 So, we put the thoughts on trial and then we learn how to rewrite our thoughts to be more accurate and essentially this is cognitive therapy that you can do on yourself. It's cognitive therapy, it's evidence-based to help you decrease your anxiety, decrease your depression, improve your mood and also prevent you from future mood issues. You're listening to Barbell Logic, brought to you by Barbell Logic Online Coaching where each week, we take a systematic walk through strength training and the refining power of voluntary hardship. Welcome to the Barbell Logic Podcast. This is Matt Reynolds. We've got a special episode today. Unfortunately, Scott couldn't be here. I assume he's out planting his garden, planting his farm at the new farm he has. But we have Dr. Pewter here today who is, I would say, the official psychiatrist of all things Barbell Logic and Barbell Logic listeners. While saying that, obviously, he's not giving you specific psychiatric advice. He is a professional that we bring on to talk about good general things. That's what we're going to do today. We've been wanting to talk to you for a while in the midst of the craziness, man. We're in the middle of the COVID-19. Everybody's locked down. Only essential businesses are currently running and people are worried. People are scared. People have anxiety. Lives have changed. So I just wanted to bring you on to kind of talk through that today. Yeah, I think if people are not stressed, then they may be stressed in the future. So this, you know, we're in an interesting time because, you know, before this, we were living a life that was fairly tranquil, you know? I mean, no wars, no great pestilence for decades and decades, you know? And not anything on our soil, at least in the US. Yeah, sure. In the US, we feel very protected. We feel very safe. And, you know, if you're somewhere 30 to 50, you're like, OK, I got decades of life left, right? But now all of a sudden, there is a very real fear, you know, that has affected everyone. It's like no one is not experiencing, to some degree, what has been going on. Yeah, that's exactly right. You know, there's really two things about this last night. There are two primary things that I think are driving the fear. And while they are connected, I think the fears are sort of very different for people. Like, one, I think a lot of people are scared that they're going to get sick or that members of their family are going to get sick. And somebody who's had this disease and struggled with it for a few days, you could see with my pneumonia in having the thing, if I had taken a turn for the worse, I could be dead or could have been on a ventilator or whatever. And I'm a healthy, you know, relatively young guy. Scott wouldn't say I was young. But we see reports of this of, you know, what we thought was a disease that really, really ravaged older people and that the younger generation was fine. And now we're coming to see that that's not exactly the case. At the same time, a huge percentage of people are completely asymptomatic that have this thing like my wife was. She didn't have anything at all. So lots of people are scared about getting sick or their family members getting sick. And then you've got the entire other thing, which is the fear of the thing that has happened to the economy. The economy is a dumpster fire right now. And lots of people have been laid off from their jobs and are furloughed or home like their schedules have all changed. Even people that work like they're the day doesn't look the same. And so I think there's a lot of fear there about, you know, the finances, the economy, what's this thing not just going to look like today, but what does it look like three months from now, six months from now? And so yeah, man, there's a lot. I think there's a lot of fear for people. Yeah, it's it's going to affect everyone. I was talking to my wife and she was like, yeah, some of my some of my friends are like home with their kids and, you know, their spouses are home with their kids and they're in ministry and, you know, and it's like, what a nice time it is for the family. And I'm like, love, like one, you don't know if they're freaking out. And two, it might be hard for them three to six months from now. Right now. And there's that there is there is that sort of reality of this is this is a difficult, this is going to be a difficult time for everyone. Yeah, and in different in different ways. And I was thinking about like, OK, how would you? How would we define, you know, Matt Reynolds audience, you know, maybe middle age, mostly male, hardworking, you know, smart, like wanting to work out better their bodies, you know, wanting to become an expert in strength. I don't know. Do you have any general other sort of ideas about who your audience is, how you would describe them? No, I think I think that's great. I think and I think from a socioeconomic perspective, I think they're mostly middle class or upper middle class. And I think they find value and voluntary hardship. I think that's one of the things that is probably a defining factor for our for our listeners and for our clients is that they understand the value of voluntary hardship. And that's I think that's what an incredible I didn't come up with that idea. Like, you know, I'd heard other people talk about that idea before. But this is why we train, right? Like we do things that are we choose things are voluntarily hard. When times are easy, like you said, when times are tranquil, when times are comfortable, we choose things that are hard so that when involuntary hardship gets thrown upon us, which has really happened to almost everybody on the planet over the past several weeks, we are better prepared to handle this thing that is hard that we didn't get to choose. And I think that that is a an important defining factor of our both our listeners and our clients. Yeah. So, you know, for that reason, I don't think kind of like the survey that it did on TikTok, you know, really works. Or even my patient population that I see it's a different you have a different group of people. Now, I do treat some, you know, CEOs and some executives and high functioning people. And so I think I do know kind of like how they're responding to this. And it's a little bit it's a little bit different. Interestingly, there are some patients who were anxious and or did have severe OCD, you know, obsessive compulsive behavior, like washing their hands two hours a day, they are not freaking out. And that was kind of a surprise to me is that some of these people, they were like, Oh, it's interesting because like, they're seeing everyone else be anxious for the first time. And they're like, Oh, I know what anxiety feels like, you know, that's funny. So is this a, is that, is that stat from your own small sample size of patients or is that like something you've read about that even this is sort of a, a broader phenomenon? This is just a sample size of my own, you know, people who, people who are connected with me as patients, people who are connected with me, maybe on social media who have told me like, actually, I've been feeling better. Now, that being said, they're like welcome to my world, everyone. Yeah, I have had a number of patients who have reached out to me acutely. You know, I had one person with coronavirus who's at home, high anxiety. Is that me? You're talking about me right now? No, no, you actually didn't even reach out. You didn't even reach out to say hi. I figured your life was crazy and I was doing OK. So, oh man, I didn't even reach out to say. Coming, coming back to that sort of voluntary hardship, episode 10 of my podcast, I talk about strength training and how it increases your total brain capacity. And I recently did a podcast on COVID-19 on delirium, kind of a deep dive from mental health professionals. And so there's a percentage of the population that are getting severely ill with COVID-19 that will get confused, hallucinate, violent. And this is a unique population that as a psychiatrist, we treat in the hospital. We get consulted on this type of patient. So I did a podcast on that and in a previous podcast, this podcast 10, when I talked about exercise and how strength training specifically seems to optimize sensorium, you know, it and specifically when I talk about that, like total brain function. Like, you know how, like throughout the day, your sensorium may ebb and flow like at 3 p.m., it may be lower in the morning, it may be a little bit sharper. It's like your ability to think, focus, concentrate. And I really think that strength training and specifically muscle mass as well, like how much muscle mass you have improves your total brain capacity. And a lot of people don't get that. They don't understand that. Um, there's one study of people with low muscle mass, sarcopenia increased the risk of developing delirium. This was like, you know, 588 hospitalized patients, they looked at this, that there's other studies that show that once to twice weekly resistance training over 12 months improves executive function. You know, that's like the frontal frontal lobe, the front part of the brain, selective attention, conflict resolution, whereas, um, balance or tone training, deteriorated function in the same study. Um, there's another study, 10 weeks, supervised, progressive resistance training program performed three times a week, showed improvements in depression, improvements in bodily pain, vitality, social functioning. So there's all these studies that kind of point to, you know, if you get severely ill, having strength will improve your chances. Sure. So that's, that's one thing. Like, you know, it's like, I would be hesitant to give that message to someone who hasn't worked out because they're like, Oh, I guess I'm like doomed. Like I'm not very strong. I'm, you know, but I was going to say, I would think the vast majority, I hope the vast majority of our audience is trying. I'm sure they are. And I'm sure there's some that don't write there. I'm sure there's a small percentage or like, we'll just listen to it for the content. Like we get emails about that sometimes, but, but it's never too late to start and everybody has more time at home right now. I mean, that's really almost everybody has more time at home. And we've done lots of things for people to figure out how to continue, even to train for strength with, without optimal equipment. Right. So if you got the equipment, you're golden, but if you don't, it's definitely more of a challenge, but we've taken up that, that challenge and we're ready to, to help people figure out how to continue their journey, their strength journey and their fitness journey, even while, even if they're stuck in an apartment with no equipment, no equipment. We've got things we can do. That's good. That's good. And also coming back to this idea of voluntary hardship, I've been thinking a lot about Victor Frankel. He's one of my sort of psychiatrists that I look up to. Victor Frankel went through the, went through the Holocaust. He wrote a book called Mansearch for Meaning. He's written a couple other books that I've read as well. Um, if you haven't read Mansearch for Meaning, this would be a good time to pick it up, uh, get the electronic version or audible version and you'll get through it pretty quick. Um, and essentially he went, he was a psychiatrist and he was, you know, so he was already a mental health professional. And then because he was Jewish, he got sort of brought through the Holocaust as a, as a prisoner. And he suffered through the same things that pretty much everyone suffered through. Um, and he writes about his experience. And, you know, before, before he started this, we were talking about how, you know, that would, that would be, uh, probably worse than what people are experiencing now. Certainly. Now, you know, of course, suffering is relative. And if you haven't suffered much in your life, this could be the biggest point of suffering. Um, and I think if, if you're a mental health care worker listening to this, it's quite possible that you are experiencing something. And if you're on the front, front lines, you are experiencing something kind of like horrific and, um, mind-changing. And I worry about those people. I worry that life will never be the same. Sure. Have you, have you read the book or have you? I have not, but I heard about it. As we started talking about it over the last 24 hours. Now I'm, I'm definitely interested to get it. So I know we were talking a little bit before recording that the thing, um, that he was able to do was find meaning and things that mattered in life in the midst of the worst possible situation. Right. Like who, I can't imagine anybody listen to this podcast being like, listen, we're in a pretty bad spot right now. Uh, we are not in a concentration camp. That's worse. And so that's not to make light of what we're struggling with at all. But here's a guy who, who was a prisoner in a concentration camp who, who found meaning in day to day activities in the midst of that crisis. Um, I don't know. Do you have, do you have some of those quotes? Like man, some of the quotes are amazing that he said. Let me, let me read a couple of the quotes. Um, the way in which a man accepts his fate and all the suffering it entails, the way in which he takes up his cross, give some ample opportunity, even under the most difficult circumstances to add a deeper meaning to his life. It may remain brave, dignified and unselfish, or in the bitter fight for self preservation, he may forget his human dignity and become no more than an animal. So good. Let me, let me tell you what I think that means to me. And then you tell me, if you have any thoughts on that one. Sure. So, you know, there's this, there's this space between what we are going through, the tragedy that we are going through and our response to it. And we can't control the tragedy. We can't control that we are up against the chaos of the situation. For him, it was a Holocaust for us. It is this great viral killer, right? We can't control that. But we, what we can control is our response to it. And so the way in which we take up our cross. Now, this is not a, for what I can tell, I, he was not a Christian. So this is not like a Christian sort of image, but it is a Christian image of, of a cross is like a crucible or something that the suffering that you take on the weight of the suffering, right? For other people. It's that sacrificial suffering, the way in which you take that up, even in the most difficult set of circumstances possible. So when you have a choice to choose the way in which you will take up the suffering, which is set upon you, that is what gives you a deeper sense of meaning. And if you choose to listen to the part of you that is guiding what you should do in our different set of circumstances, there is something that is calling us to, to live in a certain way in these times, you know, and I'm guessing they're not. That voice is not telling you to hoard toilet paper. Or to, you know, there's something else that that voice is telling you to do something brave, dignified and unselfish, right? And so then he says, or in the bitter fight for self-preservation to forget your human dignity and become no more than an animal. There is, there is a part of our brain that is always speaking to us about self-preservation. Sure. There, there is another part of our brain that is speaking to us maybe about the herd instinct or to help, to help the group, to help the family unit to consider the older people around you. If you're younger, it could be, you know, it's those, it's that other voice, right? And it may be more quiet. It may be a very quiet whisper of a voice. And the self-preservation may be very loud and maybe like save, you know, save yourself, do what's in your own interest, right? There's also the sexual, sexual sort of drive interest, right? That's always going on as well. So there's all these different parts of our brain that are speaking. And, but there's the part of you that chooses that, that chooses which one to magnify and which one to bring down an intensity. And so essentially he's saying, you know, you have the choice to listen to that part of you that is the part of you that is the human dignity. Yeah. And if you listen to that brave, dignified, unselfish voice, that is where you can add the deeper meaning to your life. He has another, he has another quote and he said, we who lived in concentration camps can remember the men who walked through the huts comforting others, giving away their last piece of bread. They may have been few in number, but they offer sufficient proof that everything can be taken from a man. But one thing, the last of human freedoms to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way. It's good. So it's like you have this choice and there were these people in the concentration camps, there were few in number, he says, but they were giving away their last piece of bread. And interestingly, what he said was that once they lost that sense of meaning, the sense of camaraderie, the sense of like, we're in this together, that's when they sometimes perished. They sometimes just die. Like he, he describes in the book, he would see people and it's like, they just gave up. It's a, there was a psychological sort of like, I'm just going to give into this and just, and, and, and, and that sort of, that fight was gone, you know? Yeah. Yeah, I think about, um, the stories are amazing. And I think it's great because we can sit there and go like, look, that some of these, some of these people were able to do this in the, in the most dire circumstances beyond what we are currently experiencing. Um, and when I think about it, you know, one of, one of our core values that we stick to, um, that, that really drive what we do is that we choose right, no matter what. Well, chute, choosing rightly in the midst of like tranquility and comfort is not that hard. Uh, but choosing right in the midst of crisis is, is much more difficult. Uh, but I also think much more powerful, right? And so as I think through this, it's, it's really about bringing some order to the chaos that there is a, a level of chaos that we cannot control that we are in today. And, and, and the chaos that, that people like Victor Frankel were in, in a, in a concentration camp or even, you know, far worse, but we have the ability to make choices on a daily basis in the midst of the chaos that brings meaning to our life and, um, and allows us to stay mentally strong. And so, you know, it's pretty easy to, to live your life on a schedule when you have to be at work at eight and you leave at five and you take your lunch break at noon. It's a little different when it's a lot different when you're at home and nobody's telling you when you have to be somewhere it's easy to sit around in your pajamas all day and watch Netflix and eat junk food and get fat. It's a, it's another issue to say, wait a minute, I'm going to come out of this thing better than I went into it. And, and we're not talking about major things. We're talking about, I'm going to make sure, like whatever those small things are that bring you meaning. So you go, you know, I've got more time to read and make my mind better. I've got more time to train and make my body better. I've got the ability to cook food at home and to spend more quality time with my, my wife and my kids. And so there are opportunities here that, well, yes, there is a massive sacrifice for everyone. There are also opportunities to, to really find meaning in the, in the day to day. So it's, it's actually less when I'm here, you're saying, you know, when I think about the people given like their bread out to others, that's not this grand macro thing. That's a small step that they made that day that brought them meaning on that day. And it continued to, to, to. I think it was a perfect microcosm of what was actually going on in their, in their hearts, in their minds, in the grand scheme of things, right? And I think that, and so, you know, certainly we can, there are true stories about this of people being in concentration camps or prison or prisoners of war or whatever those things are. And, you know, you see the ones who were essentially continued to have meaning and, and bring order to chaos and they, and they make it through. And then you see the people who don't and they, they are, they often die. We see this all the time, even in the movies we watch, you think about like dystopian type, you know, future movies, there's, there are always these characters and the, the, the hero characters in these sort of dystopian future movies that are the ones that kind of keep their shit together. And they're like, listen, we're going to do this and we're going to be organized and we're going to live, you know, we're going to make the right choices for people. And then there are always also people, characters in those movies who are like off the rails. They're like, well, things are gone crazy. I'm going to, I'm going to give in to those animalistic natures, right? And I'm going to, I'm going to, I'm going to eat whatever food I can get my hands on. I'm going to have sex with whatever I can have sex with and I'm going to kill whoever I can kill. And it's that, and to me, that is giving in to the chaos. You become part of the chaos rather than bringing order to the chaos. Yeah. And that's, if I could, if I could jump to like, okay, there's different areas where we can bring order to the chaos. Yeah, there is the physical places that we live, right? We can bring order to the chaos. We can clean our room, organize our stuff, plant a garden, prepare for a year, you know, of, we're not sure what will come. Sure. You know, we can, we can write a budget. We can, we can start to really think through like, okay, am I, am I prepared if, you know, this goes on for another six months? I, as a physician, and I'm looking at this, I'm like, how do we, how do we come out of this without if, if we have a vaccine, that's an easy win, right? Everyone gets a vaccine. Sure. Okay. If we have effective treatment, that's so good that we're not afraid of people getting it. Okay, that's a big win. The antibody treatments probably look the most promising, but it's going to take some time to get those up on a scale. Sure. That would actually be helpful. So until that happens, like, there's going to be a need for social, social distancing. So there's going to be prolonged, long-tracted period, and then there's going to be, you know, sort of a recession afterwards. So we're, we're kind of going into a season that we haven't experienced. And we don't know what it's going to be like. And there's a lot of that chaos. And so it's like, okay, how do I, how do I bring order to my physical order, to the area around me, to my dominion, so to speak? You know, how do I, how do I put my things in order? And I'm also aware, like, this is, this is really hard. Yeah. You know. Yeah, well, let's expand on that just a little bit. You know, we've heard this, Jordan Peterson talked about, you know, make your bed or clean your room. It's a great place to start. So can you talk a little bit about, like, we're, we're social distancing. Nobody's going to see the bed. Nobody's going to see the room. Why is it important to make your bed and clean? I mean, literally, we're literally, like, we're using that as an example, but we literally mean, you should make your bed and clean your room, right? You should, you should, you should wash your dishes, you should bring order to your home, even though no one's going to be in your home, other than you, why is that important? So, so I kind of like the idea that, like, your stuff will either drain you of energy and take time from you, like, every everything you own will take a little bit of time from you. And so if you own a lot of things that are unnecessary for you to accomplish, what you desire to accomplish, your goals, your purpose, your, you know, then you're going to be taken away from doing those things, right? So for example, if I want to be a dad and eventually a grandfather, and my physical body doesn't have order, then it will take away from me accomplishing that mission. Or if, you know, I want to be the best doctor I can and treat patients. If I'm physically exhausted all the time, because I stayed up late watching Netflix, you know, that will not allow me to accomplish that purpose. So in the same way, like cleaning your room, organizing your stuff, I think, I think it's one step towards more of the order and less of the chaos. And we live in a, we live in a time that's incredibly chaotic because we don't know the future. We don't know what's going on. And so I think that's why. Do you have any other thoughts on what? I do. I mean, but I think you're exactly right. The question is, who are we bringing? We're bringing order to our life for who? For us. I don't like, I don't clean my house. So it looks nice for other people. That's one of the things that's a benefit, right? I don't want to have people come over to my house and my house be trash. But for me, I need my house to be a place of solace and a place of peace and a place of order. And we distinguish a lot on this podcast, me especially in, I call it the difference between happiness and joy. And who knows if that's actually what it is, but it's the best way I know how to describe it, which is, you know, there's an instant gratification part to, you know, eating shit and drinking alcohol and watching Netflix and sitting in my pajamas. That's right, giving in to some of those lesser animalistic behaviors. And it might even make me feel happy for a short time, but it's fleeting and doesn't last. There's no joy in it. And so while I might not enjoy doing my dishes or making my bed or hanging up my laundry or getting up at five o'clock in the morning and getting to work and nobody's forcing me to do those things, what I've found is that those things bring me much longer term joy than just sitting around and eating crap and watching Netflix or whatever those things are, the time wasters. And so for me, it's that order brings joy and it doesn't and it's not fleeting, right? It's less fleeting than the instant gratification piece. And so, you know, and then you say, well, like, why are you bringing that order? I'm not bringing the order so I can impress the neighbor. The order is there because it gives me a sense of control in the midst of chaos that I don't have control. I have no control over how this thing spreads. But I have control over the order inside my house. And so that's why we do it. Yeah. Yeah, I think that's good. And I think it I think also, you know, I have watched some Netflix recently. So it's I'm not coming from like a place that, you know, I don't also get tempted or struggle or, you know, absolutely or get drawn into it, right? Like we've done the same thing. So we have been there. Yeah. But at the same time, you know, I wake up, I woke up this Saturday at 4am and I recorded my COVID-19 podcast and put it out there to, you know, 10,000 psychiatrists and mental health professionals equipping them to better understand the nuances of the medications and what we're up against. And, you know, I spend hours in the evenings digging into the content to prepare for that. That's that's my that is personally my little area of trying to help this situation. Sure. You know, at that at this point in my life, that's where I can make the biggest impact. Now, I also make impact talking to my patients and seeing people and being on call and, you know, mentoring the residents and stuff. But there's a multiplier effect with podcast right now. You can get it out there in front of a lot of people. Sure. But at the same time, it's like, how do you create that? For me, how do I create that order? It's like, yeah. Having, if I had a messy house, if I had a bunch of chaotic emails, like it would be really hard to create the space to be able to do that. That feels gross, right? It feels gross to me. And it's I'm like you, I'm an ambitious guy and I like work, I enjoy my work. And same thing, I enjoy giving back to people, I feel like I've got opportunities to probably give back in ways that I don't normally have, even right now, or things that maybe there's a little more weight to it. But for me, when my life is out of order, it's very difficult to help others or to think about how I can give back when, you know, it could be something as simple as my house is messy, but it could also be something more complicated, like my relationship with my wife or my kids, you know, there's some there's some struggle there. Yeah. And so I can't give back. And so yeah, so so we literally mean make your bed, clean your room. And those are some of the most simple things you could ever do. We also mean this is also probably I would assume you would put this into the physical and not the psychological, although certainly it bleeds in. All of it does is it's to train or exercise with consistency, right? It's that you're sitting at home, you don't have to, right? So we we bring order to the chaos. And I know you want to move at some point to the psychological side of this as well. Where do you put that? Where do you put that training? Is that the physical side as well? So so the number two. So the first is the physical order of the house, the structure, the, you know, organ organizing your house. The second is probably the physical body, right? So organizing your physical body, having a plan, I would say most of your listeners already have had that, right? And if they if they don't do any cardio, I don't know, this might be a good time to do some cardio to kind of decrease that anxiety as well, like some walking or even that, you know, as well as as doing their lifting. But they've been doing that for years. And that's, or at least if they've been listening and doing, you know, squatting and stuff, they've been doing that for years. And so not neglecting that in this time, right? Finding ways to do that in this time. That would be number two, number three would be the psychological order. So how do they? How do they not just distract themselves from their thoughts? Right? So, you know, maybe journaling out their thoughts, putting their anxiety on trial, I put I put together a cognitive distortion journal. I'll give you the link to it. They could just download it. Yeah, there's one which I've done that. I assume that's the one that I did in the past. Yep. It's great. It's the one you did. You guys change it a little bit actually for COVID-19. Oh, okay. Putting in. It's great. It's all it's awesome. You do it every day, right? Is it eight days? Is that how long is it right now? There's a nine day because I added some of the Victor Frankl stuff in journaling. And you can repeat it over and over again. I think until you get it to the point where you're able to put your thoughts on trial and just to give you guys an idea what this is, it's like imagine you have thoughts like all or nothing thinking or over generalization. You over generalize from one bad situation over to everything or jumping to conclusions, predicting the future. These are cognitive distortions. We can't really predict the future. So we put the thoughts on trial and then we learn how to rewrite our thoughts to be more accurate. And essentially this is cognitive therapy that you can do on yourself. Right. And so you don't need a therapist to do it. Sometimes helps, but it's cognitive therapy. It's evidence based to help you decrease your anxiety, decrease your depression, improve your mood and also prevent you from future mood issues. So if you've never, if you've never done that, I think it could be really valuable. They, for example, they did this on people who were going to be residents in medicine. So they did this to fourth year medical students and they decreased their depression suicidality in that first three months, which is the highest risk three months of of their career pretty much because it's so stressful, you know, 180 to 100 hour work weeks, everything's new, you know, not everyone in the hospital is nice. So there's this incredible stress in that first three months that I went through and other people go through. And so it's like doing this type of thing before they went into it actually prepared them to be able to handle the stress. So yeah, number three would be putting creating some psychological order and not just kind of passively, you know, allowing your thoughts to run free. So you, you talked about the cognitive distortions journal. Are there some other good just basic practical takeaway examples of what our listeners can do to do that to help put themselves in psychological order? What are some other great options for them? You know, I mean, if they can't, if they're stuck in an environment, and they're stuck in a place where they're anxious or distressed, I think finding a therapist can be really helpful to change their environment, have someone look at your thoughts with you, the distressing thoughts doesn't have to be a therapist. It could be a very thoughtful spiritual leader. It could be a it could be a friend. But having someone to be able to process some of their more anxious thoughts, there's there's a lot of people a lot of guys who like they think it's almost like weakness to have those thoughts, to have distressing thoughts so they don't want to tell anyone about it. So they basically just push it, push it down, push it down. There's a time to push things down. And there's there's, I think it's helpful to find to find a space where you can process through those things. If you feel like you can't do it, if you're if you're environment is not allowing you to do it by yourself. Yeah. Change your environment. Yeah. Yeah, I was thinking about the how helpful just having conversations with people about this has been for me. But my environment is such that the people I'm having the conversations about it are very they're they're good listeners, they're encouraging. They're not yes men. It's not that, but it's also not a cycle of negativity. And so I've actually found a tremendous amount of value even even talking on almost a daily basis to my wife and my daughters about what's going on and what's how how's this affecting you guys and just kind of I think just talking through the thing being able to emote and being able to be honest about what what we're feeling. And I think like if you're not careful and you surround yourself with the wrong people, like that could turn into sort of a a negative spiral. Yeah, if you're not careful, but but we try to keep the things positive and remind ourselves, you know, how we're blessed in our in our lives and whatnot. And I've done the same thing with, you know, members of my life group at my church and my my pastor or, you know, my sister or my brother, like just those conversations, you like even having converses actually the podcast for me, I've had we've sort of pivoted a little bit in the podcast over the last week or two where. You know, Scott and I, we this podcast, we don't do very many interviews on. We are we are the ones that provide the content. And I think right now, like I am not the expert with COVID-19. And so bringing people on to talk about the things that people are worried about or anxious about or interested in has actually been there's been a tremendous side benefit for me. And then I've been able to sort of process through those things as well. And so all of those things have been very helpful to me to be to be able to do. And so, you know, of course, there's been a massive black and I, you know, the the I don't know what you call it, like tele-counseling has exploded in the last few months, right, like almost everybody, my my psychologist, my local psychologist, she reached out to me a few weeks ago, she said, hey, we've all gone online. We can do it now this way and all that kind of stuff. It's been really, really nice. Of course, you and I, we don't I don't make any. No, it's I don't hide this that you and I talk frequently on on more of a more of a counseling sort of one-on-one level. And it's been extremely helpful. And so certainly find those people. I think that's fantastic. Yeah, the one other thought that I have on how to create psychological order is to limit the news and limit the watching anxious people talk about their anxiety. Sure. It's it's something that like how much do you really need to know, you know, can you limit it to one time a day? Like, OK, I'm going to I'm going to, you know, read some articles for half an hour a day on this to figure out what's going on in the world, what's changing. But and it's interesting, I was thinking about giving this advice. And I think it's good advice, but then for myself, like, I'm preparing episodes on it. So I'm literally like in it all the time for for like a week prepared for this last podcast. Like, I was like binging on, you know, reading every article I could possibly read scientific articles on this. And there was a psychological effect that I had because I would wake up in the middle of the night thinking about these articles, thinking about the cases that I was reading about, thinking about the health care workers in the field. So there is this. You're preaching to yourself as much as everybody else. I'm preaching to myself. Yeah, I need to. Well, and I think that I think it's different preparing something to share that's that's going to help other people. I think that, you know, do you really need to watch one of the news channels? You know, maybe just read this CDC once a day to kind of get your update. Sure. I don't know. It might be more valuable, right? Yeah, that's I mean, that's kind of what we've done. And I think some of it, you know, you can tell me if I'm right or wrong. Some of it probably depends on your personality a little bit, too. Like I don't really get anxious reading this stuff. Now, I'm also it's just a time waster for me to read four or five hours worth of worth of articles on this thing. And so so I give myself about 45 minutes or an hour every night to read. I want to read more about like the cutting edge stuff, you know, like the the serological studies or that there are able to getting they're getting ready to be able to do right there. They're going to be able to they're going to be able to start taking blood from people and really getting an idea of how many people have had this thing because they'll know if there's antibodies and stuff. So I like reading about some of that stuff. I like reading about the federal stimulus. How can I help my employees? How can I help my church? How can, you know, people that could could potentially yeah, take take an active role in that. But what I've done is we my wife and I both do that at night for a few minutes and then we stop. We put our phones away and then we talk through it. Hey, you know, I read this. I saw this and we just kind of and we kind of process through it because we're not super anxious people or depressed, you know, like pessimists. Then we don't we don't spiral ourselves into into this like pit of negativity. And we're able to kind of talk through the things that we read and process it and like, OK, now we're done for the day. And we don't have to talk about this stuff anymore. And then we move on to them then often like we've actually our schedule has probably been a little tighter since all this stuff has happened. And remember, I've said this on the podcast too. I've had after I once I wasn't sick anymore with COVID, I probably have left changes to my life on a day to day basis and the vast majority people because I work from home anyway. My wife's to stay at home, mom, we homeschool our kids. We kind of we live here, right? And so we have we didn't have to figure out how do we all live in the same house together? We've done that for years. But you know, we said we get up in the morning a lot of times and we have kind of a family meeting and like this is what's going on for the day. It's almost like a staff meeting. Like what are we doing today? What school are we doing? And you know, we've got the rules like we don't sit around in our pajamas. We don't sleep till 10. We get up and we take showers and brush our hair and you know, brush our teeth and for the girls they put a little makeup on they put on normal clothes and shoes and we eat regular breakfast and all those things are normal and they provide some normalcy to the day. And then you know, my wife I have I have more time even on my hands than I normally because I don't have business meetings and we don't go to restaurants and certainly we're not going out and meeting other people or having them come here. And so there's more time. But we decided several nights ago, like, hey, we're not going to watch any more than two hours of Netflix in any given day or in whatever streaming. Okay. So like that's max for us. I'm like, we're not going to we're not doing this binge for because I just feel gross when I do it. I don't mind watching some stuff like it's fine. But what we've done is so we've we've kind of got our time immediately after dinner. And we usually just watch about an hour, one hour of television. And then we read usually about code. And then we talk. And then we move on and we we lay in bed and we read a book together or we read separate fiction books that kind of take our minds completely off this thing so we can relax and sleep and it's worked really, really well to sort of have that schedule. We eat dinner together as a family every single night, right? Most of the nights we're cooking at home. Occasionally we do or dash because it's great. But you know, and like you said, it's brought some order to the chaos for us. And this is a little bit of a new normal even for us. But it's feels OK, you know, yeah, for sure. I've one more category of bringing order. Yeah. You know, there's like a spiritual order that I think we can bring to our lives in that category, even if you're not a spiritual person, I think you'll appreciate these things. If there's people you need to forgive, if there are amends that you need to make, can you use this space to do some of those things? Now, I have an episode on forgiveness. One of the things that I say about forgiveness is it's not saying that what happened was wrong. I mean not wrong. It's not saying that what happened was not wrong. Like it's actually saying like actually it was wrong. What happened to me? And if you're spending emotional energy during the day, then you know, you might be bitter. So if you spend like 5% of your day thinking about this this thing where you were wronged or, you know, do you really want to spend that, you know, it doesn't have to be someone that you know it could be like, you know, you spent if you spend 20% of your day angry at some politician or some person that you don't even know like that might be something that you need to work through psychologically or spiritually as well. Right? Yep. So in my mind, I don't want to have to spend any emotional energy thinking about people who have wronged me in the past. And so through the process of like letting go. And I think it's really helped clear my brain to allow me to think about things that are actually meaningful. That's good. It's good. Yeah. And I think, you know, I think about as you laid this stuff out like one, two, three, and I'm sure you did this on purpose. Is the best place to start with some of those simple physical things because anybody like it almost doesn't matter where you are, like you can make your bed, you can clean your room, you can bring a little bit and it's not even about like I even that can get overwhelming, like you don't literally have to completely organize your house today. You can start literally with something like making your bed or hanging up your laundry, like a simple task. And then it seems like there's some a little more depth with each one of those. Look, look at one area of your house at a time, right? If so, for example, like your closet, are there clothes that you haven't used in two years that are in your closet? Maybe put them in a pile, give them away. So take one little area of your house at a time and create order, create, you know, like, how is this stuff serving me? How is this organized so that I can use it in time of need or, you know, basically that it's not just chaos. Yeah. Yeah. One little area at a time. Yeah. Or even things as simple as maybe decide the day before, what time am I going to wake up tomorrow? What time am I going to go to bed tomorrow? And then stick to that, right? And it doesn't have to be 4 a.m. Right? It doesn't have to be like what you and I do. But but I'm going to get up at this time and get up at six or I'm going to get up at seven or whatever it is, I'm going to go to bed by 10. Those are pretty easy things to do. And then as I think about it as you then, you know, you work then on your physical body and that's a probably a little that's a little more of a takes a little more work and a little more planning. What am I going to eat? How am I going to exercise? I'm going to take care of myself this way or that way. It requires some planning as well. And then you step into that psychological piece and there's probably there's a little more weightiness to that as well. It's certainly probably evokes more emotion than making your bed. You know, dealing with my anxieties, dealing with my fears, talking to people, journaling, cognitive distortions, all of those things are very important. But I think they're it's a little more weighty than making your bed, right? And then I think probably some of the hardest things for us are are those of us who need to let go of something greater and some of that some of those, you know, spiritual health issues of forgiving people that not not for them. It's not for them. Right. It's for you to give you free because you live in in bondage to that thing. And so or whatever those things are, you know, make things right with people, make things right if you believe in a higher power, you know, making things right there as well. I think it's maybe even the most weighty of all. So I think you've given people a good. I don't want to package it in a in a pretty little, you know, present tied up in a neat little bow package. But I also think there's some there's some sort of pragmatics in the simplicity of start with the very first thing that's small and do the small thing first and then start working through. Yeah. Yeah. So there's these four different kind of domains, the physical order of your space where you live, your physical body, and then three would be the psychological order, and then four would be kind of more of the spiritual. And I think the the other thought that I have is to in the end, sort of in that spiritual domain is kind of one, one spiritual aspect is I think the kind of sacrificial love or the the agape love. It's like the love for other people that that is to serve the other people first and foremost. And in that, you know, think in your life, no matter where you are, what does that look like? You know, are there little areas where you can do that to other people or for other people? And you know, if you're a parent, it might be putting the phone away and just sitting with your kid, giving them attention. If it's if it's your business, like you said today, you're thinking about the people who are in your business, you're thinking about how to help them financially through this time, you know, and, you know, it realize that people will not always be as receptive to that. But it's it's like you're doing it for them, you're not doing it for yourself. And then, you know, it might be your neighbor, you know, writing, we wrote letters to our neighbors, like that are older, you know, checking in on them, maybe calling the person that's maybe a little more socially isolated. I don't know, but thinking about like we're in this together, this is going to be a tough time. This is going to be a time where we can live out for other people, maybe a little bit more and listen to that that voice. If you have that voice, listen to it. That's good. Don't give into the animalistic behavior. That's the key. All the time. Always enlightening, sir. Thank you so much. Lots of great. I love it because we walk through sort of these big sort of philosophical things and then you help make it practical for our listeners, which is nice. So hopefully everybody's got some great takeaways there that they can begin to put into practice. As always, thank you for being on the show. Dr. Peter will always be, I say always, hopefully will always be a routine guest for us. And while we don't do a lot of interviews, this is when you're on the show, it's not an interview, right? It's a content episode that I can't provide and that Scott can't provide that we can't provide because we want to bring on some of those professionals that can do a good job of filling a gap for our people. It's I hope it's a it's a dialogue and I hope it's a dialogue with your listeners as well. I'll once you get this up, I'll post it to my social media. If anyone has any comments or questions, just throw up a comment on on my social media. If you just look up David Pewter, you'll be able to find me or if you go to psychiatry podcast.com. That's my website. I'm putting the cognitive distortion journal like right at the very, very top of that main website. So psychiatrypodcast.com it'll be right there at the very top. You don't have to put in your email or anything. Just download it. And I'll get you that link as well. So you can share that. Yeah, we'll have it in the show notes as well for sure. Great place to start. I did it several months ago was tremendously helpful for me laying those things out. It is hard, right? It's hard to actually like sit down and do it twice. And it's it was easier, significantly easier for me the second time, you know, because you kind of get through and you see the big picture. And I realize and for some people, I probably maybe I need to do it four or five times. I think each time you get through it, it's a little bit easier. I say easier. I mean, you still have to deal with your junk. But I think because in the beginning, you're trying to figure out what your junk actually is. Like you don't even realize where you have these cognitive distortions. What you've gone through it once, you sort of have a foundational list of I know that it's it's in my nature to to have these distortions. And then are there, you know, have I put some of those away? Have I brought on new ones? It's a little easier to have something to work off of. First time through, you're kind of thinking through like, OK, what do I have cognitive distortions about? And but it's extremely helpful just to just to bring those to light, you know, just to go like, oh, I didn't realize I that's not even what that's not reality. I think and it's something that's not reality there. And you're like, you don't even realize you're doing it. So yeah, extremely helpful. We'll put those in the show notes and thank you guys for listening. So good anything else from you? Nope, should be good. Thank you for having me on beautiful. Thanks for being on the show. Thank you guys for listening and we'll see you in a few days.