 here. So so much of recovery is doing the opposite of what anxiety tells you to do or not do. So we should talk about that today. It's Monday, which means it's Recovery Monday, Recovery Monday, Episode 14. Let's get rolling. So let us see who pops in. Everybody as you show up, just let me know everything is working the way it should usually is. So that's good. This is the 14th Recovery Monday. We've been doing this for 14 weeks now. Impressive as hell, right? So hey, love you. What's going on? Thanks for saying hello. Just let me know that you're here. Let me know where you're from. Just a quick reminder, we are teaching these lessons out of this book. This book every week, The Anxious Truth, which you can find on my website at theanxiestruth.com. All of my books and everything are there. So if you do not have the book and you would like to follow along as we go, because each one of these Recovery Monday lessons is just a lesson out of the book directly out of the book. So grab a copy if you don't have it. And yeah, we'll get rolling in a minute. Let's see. We got about 34, 35 people. Bethany is here. Whitney is here. How is everybody doing? Happy New Year, everybody. So I hope you guys had a decent holiday break. Hopefully it was relaxing and not stressful. I know some people have a hard time with the break, like not having things to do. Some people have a hard time today. Today used to be the hardest day of the year for me. Ellen is here. Welcome. But used to be the hardest day of the year for me, but thankfully it is not anymore. Now it's just Monday. The day after the holiday break was really difficult, but now it's not. But in today, I actually wrote about that. If we put this up on the screen, if you guys have not subscribed to The Anxious Morning, which is the daily podcast and newsletter that started today, I'm super stoked about that. It's up on the screen here, the anxious morning.email in your browser if you don't have it. And the episode today is actually entitled The Worst Day of the Year. And it's about the anxiety of coming back after the holiday break. So let's get rolling. I'm going to put the chat overlay up on the screen so we can get cooking here. You guys can see what each other is saying. You talk to each other. And at some point we may have an extra little special surprise here. Today I'm waiting to find out. So let's talk about doing the opposite and what that means. Anxiety is going to tell you to do a lot of things, right? It's going to tell you to not do a lot of things. And so much of recovery is based on taking the opposite action. So anxiety is going to tell you to stay home. When anxiety tells you to stay home, you should go out. When anxiety tells you to retreat, you should advance. When anxiety tells you to avoid, you should not. When anxiety tells you to not do certain things, you should do them instead. So generally speaking, the process of recovery is an exposure is really are the process of doing the opposite of what anxiety and fear are telling you to do or not do. So when anxiety is telling you to do something, generally speaking, the right answer is to go against that and do the opposite. When it's telling you to not do something, generally the correct thing to do is to let's see. I'm ready. I'm sorry. I just have to respond to this. Sorry. I have to respond to this because that's that is actually our little our special guests that's coming on at the moment. So let me just email him. Check your email. Isn't this exciting? Watch me do this. Okay. So when anxiety is telling you to do a thing, you want to not do it when anxiety is telling you to not do a thing, you want to do it. This is really difficult. So what was going on here is that this exposures are basically a systematic and incremental way to practice doing the opposite of what anxiety is telling you to do and fear is telling you to do to stay safe, because your anxiety and your fear response is other than the pauses. They're the best part of the show, right? They really are like the awkward pauses. anxiety and fear and anxiety sort of there. That's just your brain thinking that it's doing you a favor, your brain is trying to keep you safe from a threat that it somehow thinks is there that we all know is really not. It feels like it is, but it's not. And so it's telling you to do things or not do things to try to keep you safe from that threat. And as you go through the process of going toward those things that you fear, you're literally confronting that threat that your brain says is there. And when you do the opposite, so when anxiety says, oh, you better not go out and you do, you send the signal back down to your brain, like, you were wrong, you were wrong. Like I can actually do the things you tell me not to do. And I can do the things that you tell me not to do. So so much of anxiety. And that's why we say it's counterintuitive is doing the opposite. Because anxiety is going to tell you to do certain things and not do certain things. And your gut, like your intuition will feel like you should listen to that. So that's one of the like hideous or the insidious things about this is that when anxiety gives you those commands, it will your brain will interpret them and your and you will interpret them emotionally as this is just like a gut feeling that I should follow this like it doesn't feel right to go out. It's telling me that this something is wrong. And you hear about this stuff all the time, right? Like I is anxiety telling me that something is wrong. And that's sometimes mental health advice that you see that doesn't necessarily apply to folks in our situation, where people will say, Well, your anxiety is sending you a message, it's telling you something it's telling you that something needs your attention. But in our situation, that's not true. It's insisting that something needs your attention, but it doesn't. It doesn't need nothing needs your attention. So we do the opposite. We act against those impulses. And what we think is is a gut feeling. And we act against those gut feelings to learn again and again, again, experientially that it's wrong. It's always wrong. It's always wrong. So I always go back to if you're a Seinfeld fan, I always go back to George Costanza and signs Seinfeld. And he had there was an episode where he decides to do the opposite like his life is falling apart. And he just I think Jerry says, Hey, you know, if you're he says every instinct I've ever had in my life is wrong. So Jerry says, Well, if every instinct that you've ever had in your life is wrong, then doing the opposite would have to be right. And so he starts to do the opposite. And his life takes off becomes amazing. And that's what recovery is all about. So Oh, let's see what we got going on here. We got a thing happening. I can't hear you, brother. Can't hear you. Technology, man. Let's see if Josh gets it together. Just I can't hear you. Can you hear me? Yeah, I just can't I just can't hear you. But yeah, so let's see if Josh can get let's see if Josh can get that together. But yes, bizarre. Yeah, we got it. We got an echo though. We got an echo though. Can't get it right. Can we? No, we can't get it right. It's all right. No, we can't get away. Welcome, dude. Welcome, dude. Hi. Is it too echoey? Is it beyond? Is it beyond saving? Yeah, it's pretty echoey headphones. I will be joined. Got it any time. We're gonna lose Josh, but he'll come back. Anyway, so yeah, Josh is is isolating in the UK right now. And he's, you know, doing that whole thing. So I'm like, Hey, come on down. So yeah, he'll be back in a second. He's gonna find some headphones. So yes, I was really inspired by the George Costanza thing to write a blog post many, many years ago called Do the opposite. And that has become integrated into almost all the stuff that I do. And it's actually a whole lesson in the ancient truth about doing the opposite. Now, let me just clarify that. So doing the opposite doesn't mean so when I say anxiety tells you to stay home, you should go out anxiety tells you to not eat that peanut because maybe you're just magically developed an alert and allergy to it. You've never been allergic for 42 years. But now you might be allergic today. You eat the peanut. We do that since systematically and incrementally we do so it's not like you could just decide Oh, anxiety told me to not go on vacation and I'm going to get on a plane and fly 6000 miles away for two weeks by myself. That wouldn't be your first move. We're going to go incrementally toward doing the opposite. Nonetheless, we are disobeying that command that says you better do this thing to stay safe. Yeah, it's better. I don't think I hear myself. Oh, well, we'll just have to put up with it. No, it's good. I know you're good. No more. Excellent. How you do it? I wasn't for the anxious truth. Not the anxious not truth. Just the anxious bit awkwardly. But this will take That's some other guy. I had somebody had that right. So I don't know who he is, but he's got a lot of followers, I think by accident. Anyway, so he's a fraud. He's a fraud. Yeah. So we're talking about doing the opposite for those of you who don't know, I cannot imagine guys don't know because he's audiences like 10 times the size of mine. But Josh Fletcher joining us from the UK. Psychotherapist Josh Refletcher anxiety Josh on Instagram. Yes, that was my sign for pain for psychotherapist. We're today we're talking about doing the opposite. Like when anxiety tells you to do a thing. Generally speaking, part of recovery is learning to do exactly the opposite of what it tells you you're supposed to be doing or not doing. I'm guessing you have lived some of that I know I lived a ton of that. Like so in your struggle, or some of the things anxiety told you to not do that you had to do anyway, that was scary as hell. Oh, I mean, I didn't leave the house for a year early. Because my diet was telling me to stay and wait till it goes away, wait, it feels better way to your strong enough to do your exposures. Maybe not today because you're not 100%. Why don't you look for contingencies, escape routes, escape plans, a safe person, a safe route out to your safe place. If you go for a walk, make sure you take a safe person. Make sure that you don't go a certain distance from your car or your home. Oh, I'm in the loads. Don't go anywhere without your bottle of water, your bag of sweets just in case you have blood sugary symptoms and it makes you panic. Endless stuff. I'm asking you before I came psyched up, you know, just like, kind of, yeah, I've got to stop doing these things because the United is trying to protect you. But like an overthusiastic, overprotective parent, maybe, you never get to learn that you can deal with the uncertainty yourself. So do the opposite. I'm luckily I'm really good at doing the opposite of what will tell me to because I'm petulant and childish. But it's really good. And you want to apply that to your anxiety. I can confirm this, by the way, I'll confirm that. I love that like anxiety is like a here in the US, we have a term called helicopter parents. I don't know if I don't know if you got the Yeah, helicopter. Oh, yes, constantly. Yeah. Yeah. So anxiety is like one massive helicopter parent. That's exactly what it is. Like just it loads you up with restrictions and rules and things that you're supposed to do and not do and be careful. And there's always to be careful like goes on top of all of that. And so in a way, like doing the opposite as part of recovery is not only the way to learn that like, oh, I don't have to be careful, like at an excessive level, I can handle this stuff. But also like, man, all these rules are just not required. I don't have to overthink so much of life this way, I can just organically live my life. So doing the opposite is hard, because it's scary, you're going against that that protective signal. I was before he came on, I was talking about how it feels like, like a gut feeling intuition, it feels wrong to like do the opposite and go against an almost reckless or dangerous. I talked about a lot of the mental health advice that you see out there that doesn't apply to us, which is your anxiety is trying to tell you something. How often have you heard that message, like in the online mental health community? Your anxiety has wisdom, it's trying to tell you something. Is it really? Yeah. Going through I'm going to find a headset and put it because I think a couple of people are struggling to hear me. Yeah, I will be going with my head. Yep, you got it. So no problem, we can talk about that a little more when Josh gets back, we'll we'll go over that topic, but that is advice that is not really meant for people like us. That whole, you know, anxiety is trying to tell you something. There's a whole thing that was going around about a year ago, the wisdom of anxiety, anxiety is the wisdom of it. What's it telling me? And in a lot of instances, you hear people who are stuck in the he did sound like a doll, like you're absolutely right. It was a doctor who thing going on there. There was that whole wisdom of anxiety thing, and people will still come into the community and say, you know, my anxiety is telling me that I have to run to the ER again. My anxiety is telling me that I have to do this or do that. Like, is it really trying? Is it just, should I ignore this? Isn't it trying to tell me something? And sometimes in an in an ordered state in a regular state where anxiety has not gone off the rails, it's just like a regular person, a non anxious person experiences anxiety in the face of a real threat or something that's that's truly a problem that's actually a problem externally. Then yeah, sometimes anxiety does have wisdom. It exists for purpose. It warns us of threats that keeps us safe. It does all those things, right? So I'm gonna stop for just two seconds. Coming in every week to ask about your digestive issues, how do I deal with is not going to be terribly helpful to you, my friend. Always you come in every week and ask the same questions. And as you can see, there's never a direct answer to them. So you're going to have to change the way you're thinking about this. And I know that sounds like a little bit of a tough response for you. But every single time you want to know specifically how to deal with these specific symptom about your gastrointestinal tract. And there's no answer to that. That's not the problem. But in the end, the whole anxiety thing of it's telling me something for a regular non anxious person, that might be true. But for somebody who's in the grips of an anxiety disorder, especially OCD, especially OCD, he's back with headphones, especially OCD, that's going to be a problem. How you doing now, dude? Let's say, can you hear me? No, I'm struggling with the audio. You sound like a, like a cartoon character. I am a cartoon character. I'm not real. It sounds okay. Can everybody tell us if we sound okay? I think I sound bad to you, but you sound fine to everybody now. If you could hear this, it'd be so fine. Okay, I can't quite hear you. Oh, I'm sorry, I don't know what's happening. That's all right. No worries. If you want to sort it out, we'll still be here. We're going to hang for a while. Yeah, I just can't hear what you said. Yeah, obviously me. Yeah, everybody's saying, you sound okay now. You just, Josh just can't hear me. So I don't know if you can, I can pretend to hear what you're saying. I'll just, well, yes, this is a great haircut. My barber is fantastic. Maybe it's very good. I don't know what's going on, but okay, the sound is sounding good now. Everybody's saying it sounds good, just that Josh can't really hear me. So. Right. Right. Yeah. I don't know. Just give me one more chance. So I'm ruining your stream. I'm ruining the stream. Where are we going to be? I'm glad people can hear me. That's good. But I can't hear. Drew, you sound like Tweety Pie in the head, but I can't quite hear what it is. Wow. Okay. That's not anything I've ever been accused of sounding like, but okay. So, Josh, we'll be back. Let's start taking some questions here. Might as well go through that. So I will go through some of the comments here and let's see we come up. But thank you guys for for dealing with the sound. I appreciate it. Sometimes technology doesn't work out so well. So let's take a couple of things here. No, no, no, no, no. Depression and anxiety have a tough time with the feelings of heaviness. Do I treat it? Let me bring this up on the screen real quick. This invariably comes up. I'm going to answer this question really quick while we wait for Josh to come back. This comes up quite often. Do I treat it like anxiety? I can't really give you specific advice about how to deal with your specific situation because you can't diagnose you over the internet. But the way anxiety is depression is treated a little bit differently in that you never want to look at the thing as like, well, this is a floating exception. Sorry, dude, it's not. OK, I don't know what's going on. Well, I can hear you, but it's just not coming through. It's like it's just it's muffled. Yeah. Sorry, everyone. I was about to reveal to you the great secret of overcoming anxiety. But because Drew's audio doesn't work out. This is why. Hey, we try. We'll try to get next week, maybe we'll see. And now he's gone. Now we can't hear you anymore. Sorry, man. Anyway, Josh is gone. We'll try it again next week. We tried. Anyway, to finish answering the question, the depression is a little bit different because people sometimes think, well, I just have to sit with it. And most therapists will tell you, no, no, no, like, you don't want to just sit with it. You actually going to have a, you know, you kind of go toward it a little bit. You got to behave or you'll activate, really trying to challenge those things, even when you don't like, even when you don't feel like doing it. So, Marge, it's very generic advice. But what I would tell you specifically, you know, especially to take the heart is that it's not a passive process. Most therapists that are treating your anxiety will make you get up and move, will make you engage even in very small doses. That's important. You don't just sit passively and wait for it to get better. That's, that's, it's not like that at all. So there you go. Let's keep going through here. Coming back again. I don't know. Let's see here. So I'm going to keep going. I'm going to keep going here. Oh, this is a good question. I'm sorry. I can't see your names, Facebook user. That means you're my Facebook group and Restream doesn't show me your name. I wonder if our ancestors a hundred years ago. Well, if we go back thousands of years ago, yes, human beings dealt with this since the dawn of human beings. It's pretty I think it's probably pretty certain to say that it's not like the biology underneath this is brand new. It's been evolving for a very, very, very long time on planet Earth. So how did people deal with this stuff? Say, you know, thousands of years ago, I often wondered that like primitive man had the same responses that we have. But if you go back a hundred hundred and fifty years, not even a hundred years ago, eighty five, sixty, seventy, eighty, ninety years ago, how did they deal with this stuff? Not well, like not well. They diagnosed people with things like hysteria and women had fainting couches and it was called housewife's disease and there was all kinds of crazy stuff going on back then. So how did they deal with it? Not so well. I mean, but you know what? I mean, look, they didn't really know a lot. So you got to kind of a little break, but that was not that was not really easy. You know, there was the technology for research wasn't there. The knowledge base wasn't there. We're just the beginning of a lot of this stuff. You go back to the early part of the nineteen hundreds. Psychology was really kind of a very beginning thing at that point. So yeah, it was really attributed to a lot of stuff. If you go back even further than that, sometimes it was attributed to the demonic possession and there was all kinds of crazy stuff going on. So in a way, while we still don't know enough, imagine if you had lived back then, right? So that sucks. But good question. So let's see. I'm going to keep going through here. No, no, no, no, no. OK, so this is a let's bring this back to the topic of doing the opposite. Put Allison up on the screen, Allison. Thanks for coming by. My anxiety and agoraphobia is very, very bad. So hard to do anything at all, especially since I've worked from home all year and have everything delivered. This is actually pretty. It's actually pretty common, right? So it's a very common thing that the pandemic changed habits and a lot of people might end up staying home and it's cemented that belief that like I'm good in my little cocoon in my safe place. So essentially, Allison, to bring this back to like the point and for everybody watching the point of today's topic of doing the opposite, you're having a hard time with this stuff and having everything delivered. And I should have everything delivered and I shouldn't go out and I'm supposed to stay him and I'm only safe. Well, let's say we're going to give him one more shot. I'll give him another shot at it. Let's see. Let's see. Sorry, I'm bringing back on. There we go. Oh, come on, man. Hello. All right. Here we go. Here we go. Now I hear you. Can you hear me? Yes. All right. Yeah, there you go. We're cooking. So I was just taking some questions here. We had somebody who was talking about how hard agoraphobia has gotten worse over the course of the pandemic, staying home, having everything delivered. And I was going to relate that to the doing the opposite thing. So in that situation, how does doing the opposite relate to like my agoraphobia has been cemented by lockdowns? What do we do now? We got acknowledged over the last two years. Brains have been conditioned to think that things outside are dangerous. And they have, to be honest, you know, there's a dangerous virus knocking around. Now, to the anxious brain of an agrophobic. Oh, it's amazing, isn't it? What an excuse. Lovely. I don't need to go outside. There's a virus outside. Well, to an extent, yeah, you know, be considerate. Use your anxiety to your advantage when there's a virus outside. And that's what anxiety is there for. When I'm in the supermarket and I'm anxious because there's people near me. I like that. That's cool. It makes me I'm not complacent. I don't want to go near people, don't want to put people at risk, don't want to do all these things. But if I'm an agrophobe and I'm using that as an excuse to which I know a lot of people do like, oh, well, I'll do it when the pandemic's over. So you don't because you can do things around that. You know, the the anxiety saying, see, you know, stay inside, stay safe. There's nothing unsafe about walking through a park, something unsafe about going driving in your car. There's nothing unsafe about kind of plan, meticulously planned risk assessed kind of exposures. And so I have a go at that. Try not to use it as that. Do the opposite of what your brain says. But not all the time, you know, actually, if you're if you're in the supermarket and the brain saying, stay away from that person, listen to it. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, but but if you're outside going, oh, go home because you're because you might panic, then no, don't listen to it. Do the opposite. Yeah, I think the other thing that happened to during the pandemic that cemented a lot of that stuff, which isn't isn't so much an opposite thing, but it's just a good illustration of the distortion and magnification machine that is distorted anxiety, which is like COVID-19 was a real threat. There's no doubt about that. It still is. It's a day. It could be a dangerous virus for a lot of people like we get that. That's real. But your anxiety will turn that into it's literally standing at your front door with a loaded rifle just waiting to shoot you in the face the minute you open the door, which is not true. So yes, there is a real threat that needs to be assessed and managed to a certain extent. But turning it into I've already projected my whole family getting COVID-19 and dying. That's not required because that's that's not necessarily realistic. So we have to recognize that as well. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, absolutely. All right, let's keep rolling here. We've got a ton of comments in these. I can't take them all. I wish, guys, but I just can't. Oh, let's put this up here. It's a good OCD question. Josh, you can take this one, which is come on, put it up on the screen. I supposedly did. You think, hey, Drew, tips for recovery, like doing the opposite, even when anxious, applies to OCD as well. How would you? Oh, absolutely. Oh, it definitely applies to OCD. If you go to OCD, you your rational brain knows 99% that this thought is absurd. But as what was really interesting, I saw a documentary and a brain scan of people with OCD, your whole like brain lights up when you have these thoughts. So it feels real. So, you know, the absurdity and the probability of this thought is ridiculous, rationally. But when it feels real, you want 100% certainty that that thought and the catastrophic consequences of that thought do not come true. And so the three magic words that we always avoid, and this is agoraphobia, agoraphobia or OCD, if your brain suggests to you do this just in case, tell it to get lost. Just in case what? You know, I'm going to ruminate. People with OCD, they'll have to ruminate. I'm going to ruminate just in case I miss something. I'm going to put in this safety behavior just in case that scenario comes true. I'm going to seek empty reassurance to make sure I didn't hit that person on the way home in my vehicle that I didn't do that horrendous thing that could get me canceled, that I didn't do that awful thing that goes against my morals. But I'm going to keep ruminating and scanning and testing and asking for reassurance until I reach that 100% certainty. But as we know, nothing in life is 100% certain, except death and James Corden. And that's the only thing that we're going to put up with. James Corden, he goes above taxes in the U.S.'s death and taxes. You guys have James Corden, I guess a different habit. Maybe worse. We gave you James Corden and you could keep it. So I was so untold. Good answer. Definitely good answer. Let's throw another question up on the screen real quick, which is Lily asks, is it not OK then? Restream is clearly like a little bit wonky today. It's slow. Is it not recommended to bring coping techniques stuff like water or gum? So I would say no. That's not those are not good thing. So again, if you go back to the topic of do the opposite, your anxiety is telling you that you need to have cold water. You need to have mints. You need to have gum. You need to have sweet snacks. You need to have your phone. You need to have a rubber band. You need to have your lavender oil with you. Because if you get into trouble, then these things is what you use to get out of trouble. But doing the opposite would be, no, I'm going to leave those things behind because I'm not actually in trouble. I feel badly, but I'm actually not in trouble. Like it's trying to convince me that I'm in trouble by making me feel this way. But if I respond to it like I am and I must use special coping or escape techniques, then you're reinforcing that mistaken belief that like, oh, if I don't have my lavender oil or my gum, I'm going to be in trouble. Like I might not get out of this, but you always get out of it. And I like Josh always says, who gets the credit? Do you get the credit as a gum? Get the credit. I love that. Yeah, that's so important. Who get who's getting the credit here? You spend all day in that scary exposure. And the award goes to the gum. Oh, thank God I had the gum with me. Otherwise I'd have freaked out. What a waste of an exposure. It reminds me of that Simpsons episode where Homer saves the spaceship by using a uranium rod. And then the rod gets the credit for saving it gets ended. It ends up in Time magazine and paraded around America. That exact scene, I'm going to get actually put it on my social. That exact scene is like taking a bottle of water or something. You're not getting the credit. Oh, thank God my partner was nearby. Well then wasted exposure. Well not wasted exposure but when you're getting stuck with your exposures. Right. You need to start getting the credit. So it's a hundred percent you. My last final exposure when I was in therapy was I got dropped off at the bottom of a hill. No water. I didn't have any breakfast and have anything to eat. And I walked up a hill on my own. No mobile phone. Oh, but what am I brains like? Oh, but what if you freak out and need help? I'm not in danger like Drew says. I walked to the top of the hill and by the time I got to the top of the hill I was like, actually, this is pretty cool. I realized I didn't actually I don't actually need a drink. Amazing. I'm OK. I'll have one when I get home. But it's so weird in it, Drew, how you feel in the anticipation. Yeah, at the end of an exposure. It's completely different. Oh, I mean, it's one of the to me, it's one of the great feelings. Like I wish I could bottle it and give it to people because from the adjunct, abject fear and doubt. And I don't think I'm going to be able to do this and I'm going to freak out and this is going to be dangerous to the swagger of like I did it. Like, look at me. I'm here like it really is a very superhero kind of feeling at the end. For me, I remember I used to drive around. My doctor would give me Xanax of Benzo to ask me to be 90 pills because here in the U.S. was like 90 pills for like 42 cents. Like they're practically free. Geez, I have a problem, right? Imagine that. So he would get right me a prescription for 90 of them and a year later I would have 89 and a half of them still because I was just stubborn and I I'm not claiming moral high ground here. It's just the story, right? But I carried. I carried those pills around in the console of my car for like two or three years. They baked. They froze. They baked again. They froze again. I probably could have put them in in cupcakes for kindergartners and they would have been fine. Like they were probably completely ineffective. But I remember the day that I had taken them out of the car to clean the car. I forgot to put it back in. They were in my garage and I was out and realized that the Xanax was not in the car with me. I had not taken one in two years, but it was still a difficult moment in one of those final hurdles when I thought like, this is ridiculous. I clearly don't need it. It's never done anything for me. So, you know, leaving the gum and stuff behind is a big step. Sometimes it's a it's an end step. What would you say to starting with the gum? Yeah, one thing at a time. When you work with OCD, when I work with ritual OCD, so people that have like strict rituals and stuff, we just start by taking one thing out of the ritual, then the next thing, the next thing. You don't have to go straight in, but when you are getting stuck with exposures, then you start to look at again, who gets the credit. Drew did so well and then he realized one day even by actually, oh, I realized, I'm getting the credit here, you know? Probably for a long time, the bottle of the Xanax pills that he wasn't even taking, got some of the credit because they're there. I hear this a lot from people like, oh, you know, I don't use it, but just knowing that it's there makes me feel safe. Is it, well, then what happens one day when you don't have that? Yeah, just in case. You know, just in case. Yeah, the just in case words are the one of the most sinister, worst words for agoraphobia and anxiety disorders. Just in case what? I would agree. I find the quick response to do the opposite is pretty powerful when I can carry it through. So I think, yeah, it is incredibly powerful. That initial turn toward, you know, as opposed to like, it's gonna tell you to run, you're gonna have that flash of fear. And I always say, there's a space there from the time that you have that first OMG to the time that you act, it's a small space. It's only a couple of seconds wide, but there is choice in that space. And when you make the choice to say, whoop, I'm gonna stand my ground, I'm not gonna run, I'm gonna lean into this fear. It changes things pretty quickly, I think. So Nikki is just acknowledging that I like that, but yes, it is hard to carry it through. But just the act of doing it I always found was kind of empowering and it changed the trajectory of the panic at that point in a big way, like leaning into it as opposed to adding more OMG OMG, I gotta run, really changed it in a big way. It started to, you know, sort of take the wind out of it pretty quickly. So, all right, let's roll. Let's see what else we got here. We are way behind our comments, but that's okay. I'm gonna scroll closer to the bottom here. I had to start dealing with panic, da-da-da. All right, let's talk about this. We might as well. We're in the middle of it. We'll put it up on the screen. I try to stay out of this too much. So she says, but there's new variant, but my favorite word, but, there's always a bot, right? But this new variant, it's spreading so fast, it practically is at the front door. I mean, it isn't at your front door. It's around, yeah. I'm self-isolating right now because I was an exposure, exposed to someone with it. And yeah, I admit I was a bit scared of the anticipatory anxiety, what to do. And my anxiety was telling me, well, keep scanning your body, keep looking out for symptoms, keep doing all these things just in case you get it. But then, like Drew says as the theme of this episode, I did the opposite. I will cope. The biggest antidote to just in case and monitoring and doing all these things is, subscribing to this belief that no matter what happens, you will cope. You've always coped. You've never not coped. You hear all these things like, oh, I had a spiraling meltdown. I had the worst panic attack. Well, you still sat here. You obviously coped. You'll always cope. And that's what I kind of say to myself, no, I could have it now. I've got a headache. You know, it's just one of those things. But to plan your entire life around it, be sensible. But there's no excuse to sit inside and avoid life. There's plenty of things you can do that isn't going to big social gatherings to help with your anxiety, definitely. Don't get me wrong, it's not nice. It's natural to feel a bit anxious out there. I actually feel quite positive about it, to be honest. I think it's the beginning of the end, not in an apocalypse kind of way, but in a kind of the end of a virus just tapering out. But I'm not a virologist, so who knows. There was actually, if you listen to the podcast, The Daily, which is published by The New York Times, I hate to address the specifics all the time. I really don't like to do that. But if you listen to The Daily today, they had a really good report on this variant and some of the science behind it and what's starting to come out. So I'll listen to that tonight. It's 20, 30 minutes long. And it might actually, if you're listening right now and you're really super, super concerned about this, it's a good listen. And it's pretty effective, it's pretty, it's good reporting. It's not insane. And Drew, it's absolutely okay to provide a view on current affairs. It's a real thing. And yeah, absolutely. But also acknowledge it's okay to be a bit anxious because outside the realms of an anxiety disorder, people are worried and that's okay. I think, I don't know if you found this Drew, but a lot of people just then banned everything under the anxiety disorder umbrella. They're just like, no, you're just allowed worries too. Like that's okay. Yeah, yeah, that's normal. We're allowed to have normal worry also. Let's throw this up on the screen. It's a sort of a GAD thing, which is always interesting. If the anxiety is trying to tell you things, that's really tricky with GAD if you're generally unhappy in trying to figure things out. I would say, I'm curious at your responses on this, Josh, but I would say that it's not so much the anxiety with GAD is trying to tell you something, but you're, I mean, again, I'm gonna qualify this by saying this is crowdsourced over thousands and thousands of people and hearing the same things come out again and again and again. That anxiety, it's not that anxiety is trying to tell you something, anxiety is basically pointing right back at you for a lot of GAD people in my community at least because you have to try and figure everything out. You need to know, you need to be perfectionist. You need to plan. You can't leave anything up to chance. You can't be uncertain. You think it's a badge of honor to worry about things. You think you're supposed to do all that. And so what is the anxiety telling you in that situation? It's not trying to tell you anything other than like, is there any mystery? So I love that people with GAD will say, I don't know why it's here, but then when you lay out these traits, they're like, oh yeah, that's me, me, me, me, me, me. I'm like, how can you not know why you're so anxious? So I think, do the opposite would be you're gonna have to leave questions unanswered and plans unmade and questions unsolved and stones unturned. And that's gonna feel really wrong and reckless and uncomfortable. But for a GAD sufferer, I think that's the opposite. I'm gonna have to start to abandon those thinking beliefs that if I think think think enough, I could be safe and control my life. It's very communicative, right? Well, GAD is similar to OCD in the sense that it relies on habit. In fact, GAD is pivoted on one habit, one giant compulsion and that is rumination. GAD is literally, I ruminate too much. I believe that worry is a safety behavior. I believe worry helps me to change and affect the outcome of these catastrophic thoughts. Now, don't get me wrong. Some worry is okay. I worry that if I don't do enough work this week, my boss might not be happy. Well, then, okay, that'll motivate me to do my job properly or finish my essay. But because it helps for one thing, people with GAD thinks that that's just a compulsion, a safety pet, the solution for everything. I will just do it. And what happens is when we get so sensitized with GAD, the brain starts to shoot out kind of messages and it tries to find the dangers for you. So stimulated and the brain's trying to help you by saying, what if it's this? What if it's that? What if it's that? What if it's that? What if it's that? What if it's that? What if it's that? And that is a mechanism in itself. It's an old ancient mechanism that our ancestors have, but it's just adapted to modern times. People with GAD have the habit of listening to that constantly because it, like people with OCD, feels real. And it isn't. You know it's GAD when it's what if and you don't feel great, done. I don't feel great and I'm gonna go, what ifs? This is GAD. I'm gonna leave it alone. Yeah. Yeah, that's a tough one. And I always get fascinated too by that. It's that love-hate relationship, like that metacognitive thing of like my relationship with my thinking. I think that thinking is awesome and that is my go-to for everything. I will ruminate, worry and try to predict the future. But then I will notice that this is killing me. So I should stop doing it. How do I solve this problem of thinking? Oh, it's a problem. And how do I solve problems? I love attention training. I love metacognitive therapy is the new, honestly in two, three years time will be the new gold standard, I think. They just, they like, they see your attention as a muscle and then spend weeks with you going, why aren't you training your muscle? Oh, just spent four hours ruminating. Focus on these points. Don't force it. It's not a compote. It's not this, but you've got to make it more elastic. I've struggled with GAD for years and I realized a lot of it. And it's similar to you, Drew. I still have your voice in my head sometimes. It's like, when you describe doing exposures first thing in the morning with that immediacy, I do that with GAD. Whereas like, as soon as I catch myself in GAD, it's like, nope. Nope. Yeah. Yep. Nope, not doing that. But that took time to get there. We could catch that right away. I'm sure that wasn't necessarily automatic. That took time and work. Absolutely. So that's to do the opposite in GAD is essentially like, you're going to have to leave stuff unthought about, which is feels so wrong to do for most of you. Unthunk. You have to, yeah. I mean, look, we don't have to control what we think. I get that, but, you know, questions unanswered and plans unmade and worries unaddressed. Those are hard things for people with generalized anxiety. So I could say, but we'll take a couple more and then we'll sort of wrap it up because we're getting near the 40 minute mark. So we can hang out all day if you guys want to. I mean, I don't care, but let's see. Is it part of the process that before and during the exposure, the sensations are there and the what ifs? But then after the exposures, the sensations heighten and grow more and more. That after the exposure, like there's that after effect. Is it part of the process that before, let's put that question up again. Yep, I'm trying. It's just super slow. Like it's laggy putting it up and down. Is it part of the process that before and during the exposure that the sensations are there and the what ifs? Right. But I'm then after the exposure, the sensations heighten and grow more and more. Even though she's successfully, I can sort of translate Jada's in my Facebook group. So the question is after the exposure is over. I know what she's at. She basically asking after the exposure is over, isn't it all supposed to go away? It didn't go away. So it doesn't sound like the exposure is over. Thank you. It doesn't sound like it at all. It sounds like you've decided you want the exposure to be over and gone home. And then, so who's got the credit? Well, you being in your house because that's when the anxiety is going to end eventually. And yeah, you're going to feel really uncomfortable, but you might as well do that wherever you were. Keep going until you're calmer. Or if you're not calm at home, then that's fine. It means the exposure isn't over at home. So this is, I think, a mis-targeting that says, well, the exposure was the restaurant or the exposure was the supermarket or the exposure was the trip to the zoo. No, no, no, the exposure is to the sensations and the discomfort and the fear. So wherever that happens to be is the exposure. And if that means that you're still feeling that when you get back home or after you leave the restaurant or whatever it happens to be, the exposure isn't open, isn't over. So it's like, well, okay, I still feel this way. I'm going to have to just allow this as opposed to, well, I left the restaurant, it should go away now. And it hasn't OMG. Okay, so you were in the store even after you leave, even though I was in the store, Jade is adding to that. Yes, so the exposure isn't asda. Asda is not the exposure. The exposure is how you feel. My biggest ever exposure was in asda ever. One day, one time, we're going to have to go to an asda because I hear about it all the time. It's just Walmart, it's the same place, it's the same company, they just call it asda in the UK. It's anxiety, enemy number one. My advice for you, Jade, there is to take Drew's, rather go 7% slower, go 80% slower. So I went in and did into asda for my exposure and I only needed a few things. So you're right, you probably go in, takes you 10 minutes, you're out. And your anxiety is still going. Ah, go in, take your time. Look around, be mindful of what's in the aisles. And even if you only get five things, get five things. Purposely challenge yourself, if you see three cues, go to the longest cue. Keep yourself in there longer whilst doing what non-anxious you would be doing as well. Be clever with you as well. But if you're just white knuckling your way through it and doing what your anxiety is telling you, it's like, hurry up and get out, then no, others will end up stewing in a broth of anxiety at home, like slow it down, you know? 7% slower, slow it down. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's always a good recommendation, 7% slower is a great book. But I should have it here so I can hold it up, but I don't, it's behind me. And I think that's, again, Jay, that's that target where like I'm just, yeah, I'm gonna say I'm doing the exposure, but really I'm just trying to find a way to make these things go away. And that's tough. Let's take this one real quick, which is I think a good question from Hailey, we'll throw it up here. Do you have to expose yourself to all your fears? Well, I did, I'll throw, oh, my mouse is dying also. So I did a podcast episode last year, I think it was last year called, all of your fears are one fear. So in most of these situations, if you're agoraphobic, if you have panic disorder, all of your fears are one fear. So you fear how you feel and what you think. There really is only one fear, it just keeps gluing itself to all these different contexts. And then you think, oh, I'm afraid of the supermarket. Oh, I'm afraid to drink the new orange juice because it might be poisoned. Oh, I'm afraid of this. No, you're just afraid of your reaction and how it triggers that wave of threat response. So all of the fear is really just one fear. You don't have to tackle all of those fears. It's good news, because you think you have a list as long as I am tall of fears to tackle, but you don't, you really have one, maybe a couple, but really just kind of one. You got an opinion on that, bro? Yeah, at the same applies to geographical places, like when you're working with agoraphobia or agoraphobia, it's like, oh, does that mean I've got to expose myself in the park and then I've got to go driving and then I've got to go on holiday? It's like, no, by you exposing yourself in Asda, I've been a psychotherapist for so long and I still find that sentence funny. After you've exposed yourself in Asda, you're exposing yourself to the one fear that Drew says, the fear of it itself. So then theoretically that becomes easier when you go on the train or get in the car or go to a new place because you're not exposing yourself to the train, the car or the new place, you're exposing yourself to the sensations and the thoughts. Yeah, so it's really only one fear, it just expresses itself in a bunch of different contexts. So don't feel bad, you don't have a giant list. And the last question, it's actually the last question. I don't see any more that came in, which is great. Sometimes I feel like I'm really not sure whether I white-knuckled or actually floated and I'm sorry guys, I can't take all of the questions. There's a lot, so what can we do? How do you know if you've actually, this is a tough one, it's so nuanced. Did I white-knuckle? Did I accept right? Did I do it right? Did I float? Would Claire Weeks be proud of me? Like, I can't say that. Claire Weeks is my hero, but floating is a vague term. I don't use it. It's just like, you know, it's fine. We all have a version of it. Drew's a surrender, my minds willfully tolerate. You know you did it right when you feel 1% more confident than you did before you did it. That's when you know you did it right. If you feel 100% confident after it, then that's a bonus. But if you feel just a grain more confident that you could do it, or a grain less scared, then you've definitely done it right. That's how you know you've done it right. I like that. Because I think that's a direct function of whether you white-knuckled or not. Because if you just, I made it, I made it through ASDA. Well, you know, it was just dumb luck. I made it. I held on long enough to not fall apart. So there's no confidence built there at all. Yeah. And then ask yourself when you get back from ASDA, how would you feel about doing that again? Now the answer isn't, shouldn't be great. I'm over my anxiety disorder. It should be, actually, I probably feel a little bit more confident. And that's why I ask my clients all the time when we check in, I say, but would you feel more confident? And they're like, actually, honestly, yeah. I would. There's therefore it was a successful exposure. I really like that. You know, if I think back to the time that I was spending my winter mornings just driving around my neighborhood endlessly, trying to not, you know, learn to not be afraid of that. I just want to put Lilo back up. Because she said, yes, well, then I surrendered then. She just wasn't sure. So good job, Lilo. That's great. But I remember thinking at the end of those exposures, I was tired and all of those things because it is hard work and it is a little bit tiring. But it always, at the end of an exposure, I always felt like I could get back in the car again. It felt easier to go right out again after. That's why, and then again in this book, I write about a thing that I call the morning effect, which is do your exposures in the morning if you can. I'm off screen, but there you go. And I'm lagging also, but that's okay. Do your exposures in the morning because it sets you up. And after those exposures, I would feel like everything else was a little bit easier. So that's good. Yeah. That's good advice. All right, guys. I'm sorry that we had some technical problems, but in the end it worked out really well. Josh, I appreciate you coming by and hanging out. Thanks for inviting me on. Open it. Do you want to come on? Yeah, I might do an Instagram Live later if you're about, feel free to drop in. I'm sure. Say hello. I'm just going to take questions from the general public, get them on camera. You know, and I like doing those open Q and A. It's quite fun. It's always exciting. Yeah, it's always so scary because you don't know who's going to come on. Like someone's like butchering an animal while you're like, whoa. Thank you. I like that first test. Anyway, all right, guys. This is going to stay, what do I have to tell you before I go? How do we find Josh? Everybody has to find Josh at Anxiety Josh on Instagram, right? Yeah, Anxiety Josh. There you go. Oh, Josh, you're a fletcher. Hey, by the way, I saw your picture yesterday. You're right. How's the new, how's the new work coming along? Shit, your therapist is thinking about it. Shit, your therapist is thinking is good. I like it. I like it. It's going, it might get struck off the register after I release it, but I don't care because it's going to get hit off the therapy game, man. Yeah, I'll send it to you. I've only written 5,000 words, but I'm pretty happy with it. See how you think. Yeah, very cool. Very cool. What else can I tell you guys? If you don't have, we'll be back again next Monday. We do these every Monday until I run out of chapters in this book, which is going to take us all the way through this spring. We do a lesson a week. Next week we're going to do, I don't even know what we're doing next week. They have to do the opposite. Next week will be changing your focus, paying attention. So that would be a good one. Yeah. So we'll see you again next week. If you don't have the book, go to my website, which is at theanxistreat.com, and you can grab it. And if you didn't sign up for the new daily newsletter and podcast, which we are rocking it, I think we're going to hit 3,000 people today. I'm super excited about that. That's really cool. I got to tell you flat out. I'm going to give you just a quick plug for this. I'll put it on the screen. It's the anxiousmorning.email. Of all the stuff I have done, and I have produced a lot of words and spoken into a lot of microphones and cameras, this is the best stuff. This is the best work I have produced to this point. So go check it out. And it's freaking free. So there's no excuse. The anxiousmorning.email. The action on it, yeah, every morning. It's an email newsletter with a podcast attached to it that's three to four minutes, teaches a little lesson. I already have all of January. Every morning. Every weekday morning. All of January is already produced and just firing out at 3 a.m. New York time. So this is what I've wanted to do for such a long time. And it's going on really well, so go get it. That's really cool. All right, peeps. See you guys next week. Come back. We're out.