'Practice bravery': Winnipeg psychologist hosts event to help people deal with anxiety

Michelle Warren knows anxiety through personal experience.

"As a kid, I had anxiety very badly from about ages 10 to 14," the clinical psychologistsaid. "I had stomach aches, which is classic, and insomnia, and I worried about a lot of different things."

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She draws on that experience in her practice and for events such as the one she's holding Thursday evening in Winnipeg. "Understanding anxiety: strategies for coping across the lifespan"will start at 7:30 p.m. at Shaarey Zedek Synagogue.

The event will give people the chance to ask Warren about how to deal with anxiety in themselves and those around them.

"Anxiety disorders refer to fear that's a very normal human response, but that's taken to an extreme and is too great for the actual threat present, and then the disorder means that it's actually getting in the way,"Warren said. "It's preventing people from being able to function at home or work or school.

"It prevents them from relaxing and being able to have a good time, or just eat a meal and digest their food or fall asleep at night, for example."

When anxiety reaches that stage, a person should get professional help, Warren says, but there are ways to prevent fears from reaching the point where they interfere with daily living.

"I always focus on what the parents can do, because they can plant seeds," she said about preventing anxiety.

She had a classic what-not-to-do parenting moment during her daughter's swimming lessons, she says.

'Excessive reassurance'

"I heard her kind of sound upset or something at the water's edge it was at the Rady Pool [in Winnipeg] that has this gradual entry into the pool and I had this anxious response of kind of running over to see what was the matter," she recalled. "And I didn't realize until I was, you know, soaked up to mykneesthat I had sort of run into the pool without rolling up my jeans.

"Me coming kind of to rescue her, or check in on her right away, reinforces this idea that you shouldn't feel feelings, you shouldn't feel afraid the first time you put your face under water or, you know, you need excessive reassurance, [that] you need me to be there to protect you."

Warren started to think about what she'd done from the point of view of a psychologist, and realized she hadfed her daughter's anxiety when she should have reinforced her bravery.

"What we need to do is just practise bravery and facing that which we fear, and also to congratulate ourselves, because when we're brave and we do things, it's harder for us perhaps than for other people, and that's noteworthy."

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Warren says anxiety can continue from childhood, when it's often based in physical fears, to the tween and teen years, when it often becomes social anxiety, into adulthood, where it often is focused on achievement.

Symptoms can range from looking on edge, moving and talking quicklyorengaging in anxious behaviours such as nail biting, to being withdrawn.

"There's also the extroverted worrierwho just as often gets missed because they look sociable and friendly, so they mustn't have anything the matter but, you know, they're hand-washing all day."

Higher-than-average IQ

Those who deal with their anxiety and learn to overcome it can become very successful, Warren says.

"Research suggests that as it sticks through adulthood, people who have anxiety have a higher-than-average IQ," she said, adding their sensitivity can become a strength.

While Warren has overcome her anxiety disorder, she still gets that anxious response in some situations.

"My automatic reaction especially in times of stressI tend to rush to thoughts that something bad will happenor someone will be mad at me," she said.

For example, if someone misses an appointment, she says, she immediately assumes the worst and starts calling to make sure her patient is OK.

"We laugh, my clients and I, and we know that we have more in common than we have different."

For tickets to the eventcall or email Jewish Child and Family Service at 204-477-7430 or jcfs@jcfswinnipeg.org.