Managing Stress, Worry, and Anxiety: Effective Strategies for Mental Well-Being

How does stress shape your daily life, and could it actually be a catalyst for growth? What if the key to reclaiming balance lies in recognising hidden stressors and responding rather than reacting? 

Join Anthony Hartcher as he unpacks the profound impact of stress, worry, and anxiety on wellbeing. This episode dives into uncovering the mental, physical, and chemical stressors in our environment, offering actionable tools to transform your response and embrace a balanced, fulfilling life. 

Anthony shares a personal journey of transformation sparked by a health revelation that redefined his approach to self-care and priorities. Explore how shifting perspective and appreciating the present can dissolve negativity and reclaim self-worth, even amidst the challenges of social media and societal pressure. Tune in for empowering strategies to navigate stress and embrace your unique strengths for a healthier, more meaningful path.


About me&my health up & Anthony Hartcher     
me&my health up seeks to enhance and enlighten the well-being of others. Host Anthony Hartcher is the CEO of me&my wellness which provides holistic health solutions using food as medicine, combined with a holistic, balanced, lifestyle approach. Anthony holds three bachelor's degrees in Complementary Medicine; Nutrition and Dietetic Medicine; and Chemical Engineering.

Podcast Disclaimer
Any information, advice, opinions or statements within it do not constitute medical, health care or other professional advice, and are provided for general information purposes only. All care is taken in the preparation of the information in this Podcast. [Connected Wellness Pty Ltd] operating under the brand of “me&my health up”..click here for more

Chapters

• 0:08 Managing Stress, Worry, Anxiety for Wellness
• 11:37 Personal Transformation Through Health Awakening
• 24:07 Dissolving Worry and Anxiety

Transcript

Anthony Hartcher: 0:00

Are you a stress head? Worried? Do you have anxious thoughts, feelings throughout your day? Is it costing you progress, productivity, relationships? So yes, you've landed on an episode of me&my health up. I'm your host, Anthony Hartcher. I'm a clinical nutritionist and lifestyle medicine specialist. The purpose of this podcast is to enhance and enlighten your wellbeing. And today we're talking about the stress, the worry and anxiety in our lives and how it's costing us living, how we are throwing away our lives by stressing out, worrying and feeling anxious. So today's episode is all about empowering you with techniques to recognise it and what you can do about it and how you can get on top of your stress, worry and anxiety and control, control, better control how you respond to situations and how you can get control of your life and take it in to the direction that you want to take it in. So let's get underway with the topic and defining what is stress, worry and anxiety. And yes, they're all interlinked, as you've probably realised. So stress, again, there's many forms of stress. So if we're talking mental stress, then it's certainly linked to worry and anxiety. There's also physical stresses, which can result in mental stress. So what I mean by physical stress? physical stresses, the amount of exertion, physical activity. So it can be over-exercising, can be a, you know, a physical stress on the body, just can be just doing too much and not allowing enough rest. Physical stress can be created through lack of sleep. So sleep deprivation can create that physical stress in essence where our body's not restoring and repairing. So it's not doing the regeneration phase and that happens at night or we are putting too much stress on our body, physical stress that it can't get the repair work done at night and it needs a number of nights to do the repair work. So yes, we can create physical stress through overactivity and not allowing enough rest and rejuvenation. There's also chemical stresses which come from the environment. So these are what we call the sort of endocrine disruptors. So endocrine disruptors are the chemicals that are man-made, that are artificial, that are toxic when inside of our body. And there's many ways in which we can induce these toxic chemicals. We can do it through eating, so in the food chain, drinking, in the water supply, and just general exposure from day to day, such as household cleaning chemicals. And when we consume, like, say, fish, fish have been living in the sea. The sea's accumulated a whole lot of toxic waste, and that finds its way into the food chain within the sea, and that finds its way into our food chain. And so these microplastics can cause a toxicity, a level of toxicity in our body, which causes inflammation and can cause all sorts of problems within our body, that excessive inflammation, particularly if we're, we have continued exposure to that chemical stress. It's okay, you know, having one-off exposures and our body has time to recuperate and detoxify. But if we've got repeated exposure, such as mould exposure that may be in the house, the mould spurs, and that constant exposure is too much for the body. It's too much stress for the body. So, and then we have the mental stresses. So these are probably the worries we have in our life and the past traumas that we haven't got over. So it's either the past is running us or the future is running us. A worry in the future. So typically is, you know, worry will be created through us, you know, not wanting to lose something that we infatuated over. So we have an infatuation over it. We have a attachment to it. So it could be a relationship. We don't want to lose that. And so we start to worry about the potential or nightmare of losing that that loved one. And the other one is the someone coming into our lives that we don't want. So that person that comes into our, you know, we don't want to ever see that person again. So it's that disliked person or resented person popping into our lives and featuring in our life and we worry about running into that person. Or it could just be, you know, things from the past that are popping up and then we worry about that happening in the future. So this, and it could be work imposed, it could be new situations, uncertainty around, say, you've been given a task that you've never done before and you worry about whether you are capable of doing that task. And so these worries are in the future. They can be created from past situations and projected again into the future or future situations that you haven't encountered that you allow, I guess, your mind to run away and catastrophise the outcome, make it the worst case scenario. So that's worries. And then so these stresses and worries will play out in our body. They will manifest out in these forms of feeling anxious. So we will get anxious when we are uncertain about future events and we can't control it. We will start to feel what it's like experiencing or playing out that event in the future. We start to feel it in our body. And so what to look out for if you're thinking, well, do I do this? Well, it's uneasiness. It will be that nauseated feeling in the stomach. You feel a bit sick or queasy in the stomach, that nauseation, and you feel like vomiting. So that can be that you're actually playing out that future event. Your mind's running away, it's playing out and your body's actually experiencing that what it feels like being in uncertain in that situation and not knowing what to do and not having control, what you'll find is your heartbeat increases. So this is the same as with stresses on our body. So these stresses, again, they can just be perceived, imaginary, they can be a worry, you know, in terms of mental, or they could be a physical stress demands, work demands on your body. And how they play out is the body gets ready for that stress. So the body goes into fight or flight mode, and it turns on the heart, or accelerates the heart, it's acceleration of the heart, so you get rapid heartbeats, you start to feel yourself breathing faster, because you need to get more oxygen into the body to fuel the muscles so that you can get away from the threat, or you can fight the threat. And so we go into this fight flight mode, or we so we can get away, fight it, or we freeze, we pause, and we don't know what to do. And so they're stress responses from the body, but they can be created through worrying about a future event. So we can actually imagine ourselves like if it's a public speaking event, and you think, and you're imagining yourself losing yourself on stage, and you can't find the words, and everyone's looking at you, and they're starting to snicker, and you're starting to feel uneasy. And so you'll start to feel that in your body, what it's like actually, as if it's playing out in reality, but it's not, it's you projecting the future as to what it would be like to be up on stage and not remembering your words. And so what these events can, in essence, do is prepare us. And that's what they're doing in our body, they're preparing us. But we want to prepare in such a way that we have control. So we realise that the situation, you know, that we are projecting the future situation, but we want to bring it into something tangible in the now that we can actually do something about it. So there's no point worrying about things that have a very low probability of actually happening. We best to do, I think, about the more likely scenarios and addressing them. So for example, what you can do with your worries is actually list out your worries. And with each worry, state whether it's possible. So possible, yes or no. And then state what's the probability of it occurring? Is it a high probability, a medium probability, or low probability? All the high ones are things that we can then think about, what can I do about this now? So if it's a public speaking event, for example, we can start preparing, we can start researching, we can start talking to expert public speakers and get their tips as to how they properly prepare. And we can start, we could engage a speaking coach, for example. So we can start looking at those scenarios and then start doing something about the ones that have a high probability of occurring and not worrying about the ones that could happen, but have a really low probability. So that's one way in which we can assess our worries in the future and do something about it in the now. So that's worthwhile. Worries that we constantly think about that we just live out and we're constantly living out, we want to question where they're coming from. So is it coming from a past experience that we're now projecting into the future happening again? Then we want to make sure we do something about that past experiences. And there's cognitive behavioural therapy, for example, is one where you can seek professional help and get help better understanding what you can do about it from a thinking and behavioural perspective. One technique that I've learned is the Demartini method. And that is looking at those past experiences and actually going into the moment and altering your perception or getting a full perception of that moment. What do I mean by that? So it's actually taking it back to the situation and getting back present in the situation. So you're actually there present back into that scenario. What you're looking for is the counterbalance to what you judged in that moment. So if you judge that situation was all negative and you have this list of negatives about that situation, what you want to look at in that moment, how did it benefit you in that moment? What were the benefits of what happened to you in that moment? And then what you start to do is stack up the benefits. And once you've exhausted the benefits in that moment, you can then look at that from that moment up until now to continue to look at how that event has, how you have benefited from that event. And what we start to realise is that that event had both sides always in that moment it did. And from that moment onwards, it had a duality in a sense it had a downside, but also had an upside. But from that event, and the reason why we're traumatised from that event is that we just took away the downsides and judged it and labelled it as negative and that it was no good. However, we missed and we, and we were blinded to the upside. We were blinded to the upside, the benefits to us. And we can equilibrate that we can balance that event by going to the moment and looking at how it served us, how it benefited us, if we perceived it as traumatic. And so that can really help alter how we then see that event in the future. We won't be run by emotions around that event, because that event has all these associations to it, sensory associations that we can then pick up in the future that then remind us of that past event. And so if we don't dissolve how we perceive that past event, then we're going to constantly have that past event run us in the future because we'll have triggers that are associated with that past event. The other thing about that past event, it will create a nightmare in the future about it happening again. And so what we need to also dissolve is the nightmare around it. And so we can look at, you know, the fantasy we have around it, how it should have been, how we wanted it to be, so how we wish that had played out. And then we can look at the downside if we had have got what we wanted in terms of the way in which we wanted that situation to play out. What was the downsides of actually getting what we wanted? And then we, again, we balance our perceptions around the fantasy we had, and we we bring down the fantasy, and we actually see it as it is, as opposed to a projection of a nightmare or a projection of how we wish it had been. And so these nightmares and fantasies will create worries in the future if we don't dissolve the past event where it's coming from, or how we perceive the world should be. If we're putting projections on the world that the world should be this way, then what we will have will create nightmares around if it's not that way in the future. So again, it's really about balancing our perceptions and seeing things as they are, as opposed to judging them and labelling them and wishing them had it been another way, because there's beauty in everything. And we can see that the hidden order in everything that transpires in front of us if we look to balance our perceptions. So what you want to think about is if something makes you feel uneasy, and you're starting to get anxious about something that's happened to you, and if you're starting to feel emotions around it, if they're negative emotions you're feeling, let me share an example of what I'm talking about in relation to a situation that arose with me. So I was wanting to grade in karate, and in order to grade in karate, I needed to get a medical certificate. And so I was going about getting my medical certificate, and my doctor was getting me to do some tests, and I needed to keep going back to review the results with the doctor. And I was going back to get this result from a calcium score that he said that I should get based on my high cholesterol. And I was, he opened the computer in front, you know, the email in front of him, all the results in front of him. And I was, you know, thinking that, yeah, I'm going to get a great score, because I look after myself. And I was shocked. I was really shocked. I had a really, really high calcium score. So that's the amount of calcium that's around your arteries that includes, includes blood flow. So it's stopping optimal amount of blood flow through the arteries. And so it's not good to have some sort of form of blockage in terms of flow to your heart around, you know, oxygen supply, because it can result in a heart attack with the heart not being able to keep up with the demands. So that was, you know, a big shock to me. It was a an awakening, so to speak. And so how did that serve me in that moment? Because obviously, the focus was, well, I'm not going to get a medical pass, I'm not going to be able to grade. And I had ambitions for that year in terms of what I would achieve. And, and it was sort of all blown away in that moment. And again, my perceptions could have been just purely focused on that negative. But how did it serve me in that moment? So being in that moment with the doctor, well, it was humbling. So it made me feel like human. I wasn't, you know, a superhuman in terms of health. So how does that serve me in terms of my persona in front of clients, in front of the podcast that, you know, I claim to be the healthy man? Well, it makes me human. It makes me more relatable, connectable. And so it helps me relate to my audience. It helps me relate to my clients. So, you know, I don't feel that I'm above them. I'm equal to them. In essence, you know, as much as I put into my health, it's a reminder to me that I need to continue to put into my health. I can't take it for granted. And so it serves my health in terms of improved focus. And it makes me think twice about what I'm doing. Have what I've, you know, in terms of what I did in the past, is it the best thing to be doing going forward? And so you start to test everything, test and you start to research as to whether that's supportive of your health going forward. And it's actually got me down a path now that I have a more better understanding of human health and heart health and what, what is important around heart health and some of the misconceptions that are shared with us around heart health. And so it was a real eye opener in terms of, you know, what medicine, how medicine views heart health and where the science is at with heart health. There's a huge disconnect. And I discovered that gap through this process. I also realised in that moment how I can't take life for granted. I need to live every moment. I need to, I need to spend time doing things that I love. And so focus on priorities, Anthony, focus on priorities, your family is a priority. And so what that made, well, you know, certainly encouraged me to do and led me down the path of really prioritising family time and spending time with family, spending time on my health, taking, not taking work so seriously and realising that work's going to always be there, but I need to make sure that I'm going to be there and continue to be there for my family, my, you know, the people I love and my clients and continue to do the podcast. So I saw work as more of a long game as opposed to, you know, these, just these short term deadlines. And so it changed my perspective on work and how I go about work and how I go about doing my day. Now, my day is totally, rather than just big chunks of work and just focused on work and pushing out work, I take regular breaks throughout the day. I'm looking after my wellbeing. I'm walking the talk more. And so it really served me in terms of what I value, in terms of, you know, my client's health, in terms of my family, in terms of my health, it served me in all those areas. And, you know, it's, it's served me from that moment up until today, because what it changed was in terms of with karate was, well, rather than focus on my karate, I could support my kids, you know, like really important to me and their development and their growth. And so my daughter that year was going for a black belt or this year, it enabled me to take a backseat in terms of my journey and help her on her journey. And yes, she was successful in getting her black belt this year. Same with my son. He's also progressing really high in his grades and he's going for his black, black belt next year. And so it enabled me to support him on his journey towards his black belt. And so it really took away from my karate journey, but it transformed into being part of their karate journey. And so I was able to go with them and be with them more as opposed to focussing on myself. And so that's another benefit that's come from it. And I look back now and think, would I have wanted that result to be all clear? No, not at all. Not at all. I'm grateful for what's transpired. I've also developed a stronger relationship with my doctor as a result of that and having heart to heart conversations and seeing how he really like the way in which he supports his clients is something I've learned about supporting my clients and respecting their decisions because he respected my way of doing it. He didn't impose that I had to do drugs like statins. I had to take statins. He said, well, if you want to take an alternative path, make sure you're well guided. So here's a cardiologist that will guide you on an alternate path. And so he gave me options as opposed to saying, no, you've got to take statins. You've got to take statins. And so he actually supported me and respected me for who I am. And I've got a huge amount of respect for my doctor. And I'm very grateful for the Karate Association having this protocol in place because it really protects the karate the participants in going for their grading because they do. They have to make sure they're physically fit and able to grade. You know, I could have resented having that imposed on me that I had to get the medical test because I'm thinking, well, if I didn't have to get the medical test, I would have been able to grade. But I'm grateful for it because I'm aware of the condition that I wasn't aware of before. I had no idea. And I'm grateful for the doctor for putting me through thorough examinations to make sure that I was medically fit because if I hadn't been through the thorough examinations, I wouldn't be aware of I've got some heart blockage and now I can actually do something about it. So that event I could have seen as bad because I wasn't able to pursue my goal in karate and that it sort of, you know, knocked around my persona around the healthy man. And I could have, you know, I'm not the healthy man anymore. And, and it's like, so my persona, the healthy man, isn't, I guess it's who I'm becoming. It's, and that's who the clients are becoming, a healthier version of themselves. And so for me, the healthy man persona is what I do. And if I keep doing healthy things, then I can, I'm comfortable calling myself the healthy man. I don't need to think that I'm imposter. And that was the first thing that came up to me was I feel like an imposter. And so again, I could, if I didn't balance what happened in that situation, I could have had worries in the future about doctor visits and getting, you know, negative outcome or perceived negative outcomes. I don't worry about going to the doctor anymore. I've got no worry about going to the doctor because what the doctor is going to show me are the facts and where things are currently at, And knowing that I can do something about it, it empowers me. So I don't fear doctor visits. I'm not projecting that fear of that appointment in the past into the future because I can see how it served me. I can see the downsides and I can see the upsides. I can see it in full perspective. So I don't have emotions associated with it. The emotions have gone. And this is what you can do with past events that are running you and running, taking you away from the presence into the future and worrying about those past events coming up again in the future. And you're not living your presence. I can live my presence now because I'm not concerned about what happened earlier this year. I can see how it served me. I can see the setbacks. I can see the advances forwards. I can see it in perspective. I can see it in full and I'm grateful for it. And if we can have gratitude for everything that happens, then it doesn't run us. It doesn't run our emotions. It doesn't, it doesn't take us away from the presence. And so as a result of doing this work on that situation that I could have perceived as traumatic and negative, it doesn't run me today. I'm, I can stay present. I haven't got any associations with walking into the doctor's office and feeling anxious or anything like that. I actually get excited to go in and have a conversation with him and and see where my health's at and because it's it empowers me and it enables me to better connect with my clients. It enables me to focus on my priorities because I realised that life is precious, and I take, I don't take any moment for granted. I focus on my priorities and do what's important and that that is a day worth living. And so I don't worry about trivial things. I don't do things that aren't important to me. I just focus on the things that are most important to me and that makes me feel purposeful. Every day feels purposeful and meaningful. And that's what I want to share with you is that you can also make every day purposeful and meaningful by doing what's important to you and not not getting distracted by thinking that you're not, you know, that you need to be someone else, that you're comparing yourself to others. And this brings me to a client I saw recently and social media was constantly making them compare themselves and feel inadequate. And so what this is doing is make them worry about themselves that they're inadequate. And what they were doing is they were comparing, like, all the things that they didn't have and will perceive that they didn't have, but they, they actually weren't. They were, like, judging themselves and they weren't honouring the form that they had it in. So again, we have everything we want. It's just in a form that we value more because that's where we spend our time and attention. However, what we tend to do is look at others and then think we're inadequate and that there's something missing in us, but there's not. We just need to look inside of us as to where it is and it's in a form that we value more than what we're observing. So again, we don't need to worry about that we're inadequate or we don't have self-worth, that there's something missing because the client kept telling me, I feel there's something missing and I got her to take me through as to where she gets this from. When does she feel that she's less of or inadequate or what makes her feel low self-esteem? And she showed me this Instagram profile and we actually went through what she admires in this Instagram profile and then I made her find where she has that in herself, and she did. And then I looked at if she had the opposite of, you know, what she's perceiving that she would like, if she actually had that, then what would be the downside? So she's dissolving the fantasy of having that. And she realised that, no, I actually don't want that. It's, it's not who I am. I'd hate it. And so she started to realise that she was fantasising having it, but not seeing the downsides of having what she thought she really wanted. And then she thought, no, it's not missing. I actually don't want that. I'm happy with the way I am because I don't attract this attention that I don't want. I want attention in another form. She wants attention due to her creative nature, her masterpieces, her creative talents. That's where she wants attention. She doesn't want attention sexually, but when she was observing this Instagram profile, she was looking at the attention that that person was getting, but it was in a sexual context, but that's where she doesn't want attention. She doesn't want attention there. She wants it in her area that she loves, and that's her creative design. And so we, we have what we want. It's just in a different form. It's in a form that we value more. So she values her creative work more than what she values the physical way she is. Whereas the person that she was admiring has a higher value on that physical form. So again, nothing's missing. We, we, and this is the other thing about the healthy man and that imposter syndrome that I created in that moment. But when I look back, there was no imposter syndrome because in actual fact, I've always had health problems all throughout my life. It's just transformed over time into different health problems. So as a kid, I had ear, nose and throat infections and problems, and then that transformed into acne. And, and so the current form of health problems that I have is more around this heart blockage and high cholesterol, but I've always had health problems. They've never left me. They're just transformed. So we don't actually gain or lose anything. We actually go on a journey of transformation. And that that journey that we go on empowers us because it helps us to think, well, what can I do about it? And we research it. And then we go about enacting something. And so we've become more educated and it can really serve us in many ways. It can not only serve ourselves, but serve others. So I just wanted to share some insights as to stress, worry and anxiety and how a lot of our stress and worries come from past events and that we project those past events coming up in the future because we haven't seen the past event as it is. We haven't dissolved the emotion around it. We, allowing that emotion and all the triggers associated with that past event to trigger emotion in us in the present and in the future. And it constantly is running our lives. And in order to free ourselves up, we need to go back and find out what is running us from the past that we're now running into in the present and and we project into the future because we haven't actually seen it as it is. We've judged it and labelled it and we've attached ourselves to those labels to justify the way we feel. But if we don't want to continue to feel that way and we don't want to allow it to keep running us in terms of thinking, our thinking capacity and constantly worrying about it, then we, we need to go back and see it as it is. So we need to, if you're seeing it as negative, you need to start looking at the upsides in that moment and from that moment up until now in terms of the things that you value and in all areas of life. And you do this work and the emotion dissipate about that event and all the triggers also go with it because you no longer see it as a traumatic experience. You no longer see it as a bad event, a labelled event. You no longer judging it. You see it as it is and you're grateful for the event as opposed to judging it and thinking that it was all bad. And so if you need help in this area, I can help you just as I helped my clients dissolve fantasies as how she wished she was. And she, she's feeling a whole lot better about herself because she's thinking, well, if I had what I fantasise over, I can now see the drawbacks and now think, well, it's not really the attention I want. And so if you're worrying about your size, your physical size, or you're allowing past events to constantly occupy time and space in your mind, in the present, and taking you away from living the present moment and being present for others, and enabling that productivity for work, or productivity in terms of the areas that you value and you want to do more of because you're constantly in this space of anxiousness, you know, feeling anxious and constantly exacerbating worried thoughts based on past events, then come and see me. I'd love to help you. I'd love to help you break free of the past and liberate you so you can live the present, live the life that you want to live. So reach out to me. I'm happy to, you know, help and coach you and help dissolve these things, these worries that are currently running you and not allowing you to be present for the things that you love and not allowing you to live the life that you want to live. So reach out, connect with me. I'd love to serve you, help you on your journey. And in terms of stresses, well, we've dealt that, with that. So this becomes a stress when you're not dealing with the worries. So, so stresses I've dealt with in previous episodes. So I just really wanted to focus more on the worry and the anxiety, but the stresses created through imaginary events that could have been a result of past events that are running you and you're worried about running into them in the future, or things that you have attached yourself to that you're worried about losing, or things that you want to run away from, that you're worried about running into. So all these things occupy time and space and take us away from being present and stop us from living. So reach out to me. I'd love to help you. And until next time, continue to health up.

Podcast Disclaimer: 32:00

This podcast and any information, advice, opinions or statements within it do not constitute medical, healthcare or professional advice and are provided for general information purposes only. All care is taken in the preparation of the information in this podcast. [Connected Wellness Pty Ltd] operating under the brand "me&my health up" does not make any representations or give any warranties about its accuracy, reliability, completeness or suitability for any particular purpose. This podcast and any information, advice, opinions or statements within it are not to be used as a substitute for professional, medical, psychological, psychiatric or any other mental health care or health care in general. me&my health up recommends you seek the advice of a doctor or qualified health provider with any questions you may have regarding a medical condition. Inform your doctor of any changes that you make to your lifestyle and discuss these with your doctor. Do not disregard medical advice or delay visiting a medical professional because of something you hear in this podcast. This podcast has been carefully prepared on the basis of current information. Changes in circumstances after publication may affect the accuracy of this information. To the maximum extent permitted by the law, me&my health up disclaims any such representations or warranties to the completeness, accuracy, merchantability or fitness for purpose of this podcast and will not be liable for any expenses, losses, damages incurred indirect or consequential damages, or costs that may be incurred as a result of the information being inaccurate or incomplete in any way and for any reason. No part of this podcast can be reproduced, redistributed, published, copied or duplicated in a form without prior permission of me&my health up.