 This week on The Anxious Truth, we're going to talk about the idea of personal responsibility, accepting responsibility for your recovery and the fact that you are the only person who can make you better. It's a really important topic, we got to talk about it, we have to clarify it, so that's going to be this week's topic. So welcome to episode 213 of The Anxious Truth, no fancy intro, no music today. I'm going to cut this down to make it super easy to produce, but hopefully the content will be good. If you're new to the podcast or new to the YouTube channel, I'm Drulan Salata. I'm creator and host of The Anxious Truth. This is the podcast slash YouTube channel that covers all things anxiety, anxiety disorders, and the recovery process. So if you're dealing with things like panic attacks, panic disorder, agoraphobia, health anxiety, OCD, this is a good place to be. If you are a returning viewer or returning listener, welcome back. I'm glad that you're here. This again is episode 213. We are recording in the beginning of June 2022. I'm not sure when you're going to see this, but we're going to talk about the idea of personal recovery, personal responsibility and recovery, and why it's so empowering, but can be confused as blaming. That's what I really want to talk about today. Before we get into it, I just need to give you a quick reminder. The Anxious Truth is certainly more than just this podcast episode, more than just this video. There are three really great books on anxiety and anxiety recovery that I've written that are literally helping tens of thousands of people all over the world. There is another 200 and somewhat free podcast episodes that I've done over the years since 2014. There is my morning newsletter, which comes out every weekday morning called The Anxious Morning. That's also free. And there is links to all of my social media stuff, all of which can be found on my website at theanxistruth.com. You can go check that out and avail yourself of the resources. And if you are enjoying my work and I'm helping you in some way and you would like to help me keep it free of advertising and sponsorships because I turn down that money every day now. All the ways that you can support my work can be found at theanxistruth.com. It's never required, but I always appreciated and however way you are supportive of this work, be it financially or in spirit or just by hitting the like button or subscribing to the podcast. Thank you. I appreciate all of you guys very much. So today we are going to talk about the idea of responsibility and why taking responsibility and understanding and accepting responsibility for your recovery is a really good thing. There's a lot of power there. It's an empowering thing. It's you work from a position of strength when you accept the responsibility for making you better. But sometimes this idea of responsibility gets confused with the idea of taking blame or finding fault in where you are, like you are somehow doing something wrong. So I really want to clarify that. So when we say that you are responsible for your recovery, there's a couple of really brutal statements that I would make some of which involved me. And most recovered people will echo these statements after the fact. When we look back, we know now I can say this and I can say that this is important in my own recovery. You make you better. In the end, only you make you better. I made me better. All of the admins in my Facebook group that are so helpful in offering their advice and their experiences, they make themselves better. They either did or they're on the way to doing that. Anybody that you see that has gotten over these problems that we talk about here on the podcast or here on YouTube, they made themselves better. Does anybody do it alone? No, we don't do it alone. There is support to be had and that's why this podcast exists and that's why I do what I do. But people like me can offer encouragement. We can offer education. We can offer good information. We can offer inspiration and encouragement. We could be cheerleaders and motivators and we could be explainers and we could do all of those things. But in the end, you make you better. I won't ever make you better. Nobody else that does an anxiety podcast or makes videos or audio books or write books or does seminars or webinars or coaching or mentoring will ever make you better. You make you better. And as somebody who is in a master's degree right now, a master's program on the way to being a licensed therapist, I can also tell you that your therapist will also not make you better. And your therapist, if you have one, would agree with that. We can be guides for you. We can be cheerleading sections. We can be educators. We can be all the things that I said. But in the end, you are responsible for fixing you. That is a really important concept to get your brain around. It is huge. In my Facebook group, we're going to hit 10,000 people very shortly. That group is growing and leaps and bounds. But Ingvill from Norway, my friend from Norway, is one of her admins, one of the early admins. She says all the time that one of the turning points for her is when she accepted the fact that the only thing keeping her stuck was her. That is a hugely powerful statement to make. And that resonates with me because I kind of hit the same thing. I will tell you a quick story when I was sort of in the beginning of really getting my act together and trying to do this work to get past the problems that I was having. I'm a huge Claire Weeks fan. Anybody who's followed my work for any amount of time knows that if there was no, I say it all the time, there was no Claire Weeks. There's no anxious truth. Full credit to Dr. Weeks. She was a hero of mine. When I was feeling badly and trying to get my brain around the idea that, well, I know I have to do this exposure stuff. I know I have to go toward the fear, but it was so scary and it was so hard to do. I used to look to Claire Weeks to make me feel better, right? So it was a very passive use of the material that Dr. Weeks had published. So this is my experience and you may find echoes of this in maybe the way you even listen to this podcast or watch these videos or read my books. I wanted Dr. Weeks to make me feel better when I was uncomfortable, when I felt vulnerable, shaky, afraid. When I had to do scary things that I really didn't want to do, but I knew I had to do them, I would put her audio books in my ears. I always had her book on my nightstand. I would go back and read it again and again. There were other books that I thought would help me too. I have a book by the Dalai Lama called The Art of Happiness. Some of you may have read it. It's a great book, but I would go and read that book and hope that the words that the Dalai Lama had written would make me happy. I was wrong. In the end, I was wrong. The information that Dr. Weeks was giving me and the research that I was doing and the stuff that I was learning was 100% helpful to me. But only when I took responsibility for getting better. Only I could make it better. And again, most recovered people wouldn't understand that and they would echo this as they get down the road. Like, oh no, once I accepted full responsibility, there's power in that. But one of the things that I really want to go over today, it's important, is that some people think, number one, there's no way I could do that. Like, I'm not strong enough to do that. I'm not brave enough. I'm not like you drew. I'm not like all those really strong, brave people. That responsibility is a thing that we accept sort of incrementally. You know, we may have a bit of a light bulb moment at one point where you discover like, I'm going to really have to face this and accept this. However, putting it into practice is something that does take time. It does take time. So if you're struggling with knowing, yeah, I guess only I can fix me, but you're still a little bit stuck, that's okay. So that doesn't mean a light switch goes on and instantly you kick your recovery into high gear and instantly you're strong and brave. It does not like that at all. It's an incremental change that happens over time with experience. So just keep that in mind and be nice to yourself. Don't beat yourself up if you're having a hard time putting the concept of responsibility into practice. It takes a little while. But I will also say that other people hear that they are responsible for their recovery and only do they think they can't do it or they're expecting it to change things instantly. But some people say they start to hear it as a weapon, either it's an accusation of blame or they use it as a weapon against themselves to say, well, I'm responsible for this mess that I am in. And so I think Dr. Weeks actually sort of wrote a little bit of that, the only thing keeping you sick is you. And Ingle talks about it all the time and a lot of people talk about that. But sometimes that gets misinterpreted as, oh, you're choosing this or you made this problem or, you know, you're making it worse or you're doing something wrong. That's not what that is at all. So one of the most important things that I really want to talk about in this podcast in this video is the idea that the concept of becoming actively responsible for your own recovery and understanding that you are the one that has to get that job done and no one else on the planet can get it done for you is empowering. It's really empowering. It is not a statement of blame. When I say that to you, it is I'm not being accusatory in nature. I'm not accusing you of making a mess. I'm not accusing you of not doing it right. I'm not accusing you of failing. Nobody, I hope nobody is. I certainly am not. I would hope that anybody who has any sort of compassion in their heart would certainly never blame you for causing this problem like this. You didn't cause this problem. So sometimes it's important for me to say that because people will hear, well, you're in charge of fixing you, not me. And they feel like they're being attacked. But nothing could be further from the truth. Understand that when you accept the idea that, oh, I have to fix myself, that means I can fix myself. So if I hope that the universe will fix me, or some spiritual force will fix me, or the podcast guy, or the guy who writes the books, or the anxiety mentor, or whoever it is will fix, or the admin in your faith, your favorite admin in Drew's Facebook group will somehow fix you or make you better and make you feel better, you have no control there. So hoping some other person will change things for you, change stuff that happens in your own head and in your own mind and ultimately in your own body. So there's a giving up of your power when you hope for some external person or an external force to make you better or change things for you, just hope that it changes. When you say, well, I have to make myself better, you finish that statement by saying, so therefore I can make myself better. Oh, look, there are things that I can do. I don't have to wait for Drew to do a special podcast on my scary symptom. I don't have to wait for Drew to do a special podcast on the special scary thought or my specific life circumstance right now that I'm struggling with. I don't have to wait for that. I can do stuff now. I can start to understand the principles of recovery and apply them in my own personal context. If you finish the statement and don't just get crestfallen at the idea that you have to fix myself. So try not to think of it as, well, Drew's telling me that I have to fix myself. Drew's telling you that you can and should fix yourself. So the idea of taking responsibility for the recovery process and being responsible for your own recovery and ultimately facing the fact that only you are going to make you better in the end is incredibly empowering. There's power there. There is a recognition of the fact that you have choices that you can make. There's all kinds of stuff falling off the tree. I don't know if you can see it on the camera. But there is power there. There's recognition of choice there. There's a recognition that you have influence in this process. You have agency. You can make a difference. You can push back. I know we never talk about fighting our anxiety, but instead of being just tossed around like a cork in a storm in the ocean, you can start to swim in a particular direction, even though the current may be hard to swim against. So understand that accepting that personal responsibility and then taking the action that comes along with it can be very empowering and that's where change is. Dr. Bridget Cooper, Dr. B, you've seen her on the podcast before, a dear friend of mine, love her to death, she says all the time, right? With choice comes power and, you know, power. Choice comes with responsibility and responsibility equals power. She says that all the time. And it's true. If you accept responsibility for fixing yourself and expect me or anybody else walking the planet to fix things for you or make you better, then there is power. You start to recognize your choices that you can make, your agency, you accept responsibility, you get to have a say in how this goes. And that means that you can have a, you can start to have a say right now. So while you're waiting for me to write a book on a topic that you really want me to talk about, or you're waiting for me to do a podcast episode on the topic that you really want me to talk about, you can actually still be moving forward because you don't need me to do that. All right. So in a nutshell, that's what's super important about today's podcast. The acceptance of personal responsibility. You are responsible for fixing you. I am happy to help you do that. And you know all the time people will say to me, they'll say very nice things to me. You changed my life. And I will always say, no, no, no, you changed your life. I did no such thing. I don't change anybody's life. And I am never going to accept credit for being a life changer. I'm not a life changer. I can just give you information that I seem to be good at explaining and teaching and talking about. Maybe I'm a motivator. I don't know what I am. But whatever this is, it's working out pretty well. But in the end, everybody that you see getting better, they're doing that. They get all the credit. And I can tell you that in my recovery, if you had asked me six or eight months into it, I probably would have given a huge amount of credit to Claire Weeks. I probably would have given a huge amount of credit to the therapist that I have for a very short time. Even though she didn't really help me with my exposure, she gave me some firm ground to sit on. Her name is Rhea. Rhea, if you're listening, thank you. I would have given a huge amount of credit to Rhea. But in the end, I realize in retrospect, oh, I did all that. I did that. I made it happen. Dr. Weeks was tremendous. She played a huge role in my recovery long after she passed, and she's been gone for many, many years. Rhea was a huge help. My family was a huge help. The friends that knew about it were helpful and supported to me. My online friends, that small group of you and you know who you are, that are kind of responsible for the fact that I'm here doing this podcast in 2022. They were huge helps. But in the end, I had to do it myself. And I did. And you can also do it yourself. And people like me will cheer for you and will provide as much information. Breadcrumbs to follow. Lights to follow in the darkness. Whatever we can do, we will do. Your therapist is there. Your counselor is there. The people who care about you hopefully are there. But those are the roles we play. Nobody is here to make you better. We can't. Only you can do that. Before I end it, I want to make a quote about the difference between feeling better and getting better. Because those are two different things. You are responsible for getting better. But often, as was the case with me, when I would go and get in my car to drive in the morning, I was terrified that I was going to have a panic attack when I turned up to 347. I would put Claire Weeks in my ears. I would have my headphones on and I would have Claire Weeks in my ears. Because I wanted her to make me feel better. And it was a soothing thing. And it's interesting, I just got a phone call with a friend of mine that I love and some of you in the Facebook group will remember Jay. Jay and I were chatting for a little while. He said the same thing in our conversation that he used to use Claire Weeks as a soothing tool. And I did too. Understand that there is a difference between wanting to feel better and many of you I know that are listening to this or watching this. It's lovely feedback and I'm able that I can have some sort of positive role in your life. But I hear all the time that like while people fall asleep while they're listening to my podcast or they have my podcast on in the car all the time or any time they do an exposure they put on a podcast episode and listen to me. That's because you're hoping that I will make you feel better and sometimes you are confusing feeling better with getting better. Those are two very different things. So yes, is it possible that I can make you feel better temporarily? Sure. It seems to be possible and that seems to be the way a lot of people are doing this. But feeling better for 30 minutes or an hour or two hours or a day doesn't mean getting better over the next six months. There's a big difference. So external forces can help you feel better but only you can get better. Hopefully that clarifies that think about that for a little bit. It might be a little confusing to you but there is a huge difference between feeling better which is a short term immediate goal and getting better which is your long term goal and that might not be what you want but in the end I can tell you that that is what you need. You don't need to feel better now you need to get better later. Trust me on this one. So that's it. That is episode 213 about personal responsibility and the power of responsibility and the fact that responsibility does not equal blame or fault or accusation. Really important go back and listen to this a couple of times if you have to let that sink in a little bit because you can get better and taking responsibility for that is part of this. So that's episode 213 and I appreciate you guys coming by. I have no outro music today none of that stuff because I'm just going to try and edit this super quickly and get it ready to go. School has been a big demand on my time so I have to get better at producing these a little quicker and with a little less effort. Special thanks to Emma Emma Love Day in the UK who helps me produce these podcasts believe it or not I do have a podcast production business but I don't even produce my own. Emma helps me out. Thank you Emma. And I will still give a shout out even though you don't hear Afterglow right now to my buddy Ben Drake who lets me use that song and was very generous with his own intellectual property and his creativity so you guys know if you like the song that you hear in the beginning and end of the podcast go find it at BenDrakeMusic.com If you're watching on YouTube like the video comment, subscribe to the channel I guess you're supposed to hit the bell so you know when I upload I don't know I'm supposed to say that if you're listening to this as a podcast on Apple or Spotify or any platform that lets you rate the podcast or review it or start rating if you did the podcast and maybe take a second to write a short review about why you like the podcast because it helps more people listen and so many people have been doing that by the way I'm amazed we are doing now 140, 150,000 downloads every month I believe it is so we're doing well over some weeks we do 30,000 downloads in a given week it's amazing and that's all because of you guys you guys talking about it the reviews, the ratings all that stuff I appreciate all of that helping other people get help which is great and that's it so what else can I tell you I think that's it hopefully this format worked out for you today I'm going to experiment a little bit I will be back again next week to talk about something I don't know what that will be yet but I'll be here maybe here maybe someplace else maybe I'll do it in about five minutes I'll be wearing the same clothes I don't know thanks for coming by I will see you next week and remember this is the way