 On episode 262 of The Anxious Truth, the podcast that covers all things anxiety, anxiety disorders, and anxiety recovery, we're going to talk about what end stage recovery from an anxiety disorder looks like. So let's get to it. Hello everybody, welcome back to The Anxious Truth. This is episode 262 of the podcast. We are recording in June of 2023 in case you are listening in the future. I am Drew Lincellotta, creator and host of The Anxious Truth. If this is your first time listening to the podcast or stumbling onto the YouTube channel, welcome. I hope you find it helpful or useful in some way. Of course, if you are a returning listener or returning viewer, welcome back. I'm glad you're here. This week, we are going to examine what end stage recovery, what is sort of the final stages of anxiety recovery look like? What does it feel like? People want to know this because when you can sort of hear these stories, it gives you a little bit of hope and inspiration. So we're going to talk about it today for about 15 minutes or so before we get into it. I just want to remind you that The Anxious Truth is more than just this podcast episode. There are 261 other podcast episodes that came before this and those are all free. There's my new podcast Disordered that I do with Josh Fletcher and that's also free. There's a ton of free social media content out there. There are three books that I've written on anxiety and anxiety recovery. There are courses and workshops. There's just a lot of resources more than just this podcast episode or this video. You can find all of those things on my website at TheAnxiousTruth.com. So go check it out and avail yourself of all the goodies. Hopefully, you will find it all helpful. So before we get started today, I want to also tell you that there are other episodes of this podcast that sort of reference this topic. Specifically, episode 134 of The Anxious Truth is also on this. We talked about in that episode, we talked about the stages of anxiety recovery. There are no specific defined like clinically accepted stages of these are the stages of panic disorder recovery. There's no such thing really, but I sort of broke it down into six stages. So if you want to go through that, you can check out episode 134 of this podcast, either on your podcast app or on YouTube, wherever you like to listen. It's there. So go check that out. Let's talk about end stage recovery. What happens when you get sort of near the end of this journey or the end of this process? What does that look like? What does it feel like? Well, it might not exactly be what you think. First of all, recovery doesn't really have a finish line, which is a weird thing to say, but it's true. And anybody who is listening today that either is way down the road toward recovery or recall themselves recovered. And that would be my category. That's where I am. We tell you that at some point you look back and say, when did that happen? So there really is no sort of finish line like one day you recover. That's not really how this works. It really tends to end kind of quietly. So your disordered anxiety, which is important if you listen to this podcast or you read my books, you know what we're talking about here. The anxiety disorder sort of slips out the back door like three in the morning when no one's looking like one day you just wake up and you wonder, hey, when did I mostly get better? It's that way. It's quiet. It sneaks up on you. It's not loud. It's not triumphant. It's not dramatic. It just sort of happens little by little. So just be very careful about either looking for or looking forward to a triumphant moment of recovery because it kind of doesn't exist. Now I'm not saying that there won't be moments down the road as you go through this process where you have realizations that things are changing and you're getting better. You will have those moments. There's just no one particular moment where you say, oh, look, I'm recovered. If somebody is dealing with a medical condition or if somebody is dealing with cancer, for instance, and they get they do a follow up and they get scanned and tested and they discover that, oh, look, there's no sign of cancer. I'm a complete remission. That's like a milestone day right there. And they can look at that with us. It doesn't sort of happen that way. It's just this weird, like a creative thing where it's just experiences add up and add up and add up and you change over time little by little by little. And you kind of don't even notice it. The analogy that I like to use sometimes is it's like losing 20 pounds. I'm a reasonably large person, so for me, 20 pounds isn't that much to lose. But if I lose 20 pounds, I won't see it because I see myself every day in the mirror. I don't notice it and it happens ounce by ounce every day. I don't notice that. But one day, one of my friends walks up to me and says, hey, you look like you lost some weight because they haven't seen you. And to them, they notice something different. It's kind of like that. I mean, you guys, you guys can mostly relate to that, I think. So what does it really look like? It doesn't look like, you know, boom, there's a moment. There's a day where you wake up and like the clouds have lifted and you are recovered and there's it's a triumphant moment doesn't look like that, which seems a little disappointing. And it kind of is, but it's it's still satisfying. Do not get me wrong. So what does it really look and feel like? I'm going to just give you a couple of sort of bullet points and we'll kind of flesh them out as we go here. End stage recovery where you get near the end. And if you go back and listen to episode 134, the anxious truth, that would be up like stages five and six that I kind of threw out there in that episode. Go listen to that. But when you get into the end stage of recovery, it kind of looks like saying yes to things that maybe today or once upon a time, you could never have imagined saying yes to. So when you are near the end of the recovery process or getting more advanced and getting to that point where you might say, hey, I'm a recovered person, you will find that you default to yes. Whereas now you tend to default to no. So what I mean by defaulting to yes or saying yes to things is you will when somebody says, hey, I'm going out for a little while, which means you're going to be home in the house alone for two hours. You know, okay, you know, you might have a little thought about it because you're still not totally all the way there. But it's not like, oh, no, oh, no. And you have to say no to that. You have to find a way to make it happen. You might think about it for a second, but then, okay, cool. Hey, we're going out to dinner because it's grandma's birthday next week. Everybody's going. And you might have a moment of trepidation, but then, okay, sounds good. Let's go. It's grandma's birthday. I want to be involved in that. So those are very simple explanations. Or what you will also find, like, let's say you have health anxiety, you will begin to find that when your brain says you might want to check that mark on your leg. You will think about it for a minute or two, but you won't check the mark. Now, I don't really need to do that. So your defaulting to yes would be yes to not protecting yourself against the little mark on your leg that a year ago you would have been absolutely in a downward spiral over for a week. If you have got you start to learn how to recognize those like, oh, I'm worrying about things that haven't even happened yet, or I'm trying to solve problems. I don't even know exist. I'm just going to let that be. I'm going to default to saying yes to leaving my questions unanswered and my problems unsolved because I've kind of learned through these experiences that I've had over my recovery journey that I don't have to fix them. So that's what it looks like to begin defaulting to saying yes. You start to say yes to things that you would have never said yes to your yeses become no's. And I guess conversely, your nose become yeses. So that that's sort of what end stage recovery looks like end stage recovery. Oh, my chair is very squeaky today. End stage recovery also looks like making decisions based on what you care about rather than what you fear, right? So you've probably heard me say this recovery is a march from fear based decisions to values based decisions. What are the things that are important to you? So I can give you a quick example of something like that and this is a real life example from somebody who probably doesn't mind me using it. I won't say the name, but if you have to run out and get your kid a birthday present because you want to do that for them because tomorrow is their birthday or it's Christmas or something. And they they have asked you for something that you would like to give them because you love them. We could argue to fill the philosophy behind gift-gifting, but this is an example here and your anxiety would say, I can't possibly go to that place and get that gift. But your values say, but as a parent, I want to do this for my child. They want to do this and your value wins out and you go and do the thing and get the birthday present or the Christmas present, even though you're afraid to do it. That is a value based decision. Whereas previously you would have made a decision based on fear. I really want to do that, but I can't. I won't because I'll be too afraid. So end stage recovery looks like your values start to weigh in and hold sway. Not all the time. This is not a straight line, but you will find that you begin to catch the fear and then your values or your logical brain that gets to say, wait a minute here. I know I'm afraid, but I really want this because it's important to me. So let me think about this for a second. Nope, we're going. We're doing the thing and that ties into defaulting to yes. So your yeses where, you know, knows become yeses and yeses become knows depending on which side of the equation you're on because your values, the things you care about and the logical part of your brain begin to weigh in more. They have space to operate now. You're not completely dominated by fear all the time. That's a big part of end stage recovery. And again, these things just sort of happen slowly over time. But when you make some of those initial decisions that you refuse to make for a long time, you may have moments where even in the middle of it, you say, who even am I? I can't believe I'm doing this and that might make you a little nervous, but that's okay. That's what this looks like. So end stage recovery also looks like sometimes you are still jolted by fear, but you can return to those value based choices in pretty short order. Right. So one of the things over the last six months or year that I have started to talk about more and more in terms of the definition of recovery to me or a metric of recovery, if you will. And we can't really measure these things and everybody goes at their own pace. But everybody gets triggered. Everybody. There is, I say this all the time I joke, there's nobody more recovered on the planet than me. And I can get triggered too because I'm a human being. The difference is the time between triggered and going back to logical brain value based decisions instead of running and hiding and making your decisions based on fear gets shorter and shorter and shorter. So in the old days, your fear would overwhelm everything else and it might take you hours or days to get over that fear or you wouldn't at all and you would continue to completely avoid the thing that triggered you. Recovery is what happens when the time between triggered and acting anyway, did it anyway, do it anyway. Right. You've heard Josh Fletcher talks about that. We do do it. Did it anyway on the Disorder podcast, the time between triggered and did it anyway gets shorter and shorter and shorter. So you will still get jolted by fear and in stage recovery. But that jolt doesn't feel as severe or as urgent, I would say, and you return to value based choices and do it anyway in reasonably short order. And as you go down the road, that time interval gets shorter and shorter and shorter. So that's part of end stage recovery also. What's another part of end stage recovery? When you get to sort of the end stages of recovery, it means there are questions that you just stop asking because they're not questions for you anymore. One of them is what if I never get better? And I know that that is a very, very common question in this community, but what if I never get better? I think I might never get better, but I'm having the thought that I never get better. In end stage recovery, you have acted even though you're worried that you won't get better. So everybody thinks they're not going to get better, but they act anyway. And then those experiences teach you over time that what if I never get better isn't even a question anymore. So it's not like you get an answer to the question. And this is very subtle and very nuanced. And until you get there, you won't fully understand what I'm saying here. But it's not that you get a definitive answer about getting better. You just understand that that's not even a question. So you can look forward to that. And another question that you find that you don't need to ask anymore, when you really get all the way to the end, you do not stop inside the acceptable bubble. You keep challenging. You keep expanding. You keep having different experiences. One of the questions you don't ask anymore is what if it comes back? That's another question that is people, especially at the beginning of this journey or in sort of in the middle stages, will get stuck on. But what if it comes back? But what if it comes back? And I recently did a podcast episode called, How do I Stay Recovered? If you want to go to theanxioustruth.com and search for that, I explained that even more. I recorded that on a beach that I used to be afraid to go to. What if it comes back? What if I have a relapse? You stop asking that question. Again, not because you find some ironclad certainty that, oh, I will never have a relapse. You just start to understand like that's not a question because I'm not afraid of this anymore. So there is no more it to come back. So that's part of End Stage Recovery. End Stage Recovery is also when you start to have the realization that you actually understand all the things that I wrote or said or Claire Weeks wrote or said or whoever, Josh or Kim or Jenna or whoever it is that you are following in recovery and using as a guide or your therapist, at one point you say, oh, now I get it. Now I understand. Back in the day, I was hearing it, sort of logically getting it, but emotionally, uh-uh, wasn't getting it. Couldn't put my brain around that. Like when I tell you that you will reach a point where you don't have to ask about relapse anymore. That is one of those concepts that somebody early in recovery can simply not understand. How can you say that? How can that possibly be true? That won't be a question anymore. One day you will know you don't have to ask the relapse question anymore and then you understand what I was saying. So part of End Stage Recovery is you begin to really get an appreciation for things maybe your therapist or your counselor has been telling you that you think, hmm, I am not really buying this or I don't understand it, but how do I implement it? You just don't get it. At some point, you discover, oh, I get it now. And it's the experiences that did that for you. Because you begin to gain that understanding of those concepts that you couldn't understand because you did them and you applied them even when you didn't understand them. So if one of the things that's really important, how do I get to End Stage Recovery? You act even when you're scared. You act when you don't feel brave. You apply these principles even though you don't believe them yet. You apply these principles and concepts even though you don't understand them yet. And then it's the experience that teaches you that you are brave, teaches you that you are safe. The learning happens after the doing in this process. And those experiences give you those lessons that you can look back and say, oh, now I understand. Now I get it. Now I believe it. But you got to do it before you believe it. And then you believe it later. It's a crazy deal, isn't it? But it's a deal we got. End Stage Recovery feels largely neutral. This is a really important one because sometimes people get down the road and the recovery journey and they start to expect that just like I said, there's no triumphant moment of like nirvanic recovery. Oh, I'm recovered and you're triumphant and there's a big emotional thing. You will have little moments like that that add up. But End Stage Recovery feels largely neutral. It doesn't mean that you walk around. Oh, I'm not anxious anymore. So I must walk around feeling joy and happiness and gratitude. Nah, not so much. You certainly will have room to feel those things organically where anxiety and fear and doubt are taking up all of the room now. So you can't feel those things. They don't have any room. You make room for them and sometimes you feel really happy and you feel joy and you feel grateful and you feel all of those things. And also you might feel sad or disappointed or angry one day. You'll have room for all of your emotions. But generally speaking, the default state for a human is sort of neutral. We're not always concerned about how we feel. We're just doing things and we're having experiences and we're not always evaluating how we feel. That might seem ridiculous to you now because it's all you're doing all day long. But when you get into End Stage Recovery, you start to largely feel neutral. So don't misunderstand that because a lot of people will say, I don't understand. I thought I would be super happy all the time. Well, who told you that? The opposite of anxious is not happy. The opposite of anxious is content. The opposite of anxious is neutral. The opposite of anxious is not on guard, which means I'm not evaluating how I feel all the time. So I don't know how I feel. To be honest with you, have you asked me how I feel this morning? I don't know. I guess I feel okay. I'm recording a podcast, drinking a cup of coffee. It's a little warm in my office. Summer's coming. I don't know. That's what I got. So interestingly, that is what End Stage Recovery looks like. Don't fall into the trap of thinking that when your anxiety falls away, it is replaced automatically with joy and happiness and gratitude and only the super positive states. And this is especially true if you are a parent or if you want a romantic relationship, an intimate relationship, and you think that you are supposed to automatically experience states of extreme happiness and joy with your children or your partner. That's not the way humans work. You will because you'll have room for them when they happen organically, most of the time you're just going to feel neutral. You will be content and living your life. That's important. And I think finally what I want, I could probably do this for two hours, but the last kind of important point that I want to make about what End Stage Recovery looks like and feels like is that it means that you are no longer automatically most interested in how you feel, which plays into the last statement that I made. Right now how you feel is probably automatically the most important thing in the room all the time to the point where it starts to feel selfish and self centered. And like it's always about me and how I feel. And I did a podcast episode on that. If you go to the anxious truth.com and search for selfish, you'll see that I talked about the selfish nature of the disorder, not you, but it will demand to be the most important thing in the universe all the damn time. And what winds up happening is that when you get to the end stages of recovery, you don't do that anymore. You don't have a need to do that. I'm not constantly scanning for how I'm feeling. I'm not looking for symptoms. I'm not looking for thoughts. I'm not, it doesn't matter. I don't not afraid of those. So I don't look for them anymore. And what have some people make a mistake here and I want to clarify this to sort of wrap it up. When you get to that point, you have not learned to be a robot and some people will say like, are you teaching people to ignore their feelings? No, no, no, not at all. Like when your feelings come up and you have experiences that trigger emotions, you will still feel things. But you will learn to focus on how you feel because of the context you're in. I had a fight with my partner and I'm really upset. That's normal. That's human. And yes, you will focus on your feelings in that moment because that can be a healthy and productive thing to do. It's just not your automatic default anymore simply because you are afraid and uncomfortable. That is a huge difference. So end stage recovery means that you no longer make how you feel the most important thing in the universe all the time because you don't have to. And you have enough space to navigate in that you can connect to your emotions and how you feel and what's going on in your body and your mind when it's a healthy or productive thing to do. And it's generally contextual. What's going on, something triggered me. I'm having a bad day at work or oh my goodness, this is such a great day. We're all out with my map with my friends and this is awesome and I'm having a great time and you connect to those emotional experiences or your thoughts. And that's when, you know, general mental health or or wellness advice like check in with yourself, ask yourself whether you need. That's when you'll be able to get to do those things. That's when you'll be able to get to do things like I'm going to go with my gut on this one right now your gut is dragging you around up and down the block all day long in a bad way. One day you will get to the point where like, oh, okay, I can sort of trust my gut or I can check in with myself and see what I need or I can examine why I feel this way and work through it in a healthy way. So it's not automatically the most important thing in the room only because you are afraid and uncomfortable. And that's it. There are way, way more things that I can give you. Again, I could probably go for two hours on what end stage recovery looks like when I sat down and really thought about it like these are the most important points that I want to give you. So hopefully it gives you a more realistic view of what you have to look forward to. What I really wanted to do was dispel some of the common myths and I wanted to try and give you a roadmap that maybe will help you not fall into the common traps that people fall into. Although honestly, you'll probably fall into them anyway. We all do human nature is human nature. But if you do find yourself beating yourself about the neck and shoulders because, oh my goodness, how come I'm not automatically super joyful when I'm with my kids at the park now. You can at least say, oh yeah, I remember when Drew talked about that in a podcast episode. It's cool. Okay, this isn't like a disaster. So I was hoping that's what I would be able to give you in this episode. And that is it. That is episode 262. What does end stage recovery look like? Sort of in the books, you know, it's over because the music is playing. That is the sign that the podcast episode is over. If you're new here, you're going to get used to that. This song is called Afterglow and it was written by my friend, Ben Drake, who wrote it at least in part inspired by what he heard in this podcast years ago. And he's been gracious enough to let me use it ever since. If you want to find out more about Ben and his music, you can check it out at BenDrakeMusic.com. Tell me said hi if you do that. What else can I say to you? If you are listening to the podcast on Apple podcast or Spotify or some platform that lets you rate or review the podcast, maybe take a moment to leave a five star rating and even write a review because it helps more people find the podcast. Then we can help more people, which is why I do this to begin with. Of course, if you're watching on YouTube or listening because there's no video this week, like the video, subscribe to the channel, hit the notification icon so you know when I upload new episodes, new episodes, leave a comment or a question. I circle back to YouTube at least twice a week to answer comments. So I'd love to hear from you. I think that's it. I will be back next week with another podcast episode. I have no idea what I'm going to talk about, but I will be here and I will leave you with just a quick reminder. No matter what you do today to move forward, even just a little bit, no matter how small that step is, it counts. See you next week.