 Hey there, I'm Drew and you are listening to the Anxious Truth. The Anxious Truth is the podcast that covers all things anxiety, anxiety disorders, and anxiety recovery. So if you're struggling with things like panic attacks, health anxiety, OCD, or gorophobia, this is the place for you. Lately we've been talking about anxiety symptoms and the common fears in anxiety disorders. Today I want to talk about how two people could have the very same experiences and the very same symptoms, but have very different reactions and very different interpretations. So let's go. Hello, everybody. Welcome back to the Anxious Truth. This is podcast episode number 239. We are actually recording early in the morning on Christmas Eve of 2022. So if you are listening in the future, I hope Christmas 2022 was good for you. Anyway, I am Drew Lentz, a lot of creator and host of The Anxious Truth. Thank you so much for being here with me today. We are going to talk today about the very wide range of reactions and interpretations that people can have to the very same symptoms and experiences of anxiety. Lately we've been talking about symptoms, we've been talking about common fears, and we've been sort of talking about what anxiety feels like, which is sort of a new topic for me, believe it or not, even after 230-something podcast episodes. But in talking about this sort of thing in the last couple of weeks, I've really gotten some amazing feedback that shines some light on the fact that people can have the very same symptoms or the very same fears and experiences, get interpret them very differently and react to them very differently. I think it's a great topic. We're not going to go for too long today. I am recording on Christmas Eve, but I wanted to make sure there was a podcast in the week between Christmas and New Year's. A lot of people take a break, have a little extra time to listen, maybe learn a little bit, maybe get something out of it. So I wanted to definitely put something out. And I appreciate you guys for having supported the podcast the way you have in 2022. This podcast has gotten larger this year. And I appreciate that, at least if the metrics are to be believed, it has gotten larger. And I appreciate your support. So I wanted to make sure we had an episode for this week. That's what we're going to talk about today. Before we do, I just want to remind you that The Anxious Truth is more than just this podcast episode or this YouTube channel. All of the things that I have on offer for you are at my website at theanxistruth.com. There's a bunch of free social media content. There's all the rest of the podcast episodes. There's books that I've written. There's a webinar I do every month with Joanna Hardis on Distress Tolerance. There's a whole bunch of good stuff there. So I would urge you to head on over to my website at theanxistruth.com if you're not following me on all the socials, you should do that. Take advantage of all the resources and thank you so much for your support. I appreciate it, whatever that looks like. So let's get into this. What prompted this was I had posted about depersonalization and derealization on TikTok. So believe it or not, in the last two months, it was strongly suggested, hey, you should really make a run at TikTok. Like I'll give this a shot. So I started posting content on TikTok. And as of this morning, and this is Christmas Eve of 2022, the video that I did about dpdr, depersonalization and derealization now has 2.7 million views. I am blown away by that. Absolutely blown away. I have never actually done a piece of content that ever went viral. And this one clearly did 2.7 million views on TikTok. So if you're found me on TikTok, thank you. Welcome. Anyway, with 2.7 million views, there's also, I think we're approaching almost 10,000 comments. There's at least 8,000 comments on that video now. And I can't watch them all clearly. I cannot even respond to them all. I've done as many as I could. But one of the things that I found amazing about my discussion of depersonalization, derealization, which so many of you will say is the scariest symptom, the hardest symptom to deal with, I was surprised that the number of people in the comments on my TikTok post that said they like it. Interesting. So people understood what it was. And I was amazed at the number of people who had never heard it given a label. So they were happy to hear that, oh, it has a name and other people have this. So that's the beauty of this sort of community is that there were so many people that saw that video and said, oh, my God, I didn't know what it was called. And I didn't know that other people had it. But I was amazed at the number of people who recognize it as part of anxiety. They do deal with anxiety in various ways. It is a bit of a problem, but they actually see DPDR as a pleasant sensation. How amazing is that, right? I'm not saying they're wrong. There's certainly not strange or anything like that. But what an illustration, right, of the fact that these folks can take that particular symptom, which so many people feel is absolutely like, no, I can't possibly allow the symptom to be there. And they will see it as a break. So, surprisingly, many, many people look at DPDR as the time when they can feel a little bit of peace or they get a break from themselves, from their thinking, from their anxiety. Interesting, right? Some people actually say that they hope that it happens. Now, some people, I think, because so many people did watch the video, so many people rolled in on the DPDR thing and did mention that it's from the comments, I'm guessing that they don't have anxiety problems. But many people who do at that large number, it was surprising to see that if I was going to put a percentage, and this is TikTok comments, there's nothing scientific about this, but probably close to 10% of the comments in that thread were about how people actually like it. They like that feeling. Some people actually said that they not only like the feeling, but sometimes they experiment recreationally with different substances to try to create it. It's a break for them. It's a sense of peace or calm. So interesting, right? So it led me to say, led me to think about the fact that while so many of us can experience the very same symptoms and sensations and have the same core fears. We talked about that last week, fear of death or incapacitation, fear of losing control, fear of embarrassment or shame. We have these main themes that all of our symptoms and sensations and scary thoughts tend to revolve around. But the way we interpret and react to each one of those individual symptoms or sensations or thoughts can really vary very widely, which is interesting to me. So let's talk about a few others of these. Again, I'm not going to go too long today, but it's just something to chew on in this little sort of break week. So some people actually like the feeling of depersonalization and derealization. And I'm guessing many of you listening would be like, holy cow, I can't even believe that to think it surprised me. Really did. Let's talk about another common thing because I also posted about this on tech talk and also on Instagram. If you follow me on Instagram, the content is pretty much the same, but I posted about the fear of being alone, which sometimes we call monophobia. So people that have panic attacks on agoraphobia, especially some people who have harm OCD subtypes wind up in a situation where they are afraid to be alone. So usually that means left alone at home. Often it means left alone at home with young children or with pets or whatever. There's that fear that they may lose control and then nobody will be there to either save them or stop them from doing something terrible. And that's a really common fear also. But what was amazing to me, this I already knew, but again, when people came into the comments section to hear the number of people sort of representing for, Oh no, I'm not afraid of that. I want to be alone. Right. So in for many, many people, they don't, they're not afraid to be alone. They would rather be alone. So while I think it's probably fair to say that the majority of people who deal with anxiety wind up wanting to have people around them when they're in that bit of anxiety crisis mode, intrusive thoughts are ramped up, symptoms are ramped up, maybe you're panicking, you're in a spiral, you want your safe people around you. That's why we talk so much about safe people. You think you need to be saved. You think somebody needs to protect you against your thoughts. But for other people, I don't know if I was going to take a guess again, totally unscientific based only on social media interactions over the years. I bet that 35% of people in our community would prefer to be alone. That number might be higher. And if you're one of those people and you want to represent for the I'd rather be alone crowd, which is totally fine. If you're in the Facebook group, mention it or write me on Instagram or TikTok or wherever, and we can talk about that. But interesting to see how we can be in the same sort of state. So yes, I have panic disorder. Oh, and I have panic disorder, two people with panic disorder that one is terrified to be left alone. The other one wants nothing more than to be left alone because that's better for them. Interesting, right? Another one that I find interesting. We have these discussions. And now this is especially true for people with agoraphobia. So if you're agoraphobic and listening, you're struggling to probably get out of the house, even though agoraphobia is more than just can't leave the house. That's the what people think. But one of my old podcast episodes, if you just go to the anxious truth.com and search for agoraphobia, you'll see an episode I did a year and a half ago that explains actually what agoraphobia is and how it develops. But you would think that it means that people with anxiety have a hard time leaving the house. And it's true. If you're agoraphobic, that becomes the way it manifests. People with panic disorder often have a hard time leaving the house, leaving the house. But what's also interesting is that people with the same issues, there are people that have panic disorder that are afraid to come home. They would rather be out. So people, you know, ask about that all the time. This is a question you see all the time. Like, is this weird? Do I have reverse agoraphobia? People will talk about terms like that. And well, I don't know if it has a name, but I don't think we call it reverse agoraphobia, but it starts to look like that, right? So consider the number of people in our community that you know that have a hard time leaving their safe spaces, whether it be that home or whatever, you know, they want to be in the safe space in the cocoon in the bubble, because there they feel like they're their sensations, their thoughts, the anxiety, the panic is somehow more manageable or they're safer from it there. But other people have a hard time. They don't have a bubble. Their bubble is really the whole rest of the world. And for those folks, the issue is if they come home or whatever, you know, home base is at the end of a day or they have a weekend where they have not much going on, then they're sitting, they're idle and they feel the anxiety. So those people develop a coping strategy. It says I have to be out. I got to be on the move. I got to be socializing. I got to be doing. I got to be busy. The minute I'm not busy, then I'm left with my thoughts and sensations and I don't like that. So it's not always that people are afraid to leave their home. Some people are afraid to come back home and take a break and have that idle time. Right. So another interesting thing to think about and we'll tie this together in a few minutes, I promise. But the other one that I wanted to bring up is that so many people struggle in the morning. Right. So warning anxiety. What do you do about that sense of dread in the morning? You wake up and it's there. What do I do about it? I get that. It's super common. But remember that there's also a fair number of people and this might be 50 50 to be honest with you. I'm going to guess. Again, I'm guessing based just on social media content. I'm not not scientific here. So you know, don't quote this. This isn't research. But for me, in my experience with a large number of people over the years, this one's probably closer to 50 50. So you might struggle waking up in the morning and the minute you wake up, you have that sense of dread, doom, the anxiety kicks in right away right away. You're scanning, checking how do I feel? How am I doing? How's this day going to be? Oh my God, I got to do it again. Whereas other people feel really good in the morning or better in the morning, I should say, maybe not really good. And then they get more anxious as the day draws to a close. Again, interesting to think about, you know, you might be in the same diagnostic class to people with panic disorder, two people with OCD, two people with health anxiety, whatever. And one person is kind of paralyzed by it in the morning. Whereas the other person is sort of paralyzed by it as the afternoon ends. And especially a lot of people in the winter here in the northern hemisphere we're in the winter right now and it's freezing by the way here in New York today. It is literally freezing. But especially this time of year when the days are short, it gets dark earlier. People struggle with at late afternoon, evening, nights. Some people struggle more actually overnight. They start to associate sleep with panic and anxiety and that sort of stuff. So the same exact people might be diagnosed, meet the criteria to be diagnosed with the same exact anxiety disorder, but it expresses in a very different way. Whereas one person is terrified of the morning, the other person is terrified of the evening. So again, something to think about. Why? What does this really tell us when you look at it? So two people can experience the same physical sensations, the same scary thoughts, the same, you know, sensations, all of those things, the same sense of fear organized around the same themes that we talked about last week in episode 238, but it will express a different way and they will react to it, interpret it a different way and therefore they will tend to modify their lifestyle, which is sort of the hallmark of the distorted state. As we begin to build your life around avoiding feeling which you don't want to feel and they will modify their lifestyles differently. So they'll have a different set of restrictions or conditions on their oakeness. And I think that also speaks volumes. Number one, it tells you once again, and I think the theme over the last few episodes of the podcast is, you know, you're not alone. This is a common lived shared experience in a very large number of people who have these particular issues, right? We know that, you know, anxiety and depression are the most common mental health issues faced in the Western world by far. So many people are impacted by this every year. They're very common issues for sure. So you're definitely not alone in where you are and the experiences when we look at large number of people are so very similar, right? We share the same themes in our fear. We share the same thoughts. We share the same scary sensations. There's, we share a lot of different things, yet even within that you could see how the interpretations can really vary and that tells us not only we're not alone, we're living a shared experience in a large community of people, but it also really shines a light on the fact that the way we react to these things means everything. It's so important and it's the thing you hear me drone on and on about forever. If you've listened to the podcast for any length of time, yeah, we hear you drew reaction, new relation with anxiety, we get it, but that's a real good illustration, though, in the end. Like why, if you are terrified, for instance, to be alone when you panic, but someone else wants to be alone when they panic, what does that tell you about your fear of needing to be saved? And conversely for the person who wants to be alone when they panic, what does that tell you about their fear of having people around them? Now, I understand people like might say, yeah, but then I'd be embarrassed. Okay, that's an outcome that's correct, but it really illustrates how like the very same threat is interpreted so differently. So is the state itself the threat? How could it be if two people with the same condition wind up interpreting it very different ways and taking very opposite approaches and different modifications and conditions in their life? I think if you think about that, the same way that like if you're in my Facebook group, you're also tired of hearing me say things like, hey, I know that you're really afraid of your breathing, but go look at the 50 people over there that are afraid of being dizzy, so your breathing isn't special. You know, I say that stuff all the time. And when you look at this, you think, oh, maybe there's something to that. So it's not the breathing, it's not the heart, it's not the nausea, it's not the thought, it's not the alone, it's not the shame, it's the feeling that we can't handle the interpretation. I can't handle this. And it makes you interpret it, I can't handle it because XYZ, or as another person says, I can't handle it because ABC, and they react differently and they relate differently to it. But you both wind up relating in an avoidant kind of way, in a phobic avoidant kind of way. And so in the end, it poses the same problem in terms of restrictions and lifestyle problems. But, you know, XYZ interpretation and reaction versus ABC tells you that, oh, it's probably not this, the state itself doesn't seem to represent the danger. I think it does, or my group of people think it does, because those group of people think it represents a completely different danger. And they react accordingly to that. So in a way, when you look at these patterns, you can really, you know, you chew on it and you say, okay, I guess that's true. How could it be that half of us in the room are certainly sure that we need to be rescued, and the other half are a hundred percent certain that they don't need or want to be rescued. So what does that tell us? Is the state itself the danger, or is it what we think about it? You know, chew on that. I think it's important. So different reactions and different interpretations of the same anxiety-based experiences, fears, and symptoms. The fact that people enjoy the sensation of DPDR is foreign to me, because that was the thing that I hated feeling. Still hate it. If it happens to me now, still hate it. Do not like it. Do not want it. So the fact that some people can actually welcome that was really an eye-opener for me. And I think it led to today's discussion, which hopefully, you know, makes sense for you. It might ring a bell. It might give you something else to think about. You know, as we go down the road and you listen to podcasts like this one, or you read books like the ones that I write, or other people produce podcasts that sound like mine, it gives us an opportunity sometimes to look through the eyes of others. And that's really important sometimes. So when I bring up things like, go talk to the guy with breathing problems when you're sure that your stomach is the worst thing in the world. In this situation, if you are terrified to feel DPDR, go talk to the the person that actually likes it. If you're terrified to be alone, go talk to the person who wants to be alone. If you're terrified of the morning, go talk to the person who likes the morning and is terrified of the evening and ask yourself, oh, well, what does that tell me? What does it tell me? Not because any of this is going to cure you. It's not going to banish your anxiety. These are not epiphany light bulb moments that somehow make your anxiety disorder magically disappear and you'll be fine for the rest of your life. I wish it was, but it's not that. But when we have these sort of insights and we get to act as a community and start to maybe look at things through the eyes of other people and see what they're doing versus what we're doing, sometimes it helps inform those actions. It encourages, it inspires us. It emboldens us to do the scary things and the difficult things that we have to do to get better. And that's why I like to bring stuff like this up. It was just interesting to me. I thought it was worth discussing. And so here we are at the end of episode 239 talking about how we can have the same conditions, the same disorders, the same diagnosis, experience the same thing, yet act and react and interpret very different ways. So consider that a little bit. To use one of my old and most favorite phrases. So there you go. That is episode 239 all done. Hopefully it has been helpful, educational, informative, inspirational, whatever. And you know the episode is over because music. That is, as always, at the end of every podcast episode Afterglow by my friend Ben Drake who wrote the song at least in part inspired by this podcast and let's me use it as his theme music. So if you'd like to support Ben or know more about him, go to his website at BenDrakeMusic.com. He's a good dude. If you are listening to this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or some platform that lets you leave a rating in a review, have at five stars. And if you really dig the podcast, take a second and write a few sentences and review it because it helps other people find the podcast. We grow the community, we help more people. And that's really why I do this in the end. And if you're watching on YouTube, which you certainly can be, even there's no video this week, subscribe to the channel, like the video, hit the notification bell so you know when I upload new episodes. Leave a comment. Love to interact with you guys on YouTube, even if I'm slow to get there sometimes. So thank you so much for coming by this week. I hope it's been helpful. I appreciate your support. I appreciate your time. I hope that 2023 is going to be a better year for you guys. Maybe you're thinking about this is going to be my year to recover. Maybe that's what we'll talk about next week. I'm not sure. I haven't figured that out, but it will be the first episode of 2023. We'll see what we do there. So there you go. I hope you're enjoying your break. If you have one, I will see you next week. And remember, as always, this is the way.