While we all experience anxiety, suffering from an anxiety disorder can be paralyzing. It effects 18% of American adults. It can take away from the enjoyment of daily life – causing the sufferer to avoid work, school, family get-togethers, and other social situations that might trigger or worsen today symptoms. As today’s guest describes her anxiety – it can feel like living in constant fear that something is going to go wrong.
I had the opportunity to interview Sarah Richardson, one of the amazing women who shares her story in the second book of the Friendship series, Make Your Mess Your Message – she is a career prosecutor and someone who lives a full and fulfilled life despite her anxiety disorder and she hopes by sharing her story, she is able to help to take the stigma away from the disorder so that others in similar shoes can speak freely about their experiences without fear of judgment.
The full interview can be viewed here
In the interview Sarah gives us her 3 tips/tools for people who suffer from anxiety disorder. Here’s the transcript excerpt:
- “First of all, you’re going to be okay. You will be okay. You’re not going to live in this moment forever. You’re not going to feel like this all the time forever. It will get better. And for me, that was a mantra that I told myself over and over and I could pull myself out of the cycle sometimes for 30 seconds, sometimes for an hour or two, but find ways to pull yourself out of that cycle and practice that so that you can stop that merry-go-round of those thoughts that are happening.
- Second, educate yourself and find a provider that you like, and you can relate to the first doctor I had, I didn’t like him, and I like everybody. I didn’t like him. So, I quit him and found a doctor who understood me. And she was hilarious. She told me what, you know, you’re already in your mid-thirties, you’re a career person, and you’ve got children to raise. You should have had anxiety a long time ago. It was nice to hear it normalized. And remember, you’re normal. This is part of you’ll have bouts off and on it. Doesn’t define you. It’s just simply something in your life and it is completely manageable. So, find someone to help you manage it and educate yourself on what might work best for you.
- I think the absolute key thing to help me was to be physical, hobbies and interests that can take my mind outside of itself to make my mind much less selfish, less self-centered. I love to garden. I love to go running. I recommend that people have activities that include some physical components. So, for example, you may love music – don’t lay around the house, just listening to music, sing with it, or dance to it, or compose it, or play an instrument – or, just get out, dig in the garden, play sports. Don’t, don’t just watch them on TV, do something that is getting your body going, because a lot of the chemicals involved in this can kind of store up in your body. And again, I go back to my thought that this is really a physical issue because your body physically manifests this anxiety, shake it off, get it out. I think those are probably the top three things I would, I would tell someone.”
