Could You Guess If Your Stress Is Super Chill Or Super Crazy Ep 691

English Listening Practice: 8% In The UK Have GAD, Mostly Women

Struggle with nerves? Let’s unlock the mystery of anxiety while boosting your English. Dive into our latest English language lesson—no pills, just powerful words. Perfect your English and conquer fears. Ready to transform? Join us!

• ✅ Practical Psychotherapy Vocabulary 🧠
• ✅ Advanced Listening Skills 🔊
• ✅ Fluent English Conversation Practice 💬

Learn on the go with "Adept English" and grasp Generalised Anxiety Disorder, from symptoms to therapy—without popping a single pill! 🎧💊 No more anxiety over idioms, grammar, or pronunciation. 🎓

Why join us?

• 📚 Learn English for psychology with real-world phrases.
• 🤝 Embrace British culture and language.
• 🎧 Perfect your listening with our listen and learn system.

✔Lesson transcript: https://adeptenglish.com/lessons/english-listening-practice-generalised-anxiety-disorder-understanding-and-vocabulary/

It's not stress that kills us, it is our reaction to it.
⭐ Hans Selye

Unlock the secrets of the mind while sharpening your English skills! Dive into our latest podcast with Hilary, a seasoned psychotherapist with 23 years of expertise. We're peeling back the layers on Generalised Anxiety Disorder (GAD)—a topic as prevalent as it is misunderstood.

With Adept English, you'll not only master the language but also gain insights into a condition affecting millions. Get ready to transform your English learning with real-world vocabulary and contexts. This isn't just an English lesson; it's a window into human psychology. Tune in now and change the way you learn forever.

No need to hurry. No need to sparkle. No need to be anybody but oneself.
⭐ Virginia Woolf

Speak English with confidence and ease—join our lesson and transform your English and mental health know-how today! 🌟 #SpeakEnglishFluently #AdeptEnglish

More About This Lesson

Dive into the world of English and psychology with Adept English! Our podcast, featuring Hilary—a psychotherapist with over two decades of experience—explores the topic of Generalised Anxiety Disorder (GAD). It’s a lesson in English and a deeper look at a common mental challenge. Learn English the natural way, through real conversations about real issues.

You don't have to control your thoughts. You just have to stop letting them control you.
⭐ Dan Millman

Things you will learn from listening to today's English listening lesson:

1. You learn real-world vocabulary.
2. You improve understanding of anxiety.
3. You get insight into Talking Therapy.
4. You practice listening to medical terms.
5. You engage with British English.
6. You discover anxiety management.
7. You hear psychological expertise.
8. You can practice our Listen & Learn method.
9. You are immersed in British culture.
10. You gain from free learning resources.

Benefits of our listen & learn approach to learning

• Learn English Naturally: Improve your language skills with real-world examples.
• Understand Anxiety: Get to know about anxiety and how to manage it.
• Cultural Insight: Gain insights into British culture and medical English.
• Expert Knowledge: Benefit from a psychotherapist’s expertise on GAD.
• Enhanced Listening: Sharpen your listening skills for better fluency.

Key Points:

• Real-world Vocabulary: Learn English words used in daily life and psychology.
• Simple Explanations: Difficult psychology terms made easy.
• Dual Learning: Improve English while learning to manage anxiety.
• Cultural Understanding: Learn words related to British culture and healthcare.
• Confidence Building: Grow more confident in your English with every lesson.

No pills, just words! Learn about English & talking therapy on our podcast. 🗣️ #MentalHealthMatters #EnglishLearning

Stress is an ignorant state. It believes that everything is an emergency.
⭐ Natalie Goldberg

By listening to our podcast, you'll not just learn a new language, but also understand a condition that affects millions worldwide. Our lessons break down complex ideas into simple parts, making learning enjoyable and easy to follow. You'll also pick up new strategies to handle anxiety, which can make your learning even more effective.

Embrace our #AdeptLearning method and discover how our 'Listen and Learn' system can skyrocket your English fluency and cultural know-how. Are you ready to boost your English and master the secrets of the mind? Listen, learn, and leap forward in your English fluency journey. Subscribe to our podcast now and start a learning experience that changes lives. Let’s conquer anxiety and English together!

Questions You Might Have...

Embark on a mind-tuning voyage with our podcast as your compass, navigating the murky waters of anxiety with the beacon of British English guiding you to the shores of clarity and calm.

1. What is Generalised Anxiety Disorder (GAD) as discussed in the Adept English podcast? Generalised Anxiety Disorder, or GAD, is a common condition affecting around 8% of people in the UK, especially women. You feel anxious about various things, more than most people, almost as if the anxiety is there regardless and attaches to normal life situations.
2. How can the Adept English 'Listen and Learn' method help me understand psychological terms like GAD? By listening to the Adept English podcasts, you're exposed to complex terms like GAD in a real-world context. This method helps you learn the meaning naturally and remember it better, just like in this podcast discussing GAD.
3. Why does the podcast host discourage medication for treating GAD? The host, Hilary, suggests that while medication might help with extreme anxiety in the short term, it's not ideal long-term. Medications like benzodiazepines can, over time, increase anxiety. Talking therapy is recommended as an alternative to understand and manage anxiety without medication.
4. What are some symptoms of Generalised Anxiety Disorder? Symptoms include edginess, tiring easily, impaired concentration, irritability, and difficulty sleeping. These signs indicate a medical condition that may fit the diagnosis of GAD as per the DSM-5, a manual by the American Psychiatric Association.
5. How does talking therapy help with Generalised Anxiety Disorder according to the podcast? Talking therapy explores underlying causes of anxiety, such as past experiences or fundamental beliefs. It helps develop better strategies for managing anxiety and encourages facing fear-inducing situations gradually to learn they're not as threatening as believed.

Most Unusual Words:

• Psychotherapist: A person who helps people deal with mental and emotional problems by talking.
• Generalised: Not specific, affecting many parts of something.
• Anxiety: A feeling of worry, nervousness, or being afraid.
• Diagnosis: Finding out what illness someone has by studying their symptoms.
• Symptoms: Signs that show there is an illness or problem.
• Edginess: Feeling nervous or tense.
• Fatigue: Feeling very tired.
• Impaired: When something is damaged or not working well.
• Irritability: Getting annoyed easily; feeling irritable.
• Context: The situation or environment in which something happens.

Most Frequently Used Words:

Listen To The Audio Lesson Now

Transcript: Could You Guess If Your Stress Is Super Chill Or Super Crazy

Want to learn about 'Anxiety' as a medical condition?

Hi there. Are you interested in the human mind and keen to practise your English listening skills at the same time? Well, I've got a great podcast for you today. I've got 23 years professional experience of helping people with psychological problems. And today I'm going to talk about a psychological problem that is as common as it is complex and that is anxiety.

By the end of this podcast, you'll have improved not only your English skills, but also your understanding of this particular type of anxiety. I'll give you real-world vocabulary and a real-world context for your English.

Hello, I’m Hilary, and you’re listening to Adept English. We will help you to speak English fluently. All you have to do is listen. So start listening now and find out how it works.

Be free of anxiety - without pills or medication!

And stay with me until the end of this podcast and I'll talk about how as a psychotherapist, I might work with 'Generalised Anxiety Disorder' just with Talking Therapy, no medicine or pills.

So one of the very common problems that people suffer from that I'm covering today is 'anxiety'. That's A N X I E T Y. And there are many different types of anxiety. But today I'm going to look at a common diagnosis, which we call 'Generalised Anxiety Disorder' or GAD, G A D.

This is so common that you probably know somebody who would fit this diagnosis, or you may have these symptoms yourself. Let's find out.

Do you know how best to use this podcast for English language learning?

But first things first, do you know what's different about our Adept English podcasts? Well, it's our unique 'Listen and Learn' method and it's really important to make the most of our content and to know what to do with it. So we offer a free course called The Seven Rules of Adept English. And this teaches you how to learn a language and how to use our content to improve your English language skills.

Sign up for this free course and you receive seven videos, giving you lots of advice on language learning. So that's The Seven Rules of Adept English available on our Courses page at adeptenglish.com.

The course is free, so you have nothing to lose and a lot to gain! Your English language learning may happen much quicker once you've done this course.

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Is 'too much fear about lots of things' the right way to define Generalised Anxiety Disorder?

Let's tackle today's topic then, Generalised Anxiety Disorder or GAD. Some vocabulary for you. 'Diagnosis' is a word that we use, D I A G N O S I S. And it means when you get told you have this problem, when the doctor tells you you have it - or a psychiatrist, it might be in this example. 'Generalised', that's G E N E R A L I S E D. ' That means it's 'not specific'. It's 'general'. I'll talk more about that in a minute.

And 'anxiety', A N X I E T Y, is a noun meaning 'the worry, the discomfort, the emotion that we feel'. And 'anxiety' is 'a state of being in fear'. We also use the word 'anxious' as an adjective to describe the person who experiences anxiety. And that's A N X I O U S - 'anxious'.

So, Generalised Anxiety Disorder is quite common in the UK. It's estimated around 8 percent of people get this diagnosis. Bear in mind too, many people just don't get diagnosed. And two thirds of the people with GAD are women.

Generalised Anxiety Disorder means that you have anxiety about a variety of things. And to a level that most people wouldn't have - it's more extreme in other words. It's almost as though the anxiety is there anyway, and it looks for something to attach to. It finds normal life situations and life events, and attaches itself to those.

This is different from some other types of anxiety where the focus is very specific. And it remains the same over time - it doesn't vary So, someone might be rigidly focused on washing or cleaning, for example. That's very specific and focused anxiety, and here we're talking about 'Generalised Anxiety'.

Could You Guess If Your Stress Is Super Chill Or Super Crazy Ep 691 Article Image

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An anxious woman laying on bed. Dive into our podcast and turn anxiety into learning! Learn English the easy way!

©️ Adept English 2023

How psychological experience has been 'medicalised'

And notice I'm using very 'medical' language here. I'm about to give you a list of 'symptoms', and we're talking 'diagnosis'. So this is medical language that psychiatrists tend to use, but psychologists and psychotherapists like me also use this language to communicate. But beyond diagnosis, the 'labelling' isn't that helpful, and it can sometimes make a condition like this seem fixed and rigid as though it cannot be changed.

That's not helpful, nor is it truthful. Many psychological difficulties can be changed. People can work to improve their anxiety without medication, without taking pills. The workings of the mind are not fixed and unchangeable.

Is your anxiety a disorder or just a normal human response? Let's find out - 'extent'?

And whether or not you have Generalised Anxiety Disorder, it also depends on the 'extent' of the anxiety. That's E X T E N T and it means 'how big is the anxiety'.

To be human is to have anxiety some of the time. That's perfectly normal and in fact helpful in some ways. It might be more concerning, more worrying in certain circumstances if you don't have anxiety. There are certain things we should be worried about, and our anxiety informs our actions and makes us behave differently and sometimes that's good.

For example, if you're scared of having a heart attack because your neighbour has just suffered one and your worry, your anxiety, means that you change your diet and eat better and you do more exercise, then actually maybe that's a good outcome. Hopefully making those changes calms your anxiety down.

But, if despite making these positive changes in your life, your anxiety about having a heart attack continues to occupy you day and night, you're obsessing about it in other words, then this is more of a psychological problem because it's outside of normal range. That's what I mean when I say it depends on the 'extent' of the anxiety.

Is your anxiety a disorder or just a normal human response? Let's find out - context?

And the level of your anxiety must be seen in relation to its context. That's C O N T E X T. If you live in a war-torn part of the world, you would be crazy not to feel anxious. You may be living in high anxiety, and that can be a very normal human response to an abnormal situation. In this threatening kind of circumstance, anxiety is trying to do its job. It puts you into 'fight or flight mode', and you're primed, primed to protect yourself.

Of course, no one should be in that situation, but it's a context where anxiety may help you stay safe and give you an advantage. But of course, being in 'fight or flight mode' for any length of time is not good for anybody.

We need to ask whether the anxiety is justified by what's going on around you.

What are the symptoms of GAD - from the DSM-5?

So what are the real world symptoms of 'Generalised Anxiety Disorder'? How does it impact your life? The word 'symptoms', S Y M P T O M S - that means 'the signs, the indicators that you have a medical condition'. And the 'symptoms' I list are from a book, a manual, M A N U A L, published by the American Psychological* Association (* actually 'Psychiatric') , or APA, and this is called the DSM-5.

It's well known amongst 'psych- professionals'! DSM is short for 'Diagnostic and Statistical Manual'. And a 'manual' is 'a book that tells you how to do something'. So this book lists all the different psychiatric conditions that people might have. And it lists the symptoms.

For Generalised Anxiety Disorder, these are:-

• Edginess or restlessness. This means you can't settle, you can't be at peace, you're 'on edge', as we say in English.
• Tiring easily, more fatigue, that's F A T I G U E, and it's a word for 'tiredness'. So it means that you feel more tired than you might expect, given what you've done in the day.
• Impaired concentration. If something's 'impaired', that's I M P A I R E D, it means 'it doesn't work as well as it should'. And your 'concentration', C O N C E N T R A T I O N - that means 'your ability to focus'. So 'impaired concentration' means you can't focus on anything or you can't focus your mind easily.
• Irritability, that's I R R I T A B I L I T Y. That means that 'you're irritable, you're short-tempered, you don't have much patience with other people and things around you'. And you might keep that inside, or you might be irritable with those around you. You might, as we say in English, 'bite someone's head off'!
• And difficulty sleeping. Quite often, in anxiety, this is because the mind is 'working overtime'. An anxious mind is not a quiet mind, and it's difficult to calm the mind down in order to sleep.

Does anxiety need pills?

So these symptoms are for diagnosing Generalised Anxiety Disorder. And to see whether your experience fits that description. Medication may be the answer, in some people's minds, but I don't think that's a great option on the whole, not for anxiety. If your anxiety is acute or extreme, it might be good to take medication in the short term. But in the longer term, few people want to be on tranquillisers or benzodiazepines. There is evidence that, in the end, these medications make you more anxious anyway.

And just thinking about my podcast on idioms last week, actually coming off something like benzodiazepines, you would certainly experience 'cold turkey', shall we say. Most people want to find other ways of solving their difficulty.

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How I might work to help someone with anxiety simply by talking

How do I work as a psychotherapist, who uses only words and talking, not medication? How do I work with Generalised Anxiety Disorder?

Well, perhaps that's the whole other podcast, but in short, I would tend to do the following things:-

I would try and find out 'What has happened to this person in their life, that causes them to have such an anxiety-making view of the world?'

'Why do they feel that normal things in the world are 'unsafe'?'

Download The Podcast Audio & Transcript

Sometimes this can be down to fundamental beliefs, which when surfaced, when brought out into the light, are easily dismantled because there's no evidence to support them. But they're beliefs that the person has carried around for a long time.

'What role did the person's parents play?' ' Were they themselves anxious? Or were they the cause of the anxiety, maybe? Or were the parents 'overly-protective' so the person didn't learn to handle 'anxiety-provoking situations'? How did the person learn to fear anxiety? Is there trauma in their history, perhaps?

Secondly, I'd want to find out, 'Why doesn't this person have good strategies for managing anxiety?' And what do they do instead? So we would also work on better strategies for managing anxiety. Some of those are very teachable.

And thirdly, I'd encourage the person to gradually start to do the things that make them anxious. Usually, there's a lot of avoiding. And through doing it, and finding out that it's OK, the person will gradually learn that these normal things are not that threatening. Often, there's no substitute for experience here. Sometimes this is called 'behavioural work', and it can take quite a long time.

Does understanding psychological topics like anxiety keep you listening, so helping your English?

So, this podcast is an experiment. Let me know if you like this topic, if it's useful for your English language learning and it's interesting too. Maybe you know someone who has Generalised Anxiety Disorder?

Goodbye

So give us feedback if you would like more - or if you wouldn't!

Enough for now. Have a lovely day. Speak to you again soon. Goodbye.

Thank you so much for listening. Please help me tell others about this podcast by reviewing or rating it. And, please share it on social media. You can find more listening lessons and a free English course at adeptenglish.com

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