There are many ways to manage anxiety. Some are helpful, others are okay in some contexts, and some are detrimental to you and the people around you. Listen to this interview with my 20-year-old nephew, Jude, to learn the various ways he has been managing anxiety, from when he was very young, during a few years of drug use, and now, through meditation and creativity. You’ll learn:

• The importance of community and belonging
• Various paths to get to the top of the mountain
• Daily practices that sustain well-being
• How diet can affect anxiety
• How some escapes are good escapes

To know Jude is to love him, and I am thrilled to inspire you with his wise words. Have a listen!

"When I experience anxiety, it's this train that doesn't stop.  I go from one thought to the next. And there's a degree of rumination in there for me.  I think about something  over and over. But it's not something logical, so there's  no way to stop it logically. It runs away."

-Jude Aman

Resources discussed in this episode:

• Order the Book: Anxiety . . . I'm So Done with You: A Teen's Guide to Ditching Toxic Stress and Hardwiring Your Brain for Happiness
• Blog post and resources

Remember, you can join me live every Monday at 8 p.m. Eastern on YouTube, @doctorjodi, where you can ask your questions in real time. 

📣ALL NEW episodes are now on Ask Dr. Jodi - Mental Health and Relationship Advice Podcast.📣 Text JODI to 8334583845 to get in the show message group.

👉👉Get on the list to get reminders about the show, including the topic for the week, PLUS, receive my Gen Z Mental Health Resource Guide here: jodiaman.com/live. 

Contact Doctor Jodi:

• Website: jodiaman.com

• TikTok: @doctorjodi

• YouTube: @doctorjodi

• Instagram: @doctorjodiaman

About Dr. Jodi: 

Jodi Aman is a social work doctor with 28 years of experience in clinical practice. She helps clients heal from trauma, understand the world, and reclaim self-confidence. She created C.O.M.P.A.S.S., an emotional wellness curriculum for middle and high school health classes designed to mitigate symptoms of anxiety and depression.

You can find her live-streamed talk show on her YouTube channel @doctorjodi, where she discusses topics unique to Generation Z. Also, watch her TEDx Wilmington talk, "Calm Anxious Kids," and read her award-winning book, Anxiety… I'm So Done with You! to learn how to understand and reverse the current mental health crisis. More about Jodi

You’re listening to the Anxiety I'm So Done with You! Podcast with Doctor Jodi. 

We hope to ease the minds of “the anxious generation.” To do that, this show will guide emerging adults, their parents, and helpers, galvanizing them to release toxic stress, achieve emotional wellness, and hardwire their brains for a happy and meaningful life.

Jude's own Facebook post from his anniversary: 

Social media is both a blessing and a curse – how beautiful that we are able to connect with each other so instantaneously, to share our thoughts and feelings? And yet, how honestly are we choosing to present them? I’m aware of this as I celebrate an important day in my life – a year sober from drugs and alcohol.

A year ago, I jumped from the second story of my house onto my neighbors’ driveway, fracturing both of my arms, and three bones in my face. I share this to help disarm (haha) what I think is so dangerous about social media – presenting only the parts of yourself which you want others to see; I spent a great portion of my life avoiding being seen – making efforts to avoid being known as I saw myself.

That is the nature of being human. But no longer do I care to hide them. Life is too short to spend time worrying about how others view you, something that I often used drugs to try and escape. Coming to terms with the things that make you uncomfortable – jumping into the lake on a cold windy day because that’s what you are asked to do – that is what has made me proud to be where I am today.

This didn’t happen by my will alone. The support that I’ve received from family and friends has been the most important part of moving forward. They have allowed an environment of love and care to fill me up. It is one, I can recognize, that not everyone is so lucky to have. I would be remiss if I did not thank in particular, my mom and dad, who both helped me to find my way. Additionally, in working with Robert Veeder, I have been able to explore what life is all about (abetterhigh.org).

The loneliness that can feed any kind of mental illness is something that we should all be acutely aware of. Being able to join communities that I can identify with has been an eye-opening experience for me. And one that has transformed both how I view myself, and the world around me.

Please feel free to message me if you have any questions or want to know more about the recovery community or what that has been like for me.

I wish you all a happy 2023.

Peace & Love

Jude Aman

Jodi: Hey, you're here with Dr. Jodi, and this is "Anxiety… I'm So Done With You!"  I am so excited about this podcast. It's an accompaniment to my book by the same name, "Anxiety… I'm So Done With You!" It's a teen's guide to ditching toxic stress and hardwiring your brain for happiness because that is what we're going to do in the series: We're ditching that freaking toxic stress and hardwiring your brain to generate happiness every day. 

This is what you do: You read or listen to a section of the book. Then come on over here and listen to an episode where we're going to go a little bit deeper, give more examples, and tell more stories. I want to provide you with everything you need to be sure that you find your way out of this horrible anxiety cycle so that you no longer have to suffer. Please leave me a five-star review on Apple podcasts. That'll help me get in the ears of more people who need this series. Mental health problems are skyrocketing, especially among teenagers, and this series will change the tide.

Jodi: Welcome to this episode. We have a special treat for you today. This is my nephew Jude.

Jude: Hello 

Jodi: I'm going to interview Jude because he's a great representative of Generation Z. We're talking in this season about 

• where anxiety comes from
• why we have it so much
• what's going on for us biologically, culturally, and emotionally,

and all the things in this season. It'd be great to hear a story from someone who could relate to what's happening. Jude might ask me some questions, but mostly, I'll ask Jude some questions. So let's get started.  anxiety is different for everybody. Everybody has different feelings about it. It works on us all in similar ways, but we think about it differently. We experience it differently. We're upset or afraid of different things. Please give us an introduction to your experience with anxiety.

Jude: I started to notice my anxiety and name it "anxiety," probably around 16 or 17 years old. But as I look back, I can recognize it from the time I was four or five. I have distinct memories of how I perceive anxiety, right? It's kind of like this "unconditional worry." One of the ways that I remember that expressing most frequently was when I was in the car. I can remember being very aware of the speed limit and if my mom or dad were driving five or ten miles over, it would really freak me out. I would get really worried. When I looked back that was one of my main introductions to how I understood anxiety.

Jodi: So can I ask you about that unconditional worry? I love that description. It isn't a description I have heard before. I appreciate how people have their experience and their own way of describing things. Because, rather than a diagnosis or a mental illness, it's like a description of what someone is going through. 

Jude: Right.

Jodi: Say more about how you came up with the unconditional worry.

Jude: Well I think that's really what happens when I experience anxiety. It's this train that doesn't stop. I just kind of go from one thing to the next and there's a degree of rumination in there for me. I’m thinking about it over and over again but it's not something logical. There's no way for me to stop it. Logically, it’s run away. 

Jodi: So the unconditional is mostly like lack of logic?

Jude: Yes, like it didn't have to be anxiety. There were no conditions that caused it. It just is there. 

Jodi: I get it, cool. Alright, when you were 16 and 17 you said it became a little bit different - tell us about that.

Jude: My relationship with anxiety changed in large part because I started to do therapy. And so, I could name and explore anxiety in a more concrete way as it applied to myself. Part of that work was also looking back at my younger life and understanding it. It took me a while to realize how present it's been throughout my life. One characteristic of anxiety for myself is how I hold my stomach. It's like, I can't relax my stomach and so as a child, I had like pretty defined abs just because I was always just keeping my stomach in. Which is kind of funny, but also an interesting way that anxiety expressed itself physically for me. 

Jodi: It speaks of that tension and maybe a layer of protection? Protecting your soft belly by…

Jude: Absolutely. Yeah, that's always been a place where I felt anxiety. I think it is in my upper chest as well. That's where I feel it bloom. There's an energy to it in my chest. I can feel it and describe it as a kind of this tightness. Whereas the anxiety that expressed in my lower stomach was more like a symptom of the anxiety. I feel anxiety in my stomach or in my upper chest.

Jodi: You're saying that you feel like your stomach's squeezing is a response?

Jude: Yes to that feeling––that blooming in the chest. And also, I think that tenseness is not something that's located just in my stomach. I can remember always just being very high-strung as a child. Like my shoulder blades were always really far up and I would have trouble relaxing. I started to become aware of it in 9th or 10th grade. I was aware of how much I tensed up and I would have to relax myself. I remember being surprised at how much further my arms went down my body when I would do that. It's funny how for a long time something is just ingrained in you. But I mean that's just what I knew, I knew myself being very tense and high-strung. Then, I started putting work behind it, and it changed.

Jodi: What you're describing is you becoming aware of yourself. In 9th or 10th grade and then in therapy at 16 or 17 years old you were beginning to witness yourself.

Jude: Yeah 

Jodi: Can you tell us that process of how you started to become an observer of yourself? If that's interesting. It's interesting to me because I know how that affects people so I'm curious how it’s affected you.

Jude: When I think of becoming an observer of myself, I think about meta-cognition, which is like the ability to be present to your own thoughts. This isn't really scientific, but how I think about it: It’s like this insight into how I behave and what I do. I started to come into situations where I was aware of my thought process as it was developing. It’s the ability to look at the process of my thoughts as they came. It changed the way that I was able to think about them [my thoughts]. It's something that I did with professional help. Perhaps, I could have done alone but it I had help.

Jude: Until very recently, I still hadn't mastered the idea, "I am not my thoughts.” Once I did it was really powerful for me, especially in my recovery from drugs and alcohol. Like with cravings. One of the ways that I've been able to approach cravings now is by understanding that what I'm thinking, doesn’t define who I am. And so being able to differentiate those two things has been really important. I still don't think I really answered your question though.

Jodi: That's okay. That's brilliant, brilliant information. So you're, you're beginning or you referred to your struggles with drugs and alcohol. Do you want to introduce us to that story?

Jude: Let’s see…mostly it was with drugs… my primary drugs of use were marijuana (cannabis) and LSD.

Jodi: When did that start?

Jude: That started at the beginning of quarantine. I had smoked weed before then but I started using it on a daily basis was at the start of quarantine.

Jodi: Can you tell us how old you are now?

Jude: I'm 20.

Jodi: So in the beginning of quarantine, we all know what that means.  

Jude: Yes. I had been finding outlets for myself before. Then I was involved in school, a lot of extracurriculars, like track, and I was part of student government. I was also in charge of the yearbook and ran the business club. So, I was very heavily involved after school and that was good for me. I have a pretty busy mind so being able to put it to work was a really great thing for me. But when things started to shut down, I really struggled. An easy outlet for me, in terms of redirecting my mind's attention, was smoking weed. It was a way to spend my time. It filled the hours. 

One thing that happens a lot in recovery is this wholesale demonization of someone's time in addiction, [but I don’t want to do that.] There's a reason that I kept going back. It was fulfilling something for me and that's an important thing to remember. It was this “creative outlet” for myself. I would spend most of the time listening to music and it changed the chemistry in my brain in such a way that it allowed me to really listen. Now, in my sobriety, what I've realized is that's not something exclusive to drugs. There's this great analogy about meditation where the state of mind that you reach in meditation is compared to one you can have with psychedelics. The analogy is that one person climbs to the top of the mountain, and the other flies to the top in a helicopter. They both get to the same destination and see the same beautiful view but the way they got there is just so different. The mountain climber wouldn't say the helicopter arriver a mountain climber, right? They see the same vantage point, the same beauty, but he didn't put in the work to get there and so it always disappeared. What I've found in my recovery is a more sustainable way [to stay at the vantage point] through meditation and intentional living.

Jodi: What else do you want to tell us about your journey through drugs? (And then, we'll get to your sobriety.)

Jude: My journey through drugs… let's see. So it started when I was at the beginning of quarantine and then kind of progressed. I reached a point where I was doing acid at least once a month. And, there was probably a three or four-month period where I was doing it, if not every other week, then every week. Which was kind of weird––it’s like going through life in kind of a dreamlike state––especially at that age. It's ordinarily an age of transformation where you come into yourself. So, to have so much of that time period taken up by psychedelic experiences was weird. If I look at how I am now, there's just so much that's the same from before that period in my life. So it's kind of like this weird period for like three years where I was really lost. A lot of my curiosity for life was expressed differently.

Jodi: How did it affect your life or your relationships? Your school? Your anxiety.

See the rest of the transcription at https://jodiaman.com/blog/managing-anxiety/

ASK DR. JODI

Join me live every Monday at 8 p.m. Eastern on YouTube, @doctorjodi, where you can ask your questions in real time. 

📣ALL NEW episodes are now on Ask Dr. Jodi - Mental Health and Relationship Advice Podcast.📣 Text JODI to 8334583845 to get in the show message group.

👉👉Get on the list to get reminders about the show, including the topic for the week, PLUS, receive my Gen Z Mental Health Resource Guide here: jodiaman.com/live. 

Contact Doctor Jodi:

• Website: jodiaman.com

• TikTok: @doctorjodi

• YouTube: @doctorjodi

• Instagram: @doctorjodiaman

About Dr. Jodi: 

Jodi Aman is a social work doctor with 28 years of experience in clinical practice. She helps clients heal from trauma, understand the world, and reclaim self-confidence. She created C.O.M.P.A.S.S., an emotional wellness curriculum for middle and high school health classes designed to mitigate symptoms of anxiety and depression.

You can find her live-streamed talk show on her YouTube channel @doctorjodi, where she discusses topics unique to Generation Z. Also, watch her TEDx Wilmington talk, "Calm Anxious Kids," and read her award-winning book, Anxiety… I'm So Done with You! to learn how to understand and reverse the current mental health crisis. More about Jodi

You’re listening to the Anxiety I'm So Done with You! Podcast with Doctor Jodi. 

We hope to ease the minds of “the anxious generation.” To do that, this show will guide emerging adults, their parents, and helpers, galvanizing them to release toxic stress, achieve emotional wellness, and hardwire their brains for a happy and meaningful life.

Ask Dr. Jodi Live

Do you, or does someone you love, have anxiety or ADHD? Do you struggle with motivation and worry about your future? Keep listening. 

As a psychotherapist, I have worked with young people for 28 years, and I’ve seen and understood the nuances of Generation Z from this rare perspective.

Guess what I discovered? Your brain is not broken. You are having a regular human response to the context of this crazy world. You don’t have to feel like this; you can feel better!

Tune in live every Monday at 8 PM E on @doctorjodi or binge the recordings. We’ll have relieving conversations, exciting guests, and inspirational stories that will show you how to get rid of worry, recover your energetic bandwidth, and grok a socially conscious life of overflowing joy.