So many people are in sincere need for tips for living with anxiety after more than a year in the pandemic. That’s why I asked Dr. Catherine Schmidt to come on the podcast.
She is a licensed clinical psychologist based in San Francisco, California. Within her private practice she specializes in helping women alleviate anxiety, improve their relationships and cultivate fulfilling, balanced lives.
Women Need Boundaries
Dr. Schmidt points out one of the tips for living with anxiety will consist of making and keeping boundaries. She shares that women in particular, need to make sure they are setting boundaries.
“We are inundated with information, with emotions, with really charged topics,” Dr. Schmidt shares as she discusses why it’s so important to start setting boundaries.
She says it’s not enough to just say you need boundaries, but we need to learn how to clearly indent and communicate them. Check out this episode for some great boundary tools you can use with your family and friends.
A Tip to Get a Break from the Burnout
One of the other issues, Dr. Schmidt has noticed, is many women are dealing with burnout from being not only moms, but stay-at-home-moms, teachers and even doctors.
I just did this episode with five ways you can get some relief from motherhood fatigue and burnout. Dr. Schmidt shares another tool – it is acknowledging the anxiety. She says it’s as simple as sitting with the worry, the fear or the dread.
She says when we are managing so many things, we don’t realize we’re operating at a level 10 anxiety all day long. Acknowledging the anxiety looks like taking a quick moment to say, “I feel so anxious right now. I am everything for everyone and I just need a quick minute to say ‘I am tired’ or ‘I am fearful,’ etc.
We follow the moment with a deep breath.
Dr. Schmidt says this helps all the hormones that help us calm down start working throughout our body. She says this can be as easy as take just one minute.
Schedule Yourself a Worry Time
When I asked Dr. Schmidt about whether that one minute of acknowledging the anxiety could snowball into several other triggers and a woman being disregulated for the whole day – she answered that’s exactly why women don’t stop.
The solution to this, she says, is scheduling yourself a worry time.
She says choosing ten minutes in your day to journal about your worries (or a walk where you go through your worries), will help you as your anxiety begins to build up during the day. She says when you need to take a moment to calm down during the day, it won’t unravel you because you know you have time coming up dedicated to worrying.
Dr. Schmidt says when you put your worries on paper or bring them to light they don’t seem as big as they did when they were in your head. She suggests this can help you get back to your life and the joyful parts of life.
More on this Episode:
There’s twenty more minutes left of this episode! You can listen to the whole thing by clicking on the Youtube photo or the play button at the top of this post.
Here’s what you’ll hear:
- how to set boundaries and keep them
- how and why anxiety shows up in the body
- what to do with negative self talk
- how self-love can help with your anxiety and what self-love really is
Want more?
- Setting boundaries with your family members here
- Check out this episode with five ideas to deal with burnout
- I talk about burnout and overwhelm in this episode
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