 Hello. Welcome back to Recovery Monday. This is episode number 43. We've done 43 of these. Today we are going to talk about the benefits of learning to slow down because there are many. Learning to slow down instead of speeding up when anxiety and fear and stress want you to speed up is difficult, but there are benefits to learning how to do that and practicing. So we're going to go over that today. Just a quick reminder that we are currently doing lessons out of this book, 7% Slower, which you can find on my website at the anxioustruth.com or at 7% Slower.com. If you want to go back and watch some of these lessons, you can do that on my YouTube channel. There is a playlist called Recovery Monday. They're all here. If you want to grab the book and follow along, you're welcome to do that. So anyway, that's what we're going to do today. Let's wait for folks to start to pop in here. I will put the chat overlay up. I have my screen blanking software off. Everything is all set. So I think I'm actually prepared today. So like I'm really impressed with myself today. So that's what's going on. Let's see. We'll wait for the usual suspects to file in. How is everybody doing? I will put the chat overlay up on the screen, which I already did. What up? Bethany is here. I assume that everything is working. Everybody can hear me. These seem to be delayed. The last couple of weeks when I go live, usually everybody shows up almost right away, but the last few weeks it's been slow. So I have a feeling that there's a little bit of a delay. So we'll just hang out and wait. Hey, Jen, thank you very much. That's very kind of you. Welcome. Yep, all good. Appreciate it. Where's everybody coming from today? We'll give a few extra minutes for people to file in, because like I said, there seems to be a bit of delay in going live on at least one of the platforms. I don't know which. So how's everybody doing today? It is, where are we now? We are in the end of August 2022. If you're watching in the future, summer is pretty much over. So, hey, Colleen from Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. What up? Good to see you guys. Hello from Montreal. How's it going, Genevieve? Forgive my friends. I have no French skills. I have no French accent. I'm sorry. Lindsay from Oklahoma. Welcome. We got about 16 people. We'll let it get up about 20, 25 people, and then we'll get going today. Hot and humid in Pennsylvania. It's humid today here in New York too. It's gross. I can't complain. We haven't had a horrible summer, but not too shabby. Hey, Selena from Illinois. How's it going? Where are we here? People are starting to file in, so we'll do another minute, and then we'll get going on today's lesson. It's actually reasonably long. I have a few different points to go over. I think there's a seven or eight points to go over. Atlanta is here. Connecticut is here right across Long Island Sound. Hello, almost neighbor. Gene, how are you? So yeah, we'll get rolling in a minute here. There you go. And now all of a sudden, like a whole bunch of people show up at one time. So there's something weird with the streams. I don't know what it is. Hopefully it's working for you guys. I am going to do a quick reminder, and I will mention this also in the middle of this lesson because when we talk about the stress tolerance a little bit, I'm going to put this up on the screen. For those of you who are interested, because we are going to talk about the stress tolerance today, really? Can you hear a copper? He's decided that he needs to chime in. Let me just close the door real quick. For those of you that are interested, this up here is the URL to go for the webinar that Joanna Hardis and I do every month. Once a month, we're doing one in the middle of September. You can check it out on distress tolerance because it is an important part of a recovery process, learning to tolerate distress. It's kind of a big deal. So yeah, we're going to do that. Anyway, let's get cooking today. And I will remind you of that later on also. Oh, also, I have to put this up on the screen. Also, if you want a copy of 7% slower and you don't have it and you want to follow along, you can go to this URL, 7%slowwer.com will get you there. So there's that. And let's get cooking here. So what are the benefits of going slower, learning to go slower? 7% slower is what I wrote in the book, but slower in general, right? So what are the benefits to that? Well, first of all, let's acknowledge that this is a difficult thing to do. We're learning to go slower when anxiety and panic and stress are trying to speed us up. So we're trying to do that. And it's difficult. We're going against our sort of survival instinct. We're going against some of the lower parts of our brain that are driving us to speed up and run around for most people. So this is really difficult. It takes time. It takes practice. It takes effort. It's not easy to do. We can acknowledge that this is something you could just decide to do. It does take some time and it does take some effort, but it's well worth it. And here are the reasons why I'm just going to run through them relatively quickly. And then we can go through and have a couple of, we'll go through the comments and whatnot. So one of the benefits of learning to slow down and practicing that and getting better at it is a decrease in sort of nervous energy. Like nervous energy is just that jittery thing that we get going on in the background all the time. And when we can learn to consistently slow down, we can generally see a drop in that background nervous energy. Now, this doesn't mean an instant state of Zen. You're not instantaneously calm. It's not like you're completely banishing all of your anxiety, but it is nice to be able to take a little bit of the edge off of just that background nervous energy that a lot of people feel all day long. You may actually start to see a little bit of a decrease in that as you begin to slow down as opposed to rushing through your day like you've been shot out of a cannon. Again, not an instant anxiety cure. Not going to banish it all, but people do seem to report that it does take a little bit of the edge off sometimes. So an increased sense of control, competence and confidence over time. So you may begin this process by thinking, no, no, I have no choice. I have to run home. I have to freak out. I have to throw myself on the floor. I have to run around. I have no choice. But we do have a choice. And one of the things that we can gain as a result of learning how to slow down and disobey that order to speed up is we can begin to learn that like, oh, I actually do have some control here. I have some power here. I can do this. Like I thought I wouldn't be able to slow down, but look, I'm actually learning to do it. And so when you start to recognize that you have a sense of control in this process, you have some power, some agency, some authority here, you start to build that sense of competence like, okay, maybe this is not completely out of my control. Maybe I can make a change. Maybe I can do things differently. Maybe I can turn this around. Maybe this is possible. So learning how to slow down is one way to start to tap into that and understand like, oh, this is not a monster that's pinning me down. I am participating in this process and I get to decide some of what happens here. That's really important. So that's number two. Number three would be that we're helping to over time, again, not instant. This is not an instant anxiety cure. I say it all the time. Over time, we are learning to help to turn down that anxiety and threat response, right? That threat detection overactive, making sure you're safe response. We're starting to turn that down. So what we're talking about here is that when you can learn to slow things down and act mindfully and intentionally as opposed to running around and trying to escape and rushing and rushing and speeding up, you're sending one of those signals. We talked about signals, right? The way that we can talk to our anxiety is to send signals back down the chain to the fear center in your brain and going slower sends an all clear signal. So when your lizard brain is firing red alert, red alert, red alert, and you slow down instead of speeding up, you're sending green light, green light, green light back down the chain. Over time, over time and with repeated experiences, that helps contribute to turning down the volume on that anxiety knob, right? The threat detection sensitivity knob. You get to turn it down a little bit. In the book, what I said is over time, it gives Mr. Lizard Brain permission to start using his inside voice again. Like those of us with kids would understand, use your inside voice, use your indoor voice. He starts to learn how to use his indoor voice again, his normal voice, not his screaming voice, and only when appropriate. So slowing down is part of the way that you start to turn down that sensitivity knob, turn down the volume on that fear response. That's a pretty big benefit, right? Fourth one, distress tolerance. I put that up in the beginning of this. Joanna Harness and I, Joanna is a therapist out of Cleveland that specialized in treating OCD and anxiety disorders. We're doing a webinar every month on the concept of distress tolerance. It's actually super important. We don't talk about it enough because really learning to go through states of stress, anxiety, panic, fear, uncertainty is really about learning to tolerate distress and not automatically saying that as soon as I wind up in a distress state, I must run. I must never allow it. I can't handle it. We learn to start to lean into it and to navigate through those states. It's really important. It's probably one of those like secret sauces in recovery that we don't really talk about a lot. So when you begin to learn to slow down and practice that, you get the ability to tolerate distress a little bit more. How so? Because slowing down puts and dropping out of that frantic state. Remember, we're never talking about creating instant calm. This isn't creating instant calm or knocking anxiety down immediately. But when you get detached from that frantic state, you make a little bit of space, just a little bit of space between you and the fear, and it becomes a little bit easier to surf through that as opposed to just being dragged around. So slowing down is a big part of the ability to tolerate distress, which then we'll talk about this in a bit, translates even beyond just states of stress, anxiety, and panic, but to kind of everyday life. So increasing your distress tolerance ability by learning to slow down and be more mindful and present and engaged is another great benefit to this. So the next one that I want to go over quickly would be improved crisis management and navigation skills. Now, this isn't necessarily an anxiety thing or a stress thing, but when we learn to slow things down instead of speeding up and acting like a speed demon, we really do gain a better ability to handle a crisis, right? So we all know those people who are kind of the cool cucumbers. They are common to pressure. When the place is on fire, they don't get ruffled. They know what to do. They can handle it. They don't freak out. I'm not saying that if you're not that person, that's okay, by the way, the world needs all kinds of different people. But when we learn to slow things down, as opposed to automatically rushing around because we're stressed or afraid, we move a little bit closer toward that, right? Now, that might not be your ideal thing to be in the world, and that's okay. And I'm not saying that you have to turn into a completely different person. That's not what we're after here. But it would be nice to have a little bit of an increased ability to handle pressure, right? And crisis when there's a crisis, if you will. And by the way, which doesn't necessarily mean your crisis, just any crisis, right? And we've all been in those situations, high pressure situations. There's a car accident, there's a fire, there's a big deadline at work, there's a deadline at school, like in crisis situations, learning to slow down and be more intentional is a skill that you can use all the time when you get into those situations. And it really does make you better at navigating through those. So I can tell you with absolute certainty that I've always been, I've always produced a large degree of work all through my life, but post recovery and having learned to be more intentional and mindful and recognize when I am putting myself in a needlessly frantic state because I have so much to do, coming down out of that state makes me so much better at dealing with deadlines and emergencies and crisis and it makes me so much better at it. I was always pretty good at it, but at this point now, very few things in the world will ruffle me. So again, you don't have to become me, nor do I have to become you, but it would be nice to have the benefit of a little bit of a more resiliency in the face of some pressure, right? So that's another benefit to slowing down. Next, we're going to move on to lowering the threat, distortion and magnification level. So especially if you're dealing, you know, 7% slower, I wrote about anxiety fear and stress, just general life stress, but if we're talking about anxiety and panic and things like that, which I know most of you are here to talk about that, you have to always remember that in a state, in an anxious state, whether it's panic, agoraphobia, health anxiety is huge for this OCD also, that your anxious brain is magnifying and distorting the level of threat that you are facing, right? So when you feel a bump on your elbow, and we joke about this sometimes in the Facebook group, when we talk about, you know, I feel a bump on my elbow and I immediately think that I have some sort of elbow cancer, right? I know this is sort of a running joke, the elbow cancer, but it's, that's because that in this, in that state, your anxious mind is absolutely twisting and distorting the threat level, right? So what might be a very minor, minor threat? I have a bump on my elbow, I don't know, it could be a bone spur, I don't know what happened, I hit myself, it's just swollen, but my anxious mind will take that tiny, tiny threat and magnify it and twist it and blow it up far out of proportion. And now I'm in a frantic state. And that holds true when you are ruminating excessively about things and you feel that those things are far more important than they might really be in the world, you're the state of your body, physical sensations, thoughts, emotions, feelings, health issues, all of those things, our anxious brains will literally magnify this to certain doom, right? Certain doom. And that's not cool. So when we go through the recovery process, we're literally learn to, there you go, see your actual normal bone been there, yeah. But we're literally learning to turn that down, like to eliminate some of the distortion of magnification. We do that by being able to recognize that we are in a distorted, twisted, magnified alert state. When we slow down, we can make that little bit of space. So as opposed to just being completely frantic, and that frantic state glues us to the distortion of magnification, we don't see it. To us, it's completely real. So if you feel a little, you know, rumble in your heart because your heart through a PVC, and your cardiologist has told you a million times that there's a completely benign and that every heart does that. If you go into a completely frantic state, you will glue yourself to the, oh my God, this is certain death. So when we slow down and drop out of that frantic state, not necessarily to calm, but just not frantic, we get a little bit of space, and then reality can fill that space and show us like, oh, wait a minute here, I know what's going on. I feel for sure that my heart is about to stop, but I can also recognize that I have felt this so many times and that my brain in its anxious state is magnifying and distorting the level of this threat. Now that doesn't make it feel any better, but it does at least give you the opportunity to navigate through that a little bit more. Okay, I remember what I'm supposed to do now. I have to just let that threat be there so I can see that it's wrong. And slowing down is a big part of making that little bit of space, right? You back away from frantic, you unglue yourself from that distortion and magnification. It says, no, it's real. This is 100% real. It feels so strong. It feels so real. Slowing down gives you a little bit of space to peel yourself away from that and at least understand, oh, I know what's going on here. I'm distorting things again, right? So it's a huge benefit and that's a heat of the moment benefit, right? So some of these benefits are sort of longer term general recovery. Some of these things are beyond recovery and they're just sort of life benefits. And some of them like this one for sure is a heat of the moment benefit for sure. When you're in a frantic state, recognizing that, slowing down starts to kind of break things apart. Okay? So the second to last thing that I want to talk about is when we learn to slow down, we get to act a little bit more in line with what we value and less in line with what we fear. So a lot of people, including me, would make the argument that the recovery process literally is a march from fear-driven choices to value-driven choices. Now that's kind of philosophical and maybe a little touchy-feely, but that's okay because I think we have to acknowledge that. That is one of the things that recovery represents, movement away from acting solely based on fear and moving toward the things that you actually value that matter to you that are important to you that you care about. So when we start to slow things down, we can more clearly see and remain cognizant of, you know, this is what I really want and I can move toward that as opposed to this is what I fear in a frantic state and so I will be dragged around by that. So that march from fear-driven behavior and fear-driven choices to value-driven choices over time can be definitely helped by slowing down. Again, because you make that little bit of space dropping out of that frantic state, then you can remember like, hey, wait a minute here. This is silly. My brain is screaming at me that I should get back under the covers here, but I really, really want to go to my kid's concert. So if I can slow down just a little bit, I can reconnect with that value-driven thing which says, no, it's important to me to go to the concert. I want to go there as a parent. I want to show support for my kid and you can go. Not that it's easy, but it helps you to make better decisions in the heat of the moment and in general, like as opposed to trying to engineer your entire life all the time around not being afraid or trying to not be triggered, if you will. Then one good way to do this is to start to slow down because it helps you get into that state where it's like, okay, you can move a little bit more toward my values and away from what I fear. Where are we? 17 minutes. And then the last benefit of slowing down that I wrote about in this chapter of 7% Slower is improved analytical ability. And this one is a little bit of a no brainer. This is not a heat of the moment thing a little bit, but it's more of a general thing that helps in overall recovery and just sort of in life in general. So when we are frantic, when we are moving around like we have been shot out of a cannon, we're not good at thinking. Like we are terrible at thinking in that state, completely terrible at thinking in that state. So when we start to slow down, we gain a little bit of an ability to be a little bit more analytical, to be clearer in our thoughts, to let logic weigh in, to let reason weigh in. Now, life isn't always about logic and reason, but when we are clouded by fear and anxiety, our thought process is not terribly, terribly acute. It's not sharp. It gets dulled. Like, and we see this all the time. Oh man, I feel like I can't even think, right? When you're anxious, my brain stops working, my brain shuts down. But when we could start to slow down, we regain that ability to think a little bit more analytically and a little bit more clearly. So it takes us out of, I don't want to say brain fog, because I don't think it's brain fog. It's not cobwebs, whiteout conditions. If anybody who lives in areas where it snows, so if you're living in warm areas, trust me on this one, if we live in a snow area, you understand what a whiteout is. Whiteout is when it's snowing so hard and the wind is blowing so hard, it's just white. You can't see anything. It's a whiteout condition. So when we slow down, as opposed to trying to think through a whiteout where there's no vision whatsoever, you actually slowing down is like turning off the wind a little bit. It's still snowing. There's still snow in the air. It's okay. It still poses a little bit of a challenge, but you can see through the snow and you could actually start to walk in the direction you want to walk in. So improve that analytical ability, like slow things down, think a little clearer. It's sort of a no-brainer and that happens almost automatically. And again, that's a benefit that goes way beyond, like way beyond just recovery. It goes to life in general. And I can tell you from personal experience, I'll always try and share my experience with you that, again, when I am a situation where I'm jammed up against the wall, last week was a good example, like I have so much work to do for my master's program. I had a bunch of other projects in the business, so I was just jammed all day, every day, all day last week. Being able to slow things down was a huge benefit to me because it kept my thinking pretty clear. It kept me focused on what I was trying to accomplish. It kept me methodical. It was great. So it definitely helped. Was it a fun week? No, definitely not a fun week, but it wasn't a frantic week because it didn't have to be. And so that's where I ended the chapter after that was improved analytical ability. And I think these are all great benefits. So like I said, it's really hard to learn to slow down when you think you have to speed up to be safe. But it is so worth the effort because you start to realize a bunch of these benefits that we talked about today. So hopefully that helps encourage you to maybe continue to work on this slowing down thing. So let's go through some comments and see what everybody has to say today. Let's scroll up to the bottom here. Let's see. Oh, I got to scroll to the top. Let's see. Not a lot of comments today, but it's okay. I see where everybody's from. Hello from the UK. Sorry. Oh, Arizona is here. Amsterdam is here. Oh, man, everybody's here. New Hampshire is here. We haven't heard copper in a while. He calmed down. Lunchtime on Twitch. Twitch is here. Got to always... Oh, we got a 490 on a Super Chat. That's awesome. Thank you so much. But what is that? What was your question? I'm sorry, Khadija. Khadija Franklin. Thank you very, very much. I appreciate that support, but I don't see a question only a Super Chat, which I didn't even know I had the ability to do, by the way, but evidently I do. So if you have a question, pop it out there. And I'm happy to answer it for you. Let's see what Michelle Holgeroth says. Do you benefit from slowing down even if you're forcing it and doing things most... Yes. Oh, yeah, 100%. In the beginning, especially, I would say, I'll put this up on the screen so you guys can see what Michelle asked. Yeah, I think you do. I think you do benefit from that because in the beginning, that's what slowing down looks like. It's not natural. It's forced. You're trying to slow down because you really don't want to. This isn't a switch that we could just flip and say like, okay, I'm slow. It doesn't work that way. You're going to really suck at it in the beginning and you're almost pretending to go slow. That's why when I wrote the book, I really talked about ways to practice it outside of the context of panic and anxiety. I talk about mindful eating and slowing down when you take a shower and brush your teeth and all of those things. It's really important to practice this when you don't have to so that when you are in that situation where Michelle, you say panic is internally screaming at you, you can fall back on the skill that you've been developing. If you only wait till you panic and then you hope that you can slow down to try and alleviate that, you're going to wind up disappointed. You've got to practice these things when you're not in a panic. Hopefully that helps. Let's see. I've got a question from Montreal. You once wrote something like learning the difference between calm and relaxed is key. Yes. I think a lot of people don't get that. Being calm and being relaxed are two completely different things. I'll go over that for 30 seconds for those who don't understand that or haven't heard me say that. Relaxed is a physical state. I have learned to relax my body even though my mind like mentally and emotionally is not calm. It's just not calm. But my body can be relaxed. The difference between relaxed and calm is really important to hang on to. You can work on relaxing your body because relaxing your body is a signal toward calm. You can't instantly create calm, but you can create physical relaxation. Yes, it's possible. I know you're going to argue that it isn't, but I promise it is. You can practice relaxing your body to get into a more relaxed state, more relaxed, not perfectly relaxed, just more relaxed. It's better to be more relaxed than twisted up and tightened like a spring. While still your mind is not calm, but it helps you move toward calm. It's important to recognize that. A lot of people think like, well, I'll try to relax, but it's not working. It's not working. I'm still afraid. It's not supposed to work. Relaxing isn't a thing that works. It's just a thing we do, and it's additive over time. It's a navigational skill, not an eradication skill. That's really important to understand. Let's see. Kathleen's comment was really good back to Michelle. I see that when you first start practicing the skills, it sometimes does feel like white knuckling. Yeah, 100%. Like I said, you will suck at it in the beginning, but you got to practice it all the time. You got to practice it all the time. Okay, this is good. Hey, Julie. Nice to see you. Just telling myself to slow down makes everything for more in control. That was one of those earlier benefits that I talked about when I was going through the chapter. It totally does. Remembering like, oh, I can slow down. I'm allowed to do that. I can exert some influence here. I get some say in what this looks like. That could be a huge, huge boost because you realize like, oh, I have a say here. I actually participate in this process. When you're in that sort of the chips are down, high anxiety, like heat of the moment thing, that I do most of you care most about, really and truly in that situation, understanding that like, oh, this isn't beyond my control. I participate in this process. Like I actually participate in this process. It's really important to recognize that. So when you wind up in a situation, especially people who are like kind of going down the road to recovery and all of a sudden they'll say, oh, I had the mother of all panic attacks. It's a setback. When you realize that, oh, well, this process has taught me that I am participating in this. I'm an active participant in the panic process and the response process. I helped to make that mother of all panic attacks. There's a huge amount of power there. And when you learn to slow down, you start to recognize that power. I can go slower or I can latch on to the fear and OMGOMGOMG and build a giant panic attack. I have two ways I can go. But we do participate in this and it matters. How did we do this? I'm sorry, can't see your name because of recent ways of restream works. You're in the Facebook group. How do we know who it is? How do we do this with constant thoughts? Over and over. So remember that statement today about like, you can't decide you're going to do this and then immediately hit the panic and the eject button the minute you have a thought or feel something. That doesn't really work out. You're not even giving yourself a chance. Every one of these experiences is additive. They all matter. So you're taking tiny little steps every time you have a scary thought, every time you feel afraid, every time something makes you uncomfortable. We're taking a tiny little step toward recovery. But if you immediately say, oh, I'm afraid and I can't do this and I have to run and find out, but how I can't, it's impossible. You're giving yourself no chance and no credit. And you start to run out of like, there's nothing more that I could tell you if that's the way we approach these things. Right. So how do I do this with constant thoughts? Constantly. That's the way you do it. It's a practice thing. It's a practice thing. I'm going to put this up. This is a giant comment. I know Michelle and Kathleen are going back and forth and I appreciate you guys helping each other out. Thank you, Kathleen. I appreciate that. The idea of slowing down seems impossible to me. I feel so stressed out because there's so much to do. This is a huge statement and Michelle, I appreciate you sharing that. Let's talk about that for just a second. This is more common than you think. So sometimes the speed response is based on escaping some sort of threat or danger. It's panic. It's, I need to get back home to my safe place. I need to get to my acceptable bubble, whatever. I need to get away from these scary thoughts on my head. There may be like a, you perceive an immediate threat. Sometimes the speed response is part of that whole like perfectionist, overachiever, hyper responsible. I'm nervous. I'm just nervous and amped up all day long and I don't know why, but I'm also the person that must get everything done, handle everything, plan everything, control everything, be responsible for everybody's happiness and the outcome of everything in the universe. And I can't possibly slow down because I'm responsible for all of that. So sometimes the speed response is not so much an immediate threat, but it becomes a baked in part of our anxious state driven by some of those assumptions that I have to be the person that does a lot. I have to accomplish. If I don't check all the boxes, I'm a failure today. And in that situation, you have to come to grips with the idea that if I slow down, first of all, there's a paradox, because sometimes when you slow down, you can actually get more done, believe it or not, working in a more controlled, not controlled, but more engaged and mindful state is more productive than working in a frantic state. But even if you slow down and a couple of things don't get done that day, you're just going to have to deal with the fallout of that. Like, oh, I can't possibly allow this. I can't allow myself to fail, because what horrible fate would be for you? In those situations, we're slowing down and we're going to have to allow the outcome of that, which is I might accomplish a little less today. Okay. Well, you'll have to figure out how to navigate through the discomfort that comes from that. Good point, Michelle, I appreciate you sharing that. Let's see here. I'll throw this up on the screen. What if the things is really common? What are the things we are ruminating on are actually true? I know whether it's true or not. I guess either way, it's out of my control just learning and just leaning into this comfort. There you go. I didn't even need to pop that up. You got it 100% right. I'm sorry, I can't see your name. But yes, people will often say that they can justify their rumination or their overthinking or their obsessive thinking or excessive problem solving, mental problem solving, because it's real. Yeah, but this is a real thing. I understand life does throw real challenges at us, but that still doesn't justify deciding that I must choose to think continuously about a thing in order to solve it in my head. When I know full well that I cannot solve it in my head, I can't solve it in my head, but I'm going to keep trying to. So I get that. I do understand that, but at some point it's going to be, well, there's nothing I could do about this. I can make a plan. What can I do to make a plan to address this real issue? If there's literally nothing I can do, notice I say do and not think, then you're done. If there are things you can do, then okay, well, you can do those things. You could put things in place. You can rehearse those things. You can practice them. You could do them, but then once that's done, you're done. And when you're out of action, then you're done. And then it's the discomfort of there's nothing else I can do here, but it's okay. I can handle that. I can handle the discomfort of being out of control. The funny thing about this, and this is a little bit outside the realm of what the topic we're talking about today, but most of life is completely out of our control. Most of life is totally and utterly out of our control all the time. Life is mostly full of uncertainty and lack of control every waking moment. Except we hit certain instances where we decide I can't accept that. We'll accept it everywhere else except in a few little places, and then we think somehow we can choose to not be out of control. It's completely illusory. It doesn't matter. Actually, it's all counterproductive stuff. Again, doesn't mean that you can just decide to stop ruminating, but understand that when you back away from the rumination and come to the realization it's not helping me, it's hurting me. There's going to be some discomfort there because you think thinking is problem-solving and safety. Good question, Shelley. Thank you. Let's see here. It also helps me to keep all the crisis kind of a third person. Oh, this is really cool. Thanks, Jay. I appreciate this. It helps me to keep all the crises as a kind of third person and address them as such. This is that thing where I say we unglue ourselves from the frantic state. We unglue ourselves from that so you could start to see a little bit more reality. Like, okay, this isn't cool right now. This is urgent. Maybe it's an emergency. Maybe there is a real threat, but I don't have to be glued to OMGOMGOMGOMG. So I like this because it sort of puts some space between you and the crisis. Jason, this is a really good comment. That's a hard thing to put into words, but instead of being the crisis or the state of crisis is itself a crisis, you start to see the crisis as an external thing that I have to address. And really, that's the difference between life, life anxiety, life stress externally generated. There's something happening right now that's pressing on me. I can see that that thing is happening. I'm dealing with it. And my own internal state being the source of the crisis, that's that disordered state where the anxiety is and threat is internally generated. So it's really good because it illustrates the difference between kind of regular anxiety, garden variety, run of the mill anxiety, and the stuff we're talking about here. Let's see. My wife loves me 7% more. Kathleen's going on a big trip, I know. So good luck with that. And yeah, it was like I said, this stuff can help in a lot of things just beyond recovery. So this isn't some sort of crazy, like, you know, life coaching manual or anything like that. But when you learn the lesson of going slower and being a little bit more mindful, it is applicable across multiple contexts. And it is helpful. I use it all the time. I use it all the time. Hello, Wales. Hey, Michelle. What are you going to school says, Colleen, I'm in a master's program in clinical mental health counseling on the way to being a licensed therapist in the state of New York, for those of you who do not know. So yes, I am in a I am now a full time graduate student on top of everything else. Why not? Why wouldn't I? So let's see here. Shannon says, hey, Shannon, good to see you. When I drive, we do okay until I come to a stoplight. I just want to keep going. Yes, about a zillion people have that problem. That's the trap thing. If I have to wait at this stoplight, bad things will happen. I will have to confront my symptoms. I'll have to confront my sensations. I might have to wait too long. What if I panic while I'm at the stoplight? What if I lose control while I'm at the stoplight? I can't escape right now because the light is red. Maybe there are cars all around me and I am boxed in. That is an incredibly common thing. Unfortunately, the only way to do that is to practice the stoplights. It sucks, but there's no answer to that other than yeah, you don't want to be trapped because you still think you need to escape if things get to be too much. And so you have to let them be too much to learn that it never is. Let's see here. I know how. So Lindsay says the same thing. I don't know how to push through it. And I always hate the term push through it. You're not pushing through anything. You're literally surrendering to too much at the stoplight. Too much at the stoplight. So is it going to be too much? Maybe let it be too much. It's not pushing through it. It's like surfing through it. It's navigating through it. It's being a little bit more graceful than just I'm going to push through this. Let me just get through it and get to the other side. Nope. Like I'm going to stop the fight and let whatever happens, happens to learn that I can handle that completely. We understand that. Can I use that in my Saturday in the restaurant? Yeah, Julie, all this stuff kind of dovetails together. You can use that for sure as part of it. So ever since going slower is not going to completely solve the problem in the restaurant, but it's part of the reaction you want to have. You start to get anxious about the restaurant. Okay, let's put this up on the screen. Colleen, I know you've been dealing with this for a long time, as long as I know you. And this is that distortion and magnification thing that I talked about. So the point about distortion and magnification is this. So if you listen to the podcast episode I did about health anxiety, I've done a few. I did one with a Norwegian doctor, Ingvar Henhel, I can't say his name, but I have two episodes on health anxiety, one with a doctor from Norway who treats hyperchondriasis, psychologists from Norway, and one I did on my own. And in the one that he did on my own, I talked about this, like your evaluation of the threat, medical threat, is completely blown out of proportion. And so since it is not zero for people with health anxiety, since the threat is not zero and never can be, I don't have zero health threat right now. I would like to think that I do, but I don't have zero health threat right now. I'm just okay with 0.4% health threat. For you, 0.4% is 100%. It's either 0%, 100% certainty about your health, or it's no good. And that's what drives this. I can't, I don't know how to tell whether it's a medical issue or whether it's not. Because you can never 100% be sure, so you get stuck on that loop forever. But I bet it should just to be safe. I better treat it like it's real, just to be safe, just to be safe, just to be safe. And next thing you know, you're treating everything like it's real. And then you're trying to not die, but the way you're living, you don't want to die because you want to live, but the way you're living is only to not die. Like that's a tough spot to put yourself in. So recognize the distortion and understand like, oh, I'm acting based on a complete and utter distortion. Look at the people around me. They do not assign the same threat values that I do to these things. And you might be tempted to say, well, that's because they're being irresponsible. Really? So I know that's a common. I'm going to try and scroll down as far as I can. As a physician, I refer to you often. Thank you, Jeffrey. I'm glad that I'm able to help or help your patients in some way, shape, or form. Those are kind words. Thank you. Valerie wants to know, how do I stop the panic? You don't stop the panic. I'm going to ask you to go back and start to listen to the earliest episodes of my podcast. How do I stop the panic is a common question. Everybody wants to know that, but I'm never teaching you how to stop that. I'm teaching you how to learn to not be afraid of yourself. So go back and listen to the very first episodes, first 15 episodes of my podcast. I explained what this is all about. The shorter answer is I don't have an answer for stopping panic because that's not the way out. Let's see. We get anxiety when motorcycling to unknown areas like range and anxiety. Let's pop this up real quick, and then we're going to go in a couple of minutes. I get anxiety, turn to range anxiety, distance anxiety. Try to explain yourself to more, but not much use. Well, I would say I arrange anxiety, meaning distance anxiety. If you're okay within a certain distance, I'm assuming, I have to guess here, doesn't really know you. You're okay within a certain distance, but if you go too far, it's too much. And so the only way to do that is to let it be too much. I know I keep repeating myself, but I would probably look at what are those exposures really look like? Like I'm trying exposures, but it's not doing much. Well, what does that exposure tell you? If you get to the, it's too far, it's too much, and then the story you tell is this is too much, it didn't work, but it did work. Like you want it to feel like it's too much. So sometimes it's an expectation of what the exposure is supposed to accomplish. You're going further than you want to to be intentionally afraid and to intentionally feel like it's too far. And then you have to let all that catastrophe happen to understand, oh, that wasn't too far at all. So sometimes it's an expectation of what the exposure is supposed to look like or feel like. I can't be sure, but that's the most common, the most common cause for what you're talking about, that exposure isn't helping. You're welcome Val, no problem. I try to tell myself that I was fine a few minutes ago and that the stoplight is not okay. Let's see here. This is one of those things I'll put up really quick. We only have a few comments left. I have to like get on my tiptoes to look over the comments. I tried to tell myself that I was fine just a few minutes ago and that a stoplight is not dangerous. It's still not dangerous. It helps sometimes. Well, I would probably say that that's a good framing statement to make before you get in the car. Hey, whether I'm moving or I'm stopped, I'm the same person. I used to use that. I'm the same person no matter where I am. What's the difference between me on my sofa and me 3,000 miles away in San Francisco? No difference. I'm the same person, right? So once you can frame that and say, okay, that means that today when I get to a stoplight, I'm going to welcome and allow and expect this discomfort. I'm not going to try to convince myself to not be uncomfortable. This is why I did that podcast episode a couple of years ago called Why Positive Self-Talk is bullshit. It's out there and it's really popular. If you want to go find it on my website, you can listen. There's a method to my badness there. If you're trying to talk yourself out of the discomfort, don't do that. Let the discomfort be there. The problem is that you're afraid to be uncomfortable. So trying to stop being uncomfortable with words just reinforces the idea that you should not be uncomfortable. And in this situation, I know it seems counterintuitive, but trying to talk yourself out of discomfort says, wait a minute. I do have to get rid of this. I need to find some evasive action when I'm uncomfortable. No, you don't. You don't have to find evasive action for your own body and mind. That's what creates the problem we're in to begin with. So use those thoughts. I'm okay even at a stoplight to inform your action when you're out and doing the work, but do not try to talk yourself out of discomfort. That's sending the wrong message. So let's see. Scroll up, scroll up, scroll up. I carry so much responsibility. I want to be accepted. My in-laws, I go overboard. Okay. I understand. Shelley, I assume this is you. Makes me want to worry and do compulsions and hope. Okay. Very difficult. Look, I get that. Shelley, I completely get that. Everything we talk about here is really difficult. Everything we talk about here is really difficult. It's not fun. You're sitting in states of distress. You're sitting in states of discomfort. You're sitting in states of fear. You're sitting in states of uncertainty. Sometimes you feel like you're sitting in states of true threat or you're sitting in states where there is some disaster that will happen because of what you think in your head. So it's really hard to accept that and move through that. It's always, we always want to acknowledge that. This is not easy work. Let's see here. I'm going to scroll down to the bottom. Very welcome. Melanie is talking about the anxious morning. If you don't subscribe to the anxious morning, that is my morning newsletter that comes out by email and a mini podcast for four days a week, Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, Friday. Just go to the anxious truth.com. It's right there on, it's one of the things right on my homepage. It's just a quick little email that you get every morning when you wake up. And it's also a mini podcast. Melanie, I'm happy that you're finding it helpful. Everybody seems to be enjoying it and I enjoy doing it. Scroll down to the end here, I think. You are very welcome, slip joint guy. Sorry, I don't know your name. No, I do not. I am sorry. I can't do that right now. That would not be very ethical of me to do that. I got back from a week of Sandbridge. Hey, this is great. I'm glad you did that. Melanie, this is a good thing. Funny head, a little anxiety. Well, you know what? When you get out of your head, I'm sure that there are times during the day when you get distracted and you get out of your head and you're not necessarily anxious in those moments, right? Ooh, this is good. Okay, I shall assume that's it. I am the same person whether I am accepted by others or not. That is 100% correct. That is true. So let's see here. I am stuck in it and I find it frustrated. It will take a while until I quit as I need to find it or shall I quit? This is a thing that I cannot answer for you, unfortunately. I'm stuck in an awful job. I hate it and I'm frustrated there. It will take a while until I quit as I need to find a job or shall I quit? I can't answer. I can't tell you whether you should quit or not. That's a decision you have to make on your own. Clearly, you don't want to stay in an abusive job or anything like that, but I can't tell you whether you should quit or not. I'm sorry. Is it worth it to try? I will put this up real quick and this will be the last comment because I do have to get rolling. Is it worth to try an SSRI when feeling too stuck in the fear to get motivated or start exposures? Okay. So it's a reasonable question. I don't mind you asking. A lot of people ask me this. And my answer to that is I'm never going to tell you to take medication or not take medication. Never, ever, ever, ever. But is it okay to make that choice? You have a right to make any choice you think is best for you. And ain't a soul on the planet, me included, the stupid guy with a microphone and a camera that should pass judgment on that choice. You have a right to autonomy in that, right? You have a right to do what you think is best for you, for your family, whatever your unique situation is. And then you have a right to that without judgment. So is it right or wrong from a judgmental or like moral or ethical standpoint? It's neither. It's whatever works for you and we should all respect that. From a technical standpoint, the debate is if you take away the symptoms, then what is the exposure, right? So remember that exposure is not to places and things. Exposure is to the symptoms, the sensations and the thoughts. So if the medication takes those away, the debate, I'm not saying the right or wrong, the debate is, then what's left? What's the exposure? So sometimes what happens is when people do take medication and it's perfectly okay to do that to get the ball rolling. I talked about that in a recent podcast episode about safe people and safety devices. If you need it to start, it's better to start that way than to never start. Always. It's better to start that way than to never start, right? So you would never, I would never say that you're wrong to do that. Just keep in mind that issue. Some people who decide to start taking medication to get started discover like, oh, I don't feel it anymore. I don't need to do this work. So just be mindful of that part. That's the only thing I would say, all right? And that's okay. Penelope, you could completely and utterly make decisions that you know are in your best interest and I personally, as one human being to another, would 100% support you in whatever you decided to do with that. The best really advice I can give you on this, just be aware of all the issues and then make the best choice you could make. And guess what? You can always change your mind and do different things later on. That's always an option. That's the beauty part of being like alive. We can change that. We do one thing on Tuesday and a different thing next Tuesday. So whatever happens and whatever choice you make, I hope it works out for you. All right, folks. Thanks a bunch. I appreciate you coming by. Again, all the stuff, the morning newsletter, the books, everything is on my website. That's at the anxious truth.com. If you don't have a copy of 7% slower, 7% slower or any of my other books, if you want to subscribe to the morning newsletter, that's there. You want to check out the webinar that Joanna Hardis and I do on distress tolerance. I think the next one is September 15th or 16th, which you could pop yourself on the mail list for that and we'll let everybody know when the next one is. That's not free. There's a fee for that, but we think it's really helpful. So any of the stuff that I do is over there. Go check it all out. I appreciate you guys coming by. These are like my favorite day of the week is Monday when we get to hang out. And yeah, I'll be back again next week. We're almost done with this book. We have two more chapters of 7% slower and then we'll have to think of something else to do on Mondays, but we'll figure something out. All right, guys. See you next week. Thanks for coming by.