Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: This podcast is brought to you by MHA of Dutchess county and produced by CMJW Entertainment.
This episode of the Vital Women Podcast is proudly sponsored by Salt Boutique Labs.
You're listening to the Vital Women Podcast.
[00:00:18] Speaker B: Welcome to the third segment of Anxiety Order. The flight response. How we react to the physical and mental pressure of debt. And wider solutions often keep us stuck.
Do you know what that happens to be, Connor?
[00:00:35] Speaker A: Actually, it's not coming to me right off the top of my head. I would just imagine, you know, the fact of anxiety, paranoia, holding us in a paralysis. But what it is that keeps us stuck, that I don't think I know.
[00:00:48] Speaker B: Avoidance. A lot of us react like an ostrich. We choose to stick our head in the sand and avoid the problems that we have to face.
[00:00:57] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:00:58] Speaker B: And a lot of people, like you said, don't realize that that's how we are behaving. That's how we are reacting. You know, last week I spoke about the racing heart, how we hear that intrusive, you know, those intrusive thoughts. Now, today we're going to look at actually how we can resolve the problem.
[00:01:20] Speaker A: Sounds great. Let's do it.
[00:01:21] Speaker B: Without allowing our anxiety to take over. So the most common behavior, like I said, is that ostrich effect. This is when we leave those bills stuck on our kitchen counter or on our desk and weeks go by and we decide not to open them up.
You know, you stop logging on to your bank app and you decide, I'm not going to. You know, maybe if I ignore it, they're going to go away. It doesn't happen that way. A lot of the times when people choose to do that, what happens is that the bills add on more to.
What do you call it? I. I lost.
[00:02:00] Speaker A: You just increase your debt constantly.
[00:02:03] Speaker B: Well, it increases your debt, but not only that, but they, you know, they slap you with these late fees that sometimes.
[00:02:09] Speaker A: Oh, my God. Yeah.
[00:02:10] Speaker B: Yeah. It just makes it, you know, not worth avoiding.
[00:02:14] Speaker A: Yeah, the interest builds up and up and up and. Yeah, no, and that can. That can be suffoc. You know, there's this movie that I love a lot. It's the Replacement, starring Keanu Reeves, and it's about replacement football players. But one of the things that they were talking about, the coaches asking them is like, what are the things that we're most scared of? And Keanu Reeves, his character says quicksand, and his team looks at him and it's like, what are you talking about? And he says, well, you miss your first pass and then you start to get in your head, and then slowly and surely you lose your confidence. And the more and more you try to fight it, the harder and harder it is to make anything productive happen, AKA quicksand. And I feel like that just translates to so many parts of life, especially what you're saying here about, like, keeping up with these responsibilities and bills and getting stuck with the interest.
That's disastrous. That's an example of quicksand.
[00:03:09] Speaker B: Absolutely. I love that. That analogy. Thank you for bringing that up. Because that just, you know, can envision that happening. And a lot of the times that that's how we feel, you know, we're sinking in deeper and deeper into our debts.
So.
So the next thing that might happen is that paradox of our physical stress and our debt. And sometimes our bodies, not our bodies, but also our brain might say, well, you know, I'm going to buy myself this $7 latte or I'm going to buy myself me some $50 pair of shoes to hide the fact that we are drowning, perhaps in $2,000 debt or even more. This is how our brain is trying to justify what we did back in December, trying to provide us with a solution. But in reality, it's not a solution.
This is being irresponsible.
And unfortunately, a lot of people go that route.
And like you said, then it creates that quicksand effect. Yeah, but.
And that's a way of the brain tricking us, too. It's so interesting how the brain works and it just decides, you know, to trick or to even mask, you know, certain behaviors.
[00:04:20] Speaker A: Well, the brain is always trying to protect us from things, whether we mean to or not. And it's a great mechanism that's helped us through, you know, majority of human life. But, you know, now that we're not being chased by tigers constantly, that that biological factor, it kind of works against us at times where we forget certain memories. We forget, like the hard memories. We try to. We try to forget hard circumstances, and our brain is protecting us. But in moments like that, you're saying it's really only making certain situations worse by ostrich. Ostrich putting your head in the sand. And yes, the avoidance. And it's also a.
An amount of competence, however much competence we can bring to the table. You know, there was an interview with Billy Joel once where they asked him, was like, what makes you so great? And he says, like, honestly, I don't think I'm all that great. I'm competent. I know what to do, I know how to do it. And in a world Filled, full of incompetence, looking competent. Actually looks extraordinary.
[00:05:27] Speaker B: I like that, too. Wow, you're full of analogies, which is great.
[00:05:32] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:05:35] Speaker B: But you're right. It's, you know, our brain reacts with that fight or flight effect, and we're not being chased by, you know, humongous animals anymore. So it's in our DNA for us to still behave like we did, you know, years ago during primitive times.
[00:05:54] Speaker A: So, absolutely. It's. It's there. We're wired.
[00:05:57] Speaker B: Exactly. We're wired for it. We're absolutely wired for it. So your brain is tricking you. You know, your heart is racing and you are trying to figure it out.
So one of the ways that you might say, well, from now on, I am going to become a hermit. And that's your social, you know, behavior that's taking place. Because now not only are you sticking your head in the sand, but you want to hide. You want to hide from society because in Dec, you felt, okay, I, I'm being responsible and buying gifts for, you know, my, my children, my aunts, my parents, whoever, you know, and you ended up spending more than what you expected or even the last time we spoke, you know, for those unexpected emergencies that may come up.
So now you're choosing to stay home when your friends reach out to you and say, hey, let's go out to lunch, let's go for a brunch, because you don't want to spend money, because you're trying to figure out, how am I going to fix this debt that I created.
So during that time, you start coming up even with more excuses.
You know, I'm doing dry January.
I am too busy just to avoid from getting out there and spending money, like I mentioned already. So how do we break that cycle? You know, what kind of actions are we going to take to start dealing with those bills that we accumulated?
So one of the things that I am going to suggest is, you know, maybe breaking that fear by opening one envelope at a time. You don't need to address all the bills all at once.
Start to trick your mind, I'm going to do this. You know, that's when you need to form a challenge. And, you know, and, and as humans, we love to form challenges, you know, so you need to challenge your, your mind to, I'm gonna do this. I'm going to open up this envelope. You know, you said five minutes aside a day to open up an envelope. You don't need to pay right away. You just need to look at what you're up against.
It's almost like running a race, right? You go out there and you practice and you pace yourself and you put it on a timer and trying to train your body to do the best.
[00:08:15] Speaker A: No, I hear you on that.
[00:08:17] Speaker B: So it's the same when you're trying to pay your bills and shut down on your debt.
[00:08:23] Speaker A: Yeah, without a doubt. It's, you know, they talk about I, there's a term for this and I can't think of the term right now, but just taking it into bite sized pieces. When you say, as you said, just do one envelope. If you tell yourself you're going to do just envelope and you open it up, you'll be amazed. Is like, okay, that wasn't too bad. And sometimes you get more going and sometimes you'll realize it's like, okay, I'm in the mode, let me keep going. Or sometimes it's like, all right, that's a good start, I'll come back to it later. And you're able to get it in bunches and pieces. But a lot of time it's the great motif, mo, motivator to get you going in something like that. I think that's huge. You also talked about with people kind of avoiding going out and avoiding seeing people because you know, they haven't had the money.
I've been there plenty of times and it doesn't even have to be January either. And one of the things that I've learned myself is like, you don't need to spend money to see people. I know that there's that feeling that you have to at times is like, oh, like the only thing we could do together is go out for lunch or dinner. So I'm going to have to pay. Is like, you don't have to meet up at the gym, go for a walk somewhere. Obviously it's winter right now, so it's kind of tough to do stuff outside.
But I've just met people at the mall and we would literally do laps around the mall and that's nice. And you know, little things like that and if your, your home is available, just invite them over or vice versa, you know, see what can happen. There are plenty of cost effective ways to see the people that mean the most in your life.
[00:09:51] Speaker B: Absolutely. All of those are great ideas and we need to figure out, you know, how to do those things without spending money. So I love all your suggestions.
[00:10:00] Speaker A: Thank you. Appreciate it.
[00:10:01] Speaker B: You're a smart guy for your age because sometimes most people your age haven't figured that out yet.
[00:10:06] Speaker A: So I've lived many lives in the span of 28 years.
[00:10:10] Speaker B: Yes, you have. Yes, you have.
So, you know, through other shows, we cover the emotional, the physical and the behavior. Well, today we're covering the behavior and in order to deal with those behaviors. I love your suggestions, as I stated, but one thought that I had when you were talking about is not only can we apply these skills to our financial debts, but throughout life. Sometimes in life we can take a look at something. We don't have to deal with it right away, we don't have to address it. We can just look at it, process it and digest it before we decide to move forward.
So this applies, you know, to everything in life, not just to our bills.
[00:10:58] Speaker A: No, naturally, you know, everybody talks about like shower thoughts, bathroom thoughts. Just like you're away from everything and you get all the good ideas. That's important. I find my time in the car is very important to me where I'll just turn off everything. No radio, no podcast, no nothing. And I'll just like ruminate with my thoughts. Especially I go for long car, car rides. I'm driving all over the place. I'm in the car for like two, three hours at a time sometimes. And just being there, sitting with my thoughts helps me to, as you said, analyze and digest the things that I have coming up so then I can attack them easier than just kind of like running into, running into battle willy nilly.
[00:11:35] Speaker B: Right, right. During those quiet moments. You know, as you mentioned, the shower time, those long drives are terrific. To help us unpack things. Yeah. Without having to react and launch.
So now we're in January. So in January, how do we reset, you know, what kind of tactics are we going to use to guide us to tackle those bills? You know, what kind of plan are we going to form? A lot of people talk about, you know, new Year, new me resolutions. Well, this is part of the new me resolution. Right. So what kind of action? So in one of the shows I spoke about that I'm a very visual person and I like to write things down. So when I was struggling financially, one of the things that I did was I would take.
Well, I would say to myself, you know, I'm not my past choices.
This doesn't represent my future either. And I'm a person of value in order to calm down that anxiety. Because anxiety thrives in the unknown. And when we are not picking up that envelope and looking at it, our mind is racing and coming up with all kinds of ideas and that's the unknown. So we're feeding our anxiety at that point.
[00:12:48] Speaker A: Absolutely. Yeah.
[00:12:49] Speaker B: So opening up that envelope, taking it, looking at it, writing down what that particular bill will be.
So that's how you start forming, forming your plan.
Maybe the next day, again, taking that five minute, open up another envelope, look at it, write it down.
Because the idea is not to pay everything right away.
Calming down that breath, taking that side, forming in a little bit of that breath that is talked about so much, you know, during yoga, it does help inhaling, exhaling, because just by doing that, you feel so much calmer. It brings, you know, oxygen to your brain. It calms down your central nervous system. And that's what we need to do. That is part of forming the plan. Yeah.
[00:13:46] Speaker A: I was just speaking with a integrated pharmacist about this on energy healing, and we were talking about how, you know, a lot of people don't take really good breaths for whatever reason. We have these really bad habits when it comes to breathing. So, like, most of the time it's fast or shallow breaths. So, like, when you really do take a moment to be mindful and control your breathing, it can be such a reset for you. And it's such a simple thing, or it sounds like a simple thing, but when you sit down and actually try to do it, you'll be amazed, like, how hard it is to really center your breath. I don't know how we got out of breathing, which is mind blowing, but it's true.
[00:14:28] Speaker B: I don't know how either. And I did listen to that episode and I thought it was terrific because, you know, before I started practicing yoga, I did a lot of shallow breathing as well. And sometimes I have to be mindful, like you said, when I feel anxious and talk to myself and say, no, you're doing that shallow breathing. You know how to breathe. You know, take a full inhale and a full exhale. But sometimes it's so hard and people don't realize, yeah, breathing comes natural.
But we have trained ourselves to just do that shallow breathing, and that's when our energy gets stuck. Right. As she was saying. So in order for you to move that energy, you really need to take a full breath. And it just stimulates that flow, that blood flow. And when that blood flow is happening, it's stimulating your brain.
[00:15:19] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:15:20] Speaker B: And you're calming those anxiety symptoms that we experience.
So thank you.
[00:15:26] Speaker A: Yeah. Something I just thought of, and it's the first time I ever actually thought about this. Do you? I just want to hear your opinion. I have no scientific backing to any of this. This is just something that I am very curious about. And probably will look into now.
I remember, you know, talking about, like, childhood, you know, being in school, not wanting to make too much a scene or draw too much attention to yourself or teachers or adults saying, it's like, hey, you're being too loud. Quiet down.
Do you think that could be one of the reasons why we don't actually accentuate our breathing as much as we could? Because, like, when I think about it, like, there are times I'm at places like I'm like, don't breathe too loud because I don't want to be heard. I don't want to be noticed, I don't want to be seen. I'm not trying to put attention to myself. I'm 28, and I still think that at times. So if that's a conscious thought, just imagine what I'm doing subconsciously. I don't know. That just popped into my head. What do you think about that?
[00:16:22] Speaker B: Well, it's very interesting. I would love to do more research on that, because that is a very good point. You know, where does that behavior come from? Where did we first learn? You know, and that is a great theory that perhaps, you know, a lot of the times people tell us, you know, behave this way, don't behave that way, don't do this. And in a way, it's putting us in a box, Right? Yeah. So to quiet ourselves, to hide ourselves, to minimize who we are.
So it could be coming from the. That particular place. But let's make a note. Let's, you know.
[00:16:55] Speaker A: Yeah, let's make a note. Let's look into that.
I think that'd be good research, actually.
[00:17:00] Speaker B: Absolutely. Absolutely. So, and, and, and that also brings, you know, the whole idea that perhaps that is how we address also our anxiety with our bills, that fight or flight effect. You know, it's if, if I hide myself, if I put myself in this box, you know, things are going to go away. I'm protecting myself, so.
[00:17:19] Speaker A: Yes, yes.
[00:17:21] Speaker B: Yeah. So it's just the brain amazes me, the body amazes me because of the things that we do. Believing that we're protecting, you know, ourselves from danger, you know, so we still go back to that primitive time, Even though that is 20, 26 is very, very interesting.
[00:17:40] Speaker A: At the end of the day, we're just mammals.
[00:17:41] Speaker B: We're just mammals. Absolutely. So going back to, to, you know, dealing with these bills, how are we going to do it? So within a week, you know, I would say form a plan. Form that plan to open up those bills. If you have five bills, you know, take One at a time, look at it, write down the amount. Don't start forming a plan until you have open up all your mail. And then you can start adding your bills and you can start looking at your bank account, how you're going to address it. Because the plan is, you know, you're going to make within that list, you're going to put pay now, pay later and what's junk, you know, so creating that three rule effect of sorting things out and then once you have written everything down form that plan, now I need to sit down and I need to address these bills. You know, you're going to need more than five minutes. You know, you might need 10, 15 minutes to completely look at your bank account to figure out how you're going to pay them.
Sometimes they say it's better to pay the lease of your bills because you may not be able to afford to pay the full bill. But like I mentioned in the, in the show, it's always important to secure a roof over our heads and make sure that we have enough money to pay our rent or our mortgage.
[00:19:09] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:19:09] Speaker B: And then break things down, calling those creditors and say, hey, you know, I can only pay $25 out of $100. How can you work with me? A lot of the times they are willing to work with you instead of you sitting there and avoiding and thinking that things are going to go away. Oh yeah, reality, nothing never goes away.
[00:19:27] Speaker A: No communication. It works out. It a lot of the times in my experience. Yeah, no, you reach out and see, it's like, hey, can we break this up? What can we do? Because yeah, no, if you just avoid it and go silent, they're going to be like, that's when they slap on all the extra interest. That's when they slap on all the extra fees, those penalties because they're like, hey, knock, knock, knock. Are you there at all? But when you're communicating, it'd be like, okay, yeah, let's work this.
[00:19:54] Speaker B: Absolutely. Communication is the key with everything. With everything, you know, and, and that helps you build that bravery muscle. We all need to, you know, build muscles physically and mentally. So that is part of that mental, you know, brave muscle effect. What makes us stronger is, you know, trying to figure how to advocate for ourselves, trying to problem solve.
And in doing that, really you are creating a much secure person.
Because like I said, in life we can't avoid things. No have to, you know, we have to deal with problems and sometimes we can deal with them head on. Breaking them down five minutes at a time, 10 minutes at, you know, at a time.
Breaking things down on a daily basis is key.
It isn't a big secret, you know, how to deal with our anxiety audit or our financial problems. We have to deal with it, and that's the fact.
[00:20:54] Speaker A: Oh, absolutely. And as you said, people like building up that bravery muscle. You know, a lot of people are afraid of confrontation. But one of the things that's helped rewire my brain and some people around me as well, instead of considering it confrontation, consider it advocating, whether it's for yourself or whatever it is that you are trying to put out there. Not confronting, but advocating. And that's a much bigger, more positive spin to it. It doesn't sound as nasty or, you know, scary. Just scary, really.
[00:21:27] Speaker B: Right, right. And. And as I see it, challenging yourself, you know, because we all like to create a challenge. We all like to feel like we're in a competition, but what's better than to be in a competition with yourself and to challenge yourself as opposed to challenging somebody else or competing with somebody else?
[00:21:43] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:21:44] Speaker B: So I'm going to end our episode there because I want our listeners to think about, you know, how do I challenge myself? How do I compete with myself? One thing that I want to leave my listeners with is please, you know, subscribe to the Vital Women. We're trying different things, how to better address your needs, and I'm here for you. Thank you so much.
[00:22:07] Speaker A: This podcast is brought to you by MHA of Dutchess county and produced by CMJW Entertainment. This episode of the Vital Women Podcast is proudly sponsored by Salt Boutique Labs.
