22: Overwhelmed? Drowning? Out-of-sort? Let's chat about Anxiety.

Jenna
 0:00:00
 Hello, this is the No Wellness Wankery podcast. My name is Jenna D'Apice and I'm joined by the wonderful dietician, nutritionist, and all-ground great person, Lyndi Cohen.

Lyndi
 0:00:45
 Thank you.

Lyndi
 0:00:46
 I'm very grounded.

Lyndi
 0:00:47
 Thanks for having me on the show. No, so today we're gonna have a chat about Anxiety, which is something that I've had been diagnosed with What's like 11 years ago clinical anxiety? And it's something that you work through as well. Yeah, I feel like I would have got diagnosed with anxiety Probably the same maybe when I was like, yeah 18 or 17 or 18 I feel like the first time like really had was very anxious, the HSC made me very anxious at school. It was the first time I properly noticed it and then probably started to get medicated. And then I haven't been on medication for a long time but yes, anxiety doesn't mean it goes away. Can you take me through that? So what does your anxiety look like? How does it show up for you? I feel like my anxiety shows up in just catastrophizing and also constant overwhelm. I feel like I'm always have that thought of, oh, life will calm down when and I'll be able to get back on top of it when and I always feel I just want to pause life and then I'll be able to catch up. I always feel like I'm chasing my tail and even though some other people just like you can see oh they just like get through like I never feel like I have time to watch TV but I'm never doing anything else. I'm just walking around in a haze of overwhelm. Anxiety can really paralyze us, can't it? It's like you have these two ideas, I should be doing so much and as a result I actually am able to do nothing. And doing nothing. Yeah, so it's a really strange place to be. So tell me about how did you get diagnosed, what did that look like for you?

Jenna
 0:02:10
 I think it probably first got diagnosed back when I was doing the HSC because I was so stressed about going well and getting good marks and I was studying so much and then I remember I like went for one of my exams and I just got like an English exam and I just got into the hall and I forgot like every character of the book I didn't know a single thing even I was like it was some Shakespeare play like I couldn't even name one character I'm like I've had a complete mental block I knew nothing.

Lyndi
 0:02:48
 And you studied it for a year, right? I studied it for a year.

Jenna
 0:02:50
 But you knew it. I knew it. And then it went, then I started to go on your medication, but now I kind of manage it. I say kind of, because sometimes I feel like I'm not managing, just like regular psychologists. And sometimes I feel like, I see it's like, say I talk to her once a month, sometimes I feel like the last days of the month, I'm like stretching to get there. And then it feels really good when I go to an appointment and I'm like, actually, like wasn't feeling like I was going to combust before this. But then other times I'm like, because you just feel going and talking to someone kind of like gives me that little like rejuvenation to keep going.

Lyndi
 0:03:25
 Yeah. Can we talk about this? It's seeing a psychologist is something I think everyone should do. If you've got diagnosed anxiety, depression, any other mental health condition, I think it's essential. But also if you don't, I think everyone can benefit from doing it. Seriously, even if you feel good, when you go there, it makes you feel better. And she always makes a great point when I'm like, sometimes I'm like, I actually feel all right this week, like it's fine. And she's like, well, that's when you can actually, it's a lot easier to work on yourself when everything's not on fire. You know what I mean? You can actually talk things through as opposed to just like putting out fires and working on getting through the day. It's the best.

Lyndi
 0:04:04
 And so she sounds like a really good psychologist. So one of the tricky things is to find the right psychologist for you.

Jenna
 0:04:09
 A hundred percent. How did you find the psychologist for you?

1
 0:04:13
 Well I think it's like dating. I think, you know, I've gone through, I'm probably on my fourth psychologist now over the last 11 years. So I felt like I have got a bit of luck in finding the right people. But you do have to, firstly, if you feel like, okay, I'm not coping, you feel like, for me, anxiety feels like I'm drowning. It feels like my head's underwater and I just, as you say, I can't catch up. Everyone else seems like they're doing okay and they're floating and they're thriving and I'm just over here feeling like this is all too hard. When I feel like that, if you feel like that, that would be a cue to go, let's go to make an appointment with my doctor and have a chat and talk through those symptoms. They'll give you a test and that test will try to understand, are you diagnosable at this point? How intense is it? And what kind of treatment protocol do you need? They will refer you on to someone. One of the useful things to do is they might know someone, but typically what I do is I will try to find someone before that point. So, I might ask friends. There are certain friends that you'd be able to ask this kind of thing to. Looking online, looking at... Psychologists don't have reviews. It's not like that, unfortunately. But you do want to find someone who specializes in whatever it is you're working through. Two schools of thought I've had, one is which that I've always kind of looked for a psychologist who is similar to me. I think I once had a psychologist who was my parents' age and I feel like we were generationally different. Like, she wasn't really understanding where I was coming from. But then the other school of thought is you have someone who's slightly older, they have more life experience and they might be able to teach you things that you haven't really ever thought about in that unique way. It's just about finding out whatever works for you. One of my favorite psychologists was a man so I think that you know also whether or not it has to be the same, they have to be the same gender as you, it's really just up down to personal preference. Yeah I find my psychologist at the moment I really feel like it's working well because when I talk to her it feels like she's just like a friend who has done a lot of training on the brain. You know what I mean? So it feels like she's very much similar age, similar demographics as me, understands the same issues, but just knows, comes at it from knowledge of the brain. And I'm like, it just felt, it's very easy for me to open up. Even like when I was dating and stuff and talking about like dating apps and ghosting and all those type of things, she just like got it, so she could like revel back with me a lot easier. You didn't have to explain what ghosting was. No, I didn't have to explain it. She's like, I got you. I got you girl. How nice. It's also it's about that how you how you vibe with someone. So then once you've got this referral, you go see someone, you can have a first appointment with them. And if you like them, if you vibe, if you think there's something there, you can stick around and keep seeing them. If you go to a first or second or third appointment and you're like, I just don't really think this is clicking. That's cool. Okay. You can also kind of go maybe you're not my psychologist right now and whatever I need or my counselor or my psychiatrist whatever mental health care professional you need we really are just trying to find the right mix for you you will find a hundred percent and when you do it just it feels like a joy to have someone who is paid to listen to you this is this is very different from friends I find that when I talk to my problems about my friends, sometimes I feel like they don't quite know what I'm wanting to try and get out of or they try and fix my problems where I just really just need to vent and tell them about my problems. And you're talking and apologizing the whole time you're talking. Yeah, I'm so sorry for venting. I'm taking up so much space in the conversation. I'm so sorry the anxiety is kicking in.

2
 0:07:58
 Yeah, exactly. You're like, you don't want to be talking to me.

4
 0:08:01
 Exactly.

1
 0:08:02
 So just to have someone who knows your space, this is your time. You can cry in front of them. You can yell and get angry. You can do what you need to do. I think it's been super important and I will probably see a psychologist for the rest of my life on and off, increasing in frequency or decreasing depending on how much I need it. There have been times where I've gone weekly. There are times where I go monthly. There are times where I haven't gone at all. But just knowing that I have that person, I can always come more often or less often as I need has been critical. I think this is a big thing in accepting that anxiety and mental health isn't something that's just going to be fixed or go away. I always feel like sometimes I put pressure on myself. It's like, why can't I get this under control? When is this going to go away? It's like accepting the biggest thing she taught me is like everyone's brain has a manual of how it operates and it's about understanding your manual and doing things that work for you. So it's like if you're not a morning person or if you procrastinate things then just accept that's the way it is and don't always be putting pressure on yourself to change every part of you because that's so overwhelming. Feeling guilty when you do things differently, just accept you like this is the way I operate and that's okay. It sounds like intuitive eating in a way.

8
 0:09:16
 Literally.

1
 0:09:17
 We're listening to our body instead of subscribing to what everyone else is doing and trying to mirror everyone else, we're kind of going, well, what works for me? Letting go some of that crushing pressure that we feel to be a certain way and just trying to be ourselves a bit more. Yeah, because the pressure is what gets to me. It's like a lot of the times with like, sometimes I feel like I leave everything to last minute and I procrastinate and that's fine. I always get it done. So it's if I'm just realizing, okay I'm gonna do that on Tuesday night because I need to do it for Wednesday or whatever and just knowing all week that that's okay and I'm just gonna do it on Tuesday night as opposed to all week being like you should be doing that, you should be doing that, you should be doing that, why are you doing that, why are you doing that? That's how my brain operates. That's exhausting. It is exhausting. Do you know what I mean? It's so exhausting. I feel like the crushing pressure is out of control and it is very much about just accepting who we are a little bit more. For me, my anxiety shows up in me lying in bed at night for hours, not being able to fall asleep, running through all the ways in which I am an awful, inadequate failure of a person, every awful thing I've ever said that was silly or dumb or embarrassing or mean I go through. So I could replay stories from when I was like six. Nothing's off limits for me. And I think something that does help me there is this reminding myself that no one else is lying in bed tonight replaying my biggest failures. They're probably replaying their own biggest failures sadly. And so sometimes I do try and imagine that my brain is a radio. And I go, you know what? I notice that we're having these thoughts. I can decide to not have these thoughts. I'm choosing right now to change the channel. And right now I'm reading a book about, it's called The Hidden Life of Trees. It is appropriately interesting and boring at the same time. I just find it puts me to sleep a whole lot better. Because if I'm ruminating about how I'm a terrible person, I stay up for hours. And I was doing some research for my upcoming book talking about sleep and how important sleep is. And there is such a connection between mental health and sleep. So firstly, one thing that can happen is you have a mental health condition and as a result, you get poor sleep. So interrupted sleep, you can't fall asleep, you wake up and then you can't fall back asleep. And that's a big issue because it makes it all a lot worse. If you're sleep-deprived, you're not your best self. For me, though, I feel like if I can kind of fall asleep a whole lot easier, it means I don't have three, four hours of ruminating each night where I can tell myself how awful I am and my anxiety is much better controlled. So I think prioritizing our sleep can be a really important thing to do. Mental health walking is something I'm a big fan of.

2
 0:12:03
 Preach of the mental health walk.

1
 0:12:05
 I don't get my walk in. I feel like I'm a different person and it's so tricky because I used to have this really negative relationship with exercise, with burning calories, and now I'm like, I need to go for my steps. I need to get my steps because I noticed I tracked everything and the more, with the days when I got lots of steps, I'm just a happier, I feel more resilient. I feel like I can do more, I achieve more. And by achieve more, I just mean like I actually do things, like make my bed and those simple things. I just feel like my life is better. So that's another key thing.

2
 0:12:36
 And if you don't get the sleep, you therefore are too tired to get up and go for your walk. It's like this ripple effect.

1
 0:12:43
 Yeah. And so you can get to this point where like things have snowballed and you're not in a good place and you're like, well, I'm just absolutely not doing anything. You're feeling quite crippled." And I think that's the time where, as you say, we lower those crushing standards to just kind of accept exactly where we are right now. And I think what we can do is we can reach out to someone at that point and say, hey, I need a little bit of help. I'm in a hole.

7
 0:13:03
 I need an assist over here.

1
 0:13:04
 Get me out of the well, please.

5
 0:13:05
 Someone save me.

1
 0:13:06
 Something that really helps me, there's a lot of podcasts out there, other than this amazing one, about sleepy stories and they really work for me. There's one I listen to called Sleepy Time. There's a few other ones where they just tell you these really boring stories so I have to listen to it and get out of my own head and then it puts me to sleep. Because my own head, similar to you, if I'm just sitting there I'm just like running through a to-do list, a never-ending to-do list in my head and it's crazy. I like that. I like that's a really tangible thing that we can do. I want to bring it back a little bit and talk about medication. So I was diagnosed, I was 21. I remember the moment I was standing in a Vinny's, which is a second-hand clothing shop, and I was trying to find clothes to wear to someone's 21st and nothing fit me. And I remember just like staring into the mirror being like, I shouldn't have to feel this way. I work, I just don't. I feel numb inside. I feel like everything's too hard. I feel like life hasn't lost meaning for me. It felt really hard and pointless. Everything felt pointless. Why would I bother doing anything? So that's when I literally drove from Viti's straight to the doctor and I just waited for the first appointment. That That doctor put me on medication, diagnosed me with anxiety. And then that week coming on to medication was really tough. Well, it was tough because I told my parents and they were really sad. Not sad, it's like they didn't have bandwidth to accept the fact that I had anxiety and so I felt even more isolated as a result.

2
 0:14:49
 I feel like our parents' generation, my mom wouldn't have gone to school with eight other people that in her immediate group of friends that also have anxiety or mental health issues like I would have.

1
 0:15:00
 And they probably did, but just no one spoke about it. Totally, so for them it feels like it's this problem as opposed to you going, well actually it's pretty common and it's not something to be fearful of. In fact, you making me feel like there's something wrong with me is really making the whole problem a whole lot worse. Exactly. So that week was really tough. I was coming on my medication and sometimes coming on medication can be a little bit tricky. Some people can get some side effects. I got some side effects in that I found it really hard to fall asleep. So my sleep was really, really destroyed. I was really sad and cried a lot and I had exams coming up and so I went back to the doctor the next week and I asked him if I could get a medical exemption to say that I would sit the test a little bit later because I was not in a good place and he refused to give me a medical exemption and I you know I remember feeling like this doesn't make sense I'm telling you I'm unwell I'm sick you have prescribed me medication for a chronic condition that I have and you were telling me that I should just toughen up and get on with it. And I actually didn't leave that doctor's office until he gave me a medical certificate. I was like, this is absolutely happening. But it made me so sad to think about that's the state it was. That was 10 years ago. I like to think things have changed since then, but I still think that there is a difference in how medical communities see a mental health condition or a physical condition. So your doctor really does matter and finding a doctor who maybe has a specialty in mental health or understands mental health, I think that's really helpful. I started seeing a new doctor who did know a whole lot more about mental health and that really helped me. But coming back to the medication, I think there's a lot of stigma around taking medication but for me and for pretty much anyone I've spoken to who's taken medication, it was absolutely essential for helping. It was essential for getting me out of that hole that I was in. I would describe it as having had taken the edge off for me. So it actually enabled me to start taking progress because I was so deep in that hole that I couldn't actually proactively improve my life or improve how I was feeling. So it really just helped me. I was on medication for many years, probably seven or eight years on Zoloft. I ended up on the highest dosage that there was and eventually I just started weaning off. Why did I wean off? Because I felt like I was managing it better and that I was in a better place. Medication gives you the tools to learn how to manage it yourself, kind of like to learn the toolbox of how your brain works. But if you are coming from such a low point, you can't work out the strategies on your own. You don't have the space. No. You can't breathe. So you need to be able to get to a point that you can breathe again. Jenna and I are obviously not doctors or psychiatrists, so we can't tell you what to do. This is why I think seeing the right kind of doctor who can speak to you about these things. But I just want you to know, we both took medication. Lots of people take medication. So many people. No shame, it was essential for me and I just be open-minded to whatever you need because life shouldn't have to feel this hard. Life shouldn't have to feel hard and exhausting and like you're trudging through it. Yes, there are hard periods but if you feel like your life is constantly hard and anxiety or depression or another issue is taking over your life, it's time to get a little bit of

6
 0:18:22
 help.

1
 0:18:23
 There are so many resources of people that can help you now. It's like your doctor, there's also free hotlines. And if you're not ready to go see a doctor, there's hotlines you can call to put your foot in the door before you go to make an appointment. Because those things can be daunting.

2
 0:18:39
 There's things you can do before you even get there.

1
 0:18:41
 Yeah, and I've called one of those hotlines before. So don't just think that for other people.

2
 0:18:46
 Yeah, no, they're for you.

1
 0:18:47
 We're gonna leave them in the show notes as well so you can find them. And also, the Butterfly Foundation, we'll leave that there as well in case you need some eating disorder support, because that's another thing where you feel like, okay, we can reach out to get help for our eating disorders as well. We absolutely should be. Anyway, guys, I hope that has been semi-helpful. We will talk about anxiety again. If you do have any other questions for us, we always do love to hear from you. Send me a DM on Instagram at nude underscore nutritionist. And if you'd like this podcast, you can share it with a friend or you can leave us, and or you can leave us a review.

5
 0:19:20
 And or.

1
 0:19:21
 To tell us that you like it. Anyway, thank you so much for listening.