Episode 4: When Anxiety Gets Stuck: Understanding Scanxiety, Fear After Breast Cancer, and How to Actually Heal

Katherine Froggatt: Before we get started today, I just want to thank you for pressing play for connecting with me today in this episode. Now this episode is for you. You whose world has been turned completely upside down by a diagnosis that came out of nowhere. You who lie awake at night with that deep visceral fear that you might not see your kids grow up. You who carries the shame that no one talks about. The kind that quietly consumes everything, and you who is desperately looking for a way out of this pain. That was me ten years ago, and I wish that someone had handed me this conversation back then. If you are in the middle of that storm right now, if you can feel it, but you cannot name it, and you definitely cannot shift it, this episode was made for you.

Katherine Froggatt: Well my guest today is Diante Fuchs. She is the clinical psychologist, author of "The Gift of Anxiety," and founder of the Unstuck Initiative. After more than a decade in practice, she became convinced that most anxiety advice is solving the wrong problem and creating the east method to address what actually is keeping anxiety stuck. She works with women navigating some of life's most overwhelming experiences, helping them move from surviving on coping strategies to healing anxiety at the root. Her core belief is that coping isn't healing and that anxiety doesn't need to be controlled. It needs to be understood. She is based right here in Queenstown, New Zealand with me where I live, and I am so glad she is my friend, my colleague, and she makes me feel like a completely normal human being when I cry at Disney Pixar movies. Welcome so much Dee. Do you mind me calling you Dee? So I'm gonna start by asking How are you doing today?

Diante Fuchs (Dee): Yeah, please do, it's far less scary than Diante. Yeah, I'm well. I just wanna say that's because I cry far more than you do at the Pixar movies.

Katherine Froggatt: Indeed, that is a true story, I have to say. And when I look over and I'm like you are crying, that gives me the whole hundred percent permission to just bawl my eyes out.

Diante Fuchs (Dee): Yeah, yeah. I challenge anybody to sit through any sort of Disney movie dry-eyed. Let's face it.

Katherine Froggatt: Yes, I know. And I know our daughters will get there one day. So Dee, I just want to get started by saying what an amazing achievement with your book. And your book "The Gift of Anxiety" that is such a confronting title for anyone who has sat in a waiting room before a scan, heart racing, barely breathing. What do you mean by that?

Diante Fuchs (Dee): Thank you. Yeah, it was a tricky one. When I originally wrote the book, I was just gonna call it anxiety unstuck. And then I thought maybe I should rather call it ease anxiety because that's the method that I use. And then when I was working with my publisher, he came back and he was like, I think you should call it the gift of anxiety, because that's really what you are speaking about is the fact that anxiety is a guide and it's helping people to see parts of their lives that are not serving them. So that's quite a gift. And I don't know that I resonated with it originally, although it is a little bit of what I'm seeing in the work that I do with people, is that when they come out the other end of this, there is something huge that's shifted. And that's a gift, right? And I think if we think about any challenge that we might be facing, especially if you're sitting in a doctor's office, you might be facing a diagnosis that you don't want or feels really scary. But when you come out the other end of that journey, and you know this, Katherine. There is so much that shifts. So much of the stuff that didn't serve you before that you will have let go of, that you would have shed, that you you know, you don't pay attention to anymore, and you start looking at the stuff that's really important. So our challenges are a gift, but it's always hard to see that in the moment. Yeah.

Katherine Froggatt: A hundred percent. And I think I work with a lot of women who still will not and refuse to, or maybe perhaps are unable to, 'cause I know that phase they're they're in, you know, where the diagnosis came out of nowhere and suddenly you're just confronted by this truth that y you couldn't make sense of it and then you're sitting with this emotion it's like I cannot have anyone tell me this is a gift. This is unacceptable. I mean this is this is completely ruining my life and the overwhelm of all of that and and I want to read something in your book because you you wrote here feeling anxiety on a regular basis is critical to your health and well-being but feeling stuck overwhelmed and completely hopeless is not. When you fail to connect with your healthy emotion of anxiety appropriately, it grows in intensity, becomes loud and intrusive, and leaves you with the inevitable feeling of overwhelm and hopelessness. Some might call this an anxiety disorder, I call it stuck anxiety, and I think it's such a game changer for us to try and reframe that thought because Dee I have sat so many nights thinking I couldn't get out of this emotion because I couldn't cannot think about my death, my mortality, my fear of not seeing my kids, my potential l sort of loss of this rich life that I really want to live. Like I I couldn't get out of it, but I was desperately wrestling because I'm like, how could I be a role model for my children when I'm feeling all these horrible fears? I mean, tell me more about that, 'cause I've spent nights of kind of wrestling with that and I lost obviously. I I completely lost at the time.

Diante Fuchs (Dee): You couldn't have lost if you still standing here, Katherine. We sometimes feel like we're losing the battle in the moment, but really we're always coming out the other end. But I think what's really important is for us to recognize, you know, when I talk about stuck anxiety, that is aka the disordered side of things. But there is ordinary anxiety and that's that kind of normal feeling that we need to have. And so ordinary anxiety is what everybody, every human in the whole world bar psychopaths and people who've had lobotomies, maybe. everyone else will experience some level of anxiety. So it's very normal. It is the thing that helps us to get up in the morning and be on time for work because we're just a little bit anxious that we might lose our job and then we won't be able to put food on the table. You know, it's the thing that helps a a mother of a newborn baby wake up in the middle of the night when the baby cries, because every new b every mother of a newborn baby knows that when that baby cries, we have that sort of surge of anxiety and that gets us up and pays attention, right? So anxiety and sympathetic activation, it shouldn't be pathologized. It is a hundred percent required for us to be able to survive and thrive in the world. It's very ordinary. And what it is really is just a signal, it's an alarm system in your body that is designed to get you to pay attention to something. And that something that it's asking you to pay attention to is generally going to be a threat to you. Now, often it's a very real threat in the world, like for example, starting a new job or moving to a new town or getting a diagnosis or having a physical illness that is threatening to our lives. Those are real valid threats. And if you're feeling anxious about that, well then welcome to being a normal human being, right? That's not unusual. But what lands up happening is that when we start to feel something about the way that we feel, that's when we start to get stuck on ourselves.

Katherine Froggatt: Yeah.

Diante Fuchs (Dee): And actually we can look at sort of all the disorders that people talk about. So depression, for example, is really just stuck sadness. Because we have a right to feel sad about some of the things that happen in our lives. But when we start to feel sad about the fact that we're sad, and then we become depressed that we're depressed and we start telling ourselves things like, I'm not being a good mother, I really need to be better, I'm ruining the day for everyone, no one wants me around because I'm always so sad. Now we've started layering sadness about sadness, and that's depression, right? The unfortunate thing is that anxiety doesn't have a separate name for the disorder. It's anxiety and then that's anxiety. Whereas we have sadness and then we have depression. So we have a way of kind of differentiating between the two. But with anxiety, when it gets stuck, this is when people become a little bit afraid of the feeling that they're having. So they're anxious and then they're anxious that they're anxious because they're worried that you know the symptoms are doing something bad to them.

Katherine Froggatt: Yeah.

Diante Fuchs (Dee): That they might not be able to function, that they're going crazy, that they're gonna need medication, that they can't be the best parents or the best partner that they wish to be. But more, I think, when people are struggling with a physical illness like cancer, for example, then they worry that the stress that they're experiencing in the anxiety is going to affect the physiology and make them worse and make them more unwell. So then we start to feel anxious about being anxious for another reason, right? It gets really complicated.

Katherine Froggatt: Exactly. Yeah. And I remember sitting in that I call it a storm where I feel like I can't get out of it. And because the more I I've been reminded of the reality of what's coming for me from the diagnosis there is a waiting. There's a waiting for more results. There is a waiting for more plan coming through because the panels will sit together and they'll discuss. There is the anxiety that increasingly like just consumes me up until the day that I know I'm gonna see my surgeon, my oncologist, whatever that might be. And so I I there are days when I feel like I have to just stop feeling this way because it's too painful, it's too difficult. I can't navigate life the way I do because now I just don't know what life is gonna look like for me moving forward. So yes, the narratives are all of what is just churning in and every day, every moment, every time I feel a little bit of the sadness coming, I'm like, I can't feel sad because what if what if the tumors get worse and what if you know there is something else that happens somewhere else in my body? You know, the fear is real. And I feel like there is a really rich conversation that we can have. We're not really disregarding what we're feeling emotionally and physiologically, but I guess what we can do is to try and connect and unpack that.

Diante Fuchs (Dee): Yeah, yeah.

Katherine Froggatt: So I love what you said about it's not a disorder, it's stuck. So can you describe a little bit more about, you know, what's normal, what's ordinary versus how can I then recognize what's not normal and how can I start to sort of navigate and shift that?

Diante Fuchs (Dee): Yeah. Well, plainly put, I think that being a raw, messy human being is normal. So if we could actually just be okay with that, then pretty much all of our experiences are normal. It is when we start to believe that there's something wrong with us that we begin to resist and to fight and to push away. And it's actually in the resistance that we're causing the problem, right? Because if we can just be with what is and allow that outcome to be it, with a belief that we are supported and that we have what it takes to move through this challenge, then whatever discomfort is coming up, we will allow it to process. Whereas when we're sitting with something and then we're fighting it and resisting it because we believe now that there's something wrong or we should be better, we should have figured this out by now, or we're causing harm to our bodies by feeling more of this, then we are creating a resistance which actually just escalates or feels or even heightens the experience. I think it was Buddha who said, pain is inevitable, but suffering is optional, right? And that's really what it comes down to is that we are going to feel uncomfortable and we have a range of uncomfortable emotions, we have a range of uncomfortable challenges in our lives, but that doesn't mean that it's bad or a a pathology, right? Like it just means that we have to sit with that and move through it. Now what most people will say to me is, but if I just sat with that anxiety, it will just get worse. It'll just I will just let it go. And then I think, okay, yeah, fair. Accept that. Anxiety is an emotional response in the same way that your anger is, your sadness is, your joy, your grief, your love. It's an emotional response. That's all it is. So if it is the same as all the others, and most people can agree that it is, then has there been a time when you sat down and you just laughed with a friend, and then you just allowed yourself to laugh? And then it just escalated and grew worse and worse and worse to the point at which you were like, hysterical and you couldn't stop laughing and someone had to come and like sedate you and take you to hospital to make you stop laughing, right? Like, no, it doesn't happen that way. Even when you're having the best time, the laughter subsides. You and I know we do a lot of laughing together. So it always subsides. Even if we don't want it to, it will come down. So the same goes for our sadness. The one example I always use, I think I wrote in the book as well, is when you, you know, when you start to feel sad about something and you want to cry. Then you think, I can't cry right now. It's embarrassing. And you try to make it go away. Those are the times that you're going to have those big red ugly cries, you know, where your face just like scrunches up in a weird way. But if, yeah, and if you just allow yourself, you think, my gosh, I'm feeling sad. And you removed yourself for a minute and you allowed yourself to just have the tears, you know, every single time I've done that, it's been such an anticlimax because the tears just dry up quickly and you move on to the next thought. Because you've allowed it to process. So the same thing is going to go for that anxiety. And when you have an ordinary, real valid threat that's facing you, which is your diagnosis or your health condition, then yes, you're going to feel anxious. Like what a normal, beautiful response to have in this. You want to stay alive. That is a very good thing to want. And there's something threatening that. So the fact that you're anxious and your anxiety is asking you to pay attention to this very real and valid threat. Is nothing wrong with you. So when that's coming up, can we address that with compassion? And in the same way that, you know, if your best friend was struggling with this or your daughter was struggling with it, when they're anxious about it, would you say, come on, man, that's ridiculous. You can't be anxious. You're gonna make your cancer worse. You would never say that to them, right? You would be like, Yeah, it is frightening, but you're okay and you've got this, and together we're gonna work through this. So can we have the same level of self-compassion to all of our raw and messy emotions when they come up so that they can just naturally subside? Because that's what's normal. Yeah.

Katherine Froggatt: Yeah, yeah. Look, Dee, I think y you've just jolted my memory about how we should be feeling. And I think society has this label of how we should be feeling all the time, every day, all day, all the time. And it's it's it's that constant suppression and pressure of how we should be. How we should be feeling that makes us feel like, you know, and I remember this is classic, Katherine, right? Chronic perfectionist was my middle name before. And because I'm such a labeled person of this persona, that I could not ever tell people that I'm having a bad day, that I'm feeling worried, or I'm feeling scared, or that I'm not in control. And that habit of me being this way. And again, my lifestyle in Singapore, being high performing all the time, high achieving, there is never a time where I should be ever showing my boss that I am not able to deliver the results that she expects of me. So this becomes a habit. And so that's the reason why when I got this massive diagnosis, and I potentially would speak on behalf of a lot of other women, that this this is just not the way I know life to be. It's not in the framework of how I believe the truth or the control is. So I it was it was a real struggle because on one point my body is feeling that I'm sinking, that I'm in this whirlpool, that I'm not able able to breathe. But my mind is telling me that I need to get out of that. I need to disregard that because that's a sign of weakness. That's a sign of me not performing. Does that make sense to you?

Diante Fuchs (Dee): makes perfect sense. Yeah. Because what you're doing now is you're diving into, you know, the underlying belly of what makes us anxious or at least what makes us feel certain things. And here we're going into core beliefs. So, you know, most most women who are high functioning and have that feeling of I should be better or I should be doing more and I have to be in control and I'm doing all the things have got what we call unrelenting standards as their core belief. And unrelenting standards is this belief that you have to be functioning at your top in order to be acceptable and lovable. Because if you miss the mark, then then you're not you're not quite good enough. Yeah. So our our core beliefs, just quickly so people can understand where they're coming from, they really stem from the fact that as human beings, we just want two things, right? We want to be lovable and acceptable, and we want to avoid feeling like crap. That's it. So literally from the day that we are born, we are learning from our environment what it takes for us to be lovable and acceptable. And what sort of things we need to do to avoid feeling like crap. So, for example, a baby is born, they feel uncomfortable because they're hungry, they cry, somebody picks them up and feeds them, they feel better. So the learning is when I feel crap, I cry and then I get better. And then you try it on for size when you're two or three years old at the supermarket and it's met with far less enthusiasm. And so you quickly learn crying is not the thing that makes me feel better anymore. So that by the time that you're in your 30s, you're realizing, the thing that makes me feel better is a glass of wine at the end of the day. So we're learning, right? But more importantly, we're also learning from those people around us when we're little what makes us acceptable. And it's through the things that they praise and reward and, you know, make them behave nicely towards you. You're like, yes, I must do more of that. That makes me lovable. And the things that they feel disappointed by or the things that they get angry with. Those are the things that we begin to believe are bad about ourselves. So very quickly in families that kind of push for excellence and push for hardworking people, we will see unrelenting standards as a core belief. So it's quite, it's quite typical. And people who do push themselves to, you know, perform well have this. So that's when we're going to start seeing anxiety crop up because not because the diagnosis necessarily is a threat to your life, which it is, and there will be a form of anxiety that's coming up there. But what you're speaking to there is, okay, hang on. This is going directly in the face of my core belief, which says that if I'm not performing at 100%, then I am not acceptable. So it is not acceptable for me to have this diagnosis right now. So now we go back to that resistance again. Do you know what I mean? Where we what we resist persists. So if I'm going to resist the diagnosis. then I'm gonna add a layer of suffering and pain to the already painful experience of this diagnosis. Make sense?

Katherine Froggatt: a hundred percent. and I still remember I sat with myself for the last couple of months as I was working through my memoirs, you know, and it was just putting those feelings into words and it was really profound, the the light bulb moments that I had, and I remembered I was trying to fight all the symptoms I had for chemo. It was just knocking me for six, but I was just like no I can do stuff around the house. I can be functional. I can I can, you know, I can still get up in the morning and I'm not gonna crash. I will do what I wanna do. I wanna get up in the morning, I wanna have stuff to do, you know, I'll clean the house, I will do all that. But it was so difficult on the fourth dose of the ACs, we call it the Andria Mycin. In New Zealand they call it the Red Devil. And I remember that my body was just crashing, right? It was just It was so physiological and physical, like I couldn't I had no energy. It was almost like this chronically deep sense of fatigue. And I was fighting it so much for the last three doses of the ACs. And by the fourth dose, my body what was just kind of shutting down. It was forcing me to just surrender. And I did. And I slept for the whole day, which was very unusual. behavior for me because I have always been this active relaxer, never resting. Pressing pause was such a big thing for me. And I think it was that moment that I decided in my mind, you win. I lose for today. I'm just gonna sleep. And I did. And I woke up, I I can't remember, it was all a big blur, but I probably missed two or three meals and I woke up the next day and I just felt like something has shifted because I allowed it. It was quite profound.

Diante Fuchs (Dee): Yeah, yeah. I love how you said you win, I lose for today. And isn't it interesting that that's how we perceive that? Instead of going, you know what, buggy you, I win. I'm important enough to put me first today. Yeah, yeah.

Katherine Froggatt: Yeah, I know. Yeah. And and there's this word that I thought that I'll research a little bit deeply and the word is scanxiety. I wanna talk into this because Dee, I don't know if you know, but today I am going for my mammogram. and I know. And then I thought, wow, this is very apt because I'm gonna talk about this because scanxiety is actually quite nuanced, but it's an actual word used in one of the publications by PubMed.

Diante Fuchs (Dee): Okay. I did not know.

Katherine Froggatt: And I talk to my clients a lot about this anxiety, but then now there's a name to it. And I know we want to name things because sometimes it gives us the whole notion of, there is this thing and I can name it, I can identify it. And so scanxiety, most of us describe it as a feeling, but you frame it as a body state. So so what's the difference? Tell me why does this distinction matter and how we can work with it?

Diante Fuchs (Dee): Yeah. Well, I think with with scanxiety, and I think people across the board with physical health conditions will experience this to some extent, whether it be the mammogram that we're going for or the MRI that we have to check up on our, you know, pre existing brain tumor, or whether it be, you know, some people even have it when it's just going to the doctor and getting your blood work taken or blood pressure taken. So there is this level of anxiety that comes up because well, really it's coming up with the what if question. That's really what it is. So in the background of what I'm going to attend now, there is what if they find something? That's the big question. And with our anxiety, really, whenever we ask that question, the anxiety doesn't want to answer it. It just wants you to avoid whatever lies on the other end of that question. So what if they find something they mustn't? I can't. I don't want that. And so we avoid going any further in there. But that means that we have now created what I like to call the black hole on the other end of a what if question, which is really the space where we believe we will die. Right? So it's, you know, and it can't be as simple as, what if I go to that gathering tonight and they laugh at me? Or what if I have a panic attack at the supermarket? These are frequent questions. Again, we're not going to answer it. We're just going to go, it can't happen, I'll die if it does. That's the kind of feeling state. So what we've done. Just by asking that is we've already put ourselves into a fight or flight response because we're saying if that happens, we it'll be it'll be the end of us, right? We don't have a concept that we could cope with that. So always I say when when what if questions are coming up, the best course of action really is to just answer the question. Because again, the anxiety that you're experiencing when we're talking about it being a body state, it is just the alarm. That's all it is. So your body is responding with an alarm by saying there's a threat here. We need to address, is there really a threat? So the question is, what if they find something? Well, let's answer that. Well then what will you do? And when you begin to answer, yes, the answer isn't, a wonderful I ideal situation that's moonshine and roses, right? It is, it is probably something we don't want to happen. But we begin to realize I have ways and means of dealing with that. So it isn't the death of me if that thing were to happen. So now we can step into a space where we go, well, worst case, I'll just. And in that statement, you've now like attained a level of acceptance for the thing. And there we go back to I've now removed the resistance. So it takes away the alarm because it's not so threatening anymore.

Katherine Froggatt: Yeah. And it's really what you've just shared, we are all capable of it. Sometimes we just don't have the tools. And it's really interesting that and and this might be a very uncommon or unpopular idea or you know perspective from me, but I I believe that no human beings, unless we face something deeply, profoundly challenging, that we will then make the changes. That we will then have the opportunity to just go, Wow, this is what I'm seeing, this is how I'm feeling. I can piece the puzzle and join the dots and my God, this is what's really happening for me. Because it's not really the opportunity of saying This is hard, this is I I'm angry and by by no means am I saying that we disregard those emotions. I will always feel angry. I will w I will have those moments of of shame that still come up. You know, I'm I'm not perfect, my body has gone through, you know, the surgery and the mastectomy. Yes, there are days when I feel that way. However, like It is the journey that I've been made to become aware of. And I feel that it was through the navigating of these moments of identifying what it is, knowing that it's a core belief that I'm I've been holding on to and it's no longer serving me, that potentially this is my opportunity through this, you know, traumatic experience of a diagnosis that I can live even better. And I really would love the woman that I work with and potentially will be coming in contact with, you know, to really believe that this can happen for them.

Diante Fuchs (Dee): Yeah, yeah. It is such a tricky thing to believe when you're in the moment, right? But, you know, and this is what I I tell all of my clients when we're working just in the realm of anxiety. But I think again it's true for all human beings, no matter what the challenges that we're facing, is essentially that the quality of the questions that you ask yourself is directly proportionate to the quality of your life. So what that really means is that your subconscious is it's driven to answer anything. Any question that you give it, always. So you know, if you've lost your keys and then you're like, Where are my keys? If you can't answer that question, your subconscious will keep going to that place to try and figure out where are your keys. Even so, it'll wake you up in the middle of the night and start thinking about places you might have left your keys. So that's what your subconscious is driven to do, and it will answer any question you give it. So when we ask things like, Why me? Why is this happening to me? you know, and all the other. Horrific questions that we can ask ourselves, well, your subconscious is driven to answer that. And 90% of the time, we're going to go to the negative sense of self to answer that. So it's because I'm not good enough, because I deserve this, because it's karma, whatever it is that we're telling ourselves, right? If we ask better questions, we will get better answers. So instead of asking things like, why is this happening to me? Why is this happening for me? Already that shifts the question. And if you do ask yourself that even in the midst of your challenge, you will be forced to look for, because your subconscious is driven to answer the question, to look for the answer here. Like what am I learning? What supports do I need to get into place? What beliefs do I need to shift in order to get those supports? You know, I was working with my clients this morning actually, and we were talking about just sitting with yourself for a minute and asking yourself, what do I need more of right now? And that answer can be anything for anybody, right? The very next question that we ask once we've answered that is what's getting in the way of me being able to have that? And then people come up with their reasons. Now the next question is, what belief am I holding that's creating that obstacle? And when we really dive into it, we start to realize that the obstacles that we think are there. Out there in the world that are stopping us from getting what we need are actually not there. They are our beliefs about them that are creating them. So if we can change our beliefs about ourselves, we might be able to attain that more. So in a similar way of what we're talking about right now, right? It's it's about what we're telling ourselves about ourselves in the situation that's creating the experience and the questions that we're asking ourselves.

Katherine Froggatt: I have in the last ten years Dee asked me myself a lot of questions and I think the first thing that I've had to allow myself to do in order for me to be in the space to ask myself questions, to have quiet is to sit and just be for a while. And you and I know we don't I don't do things I don't do this well enough sometimes on those days and it does not need to be a big a you know, episode or time frame that we as women allocate for ourselves. But it could be just having a cup of tea and making your favorite tea and just sitting down for five minutes and asking yourself the the three questions that you've just shared, which are going to make a profound change in the way we perceive. And really allowing those emotions to come up to the surface, but you know, still allowing a very gentle curiosity. And I always say when we don't judge ourselves, when we don't constantly beat ourselves up because of what has happened, if we allow ourselves the the moment to just, you know, see it like a toddler, like a child, and go, What's happening here? How am I feeling? What do I need? Where am I in this moment? and be okay with giving ourselves the permission to to ask for something that you need and don't feel guilty because I think women We guilt trip ourselves so much, like, no, I can't be feeling this way. And I know that firsthand because I'm so high functioning in a way that my body does not know any other way. My nervous system has been so driven in a way that this is my normal. And so a lot of the things that were normal to me I've had to unlearn and the narratives that have carried me through my thirty-nine, I was thirty-nine when I was diagnosed, and so a lot of that had to be approached with a lot of curiosity and I think you mentioned earlier compassion. I think I lack a lot of compassion for myself. I have a lot more compassion for other people, but just not myself. yeah, and I can see that you you know, you're agreeing with me and yeah, so profound. Thank you for sharing that, Dee.

Diante Fuchs (Dee): Yeah, I think, you know, compassion really is the cornerstone of mental health, self-compassion. And I think everybody struggles with this to some extent. It there's a there's a range of reasons why I'm not going to dive into all of that right now, but I think it's worth saying that there are some people who will not know how to have compassion for self because they've never witnessed it ever. You know, some people come from really difficult backgrounds where that wasn't taught that ability to be caring and nurturing. They didn't see it, they didn't experience it. So it can be very hard when we say to people, just have some more self compassion. Be kinder to yourself. Put yourself first. Ask yourself what you need. And they're like, this is not something that they've ever learned how to do. So it feels really scary and really unfamiliar. So if there's anyone that feels that way, I always say, Well, you can borrow compassion, right? And the way that we do that is because even though you may not have witnessed it or experienced it for yourself. There is a part of you, unless you are a psychopath or you're dead, that is caring for other, you know, living organisms, whether it be the puppy or a kitten or your own children or even just your plants, your house plants, there is a caring part of every human being that has compassion for something else. So you can think about what would you tell that plant or that pet or that child that is going through a difficult time? What would you tell them? And then you can borrow that compassion that you'd have for them and you can turn it inward. And that is really important. But there was one something else that I just wanted to add there, because you were talking about you know, that kind of pressure that we put on ourselves to to be a certain way, and and particularly with women. And I think when we're talking about the anxiety that's ordinary, especially in the face of a cancer diagnosis. There's an element there of being able to allow that to be present. And then there's also that fear that goes, but what if this stress makes my health worse? I'm gonna say that feeling anxious and allowing that to process is actually really healthy. It's the resistance of that that's gonna cause more trouble for you because that's the stress response that we put ourselves in about the anxiety that we're experiencing. But also these three things that we do: this I should be, I must or must not. And I have to. When we say any one of those three things to ourselves, we are automatically putting ourselves in a stress response. Because when you say I should be, then you are saying the fact that you're not means you're unacceptable. And if we feel unacceptable, because that's part of our, you know, all the one of the two things that we want. Then that is a threat to our existence. Because if we're unacceptable, people won't love us. And if they don't love us, then we'll be cast out. If we're cast out, their safety and numbers will die, right? So effectively, it is in our interest to be acceptable. So if there's any point in your life where you're feeling unacceptable, that's going to ping your alarm of anxiety to get you to pay attention to it. So if we're saying I should be better or I should really be able to get up and cook tonight, despite the fact that I feel like crap, then we're saying the fact that I can't makes me unacceptable. So now immediately we're shifting into a stress response because there's a threat. If we're saying I have to or I must or must not, then there's an implication on the other end of that that if you don't, or if you do, if you're saying I must not, then that's also unacceptable. And then we put ourselves back into the stress response. Plus, we're trapping ourselves by not giving choice. And so again, your body and your brain knows that if you do not have an escape, that that's dangerous for you. So it is going to ring the alarm of anxiety and put you into that fight or flight really quickly anytime that you believe there's no escape. And we trap ourselves with no escape when we say, I have to, I must, I should. There's no choice there, right? So, you know, my advice to listeners, or rather my suggestion, is if you're in the space of worrying about stress and what that's doing for your life or your health, the first place you can start is just looking at the words that you're using for yourself. And any time that you're saying I should, can you just change that to I could? And if you're saying I have to, can you rather say I get to? And if you say I must, can you rather say I want to? Yeah. Just those three gives you choice.

Katherine Froggatt: And it's such a profound shift in our energy by the change of three words. Yes. And I I really challenge this for everyone to try it for fit and for size, even though you may not really align to it. Some women that I work with are very, very hard. Like it could be a farmer's wife where they have no other boundaries, they're very strict in their lifestyle, you know. And it's it's just we gridlock ourselves to a certain framework and it's so rigid, but because it's scary. It's scary when I function outside of this framework. And I know this is not gonna happen everyone. I mean it's not gonna happen overnight, you know. Honestly, hand on heart, I've struggled with it for years and years and years and it's unlearning a lot of that. But where we are and the magic will happen, is that we gift ourselves the opportunity to try for size. Just try it, just have a play. I always tell my clients, it does not matter, it's not a per you know, we don't it's not right or wrong. It's an exploration of what would be the next steps for you. And I always say and the best advice I've ever received from my surgeon is Katherine, don't plan too much and too far ahead. Take a day at a time, a week at a time, and that's as far as it goes. And if you don't have a week, can you take hours? That's fine. But just sit with that and be okay with it. And and I think that was profoundly a huge shift for me emotionally, because I function in such a strict framework of what I know myself to be, the person I am. My identity, and all of that has changed and shifted ever since the diagnosis. So I just I just want to say to all listeners that are tuning in, this will change. micro changes would work profoundly over the next couple of months or weeks or years for you, wherever you are on your journey. and there is a way out. And so leading into my second last question, Dee your ease methods. So please tell me what it is and how does it serve differently for women that you work with?

Diante Fuchs (Dee): Yeah, amazing. So the ease method is really it's the big it's four steps basically to undo our resistance to anxiety. So if we're talking about stuck anxiety, then that's anxiety about anxiety. So how do we move out of that? And absolutely I believe you can use the ease method for any stuck state that you find yourself in. It doesn't necessarily have to be anxiety, but the first E stands for empower. So that is really about understanding what it is that's going on for you. When you are having an emotional response of any sort, it's right there in the name. It's an emotional response. So we are responding to something. The emotion itself is not the beginning and the end of it. There is something else that is needing attention beyond that. So when we empower ourselves with anxiety, we begin to understand what is it alarming us about? What do I need to pay attention to? Also, understanding what it's doing in your body, you know. Anxiety is there to keep you alive. So its experience cannot be the thing that kills you or harms you. And people often get hung up with this because they're like, well, I've been anxious for so long. It's really not good for my health or my system. And I'm like, well, it isn't bad for your system. It's the things that you're doing to cope with it that are bad for your system. So when people reach for, you know, alcohol or they're not sleeping well because they keep themselves awake and they want to do things that, you know, to distract themselves or it's all those additional things that are causing havoc with the body. If we're just allowing ourselves to be anxious, it's not unhealthy for you. So that's empower. So once you have a better sense of where it's coming from, you don't have to feel so afraid of it, right? And that's also understanding that it's not a disorder. It's not a mental illness. It doesn't mean there's something wrong with you because all those feelings and thoughts are going to cause more anxiety about anxiety. So once you have that information we can move away from the fear and that allows us to allow the anxiety. So that's the A of the ease approach. And it really is about stopping all that resistance and all that fighting and just allowing the feeling to be there and to process because it will subside. And sometimes there's some strategies that we need to put in place to allow that to happen because we're often afraid. People have lots of blocking beliefs when it comes to this sort of thing. They sometimes believe like I said before, anxiety will just get worse. It's the thing that's harming them. They're gonna go crazy if they just allow it to be there. They're gonna stop functioning. I mean, someone even told me the other day they're gonna forget how to speak English. That's how anxious they are. And I was like, you will not forget how to speak English when you're anxious. But there's a blocking belief, right? So we need to work with some of the stuff that comes up that stops us from allowing ourselves to feel the way that we do. And again, if we're if we're using this approach with other feelings, so for example, sadness or grief, then again. You will have some blocking beliefs as to why you will not allow yourself to feel those things, right? Am I weak? Nobody wants to see this in me. I need to be better for my kids. Those are our blocking beliefs. So we need to allow it. Once we're able to allow it a bit better, then we move into S, which is the S and the E's method, and that's just shifting. Shifting is really about shifting our focus off of how we feel. I think. Particularly with anxiety, we become very aware of our internal states because people are often monitoring how anxious they're feeling, what are their symptoms, what is their body doing. And I think particularly when you've had a health scare, there's that sort of internal awareness, we call it introsp going to be very, very high. But the realization is that your body has been making noises since the day you were born. It gurgles and it creaks and it moans and it groans and it, you know, as you get older, that even gets a bit worse. But you know, 99% of the time we're not actually paying all that much attention to it. We're just getting on with things. But when we have that heightened interception, we're listening to every noise that it's making. And then every noise is being seen as a threat. And it's sort of just when you're looking for stuff that's scary, you're gonna see it. And when you see it, it's gonna make you feel more scared. So that kind of shifting focus is really important. And it is about shifting, you know, what is it that I'm thinking? What are these what if questions that I'm asking? What are the shifting the questions that I ask myself, shifting the words that I use, like from should to could. There's so many things that can shift that will help us. And then finally the last E of the ease method is to engage. Because a lot of people will have avoided so many things, particularly when they're anxious. But again, if you're feeling anything and you don't feel like you're good enough, you're going to avoid life. So the aim here is really to get back out there and engage because when we avoid doing the thing, we're actually confirming with our nervous system that that thing is dangerous and we can't cope. Where the reality is actually you have got what it takes because you have survived a hundred percent of your worst days. So you actually have all the evidence in the world to prove that you are strong enough and resilient enough to deal with the hard stuff. We don't have to avoid it. And when you put your nervous system in those spaces where it previously believed it was unsafe, and that can be as simple as asking for help, right? Some of us, I I know you resonate, I definitely resonate, find it really hard to just ask for help. It is like a scary, scary thing. But if I put myself in the position, so this is engaging, and I say, okay, I really need help and I'm going to use my voice to ask for it, and then nothing bad happens, your nervous system gets the opportunity to learn something new. So that next time it becomes easier to do that thing. So that's the four steps of the ease method.

Katherine Froggatt: Yeah. And I guess I I'm I'm I'm needing to ask this question. How would someone know that they have shifted? Right? How do they know they've managed to shift it and and get to engage? Because some women will be go I can't allow it, I get stuck at all, I can't do this.

Diante Fuchs (Dee): Yeah, yeah. It is a process. I will say that I had a beautiful conversation this morning actually with the client who I was saying to her, if I could hand you a trophy for, you know, accomplishing this final step, this would be the day that you receive it. Because she had been invited to a big concert, like a like a music concert, and she was sitting right at the top and she's got terrible vertigo and anxiety. And she attended the concert at the top and the vertigo hit hard because she was so high up. And then she started to panic. And then in the moment she was just like, okay, let me sit down and ask myself. You know, I have this strategy called A plus B equals C. So it's basically looking at the fact that C is your experience and A is the situation, the facts, B is what you're making it mean. And those two things are what create your experience. So she was able to kind of move through that and just allow herself to close your eyes and listen to the music. And be there. And she sat through the whole concert, even though her husband was like, if you feel uncomfortable, we can go. And she came out the other end to tell the story about how it was so intense, but it was so good. And often when I hear people making progress, they say things like, I tried, I went out, but it was so bad. It was so intense. The anxiety was so bad. Or I felt so horrible. And then they believe that that is the failure. So they undermine the fact that they actually did it. And they came out the other end and nothing terrible had happened other than a really uncomfortable feeling. So what they have now is real evidence that they can survive hard stuff. So when you get to the stage where you're going into the hard stuff, you're sitting through it and you're coming out the other end feeling so proud of how you manage that. That's when you've shifted, right? So the shift is recognizing I'm not ever going to arrive at a place where hard stuff doesn't happen. Or when uncomfortable emotions are not there, that doesn't occur. We're always going to be raw, messy human beings. But when we can be okay with that and come out the other end and go, my gosh, that was amazing. Look at me, I'm still standing. That's when you've shifted.

Katherine Froggatt: And that is so true because every single one of us, have gone through the hard stuff. And yes, I would be in a position where I can say the hardest stuff I've ever had to deal with is cancer. and all of the other childhood issues I've had to navigate as well. And I'm still sitting here, ten years on, having this conversation with you and having the ability on to understand and be validated that what I've experienced is what I had no words for is actually a thing that I've learned to navigate it, even though by fluke or by whatever, by luck, by chance, whatever, hard work, whatever you want to name it to be. If you're sitting there thinking, I I would never, you know, I'll never get out of this, I'll never be able to sh to to feel happy again, or I'll never feel 100% again. I want you to know those are the beliefs that you've been sort of conditioned to think they are true. But by us having this conversation today and through my own story with breast cancer, I want everyone to know that this is possible. This outcome of you navigating out of that state of whatever that you're navigating currently, it's not going to be your forever.

Diante Fuchs (Dee): Yeah. And when you get to that other end, you will see what a gift it was.

Katherine Froggatt: It sure is, it sure is. What a rich conversation, Dee. Now, before we wrap up, I knew that we were going to go on forever if I don't put a stop to it, and I know that there'll be more for us to talk about. in in my membership in breastwise and I know that we're gonna do more work together. But before we wrap up, I want to ask you one thing. it's two AM. A woman is lying awake, she's sweats, palpitations, she has a scan in a few days or maybe the the next day. And the results might have been there for her and she's not sure what to do. And her mind is in the worst place, right? What is the one thing you would say to her right now?

Diante Fuchs (Dee): What a great question. the response that I would always recommend that people do is a three-step response. Is first of all, when we're in that state of fear, it's 99% of the time it's about the future, right? So it's a story that we're telling ourselves in our heads, and largely it's got to do with those what if questions. So the very first thing we want to do is bring ourselves back to this moment right now. What is actually happening? What can we be certain about right now? The test results aren't there yet. And whatever story you're telling yourself about how you may or may not deal with it has not happened. So right now, right here, the certainty is whatever your facts are. When you've brought yourself back into this moment, the very next thing you need to do is help your nervous system to understand that right now we are actually safe. So we can do, you know, a breath reset, or you can do one of those grounding techniques, you the five, four, three, two, one technique, or any sort of nervous system reset that works for you. People have various strategies that they can use, like butterfly hugs, all sorts of things. So yeah, there we go. Beautiful. So do a bit of tapping, just help that nervous system to move out of sympathetic activation so that with the third step, you can actually address the story. Because it's the beliefs that we're running, right? Like I can't actually allow this to happen, I can't get sick again, I I won't cope with it, et cetera, et cetera. So that's all, dare I say, rubbish that you're telling yourself. Because as we've seen in this conversation, you actually do have what it takes to get through the hardest things. So can we now, now that our nervous system is slightly shifted and we're back in the present moment, can we now address some of that? Can we answer the what if question? Can we allow ourselves to see I do have what it takes? And then can we just let ourselves get to that moment, right? If we allow whatever is to be what it is and deal with it as it comes, that is our best course of action. You can't really affect any sort of future outcome from this moment, right? Like I can't eat tonight's dinner now at lunchtime. Do you know what I mean? It's not possible. So in the same way, you can't deal with your outcome in this moment. It's not possible.

Katherine Froggatt: Yeah, such wise words, Dee This conversation is exactly what I've hoped for. and I really just thank you because I know that you know, you and I we've been doing so much work together and I think that there is some strong alignment towards, where you are specialized in anxiety and where I help women with breast cancer diagnosis. So I just want to say thank you for such a rich conversation we've had today, and that you and I are gonna help women navigate this this state of real raw emotions, albeit scary, that we will come out the other end. so please tell me How can my listeners find you? Yeah.

Diante Fuchs (Dee): Amazing. You can find me either on TikTok or Instagram and my handle is just ease.anxiety. my website is the unstuckinitiative.com

Katherine Froggatt: Well thank you so much Dee. Thank you.

Diante Fuchs (Dee): Yes. Thank you, Katherine has been awesome. Thank you.