Season 1, Episode 8: Managing Anxiety
Anxiety is a common feeling that most of us experience at some point in our lives. However, for people who struggle with anxiety, it can feel like it takes over their life and stops them from doing the things they enjoy. We experience anxiety when we overestimate potential risks and underestimate our ability to handle them. With the help of different coping strategies, instead of being something negative, anxiety can be an opportunity to learn new things about yourself.
On this episode of Living Fully, host Katherine Hurtig talks with registered social worker, Sarah Rosenfeld, about managing anxiety. They talk about what anxiety is, how it can impact the different areas of your life, and how to manage and reframe your mindset around worry.
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Katherine Hurtig
Welcome to Living Fully, a Calgary Counselling Centre podcast. Each episode we’ll bring you insights from our expert counselors and tips and strategies to improve your mental well-being. I'm your host, Katherine Hurtig. Calgary Counselling Centre and Counselling Alberta provide effective counselling for anyone in Alberta with no wait list and no financial barriers. Find us online at calgarycounselling.com or counsellingalberta.com.
Katherine Hurtig
In this episode, I talk with Sarah Rosenfeld, registered social worker, all about anxiety, what it looks and feels like, how it can impact the different areas of our lives, how to manage it, and how to reframe our mindset around worrying.
Katherine Hurtig
So, we are talking about anxiety. And just to start off like how, how would you define that? How would you kind of frame what anxiety is?
Sarah Rosenfeld
Well, anxiety takes people in directions probably that they don't necessarily want to go in, and it can really hijack people, unfortunately. Like it's almost a situation where people start to lose a little bit of their ability to navigate, to feel like they can be in control, and adapt to their situation. So, I'd say it shows up quite differently for people.
Katherine Hurtig
Right.
Sarah Rosenfeld
Some people have physical symptoms, right, somatic experiences, heart racing, palpitations, shortness of breath. For other people, it's primarily like their cognitions and how they're thinking, or the pacing of their thoughts, or the quality of their thinking. So, they could have racing thoughts or things that really don't make sense that they attach meaning to or significance to, and that leads to more and increased anxiety.
Katherine Hurtig
Yup.
Sarah Rosenfeld
Um, you know, for other people, it's in their social connections, or lack thereof. Um, so,
Katherine Hurtig
Okay.
Sarah Rosenfeld
People talk often about social anxiety. Social anxiety is really that overestimation of the risk when they're interacting in social situations that then reduce their ability to connect, and um get the benefit from what that social contact can be for many of us. But if you're really worried about how people will respond to you
Katherine Hurtig
So, it’s more than just worry? Like it’s bigger than that?
Sarah Rosenfeld
It can be. I mean, for some people it will look like worry. But for some people, it can really begin to be something that takes over a lot more in their lives. And so, the world that they had, that might have been previously a bit more expansive, has become a little bit smaller and a little bit smaller and a little bit smaller. And because it happens incrementally, you don't always notice the change.
Katherine Hurtig
Yeah.
Sarah Rosenfeld
Until maybe sometimes people say to you, have you noticed that you're not doing the things you once did? Or we miss you, or it's harder to connect with you. So, sometimes it's hard for the person experiencing anxiety to notice those changes.
Katherine Hurtig
Now you talked about like social interaction. Um are there like common things or or common triggers that can um, I want to say cause, but maybe that's not the right word, but can um
Sarah Rosenfeld
So yeah, I think I kind of know where you’re going with this? So, I think one of the things that's important to remember about anxiety, or one of the hallmarks about anxiety is that it's quite difficult because life has so many pieces to it that can be unpredictable.
Katherine Hurtig
Right.
Sarah Rosenfeld
So, what happens oftentimes is that people who are wanting to alleviate their anxiety are looking for reassurance. They're looking to know that things will be okay. And so instead of being able to say “Okay, what are the pieces that are actually things that I can manage, control, develop skills around? And then what are the other pieces that are not things that I can deal with?” They have a hard time making that distinction. So, it all just becomes really overwhelming. And then leads to more overwhelm, and so I hope I've answered your question there. If I haven't, please um please ask.
Katherine Hurtig
Yeah, yeah sure.
Sarah Rosenfeld
But yeah. That's really I think what happens. So, kind of has this snowball effect of something that might have started out initially as fairly small, then can lead to bigger and bigger things because it's hard for a person who's anxious to seek that reassurance because sometimes we just have to learn how to manage that uncertainty and discomfort. Then get to the other side of that and look back and go “Okay, what what did I what did I learn from that?”
Katherine Hurtig
For sure. And like you said, manage that uncertainty cause uncertainty is not really something that we do have much control over. Like unpredictable things are always going to happen.
Sarah Rosenfeld
And um being able to be nimble and be able to navigate really helps to kind of calm that anxiety down a little bit. It's always there to some degree, but we want to keep it in a range where it feels manageable. It feels like you can work through it, you know where to go, you know who to talk to, and you have some skills and a toolbox essentially to be able to navigate it.
Katherine Hurtig
So, what are some misconceptions that you’ve heard about anxiety?
Sarah Rosenfeld
I think there's a couple of them. One of the things that I would say is that right, if you have a thought in your head, that it's anxious. There's a misconception that you need to believe that that thought’s accurate and true. It may or may not be. So, it's helpful to kind of figure out like does this thought have any validity to it? Or what are the things that I need to do to kind of look at that, explore it, maybe digest it, reconsider it. So, I think that's a bit of a misconception. I think there's also a misconception that you know, I can handle this on my own. I don't need to go and ask for any help around it. What we do know is that sometimes it is really helpful to get a way of discussing, talking about these things with other people, whether that's a skilled and trained professional, whether that's somebody you trust in your social support network, whether it's taking a course, those things all really help us have a different experience of our relationship with anxiety, and can lead to shifting our orientation and relationship to it.
Katherine Hurtig
And like you said, if you know if it's a thought that we're having that might not necessarily be true, hearing a different perspective, whether that's from a professional or friend like you said, that can kind of help shift things right?
Sarah Rosenfeld
Absolutely. And then you know, I think the other piece is, you know, there's a misconception that it won't really matter what I do. And actually, that can’t be further from the truth. And sometimes it's the smallest things that make the biggest difference. Often, it's the small little things that add up over time that make a big difference.
Katherine Hurtig
Yeah. So, what, what are some of those? Those small things that people can build on to to help with anxiety.
Sarah Rosenfeld
So, one of the big things would be just taking a breath. Taking a minute, calming yourself down, leaving the environment that you're in, going to have a glass of water, maybe even taking a walk around the block and coming back to it and saying “OK can. I look at this with a different set of eyes?” So, when you shift that focus and attention, it often shifts your relationship to the anxiety or the thing that's causing the anxiety. And anxiety is often caused by our perceptions or worries about what other people will think of us. It's much more about what's out of our control, than what's within our control. So, when we focus too much on the other, we're less able to be agile and adapt to what's in front of us. So, little things, taking a walk having a glass of water, just reaching out to a friend, not even maybe talking about the anxiety but just saying,” Hey, what are your plans for the weekend?” Looking at photographs, sometimes photographs bring us to that place that we love so much, right, or that image takes us to a place where we feel that calm and relax. And then we can calmly return to something and focus and reattempt.
Katherine Hurtig
You'd first mentioned, you know taking a breath. And I've heard I've heard a lot about about breathing and you know, it's kind of connection with anxiety. Like if we we have a heightened, you know, breathing rate when we're anxious and how if we focus on on slowing that down, that that can really um that can have a positive effect.
Sarah Rosenfeld
I think breathing what's so great about breathing Katherine, is it's portable. It doesn’t require a lot of resources. You can do it there, you can do it at home, you can do it at work, you can do it when you're on an airplane, you can do it you know commuting. So that's I think why it's it's a really useful one. Because you can take it with you, you can use it at any time so it's that re, re tuning to something that's now within your control. You can actually control the breath, you can breathe in for three breaths, hold it for three breaths, and breathe out for three breaths.
Sarah Rosenfeld
You can do that as many times as you want to. You can stop doing that and return to it. So, it really takes it from being out of your control to something that you can manage, which then will help reduce it. You, you talked about the somatic changes, right the the breathing will slow
Katherine Hurtig
Right.
Sarah Rosenfeld
Be able to. Right. Notice your pulse is probably shifting to being a little bit less heightened.
Katherine Hurtig
And physiologically, doesn't that kind of like when you, when you work on slowing your breath, slowing your heart rate, doesn't that kind of tell your brain that you're you're not in danger? Isn't there some kind of connection there?
Sarah Rosenfeld
Yeah. It helps us use our parasympathetic nervous system, which is that relaxation response.
Katherine Hurtig
Okay.
Sarah Rosenfeld
And so, you're right. It activates that to then calm the nervous system down and allows us to go “Okay, yeah, I'm this is okay. There isn't any major thing happening here. I can manage this. I can handle this.” And that that would also go hand in hand with being able to actually start to assess risk differently.
Katherine Hurtig
Right.
Sarah Rosenfeld
Because often people with anxiety will overestimate the amount of risk. And not recognize that there are things that are actually within their power and control to do something about.
Katherine Hurtig
Yeah.
Sarah Rosenfeld
So, breathing is a great practice to be able to just as you say, calm the body down and calm the thoughts.
Katherine Hurtig
When you're working with clients, what are some ways that you you work with them on ways to manage anxiety or to tackle it?
Sarah Rosenfeld
Great question. So, I think one of the things that we want to help people understand is that anxiety is gonna be there. And so, it's not about trying to minimize it entirely. It's about shifting our focus to say “Absolutely, when I'm doing something new or uncomfortable or unfamiliar that it's going to be there to anticipate that anxiety is going to be a companion on this journey that we're going on,” but also to re-envision what that anxiety is about, right?
Katherine Hurtig
Right.
Sarah Rosenfeld
It's about. It's an unfamiliar experience. It doesn't mean that it's a dangerous or scary or unattainable experience. It's that I'm going to anticipate this. This anxiety is going to come up because this is something new and be prepared that that's going to happen and then being able to say “Okay, so this is there, this is present, what are the steps that I can take towards moving away from the anxiety and into an actual experience that will potentially transform our relationship to what we were worried about.” So, it's really about being able to notice and attend and attuned to the fact that we have that, but then having strategies to be able to navigate it because anxiety can actually paint us into a corner, and what we want to do is work with it in a different way and see this as an opportunity. So, you might say “I have anxiety and that's crippling and it's difficult,” but it could also be that it's exciting and new, and unfamiliar.
Katherine Hurtig
Yeah, and so it's about shifting your mindset.
Sarah Rosenfeld
Exactly. So, right, anybody that does something new, it's going to be there's going to be some anxiety around that that's okay.
Katherine Hurtig
Of course.
Sarah Rosenfeld
How do we then say? Right. “I want to work with this. I want to learn from this. I want to adapt and evolve.” because really life is about a learning opportunity, if we allow ourselves to be in that mindset.
Katherine Hurtig
So, in my own counselling experience around anxiety, um a phrase that I really liked was that you know with, with anxiety, we overestimate the risk and underestimate our ability to handle it.
Sarah Rosenfeld
Absolutely. I would say that's incredibly accurate. So, you will perceive risk everywhere when you're anxious and you want to do what you can to avoid risk. Well, risk is a big part of just being human, but part of it is having scalable risk. So, is that presentation really the risk that you think it is? It's not the same as being asked or being called to defend your country because you're at war. Those things are very, very different, but the body might respond and your brain might respond to those being equally risky.
Katherine Hurtig
Yeah.
Sarah Rosenfeld
What you want to be able to do with anxiety, is be able to say that risk about public speaking, while it seems scary and having this strong response, the risk is not the same as something that would potentially cause me actual harm.
Katherine Hurtig
Of course. And then how do you work with clients on on building up that confidence in their ability to handle the risks, or the worries, or the anxiety?
Speaker 4
Yeah, that's also a great question. One of the things that really helps with anxiety is being able to experientially shift what we know about anxiety. So, when I work with people that are talking about anxiety, it's a lot about, OK, the thing that's really worrying you, how do we break that down into little pieces that we can work on, that I can support alongside, but it's really about equipping them to be able to go out and do that thing that scares them so much.
Katherine Hurtig
Right.
Sarah Rosenfeld
So, if we break it down into a set of steps and sequences, and then it's about being able to go out, experiment. I ask them to do some reflection. We bring it back, have a conversation around it about their learning, about their new learning, primarily because there's going to be new learning that comes out of this, and things that surprised them that they were fully not anticipating. “Wow, that person that I went out to and talked to, they were really nice to me. I was anticipating they were going to be mean and rude,” could be really small things that make a massive difference in people's experience of anxiety and the overestimation of risk that you talked about, and the underestimation of our ability to handle it.
Katherine Hurtig
And so, the more we we do those things, the more we kind of you know, face those fears, face those anxieties, does it get easier?
Sarah Rosenfeld
I don't know if the answer would be that it's easier, or that we just know how to navigate the uncertainty differently.
Katherine Hurtig
Right.
Sarah Rosenfeld
There's always going to be new things, so it's maybe not that it's always easier, but we feel better equipped to handle it. We know that if we try
Katherine Hurtig
Like more confident, yeah.
Sarah Rosenfeld
We know that if we try this strategy, we break it down into smaller pieces, we adjust our thinking around it, we can get through it and we can manage it. The goal ultimately is to actually enjoy that process, actually enjoy being in the uncertainty and not being so invested in the outcome. But that takes lots of practice. And lots of trust in yourself and recognition that, really the act in and of itself is where we do the learning.
Katherine Hurtig
So, like from your example with public speaking. So, it's not like like that is going to suddenly become not scary, it's just you will um correct me if I'm wrong, so you'll kind of be able to approach that more confidently. Is that right?
Speaker 4
Exactly. And say, “Yeah, I want to during this public speaking, I want to make sure that I'm really clear about the ideas I'm presenting. I want to make sure that I really tell this story extremely well.” It's not that you're going in with no anxiety because we all want t be liked we all want to do a good job, so anxiety comes with that territory to some degree, but we are re-evaluating the benefit that this could have to us in a different way.
Katherine Hurtig
Yeah.
Sarah Rosenfeld
It's not just ya know that fear of failure. It's about. OK, now maybe I want I'm still maybe that's still there a little bit. But those other things might take more importance. And then shift the experience for us, that's always my hope that it shifts the experience for people of “Wow, I learned something or that comment that somebody made was wow, I really appreciated that feedback.”
Katherine Hurtig
Yeah. Sarah, can you talk about the role of like mindfulness and meditation and managing anxiety?
Sarah Rosenfeld
Sure. So, mindfulness and meditation is really that ability to refocus our attention and learn how, when things are busy to find calm at some points. So, as things and the progress and the pace of things increases, it gets harder and harder sometimes for people to find that ability to take a moment, be able to reflect, be able to calm. So, mindfulness is really about that attunement. It's about helping the brain be able to go to this different state of focus with more ease and that's why it needs to be, or we encourage people to have it as a practice because it's really hard to get to that place. You might be able to do it once, but to be able to consistently be able to do that, it needs to be a practice and it's not to say that you don't have thoughts coming back and forth, it's just about that refocus. I'm going to come back to this, even though I have these fleeting things, you don't get distracted by the fact that that's happening, you're able to say “no I just want to attend. I want to attend. I want to.” So, it's really being able to prime ourselves to figure out how to do that more consistently.
Katherine Hurtig
And that consistency and and doing those things over time, how does that benefit? What um what kind of changes should can someone expect?
Sarah Rosenfeld
Calmer, clearer thinking, more positive outlook, being able to, as we talked about earlier, assess risk appropriately. Okay, yeah, that's something that I'm worried about, but I also know I have prepared for this and I'll do the best that I can and we'll see what happens, versus what we might have previously thought if we haven't been in a mindfulness mindfulness practice or that focusing of our attention.
Katherine Hurtig
Well that all sounds good.
Sarah Rosenfeld
Yeah, it's it's you can. Now, it's not for everybody. For some people, it's through spirituality, through artistic pursuits, um being in nature. It doesn't always have to be this formalized practice, but it's also recognizing for yourself when you are able to be in a state where you’re right , you have clarity of thinking, you're able to enjoy what you're doing. Time might be passing and you're enjoying the activity. What actual things are you doing? Cause that probably allows you to gain access to that place more easily if you know what you're doing, who you're doing it with, and what you're actually doing at that point.
Katherine Hurtig
Right. And I guess that's you know that's going to be the case with with any kind of mental health, you know, treatment, any kind of um mental health concern, you know, anxiety, depression, whatever. There's some things that are gonna work for some someone, and some things that are are not and you kind of gotta, you know, would you say that it's a bit of a trial and error to find what works for you?
Sarah Rosenfeld
Absolutely. So, just because your neighbor likes to do ten-kilometer runs doesn't mean that's the form of exercise that’s gonna work for you.
Katherine Hurtig
Yeah.
Sarah Rosenfeld
What do you like? Do you like to be in water? Do you like it to be more spiritual? Maybe yoga is more of what you want. Really, it's about taking the principle of movement and figuring out what are the ways you enjoy moving your body and what sometimes it's rigorous activity, sometimes it's less rigorous. It's not about having to be like other people, it's about exploring and being willing and curious enough to figure out what fits best for you. And that's always the challenge cause often people want a prescription if you do this, things will get better, but really it's through the exercise of trying things on seeing what you like. That you can start to recognize, “Oh, I really enjoy this and when I'm doing this time passes and it's pleasurable.” Do something that you like, you're more likely to do it again if it's something you enjoy.
Katherine Hurtig
Of course, when speaking of exercise, can that like exercise and physical activity can that play a role in anxiety management?
Sarah Rosenfeld
Yeah, absolutely. It's one of the most helpful strategies for anxiety management.
Katherine Hurtig
Is it?
Sarah Rosenfeld
So, exercise can be really helpful because it actually diverts us from the things that's causing us anxiety. So, it's a diversion strategy
Katherine Hurtig
Yeah.
Sarah Rosenfeld
So, that can be really useful. Um when we're exercising, we're actually doing things that relax our body. So, it will actually reduce muscle tension and reduce any other forms of tension in the body. It can really help regulate our breathing so, that can help with the reduction of anxiety symptoms. Um, when you actually get your heart rate moving right when blood is flowing in a different way, it increases anti anxiety neurochemicals actually
Katerine Hurtig
Okay.
Sarah Rosenfeld
Including serotonin right that are positive in counteracting anxiety. So, it helps again with that calming and regulating in the body and it activates the the parts of our brain that are involved in executive functioning, so are we reacting to real or perceived threats to our survival. So, it helps calibrate that more effectively so we can perceive risk more appropriately, and it's more to what the actual risk is.
Katherine Hurtig
Yeah, I think we we really underestimate how our mind and body. Like we underestimate how connected they are. And how taking care of ourselves physically, you know, in all the ways that you know, we've heard a million times like through physical activity and a proper diet and sleep, how that can actually like just getting those basics right have like a significant impact on our mood.
Sarah Rosenfeld
It's a huge impact. And again, it's people struggle with the consistency of it. That's the hardest part.
Katherine Hurtig
It is, yeah.
Sarah Rosenfeld
When things are tough, that's when people stop doing the things that are most helpful. And then they look back and say, “Why that that was a difficult period.” It probably was a more difficult period because you stopped drinking water, you stopped walking around the block, you stopped getting up and doing your exercise in the morning. So, stress level increases, and the ability to manage that stress decreases cause the things you turned to weren't there to get you through a stressful time, we end up increasing stress levels.
Katherine Hurtig
Yeah.
Sarah Rosenfeld
Right. So, it's a bit right, we we don't turn to the things that are super helpful when we're in heightened states of stress and those are the times we need it most.
Katherine Hurtig
How can someone kind of recognize in themselves when their anxiety is becoming, like too much to handle? And it's something that they can't manage on their own anymore, and they should probably reach out for help? What does that look like? What's what’s that gonna what's that going to feel like? What signs in their life are going to be there that you know are going to say I I should I should um get some help.
Sarah Rosenfeld
You're worried about interactions with colleagues, you're afraid to say the wrong thing at the wrong time, that's a constant, persistent thought that you're always having. It holds you back from being able to engage in opportunities, so you're not able to read a room and say this is a place where I could make a contribution. You're so overwhelmed with your thoughts that it just holds you back and you can't actually accurately determine if it would be worthwhile making the comment or not. Um you were involved in some kind of regular activity, whether it was going to the gym, being on a recreational sports team, and gradually you stopped attending those things. So, at first it was just infrequently, then it became a consistent pattern and now you're feeling overwhelmed about the thought of having to go back, and what everybody's gonna think, and if you're going to be judged. So, those could be hallmarks of your anxiety becoming unmanageable. You have commitments that you're backing out of regularly, you're not being genuine about the reasons for why you can't attend things, you're too busy, but really you're not allowing for that connection with another person to say, “Look, I'm struggling.” Where there's an opportunity for them to say “Hey, I'm here. I could listen.” So, you're just automatically taking yourself out of interactions because you assume you know how, how they're going to play out, or that you don't have anything to offer. So those would be some examples of if that's happening persistently, you're probably needing to um have some help and some support from other peers.
Katherine Hurtig
So, if we're struggling with anxiety, what's you know the step, what's a good step forward? How can we set realistic expectations and focus on progress over perfection to kind of help us manage our anxiety?
Sarah Rosenfeld
So, I think this is a really important one, Katherine, because anxiety often has perfectionism connected to it.
Katherine Hurtig
Oh, does it?
Sarah Rosenfeld
From what I've seen.
Katherine Hurtig
Yeah.
Sarah Rosenfeld
With people that have anxiety there's this it has to be done just so. So, it's not about doing it better each and every time there's a thing or a way of doing it. That that's the only indicator that I've been successful So, that takes you away from the learning that could happen at any point along the way, because unless you hit that mark, you've been a complete failure. But as we know, in anything that we do, being able to obtain that is quite difficult and challenging and may actually be unattainable.
Katherine Hurtig
And that's just the idea of success that we've set up in our own minds, right? That's not anyone else saying this is this is what needs to happen. Yeah.
Sarah Rosenfeld
Exactly. So, when you have a perfectionist way of looking at things, the unfortunate thing about that is it's about pleasing others that may or may not have that expectation. It's not about what we're doing or how we're growing or adapting. So, what I try to help people talk about and you said, it is progress. What are the little things that you modified or do next time? That could be so many things, an interaction with your child. You had an idea of what you wanted to do, you tried it out. Maybe they got upset with you. Instead of saying the whole thing didn't work out while you took that opportunity to go and step into something that was unknown. Then you figured out what information was helpful, what information may have been less helpful, and you allowed yourself time to think “OK, I think I did an OK job and how can I do it differently?” If other people are around when that interaction is happening, it's always great to ask them for feedback because we're not always the best gauge of how we've done something. It'd be better to, you know, say if there's, you know, another parent around, how do you think that went? Well, I think he did this pretty well, but when he started to push back, you got really upset and I think that's where things went off the rails a bit. But up until that point, you were pretty calm and regulated. He was listening, I wonder what happened to you in that moment, can we kind of like, can you look at that maybe and see what could have done differently? So, that's not the whole interaction. Right. There were parts of it that were strong and parts of it that were less strong, that's. about progress, that's not the fact.
Katherine Hurtig
But if someone has that, you know the tendency to to be a perfectionist, how do you work with them to kind of move to to the idea that those those small wins are just as valuable? You know what I mean?
Sarah Rosenfeld
That's when I'm pretty targeted about the things I want them to do between our session times.
Kathrine Hurtig
Yeah.
Sarah Rosenfeld
I'll actually want you to go out and have three interactions with your child. You can think of the times when you want to do it, but I want to hear from you next time about how did they each go and I'm going to ask for specific feedback from them about what they actually noticed.
Katherine Hurtig
Okay.
Sarah Rosenfeld
So, I would be again what I'm trying to elicit there is that you want to be actually giving people an opportunity to go out and experiment and try things, versus having an idea in their head of what it's like and that's just one example. It could be something in the workplace. It could be something, right? They wanted to go to this bookstore because they wanted to, you know, talk to the person at the cash that they think is really sweet. But they haven't had the chance to do it, so that might be something that I'd Say “OK, could you just go in there and buy a book and smile at them and see how that goes? And then it might be trying to do something a little bit more brave and courageous, but it right, you want to be doing it.
Katherine Hurtig
Yeah, kind of one step at a time.
Sarah Rosenfeld
One step at a time, yeah.
Katherine Hurtig
Sarah, is there anything we haven't touched on, anything you think people really need to know about about anxiety and, you know, things that they can do to to kind of manage it well now?
Sarah Rosenfeld
I would just invite anybody who's listening to this to really think about anxiety as an opportunity. It really is a way for you to learn different things about yourself. There are many people famous, not famous, not known to us, known to us that deal with anxiety and end up achieving fantastic things. So, it's not about you thinking there's something wrong with you. It's about this is a gift that you've been given or a way that you interact with things. How do you learn to harness that to make it work for you to benefit you too? There's lots of right, lots of things that come with being anxious that we might perceive as not so helpful, but it can also harness us to do amazing things. So, I just would really encourage and invite people to think about things a little differently. That there's an opportunity here, that there's people willing to help that care deeply about wanting to work with you and work through things with you, that there's people in your world that care about you, and that you're more than the self-limiting beliefs that you have in your head. You're way more than that.
Katherine Hurtig
Thank you so much, Sarah. That's such an important message. And I know that, you know, with my own experience with anxiety, that mind shift has been really important to not really think of it as you know something I need to get rid of, or change completely. It's just approaching it differently. And like you said, it's just I'm interacting with the world, I'm thinking about it in just a different way. So, thank you so much for the chat today.
Sarah Rosenfeld
You are very welcome. It was a it was a great opportunity to reflect on this and talk to you about it.
Katherine Hurtig
You've been listening to Living Fully, a Calgary Counselling Centre podcast. Thank you for tuning in. This episode was produced by Luiza Campos and by me, Katherine Hurtig. A special thanks to Sarah Rosenfeld. To stay up to date on our latest episodes, be sure to subscribe. We're available in your favorite podcast app. Living Fully is a production of Calgary Counselling Centre and recorded in Calgary on Treaty 7 territory. Living Fully podcast is not a substitute or alternative for professional care or treatment. If you're in Alberta and need help, please go to calgarycounselling.com or counsellingalberta.com. For help across Canada and the United States, call 211. If you are outside of Canada and the US, seek help from your General Medical practitioner.
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