5 Popular Things That Could Be Making Your Anxiety Worse - with Ross Geller
Make like Ross, & learn to PIVOT!
If you haven’t seen it yet… brace yourself for the belly-cramping type of laugh that will come when you watch “The One With the Cop” (Ep 16, Season 5) on the nearly perfect (imo) TV show, “FRIENDS”. Ross, repeatedly screaming at the top of his lungs, the instructions “PIVOT” to Chandler & Rachel struggling at the base of the couch makes for one of my favorite therapeutic interventions.
Take my interpretations and character assignments with a grain of salt. I can talk about the different elements of psychology in this show all day. For today, let’s just talk anxiety. Here are 5 popular things that could be making your anxiety worse: FRIENDS edition.
Taking the “mind over matter” approach (the Phoebe & Joey)
Asking your friends for advice (the Rachel)
“Self-care” (the Chandler)
Exercise (the Monica)
Routine (the Ross)
I’ll be the first to admit that each of the above on their own are incredibly appealing, and ironically, quite often advised. This is also because each of the above has the potential to support your journey and relationship with anxiety… if approached intentionally. We’re all likely able to resonate with engaging in all 5 (and relating to our favorite “FRIENDS”),
Phoebe, maybe best known for her optimism & Joey, for his… naiveté, will sometimes just close their eyes at a problem and wish for something better. This often resulted in little to no change - but something they both might laugh off anyway.
When we take on the mantras “just push through”, “man up”, or “shake it off” all in the name of functionality, we deny ourselves an incredibly key factor: accessible truth. For years we’ve been taught to fear feelings when told not to “dwell” - but we were never taught the difference between dwelling and feeling in the first place. When we do the opposite, over and over and over, I can confidently warn you, that your anxiety will find time and space to grow louder. Disregarding unmet needs (which is what they are communicating) ensures its revisiting, even less on our terms than before.
PIVOT: When we name and acknowledge our experience, we show up for ourselves - we can turn toward our needs & respond to them instead of react. WE jump in the driver seat and make the calls. In doing so, our system (over time) can learn to entrust us.
Practice not judging yourself for having a feeling about something illogical, but rather, show compassion for having emotions around something purely emotional.
Rachel seems notorious for indecision and dependence on others. A dynamic that occasionally even had her blaming friends for decisions she’d made. Come on girl, we all know you shouldn’t have gotten on that plane.
Pro: Our friends provide wonderful and often, seemingly innocently supportive roles in our lives. The issue that can arise from friend advice is the ongoing validation that you can’t trust your own intuition - this comes from outsourcing confidence. When you allow friends to tell you what you should do, you lose the opportunity to practice decision-making for yourself & further validating that others know better. Our system learns repeatedly that it can’t be trusted on its own, making it borderline unbearable to make any decisions about our lives, relationships, work and beyond.
PIVOT: go in identifying your gut feeling first, and practice trusting your own intuition. When reaching out for support from trusted friends, try instead “I’d really love your witness to my processing on this”. This way you don’t cut yourself off from appropriate support, but you also acknowledge that you may already know the answers to your questions on this.
Chandler, plagued with a worthiness wound or two, often sought approval & validation for his work, thought little of himself and often faced the consequences. Maybe in reality as well?
Self-care that looks like a bubble bath after a breakdown, or a vacation after working to the point of exhaustion, or a massage twice a year, breeds the dynamic that it’s rare, luxurious, and only tapped into when burnt out. When we go heavy on the gas and heavy on the brakes - the logical prediction is that the vehicle will wear quickly.
PIVOT: Self-care is far more impactful when understood from the frame that it isn’t “stuff” here & there, but rather an intentional relationship with yourself that you invest in daily (practicing body awareness, taking breaks before they’re ‘needed’, listening & responding to needs vs. reacting, respecting your own boundaries, incorporating balance when using energy…. I can keep going, I promise.) Your challenge here is to integrate self-care into your life in a way that communicates more of: “you are important to me” and less gaslighting yourself out of needs like: “you can induldge after the all-nighter to meet that deadline.”
Monica, who I personally identify with, is a go-getter with a pace of 10 at almost all times. She’s best known at making every attempt for control & getting creative to find it when life tells her no. Exercise it out, mindset holds little difference.
Don’t fall off your peloton, I’m all for exercise……. “Endorphins make you happy!” They sure do, gotta love em. But that’s just it - when we force a hard left when our system is asking to go right, are we actually doing good by ourselves? Or again, denying accessible truth? When we utilize exercise (or anything really) as a form of avoidance, and a way to “control” uncomfortable feelings by running them out, we continue to disregard non-negotiable needs. I hear all the time how someone “just had to go to the gym” to get something out of their head. And it was their last stop - They worked out, felt better, didn’t explore further… and anxiety knocked again later that day or as soon as they woke up the next (just in time for their morning run). This cycle, like many others, could have you trapped in the very thing most reach out to stop: anxiety.
PIVOT: it’s a stepping stone: feel free to regulate your system through movement, but come back to what was knocking loudly before you started: with curiosity & interest. Turn toward your body when it asks for attention, it will thank you later by not waking you up with a panic attack. Here: self knowledge is power.
Ross is our straight arrow: stable job, always in a relationship, & looking to predict & prepare for next steps. He himself, became rather predictable.
I know, I know… trust, your girl loves a good predictable routine. Howeverrrr, it often lays the foundation for the pattern of checking out vs. checking in with ourselves. Autopilot. I hear constantly the desire for control; so why is it that we simultaneously crave the passenger seat on this? You might be thinking that operating outside of routine is the very thing that sends your anxiety through the roof, sure.. but it may also be the way you find yourself living mindfully, intentionally, consciously, and aligned. I’m not saying blow your routine to bits. But it might be worth asking where historically, your autopilot leads you. Is it somewhere you want to continue to go?
PIVOT: All I’m saying is wake up, look around, touch base with where you’re at, be curious with your needs & go from there.. before your morning brew (if possible). When we intentionally check in with ourselves, we set the stage for making conscious decisions aligned with our goals, rather than rote behaviors seeking “safety”.
While I hope to remind that none of the above approaches are “wrong”, this is a call to reflect on how they simply may be supporting an issue in disguise.
After all, PIVOT, isn’t an instruction to stop… but instead to shift your experience, with
conscious intentionality.
