 Today I'm answering your anxiety questions. What is up, everybody? This is Chris from the Rewired Soul, where we talk about the problem, but focus on the solution. And I'm going to start out by asking you a small teeny, teeny little favor. Just come here. Come here. Come here real quick. Follow me on Instagram. Follow me on Instagram, please. I just started posting stuff on IGTV and I'm doing it a lot. I'm doing some like vlogging stuff and talking about little mental health things here and there, putting some of my YouTube videos up there and stuff like that. But yesterday I posted this asking you to tell me about what makes you anxious. So make sure you're following me on social media. So when I do things like this, you can get involved. Like, I make these videos for you, okay? I read through the comments and check all this stuff out. And I try to think about videos that might be able to help you, but I would love more community involvement. I want to hear from you. I make these videos for you. So I want to make sure I am touching on specific topics that you want me to talk about. Okay. So I post on Instagram. I got some comments talking about what makes people anxious. So I'm going to be answering anxiety questions, but they were really like kind of statements. All right. But anyways, also do me a favor. I'm going to be touching on quite a few subjects in this. So do me a favor and please share this video because I'm going to be talking about a lot of tips and tricks, things that I personally use to help me out with my anxiety in a wide range of situations, which people also have anxiety issues with. All right. So the first one we're going to talk about is somebody wanted me to talk about phone anxiety. Okay. Phone anxiety is huge. Phone anxiety for me was a huge part of my social anxiety. All right. Like for anybody who doesn't struggle with phone anxiety, it can be rough. And for me, it made me feel like a crazy person. Like when my phone would ring, just a million thoughts would go through my head. Who is this? What number is this? Or if it's somebody I knew, I'm like, what do they want? What are they going to talk to me about? What am I going to say to them? Are they mad at me? Did they find out about this thing I said? Or, you know, what did I do? Right. And I was like a million thoughts would go through my head. Like by the time it got to the second ring, it was bananas. But the same thing, like outward calls, like calling somebody else. Like same thing. I'm freaking out in my head. Like, what am I going to talk to these people about? What if there's that awkward silence? What if they think I'm stupid? What if I say something stupid? All sorts of stuff. So for this, I'm going to talk about this a few times throughout this video. Like, especially for anxiety, a huge thing is exposure therapy, right? Doing things that you are fearful of or worried about, do it over and over. What it does is it actually rewires your brain. Okay. It calms down the amygdala, the fight, fight or freeze part of the brain. The part that is making you anxious because the more you go through with it, the more this thing says, oh, okay, this isn't one of those life or death situations. But something I had to do more often was just know how to and when to leave a conversation, you know, because I used to have this really big problem with just saying, all right, well, I got to go. Bye, you know, whatever it is. Like I'll say this and I'm not an advocate for lying. If any of you watch my video about lying, like I don't advocate for it, but like have like an exit plan. Okay, especially if you got to make an outbound call, like have an exit plan, like, oh, hey, it was great talking with you, but I got to go do this, right? I got to do that. Like if the conversation starts to kind of like go downhill, slow down, whatever it is, like have an exit strategy. All right, but soon you will overcome your phone anxiety by just doing this over and over and over again. Like I have to make calls all day long at work, calling in, checking up on people, seeing how they're doing and stuff like that. But I always have an exit strategy like, oh, hey, I got to run to a meeting. Hey, I got to go do this. Or hey, I have a lot of phone calls to make today. I have to call somebody else. Sorry, can't chat right now. All right. So I hope that helps. The next one we'll talk about is driving. Who do I know about this? So like anxiety while driving is a big deal. And one of the things that's so scary about being anxious while you're driving is if you're anxious, if you're experiencing the symptoms of anxiety, it can affect your driving. It can actually put you in a more dangerous situation because you're freaking out, okay? But real quick, before I jump into some tips, like just so you know, having some anxiety while driving is actually making you a safer driver. If you're constantly worried or anxious, you are less likely to drive like an insane person. You're less likely to tail people. You're less likely to cut people off. You're making sure you're using your turn signals. You're driving more defensively. So we actually do need some anxious people on the road because it makes the roads a little bit safer. So thank you, anxious people. But anyways, I get it. I get anxious driving, something that I've done. And this is also part of my generalized anxiety disorder. My anxiety will come out of nowhere, even if it's not the act of driving that's making me anxious. Sometimes my anxiety happens just while I'm driving. So when I do in these situations, I practice mindfulness and some of you are like, oh my God, you're meditating while you're driving? Calm down, calm down. So mindfulness is about paying attention in the present moment, okay? Getting back into what's happening right now. So something that I do is I use sensory stuff. So my AC is going, because it's like a billion degrees here in Las Vegas. And I place my hand in front of the air vent. So I'm driving with one hand in front of the air vent and I'm focusing on the sensation of that air, okay? Hitting my hand. I describe it in my head. Is it cool? How does it feel? Right? I notice like, is it rolling off my fingertips and things like that. What that does is it helps me get out of my anxious head. So while I'm paying attention to driving, I'm doing something else. Something else you can do is place your hand on your stomach and just kind of what it does is it brings your attention out of your head, right? Out of that crazy thinking and it helps to calm you down, okay? So something that happens to me quite often is sometimes I'm heading into work and I start getting anxious just about stuff I got to deal with for the day. Like some of you know this, I work at a drug and alcohol rehab center and sometimes I have people who are struggling or they're hurting or you know, whatever it is and I got to talk to them or I got to help them and I get anxious about that and it's not really safe for me to get that anxious while I'm driving and worrying about that stuff. So I need to get my focus back on the road, be the safe driver that I know I can be and do different things that can help me out. The next one is social situations. I actually had a few people ask me and say, hey, I get anxious in social situations, I get it. Social anxiety was the bane of my existence, all right? A few things that I do and these are just ways to kind of get out of my head or you know, just the way I talk to myself in my head. The first thing is the most important thing that I have to do is realize this and it sounds harsh but it's not. Like I have to realize I'm not that important, okay? Part of the social anxiety is thinking that everybody in this situation whether it is you know, going to a party or get together or going out to the grocery store or out to eat, you think that all of the attention is on you. That's part of what our anxious brain tells us. So I have to remind myself, Chris, you are not that important. Not everybody is focusing on you, all right? But a lot of it is too is you know, self-esteem issues, self-confidence issues and things like that. And I really had to work on just being okay with me and if you don't like me, that's cool. That's all right, you know? This helps me out a lot. Like when I go and I'm meeting new people, you know, my brain wants to say like, you know, you got to impress them, you got to do this and da da da da. And it makes me fumble over my words, act like an idiot, you know, and I just have to calm down and say, listen, Chris, you're a good guy, you're great, you're charismatic, you're funny, you know, whatever it is to kind of psych myself up. And if the other person doesn't reciprocate that, maybe that's not on me. Maybe that person's having a bad day. You know what I'm saying? Or maybe they just don't like my personality. Who knows? But a lot of it, for me, when it comes to social anxiety, is really a lot of work just being okay with myself. And this actually kind of leads into the next one that I got. Somebody said they get anxious about possibly letting people down, okay? So again, be okay with you, okay? This is the first step. Work on your own self-love, self-compassion, self-confidence and things like that. But part of this is this fear of not being perfect. And I had to get it through my head that I'm never going to be perfect. I am never, ever, ever, ever, ever going to be perfect. But guess what? Guess what the great news about that is? Nobody is. Nobody is perfect. Not a single person, okay? So when you're worried about letting people down, like the most you can do is apologize, right? Sorry I screwed that up, you know? There's one or two ways it's going to go. They're either going to accept it or they're not. You know what I mean? But if you are coming from a place of good more often than not, people are going to let you off the hook. And if they don't, maybe they're just jerks. You know what I mean? And this is why I really need to focus a week on just being a better person because when I know, when I know that most of my intentions are good, right? I don't get as fearful because I know I'm going to have shortcomings. I know I'm not going to be this idea of perfection that I have somewhere in my brain. I know that that is unachievable. But if I'm constantly following my own moral compass, I can be okay with me. And a big part of that is just reminding myself, Chris, everybody screws up. And I know that's hard to believe because you're constantly browsing around on Instagram and Facebook and everybody showing their, you know, amazing bodies and their nice cars and houses. They're taking selfies. Look how amazing my life is. Trust me. Those people are most likely a hot mess just the same as you. Next, somebody asked me about flying. Okay. Flying is a tough one. Flying is a different one. I have been very fortunate to not get too anxious while flying. But there was one time in particular where my anxiety kicked in, my generalized anxiety disorder just boom. It came out of nowhere. I was feeling very claustrophobic. I felt like I couldn't breathe and all sorts of stuff. And the best thing I can recommend while flying is to meditate, meditate on that plane. Okay. Close your eyes. Focus on the breath. You're on a plane. Get your earbuds out. Open up a little meditation app. Do that gets you out of there. But also here's something that helps a lot with anxiety. I've talked about this in other videos. I can't remember which ones. It's just separating the truth from the false. Okay. Like there's realistic worry. And then there's like this worry that my brain's getting into that is not going to be useful or beneficial. And it completely contradicts the facts out there. Like the fact of the matter is most planes do not crash. Okay. Like I have to remember that on a regular basis. Like I get scared or worried. I have to remember like statistically this is pretty safe. You know what I mean? Like if you think about you know the rare occasions when crashes happen. Like we have to remember there are like thousands and thousands of thousands of planes flying around each day. If it was that likely that you were going to crash, you'd be hearing about it a lot more. All right. The last thing I'm going to talk about and this came up and I'm just going to be completely honest. Some people asked me about like obsessive compulsive behaviors. Okay. Checking the faucet over and over again. Checking the door over and over again. And I don't want to minimize symptoms of obsessive compulsive disorder. I don't want you to think that I have it in any way shape or form. But I do get certain worries, right? I get worries that I left the stove on. I get worries that I didn't lock my car. One of the things that happens to me a lot, especially when me and my son go to movies. Tomorrow we'll see an ant man. I worry that I didn't lock the car, right? And sometimes what I do is like I'll be like, hey Dylan, wait right here. I'm going to go to the bathroom and I can like walk outside real quick and I like click my little clicker and make sure I hear a honk. But like when it comes to like OCD behaviors, like whether you're diagnosed or not, like I really think you should seek help. I am not well versed enough on these obsessive compulsive behaviors to know what works what doesn't. I know a lot of cognitive behavioral therapy works. I know dialectical behavior therapy works. I know mindfulness meditation works, which is part of DBT. I know these things help, but you need to go see a professional. Talk to your doctor about it. If you need additional help, like talk to a therapist about it. Find a therapist that takes your insurance. If you would like to do better help online therapy, I will link down in the description below, but I understand like OCD can be debilitating. I've known people who have it and it makes life really, really rough. And this is one of the forms of anxiety that makes just everything very difficult to do because you're constantly obsessing on these things. All right. So please, please, please do me a favor, seek professional help. All right. Cool. So that's all I got for this video. If any of you have topics that you want me to talk about, leave them down in the comments below. I don't care what video it is. Just leave comments. If you get an idea or if something's you're struggling with, just leave a comment on it. Find me on Instagram. Find me on Twitter, you know, Facebook, anywhere, email me. If there's topics that you want me to cover because I always say this. Okay. Anything that you're struggling with, you are not the only one. So the question that you ask or the thing that you have me talk about is not only helping you, but it's going to help a lot more people. There's a lot of topics out there that maybe I'm just not even thinking of. All right. But anyways, if you like this video, please give it a thumbs up. And if you are new here, I'm always making videos to help you out with your mental and emotional wellbeing. 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