Are you Stressed or Is It Anxiety

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Hello, World!

Have you been hearing the words stress and anxiety tossed around alot in the media, online in the workplace or at home? It seems that while we are working to decrease the social stigmas around mental health the true definitions of some of the terms seem to get lost. 

Today we talked with Natifa Walters, a licensed mental health professional and owner of her own practice called “ Gifts of Therapy”. Natifa like us wears many hats as a wife, mom, entrepreneur and full time therapist. She shares with us the major differences between stress and anxiety along with action steps we can take to decrease stress. 

Full Transcription :

Natifa:

And then they have that breakthrough. They realize, "I am worthy. I am valuable. I deserve more. I deserve to live this life. Life is worth living if I do it, and it had nothing to do with anyone in the world but me. I am important. My past is important. My present is important. My future is important."

Cheryl:

Hi. Welcome to The Cheerfully Cheryl Podcast. I'm Cheryl Simmons, your life-coach bestie, helping you to build success, no matter what it means to you, while living a cheerful life. So grab your headphones or turn the volume up, and continue doing you. Don't worry. I'll tell you when to take notes. All right. Let's jump in.

Cheryl:

Hello, friends. We have our very first guest on the podcast, and I'm so happy to have her. She's a current client of mine, but I've been a fan of her thought style and expertise for quite some time. Natifa Walters is like us, a woman that wears many hats. During the day, she's a licensed full-time social worker for the New York State Office of Mental Health, and she runs her own private practice, Gifts of Therapy. She is a wife and mother to two beautiful children that I have had the pleasure of meeting, and they are beautiful.

Cheryl:

Today on the podcast we're talking about the differences between stress and anxiety, and you know here on the podcast we love to take action. So Natifa shares with us the best methods to reduce stress and take care of our mental health. Now, this podcast is recorded and edited by yours truly, and know that we recorded this just a few nights ago before bed time for our children. So if you hear little laughs or screams in the background, just embrace it and give us grace. We were imagining you were sitting in with us on this conversation, and stay tuned until the end to hear a bit of a candid conversation we had when we thought we stopped recording. I told you I'm doing this solo, right? Done is better than perfect, I always say. All right. Listen in.

Cheryl:

Hello, Natifa Walters. It's so exciting to have you on the podcast. You are my very first podcast guest, and I'm really excited that it's you. So I have a ton of listeners here who have no idea how awesome you are like I do. Will you introduce yourself to everyone?

Natifa:

Yes. Well, thank you, Cheryl. I'm so excited to be on the Cheerfully Cheryl show. My name, like Cheryl said, is Natifa Walters, and I am a licensed clinical social worker in New York.

Cheryl:

Well, welcome to the podcast. As our first guest, we really wanted to make sure that we are giving our listeners the full concept of living a joyful and success-filled life, and with that, as busy working humans, there's so many things that pop up in between, and as a mental health expert, we're looking for your expertise on a variety of things. But first, will you share with us how you got into the world of mental health to begin with?

Natifa:

Well, I started off after undergraduate school. I was considering going in to get my PhD on a more research-based track, but I decided ... After a lot of schools told me I really wasn't ready for that, I did a few sessions in school, whatever, like counseling sessions, and it really just sparked interest with me doing talk therapy. So I said "Why don't I pursue this?" and so I got into school kind of not knowing and then just growing from there and just feeling like "Yeah. I love this." I love seeing people change. I love creating change, and talking with people through their lives is something I really enjoy doing.

Cheryl:

Pretty cool. So it sounds like you always had this interest, and you kind of just followed that. Do you have any interesting stories throughout your time doing this kind of work?

Natifa:

Okay. I can't really go into details about what has happened with me and my clients, but I will say, interesting enough, I didn't realize how attached I would grow to this work, and I think my very first case, I actually ... This is creepy. [inaudible 00:04:41]. My very first case, I really just wanted to see this person through a process, and I found myself ... After leaving that job, I just followed her. I was checking her Instagram and stuff, like "I hope she's doing well. I hope they are succeeding. I hope that they are just striving."

Natifa:

So it was good that I had the supervision in place to say "Hey. It's okay that you get these attachments, but sometimes you have to let people go," and so one, I realized how connected I was to people and how much I enjoyed working with people, and I guess it was just interesting. I had to just find a balance between the two, that it's okay to care about people and just let them go on and do their best.

Cheryl:

No. I hear that too. It's similar over here with my coaching clients. We work together for what feels like forever, but it's really just a few short months, and then after that you're so invested in the process, you really want to see them through and see what happens and how that little bit of success that happened when you're together flowers into something greater and more beautiful, more impactful, and my favorite is when I get to see other people impact others after working with them. So I totally get that. I don't think it's stalker-ish. I think it's part of being someone's support squad, their cheerleader. It just kind of never ends, right?

Natifa:

Yes. Absolutely. It never does, but it does come to an end, but it's also like you care. You want to see them through.

Cheryl:

True. A true sign of passion.

Cheryl:

So I'm going to switch gears a little bit here. I know that a lot of my clients and listeners as well have very busy lives. They're working multiple jobs. A lot of times they're juggling responsibilities in the home, whether they're moms homeschooling, all the things, and especially this time of year. It's winter here in New York. The sun rarely comes out. We haven't had that time to connect with friends in the ways that we have maybe this time last year, due to the pandemic.

Cheryl:

Now, I know that a lot of people are experiencing stress, heightened levels of stress. Can you share with us what is or what are some signs of stress versus what are some signs of anxiety and what the two look like or what the difference is, maybe?

Natifa:

Well, I think, yeah. So one, I 100 percent agree with you. We are definitely living in different times than many of us probably have ever experienced, and so I do believe that, on top of just our everyday life struggles, that there's just these added pressures to it. With that being said, stress and anxiety look alike in that we have ... It's sort of our body and our mind, our behavior, all of those responding to outside factors impacting us on the inside.

Natifa:

So for example, it could be like you think about the amount of work that you have. You think about all the tasks that you have to do, and so those are external factors, and you begin to process them internally, and so they both look like that, how we're sort of processing these external factors internally. The difference though between the two ... Oh, excuse me, and we process them. It could be like a physiological response. So sweating can be seen in both being stressed out and that could also be seen in having anxiety.

Natifa:

I think the difference between the two is that just how their levels are. So stress is seen as a very addressable thing, and so when I say addressable, it can be fleshed out. So you ask someone "Hey. What are you stressed about?" and that person can sort of verbalize what they're stressed about, like "I have 10 clients to see. I have to go grocery shopping. I have to walk the dog. I have a lot of work to do." So stress can be a very vocal thing, and it can sort of be surface level for everyone, like "I have a certain level of stress. This thing is impacting me. I'm feeling worried about it." It's a level of worry.

Natifa:

Anxiety is actually not. One, it can be very debilitating and is ... So many levels to anxiety, but anxiety is often unexplained. So one little thing about anxiety is phobias can come up from anxiety. So a small one I'll mention to you is this thing called agoraphobia, and it is the fear of going out. The person can't ... They can pinpoint it to "Oh, the World Trade Center collapsed, and so now I fear going out." They can pinpoint it to something, but they can't really process why is their brain making such a connection to it, "Why do I feel like the World Trade Center events are going to happen again to me?"

Natifa:

So it becomes very hard for them to verbalize, and that is because anxiety is steeped, one, in a lot more factors than stress, and anxiety can be really sort of like having social anxiety, "I know I don't want to talk to people, but I don't know where it comes from, where it's rooted in," and it could be very rooted in our upbringing, nature versus nurture, all of those things, whereas again, stress is very surface level. So what you'll find is, while everyone deals with stress, anxiety has a way of sort of picking people, a lot of people, but it doesn't necessarily pick everyone, because more people have the tools to sort of stay at a stress level rather than getting to an anxious level.

Cheryl:

No. Yeah. I love this distinction because I think that, while the stigmas around mental health are decreasing, we see a lot of people ... I mean, I see it all the time on social media and in Pinterest. A lot of people are throwing around the word anxiety, and they're communicating that anxiety looks a lot like stress. So I know for some of us that already deal with a hefty amount of daily or basic stress, it could be challenging to determine whether this is a normal amount of stress or is there something underlying behind this.

Cheryl:

We're all kind of concerned or worried about getting the laundry done or food on the table or that one project for work, those type of things, but how do I determine whether that stress is just from the collective of all of the stress that we have as busy working humans or whether it's something deeper that I should get more help for? But thank you for making that clarification versus surface level and something deeper that can't particularly be pinpointed, because I haven't heard that one before.

Cheryl:

Given what you've just said, what you've just told us, what would you suggest for some of these busy working humans that are doing all the things, juggling all the things, super stressed? What would you suggest for them to decrease those stress levels so that they can avoid the point of anxiety, if that is even possible to do?

Natifa:

So one, we can do a lot of work to sort of avoid anxiety, but sometimes there are precipitating factors that we can't sort of prevent. So the first way is to develop coping skills. So one, when we are stressed, I mean, even in a small scale, having a to-do list sort of manages stress, which doesn't lead ... That will help sort of if it does lead to anxiety.

Natifa:

But I will say this. That anxiety comes from our ... It's sort of a fear of dealing with the unknown. So for example, you have laundry to do, and you're like "Okay. I just need to put it on the to-do list and get to it," and then you don't get to it, and it's just like "Okay." This becomes stress now, like "Now it's added to the plate because I have more stuff to do," and et cetera.

Natifa:

But if you, for example, have experienced precipitating factors, meaning that you have had ... You just had a baby, so that's hormonal. You can't change the hormones that are exhibited in you. You've had parents who had poor responses to anxiety. You've experienced trauma, all of those things. You can be as taskful as possible, but if you sort of feel debilitated in doing that task, meaning that I just am unable to do what I need to do, like my thought process are overtaking me, then I begin to think about the laundry not being done and "How is this laundry not being done going to affect my spouse? How is this laundry not being done going to affect my children, and is it going to be more laundry piled up on that? Is no one ever going to have clothes to wear?" et cetera.

Natifa:

Those types of things are sort of managed by having coping skills. Coping skills for anxiety looks like deep breathing, positive self talk, I mean, and the gamut goes on, whereas stress ... It can look like I can hand off the task to other people. "Listen. I got too much laundry. Honey, can you take care of it? I have too much laundry." If I'm stressed about it, I can send it to a service to do it, et cetera. So stress can look like ... Again, it's very verbal. You can verbalize what it is, and you can manage it. You can sort of flesh it out, if that makes sense.

Natifa:

Anxiety ... To more so cope with it, really, I think it's about having ... One, they have self assessments online if you think you're suffering from anxiety, or you can go see a doctor, and then you can really do some of those therapeutic helps, such as having somebody teach you about muscle relaxation. I love self talks, and I don't want to say it again, but self talk is really, really helpful, just to name a few, but the gamut runs on of different things that you can do to manage both stress and anxiety.

Cheryl:

Yes. I love all of those suggestions. I'm really big on self talk as well, and I might have shared it here on the podcast. If I haven't, I'm sure it'll be in upcoming episodes, but I do a series of mantras, or what I call my daily practice, every day. I'm talking to myself in a positive manner, because if you are not talking to yourself positively, you cannot depend on anyone else to give you those positive thoughts about yourself.

Cheryl:

So for me and for the clients that I work with, repeating some of those positive mantras, rituals, affirmations ... It has so many names these days for what we call it. It's so helpful in getting you in the right mindset, and particularly when those stressors pop up, I know for me ... I'm a mom as well doing all the things, working from home. If I have a moment where I'm feeling stressed or overwhelmed because I didn't get this project done and it's time for dinner to be done, I will literally go into the bathroom, close my eyes, sit on the toilet, and repeat this positive self talk in my head until I feel a little bit empowered and inspired to go and tackle the rest of the day.

Cheryl:

Now, I know that you are also a mom of two beautiful little children. You are a working professional. You are now running your own business. You're doing all the things. You're a wife. Everything is happening. What are some things that make you feel inspired or that fill you up and give you the opportunity to live your best self? What are some tactics that you use for yourself besides self talk? Because I know that one's your favorite.

Natifa:

That one is my favorite. I self talk all day.

Cheryl:

Oh, you can talk about it. You can talk about it too.

Natifa:

I'm definitely encouraging myself all the time. I do it just constantly, actually, but ... So things that really inspire me is often the work that I do with people. It keeps me going. I sometimes have sessions with people, and just to see them make breakthroughs, things that you're just like "Yeah ..." From a distance, you're objective. You're outside of it, so you can see all these areas that it would be so great if they would just push forward in this area, but they have to realize that for themselves, because that creates more ownership on it.

Natifa:

So you sit quietly as a therapist, and you're waiting, and you're waiting, and you're waiting, and then they have that breakthrough. They realize "I am worthy. I am valuable. I deserve more. I deserve to live this life. Life is worth living if I do it, and it has nothing to do with anyone in the world but me. I am important. My past is important. My present is important. My future is important," and when people realize it, I'm like "Hey. Welcome to the club. All right."

Natifa:

It's just like you're literally winning souls back for themselves, people who are truly, genuinely loving on themselves, because I just believe that we can't do for others, we can't love others if we don't do it for ourselves, and so when I see it, when I see people coming into this club, because it is a club ... It's this group of just you love yourself, you are worthy, and you know it, and you're walking in it, and so the more people added into this club, I just feel inspired to just go get more. Come on. Come on, whoever. Come on in. Come on in. I'm just excited. That's why my company is called what it's called is because it is a gift, something that could never be under any Christmas tree.

Natifa:

You can't find it in any partner. You can't find it in any child you have. You can't find it in any relationship you have. You can't find it in any job you have. It is in you, and you have to sort of look in you and say "I am worthy." It doesn't matter how much people tell you they love you. It doesn't how many times people tell you you're beautiful. If you don't believe it for yourself, you can't get there. You really can't, and so when I see people get there and they believe it, they wholehearted believe it, I'm sold, and it pushes me further. So I've had those interactions with people, and I continue to have those interactions with people, and so I'm just like "Okay. I could wake up and do this one more day."

Cheryl:

Yes. Yes. I totally agree. It's amazing to see what people can accomplish when they believe that they can accomplish it, whether it's mental health related or whether it's about getting that next promotion. There's so many things that hold us back on this planet, and to see people see those things that have held them back in the past and bust through them, move them out the way, do more, and pull others through with them ... It is really inspiring. I feel you there. My goodness.

Cheryl:

Thank you so much for chatting with us today. I would love to spend so much more time with you. I'm already thinking of other topics that we can invite you back to talk on, but can you share with us where we can find you? What can we do with you, no matter when we're listening to this podcast, that can help us connect with that part of us where we're self talking and we are just feeling so good about ourselves?

Natifa:

So my private practice is called Gifts of Therapy. So that's G-I-F-T-S, Gifts, with an S, of Therapy. So you can just search me at www.giftsoftherapy.com. I am on Instagram, @giftsoftherapy, and also coming up February 1st to the 4th at 9:00 PM on Instagram Live I'm going to be doing a series on anxiety just talking about what it is, different coping skills, how to do that self talk. I have a whole series, one whole series, one day just devoted to self talk, dealing with our feelings, all of those things, and so we're going to be ... Excuse me. I'm going to be doing that series February 1st, February 2nd, February 3rd, February 4th at 9:00 PM. They're not going to be very long sessions. We'll talk and do some work, and then I will close out with a coping skill that you can sort of play back. So even if you can't catch the live, it'll be saved so you can just catch it whenever you can, and I'm just hoping that we do that work.

Cheryl:

Awesome. Thank you for that wonderful gift from Gifts of Therapy. I'm so excited to take part in the series and learn some new things, and I know that everyone else listening is as well. So I just wanted to thank you for joining us today.

Natifa:

Thank you so much for having me. I feel awesome being here, and I feel good about the work that you're doing, so [inaudible 00:22:59].

Cheryl:

Thank you. You know, those of you that are in my Cheerful Network newsletters, Ms. Natifa Walters was featured just a few emails ago. So each newsletter, I shout out a Cheerful Community member that we're rooting for. So if you have not yet seen those emails, hop on my email list. You can look in the show notes. There's a link provided. Or just go ahead to cheerfullycheryl.com. It'll be a nice little window that pops up that says "Join the Cheerful Network." But until then, my beautiful friends and the beautiful Natifa Walters of Gifts of Therapy, have a beautiful day, a wonderful evening, and a cheerful life, cheerfully.

Cheryl:

Okay, y'all. This is when I thought we had stopped recording, but I continued to record. As I was editing and I listened through our extra half hour of mom talk, I decided to keep some of these gems. Here they go.

Cheryl:

But thank you.

Natifa:

No problem. No problem.

Cheryl:

I often confuse stress and anxiety, because when people talk about them, they sound the same, to me at least.

Natifa:

And they do. [crosstalk 00:24:16]-

Cheryl:

Like "I'm anxious about this. I'm anxious about this. Oh, I'm anxious about this job promotion. I'm anxious about this review." I find that I'm having to talk to people about anxiety versus excitement.

Natifa:

So here's the difference though. So there's a difference between somebody who has an anger issue and someone who is just angry. So to constantly be in that state is what is actually ... That's why anxiety is more debilitating, because you're sort of in a constant state of worry. I mean, it's so crazy how our mind works, but we all have defense mechanisms. We all have red alarms. So if you call your kid right now, you don't hear them, you get a little bit alarmed, but what is supposed to click for us is all these common-sense things. Part one, they could be in the bathroom, they could sort of not hear you, all these things, and that is sort of ... That's stressful.

Natifa:

Anxiety is you don't have the tools to sort of answer it, like you become a hypochondriac, like "They could be dead. They could be drowning. The whole world doesn't like me," all these things, and so literally people are living like this. It's so amazing just how much we are in a state of worry, and a lot of it is coronavirus. Look at it. Nobody knows when this shit is going to end. So it's just like people are in a constant state of worry, almost to the point where now they're scared to go outside and different things like that, and so that's kind of what mind I used to have.

Natifa:

So phobias are linked to anxieties. So again, they become a part of your sort of characteristics and you can't separate the two, whereas stress is very ... I mean, you can sort of separate it. You can understand where it comes from, like "Yeah. I'm stressed because I might be pregnant," or something. Stress is stress. Stress is so much easier to speak about, and I do think people mix up the two because stress can be overwhelming, but it's really sort of this ...

Natifa:

Anxiety is ... You can't verbalize it sometimes. You can sometimes, but it often becomes very hard, and it's just seen in so many different ways, and the way it impacts you ... I think that there is this group of people, which is why I want to do this series, because I think there is this group of people out there who are sitting at home not getting the help they need, and I'm hoping that somebody will sort of pull on some of these coping skills. Even there's a muscle relaxation one that I want to try and do with people, but I'm just hoping that we don't sort of end up with a worse population than we already have now. I'm so afraid of that.

Natifa:

So this is my little piece of giving back to this community of mental health. This will be it. I just want to talk about anxiety. So if we can teach people to sort of breathe through it, if we could teach people to sort of separate their mind from it, disconnect from the external things, maybe. Maybe. I don't know.

Cheryl:

It's fascinating to me too. We all know how powerful the mind is, but-

Natifa:

You realize that just as much as you have the capacity to think of negative things, so do you so have the capacity to think of positive things, and people don't realize that. I'm like "Girl, you could change. You could think so much."

Cheryl:

That's the kind of stuff I work on with people, and I think I have a series on it from sometime in March, April-ish when the pandemic first hit, but really, positive thought is so fricking powerful, and it actually requires more effort to think negatively than it does positively, because when you think negatively, you think about all of the negative possibilities, all 30 of them. If I'm leaving the house-

Natifa:

Well, I even think it was the opposite. I feel like people could think so negatively on the spot.

Cheryl:

But here's the thing, they can because we've been practicing it our whole lives. We haven't practiced with simple-

Natifa:

Yes. Worst-case scenario.

Cheryl:

Right. Worst-case scenario. All of the worst-case scenarios. So we're exhausting ourselves coming up with all the negative things that can happen, when it takes less time to think about the one positive outcome that we would actually like to happen. How could the result of this be something positive? If I leave the house, I may step on a hundred-dollar bill. Oh, my gosh. So much fun. It's partially because of what is going on in our lives and what we're holding on to, so talking about those daily stressors. It's because we're holding those stressors in our brains and in our hearts.

Cheryl:

So I saw today on Instagram one of my past clients ... She was talking about her experience at Starbucks. She walked in. No one greeted her, and immediately she got upset, like "What kind of customer service this is. I have my mask on. I'm doing all the things I need to do. I walk in. All you have to do is say 'Hello, blank. What can I get for you?'" and they ignored her.

Cheryl:

She later got on her Stories to say that it felt like they ignored her for 20 minutes, but in reality it was just 20 seconds while they were getting the cash register together and how quickly her mind went to "Oh, I'm going to ask to speak to a manager. I'm going to write a negative review on Yelp," all these things she went to immediately, all those scenarios of what she was going to do because she didn't get properly greeted when she got into the Starbucks, when it takes literally five seconds to be like "Well, maybe they're-"

Natifa:

Maybe they didn't see you.

Cheryl:

"... just making sure the area is clean so that when I walk up to the register and I accidentally place my hand on the counter, I won't catch something that I don't want."

Cheryl:

Then I thought about it. I'm like "It's probably what has been happening in her life over the past day, two days, three days that I have seen on Instagram." I mean, she's no longer a client, so I'm not up to the day-to-day in her days, but I know that she's stressed out about homeschooling her two children. I can see that she's been complaining about having to drink coffee so she can finish her chores at the end of the day.

Cheryl:

So when we talk about the coping mechanisms, when we control some of the basic stressors in our life, that helps us to avoid the overflow of the pot when we get into a situation that's a little bit more stressful or different than what we have already been coping with. It's just so fascinating how powerful our minds are and how much-

Natifa:

Girl, it really is.

Cheryl:

... we just give it to the mind and we're like "Yep. Mind, you're smart. Do your own thing," but really we have to actively control that to make a difference in our own lives. Otherwise we're letting the world control us, and-

Natifa:

Absolutely, and people do.

Cheryl:

They do. Yes.

Natifa:

People are trapped. Trapped.

Cheryl:

No. We are far more magical than this planet. We are the magic.

Natifa:

I wholeheartedly ... I do. I wholeheartedly believe we are the magic, girl. I love that. We are the magic.

Cheryl:

You know what? I'm going to write that down. We are the magic.

Cheryl:

You see? I told you it was worth sticking around for. Thank you for tuning in. If you enjoyed this episode, please share it. If you share on social, please tag me, @cheerfullycheryl, and tag @giftsoftherapy so we can thank you appropriately. Now, if you've been enjoying the podcast, please rate and review. It would be so awesome, and I would so appreciate it. Until next week, my friends ... Well, you already know.

Cheryl:

Hey. Did you know that there's a three-day goal tending challenge where you could win a Cheerfully Cheryl care package that has lots of goodies including an Amazon gift card? The challenge takes you through three critical steps to achieve your biggest goals. Get started right now at cheerfullycheryl.com/goaltending, and did I mention that it was completely free? Get started right now. Can't wait to see your wins.

Cheryl:

Cheerfully, Cheryl.