 we are back for recovery Monday. This is episode number 58 headphones today because I'm going to have a special guest on. I need to be able to hear this person. So that's why I'm wearing the headphones. She will be on a little bit. Let's wait for folks to start to show up. I have a feeling we're going to have a bit of a larger crowd today. Let me put the chat overlay up as usual so you guys can see each other cannot miss out on the conversations that go on in the chat. But I'm special says Becky. You are special Becky. You're special because you're usually the lone Twitch person, which I appreciate. So today we're going to talk about anticipatory anxiety. This is one that I know a lot of people want me to talk about. And I don't know why I haven't done a recovery Monday and anticipatory anxiety yet. It really makes no sense. I will tell you what triggered it. Sorry, probably shouldn't use the word trigger because that sounds like I'm being silly. But what prompted this is I got sent this book. It's a good book by the way. I'll put this on my website if you guys want to check it out. So Sally Winston and Martin Seif wrote this book about overcoming anticipatory anxiety. They sent it to me months and months ago and asked me to read it. I just now got around to finishing it. And it's really good. So it prompted me to think about anticipatory anxiety and do this little live today about it. So hello, Katya. Good to see you, Sharice. Hello, everybody. Here we go. Our special guest just popped in. She's in the green room. We have a green room here. It's very fancy on the anxious truth, by the way. Unfortunately, there's no gifts for our guests in the green room, but I think she'll be all right with that anyway. Yeah, so we're going to talk about anticipatory anxiety. I will bring Jackie on in a second. We'll do the usual where her and I will kind of chat for 15 minutes or so on the topic. And then we'll take questions and comments from the peanut gallery as usual. Mag is here. Dan is here. Fear gal. Hello, Fear gal. If you're in the Facebook group again, I can only see Facebook user because of the way Reastream does it. Sorry. So hello, Rhonda. How are you? Jason, what's up? Hello, everybody. Let's get going. We have 57 people in the room. I know Jackie is on a schedule, so let's bring her on. I'm going to bring on Jackie Shapin. Let's see. Here she is. Jackie can you hear me? Yes? Yeah. I love it. Love it. So for those of you who do not know Jackie Shapin, Jackie and I kind of connected on Instagram. She is a therapist in California, right? LMFT in California. Yeah. Specializing in anxiety disorders and anxiety and OCD. Why don't you fill everybody in? Yeah, yeah. My name is Jackie Shapin. I'm a licensed management family therapist in Los Angeles, and I treat mainly OCD anxiety disorders and also eating disorders. Cool. Well, Jackie and I clearly speak the same language. Somehow we got connected, and I'm lucky enough to have all the smartest friends. So her and I have been talking about doing one of these together for a little while, and she was nice enough to come on with us today to talk about this. So Jackie, we're going to talk about anticipatory anxiety. I noticed you posted a Sally Winston quote about it. Have you seen this book? I have not seen that book. I have this book. There you go. One of my favorites. Okay. And then I listened to her talk at the at the OCD conference on anticipatory anxiety. Cool. Very good. So anticipatory anxiety. What we'll do, by the way, Jackie, since I know you've never been here before, you could probably see the chat scrolling by. We'll, we'll talk for a little bit. These guys are great. They went up supporting each other in the chat. They don't even need us. We could probably just talk about whatever we want. But we'll do our little spiel and then we'll take some questions and comments there for as long as you can. If you got a bug out early, that's totally fine. Awesome. So anticipatory anxiety, that is that thing and jump in anytime. That's a thing where like, you know that you're going to be challenged on a recovery and anxiety standpoint. And then you start to get anxious about the fact that you're going to be anxious about a thing. Yeah. Yeah. Sound familiar to you? Yes. And I, I experienced, I don't have OCD, but I experienced anticipatory anxiety all the time. Sure. Yeah. Yeah. And I think one of the things that I wanted to bring up, and I'm sure again, jump in anytime, it'll just, like I said, there's a very informal conversation. But the fact that people get nervous about upcoming challenges is like super normal. Every human being will have that. I talked about that in the, the real lot I posted today, like maybe you have a job interview and exam coming up, being nervous about and anticipating it is normal. Right. But a nonanxious person is worried about the exam, the event, the trip, the wedding, as opposed to our folks who are worried about how they're going to feel while they, while they do those things. Does that sound right in your experience and with your clients? Oh, definitely. Yeah. It's for someone that maybe doesn't have an anxiety disorder, OCD, they're afraid of the actual event, just like you said. Yeah. But when you, when it comes in with OCD or anxiety disorder, you're more fearing the fear that you're going to have at the event. So that, that fear is stronger. The fear of the fear is stronger than the actual event itself. Yeah. And that's kind of the hallmark. That's what makes us different from the rest of the folks, you know, what venue is this one besides Facebook Live? You could see this on YouTube also, by the way. I just noticed that. So normally, if I see them, I'll try and jump on them. So that's anticipatory anxiety. And I think it is, I've heard people say, oh, that's the bane of my existence. I've heard it's the hardest one. I've heard it's the thing that keeps me from recovering because I, I get afraid to do things. And then I stopped because I anticipate them so much. So it is a bear. There's no doubt about that. Yeah. And it, and it pairs a lot with decisiveness. Like they go together sadly so well. Yeah. Yeah. We're going to talk about that for sure. Because I think it's one of those three main, to me, concepts. And when I read the latest book, I was like, oh, they have all, there's a bunch of stuff that they wrote about decisiveness and like, bam, dead on. But what would you expect from them? Of course. So anticipatory anxiety, people will think like, well, it's a special kind of anxiety. How do I get rid of it? And I think I would always preface this by saying, well, we're not learning to, there's no anticipatory anxiety switch. Like, here's how you banish it. There's, there's no way to do that. I wish, I wish. But unfortunately, that's not how, that's not what helps. Yeah. Yeah. So like everything else, we learn how to deal with it, how to relate to it in a different way, how to navigate through it. And then it becomes less and less impactful over time for sure. But you know, it's important to say like, anticipatory anxiety can hang around for quite a long time. I would have called myself fully recovered the first time I had to fly after my recovery work. I had a lot of anticipatory anxiety over that. So that's normal. That's going to happen. It's okay. Yeah. So in your opinion, I'll just throw this stuff out here. I have a couple of concepts that I want to throw out and what kind of chew on it. So I think one of the first concepts where people fall off the rails and they get caught up in the anticipatory anxiety cycle is not understanding the difference between planning and worrying. Yeah. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. So that goes off the rails really quickly. Like you can plan for some things. That's fair. Yes. No. Yeah. Oh, I think, yeah. Planning is like you're making an action plan and you see, you plan it out, you see the end of it and you go and you do it versus worrying is not playing. Worrying is thinking of all the possible ways that things go wrong, not being able to move forward with your plan. It's not action oriented. It's just focused on solving something. Yeah. I think there's a huge difference between worrying and planning for sure. Yeah. And I think that's where people get caught up. So that that that hit of anticipation rolls in when you discover that you got to do something hard, which by the way might be in 10 minutes or it might be in 10 weeks. This same all the time, right? And so you might want to plan a certain thing like I'm going to do it this way. This is I have to make travel plans. I have to do this. I do that. And then once we get past the planning part, people get caught up and I'm going to keep thinking and thinking and running simulations and worrying and hoping and focusing. And that's where things get really difficult. Yeah. That's where that's where it kind of becomes a compulsion where it goes around and round. You never actually like reach a real committed action plan when you're worrying. Yeah. Oh, that's a really good point. You don't actually reach a plan. Or sometimes I think people they're trying to find more plan. Like I'm going to keep worrying and thinking and find something. And when you call it a compulsion, I like it because it's probably designed to soothe your I'm so anxious and afraid about this. I'm going to try and find a way to make myself feel better about it. Yeah. I think planning isn't really a compulsion, right? Planning is you're just coming up with the steps you need to take. Your commitment. Whereas worry is you're doing it to feel better and it's actually not getting you somewhere. Yeah. Yeah. I like that. It's not getting you somewhere. So probably a good thing to keep in mind as you're if you're in an anticipatory anxiety cycle is is this good? Is this making it any better for me or not? Am I fixing anything? Am I sovereign anything? Or am I just living in the thoughts and the fear and perpetuating it over and over and over? Yeah. And I think are you yeah, are you noticing any are you noticing any of those like what ifs that that are really common with obsessions? Are there any what ifs? Because that might be a worry versus a plan. Oh, that's a good point. What if this happens? What if I panic on the plane? What if this? Yeah. Yeah. What if what if what if it's not a plan? Right. Yeah. I think another thing I say this often and sometimes it sounds kind of cold is the other thing I would say is hoping is also not a plan. So sometimes people get caught up in continuous hoping. I hope I'm okay. I hope I better I better think about it some more so I can hope I'm hoping that'll be if I hope isn't a plan either and you can't make yourself do better by hoping also. Yeah. Hope sounds like it's hope is another one that as you say it sounds like it's a way to reduce some discomfort as opposed to just this is my plan. I'm going to do it. I'm not going to think too much about it because otherwise if I think too much about it then I will start worrying. Yeah, exactly. And so you know, hoping sounds like a good idea. Of course, I should hope we should certainly hope but but that can go off the rails too. So hoping could be just another form of worry also. That's a good point. I haven't thought about that a lot. Yeah. Yeah, I hope I hope I hope I hope is kind of tough. So the next thing that I want to talk about is so when you start to realize you're in a state of anticipatory anxiety because something is coming up again in five minutes or five weeks could be the way. And now you notice oops, I'm stuck in the thinking loop. I'm in the thinking worrying hoping thinking worrying hoping I've made all the plans I can make I can't make any more plans. Now I'm living an event in my head that hasn't happened yet. Where do you go from there? What would you tell somebody to do in that situation when you catch that? What can you do? I guess the first thing I just thought of because I recently went to that talk was it sounds like noticing that you're in this imagination land versus reality is one. It doesn't necessarily help to challenge it as I know you talk about a lot and we talk about but I think just noticing is my mind taking me am I totally imagining stuff or am I living in a moment? Is this my reality? And then what I hear you and what I talk about a lot is just noticing first being aware of it like the first step is oh I'm noticing I'm doing that thing where I'm hoping or I'm saying what if or I'm doing something to make myself feel better. So I think awareness and noticing what you're doing is like the first step. Yeah, if you don't notice you're doing it then you think you're doing something right. So yeah, like you think you're doing something right until you know that you're not which is really hard. That's very it's hard to get there you know. I think once you have noticed people will say yeah but how do I stop the thoughts? How do I put the brakes on? Well you don't you don't just put the brakes on it you don't stop the thoughts but I would suggest that this is where learning and practicing and working on refocusing into now today right this moment can be really helpful not because you can suddenly be magically mindful and the anxiety goes away but when your brain is demanding that you live in the future you can say well you fine I appreciate the suggestion brain but I'm going to come back to now. So I've heard people say like being being able to focus on what is rather than what if. Yes. Yeah really not easy not easy at all. Not not easy like it'll keep coming back but it's about that being mindful of oh I'm noticing I'm doing that thing again where I'm in the future what are my values what I want to do in this moment what can ground me in this present moment that I'm in and it's not easy it's going to keep coming back and that's it's annoying and it's a lot of you don't even know it's annoying but it's like oh there happened again nope I want to be with my friends and really you know trying to commit to being like paying attention to what you want to pay attention to even though you can't necessarily get rid of the awareness of the worry. Yeah you're coming into the present moment which is the thing you practice if we don't practice that and we just try to do it on demand then it gets very frustrating and very difficult like oh I'm anxious now so let me be mindful now but I never work on that otherwise it's it's not going to work. And it's not about distraction it's not about I'm going to be in the present moment and hope that it goes away it's I'm going to let it be there because it's not going to go away and if I try to make it go away it's going to get worse so I'm going to just let it be there and be with me while I'm doing whatever I want to be doing it's it's like hey little annoying sibling I try I like to call it the annoying sibling a lot like your sister or brother like okay I'm going to let them hang out with me even though I don't want them here but I'm just going to let them be there while I do whatever I'm doing. Yeah that's a good point the annoying little sister. Yeah I'm not going to say I have one but I did. So that's a really good point but that's a practice thing and if if you if you feel like well I can't get it right because I'm still anxious when I do that yeah correct it's it's just a practice thing it's a repetition thing unfortunately nothing you do about that. And you can actually you can even cheer yourself on even if you are still feeling anxious because you can say oh that means I'm doing it right if I'm still feeling anxious and I'm you know doing whatever I'm doing with my values that's actually winning that you know what I mean that you're able to acknowledge yeah the anxiety isn't going to go away so I'm not going to put myself down for it still being there and instead I'm going to applaud myself for having it and doing whatever it is I want to do. Well I like that so I'm not losing because I couldn't make it go away I'm winning because I'm doing my life while it's still here that's the win. Yeah and that's the that's the instructional experience that changes the way we view this stuff going forward really important great point excellent point so let's go on to indecision which I love that you brought up I'll throw this out and then we can we'll riff on this one too the worst thing you can do and I made this I made this mistake all the time when I was struggling so you know you have a thing coming up whether it's in five minutes or five weeks and then you decide to spend the next five minutes or the next five weeks going back and forth between I'm going to do it no no I'm going to cancel I'm going to do it but if I cancel then I'm not recovering I'm giving up but no I'm going to do it no I'm going to cancel I'm just going to cancel it make a decision and go with it I think that is so and I'm not saying that's easy to do but that waffling back and forth and keeping yourself stuck in the nowhere zone is so much worse. Yeah this is one of the ones I do this is one of the things I struggle with is indecisiveness is like yeah making a decision it's really hard um but the best thing you can do is making a decision not turning back and then when you notice you want to change your mind you notice a worry to just not let yourself do that and awareness oh I'm doing that thing where I want to change my mind but I made a commitment and so I'm just going to move forward with it. Yeah I think even if the commitment that you make and I know this might be you might not expect me to say this but even if you decide I'm not going to do this I'm not going to go to the family reunion because I don't think I can handle it okay that's okay you can make that decision now what will I do with that what plan will I build around that what will I learn from it what will I do maybe instead of that so you I think people look at it as it's black and white like either I'm winning and I'm recovering or I'm failing miserably and I can't make the fail choice and that that need to try to win and also not not be anxious is really almost impossible so if you choose not to do the thing it's okay work with that then that makes sense oh yeah it isn't just about making the choice to do something it's also using compassion and acceptance or even being happy if you don't do the thing you know owning it yeah what else can I do and I think expectation matters a lot in anticipatory anxiety also like well I'm just hoping that comes back to the hope thing I hope I hope I'm gonna feel great that day well that's fine to hope that and maybe you well and that would be awesome we'd all love it but expect that you probably won't and it will be challenging it makes it so much easier to relate to it when you expect it to be a challenge and if you decide to not do the thing expect that you will probably regret that to some degree and then what will you do with that regret how can you use that yeah that's a good point yeah yeah it's a tough one I guess oh I just lost it I had a question for you about that and then I just lost it hey when that happens um oh so you said something about um like which I kind of say too like lowering your expectations but do you think expecting the worst is okay or would you say that that could fall into like a compulsive thing well I think this is where like my stoic philosophy comes in like premeditation alarm which is the stoic said wake up every morning and figure out the worst thing that could possibly happen so you're prepared for it I'm not saying that's a bad idea it can go off the rails in our community 100 so I get that but I feel like we have to at least acknowledge a challenge not a disaster but so I think my answer would be acknowledging a challenge can be really helpful because it's it puts you in reality as opposed to just hoping that you won't be anxious and then declaring disaster when you are yeah it doesn't helpful expecting to be challenged is a good thing as long as you don't turn the challenge into a nightmare that makes sense yeah yeah like like um you can't like let's say you're nervous about going to a family gathering instead of hoping everyone's going to be in a good mood or nice or whatever that's not maybe realistic so instead I'm gonna expect them to be what they normally are which isn't that great or is difficult and I'm still gonna you know make the decision to go even if I yeah even if I wake up and I hear that they're all like in a bad mood or whatever right the choice you're gonna make and I think the experience you can have there is well I can handle that I can get through that and you might make plans like hey if need be I can step out for 10 minutes and take a break yeah again I can that's okay you can make those plans but just don't turn the expected challenge into it's going to be a challenge and I'm incapable and therefore this will be a disaster yeah that's probably I don't know if this is totally off topic but for some reason that made me think of when um when people struggle with not getting enough sleep and they worry they're not going to be able to handle things or do things when they don't get enough sleep yeah um it made me think of that just that that you can handle things even if you don't get enough sleep it just might suck but that doesn't mean you can't do it yeah I I think almost everything you and I address comes down to the idea that I can't handle XYZ whatever it is and as it turns out you always do handle it you just feels like shit when you do it yeah and so you think you think you're not handling it right but it's okay if you feel like shit yeah nobody wants to I mean I don't want to but like sometimes we do yeah it's actually really difficult yeah so I think that's important and the only thing I would say to kind of wrap it up before we go into the questions in the comments would be anticipatory anxiety matters again I keep saying five minutes or five weeks the five-minute thing and I don't know you know what your thoughts are in this jack but anticipatory anxiety sometimes stops people from doing their exposure work now I'm mainly addressing a population with panic disorder and agoraphobia but OCD is in the room also so there's ERP work there and I think in the case of immediate anticipatory anxiety like I wake this was me I know I have to go out and drive today even though I'm going to panic in the car when I made the choice to do those things very first thing in the morning boy did that get better so if you're having anticipatory anxiety about intentional exposure work how about doing it now if you can if practical as opposed to I'm gonna wait till I might feel okay sometime today till I'm ready and then I will dread it for every minute until I think I'm ready before I do it how about you do it now when you're not ready yeah I like the doing it now so much because the anticipatory worry it's only gonna it's just gonna drag on and it's the kind of comes back to that thing you said about hope like you're hoping it'll change you're hoping you'll be ready but no one loves to do exposure work so I love the idea of I'm gonna beat this anticipatory anxiety by just doing it now and kind of almost like the OCD showing it like hey I hear you I know you're there but I'm gonna do it anyway and I'm gonna get it off now not yet not quite knuffling it but like I'm gonna I'm gonna do it and not let this anxiety take me elsewhere yeah I did so much better for me when I said okay I'm gonna do everything in the morning this is and I am not a great morning person I'm still not I'm a reluctant yeah but I'm like okay I'm gonna get up and get my ass at the door and do this now in the morning at 7 a.m. or whenever the hell it was pretty early sometimes wow my days were much better as opposed to I know I have to do what I don't have to do what I don't have to do it I'm thinking about it I'm gauging whether I'm ready to do it that was difficult that was a day full of anticipatory anxiety that was not helping me at all yeah yeah and then if you do it in the morning you also probably feel a sense of pride right like you're like walking around like I did it I did that hard thing instead of waiting yeah yeah and the end of the day for me I wrote about this when I wrote the anxious truth I I even called it the morning effect I don't know if I invented that or not but maybe maybe I did I don't know but when for me when I got to the end of the day a day full of avoidance was exhausting to me mentally emotionally physically exhausting a day where I went at it in the beginning it was hard for sure 100% but the the tired or the fatigue at the end of the day was a more fulfilling fatigue I don't know if that makes any sense whatsoever it was a sense of accomplishment like yeah I'm tired but I did some stuff today so yeah I think it makes a lot of sense yeah yeah yeah I get it so that's kind of like we can't solve your anticipatory anxiety problem in 15 minutes or take it away but these are strategies that you can use things I think you can look at do you have anything you want to add to that check before we go into the the comment section I think like one other way that can be helpful is really trying to shift from judgment or figuring something out to curiosity like you know what I mean that idea of you know what I don't know how it's going to be today but let's just be curious and and be curious about how I'm going to react to it and curious about the situation so just I think I love the word curiosity over anything else that you normally can replace that with so yeah judgment curiosity over with knuckling curiosity over resistance yeah I'm with you on that the easier said than done to you know yeah like mindful let's be mindful let's be decisive let's be curious like super hard to do but but these are things we practice all the time yeah all right let's pop it to the comments and answer some questions well how long do you have Jack you ever you got a buggy in a little bit or no um I still have like 15 minutes okay let's do it we usually go about 45 minutes max so let's pop yeah it's all good um let's see oh this is good let's pop this up this is Katya in rusher I put them up at the bottom of the screen if I can I still have anticipatory anxiety when they go out with other people I worry about them worrying about me being anxious that's that's a take that you don't hear that often but I bet it's more common than we think oh yeah I worry about them worrying about me being anxious that's not the I'm I'm worried that I'm going to panic I'm worried that if or if be anxious I'm worried what other people will think if they see me be anxious right I'm worrying about it's like kind of sounds like people pleasing I'm worrying about how other people are going to be feeling or thinking about the idea that I might be anxious like are yeah like are they judging me is it going to ruin their time yeah it's a little bit like that yeah you're probably right I kind of like that or like that's that thing where I'm going to take responsibility for ruining everybody's thing yeah okay we're going to go out to the social event I'm going to ruin it all yeah it's going to be yeah yeah and I guess yeah I guess I have two I guess two thoughts are one one is um you know noticing that you have that anxiety or noticing that you have that worry and trying to let it be there but enjoying your time with your friends anyway and then the other thought is like trusting that that these are my good friends and they're not you know we're all independent people that can handle like each other's feelings like I mean like I can handle my friend being anxious and I'm an adult that doesn't mean that it's going to take away from my experience being fun yeah and that becomes that sort of what you can be compassionate with other people why wouldn't you assume they're going to be the way with you yeah you know if you went out and your friend was struggling you what would you tell me you're ruining my whole night you wouldn't say that you would you would help them and be understanding and why don't you think they would do that for you also so you know we're terrible jerks of our own situation yeah and people get a lot out of helping their friends yeah like some people like that some people like that they were able to spend the night you know helping their friend out you know I think that's a whole other conversation but I think it's a really good one too because like your friends because you care about each other and it's not a one-dimensional thing I'm only your friend so you can come and drink beer with me and make me laugh all the time right so I get that yeah good good comment Katya I appreciate you bringing up let's put up with Bethany's comments you're not really questioned but the worry opens up new possibilities that then seem keywords seem to require more planning Bethany knows stuff so I like that because when you decide I'm going to keep worrying and I'm going to keep thinking more but I think more but a worry more but I have to it's so important that's that trap that says yeah that's your brain saying think of more things right find something dig for something it'll make you feel better yeah it makes you think you're being productive with your thinking but really it can become that compulsion yeah and I think what what's difficult for a lot of people I do not know what that sound was sorry I think that was me um I think what can be difficult is that people will then ask me well how do you know how do you know when when you're when you should stop thinking you don't know you there's no black or white there's no specific answer well how do I stop thinking what if I miss something you might miss something that's true yeah there's no way to know like you know you have to kind of feel that out anyway um let's see here okay this is good too because this is a common misconception I believe and this gets into like that metacognitive thing I believe that my overthinking and problem-solving are beneficial to producing desired outcomes but I love the second half of this thank you so much it has served me well in my career yes being an analytical analytical thinker awesome but now it haunts me this is an entire and I'm a huge MCT like nerd to be honest with you so I'm a big fan this your relationship with thinking I believe that thinking is a is my go-to 100% and so I keep going to it until I discover that it's killing me and I try to stop it then I think I need to think again and I get caught in this love thinking hate thinking love thinking hate thinking love thinking hate it's really hard yeah and I I guess I'm wondering is it more complicated or would it be easier to recognize okay if it helped me with engineering then can I notice that this isn't about engineering yeah something else so if it helps me with my career then great but if it's not my career is this an opportunity where I can recognize this might not be helpful for me right now um yeah which is really it could be difficult because you're abandoning what you think is a something that keeps you safe and produces desired outcomes yeah but this is where it gets very that's super scary to yeah yeah it feels like rolling the dice or being reckless right like what do you mean I'm supposed to just do a crossword puzzle without figuring this out that are you crazy you know I've heard things like that but that is one of the things like in MCT that that people get taught like well what else can you do instead of just trying to think more what can you actually do behavior thinking so interesting really good comment though I love it um this is a good one too hello Paula let's see I find myself not thinking about the event works well for me I plan it and then not think about it but my therapist views this as avoidance and views conscious acknowledgement of the anxiety by writing my thoughts and fears is you know we could I'm sure we could figure out what the rest of that would be is a tough one because we don't want to counteract you we're not your therapist right so they know you we don't but I don't know you have any you want to not you want to know comment on that one that's I get it a little bit well I guess yeah I guess it brings up yeah like is you're not thinking about an avoidance or it's you enjoying your life and and it's just it's not coming up for you I think that becomes a little bit of a theoretical orientation question yeah because I'm for you and I we might say no that's it sounds like you got it because you're doing life and then you do the event what's not to love about that right because maybe we were more into yeah there might be like yeah like we would maybe need to know more about yeah what it means yeah yeah a little bit that's a hard one to add I mean if your therapist is coming from a different theoretical orientation where they kind of feel like you got to find root causes and get in touch with your emotions to fix your anxiety then I would understand that statement but it's hard it's hard to say or are there or are there things that you avoiding are you saying like I don't want to think about it I don't want to talk about it yeah yeah right okay well that that's a different animal that's correct that's not a good strategy either yeah no we don't talk about that yeah then your therapist is probably right yeah I guess Bethany says that emojis are not showing up on the chat this is unacceptable I will burn restream to the ground when we're done let's see here somebody talked about that too I mean let's see it's always exciting when I read the comments and people watch me read the comments I'm gonna we're gonna try and keep it on anticipatory anxiety so I know some of you guys want to ask about particular fears and symptoms but we can't do that today well this is Wendy when the thorn brings up sleep I always have anticipatory anxiety over will I sleep tonight which is Jackie brought that up earlier right yeah yeah or being vague uh it's a tough one I always bring anxiety over will I sleep tonight or be awake with adrenaline and sleep and it's really really hard but again it's is is this helping me or what am I doing in the moment that I actually want to be doing yeah it's a hard one if you look at um I don't know if you're uh Wendy if you're listening to my podcast or not but if you go back just a few podcasts episodes I did a bunch of sleep ones and I had Daniel Erickson on he's a sleep physician he explains so well how he deals with that sleep thing it's not about your sleep it's about the worry that you won't sleep and what will happen like Jackie said earlier so you might want to check that out if you go to my website it's one of the most recent podcasts in the last month or so check that one out yeah sleep anticipation is a big a lot of people have no problem yeah um again if it keeps you from sleeping Sylvia said um let's see here I don't think it's okay to feel like shit but then I often do anyway yeah I think we're all with you on that nobody wants to feel like shit no doubt about it um if you can't do it now if you are anticipating an upcoming okay uh that's true but you can't do it now if you're anticipating an upcoming flight that is correct you can't do it so just to clarify that that is true yeah it's not even trying to say one practical right yeah it's not always gonna work to do it now uh flight the flight thing is hard uh I hear about the kind of well it's similar to the driving um are there things you can do to get yourself ready for the flight that are maybe exposure based yeah I think well because people will say I can't practice flying which is correct you can't just practice flying but I always say like well what else do you what else do you fear you don't fear the plane you fear the panic in the plane or the anxiety in the plane so go do other things that make you anxious right until you got to the point where nothing makes you anxious accept that flight and then there's now you're out of options you just kind of have to be nervous on the flight yeah yeah definitely but I think this can be the the the thing about like committing to doing it yeah uh like I know like I know I might panic on the flight I've done other things to try to practice you know being a friend or accepting the fear whatever do it be doing exposures that are interceptive or like bringing up this feeling um but I decided I'm going to go so I booked my flight and I'm not going to go back and forth like I'm you know yeah that's good too yeah I booked it that's it here I go and I've seen people say that okay I booked my answers I booked my my tickets oh well here I go which is I did this is someone who they they only it's different for everyone but they would actually go to the airport because even being in the airport brought up anxiety for them so that is one way that they practiced was like going and sitting in an airport airport um yeah that could be really helpful yeah um well I've done things like um well I can't what can I do to practice for the flight well how about you go to the movies a movie is an hour and a half long I mean if your flight is 12 hours I get that but go to a movie and sit in that theater for two hours oh that's it's terrifying okay well start with the movie then and it'll help you get on the plane so you know in ways there are ways you could try and go about that um let's see here isn't this is a good question let's put it up on the screen isn't doing it in the morning a kind of avoidance of anticipatory anxiety just a thought because I am the same always the morning it's a good question because you do get that weird there's a there's got to be some little bit of avoidance in almost everything we do in a way we can't get rid of all the right I would answer that and say it's not really avoidance because anticipatory anxiety is just more anxiety you don't have to practice anticipatory anxiety you're just practicing being anxious again so is it a little bit of avoidance yeah probably but I don't know if we can ever take all of that out yeah and if you're really worried about that becoming avoidance can you switch it up sometimes yeah like if you're afraid of that becoming something then purposely do later and see what see how you feel you know that's the whole like recovering perfectly like okay you're gonna have to intentionally make some mistakes or when exposure becomes compulsive they're gonna have to work on not doing the exposure for a day or two yeah but kind of like you said if it works for you you don't yeah you don't need to necessarily practice anticipatory anxiety because you doing things that give you anxiety that's the practice right regardless of whether the whether the end and whether the anxiety is because you're going out to do your driving exposure or your walking exposure or your ERP work or you're anticipating doing that in the end what's the difference so you're still experiencing the same challenge I think yeah yeah um but it can be different from day to day and it's gonna change so that's okay it was a good question good thought yeah um more sleep stuff you guys should definitely listen to the sleep anxiety podcast because we talked a lot about that in a bunch of those I did maybe four sleep anxiety podcasts we talked about not the sleep the fear that I might not sleep and then therefore I will feel bad or be more anxious so go check those out on my website for sure um but yeah there is anticipatory anxiety around sleep um okay this is good let's throw this up I always love when people share their wins too it's hard because sometimes we have to look over the big comments sorry Jack I'm hiding making a commitment to do the thing help me with my recent dentist appointment I committed to going if I panicked in the chair I said to myself I will handle it in a moment I went and none of the waters happened love it yeah yeah yeah huge huge win there I like how she says none of the what ifs happens but I still hate going well fair enough I don't think I need those dentists but one of the things that I dig about that is I've heard people say so often the anticipation was far worse than the thing yes so true so much I used to get that about I still get that about going like going to new places and I always end up enjoying the thing because I'm a social person but that yeah I definitely sometimes the before can be a lot worse than actual the actual event yeah yeah yeah which is so true and I think sometimes it's because of the duration of the worry you know the event might take an hour or two or five or a day but the worry could be for weeks on end so I see we're much tougher for sure yeah um let's see here this is Becky my one twitter my one twitch viewer I'm always happy that she's here from twitch if I miss something will puppies die it's which is we're making jokes sometimes and I love when you guys get funny about it but it feels like super urgent right like yeah this is the worst thing in the world if I miss something and I don't plan oh my god so that's a good point if you yeah the urgency a lot of times you if you feel a sense of urgency it's your anxiety yes yeah that's a really good point there if it feels super urgent and important right now that's probably an anxious thought right I think I did a post that was um if you feel urgency it's your unless you're on fire it's your anxiety or something like that like something happening yeah that's really good that's actually really good um I see that we have evidently twitch does have emojis so you know Becky haunting Bethany because you can use emojis um Becky plans to panic on her flight to Amsterdam this summer sounds like a good time excellent I'm gonna kind of scroll here I can't take them all unfortunately this is good this person says I'm gonna do a few drives to the airport eat there get used to being excellent love it love it yeah you know you might panic in the airport but that's okay practice that's good so good um let's see here there's a conversation about accepting dying which isn't I mean that could be the ultimate I guess that's a whole different conversation we'll do that some other some other time I have talked about that like death anxiety is a thing yeah podcast episode on that go to my website and just search for death anxiety or existential anxiety I've done a bunch of posts and that we'll talk about that some other time for sure um let's see here I think we're kind of at the end of comments there are a lot of great comments here you guys are killing it today but we just unfortunately can't take all of them um your death experiences every address absolutely does Jason is here I've read the book sure he said something in his lives yeah I have talked about that I've talked about existential and death anxiety in a nutshell I could tell you what I've talked about and you go listen to stuff I I guess like right now it feels really important because your brain is decided that a thing that is going to happen we can't deny that it happens to all of us it is part of the human condition might happen right now or I have to I have to deal with it like it's happening now or it's it's imminent right now and it so in a way that loudness and that distortion for me as I got better in general sort of went away and now I can I can talk about it for days and days I think it's fascinating it's a fascinating topic I but to me it felt urgent that's the thing that you just said Jackie like if it feels urgent yeah yeah death felt super urgent to me and now it doesn't feel urgent anymore just shitty yeah yeah yeah it sounds like it made me think of like the woosh like when you feel that woosh the the fight flight freeze response right oh big in that moment but if you can kind of ride it out and like wait five minutes or like give yourself some time you'll notice that that woosh will kind of slowly go down over time because it can't urgency can't last forever yeah that's true even urgency about the thought of death that's true as crazy as it sounds I used to have to to me it was like oh I'm doing that thing again I'm treating it like I'm dying now and I'm not so like okay thanks brain I appreciate you reminding me this horrible fate we all have but right now I'm doing this thing so yeah maybe that helps I know that sounds good because it seems like that's the most important thing there is how could you say that but trust me on this one anyway um I think we're good gotta hit the road or ride are we good to go I'm so glad you came by thanks for having me this is great I love talking about this stuff yeah yeah we'll definitely do it again Jackie I appreciate you taking the time so for those of you who do not follow Jackie on Instagram we should totally do that she's on the bottom of the screen there Jackie shape and therapy I'll leave it there so you can do it I will put it also in a comment on this video which will stay on YouTube it'll stay on the Facebook group and everything the easiest way to come back and rewatch this is on YouTube because I put them in a playlist so you can find all of these on Facebook you know how it is they get buried in the search there is nice thank you yeah thanks jack it was great we'll see you guys next week I don't know what we're gonna talk about but we'll be here we're out