Anxiety is a Luxury

Sometimes it is important to try and re-focus our perspective. A great deal of anxiety is about the privilege we enjoy because of the place we live. Trying to understand that concept can help us consider how the perspective of the world at large. Refocusing is an essential tool for reducing anxiety.    https://forge.medium.com/panic-is-a-luxury-c4330107b80a   Transcript: you're listening to psych with Mike for more episodes or to connect with the show with comments ideas or to be a 0:07 guest go to www.sitewithmike.com follow the show on 0:12 Twitter at psych with Mike or like the Facebook page at psych with Mike now 0:18 here's psychic welcome in Insight with Mike Library this is Dr Michael Mahon and I'm here 0:24 with my good friend and colleague Mr Brett Newcombe I love it when you say that which part good friend or colleague 0:30 both because it gives me some identity yeah well I I am very aware 0:38 um that there was a period of time where I was an experiment for you 0:44 Oh I thought I kept that better hidden oh no you used to tell me that all the time I don't know how how you thought it 0:51 was hidden when you used to say that you used to say like those words to me well you're just really an experiment well I 0:57 mean if if you were feeling anxiety about that it's exactly what I wanted you to feel because anxiety can be a 1:03 motivator yeah and I was trying to motivate you well I was if you don't turn your sound machine you're going to 1:08 fail I was initially reluctant to believe that you would care enough about 1:14 me to want to be my friend well and I understood that and you said well there were reasons why but I'm in a period of 1:20 my life where I'm trying to be a better person and I'm using that I can bring 1:25 along as an opportunity to try and yeah I promise a turd yeah yeah and I was 1:31 like oh no thanks that's wonderful okay now you're making me anxious yeah so so 1:38 uh do you get anxious a must it's part of the human condition 1:43 yeah but I don't know that anxiety is a part of the human condition and this is why I say that because 1:50 where even if there are other uh psychological conditions that may be 1:58 actually linked to some kind of chemical imbalance or some neural processing I 2:04 don't think things I I've always believed anxiety is a thought disorder and so if you can correct the thought 2:13 disorder then you don't have anxiety so what I mean by that is that anxiety generalized anxiety other than the 2:19 fear-based anxieties I believe we should make a distinction between fear-based non-fear-based anxieties okay say more 2:26 so fear-based anxieties which are like post-traumatic stress disorder things like that those actually are ways in 2:33 which the brain processes information incorrectly so instead of the cortex 2:39 which is the area of your brain where rational thought lives processing information first and then giving 2:45 information to the limbic system which is your emotional Center and then that triggering the 2:52 fight-or-flight response when you have post-traumatic stress disorder that's turned upside down you just immediately 2:57 get into fight or flight and you don't ever process the information but generalized anxieties which are 3:03 situationally based you always process the information first and those are the result of cognitive dissonance so the 3:10 inability for the human mind to hold two conflicting thoughts comfortably so I 3:16 want to ask a girl out but I'm afraid of rejection right that's that's a that's a 3:21 a a a a conflict and the friction of those two ideas rubbing together in our 3:28 brains causes what we consider to be anxiety so if you don't have any cognitive dissonance if you don't live 3:34 with that and you don't fuel that on a regular basis then you could live fairly 3:40 anxiety free my question would be it is The Human Condition such that a person can do that 3:48 um I don't think so yeah because I think things happen I mean uh I recently had I was reflecting on your question about 3:55 anxiety uh I don't think I'm very situationally anxious uh 4:03 I mean it does happen but it's really rare uh if I'm in a dangerous environment and 4:10 I see I'm Jesse Jackson talking about walking down the streets of Chicago being followed by a group of young black 4:16 males I said made him anxious just because they were there because the reputation of the area and the community 4:21 and so on I've had that experience I remember hitchhiking through Hartford 4:27 Connecticut in the Spanish section being followed by a bunch of teenagers because 4:32 I was obviously an outsider didn't belong in that neighborhood and they wondered who I was and what I was doing there I felt some anxiety while they 4:39 followed me to the edge of the boundary and then they went away they didn't do anything they were just there but I felt 4:45 anxiety and and was asking myself questions like how'd you get here stupid well it's not where you should be get 4:51 out of here uh I had a I had a cancer scare earlier this year 4:58 and I had a lot of anxiety about well if I have cancer I'm going to die and do I have cancer am I going to die is it now 5:04 time to make my peace with that and figure out you know how to get from here to there to 5:11 an acceptable death right uh assuming I have anything to do with that at all or do I and so there's a lot of existential 5:18 anxiety uh so I think that may be the two types of 5:24 anxiety that you're talking about one one is a situational existential anxiety a baseline level of anxiety one's one is 5:30 an immediate reaction to a set of circumstances it could be scary causing you to have a reaction so I 5:37 don't think I'm very prone to one but I think I'm prone to both so I don't know 5:44 how to answer your question well I originally answered the question because of all of the people that I know 5:50 you demonstrate what I would consider observable anxiety 5:56 the least good yeah good and and I've always and I've always thought that now I've I've been in situations and I've 6:05 seen times where I have where I know that you were anxious but that's pretty 6:12 rare and so what I wonder is because anxiety is just so ubiquitous now in 6:20 society it's actually overtaken depression as the number one diagnosis 6:26 diagnosed psychological disorder in the United States and so is that a real 6:32 thing has anxiety overtaken it do we see it more and so when we're treating it 6:39 are we treating it in a way that is effective and beneficial 6:47 thank you I don't know yeah and I I don't know the 6:52 answer to the question because I don't have a global map for 6:58 society I try to see clients as individuals when somebody comes in and they're struggling 7:05 to digest something they want to figure out what that is and and try to find a way to help with that problem 7:12 uh now what I'm aware of doing counseling is that we may make progress 7:17 on this problem and when we take it off the table another underlying problem or 7:22 what we call comorbid problem will surface because it's like cards in a 7:28 deck and you play some down but there's still some there and I think life is a statement that there are problems 7:35 and you're going to experience having to encounter them and having to manage them 7:40 and resolve them to the best of your ability all of your life if you're alive there's going to be something out there 7:46 yeah that you need to be dealing with right and 7:51 I'm so so being anxious about it just saying oh my God I'm anxious I'm Frozen with 7:57 anxiety yeah isn't helpful to me no so so then my question becomes well what 8:03 are the things that we can do about the anxiety when I reframe the way you expand define it experience while I was 8:10 listening to you talk what I was thinking about was at what point did 8:17 things like psychological disorders start to become an actual thing like 8:22 when we were hunter-gatherers did we have the ability to experience 8:28 depression anxiety bipolar disorder and my guess would be long enough yeah even 8:34 if we did it didn't matter because environmental factors were such you had to have the survival skills right right 8:40 if they were survival skill enhancing yeah we had them yeah if they weren't no 8:45 and and so for me a lot of what we consider 8:50 mental disorders are really the luxury of our Advanced Society well I agree 8:56 actually okay you do agree with that I do and I also think that a lot of them are artificially created yeah uh by 9:02 advertising you know you watch Saturday morning television Sunday morning television every ad is a medical ad yeah 9:09 and they don't tell you what the product is for they they show glorious happy uh 9:16 sunshiny smiling people because they take this drug and then they and at the 9:21 end of the commercial they give don't take this drug if it can cause bleeding it cause heart attacks it can kill you you can't take it with other drugs be 9:27 sure to talk to your doctor about it oh and by the way if you have trouble forwarding it we can get it to you too yeah uh and then and then so then I sit 9:35 around like do I have that yeah is that do I have that so I don't know just call your doctor and tell them you want the 9:40 medicine ah yeah just in case yeah exactly right well you know that's magical thinking 9:46 everybody's medicine cabinet is full of drugs they didn't take a full dosage yes especially uh I I remember 9:52 20 30 years ago doctors were regularly talking about we don't want to give people penicillin because they're going 9:58 to be superbugs that come along that don't respond to those things and uh sure enough there were then there are 10:05 and so now they've uh I was in hospital one time because I got bitten by a spider a black widow spider yeah I 10:10 remember and I had uh my I think it was a brown recluse yes yes she was I said Black Widow yeah 10:18 yeah that was a different issue uh but we're not going to talk about that the doctor told me you're in the hospital 10:24 and I was there for a week yeah because we have to put you on this drip antibiotic because we can't give you anything strong enough that isn't coming 10:30 through an IV feed in your arm yeah uh to kill this bacteria because it 10:35 it'll kill you yeah so I lead in the hospital for a week waiting on the fight to be resolved while I read books no I 10:43 remember that and that was terrifying ah so if if 10:49 the if a lot of psychological disorders are the result of the luxury we have by 10:58 living in such an advanced Society does that matter in the context of doing 11:03 Psychotherapy can you say to a client you know a lot of what we suffer from is 11:10 the result of how good we have it is that a message that matters doesn't make them feeling better yeah I mean so what 11:17 the point is I have it now I'm worried about it I'm upset about it uh I'm in 11:24 the hospital with something that's probably going to kill me unless this drug works right so what can I do but 11:30 that's now that's an extreme case I mean but I mean that's where you get to well but I mean most of the time we see people in therapy they're not there 11:37 because they got bit by a spider and almost died they're there because you know their teenager is back talking them 11:45 and they don't have the intestinal fortitude to enforce consequences to make stop 11:51 or the societal support system you know I'm a five foot two 35 year old woman 11:58 with no husband and a job uh trying to manage a 13 year old who's starting to 12:04 feel his oats and get in my face and tell me you can't tell me what to do he's bigger than I am and I'm worried 12:10 about okay yeah that that is that is an um yeah that is a situation we I didn't 12:16 see a lot of people in that situation because we live in a fairly affluent part of St Louis I had a number of 12:22 clients that were dealing with that yeah and and that certainly is much more 12:27 problematic than the guy who is just so distracted by work that he's not really 12:32 active in the daily discipline of the children the mom is just furious because 12:38 the dad is checked out I mean that's mostly what I saw in therapy and and uh 12:44 to me those situations are the result of 12:50 I mean too much affluence I mean you're we're lucky that we have the uh the 12:59 luxury of having psychological disorders you whip out a chart of Maslow's 13:04 hierarchy I don't explain to them you have meals I mean this is yeah this is more of an uh a kind of a 13:12 intellectual argument between you and I as as people who did therapy for a long 13:17 time but the goal is to discuss with 13:22 clients what their situation is from their perspective in their reality and 13:29 I'm aware of that and I try and do that but for myself I see a lot of 13:35 psychological disorders as a luxury that we have because of the society that we 13:43 live in and that doesn't make them less real to the person I understand that but 13:48 I do think that if a individual can put that in context it could make it easier 13:55 for them so couple thoughts 14:03 when you address let's identify this let's look at other options 14:09 other considerations one of the things that 14:15 people are regularly told is you uh you can't think your way out of this 14:21 it's not an intellectual problem to solve it's not a data-based resolution you know the old Ben Franklin uh 14:29 conflict resolution thing pros and cons make a list divided up and weigh them 14:35 out I remember when I had a job in sales I used to teach us what they call the Ben Franklin close if you had a client 14:41 Mr Prospect who's considering uh because you've been so forceful your product 14:47 purchasing your product they're thinking yeah and you say well you know Ben Franklin had a solution for that to take 14:53 out a piece of paper and draw a line down the middle of it you say yes and no you see make up all the reasons for why 15:00 this is a good decision and then you help them with that he said well look it's cheaper it's affordable and you get 15:06 monthly payments it's guaranteed for five years it comes in multiple colors and whatever and then over on the other 15:12 side Ben Franklin put all the reasons for not buying it and then you don't say 15:17 a damn thing you make them come up with it and so if you're a trained professional you've given them 20 things 15:23 for doing it you give them nothing for not doing it they'll come up with two or three but then you're looking at the 15:30 balance it's like oh my God that's an obvious decision and that closes the sale right okay let's run to our break 15:36 and when we come back we'll pick this up hey everybody Dr Michael Mahon here from 15:41 Psych with Mike and I couldn't be more excited to talk to you about athletic greens which is a new sponsor we have 15:48 here on the show I started taking athletic greens watching some YouTube 15:53 videos and doing my own research I wanted to add something to my daily workout program to give me some energy 16:00 and to support gut health and that was the one thing that kept coming up again 16:05 and again with athletic greens is the guy who started the company did a bunch of research because he was having some 16:11 gut health issues that he couldn't get any resolution for he developed athletic 16:17 greens and it's just exploded from there so it's 75 superfoods vitamins minerals 16:23 probiotics Whole Foods sources that's all in one daily scoop you put it in 8 16:30 or 12 ounces of water you shake it up and you drink it The Taste is very very 16:35 drinkable I actually enjoy it and I have been using and my energy levels have 16:41 just been through the roof I really like athletic greens because of some of the sustainability things that they do so 16:48 they buy carbon credits and you know to help protect the rain forest which is 16:54 something that I really like but if you order athletic Greens in your 16:59 subscription you're going to also get a year's supply of their vitamin D 17:05 supplementation and five free travel packs and that vitamin D is so important 17:11 during those winter months when we're not getting enough sunlight we've talked about how that decreases your mood and 17:18 increases depression and that can be a real deal changer so you go to 17:24 athleticgreens.com emerging that's athletic greens.com 17:32 emerging that's the psych with Mike promo and you're going to get that additional vitamin D support for a year 17:40 and five free travel packs so take control of your own health today and as 17:46 always if it's Friday it's psych with Mike okay so before the break you had 17:53 adroitly refocused us and and on to what we wanted to talk about which was 17:58 anxiety and some of the ways in which people ineffectively try and deal with 18:03 it and so you're talking about this idea that I can think my way out of something which is the message that we get from 18:11 our Protestant upbringing which is hey you know you should be able to think 18:16 your way out of this situation and you had given an example of a way that you did that in business so are you saying 18:24 that that works in therapy or doesn't uh it does not yeah because it's not you're 18:30 dealing with a an affective State not an intellectual problem so it's not a 18:35 weights and measures kind of uh problem can we weigh this amount of anxiety and 18:41 say well I've got two pounds of anxiety today but tomorrow I'll have one pound yeah yeah 18:48 and so but but we are uh conditioned to say we should be able to problem solve 18:55 by thinking our way through it well if I just focus on One credit card payment 19:00 leave the others alone maximize my payment on the one until I get it paid off then I can roll over what I'm paying 19:06 on it into the next one and focus on them one at a time and solve the problem so and then I'll solve all my financial 19:12 anxieties over time typically doesn't work that way because other things intervene right uh most 19:19 people are not able to do that not able to do that for a long enough time that they have success so somebody comes 19:27 along gives them another credit card says I can help you out here there's 500 that you can charge and so they charge 19:32 up to the max they have 12 credit cards they're all charged to the max they're making minimum payments and they're 19:38 screwed so you got to figure how can I resolve this but it's not as much a 19:45 dollars and cents solution as it is an effective solution why do you keep buying stuff you can't afford right 19:51 what's the hunger driving the need to possess right you know what are the feelings involved 19:57 can we identify them and address the feelings that drive you as opposed to 20:03 focusing on the mechanics of operation that are the expression or the outcome 20:10 of being driven by those feelings right you know I need to keep up with the Joneses all my neighbors have a newer 20:15 car we haven't bought a new car my kids need to go to college and everybody in town is going to this college I got to 20:20 at least be able to you know so people get trapped in those binds that 20:25 generate anxiety and in fact affective discomfort right but they can't think 20:31 their way through it but problem solving we oftentimes talk about emotional economics and so I think what we're 20:39 saying is you may not be able to think your way intellectually out of a problem 20:44 but you can consider what is the cost liability 20:49 or the the liability benefits of my emotions of my ethics so when you have 20:56 to feel the feelings first okay you have to feel you have to label you have to externalize them then you can process 21:02 them if you just stay in your head and don't feel any of that stuff you'll come up with logical Solutions right that 21:08 don't solve anything yeah because you aren't dealing with the affect right which is the argument that's made in the 21:14 article that you have listed about thinking your way through anxiety the other thing that people get bound up in 21:21 with regard to anxiety is thinking that they have to find a perfect solution camp and that's Sometimes the best 21:28 solution is to throw a whole bunch of crap on the wall see what sticks and then among the things that stick which one is a more attractive piece and can 21:36 you get there but if you're invested in thinking there is a perfect 21:42 solution I'm going to not take a vacation until I get all my 21:48 bills paid off right I can go and pay cash for my vacation you may work your entire working life and never take a 21:54 vacation so then you say well the alternative is I can go on vacation but then I'll just 22:00 go deeper in debt right well but you know I think that the the 22:06 intellectual exercise oh yeah butt thing is a way of 22:12 restricting yourself to an action yes or from an action because you think oh I'm 22:18 investing all of this energy in trying to think about this problem so I'm doing something when in reality you're not 22:26 doing anything because all you're doing is sitting there thinking about the problem and sometimes all you just have to take in action even if it isn't 22:33 beneficial just to get mobile my father used to say on a regular basis to me son 22:39 you have to do what the fighter pilot does yeah uh that's what I don't know what that means because I'm not a fighter pilot and neither you did uh but 22:46 it would be lead follower get out of the way do something he could have been a fire pilot 22:51 no uh yeah because they say when the plane's 22:57 gonna crash yeah you got to do something even if it's wrong it doesn't at that point it doesn't matter what he was 23:03 riding on the plane right you're gonna die anyway yeah so you might as well do something even if you don't think it's 23:10 gonna help do something don't just sit there immobile so I was raised in an era 23:16 uh where the lesson that I learned is whenever you get in financial trouble 23:22 go get another job yeah get an additional job work a second job work a third job bring in more income 23:29 pay these so that you don't negatively impact your standard living so I became 23:34 a workaholic and I spent most of my adult life being a workaholic working two and three jobs working 70 80 hours a 23:41 week making good money but for much of my life didn't manage my 23:47 money just no matter how much I made it all went out the other end and it wasn't even better 23:53 so that was a real mental adjustment to 23:58 recognize that solution wasn't a solution and that other things had to be 24:04 dealt with that I won't deal with they hurt and going to work didn't hurt right and 24:11 so do you is that an example of trying to think your way out of a problem yeah 24:17 yeah I'll just go get another job yeah absolutely yeah which then actually kind 24:23 of I'll see five more clients this week right that brings in money it kind of feels like that's a solution because 24:29 you're doing something but then it really isn't solving the problem you're 24:34 not changing anything right right and then you kind of touched on the third one which is to think that you have to 24:40 pause everything to and tell you in 2010 right yeah and you were talking about 24:45 not taking a vacation and you know a lot of times that feels like good 24:53 advice stop doing everything else and just focus on this problem right and that I even argue that might be good 25:01 advice if you were actually going to do something about the problem but if you're gonna pause everything else and 25:08 just sit and focus on the problem and not do anything then that's not really helpful so as a 25:13 therapist when you look at suggesting behavioral interventions behavioral changes 25:19 one of the things that you can suggest that your client initially will think you're really stupid I'm paying you 25:25 money for this and you're saying this to me you have to challenge habituated automation 25:32 so an example that I would give to people most of you get up in the morning 25:38 and get dressed in the exact same way right every day if you put your pants on first you put your left leg in first 25:45 then your right leg then you pass your pants then you put your t-shirt on then you put your shirt on you put your socks 25:50 on what order do you do that well I don't know well think about it pay attention just watch yourself because 25:55 you'll do it and you'll do it the same way every day so do it differently what do you mean I said well for instance lay 26:03 your clothes out tonight that you're going to wear tomorrow and when you wake up in the morning go take a shower brush your teeth do whatever you need to do 26:09 without opening your eyes come back in and get dressed without opening your eyes 26:15 you always put your wallet in your left Hip Pocket put your right hip pocket do something different and be aware that 26:23 you're doing something different notice the difference and how uncomfortable it makes you how comforting it is to have 26:30 an automated ritual because we have to break the rhythm of the automated ritual 26:35 and so even stupid little things like put your wallet in a different pocket give you an opportunity to say well I'm 26:42 going to do that differently uh so you challenge them to do little things that are under their control you 26:49 can decide this morning not to have four cups of coffee you can decide to have three glasses of water 26:55 oh that's stupid well no it's really not if you make it as a proactive choice 27:00 and then we can decide and it's really an exercise in being able to get out of 27:07 the comfort zone yes people don't recognize automated if it's anxiety yes 27:13 that's your comfort zone people say well I'm I'm uncomfortable with my anxiety no 27:18 you're not yeah because if you were uncomfortable with an old friend right 27:23 you would not live in the anxiety and so that's something that I think people get 27:28 stuck with is that they assume that because they say to themselves I feel 27:35 uncomfortable with my anxiety that that means that they're out of their comfort zone no that's what you know well and so 27:43 then there are classic defenses resistance as we call them against 27:48 challenging the anxiety provoking situation yeah one is well wait a minute that's not logical I have to think my 27:54 way through it one is I have to find the perfect solution because let lesson that 28:00 will solve the problem so it's got to be perfect and the third one is I can't do anything else until I find this right 28:06 solution right so those mental traps are defenses that preserve the anxiety right 28:14 exactly yeah they stop you from being able to work your way through the 28:19 anxiety to an actual resolution yeah and 28:24 you know that touches on this fifth one which is people believe that if they didn't have 28:33 anxiety their lives would be better and that's just not true because as you 28:38 and I started this discussion just have different anxiety exactly you're going to having having anxiety is an artifact 28:44 of the society that we live in and now if you know the world Goes to Hell and we have a nuclear Holocaust and 28:51 everybody's living in survival mode people are going to have less anxiety that's why millions are going to be 28:56 living in survival would that be better no that wouldn't be better millionaires can never have enough money 29:01 right they have to have a billion and billionaires can never have to have money they have to have more because you've always got to have more because 29:07 enough is Never Enough right even if you have more money than Jesus 29:14 you still have to have more because well if somebody took some away from you right well if somebody used uh control 29:19 of the state to limit what you could do with your money you know like the Jerry Reed song you know uh 29:26 it's a song You country singer I had a song about playing dice in the alley and 29:32 they're going to put him in jail and he said who's going to collect my welfare check who's going to pay for my Cadillac 29:38 if I'm in jail I can't do those things rich people have the same issues you 29:43 know it's not so much I got to pay rent it's like I got to pay fifty thousand dollars in Property 29:50 Maintenance right for all my houses right you know and so I have to make more money 29:55 and that's the Trap of anxiety that those individuals live with right and so the 30:02 question is if you gave all that up yeah and said okay I'm just gonna live on the 30:08 beach and you know not worry about making money well you we did a podcast a 30:15 few weeks back and you spent a considerable amount of time talking about messages from the Buddha about not 30:21 being invested in things owning things having things doing 30:27 things but just being uh as a goal for life 30:34 in which you didn't experience anxiety and so I am not 30:40 capable of citing the references that you decided but you were making the point that your understanding of the 30:46 message of the Buddha was the less invested we are in things attachments 30:52 relationships the less anxiety we will experience the less suffering we will experience the 30:58 more at one with the universe will become and that that was a goal of life 31:04 so so do you agree with that do you think that's no I'm not smart enough to know I 31:11 just we were talking about someone who's negatively and adversely impacted by anxieties to the point that they're 31:17 crippling how do they deal with them one of the ways if you could get the perfect 31:23 Buddhist solution you wouldn't feel them because you wouldn't have right investment in those things those agendas 31:29 those needs those goals those desires but being a normal person 31:34 which is a given uh I got them you got them everybody I know has them how much do they interfere how 31:41 much of a problem are they that's what brings some people to therapy so and 31:46 we'll go out on this question but uh if we're 31:53 correct and what we're saying that anxiety is a part of the human existence there's no 32:01 way to separate that out then control the volume yeah physical can can a can 32:07 an individual monitor their own anxiety or do you think that it is 32:15 necessary for someone to get some outside perspective 32:21 I don't think there's a I don't have a single answer that to me it depends on how much distress are you in do you have 32:28 the resources to moderate it yourself or do you need help yeah yeah it's my old 32:34 adage about no one goes to therapy because they have a problem they go to therapy because a problem they have 32:39 causes them emotional dysregulation right yeah 32:46 so the message is be less anxious 32:51 yeah as as Nancy Reagan used to say just say no just say no just say no but don't 32:57 just say no to contacting us if you have a question or reaction to today's podcast and would like to be involved in 33:05 topics for the future that's so beautiful I'm a professional the music that appears inside with Mike is written 33:11 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