 You know, I used to start these with like a little 15 second canned intro because I was worried about fitting into an Instagram story, but nah. Anyway, welcome to Recovery Monday, episode 39. We've done 39 of these now. We're going to keep going for the foreseeable future. Today we are going to talk about the idea. We've been talking about learning to slow down and be more mindful in the face of anxiety and stress and panic and fear. We've been working lessons out of this book, 7% slower. I'm going to grab a copy of this. You can find it on my website at theanxistrutte.com. And today we're going to talk about, I think we're up to chapter 5. I'm not sure what chapter this is. Chapter 6, which is basically the benefits of slowing down. What happens when we slow down? Which I know everybody's going to want to talk about. But a little bit of an odd twist, it's not what you think. Like it's not what you think. So we'll get into that. Let's put the chat up on the screen. As you guys wander in, let me know how you're doing. Let me know that you can hear everything. This might be Recovery Monday, like end of the world editions. We have huge thunderstorms rolling in on Long Island right now. Hopefully it's going to break the heat. But there should be some lightning and thunder. Hopefully the power stays on. I have a generator, but it doesn't kick on automatically. Hopefully my internet stays on. But I'm guessing that at some point, copper will probably be under my desk while I do this. So let's see. Let's see. GBG, what up, man? Turn off the blanking screen app. Thank you. I appreciate that, Jay. I am going to turn off my screen blanking app. Good memory, because I never remember to do it. Hey, Kyle from the UK. Amy's here. Julie's here. What up? Kathy's here from Russia. How's it going? Yes, Bethany's got the thunder and lightning emojis going on. Hello, Facebook user. Remember, if you're in my Facebook group watching, I won't be able to see your name. That's just the way re-stream works, so it is what it is. Anyway, today, another short chapter. The chapter's in 7% slow or generally slow. It's short. So today I want to get into, we'll let the rest of the crowd kind of file in here. Hello, Amanda from Indiana. What up? Hey, Destiny. How's it going? Genevieve is here from Montreal. And we're going to talk about what happens when we slow down. So we're talking about learning how to slow down, how to resist the urge to speed up, how to slow down and be a little bit more mindful in the face of anxiety, fear, and panic, and stress, and what happens when we do that. Like sort of what is the benefit of that? And what I specifically wrote in this chapter is why should you go 7% slower? I'm not going to read out of the book today. But because this is just a little bit of a twisted lesson here, most people, when they try to go into this sort of thing, are hoping that the end result of doing the things, being it's slowing down or, oh, let me put the chat lowerly up, I'm sorry. I usually do that so you guys can see each other. Got to do that. Most people go into these things and will say, I think I'm trying to do this to turn off the fear. So I will tell you flat out that what I wrote in this chapter 7% slower is that's sort of not what you're here to do. So what happens when we slow down? If you go into this hoping that slowing down, being more mindful, trying to go 7% slower, if you're hoping that doing that is a recipe for turning off your fear, you would be disappointed. And in the book, I used a bit of an automotive analogy, which I want to do. And I think I used the analogy of a wheel, a squeaky wheel in a car. But today, let's talk about a transmission. So let's say you're driving your car and your transmission starts to act up. And it's making noise and it's making the car hard to drive and it's causing all kinds of problems when you try to operate that car. And you think that the solution will be to rip the transmission out or to disconnect it so that just disconnect the thing. I don't want it here anymore. The car wouldn't work anymore, right? You need the transmission. So what you really need to do is to get the transmission back to the point where it's working the way a transmission is supposed to work. And the same thing holds true for anxiety, fear, or threat detection and response mechanism. Like we can't turn that off. So a lot of people are hopeful that, oh, I'm going to get this book, I'm going to learn how to slow down, I'm going to do 7% slower, and it's going to turn off my anxiety. But that's not really what happens. That's a secondary effect. That's sort of a happy side effect that comes down the road and we practice this. And I've talked about this in just about anything I've ever written or said. Really and truly what happens when you learn to slow down, you go 7% slower and start to relate in your anxiety to your anxiety or fear, your panic or stress in this new way by slowing down instead of rushing around like a speed demon, you start to send a signal back down the chain to your brain, to the lower parts of your brain that say everything is okay. Like everything is okay. So what happens when we slow down is we are literally talking back to our anxiety. Like this is a way that we can do that. I did a podcast episode called How Do I Talk to My Anxiety? And this speaks directly to that. So when you slow down and when you do begin to practice this and you get a little better at it, what you're really doing is you're talking back to your lizard brain, to those lower parts of your brain. You're literally finding the ability to communicate with it behaviorally with these signals as opposed to what you've been trying to do, which is to talk to it with words and mantras and affirmations. It doesn't really work, right? So what happens when we slow down and put this into practice consistently is that we get to start to have a conversation with our anxiety. We get to actually talk a little bit in a new way using its own language to the lower part of your brain that controls this threat response, right? So we are sending a signal back down that chain that says it's cool. Like it's cool. I know you think that we're in trouble right now but let me show you that it's cool. It's okay. And that unfortunately has to be repeated. And we've talked about this. There was probably an evolutionary imperative at play here. Like you would want a threat detection and response system that plays a role in survival and perpetuation and continuation of a species to be very fast to activate and easy to activate and very slow and hard to turn off. It would make sense to not make it easy to turn this response off. So if you go into this hoping that when I slow down I will turn off my anxiety you'll get disappointed. And you're gonna have to exhibit some patience. And we talk about consistency and patience and tenacity and consistency. We need to keep repeating these signals and keep sending that message down the chain that says I know you think we're in danger again but it's cool. I know you're flipping on all the red lights and turning on the sirens brain. I appreciate that but let me show you back green lights. It's cool, we're cool. And over time your brain will begin to get that message. And what you're essentially doing is to use the transmission analogy is you're fixing the transmission. You're not disconnecting it which would render the car useless and dangerous. You're not ripping it out. You're fixing it. And that's what we're doing here. So I don't remember who it was that came up with the analogy. You might have been Josh Fletcher. I think that said people think that they want it. They should turn the anxiety knob off but anxiety really in our context is more like a volume control than an on and off control. We're literally sending signals back down that allows the lizard brain to start to turn the volume down again. Little bit by little bit by little bit. Okay, what if I back off a little bit? What if I back off a little bit and it learns, it begins to learn again over time with these experiences when you slow down and you talk to it by sending that behavioral signal back down the chain. It's okay. And it will begin to slowly turn the volume down, right? So, excuse me. So that's really what happens when we slow down and we do this consistently. And I wrote this chapter because you're always trying to manage expectation and make sure that people are going into it for the right reasons and expecting the right outcomes or at least realistic outcomes, doable outcomes, fair outcomes, outcomes that don't put unrealistic pressure and expectations. So we don't learn to slow down and be mindful. I know I've talked about the fact that 7% slower is a sneaky mindfulness manual, which it is, but we are not learning to turn everything off. This will stop everything. This will stop my panic. It will make me feel instantly better. It will bring instant calm to me. It kind of won't. So good things will happen when you slow down just not the things that you are hoping will happen immediately. Only happen incrementally and over time to the point where you're not even sure when they happen but one day you wake up and discover, oh, wait a minute. Everything is a little bit different now. And I think maybe it has been for a couple of weeks. I don't even know when this happened, but it's incremental. It's analog. It's not ones and zeros. It's on a very fine scale and it turns down little by little by little and you don't even really notice it until suddenly you notice that things are different. So that's the way we do it. Things are different, all right? So that's the way this really works. And again, I did not make this up. This is just something that has been, this has been out in the field for decades and decades and decades and studied and tested and it's out there. So I'm just giving you the message. So what happens when we slow down? We begin to send a signal back down to the fear center in our brain that says, this is cool. You're sounding false alarms, man. It's okay, you can chill. You can relax, turn it down, turn it down. And over time that false alarm turns down, turns down, turns down, gets a little less forceful, gets a little more quiet, triggers less frequently. So what starts to happen is the intensity begins to drop little by little and the frequency begins to drop little by little by little. So this is not about finding a magic way to slow down, be mindful, be present and boom, you feel great. You achieve calm and it turns off your panic disorder or cures your agoraphobia or cures your OCD. It doesn't work that way. But good things are happening, good things are happening when we go slow. We just have to understand what they are, accept them for what they are and keep writing that out and let the good things take their natural course over a period of time. How long is that? I can't tell you, I can't tell you, I wish I could. Some people it's pretty quick, I'm not gonna lie. Some people it's quick, for some people it's not so quick. So I can't tell you how long it will be, but I can tell you that one of the things that almost guarantees that it will be a little longer is the insistence that or that urgency, is it gonna work now? Is it working now? Is it working now? Or judging the experiences for how you felt, right? I'm telling you that slowing down doesn't change how you feel. It sends a signal. The changing how you feel comes later. So if every time you have these experiences you only come back afterwards and say, how did it feel? But I still had fear, but I still had the danger signal. It's not right, it's not working. You're missing the point. Like it's not supposed to turn it off instantly, right? So it's not supposed to turn it off instantly. So like I said, pretty short, let's go into the comments, see how everybody's doing. I should probably, hang on one second, we're back. Quick interruption, want to turn the ceiling fan on. So let's pop in and see what's going on in the comments. I will do the best I can to answer as many as possible, questions if you got them. So let's see here, Montreal is here. Ireland is here, Connecticut is here. What up Connecticut? Stop doing housework to slow down a much true. Thank you, Bessie, I appreciate it. Can you please answer my question? I don't know what your question is because I don't see a question. Let me also say that I can't, we do these on topics every week for a reason. So I know that we do a little Q and A, we go into the comments and I try to answer general questions if I can. But I can't just answer just whatever question you feel like talking about today. I will try to keep it on topic. There are 200 and somewhat podcast episodes that probably cover the question you want to ask. So I'll do the best that I can, but I can't just answer any question you feel like we have a topic today, we're talking about this. So ask them if you want to, I will do my best to get to all of them, but I can't necessarily say that it can answer every possible question. So let's struggling really today, heart rate is staying high and face is no anxiety is the worst. Okay, Amanda, so now that you have said that, what will you do with that? What will you do with that? So it's okay to say that, but now that you have said that, what will you do? The things we talk about here are always about going beyond just sitting and wringing hands and saying, this is terrible, it's horrible, let me tell you my symptoms and how I feel all the time. What will you do with them now? And we all understand in the room how difficult that is and how scary that is, but now you have to look beyond that and say, okay, so now what do I do? What do I do with these? Really important, right? And let's see here. No, no, no, no. A little transmissing humor from Reese Bellegorosh here. A few bottles of Lucas in it, keep driving, it's totally fine. Transmission, what's the worst can happen? It falls out of the bottom of the car. Here's a reasonable question, this is a good question. Can you go too slow? JoLeen, that's a really good question, right? So can you go too slow? I'm gonna say that probably not. I don't think anybody's ever asked me that before. In this book, when I talk about learning in 7% slower, I talk about learning, I try to go slow in practice. I do talk about exaggerating the slow down response so that you can learn it. It's like when I'm practicing scales or whatever on the guitar is I go slow. I don't play it like song speed. We slow down to practice, right? So exaggerating the slow response when you're learning to do this is a really valuable tool to the point where you're going almost comically slow. It's unnaturally slow, but it helps to get the feeling for it, but I don't know. I don't know if you could really go too slow, probably not. You'll find the happy medium. So don't worry about that. Can I go too slow is also a little bit of a overthinking thing. I don't think you can go too slow. This is exactly the signal we're talking about. We don't need to rush, we are not in danger. That is the signal that we're sending back down the chain. So excellent, that's 100% correct. That's the signal we're sending back down. Dudes and dudettes, I haven't said that in a long time. Let's see here. Yes, this is so good. Thank you, Montreal. We're talking to our lizard brain, but not literally in action. This is super important. Lots of the lessons that come from slowing down happen after the attack, after the exposure. That is 100% correct. And a lot of people make the mistake of thinking, oh, okay, I'll talk to my lizard brain now and turn it off right now in real time. It rarely happens. I'm not saying that you won't get some relief. You hear people say all the time, I relaxed into it, I slowed down, and it began to dissipate. Yes, that's correct, because even in total panic, we know that it's gonna peak and it's gonna come back down again naturally if you don't do anything. Your body cannot panic continuously forever. Even though I know many people are afraid they'll get stuck in that state, you can't. So it's true, you'll get some relief, but really the lesson happens after the exposure. So when I was saying before, if you're gonna come out of the experience and tell yourself the story, and when I wrote the anxious truth, that's the reaction after. What story do you tell yourself and everybody else after the experience? It was horrible. I was racing, I felt like I couldn't breathe. I can't stop this from happening. I'm still panicking. That's making it really hard to accept the lesson that the experience actually taught you, which is that nothing happened, right? Nothing happened. So yes, it's so important to come out of the experience and then allow reality to hand you that lesson. Look, I slowed down, I didn't rush, and nothing bad actually happened. Thinking things is not bad, right? Thinking things is not a disaster. Having thoughts is not a disaster. So a lot of people will say, no, no, the bad thing does happen, I panic. Okay, but panic is a state that a human being can get into. You can't hang on to that, but I had thoughts, I had scary thoughts. So the bad thing does happen. Your thoughts are not bad things. Even though they might be disturbing and not the thoughts you want, part of this process is learning that they by themselves are not bad things, nor are the sensations in your body as disturbing and as scary as they may be. They are still natural and predictable and unexplainable. So yes, the lesson comes after the exposure. That is so important. Genevieve, I cannot thank you enough for bringing that up. It is so important. Let's see here. Well, this is true since we are in summer heat in the Northern Hemisphere, but if you're in the Southern Hemisphere, you're probably sleeping now and not watching live anyway. But yes, this is true. The heat does slow everybody down. It just, we get a little sluggish and sometimes a little nasty and grumpy, but that's true. Hello Central New York, what up? Let's see here. Let me throw this up here. I don't like the word subconscious. I'm not saying you're wrong. I mean, that might be a good way for you to visualize it, but I hate that subconscious word. The subconscious has been programmed in this tougher than the conscious brain. It wants to go to the subconscious. Yeah, in so many words, I don't like to use the word subconscious because that there's a lot of mystery and like, oh, I can't access that. That's the realm of hopes and dreams and desires and repress memories. All right, maybe, you know, maybe I don't want to get into like a Freudian argument here, but yeah, essentially just think of it as lower brain, upper brain. Just really simplify it. The lower brain is here to keep us alive, nothing else. That is why it is here. So instead of thinking subconscious conscious, just think lower brain, like my physiology has evolved, this lower part of my brain has very specific functions that are very powerful, very fast, not very smart, but they're only here to keep me alive. So yeah, I'm kind of going against that when it goes off the rails, but it's not a big black box and we speak to it in actions to modulate its activity. So yes, but I'm a little bit on subconscious just because it has that air of sort of mystery to it and it complicates things. I know a lot of people will argue it is subconscious. Okay, maybe I'm not gonna get into a psychoanalytic argument here. Let's see here. Julie, this is exactly what I was just talking about. I keep on having the danger feeling. Okay, that's right. What matters the most is the realization after the fact and even during to a certain extent, I'm having a danger feeling, but look, there's no danger. The feeling itself can't continue to be the disaster. That's part of what keeps some people stuck to a certain extent is that declaring the feeling itself a disaster. No, no, no, I had it. So therefore the bad thing did happen. Gotta let go of that a little bit. This is good too. Even when you were frozen in fear, slowly beginning to move in exposure. Yeah, that's 100% true too. So like some of these signals that we're talking about and they're going toward the fear and the slowing down, allowing things to happen, they will vary depending on somebody's particular situation and context. So yeah, if you are one that tends to freeze in place, then learning to start to move a little slowly while you're in that state is part of the practice. That's a good point. Thank you, I appreciate that Hans. Good comment. Let's see here. Does Amy have the same one? Okay, this is good. I was a little reluctant because of the COVID. I'm really anxious again, despite not suffering from this, I've had a tough time with COVID, which anybody would, it does make us sick. There's no doubt. But I'm revisiting these lessons and it is helping. It is helping. And this is such a common thing now. It's such a common thing. Clearly we're in that mode. We're in that stage of the pandemic. Everybody's just gonna get it. Okay, we're gonna have a debate about that. That's fine. And so many people hit the button and like, nope, that's it. COVID put me right back to square one. I've lost everything, but you haven't. You're responding to the fact that you were sick. You're still afraid of your own body to a certain extent. This is making you think things. But it's great, Amy, that you saw that. And it's like, oh, no, no, I can go back and revisit the lessons. I already know what to do here. So that's really great. It's really great. Really great. So let's see here. No, no, no, no, let's see here. What up, Texas? I've gone from 95% homebound to going with the two minute radius and getting out of the car, but it cannot still focus in my escape. We'll throw this up real quick. I've listened two weeks with the help of 95% homebound to going within a two minute radius and getting out of the car, which is great. Huge, well done, very well done, Destiny. But I cannot stop focusing on my escape. I know the obvious is to be okay with it, but we'll let my entire go practice, practice, practice, practice. You'll think about escaping, but are you escaping? Right, are you escaping? It's totally 100% natural when you are going and doing scary things. And especially now, I'm telling you to slow down while you do them. Those thoughts, oh my God, oh my God, what if, what if this time, oh my God, I have to get out of here? When can I get out of here? How can I get back to my safe place? Those thoughts will come. You can't make them not come. They're going to be there. In fact, they're sort of part of the reason why we go toward the scary things. We want to have the sensations. We want to have the fear. We want to have those thoughts. And then we act in opposition to them. We slow down, we relax into it. We allow everything. And then we learn at the end of the experience, well, I was really focused on getting the hell out of here, which I totally get. That's okay. It's not wrong. But look, I didn't have to. That's really important, right? So don't worry about the fact that you're thinking certain things. Your job is to never turn off thoughts. We cannot decide to turn off thoughts. That's just not possible. We just know that. So trying to stop thoughts is never gonna work. Be super frustrating. And then you'll think you're failing, but you're not. It's just okay to say, like, well, I'm having these thoughts, but they don't amount to anything other than, I don't like them. They make me more afraid, but okay, that's all right. So let's see, Tabitha, I'm glad you're digging the podcast. I hope the books are useful to you. Thank you for the comment. This is pretty common. Sorry, I can't see your name in the Facebook group. The magic that happens when we try slowing down. It's like we didn't know we were moving so fast. That is 100% true. Like many, many times it takes a level of self-awareness to get that what the hell? I'm holding my breath, I'm rushing around, my shoulders are up around, I'm crunching my teeth, I'm gripping my toes into the ground, like an eagle trying to hang onto a branch and a high tree. Like sometimes we don't really notice we're doing those things. It's almost automatic. In fact, it is automatic. So that's why this takes work. This isn't just the thing we can just decide to do. I would never say that. We can't just decide, oh, I'm gonna go slower. I'm gonna be mindful. I'm gonna accept and float today. It's not intuitive. It's not at all. I have talked before about a thing that I used to do is to record myself on video. Like I shot a lot of video back in when I was doing all my recovery work and my exposure work that I never put anywhere. I didn't put on my old YouTube way back when or in Panic Station, the old group we used to have. I just kept it for me and I would watch it back and then I would look like, holy cow, look at all the things I'm doing. And then I would have to work on like stopping those things, but it's not intuitive at all. Can you slow down your thoughts? This is a really common, I think, super really common question. Can you slow down your thoughts? You can practice not engaging with your thoughts. So this is where we start to get into that whole meditation, mindfulness, quiet your mind thing. The practice of meditation, the way I use it and teach it as a focus tool can help you learn to disengage from your thoughts which may in fact slow things down. But I don't think you can decide, since we can't decide what to think, we can decide what to think. We can always decide what to think. We can't decide what not to think, nor can we control the speed that those thoughts come. So I think the practice of slowing down, putting in these breathing exercises, practicing focus meditation a couple of times a day for a few minutes here and there, you learn to disengage with your thoughts and that tends to slow and quiet your mind over time. But you can't just decide like, boom, I'm gonna slow my mind down right now. Many people will say, but my thoughts, they're just racing, they're racing. It's okay, learn to sit with those racing thoughts, disconnect from them and then things begin to quiet down over time, generally speaking. So let's see here. If you have something real, how do you hang with it without losing it? Well, what's something real? Like humans have something real all the time. Remember that the anxious response, the threat detection and response mechanism is meant for real things. Like it's actually meant for that. So I don't know what the real thing is, but people will sometimes say, well, I have a real thing, whether it's a real life stressor or a medical condition. So not, I'm out. Like that's it, all bets are off for me because I have a real thing, so none of this counts. But you have to understand that like, first of all, the threat detection system is meant for real things. So there may be two things going on at the same time. I have a real situation that warrants a real anxious response that any human being would have. And then I have this response that says, I'm anxious about being anxious. So that's two different things, right? And so in this situation, I would urge you to recognize that there could be two different things. There's like anxiety over whatever your specific issue is, which would be normal. And then also, I'm anxious about the way I feel and being anxious, anxiety reads more anxiety. Two different things, you gotta tease them apart and work on both of them, right? You don't have to work on being normally anxious as any human being would, that's normal, right? Let's see, slowing down doesn't stop my anxiety, but it does help, wait, let me see this. Hey, another Twitch person, thank you Twitch. Does help minimize tripping over my own feet from mindlessly rushing. Yeah, but you know what? I appreciate this comment for sure. It does make us a little bit more coordinated and it stops the crazy stuff like tripping over your own feet, stumbling, dropping the keys, dropping your pen, stumbling over your words. And that does help. That does help when you're not stumbling around and running into walls and fumbling with your words because you're slowing down. That does actually help, that's part of that signal. That's a good comment, I appreciate that. Let's see, I'm sorry, let's see here. I'm gonna just scroll so I can see. Okay, let's see, I'm not afraid of panicking but I can't function in public my fear of violent possibility is a traumatic event with trauma processing. Well, that's possible, that could be, I'll put this up on the screen, Alicia. So our experiences do matter, right? So it sounds like you were maybe involved in a truly dangerous situation where there was some violence involved and I'm really sorry, that's a shitty experience to have, I'm sorry that happened to you. And yeah, when those things happen, we can have strong reactions like that. One of the things that's important to recognize, and I'm always gonna recognize this and validate this by the way, is why are you afraid, right? It's a good question, why am I afraid? If you had an experience, let's say that your experience happened, I'm just gonna make something up. In a public park, there was a really bad situation, maybe there was a fight, you're actually in danger, something bad happened. We can all agree it was a bad thing. You may have anxiety now going into that situation again. I don't feel safe here because of what happened, totally understandable. That's not a float and accept problem. It is to a certain extent, there's some overlap, but yeah, you're gonna have to go through a little processing on that for sure, 100%. Let me 100% validate that for you. But also, then there's the, I can't go into that park because I'm afraid of how I feel in that park. That becomes the two different, there's the original trauma, if you will, or the original negative or adverse experience. And then there's the now I've morphed into just being afraid over being afraid. So sometimes both can be at the same time. So, Alicia, I'm sorry for whatever happened to you that does not sound fun at all, but yeah, there could be more than one thing happening there, 100%. But we can work on them both. Hope it works out for you, I really do. Oh, this is good too. Slowing Down does happen in a context. I think I wrote this in the book somewhere. When you travel to small towns where people don't have to rush. So what I consider slowing down living in a big city is nowhere where slowing down really is. That's a good comment. And I think sometimes the context that we live in on a regular basis can influence that. If we're constantly surrounded by rush, rush, rush, rush, rush, rush, rush, rush, rush, then it would be harder for us to recognize our own anxious rushing, right? Because rushing around, I mean, look, I live in the New York City metro area. It's a pretty fast place to be. So when I was working on slowing down, I felt like I stuck out like a sore thumb. Like if I'm walking slowly through the supermarket back in those days, because I had to intentionally, I felt like, oh my goodness, the world is passing me by and people might look at me sideways. So that's really good. When we live in really fast pace places, I'm saying it's a good thing, by the way. If we're just stressed all the time because it's like the environment we're in is always frenetic, then yeah, it can be even harder to recognize our own anxious rushing. So it could come at them, I like it. The GAD thing, people will usually come in with GAD and say, well, that's different and the rules don't apply to me also. I did, I've done several podcast episodes that talk about GAD. Sometimes with GAD, it is just a runaway fear of fear that just doesn't become panic. That is part of GAD. But there are other issues that usually come underneath that. Perfectionism, people pleasing, overachieving, overplanning, overthinking. I'm the person that gets it all done. I'm the smartest guy in the room. I'm the fastest person. I have to take care of everybody. I have to be the guy that's always right. There's so many things underneath that sometimes that people sometimes wear as badge of honors. The badges of honor, they don't even know they're necessarily doing them or they know that these are traits of them, but also they think they're good things, but then wonder why they're anxious all the time. So I would urge you to go check out the GAD episodes in the podcast to see where that fits in. But yes, slowing down is the same thing. So for people with GAD who are say, chronic overthinkers or cannot deal with any sort of uncertainty or must be in control of everything, when you slow down and say, I'm not gonna engage when all of my control behaviors, I'm not gonna try to control the whole world. I'm not gonna try and predict every possible outcome of every minute of my day. That will feel bad. That will feel bad. So many of the same rules still apply. It just helps to have a little bit of, maybe of an awareness of some of those habits, those mental habits that are underneath that constant anxiety. And yes, if you have to slow down a thousand times a day, then do that. If it feels really wrong to slow down, then you're probably on the right track. Tell you that. Let's see here. What up Michigan? Okay, DP, D-P-D-R. It's a symptom of anxiety. So is anxiety a symptom of DP or is DP a symptom of anxiety? Depersonalization, derealization that dissociated state is an anxiety symptom, right? Most people will tell you that's an anxiety symptom. You will say that it might be the other way. Like no, no, no, no, DP-D-R creates anxiety. Well, probably not. It will increase your level of anxiety for sure because you're terrified of it. And in the end, DP-D-R is not a special thing. I had that in a big way. It was the hardest symptom for me to overcome. I just did an Instagram reel on that a couple of days ago. I don't know what it was. Used to make me feel like I was disappearing, like slipping away. And I had to learn to just let it happen. Like I stopped trying to fix it or like prove that I was still real. I was here and the world was weird and it looked weird, but I have to prove that it isn't weird. I stopped doing all of those things. And that's when things got better. So as with everything else, you don't have to pick an exposure. An exposure would be a thing that triggers the DP-D-R if you know what that's gonna be. But whenever it happens, it's just allowing it to happen and move through it without resistance. Same rules would apply. No, no, no, let's see here. You let the thoughts come, Katie. I'm more afraid of the possibility of intrusive thoughts than actually having them. How do I not ruminate in the pot? You don't. Like you're trying to like control your thinking. I don't, tell me how to not think that. You will think that. You can't not think that. Especially if you're afraid of it, you will think it. So the way that, I don't wanna get into it too deeply now. I've talked about that in other podcast episodes. In the end, there's a metacognitive process there that will, am I thinking of it? Am I having an intrusive thought now? And as soon as you, that metacognitive process kicks in to check to see if you're clear of the scary thoughts, you're thinking of the scary thoughts. So that's how that works. That's why there's no way to just decide, I'm not gonna think about this. Tell me how to stop worrying about intrusive thoughts. You have to just accept the fact that you might have those thoughts, but I can just allow them to come and disengage from. So that's a tough one. Let's see here. Slowing down seems to be enough. Slowing down is a huge part of acceptance. I like to use the word surrender more than acceptance. If acceptance floats your boat, tolerance, whatever, totally cool. But I think it's a big part of it. That's why I wrote this book to be honest with you. Slowing down is a big part of it. Where are we? 33 minutes. We're doing good. Let's see here. Does anxiety, no, no, no. Okay, let's put this one up on screen. Hey, Carrie, how's it going? I am succeeding with regular exposure. So I go to the supermarket, medical appointments, excellent. I see close friends, but feel terrible whilst, clearly one of our British friends whilst doing it. Will my brain eventually catch up and realize it as safe? Yeah, the same rules apply. A lot of people will make the mistake of declaring certain symptoms special because it's the ones they fear the most and other people will make the mistake of declaring certain challenges special because they're the hardest challenges. It's okay, that's a hard challenge for you right now, but the same rules apply. I can feel really uncomfortable. I can feel badly while I'm talking to my friends, but I can allow that. I can allow that and I can move through that. All right, so yeah, the same rules pretty much apply. Let's see here. I'm gonna stay away from trying to address each individual symptom. Does anxiety cause this, this, this? The general rules and principles will help you. I keep sending people back to the podcast, but the first 15 episodes of the podcast kind of lay out those general principles. Learn the principles as opposed to looking for specific, I need specific questions answered about specific symptoms and what causes why. So I'm gonna stay clear of those things. I went from severe panic and anxiety and some weight. Took a trip to Gulf Shores. Truth speaker, love it dude, good job man. I'm glad to see that. That's awesome. Little big up for our friend here. Lost so much weight, hospital you are, to feeling great, doing things again and took a trip. Love it, love the success stories. Thank you for sharing that. I'll put this up real quick. Where are we, I'm close to the end, I think that's good. My anxiety is telling me that I don't wanna put the work in anymore and I'm not gonna make it and that I'm ready to give up. Okay, so I like the way you started this statement. I'm sorry, I can't see your name. My anxiety is telling me is a good clue. My anxiety is telling me. The fact that you know that this is your anxiety speaking and by the way, the thought, what if I never get better or the thought I can never get better or the thought I'm too weak to get better or the thought I can't get this and won't get better, those thoughts are part of the disorder. I'm just, they just are, they're incredibly common, incredibly common. If I was gonna stick a percentage on this, I would say at least 70% of our community struggled with those thoughts from time to time. Sometimes when things aren't going so great, those thoughts are natural to pop up. Sometimes even when things are going great, those thoughts pop up. No, I'm not gonna get this, I'm never gonna get better. So it's super common to have the thoughts that you'll never get better and the fact that you're saying that your anxiety is telling you is a really big deal. That being said, I did. I did a podcast episode a few weeks ago called You Don't Have to Recover. That was a little controversial, but the idea of going directly towards scary things and intentionally having scary experiences and intentionally allowing all of these things is a big deal. Like it's a big ask, it's counterintuitive. It means you gotta display a bunch of courage. You have to be tenacious, you have to be consistent. This is not easy. It doesn't mean that if you're not ready to do it, you're weak or broken, but sometimes it's okay to acknowledge. And I'm not telling you that this is the case here, but I did that episode called You Don't Have to Recover for a Reason, right? Sometimes you might just not be ready. It's possible that you're not ready to do this. That happens. Everybody has to reach their own point where the pain of staying stuck is greater than the pain of going forward. Because let's 100% validate that for everybody. There's pain either way here. And by pain, I mean there's difficulty either way. Pick your heart, suffer in the right direction. Like Rick Astin says that, right? So I like pick your heart. It's really hard to intentionally face the things that you are afraid of. It's really hard to intentionally make yourself afraid and uncomfortable for a reason. It's also really hard to not do those things. So sometimes we have to look at that and say, am I actually ready to do this work? Because if you're not really ready for it, even if you believe it's the right work, you can wind up really being harsh on yourself. So think about that a little bit. Go listen to that if you want. It's got a weird topic. The title is where you don't have to recover, but just go listen to it. I talked about that a little bit. It might help, might help. So let's see here. And then when you feel depressed, it is okay. Well, let's throw this up here. When you feel depressed, is it also okay to slow down? Well, sometimes in depression, there is a lot of agitation that can come with that sometimes. So there's never a reason to rush around as a safety behavior. Put it to that way. So there's always, we always talk about rushing around as a way to try to escape those feelings of threat or danger, if you will. So sometimes you might wanna slow down depending on what the particular context is in that moment. But generally speaking, we have to be careful about treating depression in like a passive, I'm just going to slow down and float through this and do nothing. We never wanna do that with depression. We always want to go after depression. That's important. So just be careful. Let's see here. We are not, let me throw this up here. We are not responsible for our thoughts only for our actions. Yes, in so many words. And I've said this before, you can decide to think a thing. Like I can decide right now, I feel like thinking about an ice cream sundae. I can think about that. I can't decide to not think a thing. I can't decide to change one thought into another. So the only thing we can do in this context, I'm talking about recovery from an anxiety disorder is to lead with behavior actions and let the thoughts and the emotions trail behind. Which is very different than 25 years ago in second wave cognitive behavioral therapy, CBT. There were worksheets and reframing and thought challenging and thought records and fact checking. And I'm not saying those things were worthless. They're not. They perform it, they provide a good basis, but they were generally concerned with trying to get you to recognize wrong thoughts or inaccurate thoughts and then to change them. But now we know that's really a big ask. So we focus on the B part first, the behavioral part. We can set the stage with the cognitive work, but we really have to focus on the behavioral work. Just really we behave first in this context that we're all in and then the thoughts trail behind. The change in thoughts and emotions trails behind the behavior. That's just become so painfully apparent over the last 25 or 30 years. That's the third wave, right? That's the third wave that we're talking about, third wave CBT. Let's see here. It was about the same. I'm just gonna kind of scroll down a little bit to the end here. You're very welcome, Alicia. Hope it all works out for you. Oh boy, this is a thing. Living in the area, I can tell you I was doing 90 miles an hour on I-95 and I got flipped off for going too slow. That's a thing. That's a thing. I had been passed doing 80 miles an hour and I was like, what? So that's rough here for sure. Let's see here. I'll throw this up real quick. We only have a few comments left and then we're gonna end it for today. What if you're reading your book but you're just not grasping the material? It's going in, but it's not sticking. I can't say what's going on in your own head, James. It's a reasonable question. A couple of things happen pretty commonly when people read the anxious truth or 7% slower. Either they start reading it, especially the anxious truth and they love chapters one and two and then they bail as soon as they get to the part where you have to do scary things. So that could be one thing. Another thing is it's not sticking is often code for, I don't want you to tell me to do scary things, which I totally get. I'm not picking on you for that. I wouldn't blame you for that at all. But sometimes not sticking is just a bit of incredulity. Like it can't possibly be that this guy is telling me that I have to go and intentionally make myself panic. I've heard that so many times that I feel pretty comfortable giving you that feedback. I can't tell you that that's what's going on but sometimes it's literally like this can't be real. I hear it. I see the words on the page. I get what he's saying, but there's no way he has to hate. I've heard clearly you don't know what it feels like. I've heard clearly you're lying. You never had this problem. I've heard all of those things. So that could be part of it too. I can't say, but those are suggestions I can throw out your James. Hopefully that helps. Let's see, let's get to the end here. Some education, me too. I'm digging like GBG and truth speaker. You guys are becoming buds in the comments. I'm digging it. I can't follow it all, but it's great. Let's scroll down to the bottom. Let's pop this up real quick. It's a reasonable question. What are your thoughts on anxiety and ADHD? I have very little experience and have done very little studying on ADHD and neurodivergent issues. So I don't have a real, I don't have thoughts on that. What I do know is that people who you would categorize as being in the neurodivergent population do 100% experience the world differently than some of us. Not wrong, just different. So sometimes people who are on the autism spectrum or there's Asperger's or ADHD, all those different issues, you may experience the world a little bit differently than me. A little bit differently than a lot of the other people in the group or in the room right now. That's okay. It doesn't make it wrong. It just makes it different. So all I can say about anxiety and ADHD is there is every possibility that what I am saying may be more difficult for you or may not apply based on your perception of the world. I am always 100% above board on that and honest about that, I'm never writing toward neurodivergent issues because I didn't live that experience and I have not studied it nearly enough to know, to speak with any kind of authority or to say that I'm authority. So all I can say is that it is possible that what I'm saying may not resonate with you. I get that and I understand why it wouldn't. So hopefully that helps. Let's see here. Yeah, that's like Mohammed, that's your question too, anxiety and autism, HSP. I can't tell you. I have my thoughts on the HSP thing and a lot of people kind of go after that HSP label. We'll talk about maybe one day, but you may experience the world differently than other people. So that's the same thoughts that I just threw out there would apply. Let's see. I can't get to all of them because I'm at 43 minutes and I'm gonna run at a time, but let's see here. Get down to the bottom here. We're cool as lemonade, very good. Anyway guys, oh, let's throw this one up. This is a reasonable question. We'll end with this one. I'm sorry I can't answer every specific question. I'm sorry I can't, there's just too many. Do you ever hit a funk toward the end of recovery where you've done all the exposures but still have a light light? Yeah, yeah, it's super annoying, dude. I completely, or Haley, I'm sorry, not dude. I didn't mean to call you dude. Just, I just, it reflects for me, but it is incredibly annoying. Yes, it is, especially when you feel like you've done all the work and you've done all the good work and you've put in the time and everything is working out so much better for you and like you're able to live your life again, but there's still that, like it's not perfect yet, keep going, like I get it. That last 5% takes the longest amount of time it did for me, it does for almost everybody. So don't be discouraged, know that that's pretty normal, that little bit of lingering, angering. I used to have days where it's like, why am I feeling like this? And I would allow myself a few minutes to be angry at that. Like I knew I didn't have to figure out why I just knew that like, all right, I guess it's just part of the deal, but I hated it and it's okay to hate it. So be frustrated if you need to be expressed in frustration, vent, let it out, and then just keep going the best you can. That's just the normal part of the process. All right, guys, I appreciate you coming and taking the time. Next week we'll be back, same bat time, same bat channel. And next week is, oh, this is good. Chapter seven next week is, is this mindfulness? Do I have to meditate? That'll be the topic next week. I appreciate you guys popping in. This will stay in my Facebook page, on my Facebook group. If you're in the group, it's hard to find those places and on my YouTube channel. So if you're not subscribed on YouTube, subscribe there, cause these are all on a playlist. Keep asking questions and commenting. I do my best to answer all of them if I can. And that's it, see you guys next week. If you want to get 7% slower, here it is on the bottom of your screen, 7% slower.com or on my website, the anxious truth.com. I'm out and we didn't have thunder and lightning here.