Understanding Anxiety
Episode Description
Anxiety is one of the most common mental health problems people face. However, there are many ways to manage and understand it. On this episode of Mind Your Mind, host Tim Unsinn and therapist Lucas Mitzel discuss what causes anxiety and how it can affect people’s day-to-day lives, as well as the difference between anxiety and fear and how to combat chronic anxiety with grounding techniques.What to Expect
- What anxiety looks and feels like
- How to combat anxiety
Resources: Learn More
- “Please Explain Anxiety to Me! Simple Biology and Solutions for Children and Parents,” by Laurie Zelinger and Jordan Zelinger
- “Supporting Your Child With Anxiety,” (youngminds.org.uk)
Things to Think About
- Severe anxiety can make it difficult to function in daily life.
- Writing things down can be an effective way to feel less anxious about upcoming tasks.
- What techniques can you try to manage your anxiety?
About the Guest
Lucas Mitzel provides therapy for children, adolescents, and adults, ages 5 - 30. He believes building relationships with clients is the most important piece of successful therapy. He loves what he does, because it allows him to walk next to people he would never have met had he chosen a different profession, as they work to make amazing life changes. He has the honor of meeting people at their worst, all while watching them grow into the people they’ve always wanted to be.
Transcript
Understanding Anxiety
Featuring Lucas Mitzel, LCSW, Dakota Family Services
Host Tim Unsinn:
Welcome to Mind Your Mind, a podcast presented by Dakota Family Services, an outpatient behavioral health clinic, located in Minot, Bismarck, and Fargo, North Dakota. In this podcast, I will talk with our experts about understanding and nurturing our mental health and wellness. I'm your host, Tim Unsinn. Join me each episode as we explore the intricacies of our minds, decrease the stigma of mental illness, learn practical tips for managing our mental health and wellbeing, and recognize when it's time to ask for help. Join me now to Mind Your Mind.
Host Tim Unsinn:
Welcome to this episode of Mind Your Mind. Our guest is Lucas Mitzel. Lucas is a therapist on the Fargo campus and provides outpatient therapy for children, adolescents, and young adults. Lucas, great to have you on Mind Your Mind. Our topic is understanding anxiety, and in today's world, I'm thinking that's like way at the top of all of our lists. So, however, before we get to anxiety, I'm gonna create a little anxiety. I'd like you to tell us about why you do what you do.
Lucas Mitzel:
Yeah. I love doing what I do because it allows me to help people achieve who they want to be, and I get to walk with them through that journey, whatever that means for them.
Host Tim Unsinn:
That's very cool. Thank you for doing that. Today's topic again, understanding anxiety. So first, what is anxiety and what does it feel like?
Lucas Mitzel:
So, anxiety is one of the most common diagnoses that we as practitioners see in our clinic. And according to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, which is what we use to diagnose and get our information from that way, it is the anticipation of a future threat. Fear is very closely related to anxiety, however, fear is more about the emotional response to an imminent threat. Fear deals more with the autonomic arousal, such as fight, flight, or freeze responses. While anxiety is more covert, dealing with more muscle tension and vigilance and preparation for the potential threat. Everybody has experienced anxiety in their life, whether it be when you're a kid asking out your crush or you're gonna have to do a speech in front of the classroom, or when you're at work and your boss says, "we need to talk about something." It's very common. However, the difference with anxiety is that it's more constant. So it's like you're walking down a path, there's a bunch of trees, and you think behind every single tree that there is a bear. Your brain will justify you feeling anxious even though you've had thousands of experiences with trees or walking past them with no bear. And if there's one time that there's a bear, your brain's going to think, well, this is why I'm anxious. But that can be more what it's like when you have anxiety.
Host Tim Unsinn:
So there's gotta be a difference though. I'm, I'm thinking some of that sounds like worry. Some of that sounds like anxiety. So what's the difference between the two and how do I know if I have a problem?
Lucas Mitzel:
Yeah, regular worry. I mean, everybody experiences that, so, but the difference is that worry comes and goes. It's more situational. It happens and then as soon as the moment leaves, it's better. Whereas anxiety sticks with you, it's impacting your day. It makes it difficult to function. And if that's occurring, it's typically we're looking more at an anxiety disorder. Anxiety is when you have a hard time controlling your worries. You have difficulty concentrating. You might have some muscle tension going on, typically in the shoulders, you have difficulty going or staying asleep, restlessness, irritability, feeling easily tired. If this sounds like you, it'd probably be a good idea to seek some professional help, whether that be through therapy, medication management, or both. Research shows that the best way to manage anxiety is through the use of therapy and medication management.
Host Tim Unsinn:
Our guest on Mind Your Mind is Lucas Mitzel. Lucas is a therapist on the Dakota Family Services' campus in Fargo. We're talking about anxiety and understanding it. So as I think about anxiety, what are some of the tools that I can use to help with, you know, mine or someone else's anxiety? You mentioned something about getting, seeking help or medication, different things like that. So what are some other tools that we could look at?
Lucas Mitzel:
Absolutely. Yeah, we have to remember that anxiety is the preparation of a potential threat in the future. So anxiety wants us to think about what might happen to us. And so if we can think about what's in this moment and bring ourselves back down to right now, we're probably okay. And you can do that through using grounding techniques. There's a famous one, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, where it's five things you can see, four things you can hear three things you can touch, you know, et cetera, et cetera. And just simply by doing that, you can bring your focus to this moment and it'll make it better. It may not fix it completely, but it's going to make it better. Things like deep breathing, muscle relaxation, taking one thing at a time, or simply just if you're feeling overwhelmed, putting what you're needing to do on a list so that you can see it written down on a piece of paper. And it's not just floating above your head and seeming a lot bigger than it actually is.
Host Tim Unsinn:
Well, I could see how it would be very stressful to think of a bear behind every tree. I get that. That's, that's really plain for so many of us to understand. Now it's dealing with those bears behind the trees. And I love the idea of writing it down because you're writing it down and you're looking at it. It's like, it really isn't that big a deal. Is that the real, the helper behind that?
Lucas Mitzel:
Absolutely. Yeah. And when we have a large list of things that need to get done, it can just seem like there's too much that it's not, it's gonna take too much time. And so writing that list really puts it down on paper and we get to see it. And then bonus points, sometimes this helps people is when you put a timer next to it, like, this task is only gonna take me five minutes. And if you have 15 tasks, that seems overwhelming, but if they only take five minutes each, well that's not gonna take as bad. So now this doesn't look as bad, so now I'm not as overwhelmed. And that has proven to be very helpful for a lot of the people that I've seen.
Host Tim Unsinn:
If I boil everything down, it sounds like if I put things into perspective, maybe I won't be as anxious.
Lucas Mitzel:
Exactly.
Host Tim Unsinn:
Alright, well before we wrap up, Lucas, thank you so much for being on Mind Your Mind. As we wrap up, one last question for you and that is, what do you do personally to mind your mind?
Lucas Mitzel:
Yeah, it's really important, I think especially for anxiety, to maintain a good exercise routine, even just doing 30 minutes a day or just as often as you can, because we're all busy. Whether that be just going for a walk or running or training for something, lifting weights, just something to get us active. It's very healthy for the brain and it allows us to just feel much less anxious, for those of us who struggle with that.
Host Tim Unsinn:
Very good. Thank you again for your time. Appreciate you sharing your talents and treasures with us.
Lucas Mitzel:
Thank you.
Host Tim Unsinn:
Thank you for joining us for Mind Your Mind, a podcast presented by Dakota Family Services. For more information, links to additional resources, contact information, and much more, go to dakotafamilyservices.org.
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