 Welcome to the anxious morning, where each weekday morning we take a look at ideas, concepts, and lessons designed to help you understand and overcome your anxiety. For more information, visit us at theanxiousmorning.com. We all know that recovery is not linear. There are ups and downs and you will get frustrated, discouraged, and upset sometimes. Sometimes, when meeting challenges and doing exposures, you will fail. Maybe you couldn't sit through the panic so you ran. Maybe you called for help or went to the emergency room or took your rescue medication to get through it. The specifics don't matter. What does matter is that even in what you call failure, there are lessons and there is value. However, if you fall into the trap of beating yourself up, berating yourself, and calling yourself names, you will miss those lessons and completely lose out on the value of the experience. The biggest mistake you can make when you fail is to glue yourself to that failure and to use it to define your worth as a person. I hate myself. I am a failure. What kind of mother does this? What's wrong with me? These are all common statements of self-loathing and harsh judgment that we hear in the community when our friends experience failure or disappointment in recovery. Have you done this to yourself? Have you failed, then lashed out at yourself and declared yourself broken, unworthy, less than or awful in some way? I know that the recovery process can get emotional at times. Big feelings are going to arise and we all make emotionally fueled mistakes that can sometimes lead us to be less than nice to ourselves. That's going to happen. The trick is to catch it when it does. If we start from the premise that failing at an exposure or recovery challenge does not in any way define who you are, it does not diminish your value as a human. If we start from there, we can then say that spending the next day or two beating up on yourself is pointless because it amounts to just telling a story out loud that isn't in any way true. If someone you love stumbles while beating a challenge, would you say bad things about them and call them broken? Of course you wouldn't because you know that it's not true. Really, ranting and raving about being the worst parent in the world, for example, serves only to temporarily soothe your pain when you say it out loud and especially when you get others to respond with sympathy and reassurance, you get a little relief from that sense of failure. Nobody would blame you for wanting that, but you can get that without the self-flagellation if you start from the premise that failing feels crappy but doesn't define who you are. There are two steps we can take to avoid falling into the beating ourselves up trap. One is speaking about ourselves objectively and with kindness. The other is looking at failure as something you did, not something you are. Tomorrow we'll finish this discussion by walking through those steps to see what they look like. If you're enjoying The Anxious Morning and you'd like to get a copy of the podcast delivered into your email inbox every morning, visit theanxiousmorning.email and subscribe to the newsletter. If you're listening on Apple or iTunes, take a second and leave a five-star rating, maybe write a small review, it really helps me out. And finally, if you find my work useful and you'd like to help keep it free of advertising and sponsorships, you can see all the ways to support the work at theanxioustruth.com slash support. Thanks so much.