 don't believe this, but you are working as designed. You probably don't believe this either. But your anxiety is not the result of a complicated series of interlocking unique problems. This is Recovery Monday, episode number six. And that's what we're going to talk about today. So let's see if we get everybody in the door. We already got one person showing up when you arrive, please let me know that you are here and that everything is working and that you can hear me. Say hello, tell me where you're from. We'll wait for the usual suspects to show up. A quick reminder for those of you who are kind of filing in all of these episodes are right out of this book, The Anxious Truth, we're just going through it chapter by chapter, lesson by lesson, and we have still a bunch of things ahead of us. So we're in chapter two right now, this is going to take us all the way through to Christmas. So we have plenty of material to go over. And yeah, that's what we're doing today. Today, we're going to talk about the fact that you are actually working as designed, even though you don't think so, and that this is not some sort of unique problem for you. If a little bit controversial, sometimes people get offended by this, but that happens. Anywho, let's see where everybody's from. Let me close this little window here and then we'll get into it. Just a heads up here, I am quickly losing my voice. So I know I always say I'm going to make these short. I think today I have to make them short. I'm actually drinking tea with honey, believe it or not, because my throat is killing me. So let's see, I'm going to make you watch, watch me drink tea. That's super exciting. So let's see who we have here. Bethany is here. I can't see you by the way, if you are in the Facebook group, I can't see who your what your name is. I just see Facebook user. So I'm sorry about that. That is just the way restream does it. Ambrine is here. Laura is here. Adele is here from all the way from Scotland. Huge fan. Deluca what up my friend, Andrew Deluca here from Vegas, Andrew Vegas. Kathleen is here. Everybody's here. This is great. Glad to see it. Alright, we got about 40 people here. Let's get into this. So this is chapter two, lesson two in the anxious truth. And this is called you are working as designed. One of the most common errors that I see people make when they approach their anxiety problem. And just about everybody makes this at least from the start, is that you may view your anxiety problem, whether you're dealing with panic disorder or graphobia or whatever it happens to be as a result of some sort of complicated interlocking complex interwoven series of either of hidden or obvious, like unique situations and unique problems that all sort of pile up and they're unique to you and your special and your problems are different. And they somehow combine in some unique recipe to make your anxiety. And you begin to view your anxiety problem as either worse than other peoples or special or unique in some way. And that really is a bit of an issue. We don't need to see it that way. Because in many instances, if we are dealing with things like panic disorder and agoraphobia, which is what I'm going to primarily address today. And yes, OCD and those sort of things will fit under this umbrella as well. But we have to try to let go of some of that. Like you are not worse, you're not special, you're not unique. And I know when I say those words taken out of context, like if somebody took those four seconds of video, they'd be like, wow, this dude is a monster, right? I'm not saying that you as a person are not special. You as a person are not unique. We're all special. We're all unique. We have different cultural backgrounds and economic backgrounds and faith backgrounds and all kinds of stuff, different life experiences. And it's, it's great. It is wonderful that we are all unique and special. And we combine to make this really amazing thing called the human race. But in this situation, when we're dealing with addressing this these type of disorders, we want there to be common ground that makes us not special, right? So in this Bella says, I'm not special. And yes, I'll explain that in a second. We want there to be common ground that makes us not special. You don't want to be special and unique in this problem, right? So some people hate when I say that, because they want to cling to, you know, different things for different people. And that's true. There are variations along the way. But if you are somehow resisting the idea that you can approach these disorders in the way I talk about, because your anxiety is somehow special, it's unique. You're special, you're unique. It can't be the same for everybody. We're all different. Or from a philosophical or spiritual level, it seems offensive for me to say that you are not special. I understand sometimes people get offended by that. So when I say, there's some controversy, usually it's rooted in that I'm not taking away your uniqueness as a human being, we're leveraging your non uniqueness in the mechanisms of learning and cognition and fear and response. We're leveraging those wonderful commonalities that all human beings have to back us out of this problem. So many people get stuck in trying to untangle, we probably shouldn't say untangle their anxiety because step along to two other guys, Josh and Dean, but it's true. Like there's probably a reason why they named their book that right? Because in a lot of ways, you really may spend a lot of time trying to unravel what you think is this complex series of events that led to being agoraphobic, or led to having panic disorder, or triggered your OCD. And that becomes really frustrating. And it becomes really difficult and you can't find it. And there always seems to be something different. Or you will say, Well, this isn't working for me because I'm unique. I'm special, I need a special approach just for me. Or because you are afraid of one particular type of thought or one particular symptom that scares you more than anything else. You think you need a special way to approach that specially scary thought or symptom. But none of that is true. Like in this situation, we should embrace our commonality and the fact that we all learn things in very similar ways. And I'm not negating I understand people will say I'm a visual learner I'm this kind of type of learner. I'm talking about the the mechanism by which we all learn to fear things and then learn to not fear things. Yes, there are variations in the way some people are more verbal, some people are more visual. But we are all experiential learners when it comes to developing fear. So in the book in in lesson two dot two in the anxious truth, I give the example of somebody who I give three examples. Somebody who is maybe in an automobile accident may develop a fear of driving somebody who is bit by a dog may develop a fear of dogs even though they previously love dogs, a person who eats at a restaurant and then gets food poisoning or has a really bad stomach virus may be coincidentally after that may refuse to eat at that restaurant again or won't want to eat that type of food again and that's happened to all of us we can all relate to that right. Their background their uniqueness as a human being doesn't necessarily enter into that right because we all understand those when I give you those three examples you say oh yeah sure I get that like you don't you don't want to say like well my fear of driving is special or my fear of dogs is special because of my culture or my my parenting or whatever it happens to be we all understand those things correct. The reason that is because human beings do not like to repeat unpleasant events. We're not wired for that we're wired to try to avoid the repeat of an unpleasant event event. We try to avoid what we perceive as danger or a threat we are wired to go around those things to go away from them to stop them from happening. So in that context and we talk about this all the time. Yes your life experiences are unique and always should be validated sometimes celebrated sometimes sympathized with but that doesn't necessarily mean that your approach to this needs to be rooted in your special uniqueness alright and somebody mentioned in one of the comments I think it was Laura that said yeah like it's nice to know in many instances that here Laura says it makes you feel not alone when your anxiety is not special right so if you are thinking that you are worse than everybody else you're falling into this trap and that's usually incorrect if you're thinking that your anxiety is somehow special or different and therefore needs a special modification to this sort of stuff that we talk about that's incorrect and you're falling into the trap if you think that somehow or other this can't possibly work for you because of your unique experiences in life you're falling into that trap and that's probably not correct. So that is kind of the first part of this chapter is really kind of confronting that and again I cannot say excuse me often enough I'm sorry my throat is really burning right now. So I know I'm interrupting a bit and the swallowing it's not pleasant. But I think many people sometimes will look at that and feel like I'm invalidating their uniqueness as a human being or I'm taking away their identity not true at all like we always have to always validate and honor people's experiences because they are true and they are real and they are valid and they matter to you. However when you get down to the mechanics of getting back on your feet from these anxiety disorders we like that commonality that that lack of uniqueness we want to leverage those common functions that all humans share. It's a good thing right it's a good thing. So before I move on to the next part which is why you're functioning as designed even though you don't believe it like I'll put this up on the screen Adele asks what if you can't pinpoint why you're anxious that's actually okay that's what I'm saying here you don't have to pinpoint why you're anxious because in the end you are likely listening to this right now not because you are anxious a lot of people are anxious right now but you are listening to this and watching these videos and maybe following the podcast because you are afraid of what it feels like when you are anxious I need to make this go away I don't like this I have to stop it I can't allow this I can't handle this I feel like I'm gonna snap so the problem isn't why you're anxious I know many people will agree will disagree with me know you gotta find a root cause but when you get to the point where the anxiety itself is the source of more anxiety then it doesn't matter how you got there and trying to figure it out tends to be really frustrating and often a dead end because you may dig and dig and come to epiphany after epiphany and discover like the epiphany of last week that you thought cracked the case and you're good turns out not to be so much four days later when that sort of like wave of euphoria wears off and the panic hits or the GAD is back and oh that wasn't it I'm back to square one that wasn't it I gotta keep looking so it's really difficult right it's really difficult sometimes there is an obvious reason life experiences I'm having money problems I had a fight with my boss or you know my girlfriend kicked me out of the house or whatever like sometimes there are valid reasons and real reasons external reasons that we could say well this is why I feel this way of course but when you try to when you're struggling because you are anxious just because you're anxious and you can't figure that out you don't have to figure it out so this is all about how we relate to that feeling and how we learned to our different reactions to it and build a new relationship with that's what we care about not why it's there is why it's there is quite often a dead end so the second part of this chapter that I went over lesson 2.2 in the anxious truth it talks about really the chain of events so how are you working as designed the things you're feeling right now are normal predictable and we talked about this in some of the earlier recovery Monday episodes it's written in the earlier lessons in the book you have a fear you have something you fear there's a stimulus of some kind I'm grossly oversimplified here but whether it's a sensation or a thought or context or situation or a task you fear that body has a reaction to that fear fear rises your body reacts to it physically you have thoughts about that fear that is all normal that is baked into all of us so you are working as designed there's nothing broken about you because you get anxious when you have to leave the house or you have to drive to the supermarket or you have to pick up your kids or you might be left home alone or you might be anxious all day long driven by the fact that you feel the need to solve every problem in the known universe really find them and then solve them or be perfect or always get it right or never get it wrong or be liked or please everybody in the world like you have normal reactions like when we have thoughts and sensations or we encounter things that we are afraid of that we perceive as danger our bodies will react accordingly these are all normal measurable predictable common responses so really and truly that state of being anxious is a normal as designed function for human beings and human bodies and human minds we don't like them and we begin to mistakenly interpret them as danger but our problem really is that they are being triggered at inappropriate times so this is really an application problem so if you think about it what this is is a solution that is being misapplied so nature has a has provided us with this built-in baked-in solution that we have no say over right so we react to scary threatening dangerous things in a certain way we all do react pretty much the same way there are variances but we generally have the same response that is a solution to a problem which is stay alive in the face of danger in our case we that we are learning to misapply that solution so that is a solution applied in the wrong time so a hammer is a really useful tool is that i don't have a hammer here but i'll pretend a hammer is a really useful tool that human beings invented and we use it in a context when we have to drive a nail or we have to remove a nail or we just have to kind of persuade something with some brute force it's a good time to use a hammer which is a tool that we have developed if we decided to just hit everything with a hammer that wouldn't be the fault of the hammer the hammer isn't broken we're just it's just being used in the wrong times in the wrong situations in the wrong context and that's our problem so we are working as designed just at the wrong time and we have to learn that that response itself is not dangerous so that we can start to reset that mechanism and bring it back into its rightful place where the solution is applied when it's really needed when there are actual problems so in a nutshell that is you know explaining the situation that you're in and what the recovery path kind of looks like so that is why you are working as designed even though you hate it and you do not like it and you fear it and you think you are broken lesson one in this whole series Recovery Monday and lesson one of the anxious truth book was you're not broken and this is not your fault so yeah you are working as designed this is not a unique problem to you you are not special you are you are not in need of some sort of special custom tailored recovery program for nausea or dizziness or dpdr or whatever's scary to you you may we'll take a second and acknowledge this you may come from a traumatic or abusive background that is real that has an impact there's no doubt about that but it doesn't necessarily preclude your recovery people will sometimes assert like well i can't do this this doesn't apply to me because i have trauma well that's true that you you do have trauma never going to invalidate that and that has to be worked on as well but we always have to be mindful of that situation where maybe that trauma has led to this situation over time but then when the anxiety itself becomes the enemy the response itself becomes the enemy now you had one problem now you have two but again working as designed right emotions and memories bring up emotions emotions bring about reactions and then we learn to interpret those reactions those physical mental reactions as dangerous so it all fits together so everybody's experience is important your life experiences matter they are valid they're important however we really need to not lose sight of the sort of those common mechanics that we use to stand ourselves up on our feet here you know get out of the fire and begin to work on maybe some of the bigger pictures so if there is a you know maybe a history of relationship problems or there's some trauma or there's some abuse or there are things that your life experiences have taught you that you are trying to get over and change if you are trapped in your house because you're terrified of your own heartbeat these commonalities of mechanics right the common responses the non-uniqueness help us stand ourselves up on our feet first so that we can begin to work on all of the stuff so if your life experiences are are unique which they certainly are and they are leading to other problems that you feel you need to work on that's great you could work on those things but we also have to work on these common threads also so that is in a nutshell why I say you are working as designed there you go so 62 of you here still let's take another five minutes or so to answer any questions if anybody has I will scroll up here a little bit let's see what do we have here we had that Gemma what up good to see you what did that I always like to put Bethany's comments up on the screen because they're always excellent if it's common that means there's an answer that's how I felt relief no more searching for the special key ah I love this I love this that's true if it is common it means there is an answer and the answer is hey Australia in the house what up Danny jeans is here so the answer to this why are you here because it is way early in the morning in Australia but anyway but Bethany says if it's common means there's an answer this is very true it takes the mystery out of this why am I afraid to leave the house why am I afraid to wake up in the middle of the night why am I afraid to eat too much because it makes my heart race all of those things then you don't have to solve every one of those problems this becomes a oh I'm just became afraid of my own my own thoughts on my own body and you don't have to work on that it takes the mystery out of it it gives you a target to shoot for again to stand yourself up get yourself out of the burning fire so that maybe you can begin to work on other things if you need to so thank you Bethany that's a really good that's a really good point and the cool thing about that is if it is common then there is an answer and the answer is to stop looking for the answer which makes your life so much easier but sometimes you have to abandon some very long-standing beliefs about root causes or spirituality or whatever it is energy and vibration whatever it happens to be I'm not trying to take those things away from you but often to get to that very freeing liberating place where the answer gets reduced to a very very simple answer and the answer is to stop looking for answers sometimes we have to put that stuff aside just for a while or at least just in this context so I'm not telling you to abandon the things you love and that resonate with you but sometimes sometimes just for a little while we need to put them aside and say that's not for me right now I'll have to come back to healing energy later when I'm no longer afraid of my own heartbeat or my own breath okay so there you go working my way through the audible version of the book oh good I'm glad you're finding it helpful yes the book is available in all the formats I will put that up on the screen places that you can go and get it you can go watch this watch this ready boom pointed right away you can get it right there on my website I'm glad you're finding the audible version of that useful definitely so let's see what does Gustavo have to say so even with real problems we need to learn yes thank you very much to Gustavo this is a good comment too even with real problems we need to learn how to relate to anxiety everybody has real problems like we all have real problems our life experiences and life circumstances are to a certain extent unique so we all do have unique problems in life that's true but we still have to be able to not be afraid of our own response right that's that's what we're talking about here so Gustavo thank you that's a very good observation I appreciate you putting that out there he's trying to figure out the anxiety sources okay here we go he's trying to figure out the anxiety sources now I really just work like working floating like a raft and teaching Lizzie Brain this experiential learning which is one of those things that we all share while you know this is interesting because I'm such a nerd for this stuff so people will talk about learning styles well there are visual learners and there are this type of learning there are people who are more visual there are people more auditory there are people who are more written learners and really there's a fair amount of research out there that says that isn't necessarily a real thing I'm not saying that everybody is the same but one thing that we do share is that we do learn experientially and we tend to learn our fears and our fear responses and unlearn and undo those responses experientially which anybody who's here all 60 of you or so that are here right now can probably attest to this all the books you've ever read all the YouTube videos all the live videos like this all the podcasts you've ever done have not solved the problem for you until you start to do things and have experiences so we rely on the commonality of experiential learning like we all tend to learn this sort of stuff most effectively through experiences doing super important right so let's see here somewhat oh okay well I appreciate this we'll throw it up on the screen because this comes up all the time um 20 minutes a couple more minutes when I recovered I lost friends and was just recently kicked out of an anxiety group and blocked by all the admins well I'm not terribly amazing so I appreciate those kind words but somewhat the most important the important thing in this statement is someone to keep you stuck so let's address that for just a second I'm not going to pick on anybody in particular but if you approach these disorders from the paradigm of like a life coach which many do which I don't understand how life coaching type things think you know get applied to these particular very very specific types of mental health problems that we're addressing here which are often upside down from what conventional wisdom would tell us so when people apply sort of life coaching techniques to these problems then often they do have I'm not going to say some sort of hidden evil agenda of keeping you stuck but I have literally been told by other people who do this sort of for a living that one of the things that they try to do is move somebody into multiple products or services so first you listen to my podcast or whatever then this person will try to get you to start to buy their supplements or their programs or their courses then they can if you start to get better they can move you into their life coaching and they can move you into their you know 10x your business so it's kind of tough so that can happen sometimes that can and a lot of times I'm not always going to say that it is see this kills me I might compare it to the screen but how I would know it was Danny even without the name because of the love heart and the smiley face so there you go but that can happen sometimes that's true let's keep scrolling down I'll see if I can catch up here does anxiety okay I'll throw this up on the screen this is somebody's going to ask this every single time does anxiety sensation come down as time passes or physical symptoms goes away on its own what you're looking for here and that's a reasonable question especially if you knew to all this we're never learning to make those sensations go away none of what I ever wrote or talk about or anything like that is ever about that it's never about let me find a way to make the symptoms go away or stop them or make them stop happening we are first learning a new way to react to them and experience them and move through them we're learning a new way to relate to those sensations and the fear that comes with them and when we are no longer afraid of them through that work then the happy secondary effect is that they begin to lessen so that's the short answer to that question yes they do but that's not the primary goal so I'm never here to teach anybody how to prevent a panic attack how to stop a panic attack how to make it go away or guarantee it never happens I'm always here trying to teach us the most productive way to relate to those anxiety spikes panic sensation scary thoughts so that we are no longer afraid of them the secondary effect of that is they begin to lessen over time so there you go let's put this up on the screen Jamie, what up I have had people say to me that I've always been anxious and a warrior okay it's definitely gone through divorce about seven years ago does the fact that it got worse what seemed to trigger it not matter too much well Jamie that's a reasonable question I appreciate you asking I'm sorry I had to go through all that that gets crappy but I think the answer to that is yes and no like in the beginning I think when we get into really stressful life situations that cause us to change our habits which is super common and not anybody's fault that's not wrong so when you are reacting to like a really stressful event like a divorce which is certainly stressful right and life impacting that often we begin to develop like coping and reaction habits to those things this is my opinion by the way based on just seeing a very large number of people and get it having the privilege to interact with so many of you that what seems to happen in those situations is the natural tendencies were always there like you said maybe always naturally anxious maybe always naturally avoidant or anxious in your responses to things but we begin to like kick that a little bit into high gear so does the divorce matter it does matter in your life of course and that's a event you'd have to process and kind of work through for sure no doubt about that but more than likely if it amped up those avoidant responses then it isn't really about the divorce it's nice to understand that like oh I was trying to cope with so much stress and my you know my fear level was through the roof and so I kicked up my avoidant strategies that's good to know because then at least you can start to make the changes that we talk about and it gives you some framework to work in but in the end I don't think once those avoidant strategies and escape mechanisms and safety behaviors are amped up to the next degree well you just kind of have to deal with them regardless of what the trigger was that makes sense okay hopefully that helps answer the question I'll do a couple more and then we're out of here I'm sorry I have to have a drink of my tea here sorry about that that's a little rude but I have to let's see scrolled to the end here no no no I used to fix eight on my sensations very oh this is good thank you Ambreen for sharing this it's a good response to do they go away see what Ambreen is saying is exactly what I said she formed a new relationship with those sensations and and they went away which is almost all of us that are in a recovery stage will tell you that's what it is so that's good so let's see here oh okay this is good too this is a good comment and put it up I was surprised that a positive change could also be a trigger I guess it's also a stress right this is this is excellent this is really an excellent well first of all it's not excellent that that that happened to you of course but it's an excellent bit of insight and it can help all of us yes like stress is not always just negative especially for people who are ready in the grips of an anxiety problem almost anything can be a trigger or an escalating event almost anything including positive things so that's a really good comment thank you very much for acknowledging that our reaction to that could matter will matter you know will will matter so there you go is GAD different from an anxiety disorder GAD is one of the anxiety disorders I'll put up on the screen quickly address that if you go to my website the anxioustruth.com and search for GAD GAD you will see a couple of podcast episodes that I did one with Dave Carbonell one that I did on my own called GAD Drivers and Strategies that will explain the relationship it's not it's it is it is one of the anxiety disorders it's a it's a little bit different in the way you approach it but the principles are pretty much the same so I'll check that out Bethany is offended by my tea drinking and with that I think our time here is done today so I appreciate all you guys coming by and sticking with me while I sort of like scrape my voice through this and hopefully it's been helpful we will be back again next week I will put it up on the screen if you do not have a copy of the anxious truth and you want to get it it is I should just put it up on the desk it is this book that's what we're working out of here on all of these things and you can get it here on my website just go to the anxioustruth.com slash recovery guide and you will find it if you have the book and you're digging it in whatever form and you want to help me out a little bit you can always write a good review on Amazon if you kind of dig it I don't think I'm supposed to ask you that by the rules but I'm going to ask anyway so anyway that's what this is all about I appreciate you guys coming by this week we'll be back again next Monday for the next lesson we're just we got the better part of the next year to do these so every Monday same bat time same bat channel this will stay on my YouTube if you're watching on YouTube subscribe and like and all of that stuff if you're watching on Facebook or in the Facebook group and I will post it on my Instagram also so anywhere that you find me you can go back and rewatch these recovery Monday episodes they will stay in all of these different places so I they never disappear all right peeps thanks for the help and thanks for your time and attention and great conversation and helping each other out I appreciate it now I will see you guys next week have a good one well wait I'll see you on Friday