What is Anxiety And How To Deal With It

Video – VLog #37

What is anxiety and how to manage it?

What is anxiety and how to deal with it?

Is worry and anxious the same thing?

Script – VLog #37

David Logan: Hello and welcome to another week of The Techno Dinosaur Meets the IT Geek. Over there or here is Willie Nicol, the techno dinosaur. My name is David Logan, the IT geek. I’m based here in Annan, south west of Scotland. With me this week is the techno dinosaur, Willie Nicol. So, hello Willie, how are you and where are you?

Willie Nicol: Hi David, thank you. I’m very well. I am Willie Nicol, the techno dinosaur, but also a personal development life coach. I’m based near Troon, South Ayrshire, Scotland.

David Logan: Fantastic. To the viewer, we ask each other questions each week and you’ll get the question in a second, Willie. One request to the viewers, I normally ask this at the end of the video. Can you please subscribe to YouTube? Press the subscribe button down here, thank you.

David Logan: Willie, your favourite subject, question this week, can you tell us about anxiety and how we can manage it.

Willie Nicol: Thank you David. First of all, anxiety is a bit like stress, it’s a perfectly normal thing, part of everyday life. It’s a fear or apprehension – we get anxious. It tends to be focused on the present or the future rather than the past. So, we get anxious about something that’s happening just now or anxious about something that’s about to happen. We’re not generally anxious about something that has happened, unless the thing that has happened causes us to be anxious in the present. But it shouldn’t because it’s happened in the past. So, I’ve done a bit of research you’ll not be surprised to hear, and anxiety is normal. It’s only when you become constantly or regularly anxious it can become more of a problem.

Willie Nicol: We’re all used to being anxious, we feel a bit unsettled, a bit not “at ourselves” but generally we get over it. However, if that persists there’s a thing called general anxiety disorder or generalised anxiety disorder which is more serious but I’m going to talk about coping with, if you like, everyday anxiety.

Willie Nicol: So, here’s a wee quote from the American Psychological Association, “anxiety is an emotion characterised by feelings of tension, worried thoughts and also physical changes like increased blood pressure”. We’re going to go back to our old friend the fight or flight syndrome which I’ve touched upon many times, a naturally occurring process when we are faced with stress or danger. We go back to the old scenario of the cave man out hunting faced with the sabre toothed tiger and he’s now faced with the problem of …. do I fight or flight? However, nowadays we don’t have these dangers, at least we don’t have any sabre toothed tigers in Troon, I’ll tell you that. But we do have everyday worries and anxiety now – life, work, personal relationships and so on and so forth. Which are perfectly natural, right, the worry or anxiety we have about passing our driving test, sitting an exam, things are about to happen that we are worried about or anxious about but once we’ve done it, it should have passed.

Willie Nicol: Let me quote from some of the notes I’ve taken. The fight or flight syndrome, as we’ve said before, causes the production of adrenaline which causes us to have heightened sensitivity, higher heartrate, shallower breathing, as part of …. do we run, or do we stay? Right.

Willie Nicol: Anxiety is very similar. However, there are ways to manage it and we’ve talked about these also. Breathing techniques, mindfulness, meditation, exercise, if you’re feeling anxious go for a walk. We’ve also talked in the past about doing some gardening – perhaps not a great idea in the Scottish winter but you get the drift. So, managing our anxiety is entirely down to us. We do some of these techniques, we take some of these precautions, and see how our anxiety diminishes.

Willie Nicol: I’ve come across some very good websites about how to cope with anxiety. Most of them are American to be fair but that doesn’t negate the validity of what they are saying and there’s one which is actually how to cope with anxiety during the COVID situation. So, what we’ll do is, I’ll let you have this document, and you can put it on the website for people to access these websites.

Willie Nicol: So, that’s it very basically, anxiety is perfectly normal. If, like stress, it gets too much too often. it can be very bad. So, how to manage it? I’ve just hit upon that. Any more information, please get in touch and I can point you in the direction of more helpful advice.

David Logan: Excellent, Willie, thank you. I didn’t have to ask you any further question towards the end of the period. That’s great though, a great load of information and it should help people through this period. As we’re going up, I don’t think we’ve got much cheer about Christmas, but it definitely is a worry time for all.

Willie Nicol: If I can just add something David. And it’s pertinent to anxiety. It’s a reference to what we call in coaching, our basic human needs. One of which, or the very basic one is, our basic human needs are for shelter, food, water, air and so on. Just above that is our need for a kind of certainty and social interaction and structure, and we like things to be routine. Now our routine has certainly been messed up by the coronavirus situation. I was talking to a client yesterday, his routine has been disrupted because he can’t go and watch the football and it’s really really annoying him. He’s not anxious about it but it’s really annoying him. And how we cope with this lack of certainty is another thing that can make us anxious. So, we’ll maybe talk about that in a future vlog but just to finalise it. Anxiety is perfectly natural but if it gets too bad, you need to manage it.

David Logan: Great. Fantastic. Thanks a lot. That’s us for this week. To the viewer, please subscribe, the big red subscribe button on YouTube. Visit us on our website, we’ll add in some website links as per Willie’s recommendations. Visit us on Facebook, visit us on Twitter, visit us on LinkedIn. We’re on these channels. If you don’t want to post something publicly, message us privately. Message Willie, message myself, private, keep it confidential. Be safe, stay healthy. If you’re anxious, speak to Willie. Thank you.

Willie Nicol: Thank you David. Yes, happy to talk to anyone who is maybe struggling a bit with anxiety, stress or whatever. It’s no pressure, no obligations, just a chat. So, I’ll reiterate what David says. Keep well, stay healthy and don’t forget …. have a bit of fun if you can. Goodbye from me.