 Everybody wants to recover today. Like in big leaps forward, especially when you're feeling super motivated and you're just gonna kick anxiety's ass, but it doesn't really work that way. We have to take small steps and they matter too. So let's talk about it today on the 24th episode of Recovery Monday. All right guys, here we are. You know the usual deal. I'm gonna put the chat overlay up so you guys can see each other and talk to each other. So let me know everything's working, which I'm pretty sure that it is at this point. I think we have it nailed. I think we're pretty good with this technology now. So what up B? Everybody's here. Leilani is here from Florida. Just let me know where you're coming in from. We're gonna take it nice and easy today. Just a reminder for those who are just joining for the first time in 24 weeks, every Monday. Ooh, I just hit my microphone. Every Monday we teach a lesson out of this book, The Anxious Truth. This is my recovery guide. Today we are talking, we are on lesson 4.4 which is chapter four, lesson four, talking about breaking things into small pieces. We're just going through the book bit by bit. And it's funny because when I started, I said we're gonna be here until the spring and it's almost the spring. So we're gonna keep going until the book is done. Anyway, let's see here who we got here. I know we have Russia, how you doing? Let's see here, I am new. If you're in the Facebook group, like watching the Facebook group, I can't see your name. I only see Facebook user. I'm sorry, that's how Restream does it, but that's okay. Iowa is here, Canada is here early today. No, same time, 2 p.m. Eastern. Let me close this message here so I can see everybody. GBG is here from Florida, Illinois here. What up, Allison? How's everybody doing? Things were a little weird on Restream, I assume we're in the group because I could see people from the group coming in. Connecticut is here, great. So let's go through it. I don't know if everything's working. I see YouTube, Facebook and the Facebook group here, so I guess we're okay. Massachusetts, Jen is here, welcome. So today we're gonna talk about, hey Canada, UK, Carol is here. So we're gonna talk about breaking things into small steps. Now in this chapter of the book, in lesson 4.4, I wanted to really great detail about breaking down a particular exposure, which is a walk around the block into daylight savings time. Thank you, B, very smart. Yes, in the U.S., we changed our clock, so I guess we're a little early for some of you guys. We do that. I don't know why we do it, but we do it. Anyway, it stays lighter later now, so I'm happy about that. Anyway, in lesson 4.4 of this book, I talked about how to break things down into small steps. And the first thing we wanna acknowledge is, a lot of times people make the mistake of thinking that they can recover in big leaps, big jumps forward, because especially on days when you're feeling motivated, like, oh, I'm feeling really good today, I don't have a lot of anxiety, I'm gonna do something really big, I'm gonna show anxiety, who's boss, and you do it, and that's great. There's nothing wrong with that. I'm not taking any of that away, hoping that taking big chunks out of the process at one time, only on the days when you're feeling kind of strong and motivated, will do the job, and it rarely works that way, rarely. We have to acknowledge that. That sucks, but it doesn't really work that way. So a lot of people feel like, nope, if I gotta go toward my fear, go big or go home, some people feel like it's that kind of, it's not that. I was one of those people, I'm just gonna run it over, I wanna run things over, can't run this over. So we really do have to break things down into small steps, and all of those steps matter, they matter. Again, this is a raw deal, but it's a deal that we have. We don't get to recover in two weeks by going from completely housebound and crippled with panic to going to Disney World or taking a vacation to Europe or being on a cruise, it just doesn't work that way. We gotta take small steps forward. Why is that? Who knows? It's just kind of the way our brains work. I mean, I'm sure that there's research on that, and at some point I'm sure I will read that research, because I read all the freaking research, because I'm a nerd, but in the end, that's just the way our brains sort of work. And the best way I can think of to sort of describe that or explain it maybe from an evolutionary perspective is, if you had to design a threat detection and protection, a threat detection and protection system for a specific species on planet Earth, if its job is to keep them alive and perpetuate that species, you would want to make it easy to trigger, sensitive to threats and hard to turn off. So it sucks, but experience proves this out. Like if you get bit by a dog, even though you love dogs, you could be instantly afraid of dogs, and it's gonna take you a while to not be afraid anymore. So the fear and the phobia can hit within minutes, but undoing that takes way longer. So easy to trigger, hard to turn off is kind of an evolutionary imperative in terms of threat detection and protection systems when you look at like the perpetuation of a species. That's my theory, I'm sticking to it. I don't know if there's any validity in that, but it seems reasonable to me. Anyway, so we have to break things down into tiny steps. And in the book, I use the example of a walk around the block. So for the typical agoraphobic, who I'm so often addressing, walk around the block is a big exposure. And I think that the point that I tried to make when I literally wrote a whole bunch of words and a lot of pages that talked about breaking it down into the tiniest little components, starting even with deciding when you're going to take your walk and then practicing and implementing all the things that lead up to actually taking a walk. Sometimes somebody might say, okay, I'm gonna take a walk around the block tomorrow and just that, just the idea of saying it will instantly trigger panic for them, because they don't wanna do it and they're afraid to do it. Okay, well then that was an exposure. Because remember, anytime we get to experience the discomfort and the anxiety and the fear and the sensations and the thoughts, it counts. That's the exposure, not the walk around the block. So if in fact you are triggered just by the thought of committing to walking around the block, and you're gonna have to be creative here and take my walk around the block, I am just hitting this microphone left and right today. I put my hands down, no more talking with my hands. So if you are, you have to take my walk around the block example and move that into what your particular challenge is gonna be, the same principles apply. But if you're completely triggered and you wind up in a panic just by the thought of walking around the block, then just sitting down and putting that in your calendar is exposure enough. You're gonna have to move to that discomfort that gets triggered when you do that. Then it may be, I literally in the book talked about breaking it down into putting your shoes on. If you panic while you're putting your shoes on, then you can practice putting your shoes on for a few days in a row, putting your coat on, standing by the door, opening the door, walking out the door, standing on your front steps. Like it is 100% okay to break it into the tiniest little steps. Those all count, they all matter. Now, here's an important clarification. We don't do it that way so that we can learn how to walk around the block without anxiety. A lot of people will make that mistake. So some people make the mistake of deciding, I don't wanna do baby steps because I'm too impatient for that or I think I can run this over so baby steps isn't for me and they find out that they're wrong. Okay, lesson learned. Some people really embrace baby steps because they think, oh, if I do it little by little in little chunks, that means I will learn a way to do these things without having all these feelings and that's not the goal either. So we don't want to rely on baby steps as a way to avoid like, well, I gotta learn to get back to the supermarket. So I'll just take tiny little steps forward just so I don't panic, it's not that at all because that isn't recovery, that's just learning how to go to the grocery store. Or take a walk around the block. So it's really important, man. It's really important. There's a sweet spot there that says, I don't care how small the step is, you can take baby steps. If those baby steps make you uncomfortable, then that's where you need to be. You just have to take them consistently and be incremental. Now we need to expand them and expand them and expand them, but the small steps all matter. There's no such thing as too small a step. No such thing at all. So long as you find, and this is a little bit of trial and error and especially if you're working with a therapist, you'll sort of find where that sweet spot is and it might take you a little while to know where you have to start and what your challenges have to be. You might think that your challenge is walking around the block only to discover that your challenge is literally tying your shoes. So for me, I thought my challenge was driving around and it was, but I discovered ahead of time that like, holy mackerel, like I'm in a panic just brushing my teeth, getting ready to drive around. So I had to scale that back and start in the preparation for the drive, but it counted. It all mattered in the end. So whatever the smallest step is that triggers you, you know, I hate the word trigger, but whatever the smallest steps are that trigger you are the steps that you can start working on and they all count anytime you move to the discomfort. Just don't dial them back so far that you're trying to do things without discomfort because that isn't really teaching you anything. That is actually teaching you that I must never be uncomfortable. I can't do things if I'm uncomfortable. So that's the point. It's not, it's actually a pretty big chapter because I went into great detail about how to build this walk around the block step by step by step to the point where you actually complete the walk around the block. One interesting thing about this is I was going through the chapter in preparation for doing this video, I remember the day that I wrote this and I wrote a huge amount that day. It was a prolific day in terms of the amount of this book that I wrote that day. And I remember stopping because there's a passage in this chapter in lesson four to four where I talk about the day that comes that you complete the walk around the block and you get closer to the house and you know that you're going to complete it. And that could be a really big emotional moment. And that happens too. So be prepared for those. Sometimes baby steps will trigger some emotions that you did not think would happen. I got emotional writing that. I'm never gonna forget the day that I wrote that because I remember what that felt like. So that's why baby steps matter. We cannot force ourselves to get over this. You can't just decide to not be afraid. These are all the misconceptions. If I could just get past the fear, well, you get past the fear by doing this incrementally and systematically. Now, I wanna point out a little something because there seems to be, and I don't know if this is a US-UK thing or a US-Europe thing, there seems to be some discrepancy sometimes when it comes to the topics of exposure and flooding, especially as it relates to baby steps. So some people will think that an exposure that makes you panic is flooding. And I've been led to believe, and I don't know this for sure, that possibly in the UK or in Europe, they would call that flooding and they would encourage that. And I would encourage that too because I would tell you that panicking during an exposure is not a flooding experience. We kinda need that to happen. So when I say take baby steps and don't flood, I'm not saying try to do it comfortably at all. So it's come to my attention recently that especially if you're in the UK and maybe you've done some traditional CBT there, you might be hearing conflicting things. You're actually saying the same thing. I'm just, when I'm saying don't flood, I'm talking about the huge moonshots. If you've been homebound for the last six months, you don't start your recovery by being duct tape into a car and driven 300 miles from your house for four days, that's flooding. But for some people, they will say that, no, no, the flooding exposure is we wanna trigger the panic. And I would agree with that. They're just calling it flooding where I am not. So that might get a little confusing depending on where you are in the world and who you're working with, but just be aware that we're both talking about the same thing. We're just using the word a little bit differently. Hopefully that helps. So that's where we are on the baby steps thing. We cannot decide to just not be afraid and just rip the Band-Aid off. It almost never works that way. I've seen people who do it that way and will declare that, yes, that's it. I'm done, I'm recovered, I overcame it. And there have been instances where it does work. I have seen it work. It's not impossible. It just rarely works that way. Usually even some initial success winds up in a backslide or what they will call a backslide a few months later when things get a little rocky because they didn't really get the chance to practice enough. So that can happen. Now, again, I will acknowledge, I have known a handful of people who did do it that way. They weren't started at a different place though. I would urge you to not try to recover in giant leaps in two weeks. It's just, it's gonna get you frustrated. It's not gonna happen. So baby stepping is totally fine and just keep your baby stepping realistic. Baby stepping also has to be uncomfortable. So the steps can be tiny and they count even when they're tiny, but they're also gonna be uncomfortable, right? Really important. So let's head into the comments and see what we got. We'll answer some questions. I'd scroll up a bit. I think we are, oh, we got 61 people here. I think the time change did kind of mess stuff up. Let's see here. No, no, no, no, no. Donna's babysitting. Hey, Donna, what's going on? Donna's comment. Babysitting, you run your own grab baby. That's so great, right? Donna is a, well, one year old. Like I could have sworn she was literally born last week. So time is totally flying. Good for you. Donna is a great example of somebody who has sort of baby stepped or little stepped. Baby steps, sometimes people don't like that. Like, oh, I don't wanna take baby steps. Okay, but Donna was very systematic and incremental. She walked and then walked more and then some more and then more and then started doing other things more and more and more and then here she is. So great textbook example of how that process works. So good job, Donna. I hope you're enjoying. Tell CC we said hi. So let's see here. No, no, no, no, no, no. Don't hear anything when I hit the mic. Good deal. Okay. All right, ready? Let's pop this up on the screen. Maria, how are you? Could the same pattern of small steps and anxiety recovery work on depression too? Well, okay, depression is related but is also a little bit different. We always try to challenge depression. We activate, we get moving and sometimes with depression, look, I have experienced depression three times in my life and I can tell you that sometimes the small steps were all I could do but it counts because when you think you could do nothing but lay on the sofa or lay in bed and you just, that's it, I can't do anything. Just getting up and dressing yourself and washing yourself and feeding yourself counts on those days. So yes, sometimes with true episodes of depression, the small steps are about all we can handle but those small steps feel huge but they 100% count. I'm gonna do a podcast episode about how I handle depression very shortly. It's gonna come up in the next six or eight weeks, I think. I don't talk about that. So the small steps when you're dealing with depression, actual depression, I'm gonna talk about being afraid that you are gonna be depressed or just being sad. It does count and sometimes the small steps are the most important ones, most important. So let's see here. Hiram's here, what up, dude? Let's see, are we talking for a few days? Are we talking weeks or months? I'm not sure the question but I will tell you that recovery does not happen in two weeks. You might work on this for months and months. I was a maniac, like I was an anomaly. I went out and drove every single day and didn't get myself any days off and I would say it took me a good six months to get to the point where I would say I'm 60, 70, 75% done. You just gotta do what you gotta do for as long as you gotta do it. There's no timeframe. I can't tell you how long it's gonna take you but I would almost guarantee you that it's not measured in a couple of weeks. It's only measured in days at all. You just have to be consistent. Consistency is the key all the time. No, no, no, no, no, no. Let's see here. Put this up. Sorry, I can't see your name because Reece Trine doesn't know your name in the Facebook group. My mother starts radiotherapy tomorrow. That's super stressful. I'm sorry, again, I can't see your name but that's stressful. Heart rate is 115. Gotta remind myself it's anxiety. That doesn't have anything to do with baby steps but that is really normal, man. Like any of us would be anxious over that stuff. So I hope it works out for your mom and I'm good for you recognizing that it is anxiety but that's normal anxiety. Just remember the difference in that situation between I'm just normally stressed and anxious like any healthy human would be. Okay, there's that part. Now I'm afraid of how I feel. That's the disordered part and that's the part that we can sort of work on. That's part we're always working on. Let's see, Seattle, what's up? Hello, hello. Oh, let's put this up here. Always good to see these. Finally, face my fear. I said, no matter what I take this new medication I'm gonna be uncomfortable. I took it three times. Still freaked out but I decided it won't wait any longer. Good job. Well, well, well done and look, I know how scary that is. So this counts in this situation taking that medication that you were so afraid to take was just like the agoraphobic that walks out the door to start walking around their blocks. So well done. Well done. Very good. Marina's here, what up? Oh, this is good. I'm gonna put this up on the screen. Comments are also big today. Baby steps are most effective but as a baby we need hundreds and hundreds. Okay, this is good. This is a really good comment. So what our friend Marina's talking about here is repetition. Like repetition matters. Now a baby does take hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of steps to learn how to get more stable in their feet. In a way, the analogy applies because a lot of people somehow think like, well, okay, I've been out four days in a row. I should be good to go now, right? Well, no, unfortunately, no. Repetition, repetition, repetition. You know when you're good to go when you stop having to ask if you're good to go. Believe it or not, some of this is the habituation response which is what is scary and difficult. It just becomes normal. That's habituation. But we're also after the learning that's like, oh, well, I guess I'm good to go because no matter what happens, I'm okay. That's the real lesson that we want. Not just getting used to it. We want the lesson that even if I do panic and I'm uncomfortable, I'm okay. And we need that lesson again and again and again and again. Again, because the threat response should be easy to activate and hard to turn off which it is. Unfortunately for us, it is. But in the event that you actually need that threat response in true danger, we actually want it to be that way. So again, sucks. Sometimes bad design. Maybe there'll be human 2.0 in another million years and we'll have this fixed. I don't know. Let's see here. I'll put this up for Carol. How do you do baby steps to go to the dentist? Okay, this is super common question. People, and I can relate this question not only to the dentist, but to other stuff too. So people will ask, how do I baby step the dentist? How do I baby step flying? How do I baby step going back to work? Part of it is understanding that the baby steps are not everything is baby stepable. First of all, the answer is, how do you baby step the dentist? You don't because the dentist is in a thing that you go to all the time. But for a lot of people that are afraid of the dentist or a doctor's appointment or flying, first of all, you have to ask yourself, am I just afraid of the dentist? Which many, many people are. Many people are afraid to fly. Many people have a bit of a phobia about going to the dentist or a doctor. So do I have that? Okay, that's one problem. But then the other problem that I add on top of that is I'm afraid that I might panic at the dentist. So which problem are you after? If you're just afraid of the dentist, which many, many people are, that's a different problem. You could bring that up with the dentist. I mean, there's even sedation dentistry. There's a lot of ways to approach that, but you can't practice a dental appointment. But what you can practice is being uncomfortable. So most people who are freaking out over a dental apartment or an eye exam or a haircut or a medical exam or a flight, any situation where they're trapped, you can't leave, you can't get to safety when you think you have to, is usually the big concern there. We practice being in the discomfort. So the more you practice going through uncomfortable situations, the less you even care about possible panic at the dentist. I mean, nobody wants a panic at the dentist. It's not a pleasant experience for anybody. But the more we practice and show ourselves through those repeated baby steps that, oh, I can panic and still be okay no matter where I am, then the fact that you might panic at the dentist doesn't become a disastrous idea that like, oh my God, I'm crushed by the idea that I might panic at the dentist. You won't want to and you'll still be nervous and apprehensive, but the trick is always to get better at knowing that I'm okay when I panic no matter where I am. But always be mindful of those two different things. Some people who just have a fear of flying. I was a fearful flyer for a long time. I still don't love it. But I had an anxiety disorder and I also was a fearful flyer. I had to separate those two things. So it's important to know that, okay? Let's see. No, no, no, no. Hey, Kim, what do you do when you're uncomfortable at home? You practice being uncomfortable at home. Like I'm not trying to be glib about that, but what do you do when you're uncomfortable at home? They'll then home is where you practice. The baby steps again, as I said earlier on, and all of recovery is about learning that we can move through the discomfort. Discomfort doesn't mean disaster. So just because it might happen at home, it might happen out, it might happen on vacation, it might happen at the dentist wherever, we always need to learn no matter where we are. It doesn't matter. I know that you will say that discomfort at home is different because where's my escape? It's my escape or safe place and I don't have that. Every place is your safe place. You are safe even when you are uncomfortable. And the recovery is the process of learning that lesson. So even if you're uncomfortable at home, it's okay. It's not a special kind of discomfort. Okay, I'm gonna have to practice being uncomfortable at home. That's all right. It can happen. I don't wanna cough in your ear. Let's see here. GBG says, grease bail a garage. A lot of my triggers seem to be associated with people, but I baby stepped back around them in activities with other self-healing. Okay, so it's really good. The activities don't bother me anymore. Again, it can almost be applied to anything. So you can baby step toward anything. Every time I say the word baby steps, and I'm guessing a lot of you guys are gonna know this, but there's the movie, What About Bob? And if you have never seen What About Bob, you must watch What About Bob. Just for anybody who's dealing with an anxiety disorder, it's almost required watching. It's like a required textbook. So what about Bob? Baby stepping, baby step through the lobby, baby steps, baby steps. So the Bill Murray character baby steps through the whole thing, which is humorous the way they did it, but it's true. You can baby step your way toward almost anything, almost any of these challenges, whatever it is you're afraid of, you can break them down bit by bit and practice it, practice how it has to be. I'm doing the work, I'm baby stepping. I need, I need, some day I keep saying this when I have nothing better to do. If anybody, I asked Jay, he's in the movie business. You guys remember Jay maybe. If anybody's in the business of that, like someday I have to reach out to whoever owns that movie and ask for permission to stream it once. And we'll stream it and we'll all watch it together. Maybe they'll let me do it because it's sort of educational, I don't know. Probably not, because they're greedy bastards, but we'll see. But what about Bob is one of my all-time favorites? Let's see here, Jax is here. No, no, no, no, yes. I've been exhausted lately, so I haven't done anything. Dealing with DPDDR today with that count as an exposure. So Jax, any time that you are confronted with discomfort in any context, 100% counts. 100% counts. So you might be doing very little today for whatever reason, you're tired, you need to break nothing wrong with that. But yes, anytime you have to confront that discomfort and move through it, which today for you is DPDDR, and I know how difficult that is, it counts, totally counts. Anytime you practice being uncomfortable, it counts, no matter how small it is. Let's see what does Katya have to say. I now have to do an express recovery to the situation here. Katya is in Russia and it's difficult there too. So yes, we feel for you. It bothers me, but the issue is from overlap, my anxiety. I didn't plan my exposure to the process in a street, but here we are, wow, okay, that's badass right there. I'm good for you. This is just a difficult situation for everybody right now, including some of the people in Russia. Just remember that Katya has not decided to do this. It's not her war. So good luck to you, my friend, hang in there. Let's see here. How do you approach baby steps when you're dealing with more than one issue like OCD, anxiety, DPDDR, each one feeds it. Okay, each one feeds into the other, I would say is your red flag there. Okay, I'm not sure. So your assertion is if I get DPDDR, then I'm completely out of control and therefore I must react in an out of control way and allow my anxiety to kick off, which then will make me more susceptible to those OCD tendencies, which we know. We can acknowledge that. When you're more anxious and under stress, the OCD is gonna seem a whole lot stronger and have more of a grip on you. We know this, pretty common. But be careful about deciding that they are, they're just connected and there's nothing I could do about that. Anytime you get to practice being uncomfortable, it counts. So be careful about the assertion that like, well, this doesn't count for me because if I have a forbid I feel DPDDR, then everything else is off the table. That's not true. Then at that moment, you're gonna have to practice working through the DPDDR or the anxiety spike. Or you're gonna have to resist your compulsions in that moment. So I understand it may feel like there's much more work going on, but I will tell you that for many members of this community, there are multiple. Very few people have, I just have panic disorder. I only have agoraphobia. A lot of people will exhibit signs and symptoms of all of the, we might not all meet to diagnose the criteria. So for instance, I've said this many times, I bet that in 2008, if I had gone to see 10 different qualified clinicians, probably half of them would have said that I had OCD. Half of them would not have. So it's important to recognize that when we are dealing with these particular problems, whatever your primary might be, we get characteristics of all the different variants of anxiety disorders often coexist together. So that's not necessarily a unique situation. So be aware of that. Let's see here, obligatory hello from Twitch, my one Twitch viewer, I'm always had to bring it out because I'm never gonna be a Twitch person, but that's all right. Let's see here. Yep, I'm gonna put this on the screen. Jen, I've read so many times 20, 60 minutes, right? We're almost done. That a full-blown panic attack will last only 15 minutes. Do you think that is true? I 100% don't believe I know that it's true. I would have told you back in the day that my panic attacks went on for hours and hours and hours and hours. In reality, what's happening is you're in a sort of an undulating wave of adrenaline and cortisol and fear. So it spikes and then it comes back down because that's what your body does. It cannot panic continuously for hours. It comes back down and then you're afraid and you're in a heightened state of alert and oh my God, is it gone? Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God. And so we're up and ramps back up again. So you're on this roller coaster of up and down and up and down and up and down. When you do not go into OMGOMG, OMGOMG on panicking, is it over? Is it over? It has to be over. Oh my God, what do I do? Then it peaks and it ends. And I think I'll let any people in the comments who are watching, like when you get to the point where you can move through that, I can tell you that a panic attack, the actual panic attack for me never lasts any more than 10 minutes. I might have one or two a year. I haven't had one a long time now, but maybe 10 minutes. And then there's the 30 minutes afterwards where there's still that chemical over, you're like sort of hangover where you're a little bit shaky. In those moments, in the old days, it would end and in that shaky time, I would be so afraid of it ramping back up again that it would, but that was again, it wasn't a continuous panic attack. It was me being afraid that it might not be over. And now, I don't care if it's over, it's not over. So therefore it is over much faster. So yes, they do last that little. There's physiology underneath that and physiology is luckily pretty much the same in a relatively narrow range across most human beings. Okay, let's see, we're doing pretty good here. I can almost get to all the comments that I am digging it. Would my cycling to that point along the road and stopping at that point and bathing is that a good step? Yeah, I think that's a perfectly fine step. You can do it a bunch of different ways. Some people will just say, I always say try to make it measurable and objective if you can. So my goal today is I'm going to cycle to whatever point. And I'm going to either you're gonna make a big loop and keep going, but what you don't wanna do, the only thing you don't really wanna do is hit the goal, hit the button at the goal and then immediately run back home. So I would say that even when you're baby stepping, you'd never wanna do those hit and runs, I made it like the old standby is always the post box, the mailbox, wherever you call it, wherever you live. Everybody wants to walk to the mailbox. And when I was doing my initial recovery work, everybody was doing mailbox videos on YouTube. It's how we all get to know each other, except me, I didn't have to mail anything. But like getting to there, look, I made it, I touched the mailbox and then I run home. You just don't wanna do that. So it's totally okay to say I'm gonna cycle to this point, I'm gonna sit here for five minutes today. And at the end of five minutes, I will exit the exposure and head back home on my own terms. 100% counts, that's a huge win. So yeah, do it that way, it's good. Let's see here. I have obsessive thoughts, should I just let the thoughts be in the background? I feel as if I noticed them, it is a compulsion. Well, it's not a compulsion to notice your thoughts, we all notice our thoughts. So yes, your job is to let them just sit there without engaging in a compulsive response, right? So yes, that's true. But it's okay to notice them, we would all notice them. That's an important point, whether it's symptoms or thoughts or whatever it happens to be that you guys are dealing with, like you can't just decide to pretend they don't exist. Some people think that part of this process is that you could just turn it off or somehow just, I'm gonna ignore it as if it doesn't exist. You couldn't do that if I paid you to do it. So you'll always notice the thought, that's okay. It's just what you do after you notice it that we care about. Hopefully that helps. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Let's see here, you just answered my question. Okay, dude, no problem. I'd answered your question without even knowing. Let's see, Kathy from Kentucky, what up? I consider myself in recovery from agoraphobia like people, blah, blah, blah. The day I decide I'm recovered, I'll drop my guard and it could happen again. Okay, this is, thank you for bringing that up. This is also super common, what guard? In the end, what guard? So the reason why you would say in recovery, this is a good discussion. We could have a discussion all just about this by itself, I'm in recovery is I'm learning to not relate to my anxiety and panic that way. So think of it that way, as opposed to thinking of it in recovery, like somebody with substance abuse problems might have, I know we all use that word, but think of it as I'm forming a new relationship with anxiety and panic, because that's really what it is. I'm learning to relate in a new way to anxiety and panic and fear. So when you build that new relationship, the more you leave the old relationship behind and build the new one, there's no such thing as a guard. You don't have a guard anymore. So you won't let your guard down. You're literally learning to live without the guard every day. I don't know if that makes sense, but the way you're conceptualizing that is if somehow or other your recovery is teaching you how to fend it off, it's not. You're actually teaching it to come on in when it needs to, sit down next to you and chill out until it leaves. And so when you do that, you're not trying to lock the door and hold it out anymore and keep it out of the invaders out at the city gates, then there is no more being on guard. I'm not on guard anymore against anything. I don't have a guard to let down. That guard was dismantled a long time ago. Hopefully that helps, Kath. Let's see. My baby steps are, okay, this is good too. And this is that acceleration that tends to happen. This is so weird because I've seen across many, many thousands of people now, you start to see patterns. So some people start really slow and then begin to accelerate. And it appears that that's what's going on for you. As you get more consistent, these baby steps are additive. So when you get really good at taking tiny little steps, they start to add up to bigger and bigger steps. That's true. Now, some people are the opposite way. They start really slow and they accelerate. Some people make big jumps forward in the first two or three weeks and discover, oh, this is harder than I thought. And then they have to slow down and get into that groove. Either way, it can vary for sure. But everything is additive. And when it is additive and the early steps begin to form a foundation for later steps, then yes, most people will find that you accelerate your progress as you go. That's why a lot of people will think, well, I'm homebound now, it's gonna take me 15 years to get back to like New York City, like where I lived, you get back in New York City. Well, no, that wasn't true at all because you accelerate over time. Every lesson adds, it brings you to the lesson before. So the steps you take in the beginning, you're standing on. You don't keep going back to the beginning every time you have to do something bigger. You're always ahead of the game. So that's the acceleration. Let's see, look at this, we're just about at the bottom. Almost, all right, so I'm gonna try and catch up and then we will end this, because we're at about 33 minutes is about right for me. Holly says, what up Holly? When you have mastered going to one certain place and you have been agoraphobic, how do you know when the next step, I still can't shop or go into buildings? Do I keep going to the same spot? No, if a thing becomes comfortable to you, so when I was okay then driving in a little two block radius around my house, it was time to go forward. I didn't want to because it was scary to go forward and every time you make the next step to something that you claim you can't do, you will have an increase in discomfort, but that's okay because the experiences that you had at the smaller steps should help you go through that next step. So how do you know when it's time, when it becomes easy? Honestly, how do you know when it's time to move forward? And you kind of know that it's time to move forward, but you're hoping that you don't have to. It tends to be when you know it's time to move forward. When you could do a thing reasonably consistently without that much distress or discomfort, it's time to go to something bigger. And yes, that will be difficult, Holly. It will be, you'll have that increase in discomfort again when you go to the next level, but that's okay. You were uncomfortable in the small level too, so you'll get there. Okay, it was a dentist thing, that's true. A lot of people do that. Dentists are so used to people being terrified of them. Like I think if you're a dentist, you have a huge complex because everybody's afraid of you. So many dentists are super nice and they will let you sit and sit in the waiting room. I mean, it's people who have done it even without asking. They'll literally just drive to the dentist, sit in the parking lot as baby steps or sit in the waiting room as baby steps. Sometimes you tell the people, like, listen, I'm afraid, I just want to sit here for a little while. But you're usually really, you're super used to it. So many people are afraid of the dentist. Again, or people that probably have a complex. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Let's see. Okay. I'm sorry, I'm just going to read through these and see what I can do. This is another, so many big comments. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. I tried flooding three hours after my very soprano. It was back on the bus where it happened an hour later, the highway day after that, the train. It worked for a little bit. Yeah, and that's what I mean. It totally can work for a little bit. I'm not saying that it's impossible. And again, I've known a handful of people who have taken that approach. But I think in almost every case, they've started in a little bit of a different place. It can work a little bit, but then it does sometimes come to bite you in the butt, as you can see. So thank you for sharing that. I appreciate that. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, let's see. Working on baby steps. Okay, let's see here. I can't put them all up on the screen, so we're getting there. Happy Pi Day. Oh yeah, it's March 14th, 3.14. How many, no, let's say you can Google it, but how many places do you know Pi? I used to know like 22 places of Pi, because of course I did. What's just ridiculous, like that's me. Let's see. Ooh, this is good. Replace, I can't with, I'm learning to, very important. I can't see your name, sorry, because of the re-stream thing, but thank you, that's a super important comment. I can't go shopping. I can't go into the shops. I can't go into big buildings. I'm learning a new relationship with anxiety and fear, so I am learning to do those things again. That's really important, as opposed to I can't or finish with I can't now. Do I have sound effects, scrolling sound effects? That's probably super annoying if you have headphones on. So, all right, I think we're good to go here. So thanks guys, I appreciate it, 37 minutes. We did it, that's about our average. Next week, we're gonna talk about, today we're talking about Baby Steps. Next week, we're gonna talk about breaking things into small pieces. The next, you'd think I would know this since I wrote the damn book. I don't know what the chapters are. Okay, the next lesson next week will be about the fact that you are working within a plan and a system. And oh my God, I cannot believe I wrote this. It's in the actual title, The Lesson, A Method. Ugh, just kill me. How did I write method? Because I always say that this is not a method. It's not the true method. Remember, I didn't invent any of this stuff. I just appear to be really good at explaining it and teaching it. So next week, we're gonna talk about that. The fact that you are working within a framework. There's a reason for this. In a way, always understand, if you don't understand why we're doing this and the system you're working in, it can get confusing and frustrating. So next week, we're gonna talk about that. It's the whole like there's a method to the madness. So don't lose sight of that. So that's what we're gonna do next week. So thanks you guys, thanks for coming by. Appreciate it. Again, if you do not have a copy of this book and you wanna copy the book, you can find that on my website at the anxioustruth.com. So go check it out. If you have it and you dig it, then maybe review it on Amazon because that always helps me out. And that's it. We'll be here again next week. Same time, same bat channel. Remember that the time has changed although I think you guys caught up in the end. So this is the same time next week because we're gonna do it. We will see you guys next week. Thanks for all the comments. Take care.