 They're back recovery Monday, episode 46. Let us wait for everything to work. I hope it's working in the Facebook group today. Restream and Facebook changed some things. So I'm hoping you guys will be able to see this in the group. Let me know if you're here from the Facebook group. We put the chat overlay up so you guys can see each other. How is everybody doing today? I'm going to drink some of my tea. Hang on. It has been a hell of a day and it's only two o'clock. Anyway, when you pop in just let me know that you can hear me. Let me know. Everything's working. Let me know how you're doing. We'll wait for everybody to show up today. We not have any particular lesson out of any particular book because we're done with them. We did the anxious truth. We did seven percent slower. So it's been a hell of a day here too. Okay, that tells me that it's working in the Facebook group. So thank you Restream for getting your act together. Yeah, it's that kind of day. It's rainy. It's nasty here. It's getting cold. Hey Katya, how's it going? Hello, everybody. I'm feeling autumn vibes. The autumn vibes are everywhere. All the playlists that my streaming services are showing me are like autumn playlists and everybody's talking about pumpkin this and pumpkin that like, oh man. Hey London, what up Lisa? I can hear you. Thank you. Thank you, Ellen. Appreciate it. Little buzzing sound. Anyone hear that? Or is that my anxiety system? Anybody else hear a buzzing sound? Let me put my headphones on and see if I can hear it. Oh, I know what it is. It's I had my phone too close to the thing and it was creating interference. Let me just see what I can hear. Okay, if there was a buzzing sound, it probably stopped. I hope it stopped anyway. It is. There is a high pitched buzzy sound. Is it still there? I was having a symptom too. Let's see if we can get that to work. It's still doing it. What happens if I change my mic? Let's see here. Let's see what I can do. You know what? Let me turn on a different mic. It's still doing it, huh? Let's see here. It's whenever you speak. No buzzing noise. You are very clear on my end, not on YouTube. Okay, so it sounds like maybe it's a Facebook issue. I don't know. All right, guys, I hopefully will go away for those of you that are hearing it. Maybe there's a delay. I could try a different microphone, but it seems I can't hear anything in my headphones and it's telling me the audio was good. Anyway, so there's 31 of you here. I guess we'll get cooking. Like I said, I don't change me. I'm on Facebook and I hear no noise. Thanks guys. I appreciate it. Anyway, let's get cooking here. Everybody's doing well today. Where's everybody coming from? By the way, it's better now. My audio was from YouTube, but I comment here. Anthony is just throwing us all off. She's listening on YouTube, but she's commenting on Facebook. So everybody let me know where you're coming from and what's going on. So today we're going to just kind of chat for a little while. I sort of want to talk about Missouri, Indiana. I don't want to talk about Missouri and Indiana. I'm going to talk about focus and recovery and like trying to keep your recovery efforts focused, which is not always easy to do when we are sort of suffering and we're desperate. It's easy to just start to run in every possible direction to try and feel better right away. So we're going to talk about that a little bit today and we're going to do questions Q&A today. So if you guys have questions, just throw them out there. I'll have more time to scroll through and try to answer them. I know you guys usually went up talking to each other, which I dig when you help each other out. Hello, Toronto is here. Have them in Toronto in many years. Love that city. I went to school in Buffalo. A while ago, a minute ago, and we used to go to Toronto all the time because at the time we could go to Canada and drink. Won't lie. So we used to go to Niagara Falls and we used to go to Fort Erie in Ontario and then we used to go over once about to Toronto, which was just a great city. So I mean, I got to get up there at some point. Texas is here. Connecticut is here. More Canada. I know Montreal, Boston, Paris. I love them. We have like we're so international. Really, really great. Hey, Julie, what's happening? Anyway, so let's get into the whole like focusing, keeping your recovery efforts focused. But before I get into that, I just want to say one quick thing and that is that I'm never here trying to convince you to get better or to do this or to believe me or, you know, that I'm right and this is the way and you have to do it. And if you don't do it, something's wrong, never that like everybody's free to make their own choices and do whatever they want to do. That's 100% true all the time. And if you chose to do this in a completely different way, I would still root for you and hope that you get better. So I need to say that. The important thing, though, I think sometimes in recovery is trying to find and at least maintain a focus for a little while. And what I mean by that is sometimes when we decide, okay, we're going to do it this way, this crazy dude in New York tells me to do these scary things. So, okay, I tried a lot of the things not really working out. I'll try this. I don't know if it's going to work out for me and I get that everybody starts from that. You're not really sure, but I'm willing to give it a shot, but you're, but it's a little tough because like, well, I know it's going to be challenging, you know, it's going to be hard. I wish it wasn't. I'll try it. Okay, no problem. Maybe a lot of people start there. That's cool. And then sometimes we get all in. It's like, okay, this sounds good. I'm going to do it. I'm going to make my playing or doing my exposures. And then all of a sudden, like the rubber hits the road, the shit hits the fan and you discover, oh, he wasn't kidding. Like I went out and did an exposure today at a full blown panic attack or I tried to stay home alone and I had a panic attack or I'm having all these thoughts or I feel like I'm feeling it more. It's getting worse. Like he was not kidding. And when we hit that adversity because nobody stumbles upon my podcast or reads my book or not just me, but anybody who even sounds like me, a therapist, another person on the internet that sounds like me, nobody just stumbles upon this stuff, reads a book, listens to some podcasts and like, okay, boom, and they go out and do their exposures and I'm better. Like it doesn't work that way. Like I've encountered maybe one or two of those people, but those are extending waiting circumstances. So it doesn't work that way. At some point we get confronted with like, holy shit, this really is hard. He wasn't kidding. Like I actually have to do this and it takes us a while to go through those experiences to understand like, oh yeah, I want to get better, but I haven't really been willing to accept that I have to panic or at least have to be completely willing to panic. You don't have to panic, but you have to be willing to panic. I don't want to have these scary thoughts about my health or about catastrophe or about terrible things I might do, but I have to be willing to allow them. Like he wasn't kidding. So first year, a lot of people start off willing to actually do hard things, but then we're confronted with the actual hard things. Then the reality of that willingness kicks in and your resolve gets shaken. Then that's okay. Like that's super normal. Man, like that's everybody does that. So if you find that your commitment to this idea method, if you will, hey, Donna wavers sometimes and you're not sure. I don't know if this is right because this is really hard. He wasn't kidding. Or I don't know if I could do this. That's totally normal. Like everybody hits that, right? But what sometimes happens is you still want to do this, but then you also then try a lot of different things like, oh, I ran across something that was really hard today. So let me go look for something else that I can try. Let me try look for something a little more gentle. Let me try a different method. Let me try some mantras. Let me try some oils or whatever. I don't know. I could name a million different things right? So if if the difficulty hits you in the face as it will to everybody and your confidence is shaken and your resolve is a little shaken. That's okay. Like that's a normal part of it. That's the moment where the focus starts to matter. And I'm not imploring you to do it my way, but I am telling you that if you do try to do it this way, when that happens and you get smacked in the face with reality, like, holy shit. He again, he wasn't kidding. I really have to be truly willing to have the thought that I might stab my dog or to have the thought over and over that I have cancer that the doctors don't know about or anything like that. Why have to be truly willing to panic, whether it happens or not. I don't know. I have to be willing to do it. And you start to get shaken in this method. Like, I don't know about this. That's the time when I got to say, well, for this to kind of work, you have to at least give it time, like make a commitment, whether it's this way that you hear people like me or Josh or Kim or any of any, you know, the usual suspects. When you hear us talk about this stuff, if you're going to, if you're going to go down this road, that's great. And we're here to cheer for you and support you. But when it gets difficult, if you just drop and try to go in a different direction right away, and then that's not really working out. So you try to come back here a little bit, do a little more of this, then you try and add some other stuff and then you come back here and do that. And then you start reading another book or I found somebody else on YouTube that this person seems to make a lot of sense. So let me listen to this person, but I'm also going to listen to Drew's podcast or I'm still going to like do Kim's Monday live streams. That can get really difficult. Like you can wind up scattered all over the place. And when we go there, sometimes we have a really hard time making progress because sometimes going all over the place means I'm trying to find ways to make it a little easier, gentler, not so brutal. Like I'm trying to find ways to soothe myself. I'm trying to find ways to address my immediate fear right this minute. So, okay, Drew, I get it. Exposures, new relationship with anxiety and fear, incremental systematic. Yeah, I hear you. But right now my heart is pounding. So I need to go and watch 16 YouTube videos about how I stop my heart from pounding. I mean, stop your heart. You got to finish that sentence because a lot of people here would freak out like, yeah, I get what you're talking about. I'm reading your book, Drew, but right now I feel like I can't breathe. So I need to go watch 16 YouTube videos and try and find six podcast episodes and read a bunch of forum posts about breathing right now. And so you can wind up running from one fear to the other and one method to the other and one approach to the other. And it's really difficult to make consistent progress. If you do it that way, it's really hard to do that. So if you find that you're getting even more frustrated or that you think nothing is nothing works for me, sometimes it's because you haven't given any one thing a chance to work because whether you're going to do it this way and sort of a cognitive behavioral approach that I that I'm always talking about, or you want to do it some other way and it's inner child work or whatever. I don't care what the other thing is. You have to almost pick that and then you got to stick with it. So when you think it's you immediately bail because it gets difficult or you think it's not working or the immediate fear and discomfort right this minute needs to be soothed. So you need to go you go off on a tangent to try to fix it right this minute. You're not giving any one thing a chance. That's really difficult. So I'm not here to try to beg you or implore you or convince you that you have to read my books and go all the way to the end with what I write. I mean, maybe it doesn't maybe you don't want to do that. That's OK. Again, I would still root for you. But you got to at least give whichever way you want to do this some fear fair shake. And that means not not bailing because I tried this for seven days. I've seen this. I've been at this for seven days already and I'm nothing's changing like I'm had a panic attack yesterday like yeah, you've only been at it for seven days like I would love to tell you that if you adopt this method air quotes. I hate method. But if you adopt this and you start to do the things that I talk about and other people like me talk about that suddenly within two or three days you're going to start to change and things are going to be different and you're going to feel better. No, well, it doesn't just doesn't work that way. So you're going to have to have repeated experiences that are actually challenging experiences, but you have to understand why you're having them and you have to have an openness and a willingness to those experiences like. Oh, I know why I'm going to I know I have to do this. So I get that it's really hard, but I understand why it's hard and I understand why I have to do this. I'm going to stick with it. And again, you're free to bail at any time. That's OK. And I wouldn't judge you for that. But just give yourself a chance because if you bail at the first sign of adversity or you start to get impatient because you want to see improvement in six days or even 12 days or 13 days. If you've been stuck on your sofa for eight months, you know, getting up and walking out into your garden for 10 minutes is a huge win, but that is not going to mean that you're recovered and somehow you're feeling better instantaneously. It's a huge win. Take it for what it is. Recognize where it fits in the process and keep trying to pile up wins. That's really important. If you bail out after two weeks because I'm still only in my garden and I had a panic attack in my bedroom last night. So this isn't working. Something's wrong. You're not giving yourself a chance, right? You're actually not going to give yourself a chance. So the best thing I could tell you to sort of bring it back in here is I don't have a problem. If you want to do different things, again, I'm not here to try and sell you on doing it my way. But I mean, in the end, if you do choose to give this do it this way, at least give it a fighting chance and understand that you're going to have to go through multiple, multiple times where you're facing adversity, distress, challenge. The disorder is pushing back at you. You will feel all the feels. You will have all the thoughts. You will have all the symptoms. You will feel frustrated. You will feel afraid. You will feel weak. That's kind of part of the deal. Why do I have to feel all these things? Because this is how I learned to be better at feeling them. Right. So the same advice I would tell you if you decided to go and see, you know, an Adlerian therapist that just wants to dig into your childhood for the for six months to see how they can do. You got to give that a chance to like you can't just bounce from thing to thing to thing. And I think it's really important to actually wrote an episode of the anxious morning. And if you're not getting the morning newsletter, it's completely free. You can go to the anxious morning dot com and check that out. But if you it's really hard to try to bolt different approaches together to. So the last thing I want to say about being focused is number one, not bailing, not jumping from method to method or from paradigm to paradigm again and again and again, just because you're looking for immediate relief. None is going to give you immediate relief. And if you come across people on social media that are promising you, if you give me your email address, I'll give you five hidden secrets to banish your anxiety run, run, because that's that's not recovery. That's a business. But if you bail at the first university, that's one way to not be focused. The other way that you can lose focus is to try to do it this way. I'm going to talk to my way cognitive behavioral way and also try to hang on to the old stuff. That's another way that tends to erode the focus and makes it a little bit harder. So if you're trying to do this stuff, but you're also reserving the right to snap rubber bands, call your partner or your mom to talk you through a panic attack to bail out and go back home if it gets too much. Like if you still want to do those things while you're trying to do this, you're going to find that in many instances, they butt heads. So if you want to do this work, but you also want to keep all of your old safety rituals and you're soothing devices and your safety devices in your life at the same time, that also makes things difficult. Like if you're going to do this, you have to do this. And part of the lesson and part of what we talk about in this stuff all the time. Hey, Mia is that unfortunately, we learn to drop all of our saving behaviors. We learn to drop our safe people. Leave them behind. I don't mean leave them out of your life. But I mean, you have to start doing things on your own. You have to start allowing the panic. You have to leave the essential oils home. Leave your phone home. Leave your cold water home. Stay home alone without inviting the neighbor over. Like all of the old rituals that you have been engaged in to try to keep yourself safe or to make it easier or more gentle or to soothe you sooner or later when you're going down the path that I'm writing about and speaking about got to drop all of those things, maybe one by one. Totally fine. You don't have to drop all at once, but you can't do this and also try to hang on to those. So if you are getting ready to go out because whatever you have to go to a birthday party today, it's a big challenge for you. It's a bit of an exposure for you. And you spend the six hours before the birthday party under a weighted blanket. You know, popping sugary snacks so that your blood sugar doesn't drop just in case and trying to be calm and trying to like psych yourself out and I can do this. It's going to be fine. I'm not going to panic. Yeah, it's you got two methods that are head to head then at that point. We're always needing to learn the lesson that no matter what happens, you're okay. So when you try to hang on to the old safety ways, you're actually teaching the opposite lesson that says, no, no, I'm actually not okay. I need this to stop right now. And I and I understand you do want it to stop. We all wanted to stop. I get that. But that's the other way that we can lose focus where we're trying to do this way that we think really works. But we also want to do our old ways to at the same time because I know what's right for me. I know what's good for me and I'm not saying that you don't. But at the same time you have to sometimes be brutally honest like, well, then maybe I'm not ready to do this thing that this crazy dude with the beard says that's okay. You might not be ready. But it's really hard to say no, no, I want to do that because I want to get better. I want to get better but I also want to keep doing this. That's a tough focus spot as well. Right. Really tough. So that's the deal with focus. Right. That's two ways bouncing from method to method method and the other way that you can lose focus is to try to do this way but also hang on to the old ways and just in case. Adrienne I see your comments here. I relate to the sugar just in case or the liquid. You always have that water. Sooner later we got to we got to drop all those things. So this thing that I'm telling you to do is diametrically opposed to any device or behavior that is designed to make it stop because I can't handle it. You always have to let it play all the way through so that you learn I always did handle it. I didn't like the way I felt but I always handled it. All right. So for a guy that didn't have a lecture today, I'd spent a long time talking at you. So there you go. Hopefully that made sense to you guys and again I will always acknowledge this is hard. It is hard. No matter who you are for some people it's even harder depending on the experiences that you bring into this process like everybody has their own challenges. Some people start at a greater degree of challenge than others do that is a hundred percent. So this is not easy work. I make it sound simple because the plan is actually simple. It's just really hard to execute which is probably unless you're sending like a washing machine size thing to Mars trying to get it to land itself. That's hard but most things in life probably are relatively simple plans just really hard to execute. So I always got acknowledged that right. So I'm going to scroll and see if I can get some comments in here. I'm going to scroll up to the top and if you guys have questions or whatever to throw them on out. Let's see. Wells is here. Hello Emma from Wells. Good to see you. I feel like I'm dying several times a day. Excuse me. Sorry I didn't want to cough in your ear. Okay let's see here. I feel like I'm dying several times a day so I'm going to erase this Mike. Many people not just health so this is good. I'll throw this up here. It's good. It's actually not a good comment because Mike I wish we weren't feeling this way but it's a good illustration. This is not necessarily just a health anxiety thing so some people get confused by that. Does it matter that much whether you're confused by it or not. I don't know maybe maybe not the label sometimes confused people or they think well if this is officially health anxiety then it's a different thing I have to do different things. You might be dying even though that is certainly related to your health like dead people are not healthy by definition. It doesn't necessarily mean that that's health anxiety health anxiety is a constant rumination over potential injuries diseases future diseases impairments that may develop in your body whereas when you're dealing with panic disorder and you're just afraid all the time you're kind of afraid for your immediate safety. A lot of people that excuse me a lot of people that have actual health anxiety aren't necessarily afraid for their immediate safety. They're fearful of something that's a little bit pushed out next week next month next year 10 years from now what if I get a terminal illness 10 years from now that's a little bit more the lines of health anxiety or I felt a thing so I better run to a doctor and see what it is as opposed to I felt a thing and it means I'm dying right now. Does it matter? It doesn't necessarily matter because the approach is going to be the same. Like okay I guess make my doctor's appointment wait for it to come and handle it the best they can. I guess I'm going to have to let my heart race really fast right now because I'm afraid and that's what heart's doing we're afraid and let it play out. So in the end the principles are the same but that feeling like I'm going to die is common. It's not necessarily just a health anxiety. So let's see here. Genevieve from Montreal how are you I slowed down in the last couple of weeks kind of the mistake I took a step back and I had to go over some steps. I was finally doing okay with that happens. It's okay. Don't beat yourself up when things get tough or life gets tough because look life is tough right. Let's acknowledge that life can be a real pain in the ass. It was the opening line of this morning's newsletter life is a pain in the ass. It is. So sometimes you do in this hard work and life is just piling shit on top of your head and it gets really hard and you just want to hide under the covers for a day too. That's okay. That happens. It's okay. Well, what did I learn from this? Things got a little tough. I went back into my old habits. I retreated for two weeks. Now I got to retrace some steps. What did I learn from this as long as you could take a lesson from it and see what the value in the experience is you're all good. So I know it sucks Genevieve don't beat yourself up too much. You can retrace the steps generally speaking if you don't wait too long the steps that you have to retrace will be faster this way than the last. Okay. Most times. Let's see here. What is Laura I'd say, hey Laura here over the top of your comment. Why do you think people's recovery time is so different? Could it be possible? Because when you get it you get it on your own time it was hard time understanding, reading comprehension. Do you think that would affect? Well, that's a good question. That's like a zillion dollar question. Why do some people go faster than others? The more I go into this and the more I learn and the more we, the royal we kind of look into this stuff and you know research this and look at clinical outcomes patterns start to develop but we still don't nobody can give you a solid answer as to why one person goes fast another person goes slow but a willingness to do this and to truly allow the worst does seem to play a role in this and that willingness seems to be comprised of a lot of different variables it's not just a switch called willingness some people decide I've had enough consequence here so I can't live with this negative consequence anymore I don't want to keep missing my kids events I don't want to keep losing jobs I don't want to stay out of school so the I will become willing to have these experiences because the pain of not getting better outweighs the immediate pain that sometimes factors into it not enough consequence honestly sometimes you can live a relatively comfortable life that is still full of restrictions and there's not a lot of consequence there there's enough but it's not always present and sometimes that can lead to I'm really okay today or I got to the supermarket I'm good so there's so many factors that go into that I can't really tell you does it matter and I think the question of like how people struggle with reading comprehension or not I don't necessarily know if that's true some of past experiences will make this process a little slow for other people if you've had experiences or people in your life that have taught you that you're not capable you're weak you screw everything up you're not worthy of a better life if you believe those kind of things because of your past experiences or they taught you that the world is not safe you have to always be careful the worst is going to happen it's just a scary world out there that adds challenge for you those are beliefs that have to be addressed and doing this work can address some of those beliefs so it's a little bit meta but sometimes that's a part of it also sometimes it's part of it also I wish I had a better answer for you Laura let's see that's how I was the concepts made sense I was willing but still took me to learn okay this is good always got to put a Bethany quote up here that's how I was the concepts made sense immediately I was willing but it still took time to learn through experience yeah 100% thank you B appreciate it because I think we all encounter that we all encounter that Mike Tyson one of my favorite Mike Tyson quotes and Mike's a character for sure but one of my favorite Mike Tyson quotes which I believe he said I have to really look this up really good quote and it's it's quite applicable in our circumstance like everybody's ready to go until you get punched in the face and then like maybe I'm not so ready to go so that's okay that happens that's not a crime okay Ron's staying got a lot of comments I love it you guys are bringing the questions here 25 minutes I can do another 15 minutes or so I've had 24 7 chest pain for 12 years had all the tests were done right there in a way like I'm pretty sure that the doctor missed something every one of the cardiologists is wrong the tests are always missing something that's pretty common and I'll be honest with you I walked around with a sore chest all the time and then somehow rather as I get better doing my exposures I had less soreness in my chest like essentially I was not walking around poking my chest and wound up systemically and automatically a lot of those pains and twitches and weird things that I was sure were deadly kind of just started going away so Ron the question here the answer is that you're never going to convince yourself that you're okay you're going to have to let yourself be broken let your heart be broken that sounds wrong I don't mean that it's not Valentine's Day I mean let something be wrong with your heart if you're so sure clearly irreparably damaged heart that's going to kill me any minute I guess I'll go out I'll go out barbecuing I guess and I'm being glib a little bit but that's really the way out and sometimes I'm glib because it really illustrates the path out I can't wait to convince myself that my heart is okay to start doing things I'm going to have to do things while I'm convinced my heart isn't okay or decide to not do that and just stay the way it is that is a valid choice um let's see here oh this is good Donna had one of those like bailout moments Oktoberfest wall to wall people I said nope no after after an hour like that's whoa okay like that's a lot of people would be thrilled to be able to do that for an hour so I think good job Donna right so maybe you haven't done one of those in a long time so it was relatively new circumstance but I love your last sentence there now I know it doesn't stop it just keeps finding things that maybe she didn't even know were things and works on them so good job Donna let's see here yes this is true Aurora says thoughts are just noise in your head right they don't dictate your reality big lesson I had to learn this is such a hard thing we're all over the place today because there's sort of no topic but this is difficult for so many people I know Lisa's here Lisa Wiffle Dust is here and she speaks about this quite a bit in the Facebook group because at a personal experience but sometimes we have a hard time dismissing our thoughts because we have been conditioned to think that the answer to everything lies within and finding meaning and every thought and every emotion and analyzing them and picking them apart and looking for the messages and all those things and the idea that that might not be true that your brain is crap is super far into so many people and that sometimes it makes it harder number one disengaging with scary thoughts feels dangerous and reckless but number two some people are either been conditioned sort of on the long term just in the environment they're in where there's just a lot of emphasis on emotions and meaning and reflecting and blah blah blah I'm not saying that's all bad there's a place for that in life but not automatically you've been through the type of therapy that teaches you that every thought has to be unpacked analyzed have meaning that's hard too if professionals have been teaching you that and in reality you have a form of OCD or you're just in a state of disordered anxiety where these disordered irrational thoughts pop up trying to find meaning in them is the opposite of what helps so those are the two main reasons why people have a hard time accepting that or garbage what do you mean it can't possibly be but it can it can if you think about that your brain is producing crap all day long mine is too everybody's is you think all kinds of crazy ridiculous funny thoughts absurd thoughts I mean I don't know how many people are fans of like absurdity I'm a huge absurdity fan I love the absurd and the sublime like that stuff entertains me that's total garbage it's like not reality not capable of that why is your brain not capable of twisting reality for what it thinks is safety right imagine that cadence is here hey cadence good to see you it's been a while let's see night and day living a normal happy life love it worked hard though cadence gets a huge thumbs up because that was not easy you didn't do that overnight so thanks for popping in I appreciate that let's see here let me put this up real quick I think that's where I'm at I just wanted to get better Sandy it's okay like everybody wants it to get better I'm never never gonna pick on you for wanting to be better because everybody wants to be better but you just gotta remember that really and this I know I say these things over and over but some of them really do matter like this is the process of learning to be better and when you can learn to be better then we can feel better so everybody wants I wouldn't be doing this if it wasn't to feel better nobody's doing this just to build character trust me on this one I get that but the feeling better is a happy secondary effect of the work it's not the primary goal that's so important to not lose track of that so let's see here till you go face first no method works this is good thank you Donna face first is actually very descriptive and I think it's right face first is good let's see here whenever I catch myself ruminating I'm sorry I'm rude I'm looking at the comments they're over here I say to myself I anxious thinking or this is a compulsion I try to focus on my underworld sometimes it feels like suppression well no it's not that you take a few steps back again it's just that the thought reoccurs like again patience patience like it takes a while for this to actually have any sort of long-term impact so that's not a step backwards like having the same thought it's like you said you see you get relief for a little bit and you didn't engage with the thought but you still get some relief that's a step forward the fact that the thought recurs after a couple of days is not a step backwards it just means keep working it's okay and that's not suppression you couldn't suppress the thought if you wanted to so thought suppression is I can't think this I shouldn't think this I should not be thinking this think another thought so if you have a thought about forcing somebody or whatever we all understand the range of intrusive thoughts if you have that thought and it's really disturbing thought suppression would be think about puppies think about ice cream only think about the happy place I need to go to my happy place that would be thought suppression and that doesn't work so just acknowledging like oh there's that thought again okay and if the end result is that thought starts to fade and is a little less noisy than it used to be actually what you're after so don't worry about it sounds like you're doing alright um let's see here nothing works could be a great idea to think but not as it sounds sometimes doing nothing when you feel panic is the best thing okay this is actually gonna put this up on the screen um nothing works could be a great idea to think but not as it sounds and this is so paradoxical so I so appreciate this comment this is kind of a big deal so I always say in the case of panic for instance when you have a panic attack you can there you have two choices you can do something or you can do nothing both will work like if you do something that panic attack is ultimately going to end because even though there are some of you here with 75 people in the room some of you are gonna tell me that you're in a concentrated panic during every waking hour you're wrong you're not but even if you do if you do something that panic attack will end but then you'll think what you did made it end if you do nothing it will also end and nothing works better than something so it's a little bit of a weird thing especially with people who have a language barrier I wish if I could speak it in different languages I would 100% do that I don't have the ability I speak very limited Norwegian after a year of Duolingo and I understand most Italian I just never speak it but if I could explain in different languages I would but that's hard for people to get nothing is better than something in the situation so let's see here oh never mind let's see here you can look at all the different methods online but it really comes down to the same this is true to a certain extent let me put this up real quick we're about half way through the comments you can look at all the different it really comes down to the same for the most part depending on what you're looking at the they are the same so if you you guys know that the usual people you would see me collaborate with yeah we're all going to sound very much the same other people if they're talking about going toward the things that you fear and learning to work through them and move them yeah it does come down to that but there are people who would who look at me and say you clearly have never experienced I've been told flat out by people over and over that I've never had a panic attack I'm lying I've been told that I'm lying I'm a scammer okay I'm not here to make you believe me because they cannot even imagine that this is a proper way to do this I've been told that it is re-traumatizing it teaches the wrong lessons it makes it worse so they just want to feel better which I understand so not everything is the same there are helpers out there there are people that espouse methods that have nothing to do with this and I'll give you a really quick we're going to run out of time alright that's fine we'll give you a really quick thing because 77 of you are still here hanging in there here's an interesting thing and I will try to link this research because it's nothing you can get obsessed over so it's good but when research is done that looks at the number of therapists that know about exposure and this kind of work and think that it works and it's effective versus the number of therapists who are willing to do it with their patients it is two very different numbers so when you say it's really hard to find a therapist that will do this work with me a lot of therapists will do anxiety or they'll be old school CBT they'll want to talk they'll want to do worksheets and thought challenging but they won't ever go to making you do hard things there's a reason for that even therapists that have training in this that understand the mechanics and will tell you yeah, I get it there's a lot of data that says it works will refuse to do it with their patients because on a personal level it's hard to make people do hard things so consider that it is hard to make people do hard things even many therapists will tell you that guy with the beard is right but I ain't going there because I can't tell somebody to go and intentionally have a panic attack they will think that they are traumatizing their clients these things are repeated again and again and again so it's fascinating it's fascinating when you look at it humans are humans therapists are humans too and I think sometimes it takes a certain personality to be able to do this kind of work so not everybody has that not good or bad just roll different ooh, love this I'm not really making I'm not getting through these comments fast enough after reading your book I wanted to read more on this topic but then I just had to stop and ask myself do I really need more information to recover probably not that's also a very, very common approach even when you're trying to find that's not really like a focus it's more of a lack of action even when all the material you are consuming sounds similar and is in the same vein continuing to just consume, consume, consume read, read, listen, watch, watch but not do anything that's not so good I did a podcast episode about two years ago I think it was on the beach when I did that it was called Stop Reading and Start Doing or Stop Listening and Start Doing that's a good one if you want to go to my website and search for Stop Reading, I believe that's a good podcast episode that talks about that you don't need another book after you've got six anxiety books and you're following four podcasts and you're in six Facebook groups you're done there's no more reading you can do mainly that happens because you're trying to find something to make it click and by click you mean so I'll be less afraid so I can do this but you got to do it while you're afraid the less afraid comes later sometimes I feel like I just say these things again and again you got to be tired of it okay so let's see here okay this is good let's throw this up real quick because this is a real thing we have to acknowledge this stress seems to throw a monkey wrench in my recovery a loose focus yeah 100% like I said life sucks life is a bitch life will get stressful shitty things will happen that we don't want to happen stress does play a role 100% stress can be an extra challenge we're dealing with people who deal with grief like a big loss in your life the ending of a big relationship changing jobs moving we all know the big life stressors right that makes it hard for people in the OCD community they will all be beating the drum here I know some folks here they're dealing with OCD when you get super stressed out those thoughts get louder and stickier don't they like so yes stress is a monkey wrench for sure doesn't make it impossible it just means that you will encounter a little bit more of a challenge difficult when life is bumpy 100% let's see scrolling down scrolling down scrolling down me is here I've tried a thousand things to recover this method is the only one I've had results with I fail at getting the full recovery oh this is so good let me throw this up here thank you marine I haven't seen you in a while how are you I've tried a thousand things I finally found a therapist to use the same method to help me to build the plant and above all to follow it probably probably the biggest when you find a therapist that will make you do hard things and will make you accountable for doing them that can be super helpful sometimes that's the missing ingredient for sure so very good I hope it's working out keep us posted how about lavender all you guys are trying to like egg me on aren't you lavender oil rants today and when all else fails oh this is a good comment I must have missed a comment ahead it's not when all else fails except that's not surrender or acceptance that's actually true actually true I kind of dig that because it's subtle but there's an important point there sometimes we have no choice you get pushed to the end there's nothing else you can do so like fine like take me out go ahead kill me whatever like and then you you get forced to surrender that's true but once you've gotten to that then that has to become the standard mode of operation as best as you can you don't always wait until you have no other choice that might be the thing that pushes you to actually ultimately surrender or accept or whatever word you like to use but that can't you can't just continually wait to hit the breaking once you get there you got it you got to kind of do that um let's see here Kathleen is here you got my few my surgery last week I didn't get you through anything you did that I did nothing I was not I was not in the hospital with you I did I did no such thing you did that you get a hundred percent credit I ain't taking credit for you for you getting through surgery um it is hard throw this up oh that's good okay I'll put that up on the screen be I meant Bethany meant acceptance isn't the final go to after safety behaviors fail you might get there that way sooner or later they all fail and you have no choice but it would be better to not do it that way uh Phil says it's so hard to not take your safety objects it isn't very hard and that's why I say it's okay to drop them little by little and I've even said and I'll say it again on the record here if the way that you can get started is by taking water bottle and mints in your phone with you that's better like I would rather you go toward the fear with your safety devices than to sit on your sofa I would prefer that I think everybody would so if you need those things to get started and start to build momentum no crime no no no no no crime at all um so that's totally fine but sooner or later you do have to start to drop them let's see here uh Viola and says I'll throw this up here super common um the sleep anxiety episode I did was two episodes ago I don't know which one 224 225 don't know which podcast episode it is but I did this I did this um lack of sleep sends me spiraling I'm going to start to ban the word spiral because spiral is this might you might hate when I say this but spiral is a choice like you have to recognize that we play a role in creating a spiral if a fire starts next to us we didn't maybe didn't start that I'm not saying you started the fire but when you see the fire you can decide what to do with that fire spiraling is what happens when you take a big old can of kerosene or gas and start to pour it on and then oh my god why is it getting bigger so spiral is not a mystery like I don't know I have no choice but the spiral like we play a role in making that spiral it's really important so you just have decided that if you don't get enough or proper sleep that you won't be able to handle how you're fear how you feel which is just another thought like my heart's going to stop or I can't breathe in the end so I'm not trying to minimize your distress I understand that it's genuinely a challenge for you viola but in the end the idea that that somehow if I'm tired I can't handle it and I spiral I'm gonna I would challenge that you've always handled it just because you don't like how it feels doesn't mean you have to latch on to that and ride it into the ground so I listen to the podcast episode from two weeks ago I think it was I talked about that um let's see here came in late yes I'm selling lavender oil now uh let's see here I'm finding a difficult time finding a therapist I feel so immersed in learning and reading and less doing I need help yeah um so Penelope Penelope crucified that's a great that's a great screen name um it is hard to find therapists that sound like this there it is hard I get that um but yes the somebody who will help you with a plan and make you do the plan there was a conversation that went on I believe in the Facebook group last week about that and somebody's therapist they were working with sounded excellent said well the reason why you're not making progress is you're still using all your safety crutches and you're bailing and you're not doing things so here's the plan now you're gonna do this this this and this and as soon as that plan got a little bit difficult the person wanted to say oh no no I think the plan is too much but the therapist made the plan because you've been calling it too much so my job if I am your therapist is to point that out to you like no no no no you keep saying it's too much I'm gonna make you I'm gonna make it be too much so that you learn that it's not too much so it's it's really important but I get it and a therapist can be super helpful in helping you get over that get past the reading and the researching and into the actual doing let's see here I'll put this up on the screen because I I literally bristle when somebody says my method I did not invent this at all this is nothing that I invented this is not the drew method I don't even like to call it a method in the end like so it's not my method that's the first thing what I'm addressing is sometimes you are anxious what I'm always addressing is being afraid of being anxious so you have to decide if that's where you are or not like people who are depressed or suffer from PDSD generally have anxiety there's no doubt about that there's an anxious state is the anxiety itself the source of more anxiety now I I don't like how I feel I'm afraid of how I feel or am I anxious because of something else I'm always addressing that what the thing that happens when the state of how you feel becomes the source of more anxiety so I'd be a that helps or not to explain but that's what I'm addressing and that can happen that can happen alongside what you're talking about 100% but if you're anxious over other things that are external from you it's not internally generated I'm anxious because of this maybe an abusive situation that you ran or whatever that's that's the different that's externally generated anxiety but if you're afraid of your own anxiety that's what I'm talking about and yes then it applies let's see here ooh Nicole Marie just pops in talks about how she her confidence I love the huge comments then this is good I will take this you've helped me change my life yes you did it you changed your life I didn't do that so thank you for saying that I appreciate it my confidence is growing more and more with every exposure but to be completely honest with you the way reason why Nicole Marie is here and can tell us that story is because she went through a bunch of really challenging situations where there was a lot of adversity there that's how you get to that and going through the adversity through the adversity starts to sink in after a while like oh I can do this like I am capable I am competent and therefore I am confident I'm going to have to bail shortly I believe let me just check my calendar real quick so I have something coming up yes I do okay so I'll do the last couple of comments and then we're going to buggy I appreciate hanging out with you guys thank you for all the questions tch tch tch that is insane oh this is really good thank you Jessica I love this the damn list of safety behaviors I had is insane down to just a few I didn't even know I had this is huge because often we don't know that we had them I had a million little avoidances little ticks little rituals I did not know that I had that's okay you discover them as you go and you work on them one by one but I love how you said you're down to just a few we don't just drop them all at one time if we could we would just get better instantly doesn't work that way little bit at a time let's see here scrolling scrolling scrolling I'm a pro caddy on the golf tour the thought of being okay first of all this is super interesting I'm sorry I can't see your name restream doesn't show me your name I'm doing exposure stuff I'm a pro caddy on the golf tour and the thought of being in front of 50,000 people still freaks me out hey you know what a lot of people get freaked out over being in front of 50,000 people so when you start to make progress like that like you are which great job wherever you are keep going but sometimes we get confused with like oh I'm anxious so therefore it must be automatically recovery related and it might not be I don't know I can't know the exact situation for you but many people freak out being in front of 50,000 people and in relation to your anxiety it might be well what happens if I'm on the tour and I have a panic attack and there's a zillion people in the gallery and it's on TV and I make a fool of myself very common people would also say that about going to the supermarket or the mall so that's super common but sometimes we think that all anxiety is recovery based and it's not necessarily like sometimes we get anxious over legitimate reasons there's a legit reasons to be anxious where anxiety serves a purpose so not every bit of anxiety that we experience even in recovery needs to be fixed just throwing it out there could be again I can't know but it could be let's see here thank you Kathleen for talking about the driving thing I appreciate it I can't answer every question I would like to but I can't there's no way someone else is dizzy all day for no reason I'm working on it alright Alicia thank you I appreciate this comment I'll put up on the screen real quick because a lot of people especially if you're new here I always think there's no way someone else is dizzy all day for no reason there's no way someone else can't do like everybody thinks at some point that they are worse and special I know it I know it but you're not and you don't want to be some people get angry when I say your anxiety is not special like oh I'm a I'm a unique individual yes yes you're a lovely unique individual human being I let's celebrate that but it doesn't mean that your anxiety is special unique you don't want it to be you want to be the same as everybody else there's beauty in that there's hope in that so everybody thinks they're worse than everybody else they're not last three months I thought I've had brain tumor heart disease I've had a stroke but now I just said okay very good I'm a good job getting through all that stuff love it okay let's see here I'm gonna try and pick maybe one more because I gotta end it you're ready for this next call I take a token when I face a challenge oh I dig this I'll put this on it's not a re-question but I like what Jean is doing here good job Jean I thank you for sharing this I take a token when I face a challenge example I walk alone picked up a pebble sometimes hold it in my hand love it like you can collect a bunch of those little tokens in a lot of ways this is akin to the success journal and I've talked about that I wrote about that in the anxious morning whenever sometime this year I don't know when that was but I strongly advise people to keep a success journal you can journal any way you want I'm not gonna tell you not to journal any way you want but like that pebble that you know Gina has in her hand is evidence that I did a hard thing so she can go back and look at her jar full of pebbles or the stones or the flower that she picked or whatever oh look I did it I did it so on the day when she feels like she can't she's got that jar full of tokens that is such a good idea Gina I love it the same way I strongly advise that everybody has some sort of practice like that sit at the end of the night and talk about what you did I was really scared today but I drove for 20 minutes I was really scared but I went to the supermarket I was really scared when I was home alone for 30 minutes and it always ends with and nothing happened I was afraid nothing happened I'm still afraid now but nothing is happening you can go back to that when you feel like you're wavering you're faltering you're having a bad day and go back to your success journal and say oh yeah look at all these 16 other really bad days that I had and I got through it I love that that's great I think I'm going to end with that because I don't think you can get any better than that it's really good it's actually really good and that will be New York I'll be practically almost like we practicing in New York I will maybe get licensed in other states I don't know we'll see but at least in New York is that's where I live and I imagine that I will be living here for quite a while all right folks that said I got to wrap it up we went a little longer but thank you so much like really lively conversation big crowd today I see you guys talking to each other I dig that so we'll come back and do it again next week maybe we'll do a Q&A so I'll see if I either put like a Q&A thread up in take token jars I could barely figure out the shit that I'm doing now good idea Laura but you know what if you want to make token jars I'll call me I guess I don't know but I could barely manage the shit I got going on right now like once in a while I put a new mug in the store and I want to cookie for it so good idea but no anyway maybe next week what I'll do is I'll maybe what I'll do is I'll do Q&A threads on Instagram one week I'll do maybe a YouTube post I'll do one in the Facebook group I'll do on the Facebook page guys can ask questions and I will come on and we'll answer those and then we'll just have conversation and we'll hang out for 45 minutes and bring your favorite beverage and we'll just chill every Monday we'll see once in a while bring a guest in it's going to be cool I dig these alright folks thanks for coming by this will stay on the YouTube pay on my YouTube page in a playlist called recovery Monday it's going to stay in the Facebook group going to stay in the Facebook page and if you don't have my books and all that stuff and you want to check it out everything's at theanxiatrute.com I'm out later