Shelyn Somani on anxiety and questioning stressful thoughts

00:03

All right. Welcome to the Mental Health Podcast. We are here today with Shelyn Somani. How are you?

Good, thank you. How are you?

Excellent, thank you. We’re going to be talking about anxiety today. I don’t know you personally, but my sister recommended that I talk to you. She lives in Grande Prairie, and I was told you’re quite famous there. Anyway, I looked you up and thought, we’ve got to get you in here for a podcast. Maybe you can tell us a little bit about yourself.

Sure. I trained in family medicine. I graduated when I was 26. I’m 45 now. I practiced for two or three years and very quickly discovered it wasn’t my passion, especially when it came to how we treated mental health. In medical school, I was trained to treat mental health solely through pharmaceuticals.

I’m not against them, but writing prescriptions started to feel more and more uncomfortable for me.

In a nutshell, I went through a lot of my own stuff. I had panic attacks, anxiety, depression, a whole bunch of things during my residency, and learned a lot of techniques to heal it within myself. That became my new job. I didn’t anticipate that happening. I did a bunch of work on myself, and I continue to work on myself. Being in that intimate a relationship with emotional pain, and finding ways to heal it, is what propelled me to do the work I do now.

01:46

I think that’s one of the things that attracted me to you and your profile online. You also do a retreat for women. Unfortunately, Jasper was cancelled this year. Can you tell me a little more about that?

I tried to do one in Maui, and then there were fires. Then I tried to do one in Jasper, and there were fires. The retreat hasn’t happened yet, but I really want to do some in the future. For now, I’ve been holding groups at home twice a week, and I’m narrowing them down to once a week.

Every Wednesday evening, I have a women’s group at home, usually eight to ten people. It’s really wonderful. We do meditation and self-inquiry. One way of looking at self-inquiry is questioning stressful thoughts that seem to take over our minds and physiology, creating anxiety and depression, and finding ways to question them to loosen their grip.

I’m a big proponent of preventative medicine. I think daily practices like that really can prevent anxiety, or at least reduce how much people experience. I’m a big fan of that.

I hear what you’re saying, because if you look up anxiety in the dictionary, you’ll see my picture. It just seems to be 24/7.

Okay, what are some of the causes of anxiety?

03:01

I think it’s a few things, and they all tie together. I’ve still not met a person on this planet who hasn’t had some kind of trauma growing up. Our parents did their best, but things get passed down from generation to generation: how they were parented and how we were parented. In my experience so far, there are aspects of ourselves left not feeling loved or worthy of love. As cliché as it might sound, to me the medicine is coming back to ourselves as love.

It’s freaking challenging sometimes, but if I can do it, anyone else can, because this mind has been very stubborn.

One of the challenges with the body’s physiology, in my view, is that most people are actually addicted to their pain and don’t realize it. It’s not like anyone’s walking around trying to be anxious. But if you don’t know another way, there are biochemical cascades in the body during the fight-or-flight response. Adrenaline, cortisol, these hormones of stress, are actually addictive. It’s almost like coming out of a compulsion or addiction that most people have had for most of their lives.

Unfortunately, I think a lot of people still go to their graves with it. But if someone is interested in breaking that pattern, they can look at what they’re thinking and believing that’s creating it. In my experience, there has to be a thought, like “Something terrible is going to happen,” “I’m going to run out of money,” or “That person doesn’t love me” or “They don’t like me.” These are really simple, innocent thoughts, but once they’re believed, they seem to take over.

There are some universal ones that it seems like everybody has. Those are some of them. Others are things like “I have too much to do” and “I don’t have enough time.” I don’t know if any of these are familiar to everyone.

04:56

Especially in the West, we all have the same ones. They’re not unique. I think that’s part of it. Another challenge I see is that this isn’t talked about enough in our society, in my opinion. If you’re having anxiety and judging or shaming yourself for it, and feel like you can’t talk to anyone, of course that amplifies the experience. I think that’s also a big issue.

Physically, lots of screen time. I’m not against social media. I think it can be useful, but when people are on their phones a lot, that can be an addiction and create those hormones again, adrenaline, trying to get the hit, the dopamine. That’s how I’d sum it up. I could talk about this for hours.

Exactly. That’s why I wanted to talk to you. I’ve been dealing with it forever, and you’re right about social media, even though it helps get the word out about Mental Health Radio. I call it “crack book” myself, because I find the stuff on there negative. With Mental Health Radio, and music being the ultimate for me, music is everywhere. It means every mood, every feeling, everything. And talking about mental health is what we’re doing here.

06:29

All right, now I have to go to my cheat sheet, so excuse me for a second. We’ve covered a lot of the common anxiety symptoms. What about some of the disorders?

This is a tough one because I read through some of them. I’ll mention a couple, because there seem to be quite a lot. Everybody knows about panic disorder, social anxiety disorder, which is a really big one, and agoraphobia.

There’s also [anxiety-disorder term unclear], M-U-T-I-S-M. It’s a constant failure of children to speak in certain situations.

I’ve never heard of that before. I was reading through this and thought, “Oh my goodness.” I started wondering, do I actually have these? Except for the last one, probably all of them.

07:25

Do you want my perspective on that?

Yes, ma’am.

When I went to medical school, I had to memorize all those names and the criteria to fit the diagnosis. I think there can be some usefulness in it. Fifteen years later, after what I’ve learned since med school and residency, and how I’ve healed things in myself and continue to, my perspective, including from working with other people, is to look at it all. The only cause of suffering in this whole world is confusion, believing a thought that doesn’t match reality. That’s it.

One of the most influential teachers in my life is Byron Katie. I’ll pose this to you right now, if you want to test it for yourself. She asks: “In this moment, other than what you’re thinking and believing, are you okay? Just for now?” I continue to discover it’s actually always like that.

08:22

Every moment, you can ask yourself. Not as denial about what’s going on in your life, not as avoidance, but she also says the only cause of suffering on this planet is a confused, unquestioned mind. These thoughts run every day and create all these types of disorders. It’s disordered thinking, disordered believing. I don’t know. It’s the relationship with the thoughts to look at. It’s not about getting rid of thoughts. Thoughts happen, like breath happens, like the stomach digests, the mind thinks. That’s part of the human experience.

It’s certainly not about denial, but I think that stuff is taken too far, for lack of better words. I don’t know how else to put it. People get labeled that way. It brings tears, actually, how many people I’ve met over the years who are so identified with a diagnosis their psychiatrist gave them that they think it defines them. “I’m schizophrenic,” or “I have bipolar,” or “I’m manic depressive.” It takes over, and that is not true. That is just not true.

There’s thinking to be questioned, for sure. I have quite a strong belief or perspective on psychiatry right now.

09:32

I agree with you as well. I know people who rely on what they read on the internet.

I have that. “I’ve got one of those, so I must have this.” I can’t remember what they call it, but it’s another anxiety where people believe what they read without checking the facts. There is an actual term, but I can’t remember it. Sorry.

My friend upstairs, my roommate, says he has a little bit of anxiety, and once the situation is over, it’s gone. I’m like, “Great. Can you take away all my anxiety for me?” I wake up in the morning and it’s anxiety until bed. Then there’s the old going on in your own head, which helps you not sleep at night as well.

Do you notice that the thoughts that cause the anxiety are the same day after day, or are they different?

10:38

I’d say 90 percent of the time they are. But there’s always that one that speaks, just when you think, “Okay, I…” Some random thing will pop in there and you’ll go, “Oh yeah, right, I forgot about that,” and then you’ll start over. It’s something I’ve been working on for a long time, and I’m getting better at it. It’s not perfect, but I’m not allowing it to control me as much as it used to. Moving back here and being with old friends and family has definitely helped.

Any other specific anxiety disorder you can think of, in terms of phobias?

Phobias, yeah. Generalized anxiety disorder is another one. There are all kinds of different ones. Again, I think it comes back to what the fear is. I suppose one way to look at anxiety, almost like a mathematical equation but with words, is fear plus story equals anxiety.

11:52

As I’ve studied so far, personally and in all the work I’ve done with other people, it seems to me that ultimately it’s the fear of death. If we go right there, the fear of being alone: why do people say, “I need a partner”? There’s nothing wrong with that. Why? Because I don’t want to be alone. If you’re alone as an animal, you could die if you’re left out. Obviously we’re human, so we don’t have to worry about that, but these fears, I don’t know to what degree they’re biological. Fear plus story equals anxiety. What happens if you question the story fueling the fear? The fear loses its power, if that’s the right word. When you give it energy, it overtakes you. The nervous system gets out of whack, fight or flight, adrenaline, all that.

When those stories are questioned, and the reason I asked you before whether the thoughts are the same every day, you said 90 percent. I can relate. Looking back on however many decades of my life, there haven’t been any new ones. Byron Katie, the speaker I was telling you about, says there are no new stressful thoughts. They’re all recycled. Day after day they recycle until they’re met with love and understanding, until they’re questioned. “Can I really know that’s true?” To me, that’s at the root of all disorders when it comes to mental health.

13:03

I’ve never met anyone who doesn’t… I mean, you can work on it. It’s very exciting to be alive right now. I think there’s more focus on this now: events, retreats, workshops, awareness, books, especially with the internet. It’s pretty awesome.

That’s another reason for Mental Health Radio, so more people can go out there and talk about it.

Yeah, that’s why I said it has helped me, just by doing the website and the group. I have all these other things like Twitch and all that stuff. I have no idea how to operate all that, but it’s there in case. It has helped me immensely. I do my own show where I play music, and once again, music is the ultimate.

13:51

I want to thank you for coming on today. I’d really like to do more, if you’re interested.

I would love to.

Great. I know you’re doing a little bit of healing in Maui, and you’ve got to bring us all back a tan, though, because you’re getting the vitamin D. As you can see, I’m not [unclear] here. Winter in Alberta, you know what it’s like.

I know.

I really appreciate you coming on, and I look forward to this. We’re going to post it everywhere, and you can share it as well.

Okay. Yeah, we’re really looking forward to some of the stuff you may end up bringing to the group.

Awesome. Thank you, thank you, and have yourself a good day.

Okay, thanks, y’all. Yes.