 Today on The Anxious Truth, we're talking about exposures and exposure therapy. Specifically, we're talking about the two primary ingredients of effective and successful exposures and why you might be missing one or both of those without even knowing it. So let's get cooking. Hello, everybody. Welcome back to The Anxious Truth. This is podcast episode number 192, 192 recorded January of 2022. If you are new to the podcast or to the YouTube channel, I am Drew Linsolati, creator and host of The Anxious Truth. This is the podcast that talks about all things, anxiety and anxiety recovery. So if you are struggling with things like panic attacks or panic disorder or agoraphobia, this is the place for you. I am happy that you are here. Welcome. If you are a returning listener or a returning viewer, of course, I'm happy you're here too. Welcome back. Today, we're going to talk about the two ingredients of successful and effective exposure and where the most common mistakes are in putting those ingredients together. Before we get into it, just a very quick reminder, this The Anxious Truth is more than just this podcast episode or this video that you're watching right now. There is seven years worth of free podcast episodes. There's a free email newsletter that comes out every morning with recovery information, lessons and tips. There's all my social media stream and there are three books that I've written. So I urge you to go over to TheAnxiousTruth.com and check out all the resources. Check out the books. They're very useful. They're good books. I'm proud of them and they're helping a lot of people. If you haven't checked them out already, go ahead and do that. At a minimum, go look at all the free stuff that I have to offer. Subscribe to The Anxious Morning email. It's right there on the homepage of the website. Yeah, go avail yourself of everything that I have out there. It's more than just this podcast episode to help you with your recovery. And if you really dig my work and you want to find some way to support it, you can do that at TheAnxiousTruth.com slash support. And whether you support me morally or you're just cheering for me or you're supporting financially in some way, thank you very much. I appreciate all of it and all of you. So let's get into the topic. Exposure, specifically the two important ingredients of effective and useful exposures. So before we get into it, exposure, what is it? I assume that if you're listening to this podcast episode, you have a pretty good idea what exposure is already. But exposure in a nutshell is the act of intentionally putting yourself into situations that trigger uncomfortable feelings, anxiety, panic, all the sensations, the thoughts that come with it, fear, vulnerability, discomfort, all those things, uncertainty. So exposure is what we do when we intentionally trigger those things. Sounds crazy, right? But that is what we do. And that is really a primary ingredient in terms of the way out and recovery. So if you're not sure exactly what exposure even means, by all means, head on over to TheAnxiousTruth.com, use the search tool on the website, and just put in the word exposure. You're going to get buried in information. There's a ton. I've written a lot, I've spoken a lot. It's in TheAnxiousTruth, my main recovery guide. If you need to learn about that, head on over to my website and search for exposure and you'll see what it is. But assuming that you know what it is, let's talk about why you might be like, okay, I know what it is and I'm doing it, but I'm not making any progress. Let's look at those two main ingredients of effective and successful exposures. The first, they are willingness and acceptance. Let's look at willingness first because it's the first one that we need to develop. And it's also the easiest one to deal with. Willingness just means you are actually willing to go and do these intentionally difficult, scary things that will trigger you. Air quotes trigger. That's willingness. Now, willingness comes in degrees. So in the beginning, when most people hear me talk about this sort of stuff, they're like, no, no, no, that's clearly not for me. I'm not going to do that. That's crazy. Those people are unwilling and everybody starts being unwilling. I get that. If these are new concepts to you, you're like, yeah, no, I'm not doing that. And I don't blame you in the least everybody starts that way. So it's okay. But when you do start to become willing, usually it's like, okay, fine. Like it appears that I have no choice. I'm going to have to do it this way. Let's do it. Okay. So you start to build a little willingness, but sometimes willingness comes in a spectrum. And at first you're willing and you're doing stuff, but you might only be doing it once in a while, either when life makes you do it. Like generally speaking, you're not going to do scary things, but when life makes you do them. Okay, Drew said I have to do exposures. I'll go do this thing. So you're only doing it when life makes you do it or you're waiting for the days where you feel good enough. Okay, this is a good day. So I'll go and take a walk to the park or I'll drive on the highway or whatever your exposure happens to be in your particular circumstance. That's really common. So we really want to define the first ingredient of willingness, full willingness when you can say, yeah, I'm really willing now is you've decided, okay, I'm going to have to do it this way. And you're doing it consistently and regularly. So willingness sometimes starts by looking like, okay, he said, I got to do it. So I'm going to go to this dentist appointment, even though I haven't left my house in three weeks, and you just sort of power through that and you call that exposure. But then you don't do anything for another two weeks. Yes, you were willing to do that. And maybe that was different than the way you used to do it. And that's great. Full credit for that fist bump for that boom you deserve it. However, that's only the beginning of willingness. You are fully willing when you say this is the way I have to do this. I don't want it to be that way because it's unpleasant. I feel you we all we all agree with that. This is the way I have to do it. And I'm going to do the work consistently. I'm doing on a regular schedule. I'm going to do this work every day. Even when I don't feel good, I'm going to do this work. I'm not going to wait for good days. I'm just going to wait. I'm not going to wait until life makes me do it. I'm going to be willing to intentionally do these exercises that I know I have to do pretty much every day. Right? I'm going to follow the schedule of my therapist, the counsel I gave me, do my homework, I'm going to do my exposures all the time. Okay, excellent. That's willingness. So if you say, well, I'm willing, but you're only doing it sporadically here and there, you start, you stop, you only wait for life to make you do exposures. It's not really exposure. I call it interruptive, interrupted avoidance. Or you're only doing your exposures or meeting those challenges on the good days. If you feel good enough, but then you retreat on the bad days, you're willing. You're just not all the way willing. So you got to get to the point where you are all the way willing. This is the work I have to do all the time consistently, even on the days when I really don't want to or I feel like I can't. So that's the first ingredient, willingness. And it takes all of us a while to develop full willingness. So if you're not there yet, and you're working on that, I get you. It's okay. It's really, it's okay. You're not failing. You're not doing anything wrong. You're just following the same path that most people follow as they go through this process. They start by like, I'm not willing at all. Then you get to like, okay, fine, I'll do it. But you do a little bit here and there, then a little more than a little more. And then you realize like, I get to do this all the time. So I get that if you're not at that point yet and you're still kind of like resisting it, I get it. You're developing your willingness. It'll come over time. Just keep going. Once you've got the willingness part down, yep, I'm willing to do this. I'm going to do this every day. Great. Second part, acceptance. Now, I know this is a word that causes a lot of confusion. We talk about it all the time. I've probably spoken hundreds of hours behind this microphone about the word acceptance. But in this context, I want us to look at acceptance this way. You, I just have to, when I am now willing to go and do this work every day, now I have to be accepting of the fact that I'm doing a scary thing. And so it will be scary. I'm doing a difficult thing or a challenging thing. It will be challenging. That is acceptance in terms of that second ingredient of a successful and effective exposure. I'm willing to do it. And I'm accepting of the fact that I will feel afraid, uncertain, vulnerable, challenged, whatever it is, anxious, panicked. I will feel those things when I do this. And I will do my very best to practice navigating through them, as opposed to trying to suppress them, stop them or run away from them. That is acceptance in the context of exposure. So a lot of people get to the point where they are willing and they've developed just about that full willingness, but they're still not really there on the acceptance. Here's an example, a quick example for you would be the agoraphobic who says, okay, I know that I have to start getting out of walking. So I'm going to do that. And they do it once in a while at first, then they realize this isn't really helping me or they learn more about it, like I got to do all the time, then they decide, I'm going to take a walk every day. And that's great. Except when they do their walk, they load themselves up with safety devices, the phone, they're talking to a friend, they're doing all that. Really, my phone decided now was the time. Sorry about that. So yeah, they load themselves up with safety devices and avoidances, or they literally will hit the eject button and run away from the exposure as soon as the panic begins to rise, they're halfway around the block. Nope, I'm going home, I'm out. And then they do the same thing day to day to day, and they can't figure out how to do this. Like I want to do it, but it's not working because I keep panicking. Correct. You might panic when you do an exposure. So that's somebody who's got willingness down pat, but not so much in the acceptance. That's extremely common. Or another example might be the person with, say, social anxiety. Somebody has social anxiety decides, okay, yeah, I'm going to this time, I'm going to say yes, I'm going to go meet my friends for dinner, whatever it happens to be. And they get there and then that anxiety starts to rise and they hit the eject button and they run to the restroom and they they hang out there for 10 minutes and then come back and then no, I don't like this and they make an excuse. I'm sorry, I'm not feeling so great or hey, my boyfriend called and I got to leave. And they leave. So that was a willingness, but it was not they were not accepting. So if you are going into the exposures, hoping that you will be able to either power through them, or wiggle through them and find a way to do them without feeling the scary things or the challenging things, or you are literally ejecting and bailing on the exposure as soon as you feel them, then you only have half the equation. Now you have the willingness, but you don't have the acceptance. So when people wind up in a situation where they will say, I'm doing all the things, but true, I do all the things, I'm doing things, but I'm not getting any better. Many times it's because the acceptance part of that equation is not really up to where it's supposed to be, right? So they're powering through or they're wiggling through. And I know a lot of people that will say, yeah, I'm doing I was doing great. I was doing all my exposures for three weeks. I had no panic, because they're doing the expo that doesn't mean you have to panic. But I say something really important in a second, but they'll say like, yeah, and I was great. I was doing him and I didn't really have a lot of anxiety. But today, I took my walk and I've taken that walk for three weeks in a row. But today I felt really panicky and feels like such a setback and I'm back to square one. No, not really. Because the exposure is meant to expose yourself to the panic, to the fear, to the symptoms, to all the things that you fear. The word exposure is not exposure to the highway. It's not exposure to social situations. It's not exposure to scary health ideas. If you have a lot of anxiety, the exposure is to how you feel. It's to the fear. So when we do exposure, we're exposing ourselves not to a context or situation or task, we're exposing ourselves to the fear and the discomfort and the anxiety and the vulnerability and the uncertainty and all those things that come up in those contexts. So that is the important part. And when you do scary things, you will in fact be scared. So people with panic disorder or agoraphobia will often ask, well, do I have to panic to recover? And the answer to that in a nutshell, which kind of sums all this up, is you don't necessarily have to panic to recover, but you have to be willing to panic to recover that much, I am sure of. So the two effective, the two ingredients, the two key ingredients of effective and successful exposures that actually lead somewhere, although bit by bit, they don't lead places in big chunks. Unfortunately, we'll talk about that in a second. But those two ingredients of successful and effective exposures are willingness. I'm willing to do this. And I know why I'm doing it. I understand why I'm doing it. I'm going to do it. I'm going to do these things consistently all the time and acceptance. And when I do them, I know that I'm literally doing these things to intentionally expose myself to all those uncomfortable feelings of fear and anxiety and panic that I've been avoiding for so long. Willingness and acceptance. Now, and like I said, if you are either kind of sporadically doing exposure, that would certainly explain why you feel like you're stuck and it's not working. This isn't working for me yet. Well, if you're only sporadically doing it, and people who only sporadically do exposures definitely aren't willing yet or fully willing, and they almost universally do not have the acceptance part down. Like in a way, the willingness, the full willingness almost always comes before the full acceptance. And then it's just probably mechanically, that's okay. This is all okay. So if you're listening to me right now and you're in that stage, where it's like, well, yeah, I'm kind of doing hit and run exposures when I feel like it, man, I'm feeling called out. People always joke of me like, I feel personally attacked by your podcast. It's okay, if you're along the path and you're just moving forward, keep moving forward, it's okay, you're gonna get there. But if you are sporadically doing it, you got to work on your willingness, work on that first, and then you're gonna have to work on your full acceptance. And in many cases, then my favorite word surrender begins to come in. So you have to be accepting of the fact that the exposure will put you face to face. Intentionally, that is the point of it. With the things that you fear, the sensations and the thoughts and all of those things, the anxiety, the panic, all that, it will put you face to face with those things on purpose. It's why we do it. And now you must surrender to those things willfully tolerate flow through whatever your favorite word is that's outside the scope of this episode, we talked about this stuff over and over and over. But you have to be accepting of the fact that that's the way it's going to look. All right, so if you feel like I am doing exposures, I'm doing the things, but it's not working. These are two things to really think about how willing am I am to am I to do this work. Sometimes it takes a while to get to and how accepting am I of what this work is really going to look like. Or am I trying to say I do want to do the work, but I kind of want to do it without feeling the scary things. I want to find a way to engineer my way to learn how to drive on the highway without being anxious. You really and I'll wrap it up here and I'll use the driving on the highway example as my illustration. Willingness and acceptance means I'm going to go drive on this highway, even though I'm having a really bad day. And I know that my job is to learn how to drive on the highway while I am afraid on the highway. I'm going to go walk to the park while I'm afraid of walking to the park. That's the point. That's the acceptance. So that's what successful and effective exposures look like in terms of willingness and acceptance. If you don't have both of those ingredients, you begin to struggle. You don't understand why this is why isn't this working for me? Why isn't it working? Or sometimes what happens is people will use the approach where they're very willing, but they don't really have the acceptance down and they engineer like a sort of anxiety free thing. Hey, I learned how to go to the supermarket and pick my kids up from school without panicking. I'm doing great. But then the one day that they do experience panic or near panic and suddenly they don't understand what's going on like, oh my God, I'm broken again. Yeah, because you what you did is you found a way to wiggle through your exposures little by little until you learned how to kind of just sort of get through them and skirt around the issue. Pretty common. So that's it. That is episode number 192, which is the ingredients of effective exposure, willingness and acceptance. Hopefully this has been helpful to you. And yeah, that's it. I'm not going to belay you with a point too much longer than that. So thanks for coming, guys. I appreciate that. I will play you out as always with Afterglow. Here it is by my buddy Ben Drake. Thank you, Ben, for letting me use the song. You guys can find Ben and his music at bendrakemusic.com. I say it every week, go check it out. He's good. He's talented, man. If you're listening to this podcast on iTunes or Spotify or any place that lets you write a review or leave a rating, please leave a five star rating and write a little review for the podcast. And if you're watching on YouTube, then please like hit the subscribe button and like the video. Like this is a pain in the butt putting them on YouTube ain't going to lie. So hopefully if you're watching YouTube, you're enjoying them and get something out of it. So yes, hit the like button, hit the subscribe button. I know I'm not so good at YouTube comments, but I'm working on it. So thanks you guys for coming by. I appreciate you and I will see you again next week. I don't know what we're going to talk about, but we'll be here. So remember, keep at it and this is the way.