9: reduce anxiety and stress in 3 steps

in today's episode, I share my 3-step process I use when I'm feeling anxious or stressed. Anxiety can manifest physically and mentally in our bodies so it's important to acknowledge and take action to reduce those feelings of stress. 

in just 10 minutes, you'll hear 3 steps to help you reduce anxiety (plus a couple poetry readings from shelby leigh to help you feel less alone with your anxiety!). 

each episode has a "small step" or action for you to take on your self-love journey. tune in for today's small step and let me know in the comments how it goes for you, if you feel comfortable sharing!

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resources from shelby:

·        check out Shelby’s mental health poetry books

·        Free self-love poetry print

·        Join the poetry club

connect with shelby:

·        Instagram: @shelbyleighpoetry

·        YouTube: Shelby Leigh Poetry

·        TikTok: @shelbyleighpoetry

·        Twitter: @shelbyleighpoet

Transcript

“I am sitting on the bus on my way to the store. The girl next to me sneezes. I say bless you and she doesn't say anything back and I wonder if it's because I said it too quietly or because she thinks I'm weird for talking to a stranger. The bus slows as it arrives at my stop and I stand too soon, stumbling to catch myself, praying I won't fall. I hear two boys laughing and I wonder if they are laughing at me. I say thank you to the driver and he doesn't say anything back and I wonder if it's because i've said it too quietly or because he thinks I'm weird for thanking him. I am walking along the side of the road on my way to the store. Earbuds in, head down, counting the lines in the pavement as I walk. I accidentally make eye contact with a girl passing by so I smile. She doesn't smile back, and I wonder if it's because I smile too softly or because I am invisible. God I hope I am invisible.”

That was a poem from my book, changing with the tides. I wrote that poem a few years ago now and even though i don't have quite that same stream of thoughts, i definitely still experience anxiety and anxious thoughts and insecure thoughts. In case you're new here you haven't heard me before my name is shelby leigh. I am a mental health writer and this collection of poems changing with the tides is my most recent book. And there's poems about anxiety and self doubt and insecurity and relationships and lots of things, but that one was one of my more vulnerable poems that I was really nervous about sharing in the book.

It is kind of just a stream of consciousness poem that I wrote when I was in college and it's one of the poems that I hear most often from readers that resonated with them, because not that I am the first person on the planet to talk about anxiety or to talk about those types of thoughts, but that particular piece is very much just my thoughts on the page. That's what I always try to write but that one in particular was just very open and vulnerable for me so I'm glad that people have resonated with that piece. And just know that you're not alone if that's how you feel or if that's something that you experience.

Anxiety:

There's all sorts of anxiety and all sorts of reasons why we might experience anxiety and today I wanted to talk about three things that I do whenever I'm experiencing anxiety, things that i've kind of tried and tested. The one thing I will say of course is that I'm not a psychologist. I'm not a doctor. These are things that have worked for me and different things might work for you and that's amazing, so I just wanted to share this to share the process that I go through when I'm experiencing anxiety.

Quick caveat before I get started with number one, I created a like voicemail voice message box for listeners like you to send me a voicemail and you might be featured in a future episode of the podcast! So if you have any thoughts on any of these things that I shared today about anxiety, about anything that we talked about in former episodes about self doubt, insecurity, self compassion, all of those things I would love to hear from you. I’ll put the link in the description box of this episode but there's also a little button on my website if you go to the podcast page you'll find it so I'd love to hear from you. I think that's really cool to be able to feature my listeners and future episodes too so if you listen, if you have a question for me or an experience that you want to share I would love to hear from you. 

Step one 

When I'm experiencing anxiety this is the first thing that I do and it's taken a lot of practice and it's still something that I'm practicing actively. It’s to be mindful about what is actually causing the anxiety rather than to just sit there and pace and worry and let it manifest in my body because anxiety can really affect our physical health too. It can cause stomach pains and stomach issues. It can lead to nail biting, picking at your skin, all sorts of physical manifestations.

So whenever I am experiencing those types of like physical aspects or feeling particularly nervous or anxious about something I try my best again, this is something to practice, but stopping and identifying what is causing the anxiety. What is the root of your anxiety? It can be helpful to keep a log or journal of this. I've talked about in past episodes how much I love journaling and how much I believe journaling can help but even if you just keep a log with the date and how you're feeling and what's causing it and when you're really noticing those anxious thoughts creeping in that can be really helpful to determine the root cause of it. And I think it's so important to be mindful of this and try to actively focus on what could be causing it because we can become really used to it you know? There's times where I'm like mindlessly biting my nails or nervously tapping my legs or having a really hard time focusing on something because I'm so stressed and anxious about something. But I don't actually acknowledge it in my body and I think it's really important to do that so that's the first step which is identifying it and being mindful about it and acknowledging that you are feeling anxious. Identifying it so you know what leads to causing this particular anxiety, which leads me to step two.

Step two

There's been a piece of advice that i've been told many times. It's something that i've read online whenever i've been looking up ways to help with anxiety and I don't like this advice. I'm gonna share what the advice is and it might work for you and that's great but I was always told: once I identify what the root cause of my anxiety is to think about what the worst thing that could happen is and then think about the probability of that worst thing happening.

But thinking about the worst thing that could happen is what's causing my anxiety in the first place! I already am thinking about something that could go wrong so that advice doesn't really work for me. I know that the chances of the worst possible thing happening are low. I already know that, but that for me does not stop my anxiety, so if you feel the same way that's OK, I think that's a normal response. It's just not my favorite piece of advice. What I like to do instead is think about the opportunities. Think about the positives that could come out of it so for example if you are really anxious about a job interview or a presentation that you have to give, think about what good could come out of it. Maybe you’ll knock it out of the park and you get a promotion or you get the job offer and you really impress everyone and you impress yourself.

Maybe if you're feeling anxious about a social event maybe the best outcome is that you do great, you mingle and you interact with people and it goes well. Maybe you make a new friend. That's great too. So I try to think about what the positives could be of a situation versus trying to focus on the negatives and focus on the probability of that happening. That's just not how my brain works. That's not what I want to think about when I'm already feeling anxious so I tried to shift that and think about the positives. 

Step 3

And so if I do the first two things—I identify the cause, I journal how I'm feeling or even talk about it with someone else that I care about which is a great method as well—and I think positively and I'm still feeling anxious (because it doesn't always work, it's not a cure. I wish that I could stop my fingers and make everyone's anxiety go away but that's not how it works) so I'm just sitting there and I can't get it out of my head and I'm thinking nonstop about what's causing my anxiety, I try to basically interrupt my thoughts. 

For me that's something usually where I have to be like using my full body and not sitting there being able to pace or pick up my nails or whatever it might be so usually that would be like working on a creative project of some kind whether it's for me writing or working on my own business trying to distract myself that way listening to music going for a walk I'm watching a show that I love just trying to clear my head as much as possible 'cause if I'm left to just sit there and silence and think about it I will and i'll keep ruminating on it and thinking about it over and over so I know that that last one is common advice to try to distract yourself or find things that you enjoy that get your mind off of it. But it really does help and it's not like you're avoiding the situation. It's not like you're avoiding your anxiety because in step one we acknowledged it and we wrote down why we're feeling that way and sometimes it just doesn't go away. And so it's not so much distracting ourselves as it is interrupting our thoughts and not letting ourselves sit there and think about all the possibilities.

Small step

So those are my three steps. As always in every episode I give you a small step to take with you that we can practice and so for this week I think it makes sense to just practice these three steps. Next time that you're feeling nervous or anxious try to apply these in your life and maybe you start with step one and you just focus for a few weeks on identifying the causes of your anxiety or the causes of why you're feeling nervous or anxious and then incorporating step two and then incorporating step three and seeing how it goes for you and if you already have things that work for you I would very much love to hear what you do when you're feeling anxious in the comments of the video on youtube you can leave a comment or leave me a rating and review on apple podcasts or wherever you're listening and let me know what your thoughts are on this 'cause I would love to hear.

Final poem

I'm going to leave you with one more quick poem from changing with the tides my poetry book this is page 46 at changing with the tides.

To anxiety, ii: you've always been good at choking me with my own words but I am tired of feeling tired when I speak.

Again like I said I can't just snap my fingers and make my anxiety go away and writing this poem or reading this poem isn't going to make our anxiety go away either but I'm very much a believer in journaling our feelings or talking them through with someone or talking them through with ourselves so for me this is how I work through those feelings this is how I kind of make promises to myself or actively choose to work on my mental health and my emotions so that's how I wanted to wrap up today's episode.

Thank you so much for listening to another episode of small steps to self-love. I love chatting with you and if you want to connect with me on Instagram and tiktok @Shelbyleighpoetry, you can learn more about me and my books on my website at shelbyleigh.co. That is it for this week. I hope you have a great week ahead filled with self-love and kindness and compassion have a good week!