Today we’re unpacking anxiety. What is it? How does it manifest in the body?
This is a beast of a subject, given that there are so many experiences and reasons that could trigger any one of us into a state of anxiety.
I'll be sharing with you an experience of my own, which included some racial and sexual profanity in a workplace that triggered massive anxiety. I'll also share with you a simple and easy tool that you can use to bring yourself back into a state of balance.
But be careful: it can backfire!
I grew up in a very multicultural environment in London and from there I can't pinpoint a time where I've experienced any kind of racial or sexual comment made towards me. I was aware that there was discrimination and favouritism in the workplace, whether you're a man or a woman, but I never personally felt discriminated against. Actually, that's probably not entirely true. When I first started my first official full-time job in the training and development space, I was very aware that I was a young Indian British woman working in a very male, white middle class dominated field. But again, I didn't actually experience any racial comments or sexual harassment specifically directed towards me.
The place where sexual and racist comments were made was in a job in Australia - it presented itself as graffiti underneath my desk. ‘Eat this curry pussy’, with an arrow pointing to where my pussy would be when sitting at my desk. I found this a couple of days after another one of my colleagues had discovered something similar under her own desk. I was working from home on that day, but a couple of days after when I returned to work, I remembered to look underneath my desk and lo and behold, there it was.
I immediately switched into a very practical mode to communicate and investigate. Ensuring that all of the desks were checked; that photographs were taken; and planning out the next steps for communication and investigation. What was required from a human and human resources (HR) perspective with the rest of the office team and the wider business?
A meeting was organised for that afternoon for the staff who were in the office to communicate what happened. Just before the meeting, I stepped into a meeting room on my own and allowed everything to just sink in.
I'd been in this very practical state, and once I stopped, the emotions just came to the surface and it was overwhelming. It felt invasive and intrusive. I started crying, letting it all out before going into the office team meeting.
That weekend, I was home alone and I was going through a rollercoaster of emotions. I would be okay and then all of a sudden, I would just stop and freeze. I remember going to buy some groceries, staring at the produce, and it just hit me. I had a wave of emotions coming up and I was trying to be still and breathe through them and try not to break down in the middle of the grocery store.
Then I'd be okay. Then I would drop. I honestly couldn't find the words to describe what had happened and all of the emotions that I was feeling, there were an absolute TONNE of them!
That happened pretty much through the whole weekend. I had a few colleagues call to check in on me to see how I was doing and if I needed anything. I couldn't express what I was feeling and how I was feeling: just that it was up and down and I was trying to process it.
I was using my tools as best as I could to clear the emotions that were coming up.
I went back to work on Monday, and as I was approaching the office I started to experience what I guess would be called an anxiety attack. My body started to heat up, my hands were clammy, my heart was beating and racing in my chest, my breath became shallow. I felt choked and felt really, really fidgety/jittery, but at the same time frozen.
I don't feel like I've experienced anxiety to that level before.
I managed to calm myself and breathe and go in and get on with my day. I actually don't remember much of what happened on that Monday. I did speak with my colleague who'd had the same thing done to her desk, and she had been in a state of ‘Why me? Why me? Why me?’ I expressed to her that this is not about you. This is about the person who did it. This is all about them and who they are, what they feel, and that this action was their choice.
I explained to her that if you absolutely have to think about why me, frame it in the way that you are such a nice person that they didn't believe that you would do anything about it, but here you are standing up for something that was incredibly wrong and making sure that it doesn't happen again.
The next day I had exactly the same experience. I was approaching the office and had a huge anxiety attack. Heart was racing, shortness of breath, felt choked in my throat, and fidgeting. I had to force myself to take steps forward to walk to the office.
My boss was away for the week; he and I had a very good relationship. I was comfortable communicating with him when I was feeling bad or if I was having any challenges. I would have done so if he had been in the office but he wasn’t. When I got in, I decided I needed to speak to somebody. I really needed to get out of my system what was going on round and round and round and round in my head. All of the thoughts were just circulating and I knew that I needed to express everything out loud, simply let it come out of my mouth.
I hadn't spoken to anybody all weekend, except for the few colleagues who had contacted me to check in on me.
I called the employee assistance programme hotline number and got through to a psychologist who went through the standard questions to make sure that I was safe and there was nothing that she needed to report.
I just unleashed everything. I rattled off everything that had happened, how I was feeling, the conversation that I'd had with my colleague who'd experienced the same thing. A couple of times she asked me if I'd seen a psychologist before. I ignored this the first time because I had the sense of ‘please don’t call me crazy or tell me that I need to go and see a psychologist more regularly’. But then the second time she asked, she actually explained that the tools and the conversations that I've been having are really good ones, and what I’d shared with my colleague was really practical and helpful advice. She thought I’d seen a psychologist before and that was how I had the tips to share. I explained that I was a coach and worked with people on emotional and mental wellbeing.
Once I was done expressing, I told her ‘My boss is away and I didn't really have anyone to download this with, so that's why I called. I don't need anything else. Thank you.’ She was happy to complete the call.
And that was it.
Let's explore the actual change that happened there.
The experience that I was having was, as I said, really quite overwhelming on a physiological level. The thoughts and the emotions that I was experiencing were enhancing and creating a loop in my physical experience.
The constant rattling around of all of the thoughts replaying the experience in my head, the wondering who it was that had graffitied my desk, and whether they were still in the office, and whether I would be having a conversation with them or not. All of that was rattling around in my head, adding to the experience that I was having on an emotional and physical level.
The thing that I really wanted to do was to express it all out loud.
I'm really mindful about who I have these conversations with because there are people in my life who I can have some conversations with and they will immediately sympathise with me and feel bad for me and feel sorry for me and feel into the anger of the situation or the frustration of the situation and come at it from that viewpoint.
There are people in my life who will have the perspective of what part of you created or co-created this situation?
In this particular instance, all I was looking for was not even a sounding board, just a board. I was needing somebody to be on the other end of the phone or sitting in the other chair across from me with whom I could verbalise all of this information that was spinning around in my head. Have it exit my mouth so that it could create some quiet and stillness in my mind.
I needed to express all the internal noise out loud and have someone hear me. That’s all.
This brings us to our tip. I'm going to be really, really clear about how you do this. I’ve just let you into a bit of an insight on this. It’s really important that when we are using this tip, the individuals that we are doing it with are ones we feel are going to listen to the information and that's it. If you choose to ask them a question about your expression, ask for advice, that's totally fine. But what you're looking for here is to have the information exit your physical body.
If you consider for a moment that all of us are energy. Those thoughts, as they're spinning around in your head, all of that is energy. If we can move that and direct it into our mouth and out of our mouth and out of our body, we have created a form of release.
So for today's tip, consider who it is that you're going to be doing this expression with, whatever situation that has created anxiety for you. It's so powerful to move it out of your body.
And this is such a simple way to do that, provided we have these boundaries around the conversation and it's these boundaries that are going to help to create a healthy release.
You are simply going to do exactly what I did in the experience above. You are allowing those thoughts to come out of your mouth. Just keep articulating them and the emotions that come up with them until everything is out. Hopefully the person you are doing this with will just sit, listen, allow and hold space for you. They don't need to do anything else unless you ask them.
If at the end of that expression you wish to extract some advice from your friend, then absolutely do so.
What I found really powerful in the way that I did it with this particular psychologist I spoke with on the phone, was that I didn't know who she was. I knew that there was safety and confidentiality in that phone conversation, and that allowed me to express myself fully. Those are two really important states that we are often seeking. When we want to express our deepest thoughts and emotions, we want to have a sense of confidentiality and safety.
So what makes this particular tip backfire? As I mentioned, when you have a friend or the person who's starting to sympathise with you, they're starting to feel into the emotional states that you're feeling and then experiencing frustration or anger around the particular situation as well. This is only going to deepen the emotional experience that you're having and enhance it, which is not what you want.
The other thing that will make it backfire is constant repetition. It’s really important when we express things out of our body, that we release that energy to a significant level. When we revisit and memorise that situation and continue to repeat it with the same level of emotional attachment, we start to embed those thoughts and emotional states and they become a deeper memory for us in our mind and body.
I'm not going to say that it takes a greater deal of effort to shift, but we're memorising things and we're creating a habit within our physical body around that particular emotional state. So we'll go out and seek more of it, creating a vicious circle of seeking more of the same, sharing more of the same, to feel more of the same.
Now, that might sound a little bit backward, because why would anybody want to experience more anxiety, but our body and our subconscious has a very intelligent way of experiencing a “normal”, or known, state of being, If the known state of being is anxious, then your whole being continues to seek out situations, events, experiences that will create more of that.
So let's quickly recap that tip.
When you've experienced a state of anxiety, the idea is to express that out of your body with somebody who you feel safe with, and where there is a level of confidentiality. That individual is there to allow and hold space for that expression to take place. Nothing more, nothing less. Should you want some advice, invite it, but you don't have to. Express it. Done. Move on.
I'd love to hear how you get on with that particular tip. Of course, if you have any other tips and tools that you use to support you when you've experienced anxious states, I'd love to hear those too. Share in the comments!
Love, hugs and magic!
Bhavna xx
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