 Happy Sunday, everybody. Today, we are going to do something new. We are going to watch me from 2008 do an unplanned exposure, the good, the bad, and the ugly. So it's an experiment. Let's see how it works out. I found these videos a couple of days ago. I have a hard drive full of them and I got to figure out how I'm going to share them. So I'm going to try this today. We're going to, we got plenty of time. There's no rush today. Whoever long this takes, it takes. And the plan will be that I'm going to the videos here in the corner. So that lower corner, little dark square is the video. I'm going to swap it so you can see it. I will stay on screen and we'll just watch it through together. So I can stop it. I can comment. I can tell you what I was feeling and thinking at the time. I could point out all the crazy mistakes and things that I was making. You guys can ask questions and we'll just hang out and go through this and see how that goes. So I'm going to pull up the chat in a second. It's already 26 people. I know this is going to be really busy today. I'm going to do the very best that I can to answer questions as best as I can, but I might not be able to get to all of them. All right. So what can I tell you about this video? I'm going to set the stage for this. Hey, everybody. I get to wear my headphones so that I know I can hear the video. I can tell you, let's see, the audio and the video quality are not great. It was 2008. I had a really crappy digital camera. It's what I had at the time. Some of this is shot in the dark at night. So you won't be able to see me in some of it, but I will let you know what's going on. What else? I look very different. I was much heavier than I am now at my heaviest. If you guys know my anti-depressant story, I was 100 pounds heavier than I am today. So I did you'll see my face is much heavier. I was much heavier. I had I still had a bunch of anti-depressant weight on me. So you'll see that also. I had no beard, no mustache, and I was 13 years younger than this. So there you go. So I'll set the stage. What this is is in my my legacy business is technology. And I own and operate data centers, which means that I had hundreds of servers co-located in my Internet data centers. People would pay us to keep their servers in our facilities with the fiber optics and the generators and all that stuff. So every once in a while, those servers break and they crash and it would require us to hit a button and reboot and that sort of stuff. So this was at the worst of things. I was really having a hard time leaving the house on my own. The data center was only about three and a half miles away from here. A server did crash two servers and a very large customer that we cared a lot about, somebody had to go and hit the button to reboot them. And I decided that that somebody would be me, which is not a thing I was expecting to do. It's not a thing that I wanted to do. I was terrified to do this. You're going to see it in my face and hear it in my voice. But I was inspired by watching YouTube videos of people like Billy Cross from Anxiety United and my friend Chris Gamble from Ohio. He's not really involved anymore with the stuff. And Sarah Watson and my friend Emma and Seth. And there was a bunch of people exchanging videos on YouTube at the time. And I had watched Ben, Ben is in our Facebook group. I watched videos from Chris and Ben that day. They inspired me and I said, OK, I'm going to go do this. So that is the stage. It is dark and I start by getting in the car and explaining what's going on. So we're going to basically, you know, go through it bit by bit. So the question, do you recommend to film yourself during exposures? Well, I can tell you that in terms of this thing that I do now with you guys, I am super happy that I film these like this is tremendously helpful as a teaching tool. I am happy that I filmed them even for my own. I will always tell you you have to be safe. So I wouldn't tell you to do some of the things that you're going to see me do here. I was holding the camera. That was not OK. And I will tell you that the camera for me many times became a safety behavior. And as I got further down in my recovery, I had to start doing things without filming them. But being able to watch myself do these things, go back and see what it looked like was very valuable. So if you have a way to safely film yourself, I'm not please do not hold your phone or your camera while you're driving. It can be a really useful tool, even if nobody but you ever sees them. It is a really good tool. You can see what you were doing. I was able to see my body language. I was able to see the mistakes I was making and it helped me be able to adjust those things. All right, so here we go. I'm going to I'm going to switch this. I'm going to play the video. So I'm going to go down in the bottom corner of the screen and we'll just we'll do it together. And I will kind of fill you guys in on what's going on. So let's bring this up and I'm going to start the video. The audio isn't great either. So just bear with me. I'm doing the best I can with the technology that I had at the time. Here we go. OK, I'm pretty sure you can't see me because my crappy camera doesn't work in the dark. Or in low light. I'm in the car and I just watched some of Chris's video. And my page or my my computer went off my phone. And I have to go to my office. So it's seven o'clock at night. It's dark. I have to go there by myself. This is pretty much the worst case for me. The only thing that would be worse would be if it was like three o'clock in the morning. So I'm feeling totally shaky, like I was literally shaking my legs are shaking. Bessie says she knows what video this is. How exciting. Bessie, did you know me back then? Am I missing something? I'm sorry if I am, but fill me in. All right, let me keep going. So I'm laying it all out here in this video. This is exactly the way it was back then. I was terrified to do this. I did not want to do this. And watch for the comment as I get maybe a minute or two into the drive when I'm already counting, like, oh, I'm a quarter of the way done. So watch that. And I'm going to do that. OK, back. Yeah, I couldn't be sure you could be able to see me. I'm not sure where you are. I'm in the sand. I'm just trying to find out where you are. Sorry, the sound quality is not so great. I'll try and turn the volume down so you can hear it. And I'm pretty anxious. You know what? I was more anxious at my house thinking about coming here than I am now. I'm pretty anxious right now, but it was worse at my house before I left. So I'm going to keep telling myself that. I'm going to be halfway there at this point. So you know what? I know I look at it. I'm halfway there. So I'm already quartered of the way through this challenge. And I'm just going to think about how good it's going to feel when I do it. When I walk out, actually, when I walk out of the building and get back to my car to come home, I'm going to be. I know I'm going to feel awesome having done this. So. OK, so let me chime in here for a second. You will see. And as I share some of these videos, you'll see things that now in retrospect and retrospect, I know there was a bit of a I was making some mistakes, right? So I wouldn't do some of these things now, namely, some of the ways that I was trying to force myself to think a certain way. This was the very beginning for me. Like this is the first time that I really actually started doing the things that I knew I had to do. And I knew enough about it to know what I had to do. But I didn't nearly know enough like I do now, 15 years later, 13, 15 years later, I would not do some of this stuff the way I do it now. So pay attention to some of the things that I say, because they're not always good practice. But see how I was like immediately like, oh, I'm halfway to the was halfway to the office, which means I was a quarter of the way done with the exposure and I was ready, like, and just, you know, like, oh, I got to get this over with. I got to get this over with. Just tell myself it'll be over fast. I wouldn't do that now. All right, let's keep going. I know the audio isn't great. I'm really sorry. I'm doing the best I can here. Um, all right, I'll be back. OK, we're made here at my office. Going to go in now and. OK, mistake there was I made it here, like I made it here, like somehow I wouldn't make it. That's not true. I wouldn't say I made it here. I said I would now I would just say, OK, I'm here. You know what I need to do? So I'm with you. You can see there's cars here. There are actually people here. There are other businesses in the building. So let's go in and see what we got. This is pretty big. But I'm doing this. This is a little bit hard to watch. I feel like I'm looking at a different person. I know it's me and I remember doing it, but it's it's truly like I'm looking at a completely different person. So it's it's weird to see this slow down. It's got to go slow. OK, now that that struck me because I did watch this about an hour ago or so to see what was all in it. And I was I found it interesting that I had to remind myself twice to slow down. And wouldn't you know it? Thirteen years later, I had to write a book about that. Anyway, thanks for hanging in there with me, guys. Yes, Emily, the difference in my voice. Yes, Bessie, that was the very, you know, some of the beginnings. Remember when I wrote in seven percent slower that I had to remind myself to slow down? You just saw that. And that was the beginnings of that book that I just wrote. And yes, the main thing for me when I watch these videos is just the difference in my voice. It was shaky, it was tentative, a lot of ums and us. And it wasn't even just, you know, I guess being used to. I mean, look, I spent so much time on camera and talking to the microphones that now it's second nature to me. But I'm a naturally confident person and a naturally kind of bold person. But not then see the difference then. Like what you see of me now is the way I was before my anxiety disorders. But now you're going to you're seeing what it looked like in the midst of it. And I didn't I wasn't like this. I was a different person. Find that like, you know, I'm freaking out. I want to like run into the place and it doesn't help. I have no idea what it's going to sound like in this place. Is that eight billion computers in here? So user gets to help on me and the machine I got to do. I had to yell into the camera because there are so many computers in this place that you can't hear. It's just a little hum of CPUs and fans and stuff like that. So I'm yelling into the camera. And that's why the audio wasn't so great. Look, so afraid I was effing terrified. You're literally watching me scared shitless to do this. And the hardest part, I'm going to say it in a second. I think I mentioned it into the camera is I all I wanted to do was go and hit the button on that server and run out of there as fast as I could. But then I had to wait until I saw the server boot up and the login screen and I knew was everything OK. That weight felt like it was forever. So let's keep going. OK, and turn it around. My heart is definitely pounding. The hardest part for me is this part. The part after I've done what I have to do. And now I got to see if it works. Ronnie, it was a Windows server, which I still to this day hate. I still it was a Windows server. So I had to wait. You know what that is, dude? I had to wait for the Windows login screen, which could be interminable. So here I will go through a little bit. There's no audio here. So I this is what I would do in some of those videos and videos we were sharing back then when I had to cut things. I would I would we would do this and run little captions. So let's go through that because there's no audio here. And I basically said the panic makes me want to run out of there. I can't until I know that the server is back online. I had to wait a minute or so before I knew I could leave. In reality, that was much more than a minute. That server probably took four or five minutes and what's going on in my head at that point is when a Windows server crashes and Ronnie seems to know here, anybody who's a little bit technical, it's a crapshoot. You don't know why it crashed. It could be a disk failure. It could be the operating system as holds. Their databases could have been damaged. In which case I am stuck there for hours to maybe fix that hours. So I was in this to do. OK, Paula knows. There you go. Stressful enough without panic disorder. So I was just trying to get there. Hit the button and run the hell home. But if that login window does not come up and I don't get a confirmation from a customer that they can see the server and everything is OK, I am literally stuck there. So it would be akin to an agoraphobic like going to the train station and not being sure if they're going to be shoved onto a train that that takes them 100 miles away from home where it would take hours to get home. That's where I was at that moment. That was terrifying. So let's see here. Being able to stay there until the panic goes away is the real goal, I wrote. But that is a bridge to cross on another night. So you'll see some of the understanding of the process and the mechanics and knowing what I had to do. But I was not there at this point. So I knew that I had to learn to stay in that. But this was one of the very first things that I had done intentionally. So here we go. So we'll let that crawl finish. And then it comes back to me speaking again. I think I'm in the car when we get back. Let's see. OK. I did it. All right, let me answer Ronnie's question. Did I find myself thinking about alternatives like getting a colleague to deal with it? Yes. So here's the story. These headphones are pissing me off. So the story is I this is I own the business, right? It's my business. This is my facility. I'm the boss. I'm in charge. But I was relying really, really, really heavily on everybody else. And one of the things that made me do this, aside from watching my friend Chris's videos, my friend Ben's videos that sort of inspired me and empowered me that day, which, by the way, listen to the words, inspiration, encouragement, empowering. Where do you hear that now? Like, what do we say the Facebook group is all about? Why does the Facebook group look the way it looks? Because those guys, those people back then inspired me and encouraged me and rooted for me. They didn't just say it's OK. It's terrible. No one understands. And that's why the Facebook group and everything I say sounds like it sounds today. Yes, my eyes were darting all over the place. I was a full of little ticks and safety behaviors. It's true. And yes, Ronnie, so to finish the thought, I wanted nothing more than to have one of my people go there and do this. But I was not not only inspired by the videos that I had watched earlier that day, but I just felt so bad about doing that. That was my business. Like, I'm the buck stops with me. How can I keep struggling that responsibility? I cannot ask people to do things that I won't do myself. So that's what made me do this. It was it was rough, man. Jeff says the squinting to look at the monitor 100 percent, man. 100 percent. That's exactly what I was doing. So let's see what I say here. I just found me. OK, I did it. My heart is pounding. Definitely see the breathing. You hear my breathing like that. I was I was absolutely guilty of the. Like, I would do that a lot. And I would kind of shake like that, too, a little bit. I would shake my hands and I would rock my legs and that that breathing that like like I was doing that all the time. And you can hear it here. My heart was pounding. I was dizzy. My legs were I remember this. It happened yesterday. Watching the spring be right back there. I was on the lower level of the building. So the data center was below ground, right? Because it actually stays cooler on the ground. And now I had to get up. So my choice was I either had to wait for the elevator or to go one floor or I had to walk up the stairs and my my legs were shaking or absolutely shaking. So I don't remember what I did. I think I walked up the stairs, panic attack central, but I did it. And I'm walking out of the building and getting back in the car. That's huge, very huge, very huge. OK, OK, I want you to notice. Yes, I was I was underground. The data center was below grade. So that was a two story building. The office was on the second floor of the data center. And this particular building was was below grant. So I have to go down one floor to get to it. But notice, notice, I did it, I did it, I did it. I, you know, I did not say I made it here. I just kept acknowledging that I did it and I was still terrified. And I was shaky for a good hour after that. And you'll see on the drive home, I acknowledge this. But it is so important that you see where my focus was. This I did correctly. This I did correctly. I did it. I did it. I was allowing myself to feel that sense of accomplishment and recognize it. This ain't pretty, what you're seeing here is in no way pretty. As you could see, it looks like a dumpster fire, really, as compared to what like a normal person would do or any of my employees would not even thought about it. They just they wouldn't care. For me, it was really difficult and it looks really ugly. But I did not focus on how ugly it looked or how I felt. I was really kind of pumped up by the fact that I did it. Ronnie, the data center is about that. I don't have that building anymore. But that building was like three and a half miles away from me. So literally a six, six minute ride at night with no traffic, you know, not that local, not far at all. But it might as well been Mars in those days. So let's keep going. Get back in the car and go home. OK, I'm about halfway home. Yeah, that was huge. I want to answer something here to have cognitive abilities, to access cognitive abilities just can't. I'm going to flat out tell you that you are wrong. You just don't like the way it feels. Now, as you can see in this situation and see in my face, I was not optimal. I was not operating at my optimal level in any way, shape or form. I was a nervous wreck and it showed. So things like remembering passwords and things of things like I was really hard. I couldn't do that sort of stuff. I would have to slow everything way down because I couldn't remember commands and stuff to type. It was really difficult, right? But I could still do it. And so can you. You cannot throw up our hands and say, well, I feel really scared. So therefore, I just am non-functional. You are functional, maybe at a decreased level, but you just don't like the way it feels. That doesn't mean non-functional. Did my staff know that I experienced this? I did a really good job of not talking about it, which was probably a mistake in retrospect. Now they do. But yeah, I tried to hide it, but I thought I was hiding. But clearly, I was not able to hide it because that's that's not normal. That was not normal. Did I feel short of breath of dizzy? Yes, I was short of breath. You could hear that you could hear that. And when you see my eyes darting around in this video, that is the disorientation. That is the dizzy. I felt disoriented, jelly legs. My heart was pounding, I was sweating, and it was hard to breathe. So yes, I felt all of those things. How long had I been housebound up to that point? It was quite a while. It was quite a while at that point. I was months into it for sure, where it was very highly restricted. It wasn't not leave my house, but there were a lot of conditions around it. So let's keep going. That was you, I can't begin to say how big that was. That is not something I expected to do today. I mean, my heart is still racing and I'm shaky and my breathing is not right, but I did it. I got in the car and I drove there and I took care of something and now I'm kind of cold. And I can't, that is so huge. I can't even tell you how big this is. I will take another question here. Did you see the smile? Bethany says I look happy. In that moment, I was shaky and still not feeling very good at all, but I felt amazing at the same time. You could see it in my face, it's still kind of shaky, but at one point I think I did smile. I realized like, holy mackerel, I actually did that. And yes, I felt like a superhero that had one foot in the grave. It's a weird dichotomy of feelings at that point. You feel amazing because of the accomplishment, but then you don't feel good because you don't feel good. But yes, I was happy that I did that. I was super happy. Let's see here. Was I taking antidepressant at this point? No, I had, there was no chemical protection here, which is me in the face of the anxiety and the panic. So no, I was not, I was two years out at that point. I was finding it hard to imagine, tell me about it, man. Like watching this, I feel like I'm watching it, looking at a different person. It's really amazing, right? I use distraction as a compulsion from my OCD with taking a video. Okay, that's a good question. I'll answer these. Like, hope you guys are all right with the fact that I'm stopping to answer any questions. We're only have about another minute or two left in this video. It's not that long. So would it be a distraction? I will tell you that I recognize that all of us in our little YouTube group that we had back then that were sharing videos with each other, we all realized at some point, like I have to start doing some things leaving the camera home. So yes, it became a crutch for me. I would talk to the camera, even though I knew nobody was watching, but I had to really stop doing that. So I had to start doing things without taking my little orange Fuji digital camera. The terrible camera, by the way, as you can see, but I would take it with me everywhere and I had to stop doing that because I quickly discovered that it was a soothing behavior. It was distraction. If I narrate this, then I feel better. And this is one of the things, by the way, if you missed the beginning, this'll stay in my YouTube and in the Facebook group and everything, you can go back and rewatch it. But one of the things that I discovered was, first of all, that was a distraction. And the talking about it made me feel better and that is why we, in the Facebook group, we do not let people go live because we've had, sometimes people get, they're doing their exposures, they want to go live during the exposure and I don't, we don't let that happen because trust me, if there was live back in these days, we all would have just been hitting the live button again and again and again and that wouldn't have been helpful to us. So that's one of the reasons why we don't do live exposures because you need to be able to do these on your own, right? What do you think would have happened? You know what, let's finish the video, then I'm gonna take, and then I'll just come back on the screen and we'll answer the rest of the questions. Good question, Paul. I'll answer it. Let's finish. And obviously it feels really good. It's gonna feel better once I'm actually home and calm myself down. I would not have done this if it wasn't for the videos I'd be watching and Chris and Billy and Sara C and I forget Emma, I think that's your name. Very cool. So I want to let you guys know that even from far away, you're doing some good for somebody and you know what, when you're doing good for somebody, then you're doing good for yourself. So thanks. Okay, I'll see you later. All right, let's see, is there an end roll? No, that's the end of the video. All right, guys. So it wasn't very long, it was like 10 minutes, right? You know that in a way like that's emotional for me, especially the end there. Like I meant what I said. I was talking to my friends and we were all trying to help each other out and they did that. Like they put me up on their shoulders and let me do that. And people ask me all the time, why do you do this thing? That, that, you just saw it, that, that. I owe that forward. If nothing else, I owe that forward and that's why I started doing this. So let's take some questions here. We'll put them up on the screen. Paula says, what do you think would have happened if the route didn't work and you were in front all nighter? That's a really good question. I know that the proper answer is, well I would have focused on the task and slowed down and done all that stuff. And I would have discovered that I can handle it. That at that stage would have been what I would probably would have called a flooding experience, right? Not planned with no exit at night where there's no one else in the building. What happened is it was late enough so that the other people in the building, they were offices. Actually there was a therapist on the second floor, which is funny, right? There was actually a therapist there. They would have all left. So I would have been alone in that building, which I had been many, many times. I spent many at 3 a.m. in that building all by myself in that basement doing stuff. As did everybody that worked for me. That was just part of our job sometimes. But in all honesty, Paula, the answer is I probably would have called for help. At that stage of the game, I will admit to you guys that I don't think I was ready and able. That's why I would never. So that's an honest answer. I probably would have called one of my guys to help me out. And I would have stayed. I would not have left. I wouldn't have said I'm going home. You go do this. I would have stayed, but I would have called for help. I will admit that. That's true. I was capable of solving the problem if I had to stay there for four hours and solve it. But I would have called for help. Now, this is why when people say, I'm tired of this, I just want to rip the Band-Aid off and I'm just going to do it. I'm just going to run this so I'm going to do it. And then you know what? Do you know anybody more aggressive than me about this stuff? And I couldn't do that. I knew enough to know that that wasn't, I was not ready for that. That would have been a negative experience. So negative to the point where I know I don't want to do that again. So this is one of the reasons why we talk about being incremental, right? And we don't solve this thing by just putting ourselves in no escape situations where you can't, there's no out, you're trapped. That's difficult. Your exposure should have a planned exit and that wouldn't have had one. So that's the answer to that. Let's see, however we feel during a panic attack, we still remember those moments. Yes, it completely is. Okay, let me put this up on the screen because this is really good. It could be helpful in order to stop thinking you might lose control and go crazy. So that's why this is one of the things people say, should I journal? Like, should I keep a journal? All right, well, you know, I wasn't a journaler but as you could see, I shot video. And in a way, now that I think about that, a little bit of revelation here live, my videos were a little bit of my journal and I was sharing them with my friends, but they were for me too. And I have tons of videos that never saw the light of day. I was the only one that ever watched them. When you can record what you did and concentrate on what you did, I can look back at this video, say two weeks later and say, look how scared I was, but I did it. But I did it, like that is hugely helpful. So I appreciate this comment, videos and a success journal. I don't mean toxic positivity, everything is wonderful, I'm a warrior, I'm a goddess, I'm a queen, I'm gonna run this over. I mean, something as simple as, I didn't think I could do that and I was uncomfortable and afraid, but I did it and I did it. That is a success entry in your journal right there. It's not flowery, it's not pretty, it's not gonna change anybody's life, but it could change your life incrementally. So when you get stuck in, but it feels like I'm gonna go crazy, but this time you can go back to that and said, oh yeah, I felt like I was gonna be crazy then too, but I did it. So that's a good thing here. Jeff says, you seem aware that you were dealing with panic, but that getting home was a certainty. Yes. So I did know that, that's true. Like I knew enough about this to know at this stage of the game, Jeff, this is a good point. I was 100% logically, I knew, 100%. There was no question in my mind. I knew that this was not, oh, it might really be a stroke or the doctor missed something. I was beyond that at this point. I already knew. Doesn't make it any easier. As I'm sure you guys can all understand, it doesn't make it any easier. Okay, I'm gonna answer this question just because I feel like being snarky. Who does super slick professional panicky exposure videos anyway? I know a lot of like really, really expensive anxiety coaches that ask their clients to do that. And if they're not slick enough, they make them do it again. Because you know, marketing. Let's see. Yes, well, this is the reason why I'm, I'm sorry, I can't see your name because of the restricting thing clear. You're in the Facebook group. See how you are now, but have a glimpse how you used to be. Like one of the things that's a core value, and I appreciate you saying that. Thank you. It's very, very kind words. One of the things that is a core value for me is never do, never tell anybody to do a thing that you are not willing to do yourself. And I know why I wrote a book and said I was you. And I say I'm one of you and I was you and I was you, but like there, now you actually saw it. Like, so just, you know, to throw something out there and clearly I'm not addressing any of you guys because you're here. But when somebody comes across, you know, some of my content on social media and they decide you are insane. I clearly cannot endure a panic attack. I must go to the hospital. You don't know what it feels like. It doesn't bother me back in the day. If somebody had told me you clearly don't know what panic is, I would have taken their head off in those days. It would have really bothered me. Now, I just sort of silently laugh because as you can see, I didn't know. All right, let's see. I feel emotion. Oh, that's okay. If you missed the video, this is gonna stay in the Facebook group. It'll stay on my YouTube. Totally fine. So you can go back and watch it. No problem. Let's see here, paying it forward. Yeah, that's it, man. That's what I'm trying to do. Okay, so let's see here. Sounds like by the measure, but you measure flooding with it. No, okay, so here's the way I would measure. Jeff's a good question. It is a little bit the time and the exposure. So time and distance, let's talk about strictly agoraphobia because that's what we're addressing here, right? And that's what that video is about. With agoraphobia, it is time and distance. Those are basically your two variables that come into play. Time and distance are really equal because if you're gonna go more distant then there will be more time. But you can also work in short distances with extended periods of time. Flooding isn't necessarily defined by the amount of time. It's generally, the hallmark of flooding generally is, and I probably have to look at what the actual clinical definition is. See me in two years when I've done my degree. But generally speaking, people will talk about the lack of escape. If you are trapped in that situation, if you are trapped. Am I ever really trapped? No, I could tell my client, go to hell. I'm going because I'm too afraid. I got to go home, deal with it. And then I lose a big client. So I could make that choice that I wanted to. But really I would have been trapped with no planned exit and no way out. That really is what kind of defines the flooding thing. It is beyond my control. I cannot get out of this. Very difficult, right? So let's see here. No, no, no, no, no. Thank you. Oh, you're very welcome. Let's see here. Somebody asked me, go up here. Okay, dealing with anticipatory anxiety. Okay, well, I mean, honestly, I did a podcast episode on anticipatory anxiety. It's not special anxiety. So if you go to the anxioustruth.com and search for anticipatory, the search term, you'll see that. It's not special anxiety. It's the same thing. And anticipatory anxiety is an exposure like everything else. We learn a new way to relate to that, even when it's anticipatory anxiety. And we get to practice our skills like learning to live in the moment and not living the task before it happens. So it's really an opportunity to practice. I don't have any tips for just making it go away, but in the podcast episode, you'll see that I do give some tips and techniques and things like that to actually relate to it better. So anticipatory anxiety is just another expression of the same fear, right? And it's just another opportunity to practice. It's exposure like anything else. So let's see. You're very welcome, Olivia. Thank you for sharing it. No problem, no problem. Visual journaling, that's kind of what I did. Kind of what I did. Let's see here. I'm a little confused about the planned exit. Okay, so no, you're not supposed to think about running away or avoiding. So I know this is really subtle. The planned exit would mean, for me, the exposures became, as I get better at this and I understood more about what I was doing, I'm gonna kind of already understood. When I put the concepts into play, it would be today my exposure is, I'm going to get in the car and I'm going to drive in a two mile radius and I'm going to drive for 35 minutes and I will not return back home until that 35 minutes is up. When I made my 35 minutes, I was done. So it's not really, and it's not fair to say that the exposure is just go out and stay in the case of an agoraphobic, it's not, right? So in that incremental and sort of graduated exposure thing that we talked about, or graded exposure, then I wouldn't increase that. I'm gonna be out for 40 minutes. Then it was like, okay, now I'm gonna drive three miles but I'm all be out for 15 minutes and expand that to 30 minutes. Then I'm gonna drive five miles and then expand the time at five miles. So that's how I would do it. The planned exit is my goal in this exposure is to do this task for this amount of time at this distance or this many repetitions and then I'm done. If I'm going to extend that because I want to and I have the opportunity to, then I will. But when I hit that planned exit point, I'm done. I'm done. So for instance, if your therapist is giving you, say, ERP homework to do, they're not gonna tell you, they're gonna give you specific repetitions, do this X number of times, do this for 15 minutes, do this for 20 minutes, do this for five minutes, whatever it is. It's not just a continuous exposure forever. That doesn't work that way. So it's not a plan to run away because trust me, when I was out for that 35 minutes, there were plenty of times that I wanted to run back home. I would drive past my house intentionally just to practice not going in. There were times during exposures when I would say, I got 18 minutes left. And believe me, I was timing this shit. Like I was, I was timing it. But I would drive past the house intentionally just to like, oh, I could just easily pull into the driveway and end this. And I wouldn't, I would practice going away from the house again when all I wanted to do was go in there. So I hope that helps in terms of the planned exposure. So let's see, I think we have, did I get to the end of the comments? Let's see here. Was I still carrying mints and safety things? Did I have mints and water in the car? There's a chance, Ronnie, that I did. There's a very good chance. I don't remember this specifically, but I always had a pollen spring water and I always had a pack of, I had Altoids. None of you guys remember Altoids. They were like super strong. They still make them, but they're terrible. But I would always have Altoids and water. So there's a good chance that I had Altoids with me. And another thing that I probably had with me is I probably had my Xanax in the car that I never, never, ever took. That's not a badge of honor. I'm not claiming a victory there, but I would carry it. I carried it for a long time, even though I never took it till it, it baked in the car, it froze in the car. Like clearly I had to throw it away, but I took it for a long time. So let's see here. Okay, so Cara just did a plane trip. And Cara, by the way, you are killing it. We're very proud of you. The necessary airplane I took. Pretty sure I wasn't ready. And when I was on the plane, I was thinking we'll never do this again. Was it flooding? Well, no, it wasn't because you know that that will end. You know that like, well, I get on the plane and was it an extra challenge? It sure would. But you know that that plane is gonna land. Like I'm taking a flight, that flight takes three hours or however long your flight was, I don't know. And at the end, the plane will land and I'll be able to get off the plane. So it does have a planned exit to a certain extent and you were able to prepare for it. Flooding is more a thing that, and look, sometimes life makes us. We don't have a choice. That's true. We can't always avoid it, but it depends on how so much of flooding could be looked at retroactively too. Like how did it turn out? You know, how did it turn out for you? It turned out really well. Like, and I saw the way you talked about it afterwards. Like it was really uncomfortable. It was terrible. I hated it, but I did it. But I did it. Look, I'm doing it. Look, I'm doing it. Admittedly, that long exposure on a plane makes it so that, well, that was not a fun experience. So you're probably anticipating the return flight now is gonna be really difficult, but you did it. So it could be a bit of a great area. Don't worry about it, Kara. Don't get stuck in like, oh, it's flooding, it's flooding, it's flooding. Not necessarily, right? Did you ever have scenarios in? Sure, all the time. Did you ever have a scenario playing your head that caused your anxiety? It's like, yeah, definitely, absolutely. I had panic disorder and agoraphobia. I didn't have a fair amount of, I don't know. I probably, 50-50, whether I would have been diagnosed with OCD in any given session, maybe, maybe not, don't know. But I was gripped with intrusive and repetitive thoughts that drove a bunch of mental compulsions. So I had all of that stuff. What I have thoughts that would spike my anxiety? Yes, how about this one? Well, it's eight o'clock at night. I sure hope nothing crashes at the data center. So the video we just watched, yes, that thought that something could go wrong and I might have to leave the house would absolutely bring my anxiety level way up. On a scale of one to 10, 10 being full, one panic, I'd easily go up to a seven and eight just thinking about that in those days. So yeah, hell yeah, always, I did, everybody does. That's not an unusual thing. So let's see here, am I an oddball? I can drive across the state at night. Or evening when it's dark out during the day. But I usually stick within 15, 20 minutes tops I can drive in the evening during the day. Okay, no, okay, I'll put it on the screen. So are you an oddball? No, you're not an oddball in any way. This is actually a really, really common thing. Because remember, the exposure of driving isn't to driving, like the exposure is never to the task. So I'm not a oddball. Like the exposure is never to the task. So I know we talk about so much driving and for me it was a lot of driving, right? Driving or going to the shops or staying home alone or going out to dinner, whatever it is that your challenge is, it's not that. You're not learning to drive. You're learning to confront that anxiety and the panic and the feelings and the sensations, right? So it's super common to be exactly that way, dude. Like because in the end, you're not afraid to drive. You're afraid of how you might feel. And so if you're in traffic and you get stuck at red lights and you get stuck in traffic and you can't escape really quickly and those feelings come up, you can't get away from it. So very, very, very common. You'll stick within 15, 20 minutes because if you get trapped in traffic and you panic, what happens? If I'm trapped in panic and my anxiety begins to rise, if I'm trapped in traffic and my anxiety begins to rise, what would I do? What would I do? I can't pull over. I can't get away. I can't do whatever. So my guess would be that your drive across the state at night thing is not hard because if something happens, you can pull over. You can call somebody. There's an escape for you. That's very, very, very common. So don't feel bad about that. That means you got to work on it. That's a clue that you need to work on that. You need to spend more time locally in the day driving in traffic and learning that when you have to sit in traffic, those uncomfortable things will come up, but you can handle those. You can move through those, all right? Let's see. Okay, these are good questions. I'll hang out for a little while, 40 minutes or so. We'll keep going. You talk about not being able to talk to our lizard brain, but when I'm out driving and I see an ambulance, I feel calm. How is that possible? Okay, well, that's not a mystery either. When you're out driving and you see an ambulance, you feel calm because the ambulance is held, right? That's held. So if something goes wrong while you're driving, if the dreaded panic hits, if you have a panic attack or a high anxiety spike or all the symptoms and you're terrified of them and you think you need to be rescued, there's qualified rescuers right there in that vehicle. So I'm not surprised at all at that. Why wouldn't you think that? And that's not a problem. You're not making any mistake. That's automatic, dude. That's automatic. That's not a mistake. You see that as safety and it makes you feel better. All right, that's okay. That's not a crime. That's just you being human. That's what brains do. So that's okay. It's not, you're not doing anything wrong. Okay, I did a video. Now, this one is not like a archive video. It's a very early podcast episode about body language. So if you go to my website, the anxious-truth.com and search for body language, you'll see that I did a video where I was driving now as well into sort of the recovery zone at that point. So it doesn't look like this one and I'm thinner and you'll see the whole thing. But I talked about that, your body language. I was the king of pulling on my ear, scratching my nose, rubbing my eyes, touching my face, poking at my chest. I had a list longer than I am tall of these little fidgety habits that I would do as soon as I would start to get anxious. I would tap my foot, I would shake my leg, I would shake my hands, I would do this. I was taught, oh my God, my hands were all over my face. Like if there was a COVID pandemic back in those days, I would have been dead easily because all I did was touch my face continually. So, you know, I did it all the time. It was hard, man. It was hard to break that. It was hard to break it. So let's see here. Let's see here. Well, the flooding discussion is always a tough discussion. Something switches on a look like the person that shows up in the ear, lots of tears snot into him. Well, Paula, I appreciate you being, you know, a little bit humorous about that, but that doesn't make it flooding, right? It doesn't make it flooding. Just to be clear on that, it means that you feel unable to tolerate or handle what's going on at that moment. And then you express that emotion where you begin to cry and maybe you get emotional about that. But that doesn't necessarily make it flooding. That could happen to you if I walked, if I knocked on your door right now, I gave you some terrible news. Thankfully, I don't have to do that, but you might have the same exact reaction. It's too much for you, right? It just feels too much. That doesn't necessarily mean you were in a flooding experience. It just could be that you were a little less resilient that day, that can happen. So the flooding thing is a tough discussion to have because people get really fixated on it. Am I flooding? Am I doing it wrong? Am I flooding? You're all good. Let's see here. Sue says, Sue, are you in the area? My fellow PJ tells me that you recognize where I am. How do you not get no other drove? That was on route 347 going into Mount Sinai, if you know the area. How do you, let's see. I'll take a few more of these. How do you get past not worrying about driver booster VACs after a not good experience? Okay. Okay. Well, I can answer that question. You're not gonna like my answer. That's vaccine anxiety is not special anxiety. It's not like, and you know what? You're gonna have to get your shot scared. There's no, I know everybody wants to ask you about the vaccine and like, what do you do about that? You don't do anything about that. You go and get the vaccine while you're scared to get the vaccine. There's nothing I could say. How do you get around having to drive to your data center at night and reboot a server? You do it. You do it scared. You watched me do it scared, right? So that's kind of the way that works. The same thing with the vaccine. Recognize that your mind is telling you that you are absolutely gonna have some sort of horrible problem, which is a distortion and a magnification. It is not indicative of reality necessarily, but even if you do feel badly, then you'll feel badly for a few days. That's okay. You cannot take that and say, well now I must act as if it is a certainty and I have to protect myself against certain doom. You're just gonna have to do it scared. Doesn't like, I wish you didn't, but that's just the way it's gonna be. Let's see here. Let's keep going. Try and get to the end here. Can we just summarize what you did right and wrong? Sure, I can summarize that. This one didn't have a whole lot of wrong. There was some of my thinking wasn't right. And when I was verbalizing in retrospect, I could say I started out just looking at like, how fast can I do this and get back? So in the beginning when I said, look, I'm already, I'm halfway there. That means I'm a quarter of the way done. I was already anticipating like, how fast can I get out of this? So that wasn't so great. I kind of fell into that. There's some other videos that I found I haven't watched a lot of them, but where I was literally telling myself that I shouldn't expect to panic. Like, I know I'm not gonna panic. And that was a huge mistake. So maybe I'll show some of those at some point. But I think the idea that I could, I should somehow be shooting for doing it as quickly as possible and getting back home. That was a mistake. What did I do right? I slowed down when I recognized that I had to slow down. I just allowed everything that needed to happen to happen. And I acknowledged the achievement those are the things that I did right more than anything else. They were very important. So let's see here. Oh goodness. Slimmer is not even the, I mean, at that point, I would say that I was down maybe 50 pounds for you guys kilos. What is that? 70, 80 kilos, something like that. So yes. Oh no, it's the other way. 20 kilos, I forget. I'm always backwards. But yeah, I was down about 50 pounds for my heaviest, but I still had a lot of weight to lose. So yes, I'm certainly, certainly built much differently than I am now than I was then for sure. Did the anxiety have to do with my weight? The anxiety did have to do with my weight. I don't wanna get into it too much. I talked about that in my medication episodes. It was the medication I was on for sure. Not only does it seem to put weight on people unexplainably, I won't say it was unexplainable. It dampened my judgment to the point where I ate terribly and far, far, far too much. Even though I knew I shouldn't, I did it anyway. So there's that. Let's say I pinch my cheeks, says Kara. The pinching thing, I would pinch my cheeks. I would pinch my forearm just to make it hurt. So, you know, that I can feel. You gotta stop doing that. So I get that, I really do. I know I live there my whole life. So Sue understands where I was driving. I drove past the Seaport Diner onto the route 347. Now there's like local talk. Johnny, we talked about flooding earlier. You have to go back and rewatch or look it up. So let's see here. How do you get out of the intrusive thoughts that keep playing it? You allow them to be there and you just let them come true without resistance and then they don't. So then they don't, that's how you do it. Like when you're looking to try to find a way to stop them from happening or prove them wrong, that's your problem there. You gotta just allow them and start to go through them. While I be streaming more of my exposure vids, I will, I don't know how I'm gonna do them or how it's gonna work, but we'll see. Not 100% sure. I haven't figured out how to do this yet on which ones I'm gonna share and in what format or even where, but I will keep you guys posted. Look, we're at the end of the comments. We did it, 45 minutes. Guys, I appreciate you all coming for this little experiment. I didn't know how it was gonna turn out. I think it turned out okay. I hope you didn't mind that it was kind of nasty, that the quality wasn't so great, but I hope you got something out of it. I hope you learned something from it and if nothing else, this crazy dude with a microphone that keeps telling you that you can do scary things, did scary things. I did scary things every fricking day for a very long time to get better. So, you know, and I'm not special, so I believe that in my heart. I am no more special, smarter, whatever, stronger, braver than any of you. It's not. So there you go. All right, folks, I will see you again. While we're doing Recovery Monday tomorrow, I'm gonna post on that shortly. Tomorrow's Recovery Monday livestream at two o'clock Eastern, as usual, will be, what are we talking about tomorrow? Attacking symptoms does not work. Tomorrow we're gonna talk about why we don't attack symptoms as part of Recovery, so I'll post about that shortly. You guys can, I'll see you tomorrow for that. And that's it. See you guys next time. Thanks for coming by. Appreciate it.