The Rational Basis® of Happiness Podcast

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Jeff, you're dealing with some anxiety.
Yes.
Hi. How are you?
Very good, thank you.
Tell me, what's going on?
Well, I'm not sad, I'm not depressed, and I'm usually a very optimistic person, but I've been experiencing some physical symptoms for the last three or four months. I've also been taking a sleep medication, which I've now reduced in half because I wasn't sleeping well on Ambien.
Okay, yeah.
And I'm wondering—I'm just trying to find answers—I'm wondering if that is the reason I'm feeling the way I am, which specifically is: I get tingly, burning sensations when I'm stressed, or sometimes when I'm even not stressed. I could be watching Desperate Housewives, and all of a sudden I have that burning sensation, pressure in my ears. And because I worry already, I'm hypersensitive to stuff, it's a concern of mine. And it seems like there would be a physical reason for this, but I think it might be anxiety. So that's where I'm at right now. I did get blood work, by the way.
Oh, that is my next question. I'm not a medical doctor. I'm a psychologist—a Ph.D. So I always like people who are experiencing anxiety to first get a good medical workup—just to go to their general practitioner and give them the symptoms, give them whatever medications they're on. Sometimes there's a medication interaction that's a problem. And so you first—sometimes when people are depressed, it's just their thyroid, and they just need thyroid medication, and there's not some heavy issue going on in their life.

What you've given me is conflicting information, which is always good to know. In one part, I hear that you're optimistic—that that's the norm for you. And so, if you're looking at—if we set aside the medical—that you can have checked out... I know my own doctor has said that Ambien can make her feel very weird, and so she's cut back on it. I take it occasionally, but I take half of a half of a half. It's like I breathe a whiff of it, and it helps me. I don't know whether it's just hot flashes that I'm having that—it just helps me over them. And I've never felt weird with it, but that is something to check out medically.

If we get to the contradiction that I'm hearing, it’s that you're usually this optimistic person, you're not sad, and now you're feeling hypersensitive and worried. Correct?
What in your life would be something that crosses your mind when you feel worried?
Probably three things.

One, actually, the physical sensations I'm getting worries me.
Okay.
Go ahead—cyclical, I guess.
Two, I mean, on a broader scope, there's financial issues, which—it's not the end of the world. I have good-paying jobs, but debt, that’s there.
How much debt? Just ballpark.
Oh, probably... $49,000.
$49,000, okay.
I'm taking steps already for that, though. That's through consumer credit counseling, so that's actually a good thing.
Okay, that still would be an undercurrent of anxiety. As that gets resolved—at least you're taking the action—so you'll reduce some of your anxiety.

What's the third thing?
And then also my stress on my job, which—this might sound like a contradiction again—but I enjoy my job thoroughly, but I have a lot of responsibilities, and it's much more stressful than ever this year.
What type of a job?
I'm a high school teacher, but also a teacher trainer in a large inner-city school district with a lot of issues in our district right now. And I'm an elected union rep, and so there's a lot—almost every day there's issues that come up that I try to help and resolve.
Okay. The first thing that comes to my mind with that is integrity. You want to know, when these issues come up, what is your own moral compass? Have you thought it through? Who is really right? And not to feel like you have to defend one person or another. It’s your moral integrity that’s at stake.

So if you're confused on any particular issue, that could lead to uncertainty.
Guess what emotion we feel when we feel uncertainty or self-doubt?
Anxiety.
Anxiety. And anxiety triggers your autonomic nervous system. You're going to release the adrenaline or the cortisol, and it—so it's like you're dosing yourself with these chemicals.
That's a really good analogy, because that's what I feel. I mean, I was at a meeting tonight—it was a nice, it was a great meeting—but I'm sitting there and I'm feeling those burning sensations again, and it's—you know, I'm functioning, but it's very uncomfortable.
Okay, again, I would rule out the medical, but let me give you some of the symptoms that you would have—

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Okay, again, I would rule out the medical, but let me give you some of the symptoms that you would have.
If I were just about to step into a very busy street and I didn’t see a Mack truck coming at me pretty fast, and I glance over and I see it, what are you going to observe physically with my body at that moment?
Well, panic.
Panic.
Now, what do you see with my muscles? Are they going to be all loose and gangly, or are they going to—what are they going to be?
I'm going to tense up my muscles.
What’s going to happen to my breathing? Is it going to be like I’m at the beach, totally relaxed, lying on a lounge?
No, it'll be quick.
It’ll be quick. I need to get the oxygen in to supply the oxygen to the muscles, which are tensing.
Do I have time to just digest food, to lie back and let my stomach store food? Or am I going to spend energy rather than digest it and store it?
Well, expend energy.
I'm expending energy, so my digestive system closes off.

So sometimes people will feel a little nausea, a little queasy, or a little tightening in the chest. Sometimes they feel tingly in the fingers—that’s very common. That’s just your autonomic nervous system doing its normal thing when you release the adrenaline, the cortisol.

Sometimes you've got some other symptoms or pressure in the ears. I don't know—you—some people feel a little dizzy because a little less blood goes to the brain—a smidgen less—but it just can give people a feeling of disorientation, because your blood is shunting to the large muscle groups, your vital organs also, but it doesn’t have time to digest.

You’re changing from—technically, you’re changing from the parasympathetic system to the sympathetic system. Those are branches of the autonomic nervous system.

Now, you don’t need to know that—it’s just that you wanted to know that it’s causal, that people have symptoms such as sweating, palpitations, a pounding heart, sometimes even choking sensations, chest pains, abdominal distress, feeling dizzy, fears of dying, fears of wondering what’s happening, maybe chills or hot flashes—and it’s all due to your autonomic nervous system, to your thoughts, fundamentally your thoughts.

So, looking at the job as a high school teacher, my guess is that you are on overload and you're very stressed. I would do the same thing you did with the financial situation, which is: look for the next few steps you can take to resolve that, to try to figure out how to reduce some of the stress, if that's possible.

You’re an elected union official. I think integrity is huge there. Don’t let anybody—union, other union people, or anybody else—bully you. Know your moral compass.

And you can always read the book—my favorite books are going to be Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead. You can go to my website, DrKenner.com, and maybe read Atlas Shrugged—that’s fabulous for a moral compass.

And thank you. I want to thank you very much for your call. I wish we had more time, Jeff, and I hope that helps.
Thank you very much.
Oh, you're welcome, Jeff.

For more Dr. Kenner podcasts, go to DrKenner.com and please listen to this:

And here’s an excerpt from The Selfish Path to Romance, the serious romance guidebook by clinical psychologist Dr. Ellen Kenner and co-author Dr. Edwin Locke:

Assertiveness is very different from aggression. One way to be helpfully assertive is to use the pronoun “I.” You have every right to say what you observe, think, feel, and expect. Whatever you're trying to express in “you” language—you make me angry—can be effectively translated into “I” language. For example, change “You make me angry” to “I feel angry.”
You can change “You never listen” to “I feel ignored.”
You can change “You drive me crazy” to “I am so frustrated.”
In each case, the sentences with “you” language make you and your partner feel attacked.
The sentences with “I” language make you both more likely to listen and talk with one another.

You can download Chapter One for free by going to DrKenner.com and buy it at Amazon.com.