Person-First: Meet Lauren

Becki Stewart currently works as a wellbeing advisor at Ara Institute of Canterbury and has had a fair bit of experience working with people who experience anxiety throughout her career, not just as in her current role but previous ones such as working in Youth Justice as a Case Leader and as a Quality Improvement Manager in mental health wards back in the UK (where she’s originally from.)

Anxiety shows up differently for different people. Stewart has primarily worked with young men experiencing anxiety and presentations ranged from lashing out to shutting down completely.

She emphasises that “Some of the signs can be quite subtle because they might be trying to hide their symptoms because they’re embarrassed.”

Fiona Gordon also works as Ara, but her role is manager of Disability Services. She has worked in disability roles for over 10 years and joined Ara in November last year.

She loves the variety of her role and how she gets to help students with a variety of disabilities succeed in their study. 

This includes people experiencing anxiety, she urges people to remember that “Anxiety is beyond someone’s control and very real for the person experiencing it.”

This is true for Wood who says that though there wasn’t an exact ‘you have anxiety moment’ when working with her psychologist it was nice to finally have answers,

“It was helpful to know that there was a reason I overthink everything, have panic attacks sometimes and why things that are really easy for other people were hard for me.”

And adds that, “It made it easier to find other people going through similar things and to know that I’m not alone in how I was feeling.”

Wood says that one of the things that helps her when she is overthinking is using a worry tree. This involves acknowledging the thought and thinking about whether it is in your control and whether it is a real situation or hypothetical.

An example can be found here https://ct.counseling.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/worrytree-743x1024.jpg

She also really struggled with being too harsh on herself and one thing that really helped her was getting a stuffed animal and saying her thoughts allowed. Also, thinking about how she’d talk to a friend, “You wouldn’t tell your friend to stop crying or that it should stop caring about it.”

Wood, Stewart and Gordon all agree that if you think you may have an anxiety disorder the best thing you can do is talk to a loved one and reach out for professional help.

Wood wants people to know that if they’ve got to a place of acknowledging their anxiety they should be proud. “I want to tell them to be proud of themselves for acknowledging it. For a lot of people, that first ‘I have something that I’m struggling with’ and then moving to the next step of ‘maybe I need help’ can be really hard.”

Similarly, if you suspect a loved one might be experiencing anxiety. Gordon suggests getting professional advice on how to support your loved one and look after yourself.

“If you think a loved one is struggling it’s all about having a conversation. I’d recommend seeking guidance from a professional such as a GP on where to start and to make sure you seek support for yourself as well.”

Stewart reflects this sentiment and says “Don’t take it all on yourself. Loved ones aren’t there to fix everything they’re there to support.”

Anxiety may be a disorder, but it can bring strengths to a person especially once people have been able to access the right help.

Wood stated that ruminating is not healthy, but it can be helpful in some ways,

 “It’s like a double-edged sword. Though ruminating is not helpful or healthy. But when you overthink something so much you can come up with solutions that you wouldn’t think of at a first glance.”

And adds that it helps her to not make impulsive decisions because she thinks things through thoroughly before making any decisions.

Gordon says that the students she work with that experience anxiety, “are some of the most articulate people I know when it comes to talking about how they’re feeling and I think that they know more about how to help themselves than someone without anxiety would.”

Data from the Stats NZ Wellbeing Survey 2021 shows that acceptance of mental illnesses is slowly increasing with around 3 in 5 New Zealanders(58 percent) surveyed said that they would feel comfortable living next door to someone who lived with a mental health condition. This is compared to 55 percent in 2018. https://www.stats.govt.nz/news/new-zealanders-mental-wellbeing-declines/

Stewart says “anxiety is definitely still seen as a weakness by society” and though there is more understanding overall than there used to be there is still not enough.

And adds, “I think sometimes people who are working with people with anxiety think they’re being difficult or rude, when actually they’re just really struggling internally.”

Wood agrees that change is needed and says, “There’s a lot of situations where people that don’t have anxiety get anxious and very generic messages from people around them like, ‘you’ll be fine’ & ‘harden up’ can be very demoralising for people. Especially when people assume you’re just lazy, anxiety can be very crippling for some people.”

If you someone you love is struggling with anxiety, here are some resources that may help...

https://anxiety.org.nz/

Mental Health Foundation- Support for Myself

Free text or Call 1737

https://www.justathought.co.nz/

Mental Health Education and Resource Centre