 This week on The Anxious Truth, we're talking about mindset, survival mindset, or defiant mindset. It makes a difference in the way you interact with your anxiety, panic, fear, and uncertainty. And as we have this discussion, if you're not sure what a defiant mindset looks like, I direct your attention to the fight scene from Rocky III, where Rocky takes on Clubber Lang, and what I think is a textbook example of what a defiant mindset really looks like. Oh, no, no, no, he's not getting killed, he's getting mad! Hello everybody, welcome back to The Anxious Truth. This is episode number 222 that is so going to get demonetized on YouTube, because I used clips and parts of the soundtrack from Rocky III. But, hell, I felt like being creative on a Sunday morning, so here we are. Plus, I think it helps illustrate the lesson of this week's podcast, which is all about mindset and specifically a defiance mindset. So before we get into that, if you are new here and just stumbled into the podcast on my YouTube channel, welcome, I am Drew Lincellata, creator and host of The Anxious Truth. This is the podcast that covers all things, anxiety, anxiety disorders, and anxiety recovery. I hope you find the material here and in all of the podcast episodes helpful and useful. And if you are a returning listener or viewer, then hell, welcome back, I'm always glad you guys are here. So today we're going to talk about anxiety mindset, specifically survival mindset versus defiance mindset. You guys might be thinking mindset, since when does Drew talk about that? Drew never talks about mindset, and that's true. If you follow the podcast or read any of my writing, you've seen me literally like say, no, no, no, this is not a mindset problem. And I'm sticking to that. That's my story and I'm sticking to it. This is not a mindset problem. Even though we're going to talk about that today, it still doesn't mean that recovery is a mindset problem. I don't like mindset because it's been sort of distorted and twisted by the sort of self-development and personal development and self-help gurus on the internet. And mindset is important, yes, but in the case of a disordered anxiety, we form such a maladaptive relationship with our thoughts and our feelings and our emotions that this is definitely not a mindset problem, right? We're not just going to change our mindset and somehow get better, so just be aware of that. But like it or not, we all do have a mindset toward our anxiety. Like we just can't help it. That's what human beings do. We'll create a mindset. You can call it anything you want. Call it a framework or a conceptualization, a platform that we stand on. It doesn't really matter, but we have one. You have one. And it does influence the way we interact with anxiety, fear, and discomfort. That is 100% true. You really can't deny that. And I think this mindset is formed over time. It's based on experiences. It's based on how we interpret them. It's based on our own beliefs about ourselves and our competencies and our weaknesses and our flaws and our courage and about the way we view the world in general. So a lot goes into that, right? And to a certain extent, our anxiety mindset does influence the way we approach anxiety, panic, fear, discomfort, uncertainty when they pop their heads up, when they make an appearance, right? So we got to deal with it to a certain extent. And this week we're going to do that. And I know that just to clarify the mindset thing and why this is not really an episode about changing your mindset to get better. And that's because, you know, that word gets warped and twisted, like I said. And in a situation where you are in the grips of disordered anxiety, which is internally generated anxiety, and it's based on how you feel or what you think or what your body is doing, that the threat comes from inside you, we have a little bit of a problem in that we get very overly and maladaptively attached to our own thoughts and our emotions and our feelings and what our bodies are doing. So really the recovery process is about learning to take a step back from that. That's really true. So it's not about thinking more or changing the way we think. I'm not going to teach you how to change the way you think today about anxiety. It's not it at all. But we got to be careful about that. So this is not about somehow magically coming to a new way to think about it, because we don't want to think more really, not that we could stop thinking, but we're going to maybe conceptualize our actions a little bit differently. And I know this is like super subtle and nuanced, but just bear with me. It is difficult to describe in words, but I think you guys are going to get it, right? So why am I using the word mindset this week? Like I said, because it can be useful sometimes if we think of it as a conceptualization, a jumping off point and something that we can use to inform our actions. So let me give you a little example of how mindset can matter without actually being like the primary mover and driver in a situation. So let's say that you have a party coming up and you get to the party and you say to yourself, I knew this party was going to suck. This is terrible. They are always terrible. I never have a good time. Why did it even bother coming? Nobody's doing anything. This is no fun. I am out of here. So that might be one mindset toward that party. The other mindset or conceptualization of the party that you might have could be very different. And that might be like, well, I didn't really want to come to this party. I'm skeptical about it. You know, I kind of always am. And it is pretty dull. It's starting pretty slowly here. But I see that the band is about to start playing. There are more people arriving. They're bringing the food out. I see a couple of my friends just walking the door. Maybe I can hang in there a little bit and maybe it'll get better. And who knows, I might wind up having a fun time in the end. Right. And in that mindset is very different. Right. That conceptualization of the party. Now, it's not literally what you're thinking about. The party is not literally changing the world in some way. But in the first case, you'll leave the party because you've already decided that it was going to suck and there's no possible way that that can change. You knew it and it's not worth staying. So boom, you're out of the party. But is that automatically true? That's not necessarily automatically true. Right. So you make a little space for reality to prove us wrong to a certain extent. In the second case, you can see that you're not really enjoying the party yet, but you're willing to entertain the idea that it could change because I can see signs of change around me. So emotionally, I might not be a big party person and I might hate the fact that I'm at this party, but I can use my mindset to say, well, let me let reality chime in here and I can see a couple of my friends walked in and the band is about to start up and this might get better. So in this situation, you will stay at the party and it still might suck, but you at least have a chance of maybe having a good time. Right. So see how your mindset can make a difference because it will inform your actions. First mindset completely and utterly, I'm out of here. You leave the party. Second mindset, I'll give it a chance and you stay. Now, again, maybe it'll suck or maybe you'll have a great time, but you don't have a chance to have a great time if you run out. So that's why mindset sort of matters here. Now, in the case of anxiety and anxiety recovery, let's talk about two different types of mindset or conceptualization of the problem, if you will. The first one is a survival mindset. This is the mindset that basically is prevalent in the beginning for pretty much everybody, right? So as an anxiety disorder takes hold and starts to worsen and kind of get, you know, get bad, as your life becomes more and more dictated by our anxiety and more and more limited by it, you, most everybody winds up in a survival mindset. This is 100% normal and to be expected. There's nothing wrong with you if you're in this mindset. In a survival mindset, you basically see your anxiety as something that's stalking you. It's a monster. It's external. It's attacking you. When it happens, you feel like you get overwhelmed. You're completely powerless. You can't do anything about this. This happens over and over and over. There's nowhere to turn. There's nothing I can do to stop it. It's terrible. No matter what you do, you can't stop this sort of monster the way you conceptualize it from catching you and just going upside, up one side and down the other one. You just devours you completely. When it happens, you see yourself at its mercy. And the best you could do is sort of hope and pray that it does not completely ravage and destroy you every single time. Right? It's important to recognize that every single time this is the way you view it. Here is this horrible thing that I am powerless over. And I'm just going to grit my teeth and hope that I make it through this time. That cycle repeats and repeats and repeats. You go into anxious situations just hoping and like trying desperately to hang on and just survive to get through it. I hope I make it this time just so you can kind of live to fight another day and repeat that cycle. And in the survival mindset, your expectations are pretty low. You're just trying to make it. And really, there's not a whole lot of room for, you know, a positive outlook there. Like your expectations are low. Your output, your outlook in terms of improvement is pretty dim at that point. And that makes sense. I get that. And again, I cannot repeat enough that this mindset is something that almost everyone dealing with an anxiety disorder either starts in or goes through at some point. I was in that mindset for quite some time. That is exactly how I conceptualized my panic attacks, my agoraphobia, my depression, my intrusive thoughts. Like that's the way I saw it. It was, it was not good, right? So if that sends familiar to you, know that it doesn't indicate, if you're in survival mindset, this is not an episode about which one is better or like how to just be a badass is nothing to do with that. But just know that if you're in survival mindset right now, that's really normal. It doesn't mean that you're weak or that there's something wrong or you're like lacking in character or you're not a badass. It doesn't mean that you're beyond hope or you can't get better. I promise it doesn't mean that. All it really means is like everybody else at some point in this journey, you're confused, you're afraid, you're feeling powerless, you're feeling frustrated. The survival mindset, it's like to be expected. It happens to everybody. It's really important for me to say that. I know that this is one of the reasons why I hate talking about mindset because a lot of times you will find that the army of life coaches and consultants or whatever they are out there that is giving you like, well, this is the right mindset and this is the wrong mindset to have. Well, in this situation, we're only talking about one that maybe fosters moving in the direction toward recovery and one that doesn't, but not because one is right and wrong. These are both sort of natural states that people naturally get in and out of during the recovery process, right? So this has nothing to do with like pulling yourself up by your bootstraps and being a badass and being a warrior. It has nothing to do with that at all. And so be aware of that as we continue to talk here. So the defiance mindset on the other side is something that takes a while to get to, right? So some people can get to it sooner than others. That's true. But it's very, very rare that somebody comes into like the community, say surrounding the podcast here and immediately can develop a defiant mindset. It's very, very rare. I'm not sure I could think of a time when that happened to be completely honest with you. It takes repeated experiences. It takes time and I'll explain that in a second. But one of the things that are sort of underneath the, whereas maybe the survival mindset is based on powerlessness, hopelessness, feelings of weakness, feeling out of control. The defiance mindset comes when you start to experience things like anger and impatience and you're just fed up and not willing to be this way anymore. That's when you start to develop the ability to get into that defiant mindset. So you need repeated experiences and that's why this usually takes some time because the repeated experiences tell us that no matter what it feels like, no actual harm has ever been done. Like we need to have those repeated experiences because if we take the simple example, say a panic attacks, people that have panic attacks and start to avoid them and retreat and maybe develop agoraphobia because of it, they're truly believed that, no, this is the right thing to do. I have to retreat from this. I have to save myself from this. But after a while, after enough experience that whether it's a panic attack or whether it's intrusive thoughts that make you think you're going to do something or that they're predicting something about the world, and it isn't ever true, just uncomfortable and really scary and difficult, you start to, and the logical part of your brain, and you know what, if the logical part of our brains could run the show all the time, I wouldn't have to have this podcast, we know that. But at some point, the logical part of your brain begins to understand this thing isn't going to kill me. Like when I say kill me, I mean, some people do believe it will literally kill them. That was me. Or they might fear that they're going to go insane, or they might fear that the thoughts are going to come true and they really will get sick or something horrible will happen, or they'll do something horrible. When I say kill me, I'm talking about that feared outcome. At some point, our anxious brains are still afraid, but our logical brains say, yeah, but I'm starting to see here that everybody's right, this isn't going to kill me. Right? So you kind of start to get that, those experiences start to inform that logical conclusion that, yeah, I guess it's really not going to kill me. However, you're still stuck in a situation where when the chips are down, you run or you avoid, or you can't bring yourself to even go into those situations and you start to get frustrated. So some of the statements that we hear that indicate the beginning of a defiant mindset is, I know I'm okay, but I just can't seem to face it. What the hell is wrong with me? Like, you start to hear frustration in people's voice and statements like that are sort of common precursors to the defiant mindset in my view, by the way. Other statements that let you know that defiance is starting to bubble in their revolver on themes of anger or impatience, resentment toward the anxiety and fear. Sometimes you're resentful toward yourself for sort of being in the situation, but you're really start to feel anger and impatience and resentment and sort of aggressive emotions or feelings toward the anxiety itself. You start to really hate it. Like, you begin to really hate it. We always hate it. Don't get me wrong. The person who has a panic attack for the first time hates that, but you begin to hate it as if it's an enemy or a person that you just want to punch in the face. You hate it for pinning you down and limiting you. Like, then you start to feel that the defiance begins to bubble up a little bit. You maybe start to become a little bit resentful over the loss of time or opportunities. I started to get really resentful toward the anxiety because it was crushing my business and my livelihood, which was impacting everything else, you know, my family and whatnot, finances. So that was a place where defiance started to build up, right? And the best way I could think of to describe this is you spend almost as much time sort of shaking your fist and anxiety as you do being afraid of it or worrying about it or looking for it or trying to get away from it. Like you start to see like anger and frustration starts to express just as much as fear does. So now you are in a situation where you can begin to sort of tap into that defiant mindset, but at some point you have to make a choice to actually explore defiance as an approach, right? So you can start to feel those emotions bubble up and that gives you that place where, okay, maybe I can start to tap into this. And we've talked about this in different podcast episodes and in the social media community surrounding the podcast. We've talked about that. Sometimes anger is not a bad thing because we can use it to motivate us. We could tap into that. We could tap into anger. We could tap into frustration. We could tap into resentment sometimes. And that's sort of where the defiant mindset comes from. But to me, I think at some point you make a conscious choice to say, you know what, this thing has never killed me and now I'm going to tap into my anger, my frustration, and my resentment. And I'm going to use it to start to change, not so much change my actions, but bolster the actions that I'm taking, like sort of increase my level of courage and my willingness to go into these scary and uncomfortable situations. So when you start to have that defiant mindset, you start to feel a little bit more brave. You're still afraid. Don't get me wrong. You're still afraid. But you start to feel a little bit more brave and you start to feel a little bit more willing to go into these things as opposed to begrudgingly do it. Oh my God, I have to do this again. You start to realize, no, no, no, no, no. I'm done with this. Let's go do this now. You know, I'm done living this way. Let's go do it good this way. So remember, you're still going to be afraid and you're tired of being afraid, but you're willing to start to accept this change that has to happen and you're willing to do the things a little bit more that you need to do to break the cycle. You're still challenged, 100%, still challenged. It's not like defiant mindset suddenly, ooh, anxiety went away because I'm defiant. It doesn't work that way. But you have the ability to rise to these challenges in a little bit of a new way and then they become more productive experience. And this is the point where you start to really find true acceptance and surrender and tolerating or floating or whatever words you like to use. You can start to find that there. So I'm going to make a statement here that a lot of people sometimes don't understand. Again, these are hard things to put into words because there's a certain amount of emotion in here. But for me, the switch, when I decided that I was going to switch into a defiant mindset came when I got so angry and so completely fed up with this that I literally told anxiety that it was going to have to effing kill me because I was not going to do that ridiculous dance anymore. I don't know if you can hear it in my voice. I can still feel that bubbling in me. Hitting those moments of more and more saying you are going to have to come and take me effing out of this game because I am not doing this with you anymore. I got so angry and so frustrated that I began to be really defiant when it came to anxiety. You know, I was just so angry with it that that anger began to fuel me and it became really useful. And that's the moment that I feel like I sort of shifted from a survival mindset anxiety mindset to a defiant anxiety mindset. Like you are going to have to kill me because I'm not doing this with you anymore. And it comes from in my bones that statement. I truly meant that and I still do to this day. So now the confusing part is that a lot of people think, oh, well, this means that I now I'm a warrior. Like now I'm going to go and kill this thing. Like, no, that wasn't it at all. And interestingly, I didn't particularly make that mistake but I think it just was the amount of work I had done and preparation I was doing kind of led me to this. But being defiant and adopting a defiance mindset does not mean that you start fighting. Let's sink in for a second. A defiant mindset does not mean that you begin to fight your anxiety. You do not ever fight it. We never fight it. We're not trying to stop it. We're not trying to crush it. We're not trying to kill it. We're not trying to run over it. We're not trying to do any of those things. Being defiant doesn't mean that you pick up a sword and start swinging it or start firing a huge like Rambo, you know, machine gun at your anxiety. That's not it at all. If you want to talk about like use that sort of aggressive overtone that comes with the word defiance, you can become sort of a defiant warrior. But being a defiant warrior means that you understand that the only way to win the war is that you don't fight it. You let your opponent show you that it cannot defeat you. There's a difference. I'm not trying to vanquish my opponent. I am going to give him every opportunity to show that he cannot defeat me because my logical brain already has a bunch of experiences piled up that tell me that this is true. So now I'm going to have to act like it's true. And you see how the defiant mindset starts to make a difference. There's there's no tensing. There's no bracing. There's no I'm not throwing punches at it. I'm not taking a flamethrower to it. I'm not doing any of those things. There's that's not part of defiance mindset. So when I got into that mindset for me when I when I experience anxiety or panic and this is true today as same as it was back then when I was doing the bulk of my recovery work. When I would go out and do my exposures and anxiety and panic would come and get me or I was having like rapid fire intrusive thoughts that were really difficult. I was still doing the same things that I had been doing. I was relaxing my body. I was like letting go of the tension. I was trying to put my focus somewhere else. I was trying to engage with the world instead of with the fear directly. I was doing all of the things that I talked about all the time just that I was doing them as an as acts of defiance as opposed to acts of survival. So I often use the word navigation right and we know that these like sort of recovery skills are acts of navigation not eradication. But I was no longer passively navigating. I wasn't just trying to get through and I think here's where the big difference is a lot of people's survival mode survival mindset means I'll use all the tools so that I can just get through it. For me these became acts of defiance. Like I literally was doing the I'm going to make you come and kill me now come and get me M. Effer. Like I know I you know I'm trying to keep a family friendly here as best as I can. But that was literally my mindset in those moments was I am going to rag doll this because but rag doll doesn't seem like a thing a warrior does but it really was an act of defiance. So figuratively speaking and in some cases really physically my posture often changed as well when when I am in that complete acceptance surrender let it come and kill me I am doing that with my chest up my shoulders back and my chin out like there is an act of there is a defiant spirit in those actions which seem like passive actions but I swear to you that to me they become more active in voice even though they're passive I'm not I'm trying to not do things and just let stuff happen around me and to me there was still more of an active measure there than just passive passivity so those all of those things that we talk about surrender and acceptance and floating and allowing and tolerating it became a defiant willingness to let it come and kill me and not done from a place of weakness at all all done from a place of what I felt was strength and resolve so when I relax my body and I completely let go and I allow panic to reach its peak that is an act of pure defiance come and get me I know you can't right so see how there's no fight yet it begins to feel like a fight these are such difficult things to express verbally because they're oxymorons they're counterintuitive it doesn't make a lot of sense but I'm hoping I'm explaining it well the defiant mindset changed change the color of what my navigation through anxiety and panic and fear and intrusive thoughts and scary things look like it colored it in a different light so the best way I can think of the describe it in the end is that a defiant mindset means you still do the same things that you've been trying to do but now you do them as you are intentionally standing straight up you're dropping your guard if we bring it back to the silly boxing rocky thing from the beginning of the episode I am you are literally standing straight up putting your chest out and dropping your guard and letting your opponent you know clock you with a right cross to the chin because you know that you might wind up on your rear end on the canvas but you also know that you're going to get right up from that it cannot knock you out it cannot win the fight it cannot take you out of that ring it might put you on your butt for a couple minutes but you're going to get up and you're going to keep moving forward and here's the best part about it when we do that and you take that hit to the chin clubber Lang man in Rocky three bam like a sledgehammer and Rocky goes down but he gets back up and sooner or later clubber ran out of gas and that's what happens try to take me out hit me and then it does and you may wind up on your butt but then you get right back up and when you get up the other guy anxiety your opponent in the fight if you will air quotes fight is now hunched over gasping for air at a juice he has to recharge he cannot throw any more punches because that's the physiology of panic like he's going to recharge at some point and you might have to go through it again but in that moment you took the hardest shot and you got up and you kept walking and now he is just hunched over and gasping for air and trying to pick his hands up again to hit you can't and then you walk away and to me because I'm a smart ass I always visualize like I'm walking away from this you are hunched over you are gassed and sweating you cannot throw another punch because you are spent and you still couldn't take me out you still couldn't take me out that I am laughing at you as I walk away from you and I know we will meet again tomorrow or maybe later today but it's just going to happen again in the same exact way you will not take me out that is a defiant mindset but you have to be willing to let your repeated experiences where you don't die you don't go crazy you don't pass out you don't fall over you don't lose your whole family like all of those things you have to let that be true because it really was right if you're not willing to accept those lessons and so much of this stuff I've done podcast episodes in that are you willing to accept the lessons of exposure are you willing to let reality be reality and when you begin to let those things pile up and you are beginning to at least accept well maybe it is true maybe I could take a leap of faith there's still courage in here there's still a leap of faith all the principles still apply but now you begin to approach these activities in a defiant way I am done with you anxiety you better take my ass out of this game permanently or I'ma get up laugh at you and walk away when you hit me see the difference there and I know silly rocky analogies some of you are not even old enough to know the rocky films but if you go to the show notes for this podcast episode which could be at the anxioustruth.com slash 222 because this is episode 222 I'll insert a youtube clip that shows you the fight and you'll get an idea of what it looks like it's a dumb movie the rocky movies are silly they're good like Sunday afternoon in the winter if you run across them you watch them but it does illustrate what I'm talking about here in a way you know rocky is right up in clubbers face and he's come on champ knock me out you ain't so bad you ain't so bad that that is a defiant mindset man and it can really change things in a big way it does not solve the problem by itself it does not magically make your anxiety go away it doesn't magically make you unafraid it doesn't magically make you a mad ass warrior that runs over anxiety but it does make you stand up a little taller make you a little more willing to have those experiences make you a little more open to them make you a little more open to the lessons and you can tap into the victory afterwards again you failed you didn't take me out you loser and by loser I mean I'm talking to anxiety I'm beginning to taunt it poke it I'm not fighting it not throwing punches at it every time it fails to take me out which is every time I'm going to poke it a little bit and taunt it a little bit and it makes me feel more and more capable and it makes me feel like I do have agency I do have control I do have power the defiant mindset is part of that it's part of the lesson so that is my rant that went on for way longer than I thought it would I'm back to a 28 minute podcast episode I hope you guys hung in there because it took a while to get going but I think this is really important the defiant mindset and adopted to a certain extent when you're ready for that it can help you turn the corner when you think maybe you have been stuck and in the end the defiant mindset allows us to understand that every time we have experiences like this we didn't just survive we prevailed and in that moment where we realize I prevailed in this moment I didn't just survive that's a huge lesson and those are the lessons that get us where we want to be and there you go that is episode 222 on the defiant mindset you know the episode is over because music that is afterglow by my buddy Ben Drake it is the song that you hear at the beginning and end of every podcast episode except for this one since I was so rude as to steal from hockey3 but if you want to find more about that song and Ben and his music you can go to bendrakemusic.com if you are listening to this podcast or Spotify or any podcast platform that lets you rate and review please leave a 5 star rating and maybe write a quick review if you are loving the podcast because it helps other people find the podcast and more people get help that way if you are watching on youtube I would urge you to subscribe to my youtube channel like the video leave a comment if you will I am always happy to interact with you guys if you are in the facebook group and you want to talk about this podcast episode go ahead and ask questions I will do my best to answer them maybe this is something we will talk about a little bit more later on but for now I think we are done that is episode 222 in the books I will just quick reminder if you got all the way to the end here go to my website at the anxioustruth.com to avail yourself of all the other resources including social media content and my books and all the other podcast episodes in the morning newsletter so go check it out thanks guys for coming I appreciate it I will be back next week I do not know what I will be talking about but I will be here and remember this is the way see you guys bye