podcast

Hi everybody. Welcome to the podcast today. I want you to meet my mom today 'cause she's a really great example of a specific anxiety management strategy that I had to learn to tweak before I could really get the benefits from it. But first, meet my mom.
Adriana: All right, mom, thanks for coming on today. And I know, I know you don't like to toot your own horn, but I wanted to just have you talk a little bit today if you would about, um, just different things that I've seen you do throughout my life that, that were different service projects, and just talk a little bit about like why you did them and what the results were that you saw for yourself. But, so one of the first things that I thought I wanted to talk about with you was, I remember fr00:30 – Welcome & Introduction
00:52 – My Mom’s Service and What She Gains From It
9:19 – When Service Becomes a Burden
10:58 – The Global Science of Kindness
12:29 – Learning to Put My Oxygen Mask on First
16:09 – Choice vs Obligation in Service
21:56 – Kindness Narrative: Making a Support Fundom the time I was really little, I remember you taking me with you to go visit various different people in the neighborhood that were lonely, you know, that lived alone, that were old, that were widowed, or shut-ins. And, um, I kind of suspect that you, nobody had asked you to visit these people, but that you were just, you had just decided to do that. Am I right?
Janelle Jarvis: Mm-hmm. You're right.
Adriana: So why, why is it that you did that as part of your regular routine?
Janelle Jarvis: well, I, you know, I was always taught that, um. Um, caring for people was, was practical religion and so I wanted to be involved in that. And I had a friend in grad school, both of us had little children and she always seemed to be able to find time to do things for other people. And I asked her how she managed because I was pretty busy. And I didn't see how, she could do it. And she said, well, I just, um, I set aside Fridays and I just, that's, that's my day. And, um, I decided that that was a good thing to do. She had helped me with something. She'd found time for me.
Adriana: Oh, So, she just, she just had a Friday. Friday and she was gonna help whoever, whoever
Janelle Jarvis: yeah,
Adriana: it.
Janelle Jarvis: you know, somebody needed a haircut or somebody needed, their kids tended, she did it on Fridays. I didn't follow her plan to set aside a day, but I usually looked at my week and decided when during the week it, it might work.
Adriana: Oh, that's neat. I didn't know that. So with these people that you would go visit, most of them were widows that I remember. Um, didn't get out much. What did you get out of it? I guess, how did it affect you? I mean, what, what was the result for you?
Janelle Jarvis: Um.
Adriana: I
Janelle Jarvis: I. really enjoyed hearing their stories. They usually didn't have very good memory for things that were current, but they remembered things in the past and they had lots of good stories and they were always happy to have me come. If I were to visit somebody who was younger, they would be too busy and wish that I hadn't come. But the elderly people were always happy. And that made me happy. And, um, they always seemed to need to have somebody to listen to them. And I was okay at listening.
Adriana: Hmm.
Janelle Jarvis: Um, my, my grandfather could make friends with anybody and he'd, he'd make friends with people in the street car and bring 'em home and was kind of sometimes a little too much for my grandmother. But anyway. I was not that kind of a person. I was, more reticent, but I could, I could make friends and I could be a good listener and I could ask questions, and that helped. Think it helped them and it made me feel
Adriana: Mm-hmm. So let's fast forward to nowadays I know that you have. You have some projects that you're involved in regularly that are for different community organizations that you like to do. Can you tell me a little bit more about the, the stitching hearts One.
Janelle Jarvis: Um. I became affiliated with stitching hearts during Covid because we were making masks, and it just happened that the area manager who was collecting these things had to drop out because of poor health. And I was the only one who would help, who would do it. So I became the area manager for my city, for this statewide humanitarian organization. And, um, we went from making masks to making quilts. Um, All of the materials were donated and, um, we made, made the quilt tops and put the quilts together and tied them, and then they're given to refugees. uh, immigrants, homeless people, just lots of different people who needed it and, um, and so I'm still doing it.
Adriana: And, and what are you just completely kind of cut off from the results of those works or, or do you get to see the impact that it has on people?
Janelle Jarvis: I don't get, not on the delivery end. I sometimes get to see videos of what. It happens sometimes these quilts go to, um, they go abroad to people suffering from natural disasters or
Adriana: Hmm.
Janelle Jarvis: and so we can see some videos of it, but that's one part that is not quite as rewarding because don't get to
Adriana: Yeah,
Janelle Jarvis: and, and how
Adriana: Uhhuh.
Janelle Jarvis: about it.
Adriana: But, um, have you heard any stories about the impact that it's had or I guess you've seen some videos? I.
Janelle Jarvis: Yeah, well there are people who are just delighted to have something. Um, when they're refugees, they really
Adriana: Mm-hmm.
Janelle Jarvis: and they're so happy to know that somebody cared enough to make to make,
Adriana: Mm-hmm.
Janelle Jarvis: So,
Adriana: I've seen a lot of the quilts come through your house, um, when I've been visiting there. And it seems like each one, each one is different. And, you know, the, the people that make them can be quite creative in what they do. But it's, it's, um, I, don't know. They're, they're just made with a lot of attention and love. It's not, it's not like a factory produced thing.
Janelle Jarvis: that's true .
Adriana: I, I know these two examples are just like a tiny drop in the bucket of, of the different kinds of projects that you've been involved in as long as I can remember . And, um, maybe I'll just ask, 'cause I didn't already ask about, you know, for the quilts project, what, what does that do for you? I know it requires a lot of time on your part. A lot of organizing. I mean, you're working on it pretty much every day, right?
Janelle Jarvis: Yeah, pretty much. It just makes me feel like I'm connected to a, um, a bigger group of people and people who have needs and, and makes me feel like I can make a difference.
Adriana: Yeah.
Janelle Jarvis: And something I didn't mention before was there were times um, I had planned to do something, like visit somebody or, or, um, help somebody out in some way. And, and it was a really busy day know that I, know that I, if I could do that,
Adriana: Mm-hmm.
Janelle Jarvis: and I just, um, I went anyway and, and I, I realized that. I never, I never remember the things I didn't get done, but I always remember the things, the good feeling that I had went
Adriana: Mm-hmm. Yeah. Well that's really meaningful. Anyway. I really appreciate you sharing a little bit about this with us today. Thanks, mom.
Janelle Jarvis: Glad to do it.

Adriana: Unfortunately, despite my mom's great example, I ended up having a relationship with this strategy of service to others i, my relationship with it actually generated anxiety. I had a dysfunctional relationship with this strategy of giving. So instead of contributing to my wellbeing and helping me feel a sense, a sense of fulfillment and meaning and joy and connection with other people, the way it helps my mom, I ended up feeling like it was a burden because I ended up feeling like service to others was just something I should do. It was a source of, of measurement of whether or not I was a good person or not, right? So I felt like it was a duty. And so it ended up being a source of guilt for me because I, and anyone's need out there, any service that needed to be done was evidence that I hadn't helped that person. And so it was evidence that I was not measuring up. I would hear people talk about how, you know, if you're feeling empty, if you're having a hard time, just go out and help somebody else and it'll change your perspective and you'll feel so much better. It'll help you to get outside of yourself, and I would think, i, I don't know what's wrong with me, but it doesn't work this way for me. It ends up making me feel overwhelmed, overburdened, and, and stressed in a bad way. Unhealthy stress, and guilty. And I always feel like it's never enough, that I can never do enough. I can never measure up. But you know, as time passed, I started to learn about not just people within my circle saying that service was helpful, but actual scientific studies that were showing that kind people experienced more happiness, that they have happier memories. And there are studies, for example, where they give people a certain amount of money and they divide 'em into two groups. And they tell one group to go spend that money on themselves, and they tell another group to go spend that money on someone else. And then they, they measure the impact on their emotions and the people that spend their money on other people end up having a lot more positive emotions than the ones who are assigned to spend it on, spend it on themselves. And these are studies that are done around the world in hundreds of different countries, in people from different cultures, from different economic, um, situations. Across the world, it seems to really help people to be kind. It makes them feel better. It contributes to their wellbeing. They have less anxiety and they have more happiness. So I started to think, what am I doing wrong? Not only do these people that I know say that it works for them, but studies that have been performed worldwide are showing that this is helpful for people. What is my problem? Why does this strategy not work for me?
Well, over time I learned there were two things that I was doing that were, that was blocking the efficacy of this strategy for me. The first thing was that I needed to learn that principle that is demonstrated every time you get on an airplane. And they tell you that if the cabin pressure drops and the oxygen masks come down, that you're supposed to put your own mask on before you help other people. And if you really think about it, why is that? It's because if you can't breathe, you can't help anybody. But if you can breathe, then you can help a lot of people. Right? So there is a certain level of satisfying your own basic needs that has to come before you have anything to give to other people. And we talked about this on an interview that I did several months ago with Dr. Nielsen, which I'll link in the show notes, Dr. Thomas Nielsen, where he talked about different dimensions of self-care. Things that we have to be aware of. Um, but unfortunately I didn't know how to do this type of self-care. And I didn't learn that I needed to take care of myself until I learned that I have limits. And and I've talked about this many times before about how I got really, really sick with long covid and I was sick for years, and there were a lot of reasons why I got sick. Some of them might have been genetic, but one of the reasons that I think that I got so sick was that I had a habit of really overspending my body's budget. And I didn't really take into consideration certain self-care needs that I had to perform. So in order to recover from my illness, I had, first of all to learn how to take care of my body so that it could heal. And I started to become very aware of my body's energy budget and my needs. And I could tell when I hadn't taken care of my body because then I would be set back maybe a couple of days or a couple of weeks, I would get sicker. But I had to, through this experience, learn to say no. This was something that was really hard for me to do because I have always been a people pleaser. I have, to some extent, I have often decided what it was that I would do based on what other people wanted me to do. But I had to learn through this experience to realize that I was the only one that really knew what my budget was, what my limits were, and what my body needed, and I had to be the gatekeeper to decide what it was that I could do and what I couldn't do. And I had to learn to engage in these different areas of self care and had to feel the need and the the permission to say no if it was going, going to take me be beyond my limits, if it was going to stretch me beyond what I could physically do. So this whole experience really helped me to recognize that I have a limit. And that I really will not be able to go past that limit. So nowadays I know, I know I'm able to say no. I'm able to say I can do this and not this, and not feel bad about it because I know that if I overspend, I can end up in a situation where I can't help myself and I can't help anybody. So that was my first problem, was that I was overspending and not paying attention to my own needs.
And any of you who missed that episode by Dr. Nielsen, where he talks about these different areas of self-care, go ahead and listen to that. I'll link it up in the show notes because he talks a lot about how, how to take care of yourself and all the different things that you should do to have this basic self-care so that then you can do other things, including service.
But the second thing that I needed to learn was to learn to do service not because I felt obligated, not because I felt like it was a should, not because somebody else wanted me to do it, but because I wanted to. And I talked before on this podcast about a study where they have a couple of different groups of mice. They're raised in cages with treadmills, right? So in one of the cages, the mice can choose when they get to run on the treadmill and they end up, um, having a lot of health benefits 'cause they have exercise. And then there's another group of mice that's sedentary that doesn't have a treadmill at all. And then there's a third group of mice that has a treadmill, but they're forced to run on the treadmill. They don't get to choose when they have to run on the treadmill. And the study found that those mice that were forced to run, they didn't actually show a lot of benefits from the exercise that they were getting because this being forced to do it created a bad type of stress response in their bodies, which kind of counteracted the good effects of the exercise. And so this just demonstrates what can happen when we feel forced, when we feel obliged, when we feel compelled to do something, that's not our choice.
Another effect of me being sick for so long and having a moment when I wasn't sure if I was gonna make it, and realizing that I could die and the world would go on without me, made me realize that, you know, I don't actually need to do any of these acts of service because I could, I could die and the world would go on. I don't have to do any of these things. But I have some time and I can do some things. What do I want to do?
I've mentioned before that at one point I did an online, a free online course. Um, it's called The Science of Wellbeing. It's done by a professor at Yale, a professor of psychology at Yale. Her name's Laurie Santos. And she, one of the units, she talks about these studies that study kindness and how that helps people's happiness and wellbeing. And she gave us a homework assignment. And the homework assignment was to do seven random acts of kindness during the next seven days. Seven more acts of kindness than you would normally do. And she talked about how they don't have to be over the top or super time intensive, but they should be something that is meaningful, right? That impacts another person. So help your colleague with something. Give a few dollars or some time to a cause you believe in. Say something to a stranger, write a thank you note, give blood. Those are just some different ideas. But this word that she used to describe it, random acts of kindness, really made something click in my brain. And I thought, well wait a minute, so just do something that I want to do. Something that i, I come up with in my creative brain something that I would like, some way that I would like to serve someone. It was a different way of thinking about service for me.
So I liked this exercise that she gave us of doing these seven acts of kindness during the week, and she asked us to register them and write them down 'cause there are studies that show actually that if you reflect on the acts of kindness that you do throughout the week, that this makes you happier too. But I learned that I, I like to do nice things for people. It's fun for me if I'm not overspending, my energy budget and my basic needs, right? If I've got my oxygen mask on and I can actually breathe and function right at a basic, healthy level, if I'm taking care of myself and if it's my idea and something that I want to do, and it's not something that I feel forced to do or expected to do, and it's even okay if somebody else expects me to do it, as long as it's also something that I want to do, As long as it feels voluntary. So that's part of why I started doing this podcast, which is, let me tell you, it's a huge amount of work. I don't expect to make a lot of money from it, but I, I like to help people. I like to think that I can offer something to somebody else who's got anxiety issues like me, who just needs a little help. It makes me really happy to do this. I like, to share love with my family. I like to do things for them. I like to make them happy. I like to write thank you notes to people. I like to invite people to do things that that might be lonely. I like to reach out to people in these different ways that I think of and that I create.
So I just wanted to share these ideas, which, you know, after I finally adopted them, then I was able to get the same benefits that my mom gets out of service, to have it increase my happiness and reduce my anxiety. I just wanted to share this in case there's anyone else out there who, like me, has a dysfunctional relationship with giving and with service and who's not getting the benefits right now of it as a wellbeing strategy, um, for anxiety management because uh, you're blocked by maybe one or two of these issues that I was blocked to. So I just wanted to tell you about these two ahas that helped me to start being able to use it as a helpful, beneficial strategy that helps me rather than harms. Now we have our kindness narrative. I have a friend who has come up with a cool, creative way to do service in her own way, and I'm gonna let her tell about it.

Friend: When I was getting divorced. I'd met a girl. I didn't know her very well and I feel like she's kind of just been sent to me for that particular period of time when things were really rough. Um, she would make me soup and, always knew the right thing to say. Uh, one night when I was coming back from her place, she was dropping me off at my apartment , she kind of pulled over on the block before we got to my house and she said to me I know you probably won't accept this, but I'm going to tell, tell you it anyway. Um, and she said that she had an account that she had, um, that she would set money aside to, to help friends with their rent or with, with anything that they might need, and that she wanted to offer it to me if I needed help with groceries or, or with anything during that period of time. and she, she said that she knew my personality and that she would, she wouldn't be surprised if I never took her up on it, but that she wanted to, to extend the offer. And I didn't ever take her up on it, but I remember thinking, oh, I hope I'm in a position one day to do that, because that's a really, that's a really cool thing. Um, and so when I finally kind of got employed in a way where I could develop my own support fund , I did so. I don't know if mine works exactly the same as hers does, but this is how I've set it up. every month I deposit an amount. It's usually not very much, , into the account. Uh, right now it's a hundred dollars. So it just kind of accumulates. Some months the support fund gets used and other months it doesn't. Uh, you had asked for some examples of, of ways that the funds used. Sometimes it's, it's just, it's something simple like flowers. Like yesterday, I used it to buy flowers for a friend and dropped them off at her house. So that's a small amount. there was a time when I used it to pay tuition for someone close to me, um, who needed help with tuition, for university. Uh, there's, there's been another time where a friend of mine was struggling with employment and just kind of like making ends meet. and I ended up giving an anonymous donation then because I didn't want, I didn't want the individual to feel uncomfortable. Uh, there have been times where a family member, um, was struggling maybe on a more regular basis. And so for a year I just kind of took the regular deposit into that account and deposited it, it into, into their account. recently someone that I, that I don't know at all, his mother died unexpectedly and he had set up a GoFund me for her funeral expenses, because she had only a very, very small amount set aside, through her insurance for the funeral. And so I, I felt comfortable making a larger contribution there because the money was already just sitting. I also have, uh, attached to the account is a debit card and I, I just put a little heart sticker on it so that way if I, if I ever need to give the card to someone else so that they can go and use it, that, that's also a possibility. I, I can just sort of pass along my debit card to someone in need. Um, usually, you know, some, someone, a close friend or a family member, who can then take the card and, and use it for what they need and return it. Once it goes into the account, it doesn't leave the account for any other purposes. So it's, it's one of those accounts that I don't sort of shuffle money back and forth into, into my other accounts. Since I created it, I've never thought about defunding it. It makes me feel really good to know that in some small way I can contribute and that the money's already been set aside. That means that should a need come up, I'm not sort of scrambling with my regular budget, to make ends meet with my own needs and whatever needs I see in the community, but that, that I've already got a plan there. So I like being able to offer it up and I feel really great when people are accepting of it.