How Emotional Wellness Can Help You Overcome Anxiety

Mix 102.5. The best mix from the 90s to now. It's Big Papa in the afternoon on a mental wellness Wednesday, talking with life Coach Rebecca. Silence. RebeccaSilence.com, she's also host of Tougher Together, a breakthrough podcast. Rebecca, Happy Wednesday.

Well, hi, everyone. I'm so glad to be here.

Well, we're glad to have you here. We're in the middle of getting ready for the holidays.

Yeah.

And I'd like to talk about, not the family aspect of the holidays, because we covered that around Thanksgiving time, but literally what you and I are dealing with right now, because everything just kind of seems to get amped up around the holidays. Work. Work is more stressful. There's more stuff to do at work. The timeline is more stressful at work. It seems like the family, you know, commitments seem to be more. The work commitments seem to be more like everything just seems there's more stress and lack of time for everything.

Right.

Right now. So let's talk about dealing with that.

Okay, so, you know, one of the things that doesn't get talked about enough is emotional wellness. And mental wellness has emotional wellness as a component, actually. And the mental wellness is the gateway for emotional wellness. So what on earth do I mean by that? So when we're mentally clear about what our intentions are, meaning what we want, when your intentions are should based, obligation based, and fear based, you're screwed and you have no power. So let me just say that one more time. So number one key to mental wellness is being intentional. Knowing what you want, why it's important to you, and what you're up to. And when you get all bogged down in everyone else's agendas, your life becomes basically you being reactive and adaptive and. And being powerless. So when you're intentional about what you want and why it's important to you, that's the beginning of mental wellness. But then there's this next level of mental wellness that has to factor in our emotions. And that's the one thing people don't want to deal with. Right. They'd rather be anxious, shutting down. La la la la la. Tuning out. I can't do it, I can't do it. I can't do it. Than dealing with their emotions. So I think.

A lot easier to ignore and hope that it goes away than actually step right up and take care of it.

Well, and we don't know how to take care of our emotions. So that's what I want to talk to you about. You know, whatever you are doing, it Better be, because it is important to you. Be intentional. Make sure it is important to you. Everything else can get put on hold. I am telling you to give yourself permission between now and the end of this year to put on hold anything that somebody else's agenda. I'm not saying let yourself off the hook, drop the ball and, and don't get things done. I'm saying get done the things that matter to you and let everybody else's agendas for what they want free from you, for their purpose, their stuff to wait. Okay? From there, let's deal about. Let's deal with emotional wellness. So how do you know you're emotionally unwell? You're anxious? Let's just talk about anxiety, okay? Because that is what will take us out in this busy, crazy time of the year and in this busy, crazy time in history.

Well, that's the song. It's the most anxious time of the year.

La la la la.

Yeah, right.

All right. So I don't know anybody who doesn't have anxiety. It does not have to be a crippling, life threatening, self inflicted, limiting way that you're living anymore. I don't know. Just like I don't know how to eliminate fear as being a part of our mental wellness work that we have to do, we have to navigate, is our brain in fear or are we inspired and able to access possibility? I don't think anxiety goes away. And I think we need to learn how to use anxiety to help ourselves get more intentional and more honest about living how we want to live. The goal isn't for conflict to go away. The goal isn't for anxiety to go away. The goal isn't for other people's neediness and what they want you to do for them to go away. Because you can't make any of that go away. But here's what you can do when it comes to anxiety. You can stop being so freaking afraid of it, okay? Anxiety is not stronger or more powerful than you. And I will tell you right here, right now, anxiety, it is a sign that you're emotionally unwell, either in the beginnings of it or in the throes of it. And it's a sign you gotta take your life back. When you start to get anxious. It's a sign that you've fallen into living on autopilot or living the way you think you should and you've lost sight of what really matters to you. I can see your wheels turning. What are you wanting to say?

No, I. Well, when it comes to anxiety, and we're Talking about if you have anxiety or you have the hints of anxiety, you start to get into it. You, you know, it shows that you are emotionally unwell. How do you fight that? How do you battle that? How do you. How do you take that on?

Yeah, let's talk about it. And, you know, I'm so grateful to be having this conversation. I recognize I might piss a lot of people off talking like this. I recognize it might sound like I'm oversimplifying anxiety, but I'm not. It's real. It's. And it can take you out, but it's sometimes.

Sometimes you just have to cut through all of the peripheral crap and just get to the point, get to.

Right. And what I'm saying is anxiety is real, but you're stronger. I am saying anxiety is real, but it's not a death sentence unless you decide that. It's just what it is and it's more powerful than you and there's no other side to it. So what I want you to get the beginning of fighting anxiety. The beginning of fighting, you know, the battle around emotional wellness. And remember, the only real emotions that we need to learn how to conquer are anger, grief, sadness, fear, joy, and excitement. These are the only ones. Some people have a harder time with joy and excitement. Some people have a harder time with the darker emotions. But they are all important. And until you can be with any and all of those emotions and not need them to go away and know how to use them as rocket fuel to get your life more on track for you, and your emotions are going to have a hold on you, a chokehold on you and hold you hostage. So anxiety is just a sign that there's one of those emotions that you're not facing, moving through or conquering yet. Okay? That's what anxiety is. It's telling you something's off about the choices you're making, the way you're living, what you're tolerating and what you're not making happen for your life. Now, again, that might sound like an oversimplification, but I'm telling you, it's facts that I am speaking to you right now. And yes, there's more. Yes, there is. Get support if you have anxiety. Don't just take this coaching and let that be it. Just let it be a start going to your professional that's helping you in getting to the other side. So you have to know there's another side. You have to. I want you to imagine you're stuck alone in the woods and you don't know you're going to make it when it's. When it's, you know that moment where anxiety has you and has that chokehold. You can get out of the woods, but not if you don't believe you can. You got to know there's life on the other side. And then the second thing is, you have to commit. If I can beat cancer, you can beat anxiety. You have to commit to being the person that gets on the other side that uses anxiety as a way to level up, to get stronger, to get more life out of this experience of anxiety. Anxiety is either going to prevent you from experiencing life or it's going to give you access to more life. Okay? So you got to know there's another side. You got to commit to getting through it. And the third thing is you just have to be willing to stay in the game as long as it takes, whatever it takes. You got to feel your way through the fear, not try to shut it down, numb out, escape from it, or put it on a shelf because it's like cancer. Anxiety is emotional cancer, and it will spread. If you don't have the guts to face it, move through it and conquer it. And you are stronger. You are stronger. You are stronger. You are stronger. So if you have moments of anxiety this holiday season or any time in your life, I just want you to recognize it's time to up your game around. Committing to living the life you want to be living.

It is life. Coach Rebecca, Silence on a mental wellness Wednesday. Host of the Tougher Together, a breakthrough podcast and anything and everything. If you want to find out more, rebeccasilence.com Rebecca, always a pleasure. I know this week in particular, we. We're both running around crazy. So thank you for the time. We'll talk to you next week.

Bye, everyone.