what do i actually care about when i talk about anxiety?

 Hello and a very warm welcome to my blog.

This is the supplimental blog to my podcast - called the diving board, which you can find on Spotify. This will be a space about anxiety and attachment brought through a wider lens. It will aim to look at how our identities, histories, and even anger shape, how we experience and heal from it.

I've got a lot of feelings about starting my own podcast and blog. I've kind of got an image of being walked to the plank, or like a cat resisting getting in the bath. It feels very, very scary, very uncomfortable. And at the same time, I love a podcast. I'm very loyal to the podcast that I listen to. I feel like my conversations with my friends, often take the form of voice notes and I love those conversations and so I wanted it to feel like that for my listeners, for my audience, and for anyone who could benefit from from this.

I work as a therapist in Kelowna in British Columbia. We moved here during COVID in 2020, with my husband and our two dogs, and we've been living here ever since. I can't believe it's been six years this year.

We live in this beautiful corner of the world. And so it means that instead of, you know, popping around to visit my friends, I mean I definitely do that now. I've made lovely friends whilst living here, but obviously a lot of my friends still live in the UK and my family still live in the UK.

And here we are, we're doing it. We're doing this. This is, the diving board. Welcome, welcome. So, I wanted to dip my toe in a little bit. Even this episode, it's about exposure. It's not just about the content. So I apologize if this sounds and reads a little bit messy. It's just about hearing my thoughts out loud and feeling out what my style is. So instead of the pressure of having to launch a podcast and a blog, I am trying to take the attitude of, I don't have to like this, I just have to sit on the edge. While I dip my toe in.

Referring to that cat visualization of being brought to the bath. So this is the pilot episode and post. I'm toe dipping. It's not the full plunge. And yet this podcast is called The Diving Board. This snippet is what I actually care about when I talk about anxiety.

When a potential client wants to work with me and they tell me that they'd like to overcome or to work through their anxiety, these are the kind of things that I will ask about. I will ask about when the anxiety began. Was it in your teenage years? Was it in your childhood? Was it always there? Has it always been a part of your life?

Where does that come from? In what context, in what relationships? Is it with people? Is it with places? Is it with things? And what's helped you cope with it? That gives us so much information as to where this anxiety stems from.

Other questions I would like to ask are around what is it trying to protect you from? Because we'll start to develop coping strategies. And so how do you cope with it? What do you find yourself doing? Is that still the case now in the here and now? And what was it trying to protect you from? What were those coping strategies trying to protect you from back then?

I am always thinking about the wider picture, um, about the system that you live in. Were you allowed to be you growing up? Or were there times in your life where you had to choose? Because it's not like you had a choice or were given that free will. Because we hopefully all have the unconditional opportunity to experience both attachment and authenticity at the same time. Hopefully we're all given that opportunity - unconditional attachment, and the ability to be authentic at the same time.

Unfortunately though, a lot of us were given the choice and it's not like it's really a choice. But we were given the option of either expressing our own authenticity or maintaining the attachment and reflexively a child in their development, are going more often than not, pick and reflexively prioritize the attachment every single time.

They're gonna learn how to squash their own authenticity for the sake of maintaining the attachment because, that makes sense on an evolutionary perspective, if you think about it. Because if we were to go ahead and, uh, express our authenticity, then that that could mean rejection, which could mean death.

We are the most dependent species on the planet. We need our caregivers. We need the grownups around us for resources to survive. And so we're automatically going to learn how to squash our own authenticity. So these are the moments that I'm really interested in when it comes to talking to someone about their anxiety. What were those conditions placed on you? What was that context like? I just wanna know kind of all about that really. And therefore I also cannot help but extend some appreciation to that part of you that decided to compartmentalize the true and authentic parts of themselves in order to maintain that attachment, because that's really helped them survive and get through that time of their lives and however that showed up.

Maybe that's a specific relationship, maybe with a caregiver or maybe it's with a system. Within the school system or maybe within the community. What were those expectations imposed and were they reasonable or were they not reasonable?

How did that impact you? The impact always it matters more than the intent. Where were those opportunities and moments of attunement? Where were those moments of repair? Were there any moments of repair? I realize here that it's very attachment focused when I talk about how anxiety manifests.

I would love your feedback. Thank you so much for reading and getting this far. My goodness, I really, really, really appreciate you showing up for the, for the pilot post. And it's really quick. It's really messy. Very clumsy in doing this. And it will, it will tighten up, it'll improve. And what I would love, what I would really, really appreciate is any sort of feedback.

Stay excellent and stay tuned and attuned for my next episode and blog post!