 On this episode of the anxious truth. We're going to talk about why recovery is just so damn hard to do We know that it's hard to do but today we're going to find out why so let's get going Welcome back everybody. This is the anxious truth podcast episode number 190 190 recorded in January of 2022 if you are new here I am drew lints a lot of creator and host of this fine podcast the anxious truth is the podcast that talks about all things anxiety and anxiety recovery So if you are struggling with things like panic attacks panic disorder or gorphobia, this is the place for you I'm happy that you are here if you are a returning listener or a longtime listener. Thank you for coming back I appreciate your time and attention as always today. We're going to talk about why the recovery process is so damn hard We know that it's really hard to engineer productive recovery from things like panic disorder or gorphobia or OCD It's difficult. This is hard scary kind of work We know this we acknowledge it in every podcast episode every day all the time Why is it so hard today? We're going to talk about why it's so hard now before we do that I'm just going to remind you of a new project that I have going on called the anxious morning Which is a daily anxiety support email newsletter that shows up in your inbox when you wake up every morning Unless we're in Australia or New Zealand in which case it's the afternoon Sorry about that, but the anxious morning will show up in your inbox every morning It is a quick three to five hundred word email with an anxiety recovery lesson or some something to think about something to chew on Something to maybe turn you in a different direction a little closer to recovery and a little further from fear And there's also a little podcast episode that goes with it a little three to five minute podcast episodes So if you want to check that out, just go to the anxious morning com You can sign up for the email. It's free. You can listen to the podcast and all of your favorite podcast platforms Check it out. We're about two weeks into it. Everybody's digging it so far So if you have not subscribed already to the anxious morning email list Go do that now with the anxious morning dot com or the anxious morning dot email Okay, so let's get into this week's episode Why on earth is recovery so freaking hard to do we know that it is that's not a question We know that this is hard and I acknowledge it all the time, right? This is hard stuff We're doing intentionally doing difficult scary things in order to get better on the long term Why is it so hard now a lot of times the fact that it is such a difficult process to go through and can be such a struggle Will lead some people to believe that well I know what I'm supposed to do because in the end recovery always comes down to well I know what I'm supposed to do if you're listening to the podcast or read my books or you follow anybody who sounds like me They're weeks or any other social media people that talk like I do about this Invariably you wind up in a place where you say well, I know what I'm supposed to do But I just can't seem to bring myself to do it. I just can't do it consistently And I get that I say all the time that this is a very simple plan, but it's really hard to execute I'm not going to deny that this is a simple plan, but the execution is difficult because it requires us to do scary and hard things And sometimes it leads people to start to conclude like well I know what I'm supposed to do, but I just can't do it Does that mean I'm worse than everybody else or does that mean that I'm broken or there's something extra wrong with me? Or I'm just too weak to do this and no it doesn't mean that at all. I promise it doesn't mean that so let's take a look at why Anxiety recovery is so hard. Let's really kind of break it down So I'm going to give you there's a lot of different reasons that come together to make this a difficult thing to do But I'm going to look at what today. We're going to call sort of the big two These are the primary two reasons why this is such a difficult process and the fact that it's difficult doesn't make it impossible Let me say that right up front. I'll wrap up with that also But it doesn't make it impossible, but it helps to know why the challenges are what they are and why this is so difficult Understanding some of these concepts really can help you sort of avoid that trap of thinking that you're broken or your extra l Or you're too weak to do this So the first of the big two reasons why anxiety recovery is such a difficult task is that humans just hate to be afraid and Uncomfortable not wired that way. I mean, I'm not telling you anything. You know, this is not anything. You don't already know Right, so we hate humans hate to be afraid and uncomfortable But the bad news is that effective require recovery requires that we intentionally get afraid and uncomfortable over and over and over So yeah, that's going to make it really hard to do now Look, there are people out there that are sort of adrenaline junkies. They're the outliers. They love to be afraid They love to be truly uncomfortable, but that is not the majority of people We know that they exist sort of on the fringes and that's fine. God bless them like more power to them But for most of us, we don't want to feel that way now. I'm not saying that humans are fragile We're not breakable. We're not we're not, you know dainty. We're not at all We don't want to be afraid or uncomfortable But in the end we are really capable of handling those things and recovery is about learning that and uncovering that part of us, right? So we don't want to be afraid or uncomfortable We will do everything we can to avoid going into those situations Not because we can't handle them. We are incredibly strong and we are incredibly resilient and we are incredibly resourceful And we can handle all of those things. We just choose to not do them Like we really reserve that stuff like those those displays of courage and bravery for when we absolutely have no choice We have to do it if our lives dependent on it Then we will go ahead and exhibit that bravery and exhibit that that strength and resiliency and resourcefulness But until our lives depend on it we would tend to try to avoid situations that will make us uncomfortable or afraid and When we do go into those situations when we're forced into them We prefer generally speaking to run as opposed to fight. So if you look at this as fight or flight Flight kind of wins most of the time So we don't want to be in those situations because we don't like to be afraid and uncomfortable and when we do get into them We would tend to fly flee or run before we fight Probably because flight is a better option survival wise most of the time I'm guessing from an evolutionary standpoint, you know Flight kind of takes priority because we have a better chance of surviving and you know coming back another day If we run as opposed to turning and fighting So, you know intentionally going into these uncomfortable and scary situations and difficult situations again and again Repeatedly as a means to get better just runs counter to our normal grain like as we're going against the grain here Generally speaking for most of us. So that's the first and foremost reason It doesn't mean that you're a weaker. You can't do it just means that nobody wants to do this All right, so nobody wants to do it this way So always keep that in mind. You're asking yourself to do something that is generally not part of human nature We don't really want to do it Here is the second reason and this is one that I think we're gonna get into a little bit of mechanics here of habit building and Why this matters? This may help you understand a little more. It's like. Oh, yeah, this is why I'm having such a hard time doing it Like some broken. This is why so recovery experiences the experiences that we need to have To move to our recovery, right? We need to go into these scary situations We need to go into these uncomfortable situations. We need to surrender to the fear willfully tolerate except flow Whatever your favorite words are do you like to use? I like surrender, but We have to go into those situations and give ourselves up to these feelings I'm gonna willfully accept and tolerate that I'm going to be afraid. I'm going to be uncomfortable We move through those situations so that we can learn that we can handle them We can tolerate them right we need to uncover that brave resourceful courageous Like resilient part of us that we don't think exists and we so we have those experiences, but they're not pleasant Experiences right so recovery experiences when you look at that going and do your exposures and meeting your challenges They are not very conducive to habit forming now in the last podcast episode episode number 189 So if you go to the anxious truth comm slash one eight nine you can listen to that I talked about how really recovery It's not swift. It's not sudden. It's not dramatic. It doesn't happen in big chunks Recovery is really about habit forming recovery is about dropping your old avoidance and escape habits and Building new recovery focused habits. So in order to really get better We build these series of small recovery focused habits And we we stack them on top of each other and we practice them again and again and again and over time they make a difference Right, so that's what recovery looks like recovery is really a series of Killing old habits that are based on avoidance and escape and building new habits and practicing them and stacking them on top of each other So recovery is really about habit forming and recovery experiences are not in any way conducive to forming habits They are conducive to forming habits. Just the wrong habits in the wrong way. So let's take a look at this when we compare experiences that build strong habits and Experiences that help us toward recovery. They're kind of polar opposites right recovery experiences mean being afraid and uncomfortable on purpose and Really those are things that would inhibit or block the the habit formation process Like we don't want to repeat negative experiences. We hate forming to do that doing those things We don't want to do in the begin with and we sure as hell don't want to repeat them So it's really hard to turn things that make us uncomfortable Into habits that we repeat and practice and stack on top of each other to get to recovery, right? When we do our exposures and we meet our recovery challenges The result is discomfort and fear It's not an instant relief We don't learn to make it go away and we say it all the time You don't do your exposures to not be anxious you do your exposures to intentionally be anxious So it's not really good. You know, we're gonna we're gonna go into these situations that we're intentionally feel bad When we do these things and that really isn't a thing that we are bred and you normally want to repeat So these are not good experiences that make us want to form these good habits. It's the opposite See where I'm heading with this So let's talk about the book atomic habits now a zillion people have read atomic habits If you haven't read it, that's okay. You can go check it out if you want And I decided I'm gonna read this book because it's so incredibly popular and I see what the fuss is And it's a great book I get it there's a lot of good stuff in there But some people I've heard people bring it to me and say oh so much of this kind of reminds me of atomic habits And the reason why I want to talk about atomic habits in this part of the podcast What we're talking about how hard recovery is is because it is a good book But you can't really use it as a recovery book or a recovery guide unless you really understand how the things that James Clear is writing about Are opposite of what makes good recovery, right? So in atomic habits, he kind of breaks it down pretty well. No, there's some kind of old school behaviorism in there So, okay, maybe it's a little dated, but I get it what he's what he's talking about. It's pretty good stuff So he talks about Habits as just repetitive problem-solving routines Right, we learn to solve our problems by by finding what works and then we repeat those things And he calls he breaks it down into four things cues cravings responses and rewards So in those models in that model we form productive habits that create positive Processes and then for positive outcomes when we can easily see that we know what our craving is we have a craving We can easily see clear cues around us to tell us how to act in such a way that will satisfy the craving Then we respond we act that way and then we get it we get a reward So let's look at a have a simple habit building example that I kind of put together just for this podcast really quickly So for example, I have a headache and I want it to go away. That would be my craving I want to get rid of my headache I know there's a bottle of aspirin in my medicine cabinet because I bought it and I know that aspirin will help my headache That's a cue so I have a headache. I want to get rid of that's my craving the cue is I know that I see aspirin in my medicine Cabin, I know it's there. I know aspirin is good for headache The response is I take the aspirin and the result is the headache goes away, which is my reward I've satisfied the craving right so they're very simplistic model here, but it kind of matters It does matter so I had a craving to get rid of my headache I know the cue was right there. I have aspirin in the medicine cabinet. I know it's good for headache I take it. That's my response and my headache goes away. That's my reward. So that's really simple It's easy to understand the sequence is easy to interact with and it produces an immediate reward for me So I can really quickly form a habit an aspirin taking habit when it comes to solving the headache problem Right, so if I have a headache down the road, my habit is I'll take an aspirin because it worked so well And it was an easy habit to form now. Let's kind of compare that to the recovery process So in the recovery process, let's say that you're craving is to make your anxiety go away I panic because I am afraid to be afraid. I panic over panicking, right? I want the panic and anxiety to go away. That's my craving Here's that here's where it starts to fall down and where our situation really becomes almost opposite Where's the cue here? What in the environment tells us how to make that happen? Nothing we when we are in that situation and we get really sensitized We're on a hair trigger for anxiety and panic everything we think everything we feel everything around us all the stimulus can become triggers So I know that I have a craving to make my anxiety go away But all I see around me are triggers that that make it worse again and again and again I don't see any clear cue here that says oh if I do this, I know this will work So I just start trying to avoid the triggers. That's one thing that I try to do because all I see is triggers I don't really see cues to solving the problem I see triggers to be avoided and then I just start throwing every piece of crap that I can think of at it So I throw my essential oils and my my weighted blankets and my meds And I throw everything at it that I think will help out But I'm randomly throwing stuff out hoping that something works So one of the clear one of the things that makes habit building easy is Clear cues we can see what to do to solve our problem to satisfy our craving right in this situation There are no clear cues to see all we see is triggers to avoid And then we just try random things we scroll endlessly through Instagram looking for anxiety gurus who will tell us how to make it go away Yeah, it doesn't really work. So my response essentially is like well I'm just gonna sort of try to avoid everything here. I'm gonna run from it. I'm gonna try to avoid the triggers I'm gonna try and stop it from happening when it does happen I'm gonna throw all kinds of random stuff at it and you know my reward maybe if I get any reward With so ever it would be temporary relief I'm okay as long as I sniff my lavender oil and I calm down for for an hour pretend I don't know what's gonna happen in the next hour. So the only habit that possibly get formed There's a clear craving. I want to make this go away, but there are no clear cues The response is essentially not bringing that that that craving satisfaction about so we're randomly responding We're avoiding the triggers to make it worse and we're randomly throwing out the problem And so we don't really get a reward or when we get a reward. Yeah, it's it's temporary It's fleeting like if those things were working for you you would not be listening to this podcast right now So what winds up happening here is? We don't have any clear way to build habits And if we do build a habit in that situation the habit that we build is based on that fleeting temporary Sort of low-level reward of temporary Easing of our of our distress. So we build avoidance habits So the recovery is sort of anxiety situation is built so that it encourages the avoidance and the escape habits that glue us to the disorders See the problem here. This is a big issue and this is why it is so difficult Not only do we just not like to do scary things which is clear But we also can't seem to get on track to form the habits that will lead us to recovery because the context that we're in Actually discourages the formation of those habits It discourages it actually encourages the formation of avoidance and escape habits that keep us stuck So you're not broken. You're just following some basic behavioral rules that human beings do now Let's kind of move on this a little bit When we are in that situation one of the things that we have to do here Let's let's go through this. Let's go through James clears craving Q response reward thing right so to build habits recovery habits The craving is is pretty clear right? So that's not an issue like we know that we're having anxiety attacks We're having panic attacks. I'm having a truce it an obsessive thoughts. I get that the craving is I want to make this go away But the cues are hidden to us Imagine the first time you ever read a Claire Weeks book or the first time you stumbled upon the anxious truth Podcast and you heard this crazy guy with a microphone in New York telling you have to go toward your fear like oh, no You we don't avoid anything. We don't avoid triggers We intentionally practice being anxious you would think this guy's crazy and a lot of people do that the first time you ever hear that It's incredibly counterintuitive. You don't think that at all. You're looking for comfort You're trying to make it go away But the people who are telling you the way out of this almost invariably when you hear people like me good therapists behavioral therapists Who treat anxiety disorders all the different books the best books that are written out there? We'll all tell you you got to go toward it and move through it That is not a clear cue. You would never have thought of that You can't see that cue that points you toward your craving solution So we need to use the big old human parts of our brain to look for the hidden cues They're not there in front of us. We have to find them and that comes in the form of psycho education from people like me That's that will tell you like I know you want to make it go away But you can't you have to stop making it try to go away. You got to go toward it and move through it So we're having a hard time there You have to actually use some extra reasoning Facilities and facilities in your brain to uncover cues to recovery that you wouldn't normally see because they're not apparent and they're not intuitive So that's a problem in the response phase the action that you will take So let's say that you've been listening to this podcast or you read my book the anxious truth or whatever You know, you're you're learning you've learned and you get it now. Okay guys. I get it. I know what I have to do I know what I have to do for recovery So now you get it and you've gotten to the point where you can see the cues are the cue is I gotta move when I have fear That's a cue, but I have to move toward it not try and banish it. Okay, so you got that part down the response What is my response? What's my action that I take to try and move towards the satisfaction of my craving to salute the solving of my problem? Well in the response phase recovery focused actions the thing we talk about all the time what I write about and speak about Those are hard It's hard to go toward the fear and tolerate it surrender to it all that stuff move through it Avoidance focused actions are a whole lot easier to do right so going toward fear not so great You know running away from fear well That's a whole lot easier to do and it might actually bring you some temporary fleeting relief So which response is the one that you're gonna pick? Right the easy stuff builds habits the hard stuff does not Except the easy stuff builds maladaptive habits that keep us glued to the disorder So we got a problem in that phase too, and then when it comes down to the reward phase We are in a situation where after we take our recovery focused actions you go and do your exposure You do your ERP work you do all that stuff you allow what you're feeling you stop trying to solve it You just try to move through it the best you can you will feel uncomfortable There the result there is that you will feel bad you won't feel good So there's actually no reward to be had there in the immediate thing So right immediately you're not gonna feel much of reward So you have to again use that like that human faculty that that we have because we have very big brains We have to look into the future to find the reward So we're literally trying to find you know a reward down the road This is no reward right now when you do your exposure I mean if you can keep your eyes focused on the prize down the road I mean we're gonna talk about that in other podcast episodes the process as opposed to the outcome We're gonna talk about all that stuff But right now if you can say well, I'm doing this for a reason. I understand why I'm doing it This is a process I have to follow and the outcome is down the road not today if you can keep your eye on that Okay, I did it nothing bad happened to me. I can learn from this That's your reward, but that's not nearly as powerful a reward as I took a Xanax and my anxiety went away Much more powerful reward there. So you're more likely to develop that habit than the recovery focus habit, right? So when you think about this It sort of sucks because when you want to form good habits You wear in a context in a state of disorder things Heidi where the situation the context is not conducive to form a good recovery Habits we really got to work on that. We have to look down the road. We have to uncover things that aren't intuitive We have to do the opposite. We got to think outside the box We have to accept long-term goals long-term rewards not immediate rewards So again, I'm gonna do a quick quote from the show notes on the podcast here If you want to go to the show notes, it's the anxious truth comm slash 190 basically I say Why that is forming good rehab recovery habits and therefore the whole process of recovery so difficult Because everything about the process requires that we look past the obvious and automatically condition things We must infer and compute cues to action that are not obvious to us and go against their natural grain We must look to future sometimes long delayed rewards We don't get to hit a lever and get a food palette like rats in a lab We have to find difficult activities that we can't see then do them to get delayed rewards that we can't feel This is what it takes to good to develop good recovery habits and none of that is easy So you understand why recovery is so hard We don't want to do this and that we have to start to form recovery habits And nothing about this is conducive to the way humans form habits naturally and effectively We got a really look ahead. We got to really use some extra Human juice that's up in our big old brains to look past the immediate and the obvious and look down the road And embrace long-term goals. It sucks So in the end, it's hard to build recovery focused habits because we're asking you to Trade short-term discomfort no reward for a long-term gain Reward that you can't see right now and you can't feel right now and you just have to trust is going to come one day That does not make it easy to continually do exposures and do your ERP and go toward the fear and accept and stop fighting It doesn't make it easy at all Right doesn't that make it easy at all So I want to wrap up by just kind of Reminding you that it's really common when you struggle if you don't keep all of this in mind I know I threw a lot at you in this episode, but if you don't keep all this in mind It can be really easy to say I am just broken. I'm never gonna be able to get this Why can't I get this people ask all time? Why I don't understand why I can't get it Well, you do get it, but if you're not broken or two-week You're just like delightfully normal in your humanness like recovery so much of recovery is going against The grain of what we would normally do in our day-to-day non-anxious lives It is counterintuitive. It's opposite action. We hear about opposite action all the time in recovery That's actually a thing taking opposite action going against the grain looking for the long term instead of the short term None of that is easy none of it is easy because it just goes against what we're sort of conditioned to do on autopilot So recovery doesn't work on autopilot avoidance works on autopilot recovery is really active and it requires us to continually Continually come back to these concepts and remind ourselves why we're doing this. That's right. I know why I'm doing this I know why I'm doing this. I know why this is so hard I know why it's a struggle, but I understand why I'm choosing to struggle All right, so keep this stuff in mind This is the big two reasons why I think recovery that explains where recovery is so hard There's nothing to do with you being worse than everybody else or too weak or more broken It doesn't it just has to do with the fact that this has nothing to do with the way We've been involved to sort of solve problems. We are solving problems a completely unorthodox way in recovery But it's incredibly rewarding and just because it's difficult doesn't mean it's impossible There are people in this community surrounding this podcast the anxiety community online that are in the process and making it work Every day people have been through and come out the other side. So it difficult does not mean impossible. You could do it Just remember everything that you're hearing today File it away come back to this episode when you have to as a reminder that you're not broken It doesn't mean that you're broken let yourself off the hook and try again I ended this the show notes with practice makes progress in this game But only if you understand why you're doing this and why you're struggling. These are the two reasons why? All right, so this is episode 9 190 the truth wrap it up now I appreciate you guys coming to check it out play you out with the song afterglow here it is But my buddy Ben Drake you can find Ben Drake and his music at Ben Drake music comm That's the song you hear at the beginning and end of every podcast episode. It's a good dude And he's a good musician go check him out If you are listening to this podcast on iTunes or Spotify or someplace where you can rate and review Leave us a five-star rating and then write a review because it helps other people find the podcast if you're watching on my YouTube channel Like the video subscribe to the channel hit the bell so you know when I upload again, and I think that's it guys I appreciate you coming by. I hope this has been helpful to you We'll be back next week with another topic whatever that happens to be you want to find all of my other stuff my books and all my other social Media stuff just go to my website at the anxious truth calm And if you're digging the work and you want to find some way to support it You can find ways to do that maybe buying my books or buying some merchandise or making your donation You can go to the anxious truth comm slash support and check it out not required always appreciated Thank you guys for coming by I will see you again next week I hope this has been helpful and remember as I always say this is the way