I have anxiety, right, like clinically diagnosed anxiety and that anxiety.
I mean, it comes out
a bunch of different ways, of course, but especially in language learning.
And I have dealt with anxiety in language learning for a really long time.
And I recently had a conversation with another language learner.
I was really surprised by how heard they felt that, you know,
they had never I mean, they they've been learning languages longer than I have.
They been teaching languages longer than I've even been learning them.
And I was really surprised to find that she had felt alone in this video
I want to talk about my language,
learning anxiety and what that looks like in a lot of language learners.
Some tips that might be helpful for you, because, you know, language
learning is hard enough.
It's even harder when you have like that little voice in your head.
That's like always questioning what you're doing, your ability to do things.
You know, comparing yourself to others, all sorts of things.
If this is your first time here on this channel.
Hi, my name is Jamie. I am a language coach.
And my favorite thing is to take a no-BS, realistic,
real life approach to language learning and normalize the things that nobody else
seems to be normalizing, that I struggled with for so many years, for so, so long.
And I want to make it easier for other language learners
who have also struggled with these things so they don't have to struggle
with them anymore.
And in this video, that thing is going to be anxiety.
Anxiety does a lot of things in life and especially language learning.
It makes you constantly question, what are you doing?
You know, are you using the right app?
Are you spending enough time?
Are you, you know, learning quickly enough?
Are you learning the right things?
Are you using the right things to learn the things?
You know, if you spent money on an app are you using it
enough to validate the expense, the cost, whatever?
All sorts of things like that are super, super noisy in your mind.
And language learning is difficult enough as it is.
And, you know, of course, there's also so many people online
who will talk about, you know, their methods to learn languages
and how they learn languages so well and how they did it so easily.
And that comparison that happens
naturally because of it is really, really killer.
We have this comparison in our minds already.
Our anxiety is constantly comparing our language
learning and our experiences and our abilities
to other people who, you know, we don't even know we don't even talk to.
But when, you know, people put themselves out there
on the Internet talking about how they learn languages and you're
then you start second guessing, you know, what am I doing?
Am I doing something wrong?
Is you know what I'm doing right?
Am I, you know, studying hard enough, studying long enough, all sorts of things.
Most people on the Internet don't really talk
about a realistic idea of what language learning looks like.
You know, it's glamorized.
It's, you know, talked about in such a way that like it's a magical thing.
And honestly, I do believe that being able
to speak and communicate in a foreign language is pretty magical. But
the journey to achieving
that level of a language is not magical.
It's it's hard work. It's consistency.
And, you know, working on days when you don't want to work
studying on days when you don't want to find things
that are hard and like your brain fights you on it and like things that are really,
really difficult and like having the motivation, dedication, confidence,
ability to work on things that are
just are giant pain and, you know, are really hard to accomplish.
That's not talked about.
And that's made so much more difficult with anxiety.
If when you do get past that and you you know, you conquer
those voices in your head, but, you know, sometimes work sometimes doesn't.
But you conquer those little voices and then you start making some progress
and then some new voices pop up,
you know, voices like, am I fluent enough?
Am I able to communicate? Like, do I sound like an idiot?
And am I am I using the right words?
Am I using the right conjugations?
Am I pronouncing correctly?
Can people tell that I'm not a native speaker?
And are people laughing at me? And
are people like, do people think I sound like an idiot?
Do I sound like an idiot?
And they're just too polite to say anything.
And it's it's also really terrifying when you don't know
when you've never experienced it.
And also when other people aren't
talking about it and they're saying, oh, you know, go have conversations.
But it's not always that easy.
It's, you know, especially
when you're just starting out with language learning, it's not always
for everybody as easy as just like throwing yourself into a conversation
and just doing it, you know.
You know, anxiety, it really holds you back and you know.
You might get in your car and drive to a language exchange.
You're sitting there in the parking lot and then.
You can't beat Yorkist, your anxiety beats you, and so you turn the car back on
and you drive back home and you just kind of like disappear
because of this, like fighting you have in your head where like,
you know, you don't think you're good enough.
Your anxiety tells you that you're not ready.
Your anxiety tells you that, you know, you're going to get lost.
And what happens if you forget a word or what happens if you misunderstand?
And all these things like me saying them out loud
sounds ridiculous.
Honestly, listening to myself talk about this, it sounds totally ridiculous.
But at the same time, I know
these are thoughts that I've had for years and years and years.
I've had to put so much work into conquering and like proving wrong,
shutting down. And, you know, I know so many language learners deal
with this kind of anxiety to this anxiety comes from so many different things.
It comes from, you know, fear of failure.
It comes from, you know, if you've gotten laughed at before,
if you've been bullied in school, if you didn't do well in school
and you have this preconceived notion in your mind that you're not good
at learning new things, that you're not smart enough, that, you know,
you have learning disabilities that you feel
are going to hold you back and make it impossible
because you've never seen anybody with ADHD, with dyslexia, with
I don't know whatever mental illness is up with depression, who learn languages.
You don't ever hear about that because it's not
glamorous. Right. But glamorized.
And so not only are you stuck by your own brain chemistry.
Not only are you stuck with these thoughts that your brain is giving you and,
you know, making you think and feel.
And, you know, it's so hard to differentiate between
what's real and what's your anxiety,
much less that you've never seen anybody else talk about this.
Like you think that, you know, nobody else in the world
has ever had these thoughts and everybody else is just confident.
And, you know, everybody else just waltzes into language exchanges and talks
a tutor's and doesn't have like anxiety attacks before every conversation.
I definitely felt that way.
And I've definitely like, you know, held my anxiety in silence.
If you felt these things, please let me know in the comment section.
I'm here, I've I've experienced all of these things
and more that I don't even have time to talk about in this video on.
So how do we turn that around? Right.
You know, I mentioned that these are things, you know,
I've done a pretty good job at conquering.
And, you know, it's it's easier some days than others.
It's not always totally easy.
But what have I done?
What what what can one do to help with this with this language?
learning anxiety?
Well, the first step the first step is awareness, awareness of when it happens.
This isn't just like general awareness of like, hey, I have language.
learning anxiety.
This is also hey, in this specific situation, I feel anxious.
I feel like I can't do it.
I feel afraid to make a mistake.
I feel like I am the least skilled in the room,
I feel like everybody else is speaking so much more fluently than this is.
This is a thought that I have all the time.
The first step is acknowledgment and awareness and saying like, OK,
I'm feeling these things. And I know that these aren't real.
I know this isn't real.
I know my brain is trying to convince me
that this is real and it's done a pretty good job.
But I know that it's not real and I can do something about it.
The first step is awareness.
If you're not aware of it, if you don't know when it happens,
then you just accept it as your reality and you accept it
as this is the way that your brain works and you accept it
as this is how my thoughts work.
This is how language learning works.
Then once that awareness happens, we can think about changing it.
And that looks different to everybody and it looks different to all situations,
depending on, you know,
if it stems from like a previous experience you've had or if it stems
from some skills you have or don't have, whatever whatever comes from.
This looks different for every person, every situation.
But as a general rule, I would recommend working on
being more gentle with yourself, being less critical of yourself.
You know, if you see yourself, if you find yourself talking to yourself
in negative ways, critical ways, judgmental ways really invite you
to make the effort to shift that thinking.
You know, if you find yourself saying, you know, oh, I'm not good enough.
Just make the effort to switch that thinking and
fair warning, it's not
you're going to feel like you're lying to yourself and that's OK.
You know, eventually you keep doing it.
enough you'll convince yourself, in my experience, we are our own worst critic.
Even if you don't have anxiety, even if you know you don't have
any of these problems.
We are our own worst critic, just like globally. Everybody is.
So keeping that in mind also
that nobody is as confident as you think they are.
Everybody who looks confident,
they have insecurities and they're afraid of things that you don't know about.
That's just across the human condition.
You know, everybody is insecure about something.
Everybody struggles with anxiety in some situations.
Just because they're not talking about it doesn't mean it's not there.
We just we're just used to not talking about our struggles,
especially our invisible struggles, because, you know, it's so easy to say oh,
you know, just get over it.
You know, people say that I'm not going to say it
because I know it's not that easy, but people will definitely say that.
Another thing that you can do is just straight up talk about it.
You know, just breaking that silence is really a big deal.
Being able to connect with somebody based on that,
based on this thing that you thought you were alone in, being able
to connect with somebody else who also thought that they were alone.
And this is really powerful.
Like I, I got inspired this entire video honestly talking to somebody who thought
that they were alone in their language learning anxiety.
I promise you, you're not.
I really invite you to reach out to somebody like a language learning friend.
People commonly experience these things,
but people do not commonly talk about these things.
And then just remember that just like language learning
anxiety is not a straightforward process.
You know, some days it'll like
it will really succeed in the graph, will go like way up top.
And then some days it all feels like it's going down.
And that's just a normal part of progress.
It's not about the short
term progress that we're looking at or looking for the long term progress.
And even if it feels like you're losing it
and you're going backwards, just trust that you're not.
I know that's easier said than done.
Some days will always be more difficult than others.
So don't let the more difficult days
stop you from waiting for the easier days.
And, you know, for those really bad days, if you need to take a break, if
you need to step back from your language learning, do it.
If it's too if it's too loud, if your anxiety is too loud,
just take a break.
I give you full permission to take a break.
Mental health. Is so much more important in language learning
than a lot of people think about language learning is all in your mind.
It's training your brain.
There's no you're not training your body to do anything.
It's all in your brain.
So if your brain is not healthy and flexible and relaxed,
you're going to have a really hard time making progress
in your language, learning your mental health needs to be a priority.
If that means stepping back for a day, for a week and taking care
of your mental health, do it.
Your language will always be there.
The thing that's been really helpful for me
and for my clients is to address limiting beliefs.
I find that a lot of language learning anxiety stems from limiting beliefs,
and we believe that we're inherently too old to learn languages or,
you know, it's too late or we're too busy or, you know ,
we are in a city or state or country that's, you know, wrong or.
You know, we have to be somewhere else geographically, physically,
in order to learn languages.
I found that to be a big, big factor in things like language, learning anxiety.
If you click the link below in the description, as always,
to join my free training.
I talk about that or talk about.
That's the first thing that, you know, very first thing that I address
with my clients, because, like I said, if your mental health is not healthy,
if it's not healthy, whatever, if your mental health is not there
and open and available for language learning, there is nowhere to go.
So I would recommend that for sure.
And above all else, remember that you're not alone.
You want proof that you're not alone. Take a look at this video.
Why did the entire video in Spanish
and I avoid it for a very long time and I'm still not comfortable with that.
Honestly, I still I still have so many anxious thoughts that come up.
Like I know that a lot of, you know, polyglots.
They have videos with the speaking like 17 languages.
And it's obvious as they're like reading a script.
I have an outline in that video, but I didn't like read
from a script and.
I am so anxious that people are going to think that they call my bluff and like,
oh, you're reading from a script or you know , whatever, but I'm not.
And that that was a really hard video to make, honestly.
And it was super vulnerable.
But I invite you to watch the video and not feel alone.
Otherwise easier be easy on yourself and I'll see you next time.