 Live, so 49, the 49th week that we are doing this, how is everybody doing? Let's wait for everybody to show up. Today, we're gonna talk about being a critical consumer of research when your anxious brain is freaking out and desperate for answers and digging into the internet like a dog with a bone, trying to find safety, trying to find assurance, trying to do all those things. Sometimes we're a little less than critical in the way we consume that information. So that's what we're gonna talk about today. We're gonna wait for everybody to sort of show up. I'm gonna put the chat overlay up so you guys can see what each other is saying. One of my favorite things about these live streams is when you guys are talking to each other in the comments and helping each other. I love that. Hello, everybody. Let's make sure that you guys can hear me. Everything should be working okay. Audio is okay, video is okay. Just give me a thumbs up. Let me know that everything is cool. Let me know where you're coming from. Hey Ken, Colleen is here from Bethlehem. Tell me where you guys are from. That always helps. And just a quick apology for last week's live stream. I kinda had something come up near the end of that live stream. So I cut it short really fast. My phone was literally blowing up. Hey Tally, what up? Yeah, my phone was literally blowing up with what looked to be a bit of an emergency. So I'm really sorry that I abruptly ended that one. I did have to take those calls. So sorry about that. Hopefully today we'll go a little smoother. We're just gonna chill out and take it easy. I have a nice light week this week. This is the last week of the term in my grad program. So I only have a couple of assignments. And next week, I got no class. I have no class next week. Eddie, like that. I'll call you when I have no class. So yeah, next week will be nice light week too. So I have nothing going on today. So too much, a little bit of work. So I'm just gonna chill out with you guys. We're gonna go over how to consume research about anxiety and your symptoms and all those things. Yes, I did turn the screen blanking off already. I'm ready dude, I got you already. And we'll take some questions and we'll just sort of hang out. Everything's good, man. Everything's good. The phone is already off, so we're good. I even quit all the other apps that make noises. So I'm ahead of the game. Anyway, hey, Melanie, what up? Kisi is here from Albania. Hello, hello. Hey, Samantha. Name, some names, I'm sorry. I know that I literally butcher your names and I try not to do that. Kadeha seems like a very pretty name. I like it or hopefully have that right. Aurora, what up, Emma is here. Yeah, Angelique from New Jersey, new to your podcast. Oh, welcome Angelique, welcome aboard. I hope you are finding it helpful. So let's get cooking here. We're two and a half minutes into it. I just, I'm gonna wing this one, but I think it's really important. So let's talk about being a critical consumer of research and information online. Now, when you are in a really anxious state and you are dealing with really scary thoughts or you are dealing with scary sensations and symptoms and they're freaking you out and all you wanna do, hey Stacey, all you wanna do is find safety from those things. Then it becomes really common to go and start researching things, like obsessively researching things. I gotta find out, I gotta know what's going on. I gotta figure out what the symptom is. I gotta know if this is normal. I gotta know if this is gonna hurt me. So I get all of those things. Like it becomes really easy to get caught up in that. So what do we do when we wanna do those things? We wanna start like frantically researching. What do we do? What do you guys think we should do? Should we research like crazy? Excuse me, is that a thing? And yes, GBG Jason says there is a ton of bad info online. There is a ton of bad info online. So I wanna talk about that. When you go online and you want to try to find safety and security and assurance, and you wanna know for sure that this is normal and that the thoughts aren't gonna come true or that your symptom is definitely part of anxiety, it's really normal to start digging in and digging in and digging in and clicking and clicking and clicking and googling and googling and searching like crazy. That's super, super common, right? Everybody does that. Now, when I was in the middle of the thick of it, I will admit it was a little while ago, so we didn't have the same level of Google ability as we have now, it was a little bit of a different time. And when I first, absolutely first, got caught up with panic disorder, it was literally no internet, it was pre-internet. So the best that I really had was, let me think about this, I go to the library, I did have a therapy appointment with a psychologist that gave me a Claire Weeks book, Hope and Help from Your Nerves, which was absolutely life-changing, but there was no internet, so I couldn't do that. And in a way, that made it suck because I had no way to sort of learn about what was going on and seek healthy assurance, because not all assurance is bad assurance, like there's assurance and there's reassertion, we'll talk about that, but I didn't have anywhere to go. Now, when I was in the middle of my recovery work, which was that time between 2005, 2006, when I was going through anti-depressant withdrawal and then really 2008 or so, when I was really, really doing the hard work of recovery, Google was a thing and there were plenty of places to go and look. So I would get caught up in that a lot, right? So it's really common to do that. It's really normal that you will go and try to do things like, is a racing heart dangerous? Will I actually hurt myself? Like, I know that you're gonna wanna Google things that will try to make you feel safe, because you don't feel safe and you feel very uncertain. It's really normal to do that, but the things you find, and I talked about this in the Sleep Anxiety episode of the podcast, is the things that you're gonna find are not always necessarily helpful. And I'm kinda watching your comments, so I'll get back to them, I promise. But I just wanna kinda go through this really quick. What you may find is a lot of information, but the information isn't necessarily going to be helpful. Sometimes it's just simply not accurate. So we get Google results and search results that fall into a couple of different categories. The first category is, it's just complete and utter bullshit. It's 100% wrong. And there's a ton of information out there that's like that, right? So just because it's on the internet doesn't make it correct. So in a lot of instances, either the information is 100% just wrong because somebody just thought it seemed right and put it on a webpage or even built an entire website around it just because it's a website doesn't make it right, okay? We can have information that is based on reasonable information, but it's portrayed incorrectly or misinterpreted, probably the most common Google result, right? So we're gonna talk about that in a minute. And then the third type of result that we'll get is a good result, but usually not a useful result because the best information you're gonna find when you Google is very narrow, it's very specific, it's very dry. A lot of times it's really technical. So that information is gonna be reasonably accurate, but it isn't designed to 100% assure you that you are okay. So the paradox here is that the best responses we get when we ask the internet if we're gonna be okay because of anxiety, panic, agoraphobia, health anxiety, OCD, the best sources of information are the ones that will be the least reassuring. They'll be the most accurate, but they will tend to be dry, technical, very narrow in focus, very careful about what they say, and they'll be really ethical in the way they present the information and try not to promise you a specific cure or yes, you're gonna be okay, you will gain your freedom, call me, 10 sessions, like that sort of stuff, it could be a little dicey. So let's talk about that middle ground, which is the second one, which is information that is okay, like it's based on reasonable information, it might be based on good peer-reviewed research, but it's presented in a really bad way. It's either completely and utterly misinterpreted, it's misinterpreted for the sake of becoming clickbait, and you have to remember that websites on the internet exist to get views. So if you are, like somebody mentioned the NHS, which is great, I always use the NHS for health anxiety, like in Britain, the NHS, or in the US, like National Institute of Health or the CDC, they don't need eyeballs. Now, we're not gonna go into the political arguments here, but universities don't necessarily need eyeballs. Everybody needs eyeballs in the end. They need people to come to the websites, of course. If you're a research university needs to get this research funded, it has an endowment. Yes, everybody has at least some motive for trying to attract attention, that is 100% true. But generally speaking, the best source of information have the least motivation to just capture your attention, grab it, make you scroll, stay on the website for a long time. The websites in the middle, where they take pretty good information, pretty decent research, and completely blow it out of proportion, completely misrepresented, sometimes completely misinterpreted, like they are 100% wrong in the way they interpret the research. They often have the most interest, vested interest, in getting you to that website onto that page and keeping you on that website, clicking around and around and around and around as often as you can. They do not want you to click away from the site. They have a motive for doing that. And the best way to do that is to be sensationalistic and to kind of be unrealistic and to poke at your emotions, right, and try and give it an emotional response from you. But that doesn't make them right. So I won't necessarily put it in anxiety terms, but I'll put it in terms that everybody could sort of understand and laugh at a little bit like things that you see on the news when there was news that you could watch. I mean, people still watch the news, but do you remember the days of like, hey, coming up after the break, new research says that this food will kill you and they won't tell you what the food is. They want you to come back after the commercial break and they'll tell you about a study that was done at one university, one study that indicated that, I don't know. Scrambled eggs might have a negative health impact on rats, like, but they don't say it that way. They lead with, you know, and there's a food in your fridge that might kill you. Find out which one it is coming up after the break. And we all know those things, right? So then that translated also into internet clickbait, like click, click, click, click, click. They want you to come to it. So when those kind of sites are presenting you with research, just keep in mind the motive for the site to exist. And I have to say also, just because it's a site that tends to align itself with health doesn't also mean that it's accurate, right? Just because there's the word health in the site, wellness in the site doesn't make it a good site to use. Like WebMD, and I know that most of you guys understand WebMD, right? WebMD, I'm not saying it's a bad website. They do their best, I think, to vet the information, to review the information. But WebMD is a business. They have a vested interest in getting you to WebMD, getting you to sign up, get a membership over there, like give them your information and stay on the site again and again and again so they can serve your information. So they can serve you advertisements. So just because it's a wellness site doesn't mean it's good, right? There's a lot of wellness sites out there that are either peddling bad information, horrible anxiety cares, quick fixes, over-promising stuff, misinterpreting research, but it's a wellness site so you might think that it's a good site. So I guess the point that I really want to make here and just sort of wrapping this up so I don't belabor it is, keep in mind when you are in a frantic state and trying frantically and desperately to get information right now to make you feel better, right? Be aware when you're in that state and know that when you're in that state, your ability to interpret what you see on your screen or on your phone is a little bit compromised. And we see it most often, again, the sleep anxiety episode that I did, I don't know, a month ago, whatever, I talked about this, we see it very often in that area, in sleep. I read that if I don't sleep enough, it's gonna hurt me, like I'm gonna damage my body. If I don't sleep enough, I'm gonna get cancer early. If I don't sleep enough, it can kill me. And that's because there's so many like really sensationalistic headlines and even misinformation about sleep. And the other thing that I hear it in is, I believe that if I'm anxious all the time, I'm hurting my body. Like I read, somebody once said, somebody commented on a YouTube video, one of my YouTube videos, a couple, about a week ago, and it said, I heard somewhere that and then there was a hugely catastrophic statement in the comment. This person was bringing it to me in a YouTube comment. I heard somewhere that. And my response was, well, can you go into better detail as to where you heard that? Where did you read that? What was the source? Was it like an article on a news site? Was it an article on a for-profit wellness site? Was it a peer-reviewed journal? Like it really matters in a big way, right? So keep in mind that even though you are desperate to get information right now, because you think you're unsafe and you're hoping to find something that will assuage that fear, be careful about buying into everything you say. I would strongly suggest, strongly suggest that you gravitate more towards sites that do not have a vested interest in keeping your attention. National Institute of Mental Health in the US, the NHS in the UK, like your national health services, say in Canada or whatever country you happen to be in, look at the information that they are publishing first. And that information often will not draw concrete conclusions because they can't. They're trying to be scientifically literate and ethical in the way they deliver the information. So you're less likely to get promises of relief, cure and safety, which are more likely to get good, accurate, ethically delivered information that you can use and sort of take to the bank. Better even is the ability to actually read the research studies themselves as opposed to reading someone's interpretation of research, which I use this term all the time. If you're worried that you can manifest something because you're thinking so much about it, then you are 100% a victim of the sensationalistic misrepresentation and inaccurate interpretation of scientific research. So I know that you've all seen this, clickbait articles that say science proves that we create reality with our brains over their thoughts, which is not in any way, and I write all about this all the time, it's not in any way what science says. Quantum mechanics does not say that, string theory does not say that. They take those studies are all over the place and it scares the hell out of people. So try and stay away from news sites and wellness sites that are just quoting research. And if you can read the research itself, that's great. Sometimes you don't have access to it because it's sort of behind paywall. One of the great things about being a grad student again is I have access to all the libraries. And I'm already a nerd, so I already read the research, but now I can read all the research and it's free. Reading research is super boring. You have to have some knowledge of statistics, you have to have some knowledge of research design and study design to be able to be a critical consumer of that. If you can do that, great. If not, fall back on things like the NHS or the CDC and see what they have to say, national system health. Just be aware of when you are being led down a rabbit hole by sensationalistic information that's not meant to help you but is meant to agitate, excite you or push your emotional buttons to keep you interested, right? So very important. Okay, that's enough proselytizing about that now. Hopefully it has helped because I know a lot of you guys get caught in that and I get it all the time. Oh my God, I read, this morning I read, blah, blah, blah, XYZ. Is that true? Like, am I gonna be okay? If you find yourself in an urgent situation, then there's a really good chance that you're not necessarily interpreting things in the most helpful way, all right? So let's get to some comments and questions. Let's see what you guys have to say about this. I'm sure there's a lot. Washington State is here, Ellen is here for the Netherlands, Angel Lee from New Jersey, hey, hey, hey, hey. Turns out, okay, I got all those guys already. Let's see here. I look so calm and refreshed. I am actually calm, Kisi, I'm actually calm and refreshed today, because I don't have a lot to do. I'm like super happy today because I'm not under the gun today for the first time in a while. I'll put some stuff up here. We try not to get into, oh, you know what I think is, like, see that, like the Lebowski thing with the eyeglasses behind me? I think my camera thinks that's a face, so if I'm coming in ahead of focus, that might be why. I'll put this on the screen. Best advice for continuing PVCs, mostly when I'm relaxing or trying. I understand it's hard to relax when you have a PVC. This is one of those things, and by the way, if you are not reading The Anxious Morning, which is my morning newsletter, go to theanxiousmorning.com and read that, because literally this week, today and tomorrow, and then Wednesday on the Anxious Truth podcast, I'm literally doing an entire three days worth of what are the steps to? What does the program tell me to do about PVCs, intrusive thoughts? How do I let go? So I wish I could tell you, Michelle, that there are somehow advice or steps, but in all of this stuff, at some point, we run out of steps, and then it becomes a courage thing. So I can relate to the PVC things. They used to freak me the hell out. Like, one PVC would send me into, like, a undulating panic, self-scanning freaking out stage for a day. Like, one PVC would ruin my entire day back then. But now, literally, I can be in the gym, like with a loaded barbell, dragging 400 pounds plus off the floor in a deadlift, have two PVCs in a row, and just keep lifting. So how did that happen? It just, I just got really good at relaxing into it, which was super scary, because I used to react with all kinds of, like, poking and prodding and check my pulse, and oh my God, make sure I'm around somebody who can call 911 in case I die. I just had to stop doing that and let myself be in danger. And over time, I did learn that I was not in danger and they were normal. My doctor, a cardiologist, everybody told me every human heart does that. There's nothing wrong with your heart. Perfectly healthy, totally cool. You can let them go. I just had to practice that, and that took courage. That was really hard. So that's my answer. Penelope Crucifius here. Love it. Hey, Viola, what up? Let's see here. Oh, this is good. Let's put this up on the screen. Aurora, thank you for saying this. My DPDR stopped being so bad once I stopped researching and watching videos about it all day. This is an excellent comment. So I really appreciate it. Thank you very much, Aurora. This is a good point. If you are frantically researching all the time, then there's a really good chance that you have to start to cut back on that, right? So researching and reading and listening to podcasts and reading books and trolling through Facebook groups. And look, I produce this content. I produce a podcast every week. I produce a morning newsletter and podcast for mornings. Like I produce a lot of content about anxiety. You can easily get trapped into constantly consuming this content as a safety and reassurance seeking behavior. So if you find that you are just constantly immersing yourself all the time in anxiety information and symptom information and recovery information, take what Aurora says here to heart. Sometimes we have to back away from that a little bit, which leads me to the difference between, because this matters in the context of today's topic, like consuming research, the difference between assurance and reassurance. I know I've talked about this, the difference between assurance and reassurance. We talk all the time about how reassurance we don't give out. So I rarely have ever provided reassurance, right? But I will provide assurance. So assurance is, okay, assurance is education. In the psychology and anxiety world, we call it psychoeducation. It's a big part of it, especially in the beginning. So somebody who has never had a panic attack before, for instance, never had an intrusive thought before, and this is all new to you, then getting some assurance, learning what it is, understanding what's going on, totally, totally. Oh, excellent. I haven't had one of these in a long time. Let's see here. Hang on. Evidently hot girls are there. So when you're in that situation, I think you have to remember that, wait, why don't let me click things? Hang on here. Sorry, guys. All right, now I can scroll back up again. So assurance and reassurance, learning for the first time what things are, learning that your heart is okay the first time, the second and third time, checking with a doctor, Googling to find out, reading my books, learning what anxiety disorder is, learning what the symptoms are, totally okay, like you kind of have to do that. It's part of the process. That's assurance. We don't like reassurance when you keep coming back again and again and again and again. So when you know, like for instance, talking about the, you know, PBCs, once I knew that like, this is totally fine, like my heart is okay even though I'm scared of it, I had to let it go. I had to stop immersing myself in trying to get reassurance about that, right? So super important, the difference in assurance and reassurance. So Aurora, thank you for putting that up and saying that things got better when you stopped researching so much. So let's scroll down and do more comments here. Let's see here. Reading two of your books at the moment, they've helped me and Coppola say off Dr. Goodman. Mari, you welcome. Mari Carmen from Facebook. I'm glad my books are helping. And yes, they should hopefully start to help you stay off of internet and get away from Dr. Google. If that's worth, that's doing that, then I'm doing my job and I'm happy. Let's see here. Okay, well, how am I gonna, I'm not gonna mention that. Look, there's some comments going on about a particular anxiety mentor and I have strong opinions about that. So here's a thing to look out for. If anybody is trying to, look, in the end, we all have to, everybody has to eat, right? So I don't have a problem with people feeding themselves. That's okay. So many of the people I collaborate with online are working therapists. They have therapy practices. Is their social media help build their practice? Yes, it does. Totally, okay. Where you worry is that when somebody is trying to sell you very expensive packages and has zero qualifications and blatantly just says, I don't need qualifications. I shouldn't, I don't need them. My experience is enough. I read Claire Weeks, so therefore I should be your coach. That's a red flag, especially if that person is charging way more, way more than an actual qualified therapist would charge, right? So you have to be really careful about that. That's not cool. And that negates any good information. So leaving breadcrumbs of good information in the hopes of selling you a $5,000 or $7,000 mentoring package. No, not good. That person would be actually subject to disciplinary action from a ethical or regulatory body if he was a therapist, all right? Let's see here. So this one up is a good one. Is it okay if I gradually give up reassurance seeking and Googling? Yeah, totally, totally gradual. This is definitely not a thing. In fact, not only is it okay to do it gradually, you sort of don't have a choice. Like everybody has to do it gradually to some extent or another. Some people can go faster than others. That's okay, not a race, no comparison has to be made. But yeah, it's okay to gradually do that. You kind of have to do it that way. One thing at a time, totally fine. If you're gonna try and get rid of Googling first and then talking about your symptoms and then totally fine. If you have a plan for gradually phasing that stuff out, I'm with you on that. It's a good way to do it. It's virtually impossible to just drop all of your research and reassurance seeking at one time. It's almost impossible to do that. Let's see here. Marina is here. Oh, this is really good. Let me put this up real quick. Marina, welcome back. I haven't seen you in a long time. When I'm researching, in fact, I'm looking for the internet telling me everything is gonna be okay, nothing bad is gonna happen, which is absolutely impossible. That is 100% accurate. Thank you so, so much for saying that. Because it's true. We live an uncertainty every single day. I mean, I'm in pretty good shape. I work out regularly. I have a really low resting heart rate. By the way, resting heart rate 54. Mine is about 51 FYI. And I like it that way. It should be lower. We want it to be low. So I'm in really good shape. I'm in good health. I have no problems. Some of my knees hurt and my shoulders hurt, but I still have no guarantee that I'm gonna make it to the end of the day. That's 100% true. So trying to eliminate all possible danger or be sure that you'll be 100% sure, you're never, ever, ever gonna achieve that ever in life. So Marina, thank you so much for putting that out there. Let's see here. This is good too. Sometimes you get backfire. Emma says that you never find safety and security. It scares the heck out of me. Because yes, it's 100% true. A lot of times the most sensational information is not really boring information that says, ah, people generally tend to get six or seven hours of sleep, but a lot of people get three and a half or four and they're perfectly fine. Where's the sensationalism in that? How does that get you to read more? That's super dry and boring. Or when you say, when somebody talks, talking about sleep, for instance, like, wow, the normal range for like needed sleep in human beings really is very wide. And it depends on context and time of year and physical condition and stress conditions. That's boring. Nobody wants to read that. You wanna read either, yes, I'm getting exactly enough sleep and I'm gonna be great, or, oh my God, it confirms that I'm screwed. I only got six hours of sleep last night, so I'm clearly gonna get like elbow cancer and die next week. The middle ground, the most accurate information, least sensationalistic, most ethically delivered is the one that will leave you nowhere, except better informed, which is okay. Being informed is okay. Thank you, Samantha, for talking about the five minute cycle of reassurance. Yes, that's 100% true. Tell me now that my heartbeat is okay. Tell me now that it's just anxiety. Whew, thank you. But an hour later, boom, you might be back again. Yeah, but can you tell me again one more time? Tell me again one more time? That's why people with health anxiety wind up at doctors again and again and again. What if the doctor missed? What if the doctor was wrong? What if that doctor was wrong? I'm gonna check a bunch of other doctors. Let's keep going here. Let's keep going. Let's keep going. How do you deal with exhaustion? I'll throw this up on the screen real quick. Hello, Zarina. I have one question. How do you deal with exhaustion? I'm tired every day because when I let all the sensations be there, that makes me so tired and exhausted. Okay, well, this is really tiring work. I will tell you flat out that when I was doing the heaviest lifting in my recovery, I would end the day really tired. Like it is hard to intentionally be scared all day long. It's hard to be intentionally scared all day long. So it's really normal to be tired. But if you were out, let's say that your job every day was going out and breaking up concrete, right? You worked running a jackhammer and a sledgehammer and carting concrete into dumpsters and doing that sort of stuff. And at the end of the day, you dragged yourself home and you were exhausted. You wouldn't, that wouldn't be a thing like, oh my God, I'm exhausted. Guys, how do I deal with that? You would say, well, I'm really tired because I did tiring things today that makes me physically tired. Okay, well, the work of recovery can also make you physically tired. It's okay to be tired. Hard work makes us tired. The issue here is not the exhaustion. The issue here is that you're afraid of how you feel. And so if I'm too tired, that's too tired. That's not right. I have to make sure that I feel right so that it's safe. So if I get too tired, then I call it a problem. It's not a problem. When you're tired, rest, it's okay. This work will wear you out and that's completely and utterly normal. Super normal. Hello, Ellen from Decatur, Texas. Good to see you. Could be accurate if it is written by an expert. That is true. So I'll throw this up here too. The information you're looking for could be accurate. That is 100% true. But the information has to be kind of written by somebody that has those credentials who doesn't, isn't trying to convince you of anything. Right? So I mean, thank you. It was written by an expert that you searched for peer review scientific yet. But again, like I said, you have to make extra effort to find that data. One of the things that I say all the time that I joke about is probably, you have probably not seen the best anxiety videos on YouTube and I'll tell you why. Because the best information about anxiety and anxiety disorders is usually made by like a really well qualified and like super helpful therapist from Milwaukee that fires up her iPhone in her office between sessions and talks for five minutes into the camera with no SEO, no hype, no social media following. And so the information is buried, literally buried. The best stuff that I sometimes share out, the inter-receptive exposure videos and things of that nature, people ask me all the time, oh my God, why don't you have 100,000 subscribers on YouTube? Because I'm not terribly sensationalistic. I'm not good for social media algorithms. So keep that in mind. It's hard to find experts. If you're willing to get that information, you have to dig for that. The internet does not make it easy to find that kind of information. It makes it super easy to find predigested inaccurate, oversensationalized, misrepresentational information. That's easy to find. That's a can't swing a dead cat with that, without finding that. Let's keep going. Oh, love the answer here. Thank you, Ellen, for talking about the, the being tired thing. Appreciate that. Let's see here. Is it the same as waking up? And I'm trying, I'm gonna scroll through here. Oh, okay. I just wanna put this up on the screen, Michelle, because congratulations on that is hard work. That is hard work. 60 days is no joke. So keep going. We're rooting for you with that, all right? My anxiety feels better. BP also down to normal. I don't know what's going on. Any advice? Yeah, it's okay. Go to your doctor if you haven't been. Get your heart checked out. I'm guessing that you have, because you see that your BP, where your BP is. Ask your doctor about PBCs. Now your doctor is, I will tell you right now that your doctor's gonna tell you, assuming your heart is fine, which I'm guessing you've probably already been told. I was told to, your heart's fine. Every human heart throws PBCs. We just often don't feel them. When we are stressed and anxious, we totally can feel them. So it sucks, but it's true. Okay, so you've been to a doctor. Excellent. If your doctor has told you, your cardiologist has told you, those are just, but they're called benign PBCs. You're good to go. It's the, oh my God, tell me why it's happening and oh my God, make it stop. That makes it worse. It's okay. They're not hurting you. They were super uncomfortable when you get me wrong, but they're not hurting you. I don't know what's going on. But they're not hurting you. Yes, this is true too. This is 100% true. So let me put this up to Tally in the Facebook group. Sorry, it doesn't show me your name, Tally. It's even a book, Sun Anxiety. Some psychologists would make statements and not support their statements on the research, which is really bad. Keep that in mind too. Even an expert can be wrong. Okay, this is a really good point. 31 minutes, I'll address that. Remember that when you were taught, when you're reading actual research, the researcher is probably more of an expert than the therapist, right? That's true. A therapist, and here's a little, again, behind the scenes I've talked about this, because I'm literally a therapist in training right now in a master's level program, and I will give you a little bit behind the scenes here. Anybody who goes through the, and I'm gonna use the United States, New York, as an example, is where I live. If I go through my program, and I do two years of coursework, 600 hours of practicum and internship as part of the program, and then 3,000 hours of clinically supervised work with clients, and then I pass an exam, I am a licensed therapist, right? So that's what it takes here in New York in the States. And I'm a therapist. Does anybody care whether I think exposure is the best treatment for an anxiety disorder? Nope, no one in that process cares. Now, do my professors try to expose me now to a lot of different theoretical orientations? Do I have, and look, this week, I wrote tons of words here, defending why I was picking certain theoretical orientations to solve certain problems. So yeah, I am being forced to defend by actions. But once you are a licensed therapist, and we know that this is true, I could say anything I want about anxiety. And if you know that thing, you see on Instagram sometimes like, hey, just so you know from a therapist, blah, blah, blah. They'll always start with, I am a therapist and I say, I am a doctor and I say, okay. But it doesn't mean that they're necessarily right. So that's 100% true. Just because the person is a therapist, they might like a particular type of therapy or a particular approach that they think is great, that won't work for you. Keep that in mind, right? So there's a huge amount of personal bias that can go into a therapist's theoretical orientation. Don't accept it immediately, as this person is a PhD or this person is a therapist, so therefore they are an expert in their particular field. I will tell you flat out, I don't know very little, I know very little about BFRBs or eating disorders. I'm sure I'll be exposed to them, but I would never produce content about eating disorders because I don't know anything about it. Doesn't mean that other people don't do that sort of stuff, right? So good point, good point. Let's see here. Let's see. I'm sorry, I'm just gonna scroll through comments. I know it's boring when I read the comments. Fixation of blood pressure, it scares me that my BP goes up, okay? And doctor's warm, okay? So blood pressure is a common thing too. Now in this situation, it's a big comment I'm gonna put it on the screen. Many, many people get fixated on their heart, on their breathing, on their blood pressure. Blood pressure is one that people get really freaked out. That one's super common. Oh my God, my blood pressure is high. Because yeah, high blood pressure is not a good thing. That's 100% true. But remember that chronic high blood pressure, if I'm just sitting here and I'm like doing nothing, I'm reading a book or whatever, I'm petting my dog and my blood pressure is really elevated, that's a problem. If I'm in a really anxious state and my blood pressure is elevated, that's not the problem that we're talking about, right? So this is where assurance and reassurance come into play. Being educated on what the problem, what blood pressure is first of all a very dynamic thing. It changes minute to minute depending on the circumstance that you're in. It's supposed to. It is supposed to change from minute to minute. Educate yourself, understand that that is what, that's the nature of blood pressure. And know the difference between chronic high blood pressure, hypertension, that is not in any way situational and situational high blood pressure. Now what any doctor tell you to just keep your blood pressure high forever? No, of course it wouldn't say that, but there's a very big difference there. But an anxious mind will only hear blood pressure, we'll hear three words, high and blood pressure. And then run with that. Like, oh my God, I haven't got a problem here because my blood pressure goes up because I'm anxious. Keep that in mind. You have to temper that. That's what we're talking about today, right? So let's scroll down a little bit more here. They were running out of comments. Oh my God, I will listen. You guys should definitely listen to that. Let's see here. Is it common courage to read about someone else? Yeah, yeah, this is super common. Is it common courage to read about someone else has and feel like maybe I have it? But then you deny and say, nah. Yeah, yeah, it's, oh, Donna's here. Donna knows blood pressure. If you guys have not, if you go to the anxioustruth.com and search for the word Donna, the name Donna, you will see the episode of the podcast they did with Donna, who just popped in. Donna is a blood pressure ninja. She was absolutely obsessed with her blood pressure and not anymore. So that's a good episode. Yes, what Marnie is asking here is it's very common. A lot of people as soon as they hear somebody else has something, then they start to immediately think, well, I might have that too. But that's just part of that anxious thinking cycle. That doesn't mean it's true, right? So let's see, let's scroll down a little bit here. Yeah, super common. Also medical, have you ever heard of medical student syndrome? That's a thing too. Like medical students go through medical school and read about all the different disorders and like they think they have them. I'll tell you that even in my course, my master's program, which by the way, someone asked clinical mental health counseling, I don't think, and we all joke about it. Like all of my people in my classmates and my peers, we joke about it. We don't think we have the disorders we're reading about. We worry about how we messed up our kids and gave them those disorders. So it's incredible. Just the way human brains work. I read about something on it and I start to think like, oh, well, clearly I messed up my daughter. You know, I didn't do this with my youngest. So she screwed now. So it's super common. Super, super common. Let's see here. Oh, this is really good. Let's put this up. GBG is a good hint here. I give myself a time limit for anxiety learning, including Mondays at two o'clock. This is a really good idea. Now it might be really super hard and when you're in the beginning of it and you're really afraid, but it's not a bad thing to set limits on that. Like how much time are you gonna spend in Drew's Facebook group? How much time are you gonna spend listening to anxiety podcasts? How much time are you gonna spend in front of my computer Googling my symptoms? Limit that. And when the timer goes off, you're done. That's hard because it'll feel really dangerous to not engage with that stuff, but it's a good way to start to bring it down. There's whole conversations going on here that I'm not in, but I'm here for that. I'm digging it. Loving you guys help each other out. It's cool. Oh, this is good. I will throw this out here. Now you're speaking my language. So Kathleen also did an episode of my podcast with me. She was, I think, the last success story episode we did, although I have one on sleep anxiety. Success is coming out in a couple of weeks. That's really good with my friend Andy Lyons. How do I create boundaries with people who only message me when they want reassurance on an anxiety symptom? Well, hello, I spend most of my day on that already. And the answer is, so you know that thing when we're bonding. That's cool, bond away, it's all good. Like we'll have coffee and cake after. You know that thing when somebody in the Facebook group, because I know Kathleen's in the Facebook group, when somebody in the Facebook group is terrified and throws a symptom out there, and my answer is basically to shrug my shoulders and say like, eh, no big deal, that. So like, and we'll always try to explain, like I can't hear, I can't keep telling you that you're okay. Like you have to learn for yourself that you're okay. It's okay to say that. Like you have to, I'm not gonna answer you anymore if you keep asking if I'm gonna get better. I'm not gonna ask you anymore. I'm not gonna answer you anymore. I'm not gonna answer you anymore. You know, after you've asked me for the 10th time if your intrusive thoughts are gonna go away, I can't, right? So it's okay to draw that line. That's one way to do it. Like I know you want me to help you, but continually telling you you're okay every time you want me to is actually not helping you. So other than the hot girls thing, let's see here. Yeah, this is good. I'll throw this up real quick. What time is it? You know what, I actually got nothing else to do today. So I'll answer questions. If you guys wanna hang out, that's fine. With OCD, I would compulsively look up symptoms of psychosis because I was terrified I was gonna lose myself. You know what's super interesting about this? And that's a great comment. Thank you for sharing. I appreciate that. Oh, they're back. That's a good comment, but it's always an interesting thing to see. Like, hey, is all of that Googling actually saving you? So let's say that you are actually losing yourself. Would Googling actually keep you from losing yourself? Which is really hard, really, really hard to face that. Like Googling something, scanning, checking, whatever for you is a fear of psychosis, which is really common. Other people will be a fear of passing out or the people will be a fear of some sort of health problem like cancer. All of that scanning, checking and defending doesn't save you anyway. Like if you were going to have a psychotic break, no amount of research is going to fix that. Sucks, but it's true. And that's a really important thing to realize because like, oh, I could keep Googling and I could keep asking and I could keep checking and I keep taking my pulse, but none of that is actually protecting me against the thing that I fear. You're only trying to gain a feeling of being safe. So there's something to chew on. I'm trying to get a feeling of safety, but the feeling of safety is not actually the same as safety. Really important. I guess we got another troll here or whatever, another bot, whatever, ignore it. I try to date people with anxiety, sorry, then it's okay, let's see here. That understands my respect, could it be a recipe for disaster? I'm just scrolling through the conversations here. Let's scroll to the bottom here. Let's see here. I'm going to keep going. I'm sorry, I'm just scrolling to get to it, I think here. If I have an action on that, how do you tell? Okay, I'm going to put this up on the screen because you need to hear the CC, the thing where it loses focus on me. Hello, I'm over here, camera, focus on me. Okay, if I have an actual diagnosis with heart rate, but cardiologist says, okay, how do you deal with that? How do you not deal with it? Right, so I'll give you a little tough love here, Marnie, you've been around for a long time. How do you not deal with it? Tell me how not dealing with it is changing anything. So I always like to turn that around because sometimes that's a useful thing. I can't, I'm not dealing with it. Well, what is not dealing with it actually look like? Are you changing anything? Are you changing your heart rate by not dealing with it? Not accepting it, not being okay with it, being afraid of it. Any of that actually changed the reality that you live in right now? It doesn't. So in a way, I would say you are already dealing with it. You just don't like the way you're doing it. So okay, you can keep fighting and keep insisting that I can't deal and I can't accept. Or you can say, well, I'm already accepting. I don't have a choice. So let me just try to do it different because I'm literally accomplishing nothing but hurting myself by doing it this way. Sometimes that running right up against that hardcore fact is really important. You're already dealing with it. So try dealing with it a different way that you think you can't do because the way you're dealing with it right now is in fact dealing with it. Just amping the problem up in your head without actually impacting the physical reality that you're in. I think it is true. I'm gonna put this up here. Crying about it, blaming symptoms on. Okay, you could keep doing that if you want. That's a way to deal with it. You are dealing with it. So try not doing that. Like when you wanna go into boo-hoo mode and like, oh my God, I better check this again. I better ask again, am I okay now? Like what else can I do besides crying and talking about my symptoms? Really important, what else can I do besides is really good. A lack of sleep can make the anxiety symptoms more intense and it isn't exactly great for you. No, I am absolutely going to dispute this live on camera right now. No, having less sleep means that you are tired. That's what it means. It means that you are tired. So when you are sleep deprived, you feel differently. The anxiety part is that you're terrified of how you feel. And that's the way that works. So you gotta let go of the, if I don't sleep, my anxiety goes through the roof. If I don't sleep, insert the middle step. It's really important. If I don't sleep, I feel differently and if I feel differently, I call that a disaster habitually. That's the issue. Not that no sleep is bad for you and gives you anxiety. No sleep makes you feel bad and you insist that you cannot handle feeling bad. You gotta have that intermediate step. It's really important. All right, so let's keep going here. I try to be up front. I see there's a whole dating and relationships thing going on. I love it. It's a good conversation. Scrolling to the bottom here. All right, so let's see here. Julie's work interrupted her personal stuff. Isn't that inconvenient? Work is so inconvenient. Welcome Julie, I'm glad you made it. Better late than never, it's okay. Let's keep going here. Keep going, keep going, going. Trying to get, find some comments here. Reading Listen to You's podcast. Sure you do, yes. Okay, let's pop this up here. It's a good one. I'm sorry, I was trying to find a comment that I can go with. Hans is always on fire, asking really good questions and making good comments. If you provoke an anxiety type by consciously hyperventilating, could that be helpful to learn that you are actually safe? It sure can and absolutely can. This is a thing, it's called interoceptive exposure and I think the episode of the podcast that's out now with Jenna Overbaugh, we talk about this. It's actually a real technique that many therapists will work with you on. So if you're afraid of hyperventilating, they will make you breathe through a straw or make you pant. If you're afraid of your heartbeat, they'll make you run in place or do jumping jacks or exercise in the chair. If you're afraid of dizzy, that might make you spin around in the chair in their office to intentionally make you dizzy. Yeah, it's a 100% of a rare, it's a very useful thing to do. It's called interoceptive exposure. That is what we would call a body exposure. You're going directly at the sensations in your body that you fear. So hopefully that helps. Really good question, man. Really good question. Thank you, Hans. Let's see here. No, no, no, no, no. I really struggle with DPDDR. Actually, Alexa, the DPDDR question, there's a bunch of stuff on, let's see here, Lockheedzer on YouTube. Goodbye, 69GirlsXYZ. I'm really struggling with DPDDR, put this up on the screen. There's a bunch of DPDDR comments. If you scroll back here before the video ends, DPDDR is just another symptom. So it's not a special thing, right? So it's a thing I talk about all the time when people want specific, how do I deal with this specific feeling? None of them are special. Just to let it be there. That's how you learn it's okay. All right, I think I'm kind of running out of comments here. Let's see here. Yeah, let's throw this up here. Rarring, checking, scanning is a waste of time, but so difficult to get. Totally as melody. Like your brain will 100% convince you that all of that scanning and checking and asking and googling and checking your pulse or whatever it is you're doing is, you're supposed to do that. You gotta do that, it keeps you safe. But not in the end. It's hard to reach that conclusion, but it's an important conclusion to reach. Let's see, scroll down to the bottom here. I think we're almost out of comments, we are. Let's see here, we have a comment from Twitter. I feel like I need to put it up on the screen just because it's Twitter. Let's see here, let's throw it up here. You're gonna appear over the top of the comment. This last two or three months have been challenging for me, very large exposure, which had me doing anxiety for a while. Got to judge a big cosplay contest, that's cool. I'm feeling synthesized when I'm back to the basics and there I am, learning, learning, learning. That's a great comment. Thank you very much, I appreciate it. Because this is that thing that we talk about all the time. You can't unlearn what you've learned. You can't not know what you know now. So anytime you are put in this really stressful situation, that can happen, like anxiety can happen. But remember, everybody that's watching, that looked at that comment and thank you so much for sharing, Twitch, I'm sorry, is even though anxiety can pop back up, we can still have anxiety, we don't have to have a disordered response to it. Which is really, everything that I'm always talking about and writing about is that, like not making it go away, learning to not be afraid of it. So even when life happens, things get stressful and anxiety pops back up again, you can experience it in a different way and not get dragged back down into the rabbit hole of like, oh my God, I'm afraid because I'm afraid, I'm anxious over being anxious, I have to run and hide, it's very different. So saying what you said, which is really great, learning, I know where I am, learning, learning, learning, so healthy. That is that sort of like healthy response to anxiety, healthy relationship that we talk about all the time. Anyway, okay, 47 minutes. I think you guys have had enough of me at this point, I'm sure. Thanks to Brents for hanging out, I super appreciate it. I love that you guys are 100% interacting with each other. There's been a whole conversation about like dating and relationships going on that I have no idea about and I love that you had it during all this. I'm a huge fan of the community when you guys pitch in and talk to each other that way, really, really, really great. I love that part. And that's it, we'll be back again next week. Not sure what we're gonna do, but we'll be back here. Anyway, just a couple of quick reminders. I'm contractually obligated to put them up here. Every month, Joanna and Joanna Hardis and I do this webinar on tolerating distress and discomfort. It's proving to be really helpful to the people who take it. You can find it there, bit.ly.toleratingdistress. The next one is November 16th. It's always on a Wednesday. So that's coming up next week. Also, for those of you following on Instagram, I have launched Instagram subscriptions and I've done that for a reason. I'm trying to find a way to communicate in more detail and more interactively with a smaller number of people at a time because it's really hard when the audience is always really big. So Instagram subscriptions is a thing I'm experimenting with right now. It means that I'm producing content over there that goes into much greater detail than just the standard posts. I'm able to answer questions more. We're having a few group chats. We're doing group lives. We're gonna do group Zoom calls. So if you're interested, pop on over to my Instagram and check that out. You don't have to do it, but I'm digging it because it lets me interact with my subscribers in a much more one-to-one friendly or more accessible way, so I'm digging that. That might be the way this stuff winds up going. I'm not sure. And that's it. I appreciate you guys coming out, checking it out, checking my books, all of that stuff. Subscribe to the YouTube channel if you're watching on YouTube. That's always the best place to go back and re-watch these because these lives stay on my Facebook page. They stay in the Facebook group, but they're really hard to find there. So if you just go over to my YouTube channel which you'll find at youtube.com slash at the anxious truth. They have at signs now on YouTube and subscribe to the channel. There's a recovery Monday playlist. All of them are there. We're out of here, folks. Thanks for hanging out. See you guys next Monday. We'll be another relaxed one, I hope, because I'll have no...