Happy Friday the 13th! It’s Daniel here for your weekly deep dive into personal wellness. Today’s TedTalk is brought to you by the letter A… for anxiety. Now, I don’t want you to get anxious just ‘cause I’m going to lay down some thoughts on this touchy subject, it’s all good!

Working in the world of wellness and self care, I meet and deal with people with anxiety all the time. Lately, though, I notice more and more people reaching out or coming with their chief complaint in their life being anxiety. I get it, while the world we live in is beautiful, it’s also totally f!#@ed sometimes.

I want to preface this conversation: I am painting some broad strokes on an extremely nuanced and complex issue; this is my personal opinion based on my personal experience. I have zero judgment for anyone’s feelings, or how they deal with those feelings. I simply have some insights based on what I’ve seen and who I’ve helped.

Sometimes you need a little perspective from the outside looking in and, as someone who is blessed to only experience anxiety on a very rare occasion, I have some insights that I think might help you or anyone in your life that’s dealing with the Big A.

So take a breath, get cozy, and let’s get into it…

reframing your feelings

When your nervous system is taxed and you’re feeling overwhelmed, anxiety is that little @$$hole who is hiding in the back seat just waiting to get its grubby little fingers on your steering wheel so it can drive you off the edge. Once it starts driving, there’s a sense of helplessness, because you simply feel the way you feel. It sucks!

Unfortunately we live in a society where the norm is just to get a prescription and call it a day. This is obviously necessary for extreme cases, but I’m concerned that we’re avoiding a lot of the root cause of these $#!%ty feelings. And one of those root causes, I believe, is way too much talking about anxiety, and the obsession with identifying with it.

So, my the first bomb I want to drop… if you’re someone who identifies as anxious, here’s a nugget of tough love for you: Shut up about it!

What we focus on expands proportionately and if all you think and talk about is the fact that you’re anxious you’re just going to get more anxious. I get it, if you have a visceral, physical response to life happening around you and it manifests as a debilitating feeling, you’re going to want to communicate that to people. Fair enough. But let’s remember: words matter. And, while watching your words may not cause an immediate change in your physiology, it can certainly help. I promise you, changing your relationship with how you talk about it can make a world of difference.

Saying “I have anxiety” means it’s a part of you.

Saying “I am anxious” means you identify with it.

Be careful with statements like this!

Let’s make a slight adjustment:

Instead of “I have anxiety”, phrases like saying “I feel anxious” allow it to be temporary and avoid ownership of it. Even a statement like “I’m not feeling like myself” provides the necessary distance required so we don’t embed these negative affirmations into our psyche and make it our whole personality.

Understandably, there’s trauma and drama attached to events in your life that can cause anxiety – that’s legit. But the lie is that you don’t have control over your thoughts or your nervous system. I hate to break it to you, but you absolutely do.

responding to life

I am all for positive conversations on mental health, but we also need a reality check: Life isn’t as bad as we think. I’m not saying that existence on earth doesn’t come with daily challenges that take us to our limits, but we need to be honest – we have it pretty good.

Believe it or not, life on earth has never been more luxurious or convenient. Think about it: we didn’t have indoor plumbing 100 years ago. Long before that we used to have to skin animals ourselves to make winter coats. We had to hunt food and build shelters and everything was harder. Flash forward to today and we all get triggered by a news headline or a long grocery line.

$#!% is always going to go down politically, economically, ecologically, but no matter what is going on, we are the ones who hold the power.

I have to share this amazing perspective from my girl Mel Robbins. I watched a clip of her recently where she gave a masterclass on life in 15 seconds:

“What is happening around you doesn’t have to happen to you. When other people do something, yes, you’re going to have an opinion, you’re to feel something. You will respond. Its human nature. But what you do in response to what somebody is doing is where your power is. That’s how you take responsibility for your life – and let’s look at the word “responsibility” – it’s your ability to respond.“

I love the way Mel put this… it’s genius, because it’s true. The way we respond to life is up to us. This doesn’t mean you have to do it alone, but it does mean that you need to be the one to be accountable for the life force energy that you’re constantly draining from yourself every time you allow external circumstances to affect who you are and how you feel.

trust issues

Here’s another incredible perspective for you. While making some notes for this week’s issue, I heard a brilliant quote that stopped me in my tracks. You ready for it?

“The opposite of anxiety isn’t calm… it’s trust.”

Stop the presses. That’s it right there.

When we feel depressed, we’re living in the past. When we feel anxious, we’re focused on the future. Would you feel anxious if you trusted that everything in your life was going to work out? Probably not.

So really this epidemic of anxiety essentially boils down to an epidemic of uncertainty. And this is good news! Why? I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: we are all experts in uncertainty.

If you’re alive to read this, it means you’ve made it this far without knowing every single step to take along the way. It means that you’ve climbed the mountains, crawled out of the ditches, and lived to tell the tale. It means you’re stronger than you give yourself credit for and that you might be giving the things outside of you more power than you give yourself.

You’ve proven to yourself that you’re capable of handling everything that life throws at you. Trust that you have the innate ability to navigate uncertainty and you can take your life back.

So that’s someting to consider: you may not have anxiety, you might just have trust issues. Let this be freeing for you. Trust can be built.

Surrender to the fact that you alway make it through, and let that build your trust that – no matter what – everything will always be okay.

help is here

It would be extremely silly if I didn’t mention one of the best tools in the world for managing your nervous system, and specifically anxiety – and that’s NuCalm. Here at Vortex, it’s our most popular session for a reason. Listen, this isn’t me being salesly, this is me trying to save the world! Everyone one of us should be using this.

NuCalm is scientifically-proven to reduce stress on demand and process energy in your body – energy like anxiety. It’s drugless, harmless, has zero side-effects and, get this – it’s thoroughly relaxing and enjoyable.

If you haven’t tried it yet, get your @$$ in here and give it a shot. If you can’t get in here, go to NuCalm.com and download their free 7 day trial of the “home version”. If you love it, use code our code VORTEX to get 15% off for life.

NuCalm and Vortex both have a shared vision of helping people calm their nervous systems and thrive in their lives. There’s nothing in the world like it. It has saved me from feelings of anxiety too many times to count. Trust me, it works.

Now, do me a favour, go out into the rest of your day and treat yourself (and your nervous system) well. You deserve to feel good!