The Blissfully Bold Podcast

Ep. 15 - How a Senior Fire Chief’s Disbelief in Anxiety Helped Shorten My Panic Attack: 3 Techniques to Manage Your Anxiety and Stress

• Gavie Remaly • Episode 15

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In this episode, we dive into an unpopular perspective on anxiety. The host recently had an eye-opening conversation with a senior fire chief who doesn’t believe in or quite understand anxiety, and it led to some profound insights. 

The host shares how these insights can help manage anxiety, including personal anecdotes about dealing with panic attacks and stressful situations. The episode encourages listeners to reflect on and apply these practices to lead a calmer life with more self-compassion. Get comfy and lean in to learn the three major takeaways to get you closer to soothing your anxiety. 

If you need a safe space to talk through your anxieties and life transitions, DM me on Instagram about out my “Crossroads Conversations” intro offer. Find me at @blissfullyboldpodcast or @gavie.remaly for more details about the program options.

0:00 Welcome and Listener Appreciation

2:43 Introducing the Fire Chief’s Perspective

3:55 Mindfulness and Survival Mode

10:19 Self-Compassion and Empathy

14:22 Priorities as an Anchor

15:37 Applying the Lessons: A Panic Attack

18:34 Personal Stories and Reflections

22:00 Engagement and Support

23:13 Conclusion and Final Thoughts

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Introducing: Crossroads Conversations
If you need a safe space to talk through your anxieties and life transitions, DM me on Instagram about out my “Crossroads Conversations” intro offer. Find me at @blissfullyboldpodcast or @gavie.remaly for more details about the program options.

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DISCLAIMER: I am not a mental health professional. This information is based off my perspectives and experience with anxiety and is for educational purposes only. It should not be a substitute for professional medical advice, and listeners should consult a mental health provider or medical provider for questions or concerns about their health.

I am not perfect.  I know I talk a lot about anxiety and I give,  you know, advice or I bring you insights into managing stress and it is still very much part of my journey right now. Where I am learning to regulate that for myself and also understanding like deeply The different perspectives that people have and how I can apply that and just make you think in a different perspective because  Staying in one mindset of like, oh, I have anxiety and that's just the way that I am Like that's not going to get you over the the hump of being able to control your anxiety and actually living in a calmer state. 

Hi, my name is Gabby Ramelli and I'm your boundary advocate to lead you to a more peaceful life. Four years ago, I was stuck in a deep depression, a fog covered lake in the dead of night, with no idea of where to turn to get back to me or my own needs. After seeking professional guidance to lead me out of the darkness, Advocating for myself, my boundaries, and my overall well being has become a daily practice of self care.

Here on the Blissfully Bold podcast, we'll chat about balancing life's chaos within ourselves and in everyday spaces, pumping the brakes on people pleasing and understanding our personal needs to create the peace and happiness we so crave and deserve. Join me every Wednesday for a new episode and dare to be blissfully bold.

Welcome to the Blissfully Bold podcast.  Hey friend, welcome back to another episode of the Blissfully Bold podcast. As always, thank you so much for showing up and showing your support and also telling me The ways that the podcast has helped you, has impacted you, whether it be from anxiety or from dealing with control or realizing that you're actually holding stress in your body, you know, all of those conversations, I'm loving them.

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So this week  we are having a little bit of a controversial topic. Maybe it might stir up some debates, but  that, so when I started this conversation, I went into the conversation in disbelief  at this person's disbelief.  So I talked to a senior fire chief over the weekend about him not believing in anxiety or rather him not understanding anxiety. 

And I had three big takeaways from that conversation with the fire chief and they were mindfulness,  self compassion,  and understanding your priorities. Now when we were talking he did not say those three things but like what he was saying  indicated that those should be at the forefront when you are handling your anxiety and staying in a calm state.

So, let's go ahead and dig in. As I mentioned, mindfulness was my biggest takeaway. Mindfulness and survival mode. Okay, we already know that staying in the moment is going to help your anxiety.  You know, when you're focusing on what's happening right now, then your mind isn't wandering to the what ifs, oh my gosh, worst case scenario, the,  I was gonna say the building's gonna burn down, but in this case it clearly was going to burn down, wasn't it?

So for us, you know, for people who are not first responders or who are not emergency responders, our everyday mindfulness may look like making sure that we are drinking our water throughout the day and Being mindful of keeping track of how much water that we're intaking, or how much food we're intaking, or being mindful of the amount of sleep that we're getting.

Things like that. Like those are  very surface level kind of mindful things, like the big picture mindful, but from my conversation with him,  it's like you have to get like really granular in your mindfulness. It's like looking at what is directly in front of you right in this moment and not necessarily thinking about, you know, big picture, like, oh, I just want to make sure we get out of here alive.

Like, obviously, that is the mindfulness goal. Like, let's make sure we're safe. But also, when you are in the moment,  You have to stop and really zero in and focus on exactly what the task you are doing right at that moment.  Are you taking someone's blood pressure?  Are you breaking down some wood or something to like rescue people?

I don't know. And so for him,  from my take on that conversation,  he was handling life or death situations. And I think that survival mode,  is being shown in two different perspectives here. So in the everyday kind of survival mode that most people experience, it's very high stress levels  and they feel like maybe they're doing too much.

They're feeling overwhelmed. I think that common symptoms of high stress for us are often shown in maybe us skipping meals.  I feel like that's a big common one. Um, feeling like you have to control. every little piece of the situation to make sure that it goes exactly according to plan.  Maybe zoning out because you are so  over stressed that you can't even think about something else going on. 

And then there is the actual survival mode  where you're making sure that you are staying safe and not going to literally die, right? Like when everyone talks about you know making your nervous system  balanced, they always talk about you know caveman days and how the flight or fight response back then was To keep you safe and out of harm's way.

Well, the way that he is using anxiety is exactly that. He's using it to stay alive.  Those instincts of being in the moment and doing exactly what you need to do right then kick in and it's because it's a life or death situation. He has been trained, highly trained,  to handle stressful situations. He even said that they went through stress training.

I really wish that I would have gotten that information,  but we had already been having a long conversation and  It'll have to be a conversation for another time, but I am really interested in what exactly they do in their stress training just because I feel like it would be so helpful because it's not only just the stress that they're training for but it also  lends itself to these expectations that are built for emergency responders  He had mentioned, you know, if these first responders are good at their job You They don't display  anxiety or even PTSD.

He mentioned that if anyone, you know, that he was looking to hire ever mentioned that they had struggled with PTSD at all, that it was an automatic no for him, that that candidate was automatically just disqualified in his, in his view. And I know that sounds. It's  really awful just because of how important PTSD can be, or not can be, it is, like it's a very real  mental state. 

And  in his position,  someone who may be suffering with PTSD can't be in the mental state. that they have to be to do this work, to do  safety, to do rescue. And your team has to be dependable and not actually crack under pressure. And so I can understand his perspective of not wanting to have a team member to be counted on that may crack under that pressure.

Or who has experienced post traumatic stress.  Whether that be the pressure from thinking about a previous encounter that went wrong, and maybe that's what the situation is now. But the important thing is to remind yourself that you are in this moment, not elsewhere.  So that in itself is why mindfulness is so important, it seems, for anxiety.

The second biggest thing that I took away was having some self compassion. Now, we mentioned that, you know, he  expects his team to have a certain level of  mental health stability, right? And that does not include PTSD. And so I asked him, I said, well, like, where is the empathy in, in, you know, understanding  that these team members.

Actually undergo trauma, that there is a sense of mental health crisis  there, or can be that there can be a mental health crisis there. And  he said, you know, I go in there and I do my best. I did my best. I did what I was supposed to do. I followed my training and  I didn't put them in that position.  And when I heard that I thought, where is the empathy?

Again, I thought, where is the empathy? But I get it, like you can't beat yourself up  or feel the guilt of something that  went out of your control. And so when he was telling me about some of these situations and how he did his best, I truly, I truly  Like understood that and I thought like what if we could apply that self compassion  to ourselves and understand that we are trying our best  and Sometimes we just feel like we're not good enough and that our best isn't good enough.

But what if it was? What if it was good enough? And what if we gave ourselves permission? To release that guilt  as someone who struggles with anxiety. I can completely understand that. understand how you can replay a situation over and over in your head and just continue to think, like, how could I have done this better?

And  in some instances, you have to have that mentality of being able to analyze  your, your moves, right? Being able to learn from  those experiences.  And  Yes, we want to be able to analyze them, but at the same time, we don't want to stay in the guilt and think of, Oh my gosh, I could have done this better.

Because then it just keeps you in a spiraling state until eventually you do find yourself in a panic attack. Um, and I think that another way to keep you straight on, you know, ignoring the guilt, or not even ignoring the guilt, but being able to Give yourself compassion enough. Like exactly what we're talking about is being able to be self compassionate.

You can be more self compassionate when you actually understand what your priority is and what your end goal is as opposed to the mistakes that you made in getting to those goals. So for him when it came to evaluation period, And as a career, they go through your goals, what do you want to do with your career in X, Y, Z years, or whatever the question may be.

And instead of giving career goals, he said that his goal was always to make sure that his family is taken care of, and that they are safe, and that they have him, right?  And also his duty  to the fire department. and also  to the safety of him and his team.  So in that way I thought, wow,  keeping your priorities in perspective, like, is your state of anxiety  going to propel you further to reaching what your goals are, or what your priority is, or is it keeping you in a state of anxiety?

of being frozen and not doing anything because you are locked. By that panic  and as I said, I experienced anxiety and I know what that feels like to not be able to even have a focus on what my priority is, much less like what's happening in front of me, right? And so I think that that is a really great anchor of how you can start to look at, like, okay, is this actually? 

Moving me towards my goals and again when you are in that panic state when you're already in a panic attack You're not thinking about any of that.  Okay, and I will actually get to applying these tactics So before I get there, I just want to ask you like write down Your priority. What's your priority?

And maybe that can become an anchor for you.  Alright, so, as I just mentioned a bit ago, I was actually able to apply these three big takeaways  a lot sooner than I was intending to. So, I actually had  a panic attack last night.  And,  though I didn't use the priority as my anchor, I did use The  staying in the moment, the mindfulness,  as well as the self compassion aspect that we did talk about.

And while I was in this panic state, I, I did hear him in my head, you know, saying like, Okay, like, what's, this is what's happening right now, or like, walking me through it. And so, like, when we were having the conversation, he had mentioned, you know, you see people at their worst.  You have to be that calm to the chaos that they are enduring in that very moment. 

And so I thought about if I  were being the person that is creating that calm for myself, like what would I tell myself? What would I focus on?  And in that moment I thought like you are doing your best, like you're doing the best that you can and we need to come out of this because You need to continue doing your best  and  you, you have to breathe. 

I practiced belly breathing  and I, I eventually I got out of it. I, I brought myself out of that panic state because of this conversation.  And I just really, my hope is that those of you who have panic attacks, that you can take this information and apply it to whatever is going on in your life. And I have another example of like a panic state. 

This is just showing like how far back these habits go and I am not perfect.  I know I talk a lot about anxiety and I give  You know advice or I bring you insights into Managing stress and it is still very much part of my journey right now where I am learning to regulate that for myself and also understanding like deeply the different perspectives that people have and how I can apply that and just be Make you think in a different perspective.

Because  staying in one mindset of like, Oh, I have anxiety and that's just the way that I am. Like, that's not going to get you over the hump of being able to control your anxiety and actually living in a calmer state. So, another time  that I had an anxious state was It was  years ago, like my husband and I, I think it was like our second anniversary of being together, maybe?

I think it was first or second, I think it was the second. And we had gone to Austin and  I found this place called Inner Space Cavern and I really wanted to go cave crawling. Like I wanted to visit the cave, but I didn't want to just stay on like the lit path, you know, that you typically go on that has the railing and stuff like that.

Like I didn't want that. Yeah. I wanted to go on an actual cave crawl, spelunking, do the thing, and I was excited to do that. And I knew that we were going to get dirty, and there were going to be tight spaces, things like that. But, I had no idea that when they said tight spaces, it was like literally  the width of like a shoebox, maybe. 

And I'm like, how am I going to get through that crack? Like. If people know me, if you've seen me in real life, like, I'm a big girl, okay? And so, when I saw that crack, I thought,  no,  like, I cannot get through there. But, I had to. I had to get through that crack because that's where the entire tour was going.

Like, we had to go through this room. to get to the rest of, you know, the tour. And so I see everyone else go and I think I was like second to last to go, to go through this crack. And, you know, I get my body contorted in there  and I'm like, I get stuck  and my mind is immediately panicking because I'm like, oh my god, I'm gonna stay stuck here  forever  And I mean, that's an irrational fear, right?

There's no way I was gonna stay in that crack stuck forever with a tour guide and a bunch of other people, right? but my mind was just racing and Incapable of thinking of what was there right now in that moment until  she guided me to  And said, stop.  Stop. Stop moving. Stop flailing. Like, just take a breath for a minute. 

And listen to the sound of my voice. Like, don't think about anything else. Just listen.  And I'm going to tell you where to move your body so that way you can kind of twist out of this and get to where we need to go.  And so, I released the control that I wanted to have on the situation that I clearly had no idea about.

Like, I was not a cave crawling expert, but she was,  right? And she knew how to handle that situation, and to keep me calm, which is important. And this is what this fire chief is doing, right? He is trained to be able to keep calm in that state of stress.  So going back to the cave crawling, I was able to get out of that tight space because her calm led me out.

And so it's like if these people have these skills of being in a calm state, like what can we take away from their professions and apply to our own states of anxiety?  And I just really would love to hear what your takeaway is on all of this information and What is the method that you want to try the most?

Is it going to be the mindfulness factor where it's like exactly zeroing on what it is in that moment that you're looking at? Whether it be your fingernail and the nail polish that you love  Or is it gonna be self compassion and knowing that you are doing your best?  And, you know, even though your best doesn't feel good enough, it is your best  and giving yourself grace  or is it going to be understanding that your priority is something bigger and that you being in this state of panic is doing nothing to reach that goal,  right?

So tell me, I want to hear from you. What was your takeaway from this conversation? You can visit me at buymeacoffee. com. That's at  buymeacoffee. com forward slash blissfully bold podcast. And whenever you actually buy me a coffee, you have the option to leave a comment. So, Leave me the comments there. I want to hear from you.

And I just really want to say that I absolutely love this conversation, and that I felt so honored to have it, and to be trusted and respected enough to be told these perspectives without judgment from his end or my end. Like we both went into the conversation with the intent to listen and understand each other. 

And some of the stories that he told, you know, they really, Showed this raw vulnerable  Side to people not just what he has experienced but to what he has seen  like what the people who he has Helped  like what they have been through and I just wanted to give a big thanks to him  For trusting me with that information.

I won't dig into what those stories are here out of respect But again, I just wanted to give a big thanks, and I do want to have more of those conversations exactly like that. And being able to be that person where you're able to be vulnerable and talk through any kind of decisions or anything that may be stopping you in your tracks and keeping you stuck because you have fear or there's anxiety  or you just have so much  pent up emotions that you don't even know how to express and you don't have anyone in particular That you can talk to whether it be friends or family because maybe they don't understand Maybe you have given your perspective Many times and they just don't get it and you know, you could go to therapy You can go see a therapist you can talk about these things but sometimes therapy just isn't the option for you whether it be because of insurance or waitlist or you know Maybe you don't think that you'll find a therapist that you can vibe with Maybe you think that mental health is a luxury Whatever the situation may be.

I want to be that You other option for you of having a safe space that's free of judgment to talk about all of these situations  that you may be having to deal with by yourself. I don't want you to deal with them by yourself. I want you to have someone to talk to. So  DM me on Instagram. You can DM me at  blissfullyboldpodcast or at gavi.

ramaylee on instagram And just ask me all the questions that you have about crossroads conversations I'm going to have two different options. One is going to be a four week program where we'll have a call once a week and The other is just for single calls. And again, if you want more information head on over to Instagram and DM me All right, friends.

Well, thank you again for joining me and I will talk to you 

next week. Toodles  Thanks again for listening and visit buy me a coffee at  buymeacoffee. com forward slash blissfully bold podcast for another way to support the show. And I will also link that in the show notes.  

This episode was brought to you by the Daily Planner Sheet for the Overthinking High Achiever, the perfect balance to productivity and self reflection.

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