#242 • Do you live with anxiety? If so, how does it show up in your relationships? For example, are you over-involved with your extended family, or do you make up excuses to avoid them?

We all have our tricks for managing anxiety. (Mine is procrastination). And psychologist Dr. Kathleen Smith, author of Everything Isn't Terrible: Conquer Your Insecurities, Interrupt Your Anxiety, and Finally Calm Down (Hachette Books, Dec 2019), encourages us to curiously examine our anxiety and our efforts to squelch it. Many of us try to control other people, myself included. "Because when we feel anxious, we often try to make other people change," she writes. "We try to calm everyone else down so we can finally relax. But if you can work on managing yourself in these relationships, it’s likely that your family, your workplace, and even the greater world will calm down a little too." So we pinpoint some ways that we can follow through on this.

Throughout the episode Dr. Kathleen Smith offers tools for how we can live a calmer, more authentic life, one that isn't defined by what other people think or feel. Sounds liberating, doesn't it?

x Ellie Knaus

Show Notes: https://www.atomicmoms.com/anxiety-dr-kathleen-smith-atomic-moms-podcast

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