The Worrywart: Control, Influence, or Neither?

On today's extra personal show, Emily opens up about her struggles with worrisome thoughts...very vulnerably, and explains a bit more about how it can cross over into unhealthy territory for her! Even though she doesn't feel like she's on the other side of being able to offer her own personal advice on the topic... she's currently in the thick of trying to learn new strategies for herself to lessen the weight and wants to  share the two key things that her therapists have suggested, in hopes that the ideas help someone else too! If you're a worry wart, know a worry wart, or love a worry wart... this one's for you!

Time Stamps:
0:45 - Intro
1:35 - How ARE you?
7:14 - When Emily's worry takes on a mind of it's own and crosses a line
9:07 - Emily's theme of lack of control and health . . . what's yours?
12:12 - Worry does nothing ... so why do we do it?
14:45 - How Emily's worrying manifests
17:35 - How to use the CIA Model to help with worrisome thoughts
21:30 - Stimulating the vagus nerve to bring about calm
26:30 - Let me be your girl
28:32 - Disclaimer


Resources Used:

Overwhelmed at Work - How to Use the Control Influence Accept Model

How can I stop being a worried mom?

Stimulate the vagus nerve & reduce stress with simple exercises

Connect with Emily:

On The Gram - @thejoyfulflamingo https://www.instagram.com/thejoyfulflamingo/

For Collaborations - thejoyfulflamingo@gmail.com

The Joyful Flamingo Podcast is produced by jpvoiceovers.
You can find them here : jpvoiceovers

*DISCLAIMER*
Just a reminder, that I am not a medical or psychological professional. Each one of my episodes has been inspired by my own experience and journey through life and is brought to you through my own opinions and my own lens. Any suggestions or advice offered here do not substitute proper conversations with your own healthcare professionals for either your physical or mental wellbeing.

Transcript

(upbeat music) Worry, a truly universal experience that affects us all,
albeit for different reasons. Throw in having little humans who are depending on you
to keep them safe and healthy into the mix and the worry can skyrocket out of
control. At the root of it, worry can sometimes be beneficial as it's an adaptive
survival response that can keep us safe and away from danger, but when does our
worry become too much? And what strategies can we use to lessen it? When does it
start to build a mind of its own and take over our brains and become unhealthy for
us? In other words, and all jokes aside here, when should we worry about our worry?
Well, hey there, friend, and welcome to the joyful Flamingo podcast. I'm your host,
Emily Schreiber, and I am obsessed with empowering women to tune into themselves,
to zoom in on their own well -being, so in turn they can lead their most vibrant,
aligned, and joyful lives. I want to create a tsunami of self -discovered,
self -loved, and self -understood women to show up in this world unapologetically and
joyfully, and to pass the torch on for generations to come. If any of that feels
aligned with your vibe, stick around. I'm so glad you're here. Now, let's go find
our joy.
Hey, hey, hey, joyful flamingo flock and welcome to the pod today. How the heck are
ya? No, really? How are you? Has someone asked you that question recently and then
actually waited for a real response. I know that today I can't really listen to
your answer to that question right now, but I'm really truly asking it. How are
you? And I want you to think before responding with just a simple, "Oh good, how
are you?" Think about it. How are you? And if you need to unload some shit that
you're feeling today, I encourage you. Call up a loved one. Tell them what's on
your mind. It can make a world of difference. I'm coming at you today with what
feels like a slightly more personal episode, I guess I would say. I mean, all of
my episodes are personal because I'm the one that writes them and they're rooted in
some way, shape or form and either a concept or theme or event that I've
experienced myself or at least that I'm interested in. But this specific episode
feels a bit more personal because it's about a part of me that I really struggle
with and that I'm actively working on getting better at because I know,
I know, no, no, no, that it affects my overall well -being. I'm putting it out into
the world vulnerably this week in hopes that the episode helps someone else that can
maybe relate. At first glance, or I guess first listen, you may be thinking to
yourself, I mean the show is about worry. We know that from the title. How is
worry so personal to Emily? How is it personal to her? It's a universal thing. It's
not personal to Emily. Everybody worries. And while you're right, it is. There's also
a point where you're worry or more specifically when my worry can sometimes tip over
into a blurred version of slightly intrusive thoughts or obsessive thoughts that take
over the brain and that line is often very blurry and often it's not crossed,
but sometimes it is and it can go from zero to 100 super quickly, which we're
going to get into the one specific thematic area in my life that really triggers my
worry to go into overload and we'll get to that in a second. But because that line
can get crossed very quickly and almost for me without any warning it made me
realize you know what this episode I think needs to be told sooner rather than
later and usually I wait to write a show until after I've gone through whatever it
is we're talking about or at least have been through it and out the other side
enough that I feel like I maybe have some sort of perspective or advice or guidance
to offer you know based off of my own experience and based off of the fact that
I've at least slightly come out the other side of it. But this one in particular,
this episode, this theme, this struggle of worry, I'm working through with you in
real time here, very messily and very openly. And I think that's maybe what makes
it feel more personal to me. You know, I'm in the trenches of it. I'm in the
thick of it. I have not yet come out the other side of it. I'm still very much
in need of a lot of help and support in this area. And so I don't have much
advice of my own to give you that's a solid, "Yeah, I tried this and it worked."
But I do have some strategies that have been given to me by my therapists that I
want to share because I think they'll be helpful. But also, just keeping in mind
and knowing that for the flock, sometimes talking about things with a friend or a
few hundred friends in this case is just what we all need to at least make sense
of something for ourselves. And when you can make sense of what's happening to you
or around you or allow yourself to not feel so alone in it, it then opens up
space for you to step forward in progress in that area. So that's what we're going
to try and do today. Over the past 10 years, I've worked with two different
therapists. The first one I was working with eventually retired. And so then I
started seeing my current therapist just over a year ago now. And they are godsends.
I cannot stress enough to use therapy proactively.
Don't wait until shit hits the fan to then go and figure it out. Use it
proactively. My favorite couple in the world, Dax Shepard and Kristen Bell, they
talked about this on one of their podcasts or I don't know, I saw it in an
interview like decades ago and I saw that they talked about using couples therapy
specifically in their case proactively and I thought it makes so much sense to do
that in advance of something big blowing up. So anyways, therapy, you should get it.
Both of my therapists over the past 10 years have gifted me such great gifts,
but they have gifted me so much when it comes to recognizing my worry, giving me
the open space to talk about it freely and without judgment. And then providing me
with a few tools that I've been trying to use to help me manage my worry. And
that's the key work, trying. For me, worry creeps in often,
sometimes not boldly, sometimes very boldly. If it's in a time where the worry
creeps in boldly and I'm in a tizzy about something, I do sometimes have a hard
time remembering that I do have tools in my back pocket to use and so I am
actively trying to put them to good use when I can and as often as I can but I
want to start by saying I'm like definitely not the picture -perfect version of
people using what they're supposed to be using. I still have a really hard time
with it, and so I think that there are probably many people who are in the same
boat. The truth is, I'm just a worrywart, and it has definitely gotten worse and
worse over time. You know, before I had these beautiful babies that I have that I
so badly and fiercely want to protect in all circumstances, My worry was there, but
it wasn't nearly as evident, you know? I guess I was the kid who, you know, would
wake up and worry about whether they were getting enough sleep at night if I
thought I was having trouble falling asleep, or, you know, if I missed a deadline
on university worried about what that would mean for me. But it usually seemed to
come and go quickly. The worrisome thought passed easily, and they were all just
worries about myself. And that felt a lot easier. Now with kids,
it feels more important. My worry, that is. My worry feels more important. I feel
like I need to be worrying more, because there's so much more at stake. It's not
just me to worry about now, it's them. And they're my everything. Becoming a parent
turns you upside down in so many ways, and this is no exception. Worry and anxiety
and stress can definitely heighten once you have kids. And some of us floccies may
have experienced that manifest as postpartum anxiety or maybe generalized anxiety
that's developed over time. That, my friends, is definitely a conversation to have
with your healthcare professionals. I want to be clear that this episode is not that
for you. I'm not a healthcare professional. I'm just sharing with you my own journey
and experience with worry and stress. And if you're struggling, I strongly encourage
you to seek out the right practitioner to help you figure out what is happening in
your circumstance and allow those professionals to help recommend things to you that
they think will help you based off of your experience. So I want to say that very
clearly. I'll give you a bit of a background. I can worry about, well,
I can worry about everything, but I can worry about my kids transition into a new
grade or, you know, maybe worry about a conversation I'm dreading having with someone
because I'm going to have to set a boundary and I don't like that feeling or
whatever the circumstance is. For those things, I can generally worry about it and
then forget about it. It's circumstantial, it's temporary, it goes away fairly quickly
and it doesn't really impact my daily life on the general. Generally speaking,
though, there is one theme that all of my bigger worries are rooted in.
All of my worries are rooted in a feeling of lack of control or fear of the
unknown. And it really heightens itself when it's an unknown about something that
feels really important to me. And that's when my worry then starts to blur into
something maybe a little bit more intrusive. Usually it's all about my family's
health, those are the worries and the thoughts that are harder to shake for me,
where I feel like I need to use some tools and some strategies to really help me
out of that mindset. There are some worries in my life that are there. I recognize
it. I'm able to let it go. It passes. It's okay. That seems normal. And then there
are other worries in my life that I'm like, no, this is taking too much focus away
from me. And this needs some outsider help, hence bringing my therapists.
And this theme of where my worry really rests in terms of health, it makes sense
to me, you know, my family's had their fair share of health concerns, not only my
immediate family that I've now created with my husband, but even before that, you
know, dating back decades. So it makes sense that health wise, health is a trigger
of mine for my worry. The pandemic didn't help me, not one single bit. And any of
you who can relate to that theme of their worst worries being health, I know that
you can relate because so many of my worries were skyrocketed in the beginning
stages of COVID. That was a time where we didn't know anything. So talk about
control. There was zero control in those situations. And that was really hard for me
especially because we were in the thick of trying to figure out certain medical
issues that our daughter had been experiencing since she was born. There were lots
of appointments, lots of specialists, lots of navigating a health care system when
the world had come to a grinding halt, including medical system in a lot of ways.
You can imagine all of that was totally outside of my control. We were at the
mercy of so many things and I couldn't fix any of it, and it felt incredibly
overwhelming to me. My worry that doesn't pass or that has more trouble passing is
all rooted in lack of control, in the fear of the unknown, and mostly regarding
health. And maybe for you, your worst state of worry isn't about health concerns.
Maybe yours is about finances, or maybe yours is about relationships. But what I do
know is the same for all of us. Worry doesn't actually do anything for us.
In fact, research shows that 90 % of the things that we worry about, you just
finished my sentence, you know. They don't actually happen. And we know that the act
of worrying isn't going to fix anything or help solve the problem. Most of the
time, it makes it worse, but for me, the worry is mine.
I'm controlling my worry. So in a time where I feel helpless or where I feel like
I can't control anything else, that seems to be my coping mechanism almost. It's
worrying. Can anyone else relate? Is it healthy? God, no. Do I know I need to
change that? Fuck it, absolutely. And For me, sometimes it goes in waves, right?
Like there are times where things seem to be smooth sailing. I don't feel like I'm
spiraling as much as I would in other circumstances or other times of life. So I
feel like I don't need to find the control elsewhere. Then there are other times
where it really ramps up for me. This is why I'm doing this episode right now in
the thick of it because to be transparent with you, the past six months have been
a time of ramped up worry, because I myself have been going through some health
issues. Ever since about June, right on the heels of us completing some really major
surgeries for our kid last year, and then my hot hubs taken that fall of his, you
OG floccies will remember all of that from an episode last year. Basically, I was
talking through it with my therapist, and we were like, okay, now that my body has
now had the time to come out of the fight mode, right? To get through all of that
to survive what we were going through last year, which seems stressful. Now it's
rested. It's almost like when I was teaching full -time and in the classroom, I
would always get sick on Christmas holidays because your body like allows itself to
then get sick. Does that make sense? So now my body is going through a bit of a
trying time itself, and I'm not going to get into it too much here, but I've got
some health concerns, some symptoms that are not so nice, and I'm trying to figure
them out with multiple members of the medical world. It's just another example that
in this circumstance, I feel like I have absolutely zero control.
Do I have zero control? No, but that's what I feel like in the moment, you know,
I don't have a background in medicine. Sometimes I don't understand lots of the
things that are being said to be about my own body, so the only thing that I can
control is worrying about it. And what does that worry look like for me?
Because it doesn't mean sitting in a chair, you know, furrowing my brow and thinking
and worrying. That's not what it looks like for me. Usually what worry manifests
like for me is in the form of educating myself, informing myself,
and that is usually done through Google. And this is where my worry takes over and
is not beneficial to me for sure. But it's the only form of feeling like I have
control. It's the, you know, feeling like, okay, the control I have is the ability
to at least understand about what could be happening in my body.
That's the only place that I really feel like I can take control back, even though
I know it's horrible for my mental health to Google so much. In some ways, maybe
it's helping me because I feel like at least I'm taking the idea of understanding
what's maybe happening in my body into my own hands. But in other ways, it's become
like a really bad habit that sends me off into spirals that I just don't need to
be in at this point. And then it's cyclical, right? All that googling is putting my
body into higher stress mode, likely making the symptoms I'm experiencing even worse
because we know how much stress and worry can wreak havoc on your physical body
too. Sometimes I feel like I would prefer to be back in the days of no internet,
no knowledge at your fingertips, where I would have to like actually go to the
encyclopedia to look shit up, but we're not in that time anymore. So my worry turns
into kind of these like these intrusive thoughts that then get obsessively researched
on the internet. I don't know if anybody else can relate, and it's around that one
theme of health. But like I said before, my stress and my worry isn't your stress
and your worry, and maybe you're experiencing worry or some form of anxiety or
stress in a completely different way. Maybe the theme for you is still feeling that
lack of control, but instead of it coming up in your health or your family's
health, it's coming up in work dynamic struggles or trying times and finances or not
having the support you need for one of your kids who's maybe experiencing trouble at
school. You know, maybe it's other relationships in your life that you feel like you
don't have control over or maybe it's something else vastly and completely different.
Worries often reflect our basic human concerns about stability,
security, and well -being. But regardless of what theme your worst worries take on,
I do want to help you a little bit with some tools. And I want to tell you about
the tools that I know I'm supposed to be using to help me kick it a bit. And
this is where it's a work in progress in real time with you.
I know there's things I should be doing and it's just really hard for me to
remember them in the time. But I will say this morning I did use this first
strategy I'm going to talk about when I had a little bit of a worry wart moment
and it actually did help. So I was like, okay, I was reminded of the strategies
being useful when you use them. So you got to just remind yourself to use them.
This first strategy I want to talk about is called the CIA model. My therapist
called it like something slightly different. She called it control influence or
neither. The CIA acronym stands for control, influence,
or accept. And I really love the concept behind this. Just like I said, CIA stands
for control, influence, or accept. Basically, when stress or worry or anxiety starts
to arise in you, you have to stop. You have to pause. You have to recognize the
fact that you're in worry mode. And think about this sorting tool, Control Influence
Accept. First, you ask yourself the question, what part of this thing that I'm
worried about, this scenario that's causing me all this worry or stress? What part
of it Can I actually control? Are there any parts that I can actually control? Even
in times where it seems like everything is outside of your grasp, outside of your
control, you actually may be able to reclaim a sense of control knowing that there
are tiny things within that situation that are within your control. Writing all of
that out will show that to you and it will also show you all the things that
truly aren't in your control. From there, you can say to yourself,
"Okay, if I don't have control over this particular piece, do I maybe have influence
over it?" Because having influence over something is the next best thing to having
control. Maybe the outcome isn't in your hands, but the way that you get to that
outcome might be How you interact with the people that are in the situation with
you, maybe the types of conversations you have, the way you take care of yourself
along the way, those are all ways of influencing what you're experiencing. These are
all examples of how you can have influence even if you don't have control. And then
lastly, for areas where you have neither, you don't have control, you don't have
influence. What you need to do is learn to accept and then manage.
The power in these circumstances lies in being able to accept the outcome and adapt
your response to it accordingly for your best mental health possible. Maybe you can't
control it, maybe you can't influence the outcome either, but now you can learn to
accept and adapt to whatever the outcome may have been. Using this model of control
influence except has been really key for me when I really start to overwhelm and my
worry spins out of control and I remember to use it. It starts to really put
things into perspective for me. It brings me back to a place where I feel like
myself because truthfully sometimes when worry takes over, you don't feel like
yourself, right? And so this CIA model helps me get my thoughts out.
Usually I use paper. So get my thoughts out on paper, look at it all from a
visual place and go, Oh, yeah, I actually don't have control over that at all. So
why am I focusing so much worry on it? Does the CIA model get rid of your worry?
No, but it can allow you to have breaks from the worry when it's starting to
really spin out for you and to at least recognize the parts that you can let go
of. That's one tool We are all going to put in our back pocket because it really
is helpful and I think also even really helpful when you're talking to your kids
about certain situations like not just worry but control influence or neither slash
accept like that's a really great sorting tool. Another thing that I want to talk
to you about that's helped me a bit over the years and this was suggested to me
by my other therapist is ways of stimulating my vagus nerve in moments moments when
I feel anxious, worrisome, lost in uncertainty, out of control, all those things. For
you OG floccies, you may remember an episode where we had Jake Lyske Willis on. So
she was that certified parenting coach. If you haven't listened to that episode, go
and listen. It was amazing. I loved my chat with her. And she was talking all
about the importance of regulating your nervous system and using the vagus nerve to
help you do that. Stimulating the vagus nerve can really help restore a sense of
calm and access both problem -solving and creativity.
All of these things can be super helpful if you're feeling like your worry is
taking you nowhere and you want to try and get a handle on it. When you worry
excessively, your brain ramps up the production of cortisol. Over time,
chronically high levels of cortisol can lead to a host of physical health issues. We
know that. We've talked about that on the pod here. One immediate effect is on your
body's fight or flight response, and it puts you in a state of high alert because
you're functioning in your sympathetic nervous system. So what we need to do is call
on our parasympathetic nervous system, and that's the one that's responsible for our
rest, our digest. And guess who its main highway is? That's the vagus nerve.
When we're in a tisier overwhelm or state of worry about something, stimulating that
nerve is essential. And there are a couple of fast and easy ways to do this. The
first being through humming, chanting, gargling, or singing.
And that's because your vagus nerve is connected to your vocal cords and the muscles
at the back of your throat too. I feel like maybe that's why women have such
guttural noises when they're giving birth, you know, it's the body's like natural way
of calming itself down. You can access your vagus nerve through humming,
through chanting, through gargling, through singing, through really activating those
vocal cords in the muscles at the back of your throat. You can also access your
vagus nerve through your abdomen, which is also why deep breath work can be really
super beneficial when wanting to stimulate it. Breathing in through your nose for a
count of six and out through your mouth for a count of eight while also having one
hand on your neck and one on your abdomen can be super calming and is a great way
to stimulate that vagus nerve. Another pressure point on the body is the ear. In
the hollow of your ear at the entrance to the canal and right above the ear canal,
Press gently with your finger as if you were pushing the skin back and forth.
This can also help activate the vagus nerve and you can also gently move one or
two fingers up and down behind the outer ear or push the skin towards the hairline
for several seconds and then away again from the hairline. All of those are ways of
putting pressure or hands or attention on certain parts of your body that are going
to lead you to stimulating that vagus nerve. And lastly, cold therapy can also help
stimulate that vagus nerve. So whether it's splashing water on your face, like really
cold water, putting your face into like a bowl of cold, icy water, maybe taking a
cold shower, doing a cold plunge, cold activities in general, stimulate and activate
our nervous system. The effect of the alternating temperatures forces the switch
between the sympathetic and the parasympathetic nervous systems and then ensures that
that vagus nerve is activated. In a time where I feel like my worry has spiked out
of control again and I need to switch up something and give myself more of a sense
of calm, less intrusive thoughts, I really try to remember to pause and reach for
one of these tools, either the control influence accept model or a way of
stimulating my vagus nerve so that my parasympathetic nervous system can come out to
play a bit more and I'm not so much in a state of fight or flight. And then I
can then start to look at, you know, what I'm worrying about from a more common
collected place. Ideally I would stimulate my vagus nerve and then journal using the
CIA model. Ideally. But you know what happens in the ideal world.
Sometimes just doesn't exist.
I still worry every day. I still identify as a worry wart. I still really,
really struggle with it. And I by zero means am an expert or the poster girl for
any of this in terms of, you know, doing it right. There are probably so many of
you actually who are going to blow up my inbox with other ideas of things that I
can do. If you're just looking for a friend who can say, "I see you,"
that happens to me too. You are not alone. Let me be your girl.
Let me remind you that we're all in the thick of trying to figure out hard shit.
We're all dealing with something that we struggle with and it's messy and it's
imperfect and it's not great for our health and we know that and we just need to
remember the ways in which we can help ourselves through those moments and cope the
best way that we can. It's a work in progress right now for me baby and I'm sure
I'm not the only one. So to answer the question you know when should we start
worrying about our worry? How much worrying is too much? When does it start to
really hinder our well -being? I think it's a different answer for everyone. And
really I think it's a brilliant question for you and your therapist or family doctor
or some kind of health professional to take a look at so you can answer it for
yourself. I can't be that person for you. I'm that person for myself with my own
health healthcare professionals, but you've got to do that on your own, but I can
be the girl who makes you feel at least like you're not alone in the process.
Maybe you should have a conversation with someone about the types of things you're
worrying about, about if that worry could sometimes be something a little bit more
than just your average everyday worry, and maybe they'll be able to help you with
ways that you can control it. And if you're like me and you identify as a type A
personality, stress and worry can be harder for you to shake. You know, worry can
turn into things that are more deeply rooted and harder to let go of. And you may
find yourself needing some outside help and there is no shame in that, flocking
friend. There is no shame in that. While you're figuring all of that out, just know
I'm right here with you. I'm in the muck of it all with you. Just trying to be
the best version of myself that I can. And know, also, that I'm so incredibly
grateful for you. Thank you for being part of the joyful Flamingo Flock. Until next
time. Just a reminder, Flamingo Flock, that I am not a medical or psychological
professional. Each one of my episodes has been inspired by my own experience and
journey through life and has brought to you through my own opinions and lens. Any
suggestions or advice offered here do not substitute proper conversations with your
own healthcare professionals for either your physical or mental well -being.