Rebecca Silence (life coach and therapist) explains holiday and social anxiety as rooted in a rejection of emotions and truth, then offers practical coaching: give yourself permission not to attend, set limits (stay as long as comfortable), arrange logistics (separate cars or Uber), and attend events on your terms to preserve control and reduce resentment. Transcript includes anecdotes, a therapeutic framing, and promotional closing.
Live and local, it's Big Papa in the Morning mixed with a 2.5 on a mental wellness Wednesday. Life coach, the unsilent woman, Rebecca. Silence. Good morning. How are you?
Hey. Hey, everybody. Let's make some magic happen. I'm wonderful.
Absolutely. And if you want to check out magic, make sure you check out our website, rebeccasilence.com tis the season for holiday parties, and you can put yourself and, you know, spouses and significant others in really awkward situations at times. If you are someone who has anxiety over social situations, the prospect of going to holiday Christmas parties or even family gatherings, depending upon how big, can be really, really almost crippling, depending upon how. How bad the anxiety is. Can we talk about addressing the anxiety and trying to work with it? I don't know if work with it is the right word, but just, you know, try to, you know, you know, get through whatever the situation is.
Absolutely. So I think let's break down anxiety in general so I can kind of frame this conversation out and then we'll apply it to the holiday parties. Right? But anxiety, just so everybody can hear me say, this is not something that can't heal or that defines you or that is something you just have to live with. Okay? And I understand, I'm a trained therapist, that it's real, that it's diagnosable. I love Gary's word crippling, because that's absolutely true. I have experienced anxiety. I have experienced clinical depression to the point where I was almost hospitalized when I was in college. So I am not denying the severity or the reality. Right. Of anxiety. And all of my work, whether you're meeting me for the first time or you've known me for a while, is about making all of this emotional, complicated, very hard part of life as simple as I can. So what I'm about to say doesn't mean it's easy, but it is this simple. Okay? So anxiety truly is two things, and you can go to my YouTube channel and hear more about this. But it's two things. Number one, it's a rejection of your emotions, and number two, it's a rejection of your truth. So what I mean by that is anxiety is easier than being with the emotions underneath of anger, fear, grief, joy, or excitement. Anxiety is a coping. It's a way of managing so we don't have to be with our emotions. But that's not conscious. Right. But there's underneath anxiety a hundred percent of the time, anger, fear, grief, joy, or excitement. And then there's also your truth that we're rejecting so depression, you're shutting it down. Your truth and your emotions. Anxiety, you haven't shut it down. You're aware, but you're rejecting it. You're like, talk to the hand, right? So I just want to frame that out because it's real. But what you can do is ask yourself, what emotion don't I want to face at all when I'm feeling anxiety? It's alarm bells. There's an emotion, right?
So maybe what we can do is. If you want to hear the rest of this, it's available online right now@mix1025.com you can also check out rebeccasilence.com it's life coach and the unsilent woman, Rebecca. Silence on a mental wellness Wednesday. All right, so what if the thing that gets you is, okay, being in a social situation, being around people?
Well, right? So there's probably particular people. So if this party has the uncle that's a narcissist and hurt you and never made it right and doesn't care about making it right, maybe at this party, this emotion of anger, right, that is just making your blood boil, is starting to come up, even just at the thought of this person's gonna be there. You know, I just wanna normalize. It isn't as general as we wanna make it. And it's real. The anxiety is real, the anger is real, the fear is real. Maybe there's gonna be somebody at this party that you haven't seen in three years and it's uncomfortable and you're two different people and you don't know. Do I have to say hi first? Are they gonna say hi first? Maybe it's an ex. There's a lot of, like, holiday gatherings and social situations where sometimes our ex could be there and we don't know. And that creates a whole Oprah worth of anxiety, you know? And so what I want us to understand is the emotions are real and human, and the anxiety is real in human. And as always, my coaching is, so how do we set you up to win? How do we set it up so that you're going to this event on your terms, not you're going to this event and feeling like you're going to be swept up in a storm and not have any footing or any power and control? Because the anxiety is always a way to have an experience of power and control where you feel powerless. I've never said it like that before in almost 20 years, but that is so good, and it is so true. The anxiety gives you an illusion of power and control. Where you feel powerless.
Right?
That's really important to understand. So here's the deal. You're not powerless. And I do this game with my clients daily and this game with me daily. I go, well, I'm not obligated to anything, so I don't actually have to agree to go to this party. So I'll start there. Like, I don't have to do anything that doesn't honor and respect and take care of me. You don't have to do anything that doesn't honor and respect and take care of you.
That's. That's a big. That's a big number one. Because a lot of people, you know, well, I'm, you know, I, you know, so. And so. And I always. And blah, blah, blah. No, you don't have to, or they're.
Going to be mad at me. I don't want to upset the apple cart. I don't want to create conflict. I don't. This happens a lot, especially with women. I don't want them to be talking about me. Like, who does she think she is? Well, let them talk. Right? But chances are, once you even just give yourself permission to opt out out, to unsubscribe from the event, then often it's like, well, wait a minute. I don't really not want to go. Right? Because it doesn't have to be one extreme or the other. You go and you're powerless and it sucks and you're anxious, or you don't go, and now you're home with FOMO and feeling like you're missing out and everybody's drinking the cocktails and having a ball, and now you're home. Those two extremes aren't going to be helpful. So what honors and respects and takes care of you. Make it super stupid simple. Like, I want to go and I want to stay as long as I'm comfortable. That can be enough. Like, and talk to your spouse, partner, whoever you're going with, bff, and say, hey, I want to leave the second I want to leave. Are you down with that? If you're not, can we take separate cars?
Right.
I remember a big Thanksgiving early on in my marriage to Mark. And Mark was like, I want us to have our own car. And I was, no, this is my family. We never get to see them. And we should have had our own car. That's how I'm going to leave it. He was right. I let him know at the end it's never going to happen again, that we don't have our own car. And then I took it in how much he loved me, that he agreed with me, even though he didn't really agree. But don't do that.
Don't think that's a way to set you up to win and to have control over the situation 100%.
And it's also a way to make sure you're not going to be resentful later because the anxiety of the party. But then there's the. The resentment hangover later if you didn't do what you really needed to do to take care of you. So set yourself up to win, go on your terms, whatever that looks like, and it's okay. And we're in the world of Uber. So even if you didn't have your own car, you're not stuck. And I think that's really important to understand and to own. I'm at choice. I'm never stuck. I can do this on my terms. I'm at choice. I'm never stuck. I can do this on my terms. But you're not there to be a wallflower or to fit in. You're there because this event fits in with you and your life right now. Or don't go.
It is a Mental Wellness Wednesday. It's life coach the unsilent woman, Rebecca Silence. If you want to learn more, there's all kinds of content content online@rebeccasilence.com and of course the book is incredible this time of year.
Get it for your friends, get it for your family. If you have it and you haven't reread it. This book is the road map to a life on your terms, to a life you love and to feeling free no matter what is going on. You want a more empowered, joyful, happy life by coming back to life. A roadmap to heal from pain, to create the life you want.
With details@rebeccasilence.com on a mental Wellness Wednesday.
