Reimagining Our Relationship with Anxiety | Elizabeth Shahid, LMFT

What if anxiety isn't the enemy?

In Episode 66 of Chatting with Slava the Jordanian, Dr. Slava Al Nubulsi welcomes back Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist Elizabeth Shahid for a deeply personal exploration of anxiety, culture, immigration, family expectations, and generational change.

Rather than asking, “How do we get rid of anxiety?” Slava and Elizabeth challenge us to ask a different question:

What is our anxiety trying to tell us?

Drawing from their Middle Eastern and Palestinian cultural experiences, they examine why anxiety and other emotional struggles can be difficult to name within traditional, family-centered cultures. Emotional distress may be minimized, expressed through physical symptoms, hidden to avoid appearing weak, or pushed aside in the name of family responsibility.

Elizabeth reframes anxiety through both a psychological and physiological lens. Anxiety is not simply something malfunctioning inside us—it is connected to the body's survival system and can function like an internal alarm telling us that something requires our attention.

The conversation also examines the immigrant experience: leaving familiar communities, navigating multiple cultural identities, carrying pressure to succeed, and sometimes feeling that questioning inherited beliefs means rejecting one's family or culture.

Slava gets personal, sharing experiences from growing up in Saudi Arabia and Jordan and exploring how guilt, belonging, expectations, family loyalty, and generational differences can shape the way people process emotional distress.

They also explore parenting and what can change when parents stop immediately dismissing a child's anxiety and instead become curious about what the child is experiencing.

This isn't a conversation about blaming culture or previous generations.

It's about understanding what we inherited—and deciding what still serves us.

From generational cycles and parenting to immigration, identity, uncertainty, and emotional regulation, this episode offers a culturally nuanced conversation about developing a healthier relationship with anxiety.

Maybe the goal isn't to never feel anxious. Maybe the goal is to understand what anxiety is communicating—and learn how to respond differently.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:04

Today, we decided to explore a different perspective, one that doesn't ask how do I get rid of anxiety, but instead asks, what is my anxiety trying to tell me? And to guide us through this conversation, we are joined by Elizabeth Shaheed, the family therapist who helps individuals and families build healthier relationships, not just with each other, but with their own emotions. Welcome back to another episode of Chatting with Slava the Jordanian. I'm your host STJ. And I just want to start with thanking Elizabeth for coming back. I know how busy you are, and I'm so excited about this episode because, as you know, I am a Palestinian-Jordanian American, and you are also Lebanese-Palestinian American. And we have mentioned in the past how our culture does not really recognize anxiety or any complex emotions. So I am very excited for this episode because I want to learn as much as I can, and hopefully, me myself come out of this episode knowing how to build a relationship with anxiety because I avoided it all my life and I'm what 57 next month, which is crazy. So thank you for coming back. Yeah, thank you so much for having me. I'm excited to talk about this too. All right, so let's start um diving into it. In your opinion, I just want to understand why families like mine struggle to accept anxiety. And how can we start having a healthier conversation at home when one of our family members, especially the young ones, is going through anxiety and how to pick up on the signs over the alarming signs?

SPEAKER_02 1:54

Okay, so this is a great question, but I have questions for you to ask about this. So I want to know what is it in your experience, or maybe in like maybe you've seen a pattern in other family members or other families, what in your experience, what is it that how do you think that people view anxiety? Like why is it such a a problem or like something that the families like don't want to talk about?

SPEAKER_00 2:20

So let me start with saying that the word anxiety, which is in Arabic, I don't think it exists until recently. So there's a word called Il Khalak or Tawattur. Tawatur meaning somebody that's not it really worried and in in and um having that racing thoughts that they can't focus. Tawatur. Tawatur meaning imbalance, right? But it refers to emotional imbalance. Al-kalak meaning that worrying. So when you worry a lot, so it's big lag bitwatr, right? If you worry so much you cannot focus on the task at hand, then you become dysregulated and you're not really balanced. But there is no word in Arabic that I know of that really translates to the right definition of anxiety. So that's number one, it does not exist in our language. So even if you are trying to express yourself or you're trying to reach to somebody to explain to them what's going on physiologically, chemically, psychologically, there is no word in Arabic that we can use to describe what we're going through. And in a scientific term or psychological term, that's number one. Number two, psychology and philosophy back in the day when I was growing up in Saudi Arabia was illegal to be taught in schools and universities. And there's no such thing as specializing or getting a degree in psychology in Saudi Arabia. I'm not sure if that changed, but all the Arab, the Levantine, all the Arab countries or even uh all around the Islamic world, I think it is recognized. But that's that happens to be the setup where I where I grew up. Number three, it's all about the tribal connection. You know, if you have your solid tribal connection and you have a very strong family relationship, you keep it within the family. And I think the Western world used to conduct themselves or conduct itself that way in the past. That don't, you know, don't hang your dirty laundry in public, don't talk about this, keep it, you know, keep it within the household. Uh, don't share what happened at home with a stranger because those are strangers that might judge you, they might criticize you. You might you are representing the family name in a very bad light. So, because of that, we could not express ourselves outside the home or beyond the scope of the tribe or the or the family. And also spirituality, it really plays upon how we express ourselves in which is praying, basically. So when I used to go ask my mom, mom, I'm so nervous about the exam, and I I pat I will panic. I was yeah, an a student, but there was a lot of pressure on me too, as an Arab female girl finishing high school, going to college. And my mom used to used to say, Go pray, go pray, which is meditation. I get it, but it's it's more than that. Do you know what I'm saying? Like, I expected or I wanted to understand why I am feeling this way, why am I being triggered? What are the triggered? Why am I being disreguled dysregulated? And even if I say yes and go pray and try to meditate in this like really high anxiety level, it's really hard to calm you down. You need to calm down first before you silence everything and can get in touch with the divine or meditate or quiet things down. So I think those three, you know, tribal connection, really, really tight family, you know, bond, keep it in the family, keep it within the family, spirituality, and just the ignorance of of what anxiety is, you know, linguistically, even. You know, if you don't have a word that you can describe those emotions, how are you going to communicate that to the person in front of you? Or let's take it further than that. How can you even ask for help if you cannot actually express yourself? And I hope that answered the question.

SPEAKER_02 6:35

Oh me, this gave me a lot, yeah, to think about and to talk about for sure. Because, you know, something interesting and in some of the things I've read about was that in Middle Eastern cultures, um people will describe mental health. You know, maybe the way that the Western uh culture describes mental health is actually um many times in the in the Middle East described in physical sensations, you know, like heaviness on your heart or on your chest, or like, you know, talking about your breathing or like a stomach ache. Um, whereas um because because there maybe are no words, or um, maybe the culture has not created a space where you can kind of like identify exactly what this is, and it's hard to identify, it's hard to describe it. Um, so I I think that's interesting. Um and like what you said, you said like the word in Arabic is like a worry imbalance.

SPEAKER_00 7:32

Yeah, so Tawatur, it's the imbalance and khalak the worrying. So you are way too worried that you are imbalancing yourself. And I just want to go back to the physical symptoms too. The reason why we actually describe how we're feeling with physical symptoms, because being physically ill will grab people's attention because that's that's important. You know, your body is your temple, you take care of it, God created it. Exactly. So people will take it more seriously if you said, Oh, my chest hurts, or I'm you know, I'm I'm feeling nauseous, or I'm feeling like I'm gonna get sick, or like I can't breathe. That people will will actually help you because oh my god, there's something actually there's a physical symptoms that we can see that somebody is in distress, we gotta get them help.

SPEAKER_02 8:22

Mm-hmm. Exactly, yeah. And so yeah, it makes it easier to talk about these things. And then also you brought up um keeping things within the family and how like reputation is important, judgment or like avoiding judgment is important. Um, you know, and I think that this is just a cultural a way that a um a culture is set up. It's not inherently bad or wrong to do. Um, it's just set up in this way that, and then the coping skills that they provide is like spirituality or a doctor, you can address the stomachache, or um, you know, kind of even going out in nature. Whereas like here in our society, here it's like nature, we want to avoid it. We want to be inside with air conditioning, and so it's just kind of set up in a different sort of way, not inherently wrong, though. And let so I wanna I want to share with you though, um uh what in my perspective, what anxiety is, because um anxiety is a very natural thing, like you said in the very beginning. Anxiety is is um a survival skill, you know, way long time ago, back in the day when our ancestors were surviving off the land, buildings didn't exist, electricity didn't exist, uh, you know, we were living off the land. Um, if there was a threat that came around, you know, maybe we're walking around, we're gathering food, we're picking mint, we're picking whatever it is, we're picking, you know, and uh all of a sudden we see in the corner of our eye a bush that's starting to shake. And immediately our body releases chemicals that widen our eye, our pupils, so that way we can receive all the light we can so we can pay attention and look around and view our surroundings. Our our breathing starts to quicken so we can take in as much oxygen as possible. Our heart starts racing as fast as it can to bring that oxygen into our blood and to bring it throughout all of our muscles, and our muscles start to tense because it's getting prepared and ready for us to act. And it's so all of these things are happening, and if we were to pay attention to those things, it would be very uncomfortable. But in that moment a long time ago, we would use those things to help us pay attention. We'd look around, we'd decide, okay, where is the threat? Is it far enough away so that way we can use our our muscles that are tensing and our quickening heart and our quickening breath to to run away and get away from that lion, let's say? Or has the lion seen us and we have a weapon here that we're gonna have to use with our tense muscles and everything prepared to fight? Or is has the lion not seen us and there's a huge tree or a cave that we can hide in? Okay, and so this is the response we have. I'm sure you've heard of it as the fight, flight, or freeze response. And so in this situation, anxiety is very natural, it's helping us to survive this moment. In today's society, we don't have a lion that's a threat, but other things can be like perceived as a threat. And and and when that happens, sometimes it's harder to see, you know, if it's a lion, we're all like that lion is scary. Yes, I can agree. But when we're talking about relationships, when we're talking about uh being busy, our schedule, our money, our all these other things that that um everybody else has different opinions on and different experiences with, um, we can it can be very easy to judge ourselves and our experience with those things. And it's harder to kind of pinpoint those things when there's so many different things bringing that chemical release that's happening. And really, the chemical release is just if we can look at it like it's a message that tells us that something is not sitting well with us, that something is uh that we need to change something, we need to do something to change whatever it is that's making us uncomfortable, it can kind of change our perspective on that chemical release that's very uncomfortable.

SPEAKER_00 12:21

I agree with you 100%. I think you put it simply and and beautifully setting this the stage up for this conversation. But I just wanna answer that as a let's say I'm an Arab mom back in Jordan, Palestine, Lebanon, Syria, whatever, and my 12-year-old is constantly panicking from like, I don't want to meet my family, I don't want to go to a birthday party, I don't want people around me, I just want to be in my room, you know, you hearing that, right? So there is a chemical imbalance that the child is going through, but the judgment is oh my God, I'm embarrassed, you know, that my child is acting uh this way to the point that that child is rejecting being with their family, you know, rejecting going to the birthday party. What are the people gonna say about me? So that's number one. Number two, or the different scenario approach, oh, this child is so, you know, so imbalanced, so dysregulated, I'm ashamed taking that child to the birthday party because they're gonna make a scene and they're gonna be very fussy, and the whole family is gonna ruin the whole family's occasion. It's all about serving the family. And what does that do? That child is gonna receive that. And I've seen it. I've seen it, you know, verbal abuse in my family and extended family. I've seen physical abuse, and you know, because that child just couldn't really express themselves. There's nothing wrong with them. We just need to step back, stop, step back, calm down, and figure out what are the triggering events that cause. Is it emotional or is it you know psychological? Is it even, you know, that child is just born with high cortisol levels, you know, the adrenal glands are fatigued, whatever, and it's causing that fight and flight constantly with that child. But unfortunately, sometimes in my generation, back home, that would be the case. Either it's like, oh my God, I'm so embarrassed, you're staying home, or oh my God, how could you and how dare you not be part of the family? And it's all about you, you being so selfish because you are, you know, serving or catering to these emotions. You have a duty to do to attend that birthday party and make me proud. Do you know what I'm saying? So that puts a lot of pressure on us. And then what we do, we'll poo-poo our emotions, we just, you know, um just shove it under the carpet, we'll deal with it later. But before you know it, that anxiety is just gonna grow and grow and grow. And even if we were successful enough to suppress it enough, I my anxiety surfaced in, you know, post-menopause. I just could not control it, right? It's not like it to it's a very to a very low degree, but I just notice it because I did not recognize what was going on. Then with professional help, you know, I realized like, oh my God, I've been carrying this all my life, but because of the pressure of responsibility and duty and dedication and being busy trying to make a life for myself as an immigrant, I just, you know, tucked it away somewhere. And now menopause or postmenopause, they there's no room for that. Forced you to look at it. Exactly. Menopause alone is just a black hole of emotions. So what did it drag with it? It's everything that I have been tucking away and that just surfaced. And for me, being it's like, oh my God, I'm a mature adult, a professional, a business owner, I can't be feeling this way. Yes, I am because I didn't deal with it back then, because the way we were programmed to just suppress it, turn it off, hide it, because it's an embarrassment. It's a exactness. Yeah, you are enough because you cannot face your emotion. Those are just emotions. Physical symptoms, you get cared for, right? But emotions, you are weak enough. You can't, those are just emotions. How can you not control your own emotions? And that's the attitude we get, and that's we that's how we shut down, and you end up with more complicated, you know, conditions, more serious episodes, and you know, it's just you go down the rabbit hole, basically.

SPEAKER_02 16:38

How do you think it would be different for that in that situation with the mom and the daughter who's saying, I don't want to go to this family function? How do you think that conversation would have gone differently if the mom had had this understanding of anxiety being a chemical release and a body as a something, a function in the body, and even natural as a as a signal to the child or even to the mom about that tells them. How do you think that conversation would have gone differently?

SPEAKER_00 17:06

I think with a different environment. Um, because remember, I, you know, I'm not downplaying parents' role, right? But our but our parents were so busy surviving too, you know what I'm saying? Because the way they transfer the power to, you know, with that attitude is that's how their parents raise them. That's how their grandparents raised them. So it's a transfer of power of that kind of you know, just cyclic um approach or style of deal of dealing with anxiety. So if that parent, my parent, for example, break the mold and say that no, I did not like how my generation dealt with it, I'm gonna start paying attention to triggering events. I'm gonna try to pay, I'm gonna start paying attention to my child's pattern of behavior to trying to figure out is it a learned behavior or is it a chemical imbalance? And then when that child gets triggered and dysregulated, then I'm gonna sit down with that child and say, okay, let's break it down, have a conversation. That's all I wanted, honestly. I did never ask for a therapist or I need to go to the hospital or I think I'm dying, you know, that panic attack. I just want to have a conversation. Do not ignore me, right? Because it's not ignoring is rejection. And nothing worse, I'm saying it right now, there's nothing worse for an Arab offspring to be rejected by their family members. That's that pay attention and just acknowledge that I'm having a hard time. That's all I'm saying. But even that we never got because my parents will look at us like, you know, Slava, I got a million things to do. There are more important things than you right now, right? The house, the kids, the family, the reputation, the party. And you need to get over yourself. Exactly. You need to get over yourself, you're not that important, and that's also that's how it diminishes our value uh and our role in the community. Okay, I don't matter, then I'm just gonna move on. You just you're just moving on with the herd and hope for the best. And unfortunately, that doesn't work, it leaves you with a lot of scars.

SPEAKER_02 19:17

Yeah, for sure. And I like how you were talking about um that that's how their parents dealt with it and their parents dealt with it. And and and I I was thinking about that when you were first originally telling the story, and that even the mom in the scenario was experiencing anxiety about what people think and judgment, so much so that it was kind of like taught to the kid. It was, it was a it was a um a lesson that they're learning to hide their feelings, to like say this is not so important, to minimize how they're feeling, and then just kind of like pretend, or until maybe one day later in the future they go, I can't avoid this anymore. This is something I need to pay attention to.

SPEAKER_00 19:54

It's it that's true 100%. But another message that they're giving you that you are not better than our ancestors. What makes you better than our ancestors for you to require more attention or a different way of dealing it? It's it's all it's all about honoring the family, it's all about honoring and the ancestry. You're not better than my mother, you're not better than my grandmother, especially with a female. It's a lot of pressure on us. So with with the male, maybe it's like they kind of baby them and kind of like protect them because it's the the heir to the throne, so to speak. It's a line of succession. Yeah, but for a female. Can you ask you about that?

SPEAKER_02 20:33

Yeah, sure. When you say, um, when you say that, and I I know this experience, I kind of I have this, but I want to ask you what it w more details about. So when when when they would say um um you're not better than, what how are they perceiving what you were doing as um, or I don't know if it this is you in the scenario, but how are they perceiving what this person is doing um as thinking they're better than the ancestors?

SPEAKER_00 21:04

Because you are asking for a different way of dealing with the situation. Like I am I want better than you ignoring me. You were ignored by your parents, you were ignored by your grandparents, I need more attention than what you got. I am requesting a professional to take care of me, I am requesting time to be heard, I do matter because if my mom says, I did not matter enough for my parents to set aside a time from their, you know, their farmers, right in Jordan, from their farming, and they were out there in the dust and the heat and the sun, and the women are preparing the food, the women are harvesting, the men are herding on the horses all day long. And then it's time for them to rest and have time for themselves. themselves and feed and and and wash up and spend time with the family, there's no time for you because the whole family is working so hard in the fields to keep this family surviving. You're just a member, one member of the family, that there is no time for you because everybody's working real hard. It's all about the collective, it's all about the greater good of the collective, greater good of the family. So you are saying that I need to stop everything that I'm doing because you're having a hard time, and you're telling me that I cannot face the family, or I'm not in the mood to go to a birthday party because something happened in your personal life that triggered you, get over yourself. That's the attitude. So for me to insist on no, no, no, I want better than that, that's not good enough. They the the way that you were taught, and that's that's probably they didn't know better. The way you were taught to take care of this situation is not good enough, and I want something better, that is an insult to my mom. That's an insult to my ancestors, that's an insult to my grandmother and her mother. You know I'm saying, and on the other side of the coin that she is actually facing a reality that my daughter is weak enough that she cannot handle herself, that she has no self-awareness that this is not all about you. She doesn't have social awareness, that she has an obligation, she has to go to that birth birthday party. So my daughter is weak. That's another slap across the face that I give gave birth to a weak individual that's going to be carrying the name of that family. So it's a lot, a lot of pressure. And I hope this answered your question. Yeah. What's that? I hope that answered your question. I said.

SPEAKER_02 23:44

Oh my gosh, yeah. I mean, yeah, this is this is this is heavy messages that that you would be receiving about not just like right now in this moment of like having to go to this family event, but also like carrying the weight of the past and the future. And I mean, that's a that's a lot of pressure for sure. Um, you know, I wanna I I I want to make sure that this is not like something that's like generalized, because I do believe there are a lot of families in our culture that also kind of understand the slowing down and the giving um like honoring honoring that feeling that maybe they didn't have words of anxiety and they didn't have um, you know, things like uh, you know, uh pharmaceutical medicines that were as easily accessible, or you know, the understanding of the scientific experience that's happening in our bodies or in the medicine or in the in our brain, but they still understood that kind of slowing down and honoring a moment with a person is important, and that even like a simple, you know, everybody spinning sitting around in the field, chopping up a vegetable right there in the field after sitting in the shade together with each other could be healing for them, and allowing space for music and expressing how you feel through that music, um, you know, and and hearing someone else's crying and mourning is healing and is medicine. And at the same time, there are many families in our culture who do exactly what you're describing, which is this is too much for me. I don't know how to handle this, um, and uh I don't have time for this because there's so many other stressors going on. I mean, the the that is very real pressure um to experience. Um but it doesn't erase that this is a human experience that we all have.

SPEAKER_00 25:41

And yeah, and it's it brings me to this to the point that and that's how so when you're starting your life relating to anxiety as something bad, you know what I'm saying? But also you care, you pluck yourself from your home world and you're going into the new world. Are you kidding me? The whole journey is an anxious journey, you know. So, I'm not knowing what's there. Exactly. You are diving into a huge field of unknown without the tribal connection, without the family support. Some some of us don't even speak the language, and they come here hoping that they have some kind of a relative or a friend they are sponsored by that will teach them the language, show them the ropes. But but can you imagine the anxiety? So if you are starting your journey with anxiety is bad, but again, for an immigrant going into the new world, anxiety needs to be used as a tool to protect yourself and survive. So you are diminishing the value of that tool, and you're sitting around, it's like, okay, uh, I'm not sure what to do with this situation because I need to survive because I sacrifice a lot coming to this country. I want my family to be proud. That's all you're thinking about. I want my family to be proud back back home, and I want to show my family that I made the right decisions, that my life in the new world is better than the life I would have had in the old world. But diminishing the tool of anxiety or poo-pooing it, or it's like, no, I I can't use that. Anxiety is something shameful. Like, how are you gonna how are you gonna survive? And I have no idea. I know so many families. I've been in this country 38 years. I so many families that they're the second general first generation American, second generation American has such a high anxiety level, and the parents are like, I don't know what's going on. I'm like, people, really, you need to go back in time and kind of retrace your steps, how you got here, because you taught us that anxiety is is is weakness. Do you know what I'm saying? Anxiety is and and going anxiety is not something that you should use to survive, which is it is that definition of anxiety is fight or flight. It's a survivor mode. But going out to your point, even taking a pill, that's a huge no-no in my in my culture. You taking medication to deal with your emotions, how weak are you that you becoming dependent on pharma or a prescription to take care of your emotions? That's that's a big no-no.

SPEAKER_02 28:16

Yeah, yeah, for sure. You know, I like that you brought this experience of immigrant um up because it's different. Um, because many people consider like the trap the the the removing yourself from your home place and coming into a different, totally new culture is a trauma. I mean and it I mean, there's so many unknowns, there's so many um uh just everything is changing. Every langu, like you said, language, just like the mindset of people, you know, it's everything has changed. And and for many immigrants who come here hustling and working so hard to get to the place they imagine themselves to be here, um, they they might consider from what I've seen, they might consider that pausing to consider your inner experience, your emotions or your soul sort of thing. They might consider that to be a privilege to be able to pause, you know, because if you're hustling and there's no time and you gotta keep food on the table, and you've got to keep everybody under under checks, and we gotta make sure you're fitting in with your people, and I'm fitting in with my people, and this is having this, but also at the same time, there's all these messages saying you don't fit in, this is this is not gonna work. There's a fear of all of this. Pausing to consider how you feel is a privilege, and it's not that um it's not that this is like inherently wrong, but like we talked about how that could kind of pass from one generation to the next generation, that experience can really be telling about what happened two generations ago um that's now affecting me today, and not knowing where it kind of came from, um, can be kind of confusing or even like judge like judgmental. It can be very easy to judge yourself with another.

SPEAKER_00 30:07

No, uh it's it's also the comment that you get, oh let's see if you well, you think you can do better, or let's see if you can do better. Like you can you you you think you know better than our ancestors. You're just a little young punk, you know, 25, 23 years old, that you know, you've you you ran away from the pressures that they are dealing with in the in the home world. That maybe they don't want to even exactly, exactly. So when I used to go, for example, and we used to go to Jordan to vacation. We used to play outside in in the alleyway and stuff. And in in some of the Jordanian kids, the the native Jordanian kids, they will throw rocks at us and they say, Go back to Saudi Arabia. You you are uh traitors, you left this country chasing oil money. Those are his uh these words I will never ever forget. I'm like, what are you talking about? It's like we stayed here for better or for worse for our country. We stayed here and we showed that we are more a nationalist than you guys are. But when the tough got going, you guys flipped and ran away to a country like Saudi Arabia that's very rich, jobs are available, money is available, it's all bougie, it's stable, you know, politically stable. Um, and and we are the ones that survived. So we are more a loyalist than you are. So that stigma alone, when I heard that at age 11 or 12 years old, the guilt, number one, is rejection. Number two, you're guilty. Number three, the shame. So I went to my mom, was like, why are people, you know, we came out bruised and and all dusty. And mom was like, What did you get into a fight? I said, No, these kids were throwing rocks at us, calling us names, calling us traitors, calling us like oil money chasers, calling us weak, you know, we don't want you here. You left this country. Why you're here, you you're here to vacation and spend the oil money that you got from Saudi Arabia. So these are children, these are 10, 11, 12-year-old kids that they can talk that way and they believe it to bully others, knowing that you know, what we're saying is gonna matter, it's gonna be impactful. So, like I said, it it was a ball of emotion. So when I went to my mom, told her she goes, go take a shower. That's all she said. And said, Mom, is it true? She goes, Don't worry about them. Those are kids, just ignore them, go take a shower, you're gonna feel better. And then she made me food and I sat down, ate food, and watched TV. So that just one of the so many examples that if this was my kid, I would sat them down and said, Okay, you need to look at the other side of the coin, right? You need to look at, we want, we pulled you out of here for a better future, for better opportunity. You need to appreciate that. We are privileged, but other people unfortunately don't have an access to resources or means to leave the country. Maybe they were they didn't have the money to leave, or they're not educated enough that Saudi Arabia will grant them a visa or grant them an employment contract because they could be just farmers or they own their own store, or you know, just Saudi Arabia didn't have use for them. You know, but no, that was not discussed, they were not spoken about because I think now being an adult, I think my mom was offended by that. So for her, if she sat down with me and broke it down, I would have discovered that she f did feel guilty leaving, right? Because you still got that pull. When you're in the new world, even just from Jordan Saudi is is is not you just travel south, it's like an hour. But just having pulling yourself from your home world to Saudi Ariba, very different culture, very different environment. Um, for her, she might have had to confine in me some of her emotions and feelings about her leaving her country. And she didn't want that. She just was maybe she was a shame. Maybe she she did believe it was a weakness, but you had to do what you needed to do to give your family a better life, right? Or a better opportunity. Exactly, right. Despite the circumstances, strong.

SPEAKER_02 34:16

She didn't want to reveal that to you that she was feeling emotions.

SPEAKER_00 34:20

Exactly. Or she needed considered weak. Exactly.

SPEAKER_02 34:23

So I wouldn't consider weak. I'm sure maybe you wouldn't consider weak. I wouldn't. No, I wouldn't.

SPEAKER_00 34:27

It's like, oh my god, mom, you feel the same way. Like uh make exactly help me understand that there's a reason why we're there. Because, you know, when you're a kid, you sometimes you wonder it's like, I wonder why my parents made that decision. I wonder why my parents did what they had to do. You you're just curious, right? But also, our culture puts you in your place. You're a child. You should not be asking those questions. You're a child. This is none of your business. You're a child, you need to be polite and have respect to your adult. And questioning, you are saying to them, I don't trust you, or I am doubting your decisions. And as a parent, that's that's a big no-no. Yeah. So moving on from your professional opinion, can we you know share with our audience the building a relationship with anxiety, right? Or healthy relationship with anxiety. What does that look like?

SPEAKER_02 35:30

You know, there's so many people out there who study anxiety and who have so many different ideas in different ways. I just want to say this is my way. As a marriage and family therapist in Alabama, I've studied anxiety, and so this is my way of my approach to this. And so for me, if I'm looking at anxiety as a natural experience, a reaction to something that feels like a threat, that that creates a different sort of relationship to anxiety than one where I'm trying to get rid of it. What it's a different relationship than one where I'm trying to suppress it and stop it from happening. You know, if you if you have a toddler or a pet or something and you take it outside your door and you shut it and you lock it, you know, that toddler, that dog, cat, whatever, is going to meow and bark and scratch and cry and bang at the door until it can be let in. And anxiety happens like that. And that as if you if you try to push it away and get rid of it, sometimes it comes back even harder and louder and more powerful than before. So if you kind of open that door, allow the toddler to roam in and to roam out, or the cat or the dog to roam in, it will it will leave and it will come back, and it will leave and it will come back, um or it can, it has a possibility of this. And anxiety is very similar. And so I um like to challenge people to look at it like that and to think if this is a natural thing that happens to me and my body, our bodies are kind of act as a thermostat. I get this from one of my favorite therapists out there, his name is Douglas Flemings. He talk, he writes about this, but our it can kind of act like a thermostat, and that when you turn up the thermostat to a certain temperature, it re the the temperature in the room will reach a certain threshold, it will heat up to a certain threshold, and then it will kick in the system to cool the space down until it reaches another threshold, and then the the the system turns off. And then once it reaches a certain threshold, and our bodies kind of act the same way. And if we can kind of feel these physical sensations of anxiety that happen to us and know this is a message, it's telling me something does not feel right within me, something in my environment does not feel right, something is going on, I need to change. I know that at some point that physical, uncomfortable physical sensation will eventually reach a threshold and start to decrease. We can kind of work with anxiety in a different sort of way. So for a lot of people, things like distraction, taking a walk, kind of getting a running away from the anxiety can be helpful for them. I like to challenge people to almost get closer to it. And it can be uncomfortable, it could be scary because people are like, oh my god, no, I don't want to feel it. I start I'm gonna start to panic. And and I challenge to say, Yeah, you you will feel your heart racing. That's what it does. You will feel, you know, your tensing of your muscles and everything. That's what should happen. And if you can kind of experience that saying, This is what anxiety feels like, and eventually I will get to the threshold where it does start, you will notice that it will start to change in your body. And you can kind of the more that you get used to this, the more, the quicker the threshold will get there and the quicker the the cooling will happen. Or the so I think coping skills can look different for everybody and how to deal with anxiety. Um, but I I wonder what it might be like for people out there listening who can kind of take this in and try that sort of idea out for themselves. What do you think when I say that?

SPEAKER_00 39:16

I I I love it. I think the the way I would summarize what you just said is to have options. You know, when you said open the door, let them come in and out. When when you're going through an anxiety or or panicky, it's like, oh my god, oh my god, oh my god, like there's something coming at me, and I'm, you know, I'm trying to get ready to do the fight or run away from it. Those are the options. Either fight it, like you said, really have a relationship with it, recognize it, and you know, get close to it. And that's what I like to do because I'm very, very task-oriented, very data and very analytical. For me as a dentist for 27 years, my job is to diagnose and and repair. Diagnose, restore, and repair, diagnose, restore, and repair to get you healthy. For for me, it's unhealthy just to poop a problem because it's it's gonna boil over. It's it's it's coming back, it's not going away, right? So when I decided to, but also part of me as a a uh a personality coming from the my home world, that that is not an option. You know, I'm saying you just you ignore it, it will go away. You ignore it, go away because that's what I was told. It's a muscle, right? It's a muscle memory from what my parents have taught me. And I didn't know exactly. I did not know about it. I was like, oh, you know, I might get hurt if I get close to the anxiety trying to figure out exactly what's going on. They taught me, ignore it, it will go away, but it's not going away. So you end up being trapped, you're limbo. It's like, okay, I am applying what I was taught, but I'm not getting the results that I'm looking for. So, what I love about what you said is give yourself options. And that's exactly what I wanted from my mom when I was like, I don't want to go to their birthday party. I just, I'm not feeling good. Could be maybe I it was like the time of the month. That could have been it. I was very emotional, but that was that's a whole different episode. We're not gonna talk about minister cycle or even female cycle. Oh my god, and my family, my culture. But you know, they did I all I wanted at that moment is like, okay, what you know, what's going on? Give me the option to say, I don't want to talk about it, or yes, I really want to talk about it. Or give me the option to say that I understand you're not feeling well, but trust me, it would be a really good distraction. And let's go for like 15 minutes. If you still feel the same way, we would leave. Just give me that option. But there was no option, it's either black or white. And and I agree with you, depending on your personality, you are gonna decide what kind of relationship you want to have with anxiety. Like I always say it, and I teach my team that humans are divided into the four personalities task-oriented, people-oriented, extroverted, introverted. So if you are task-oriented, extroverted kind of uh person, you're just gonna get just go in head head first, you're just gonna tackle that, right? If you are introverted, task-oriented, you're gonna just take your time, research it, do the data, understand it so you can deal with it. But if you are extroverted, people-oriented, you're just winging it. You're very spontaneous. I'm just gonna go see a therapist, I need a pill, just you know, very spontaneous. But 55% of the human race belong to the category of introverted people-oriented, and that group of people, very they want steadiness, they don't want change, don't rock the boat, everything is fine, just very, very quiet, um, ignoring things. I don't want to deal with this, I don't want to cause any waves. Um, let's let's move on. That's 55% of a human population according to the um the disc uh personality style model. So if 55% of humans don't want to rock the boat, and they're gonna try to ignore it and hate confrontation, you know, they don't like change, either minimal, minimal change or no change at all, then then those were, you know, my parents probably were part of that as far as anxiety is concerned. Does that make sense?

SPEAKER_02 43:17

Oh, yeah, change is very scary. Change is scary for all of us. You know, I think that there's probably a level of what how comfortable people are with tolerating the unknown in change. Some people find that exciting, some people find that like something that they actually seek. While it's some people, like you were describing, uh maybe are scared uh uncomfortable with with change. I mean, change is uncomfortable.

SPEAKER_00 43:43

Well, anxiety is the fear of the unknown. So if you're dealing with something that you know nothing about and you're fearing to be judged, to be rejected, to be criticized, that will make you the you know, the unknown is so huge, so anxiety level is really high. In the know, researching it or understanding it, or even when your child says, you know, I don't feel good, I'm I'm I'm very I'm nervous or whatever, having sitting down with a child just for five minutes and breaking it down for that child or to that child, then the child it becomes in the know, right? Yeah. The anxiety, so the unknown have shrunk, or we reduce the unknown. It's like, okay, now we identify it, we know about it, then let's let's either deal with it or we can deal with it later. So giving the options, being in the know, understanding what's going on, to me, that's a relationship I built with anxiety. I know I'm not sure if it's I don't know if there's a right way or a wrong way, or healthy way, unhealthy way.

SPEAKER_02 44:41

Well, you know, when when I heard you tell that story in the beginning, or like m like uh a moment ago, I was thinking you were because one of the things you said was I think something along the lines of like I didn't need answers or something like this that you even heard just saying, Let's just, you know, just giving you time, I thought, oh, you wanted connection. You wanted just someone to pay attention and to see you and to connect with you, and even just sitting down with you and maybe even holding your hand or even in silence giving you a hug kind of would signal something like, I know this experience, it'll be okay. Um, and so you know, like you said, like options that might work for you, and like sometimes it's not so much like even just like here's a coping skill to try. It it could just be a this is normal and it's okay, and I'm here, and we can go from from there to figure out what might work. Um, you know, I uh one thing you said was the fear of the unknown, and it made me think of this um this phrase, and at this time it's not coming to me, but I'm sure it will in a moment. Um it's the challenge um to challenge yourself with oh you said it's fear of the unknown. None of us can read the future, right? We can look at all the options, we can name a thousand different things, and still there might be something that happens that we could not have predicted. And so I think that the challenge really would be, or the question is, can we act even with uncertainty?

SPEAKER_00 46:24

Which we can and we do. Well depend I think it depends on your personality, you know, because uh the unknown it changes unknown, like you said. So uh every day, uh every hour on the hour, every single day, there's change. And God knows there's change around us, even especially these days. The whole world is changing. So, so so change is the unknown. Like, where am I going? What am I doing? How we're doing next. What's gonna happen next? Am I taking the right decision? Why am I doing it? Am I doing for myself? You know, so there's so many different varieties. So it really depends on your personality. Change is gonna happen because we evolve as human change, aging is change, right? Change. So we're evolving as human beings, right? Mentally, emotionally, um, and we're it's and it's going faster than I ever experienced in my life. So to keep up with that social media, what you know, Google, data, game thrown, AI now is taking over. It's like, okay, I don't know what to trust, I don't know what to believe, making that decision, even mental decision or intellectual decision or opinion decisions, we are doing it whether you like it or not, every hour, probably every minute of our day. So that's a lot of change. So if your personality, you know, we know as humans, change is eminent, right? It it has to, because you're evolving, right? And you're moving through time. But the difference is do you want control change? Do you want calculated change? Do you want spontaneous change? Or you want minimal change? So so going back to your comment with my mom is she actually realized my daughter is changing. You know, this is something new I never had to deal with. And who knows, maybe inside of her, she didn't know she didn't know how to deal with it. Or maybe, you know, my mom was very introverted, very task-oriented. She wanted either control change or calculated change, spontaneous change or no change, it's it's not acceptable. So when I came to her all of a sudden and dropped that kind of bomb on uh on her saying that I'm not gonna go, everybody's out of the door. It's like I I can't go, I panicked. It's just I can't go, I just don't feel good. For my mom, it's not calculated change and it's not control change. You know, so for her, it's like, oh, okay, I don't know what to do with it. The only way she knew how to tell me, let's go, let's go, basically. It's control. I gotta control my daughter. This is all calculated. We've been playing, we've been, you know, planning for this. She's gonna control, she's gonna go because she's my daughter. And me as a parent, I control my daughter. You know what I'm saying? Instead of saying, you know what, like you said, give me an option. I know you're not feeling good, slava, but this is not the time for it. Let's go. I promise you, if you don't like in 50, and she started doing that, believe it or not, when I got into high school. How did that change things for you? I don't know. I think she got older because my mom kept having kids and she was she was 41, maybe because of menopause too, because after her last child, she started the menopause process. When I was in high school, I think she started to see me as an equal. You know, I'm gonna one day I'm gonna be the matriarch of the family. And whether I proved myself, who knows? You know, in two different ways. I don't know how she looked at things from but from my perspective, it things have shifts shifted a little bit. It's almost like Slava's getting, you know, she's an adult. I should give her some respect and room. So she I I'm very introverted. I used to be antisocial. I wanted just to be home because I didn't, I don't, I don't like uncalculated change. So if somebody invites me, I had to go to a birthday party to one of my friends. My mom's like, you really should go. You need a break. It's like, no, I got so much to study. My mom's like, you gotta go change, you know. You have to learn how to how to build social skills. But being home, it it's not gonna prep prep you for the real world or for life. So I was like, mom, I don't, she goes, listen, and that's when she gave me the option. I think that's where I remember from is it promised me to go, but I will promise you in return that within the hour, if you just feel uncomfortable or you had enough, I get it, give me a call, I'm gonna send you the car, right? And then you can come home. But I stayed there the whole time until the cake was cut and the dinner was there, you know. But going in that birthday party, I had the option, and that calmed my anxiety down. It's like, I have an option to leave. I have out. Um, I didn't feel trapped, nor I felt rejected that okay, my emotions don't matter. You know what I'm saying? So yeah, that helped.

SPEAKER_02 50:59

And and in that moment, she was also acknowledging that you have feelings that might be uncomfortable enough for you to want to leave. And I don't know if that was the first time she expressed that she or or recognized that, but that was a moment where she did in a way.

SPEAKER_00 51:15

Yeah, she did, and I I felt like, oh, I'm kind of being elevated or promoted that I do matter. I'm not a kid anymore, number one. I was treated like an adult, I almost got treated like an equal. She got me, you know. Uh, I wasn't rejected, I wasn't judged, I wasn't criticized. So that brought my anxiety down because when you get rejected, you feel you are stuck in that the panic, right? It's like, why am I gonna reject it? And you just just beating yourself up. What's wrong with me? And you start analyzing yourself and the anxiety gets worse. But at that moment, I was like, okay, that maybe she's learning, you know. But but like they said, you kids, kids teach parents too how to deal with things, you know. And I think because maybe the time, you know, things were changing, and maybe she talked to her friends or she talked to her sister, who knows? That until this day, I have no idea where was so it could be hormonal, like I said, it could be emotional, but where and when the switch happened, all I know that I experienced the effect of that change, which was which was good.

SPEAKER_02 52:19

Yeah, yeah. Wow, that's such a cool story.

SPEAKER_00 52:24

Fascinating. All right, so my last question to you is that what would be your advice to families um that feel a family, not actually a family member that's going through anxiety, to the family that feel so uncomfortable addressing um, you know, anxiety? What is the advice to them? And because parents, they do a lot of, they get a lot of you know, not comments or stress like you're not dealing with this correctly, how could you do this to your child? So what's your advice to parents, especially immigrant parents, that they don't know better? Do they just release their child and say, you know, seek professional help if you can't deal with it? Or what are the other skills they can actually use to keep the relationship with their child? Because the last thing you want is for their child to give up on their parents and they have no relationship. You know what I'm saying? I think that might be one of the reasons my mom's like, okay, if I don't really kind of be kind about it, she might just l leave because I was going to the United States. She knew I was going to the United States for college, she might leave and never come back, and they didn't want to lose that relationship. So, what would be your advice to immigrant, especially Arab conservative parents in the United States dealing with a child that has anxiety?

SPEAKER_02 53:52

Hmm. I wonder if parents who are wanting to do something different with their child who has anxiety, they're probably already in the mental space where they care and where they want something to change. And so I imagine you know, some of the things we've talked about in this episode is connect connection, um giving options, um, trying something new, accepting change as inevitable. And I think those are all great ways to kind of use and take advantage of, you know, if something's not working right now, if you were to make some sort of change address it in a different sort of way, whether that means taking them to a mental health professional or trying a different sort of coping skill, like um having a conversation about what they're experiencing, or um taking a walk outside, or uh maybe leaning into spirituality if that's a change in how you might approach something, or um doing changing things up. And of course, a mental health professional can help you. And if parents are uncomfortable with the idea of medicine, they can always say, let's try other things before the medicine with their child. Um, and there's just so many possibilities, but I imagine that these parents coming in might already be kind of receptive to new ideas.

SPEAKER_00 55:22

Yeah, and and one of the I think the lack of resources internally with families as immigrant, because when you pull yourself out of big family structure in your homeworld, and you're coming to the United States, you have the parents and the kids. Back home, you know, if I'm acting up or I'm like, oh, I had I'm done with your slava, go to your grandmother's house. Go, she used to ship us to my aunt's house, her sister's house, go play with your cousins. But here there is the element of isolation too that you don't, yeah, you cannot rely on the family. And that's why a lot of immigrants start pulling their families from the home world, come over to America. You know, before you know it, you have the uncle and the aunts and the grandparents, because you need that structure and and you need that help. It's like free babysitting, basically. So if the kid is acting up, ship them to his grandmother or for a couple of days, or if you see your aunt, go to play with your cousins. Or, you know, we used to go. My mom used to send us either spend the weekend with my with her sister or my cousin who's acting up, come spend the weekend with us, just to just to change scenery or or have a better influence, like maybe the older sibling or the older cousins can actually influence them. But that's that becomes a challenge because that's what we call isolation in the immigration world. We're so isolated and you don't want to trust a stranger. It comes from it stems from also the whole tribal connection. I can't have a stranger look after my child. I wish my family was here because I trust it. Because you can you can leave us for a couple of days and you don't worry about it. We're fed, we're cleaned, we're you know, and we're we're having fun and exactly, exactly. And you know that going into a family member's house, there's they're not gonna be influenced with outside thoughts, you know. I'm saying, or you know, you it's safe, basically. You're not gonna come back with, I want this, I want that, I don't want my bed, I want to change my bedroom. There's none of that because you are within the family, that cocoon family, and it's and and the whole family operates for the greater good of the coalition, I call it, or uh, or the tribe.

SPEAKER_02 57:30

Yeah, I love that you brought that up because that's so true, is that like there's this fear of either like losing something within your family, losing the culture, losing the traditions, losing the way we do life, um, and also like the gaining of a new way of life that is inevitable. I mean, you you're kind of like living within this world of the family that's protected and almost like a almost like a paused moment in history of the of uh Jordan or where or Saudi Arabia, you know, in wherever you're at in the state, um or wherever. Um, but then also you're getting the experience in the world that you're actually in, the the the city and the town that you're actually in that is very opposite, and then that can be left to you kind of confused. And and the those coping skills that they might use back home don't work now because it's you've got conflicting um ways of being.

SPEAKER_00 58:29

Right. The belief system is different, your your values are different, so we you need to reassess the value. What served you now is not serving, it's it's not gonna serve you later. What served you before it's not serving anymore. I went through that process, you know, myself, but I think I would love to do a whole episode about how reassessing your family value, and then because there's such a huge baggage of emotions when that happens. You know, um the you just you feel the betrayal, letting go. These are my roots, that's all I know. How dare I change what my ancestors have taught me? But you have to be also selfish on the other side that you need to serve yourself because that your your life does matter. It's all about opposite of what exactly. Yeah, it's a very delicate balance between the new and the old and the home and in in the new world. And and it just you and that's how we immigrants end up with that duality of personality, you know, the multicultural competency that we can do this and that. We are this and that, not this one or that. Some of us they do, we do go through the challenge, like either I don't want that, I just want one personality, one culture. And that's really hard because again, with it, like I said, comes the the the feeling of betrayal, the feeling of of desertment. You know, I'm deserting my my my ancestry, you know, and the guilt, my god, the guilt is is huge. But thank you so much for coming, and uh, I hope we do another one um about about that. I would love to dig deep into that duality of personality and we can do some research and and introduce some data. But we have reached the end of our hour. As a reminder, these episodes are uploaded weekly on Spotify, Apple, and YouTube by the Mindset Mastery Moments. And this episode especially is part of the our special edition uh Discovering Palestinian Intellects. So if you have joined this, please like, share, and hit the notification bell. That way you won't miss any episode. And it's free. This community is sponsored by humanity and supported by everyday people's stories. So please find us, join us, support us, and as always, be kind. Thank you for watching and listening. Hope to see you next time. This is Slava the Jordanian.