 this community is do I have to find the root cause of my anxiety before I get better? It's Monday, which means it's recovery Monday. This is episode 11. Let's talk about that today. So let's get rolling here. Let's get the chat window up and see who's here. As you're rolling in, just give me a wave. Let me know everything's working. Welcome. Welcome. Welcome to the members of my Facebook group. I apologize. We're having technical problems today. Restream is not able to connect to the Facebook group. So it appears that we are just going to be YouTube and the Facebook page and Twitter. Welcome back, Twitter. We streamed live on Twitter last week, too. I don't know if anybody watched because I don't really do anything on Twitter. But anyway, let's see what happens. Folks are starting to roll in. I will put the chat overlay up so that we can see what we are saying. Hey, Ann, welcome. Just say hello. Let me know that you are here. Let me know where you guys are from. Everybody's doing today and we'll get into this topic in a minute or two. I just want to remind everybody that we do recovery Monday. Every Monday, we're doing lessons out of this book, The Anxious Truth. This is my recovery guide. We're essentially just going lesson by lesson through this book, which means we still have a long way to go. We're on number 11 now and I think there are 30-something lessons in the book. Hey, Whitney, welcome. So we do this every Monday. If you would like to travel, go along and follow along with the book and you don't have this, you can find this book on my website at theanxiustruth.com. It's a really good book. You should maybe get it if you don't have it. So we just go through lesson by lesson and today we're going to talk about the root cause. Do I need to know my root cause before I can get better? This is, I know, a pretty big deal. Hey, Kat, Olivia, what is up? Welcome. I see people from Facebook and YouTube, so that's good. Again, sorry if you're in the Facebook group and you had to pop on over to some other place. We'll fix that next week. I promise. So let's get into the, let's talk about the root cause, right? Hey, Lauren, welcome. So red dog. Love red dog because I have a red dog. So let's talk about the root cause thing. Linda is here. Welcome. So, Kate is just here. What up? So let's talk about root cause. Hello, everybody. I have to get into it. I'm just going to say hello for the next 30 minutes. So let's talk about the root cause. Everybody wants to know, do I have to find the root? Does my anxiety have a root cause? Do I have to find my root cause in order to get better? Is that required? Some people are in situations where they are working with therapists or counselors that have been digging and digging and digging with them to find a root cause they can't seem to find when they get frustrated. Other people in some instances kind of uncover things that would seem like root causes. It's actually pretty common to like, oh, I remembered this. My therapist helped me remember that. Now I know what it is. But they wind up frustrating sometimes, frustrated sometimes because in the end, they wind up right back in the same place. So even those epiphanies, either they can't find a root cause, even though whether it's their favorite online mental health person or even a counselor or therapist is insisting there must be and we have to find it for you to heal. They can't find it and then they get frustrated or they do feel like they're finding root causes, but it doesn't actually change anything, which is another very common thing, right? So do you need to know the root cause of your anxiety or was there even one? Well, the answer is there might be one. It is possible that that you had some triggering event. It is absolutely possible. It happens to people. So we don't ever want to invalidate that, especially people who have come from abusive or traumatic backgrounds. Nothing that I have ever written about this or said about this is meant to invalidate or take away your experience or your humanity. I'm not trying to take that away from you in any way. I'm just trying to point out the mechanism of action here. So as far as the root cause goes, there may be a root cause or there may be, it was interesting I did a live on Instagram with Josh Fletcher last week and he made up, he brought up a really good point. He said there may be contributory contributing causes, right? Not necessarily like a magic root cause that that's everything and you find this one thing and that's the cause. There's a really good chance that the original triggers for your anxiety were maybe additive. There was a bunch of things that added up together. So there could be contributory or contributing causes, but there also could be possibly one root cause. That's certainly possible. But what we care about more than anything else is the difference between, say, feeling afraid because you have been in a really bad situation. Maybe you are having memories of, oh, every time I got in my car, I had a terrible car accident and I was almost killed. And so I have memories of that. I have flashbacks of that. That's a real thing that can happen. I can't feel safe in the car because of that. I can't feel safe in particular circumstances because I was assaulted or otherwise abused, which is terrible if that's happened to you. My heart goes out to you. So that's one thing. But when you reach the point where I am afraid to go to things or do things or go to certain places or be in certain contexts, because you are afraid of the panic, the panic that might happen or the way you might feel, the sensations that you will experience or the thoughts you might have in those places, well, that's a different animal. So now what starts to happen is if there was a root cause or a series of contributing causes that triggered the initial thing, that almost doesn't matter now. It does because we have to work on everything. This is not all or none here. This is not either root cause or not. It can be both and we always have to work on everything. So if there are issues in your past that are troubling you and that are problematic now, you got to work on those too. So I'm never telling you to not do that. But when you get to the point where the anxiety itself becomes the source of more anxiety, then that original root cause if there was one or that series of contributing causes back then sort of becomes decoupled. It's still there and it still has to be dealt with at some point, maybe at the same time, maybe first, maybe second, don't know, everybody's going to be individual in the way they do that. But when the anxiety itself becomes the fuel for more anxiety, I'm afraid to panic, I'm afraid of the sensations, I'm afraid of the thoughts, I'm afraid that I'm going to get sick, I'm afraid that I'm going to pass out or be incapacitated or go insane. When that happens, now you're in a situation where if there was a root cause, it kind of doesn't matter now. So do you need to know the root cause? If you are in a situation where you are afraid of being afraid and you are interpreting your thoughts and those physical sensations as things that you must never allow, you're afraid of the panic, you're afraid of the anxiety, you're afraid of the thoughts, you're just afraid of being anxious all the time, then the root cause is not irrelevant in your life, but it is not the primary driver of where you are right now. So the way the analogy I use all the time, and I wrote about it in the book also, is I use the analogy of starting a fire. So if in fact, you build a fire, and that fire is now roaring, right, so we can let's use that analogy like your anxiety problem is a fire. So let's say that you, you know, the fire has been built, it's been lit, and now it is burning brightly, and it's hot, and it's out of control that fire is burning. There may be a match that lit it, right? And we can look at that as that's the root cause, or that is the, that was the tipping point with all the contributing causes in your past, and you use that match to light the fire. You might find, oh, look, that's the match, that's the culprit, and you might blow out that match. And that's great, except the fire that it lit is still burning. And that's an oversimplification, but people seem to really resonate with that. The fire is still burning. So even though you blew out the match and you discovered what that root cause may have been, if there was or contributing causes, you're covering those things in therapy, whatever it is, it's great, and you got to work on those. But if you, a lot of people wind up in the situation where they do start to uncover those things, or they dig in, dig in, can't find them, but the fear still persists. I don't know what happened. I had this huge epiphany in therapy two weeks ago, and I thought I was on the road to recovery, but I got in the car and I had a huge panic attack on the highway, and I don't know why. And now I feel like I'm back to square one and nothing works. So some of you listening may relate to that, because that's a story, unfortunately, that I hear all the time. And that's not anybody's fault. That's not anybody's fault. But it is a frustrating situation when you get to that situation where you've been told that you have to dig and dig and dig to find the root cause. And then you'd think you do, and it doesn't make a difference. It's tough. I understand that could be soul crushing to a certain extent. So if you've been in that situation, then I'm really sorry, because I know how frustrating it is, but it doesn't mean that you're unfixable. It doesn't. You can't draw the conclusion that, well, nothing works because I've seen people have that happen. Or I'm never going to get better because I can't find my trauma. I hear that too a lot. So let's talk a little bit before we get into some comments and questions. Let's talk a little bit about the environment, especially online, that you're immersed in, right? So if you're watching this video means you're following me on social media, or you're listening to my podcast, or you're reading my books, which means you're probably following other people like me on social media, and you might be neck deep in anxiety and mental health information. It is a common theme to hear the word healing. Now, I'm not picking on healing. Healing is a wonderful thing. Do not get me wrong. I'm not trying to take away anybody's healing. I'm not trying to invalidate anybody's pain or invalidate your situation or your background. But I can tell you that healing is probably the word used more than any other in mental health circles. But sometimes, sometimes, we don't have to heal. Either there is no wound to heal, which is possible. Or even if there is a wound to heal, the problem you're dealing with right now isn't necessarily a wound. There's still a wound. But this isn't it. Like this isn't it. So when we are always immersed in an environment, especially online, that promotes the idea of healing and healing and healing and healing pain, and those are valid things. Do not get me wrong. There are those are important things in a human life. But in the context of an anxiety disorder, like panic attacks, or agoraphobia, panic disorder, OCD, OCD is not a healing problem. I'm sorry, it's not, it's just not. And nor is really panic disorder, nor is agoraphobia, nor is the things that we're talking about, they may exist alongside wounds that have to be healed. That is very possible. And does that sometimes make recovery more complicated? Yes, it can. More wrinkles. Yeah, you have to work on that stuff too, for sure. Thank you, Bethany. Bethany says healing journey, healing journey is something that's talked about all the time. And I will tell you, I will acknowledge that there are people in the anxiety space that claim to be addressing the problems that I'm addressing, or that you see people like him or Josh and those folks addressing these problems, who will continually talk about healing, healing, healing, you have to heal, you have to heal. That isn't always necessarily productive. So just because you've been told continually that you must heal doesn't mean that you have to heal in order to be able to leave your house or stay home alone or go to the supermarket or bring your kids to school or attend like the holiday concert at the elementary school. That might not have anything to do with healing. So do I need to uncover this root cause? Do I need to uncover these wounds and heal them somehow emotionally or spiritually before I can move forward? Well, if there are wounds, I would strongly suggest that you try to heal them at some point. But that's likely not why you are having panic attacks when somebody leaves you home alone for 15 minutes. So it's important to understand that again, this is not all or none. It's not either one or the other. It can be both and both have to be worked on. But it is not terribly common to find that that is the problem. I mean, look, people do find that, but I'm telling you the most I feel pretty confident saying if you're watching this video right now, you're not one of those people. So there are people for whom this was all driven by specific triggering events for sure. And then they find them and that seems to change everything. And that's great for them. That's great. But that is not a usual occurrence. The more usual occurrence is I can't find the triggering events no matter how hard we dig and how long I lay in that couch and how much I open a vein and bleed emotionally in therapy, I can't find a triggering event. Or I feel like I do nothing but try and find triggering events and it isn't making a difference anyway. So from where I sit in this, no, you do not need to know the root cause even if there is one, it's helpful if you can address your past for sure. But it is not necessarily required because we're talking about some more mechanical things, right? Now if you're dealing with, you know, hate to always bring this up because it really does get really tangled. But if you're dealing with trauma, if you're dealing with PTSD, yes, you can actually get into an anxiety state or a fear state because you're having memories of things that happened before. That's a little different animal. So we're not talking about that. We're talking about I'm afraid of being afraid, right? So again, this I can't this isn't diagnosis, this isn't therapy, we don't know 100% what's going on in your particular situation. So I can't speak to you individually, viewer directly because I don't know that. But just be aware of these issues, it doesn't have to be a healing journey, or it isn't necessarily not a healing journey either, these things get kind of tangled up together, right? So that is possible. But I do not believe that a root cause is required in order to learn to not be afraid of your own body and mind. So in the end, if you are afraid of your own body and mind, the root cause is not really relevant in that part of this. There, there you go. So let's look at, let's look at some of the comments here and questions. I will scroll back a little bit here. No, no, no, no, no, no. Bo's mom, welcome Bo's mom. Good to see you again. I'll put some of these up on the screen might as well, right? So let's see here. Yep, all of that is me right now. I'm afraid of everything. I want freedom so bad. I just keep moving and doing just hoping to be free one day. Okay, Bo. That's good. I'm glad that you're moving forward. Make sure that you're not moving forward and just gritting and white knuckling your way through life that will get really frustrating and exhausting and doesn't necessarily lead to anything. But it is good that you're not retreating, right? So make sure you're, I mean, I'm not trying to sell a book, but this book is full of like how we do the things. It really addresses the how and why we do things, not just do them. It's more than just doing the things. Yesterday, I posted an excerpt where I said you can't just, you can't just, you can't just run into the scary things without changing the way you react to that fear. So that's important, but good job, not just retreating. That's really good. Lauren says it has taken me years to learn that I'm just afraid. And I understand that, Lauren. I do. And I think people in the audience, the other folks you're watching could probably relate to that. A lot of people will say that it took me a long time to discover like, oh, I'm just afraid of my own heartbeat. You know, and they think like, well, as soon as there's anything that with the word anxiety or fear, that somehow that's directly connected to childhood and something like that, it might be, you know, childhood matters, your parents matter, your experiences matter, all of those things matter. But when you get to the point where you are terrified of your own heartbeat, because you are convinced that it's going to stop randomly and you're going to keel over, that is a completely irrational fear with no basis. Then in a way, that has nothing to do with, with, with, you know, with what went on in your childhood. Could it be a contributory thing? Of course it could, but we got to break that irrational fear first, right? And then you can work on all those things. So let's keep going. Anne, you have a way of saying things. You're welcome, man. Thank you. Those are kind words. I appreciate that. So Marcy, hey, Marcy, what up? I don't need to heal. I need to tolerate and manage things. You know, this is a good point. Now, I understand what you're saying, and I'm with you on this, like you've realized like, Oh, wait, no, I'm pointing at the wrong target. And you've come to that realization and now you're working on it, right? A new way, hopefully a productive way. But I want to put that up on this on the screen here. Wait, I'm sorry, that was like the wrong thing. Because sometimes this becomes misinterpreted. So when somebody hears me say these things, sometimes they feel like, Oh, well, what do you mean? I have to learn? I'm not supposed to like express my pain, or I'm not supposed to acknowledge my pain and my emotions and my hurt. No, we're not saying that at all. Nobody should ever try to take away your emotions. So like, I'm strictly in the behavioral camp, clearly, clearly, I'm in the cognitive behavioral clan camp, the metacognitive camp. But I don't know anybody in that camp where that would tell you that you're supposed to just block your emotions and never acknowledge them or your pain. That never. So sometimes, and Marsha, you're not saying that, but this really brings that up when we use when you use freight, when I say things like surrender, or you hear accept or float or willfully tolerate that sort of stuff. Sometimes it gets interpreted as, I don't believe it, you're telling people to just tolerate their pain. Like, no, no, no, that's not what we're talking about. That's not at all. So let's see here, what does Lawrence, I need to be okay with feeling and feel. Okay, well, this is a big one too, like, and this starts to begin to cloud the situation also, right? Because a lot of times, you may have actually have past experiences or your upbringing or just your style, your personality, whatever it is, that teaches you that your emotions are too much for you. So many, many people in this community feel like their emotions, big emotions are too much, they're too, I can't handle them, they're too much. And that can come from a lot of different ways. And that may be directly linked to your past, for sure, your experiences may have taught you that your emotions are not okay, you shouldn't express them, or you're weak and you can't handle them, get all that. But sometimes that leads us into situations where we then start to lose track of what is what. Well, I'm afraid of my emotions, and I'm afraid of feeling them because of the way they trigger this fear and this anxiety response. But their emotions, so that must mean root cause or healing or childhood or trauma or inner child, right? Not necessarily. Like I know that when we use things like feelings and emotions, we will automatically attach those terms to those other terms like inner child, childhood or upbringing or parents or abuse. And they are in many ways connected, but they don't have to always be connected. Sometimes people just learn to be afraid of their emotions because emotions make reactions and reactions are things that they fear. So it's always this nuance here, and you have to be really careful. You have to be really careful. You have to be on guard to not, not really fall in the black and white thing. Like, you know, we will never tell people that's either or. So what's up Courtney, Courtney says, hard to separate real traumas that happen from just generally disorder thinking. It is, it can be really hard. It absolutely 100%. That is not in any way an inaccurate statement. It can be really hard. So for people who have lived through some real traumatic events, abusive, toxic relationships, whatever it happens to be, it can be hard to separate that, right? You're not sure like, wait, what is this? Am I justified in being afraid right now? Or am I not justified in being afraid right now? Especially if some of your past experiences involved situations where you should have legit been afraid, but yet you were told that you shouldn't be afraid because everything's really fine. So when you come from a background where you were legit, had legitimate reasons to be afraid from a physical standpoint, mental, emotional standpoint, and yet you were told you're crazy, nothing is wrong. I'm not doing anything to you or the rest of the world didn't get to see that because the person causing that was seen as this wonderful person. But you know how it was behind closed doors. Then yeah, you could start to lose the ability to a certain extent to differentiate between when should I be afraid and when I shouldn't. So Courtney, that's a real thing. You just you got to work on it. You can get through that, it makes it more complicated. This is where having professional help and somebody who is trained in resolving trauma in a helpful way can absolutely help. But I get that that's really common. So let's see here. Okay, let's see what Bethany says, or I found so many triggering events that I'm so anxious that I can't handle looking at the triggers anymore. That's another really good statement. We sometimes overlook that as well. That can happen. Sometimes you could get so dug in, so dug in with, you know, finding the triggers and processing the processing the processing processing. I had somebody say the other day, actually not the other day came back up to the day but something I heard a couple years ago from actually a trauma a trauma recovery specialist, who said in an interview, I used to like, I used to have memories and they would come up and I would say, Oh, I can't wait to get the therapy so I could process it so I could process it. And she discovered that processing it wasn't always required, but she was so sort of stuck in that that slipstream or that stream of I have to find my triggers, I have to process them, and I have to work through them. But sometimes the process of religiously trying to ferret out triggers and then process because you have to you have to heal your root cause can actually fuel more that could dig the hole a little deeper. Again, nuance, but that can happen to people. So Bethany, thank you for that comment that is 100% correct. Let's see here are certain things that happen to me tend to produce adults get those disorders. Okay, hang on here. Well, that's true, right? This is not untrue Courtney. In other words, certain things that happen to be tend to produce adults and kids with anxiety disorders. You know, we've talked about this and other things that I've done with some of my frequent collaborators, we've touched on this sort of thing. Yes, that's true. Your past experiences can teach you to react a certain way. That's not that's 100% correct. That is not anybody take that away either. So what do I work on first? That's a hard, that's a hard call to make. You know, I think you sometimes you have to work on all of it at the same time, which certainly adds additional burden, and it makes it more wrinkled and more complicated and more nuanced. It really does. So my heart goes out to you. But what do you work on first can't say I know people who have strictly done the mechanical exposure anxiety disorder stuff. And then that has given them enough space to work on the root cause stuff, the trauma stuff that that seems like a pretty common story. Like I was just so anxious and afraid of myself all the time that when I did this work and I did the exposure work and I learned to not fear my own body and brain, I got enough space for then I could actually go and work on the other stuff. That's really common too. I also have had people on the other side that some of those past events were obstacles to doing this work. So it really depends on I wish I had a good answer for you, I don't, I don't. But it depends on your individual situation. Hard to say. Let's see here. What about health anxiety and the ability to trust your body is? Well, this is actually pretty common. inability to trust your body is functioning fine with all the physical symptoms. That doesn't necessarily that doesn't really have anything to do with the root cause necessarily. So I don't think there's a link to today's topic at all. But just know that that is actually a part and parcel of almost everybody that's in this room could ask that question or at least could have at one point. So the fact that you are interpreting those physical sensations as some sort of danger or indication that something is wrong or that you need to fix them or save yourself from them. That is part of what fuels almost all of what we're talking about in these things, almost all of it. So that's incredibly common. Okay, let's see here. Could a toxic upbringing cause it all a buildup of negativity? Again, well, you know, we were talking about, like I said, with what my friend Josh had said on the live that we did last week, contributory causes causes use the British like contributory, I think is what he said. And you know, contributing causes. Yeah, like, yes, your upbringing does teach you how you should react to the world and how you can relate to the world. So you can call it negativity if you want, but it is absolutely 100% possible. Is there a genetic predisposition? There might be. Is it nature? Is it nurture? Both, probably both. But many people can point directly back to their upbringing where anxious and avoidant and fearful behavior was modeled by their parents. So that could have led you down the road of responding the way you do to your anxiety now. Like you may have been taught that right, or you may have been taught that you don't have the ability to find safety because of the way you were raised and there's there were bad situations. And so that leads you to believe that you don't have the ability to handle this stuff because it's everything was always out of your control. So there's a lot of things that go into this to really are, but we don't necessarily have to find, you know, what that triggering thing was in order to overcome those irrational fears that prop up. I'm afraid that, you know, every time I, every time I think I'm going to go insane, it means that I might be going insane. That's the stuff we're talking about here. Anxiety isn't just a mental thing. My entire body will feel ill. I'm just going to read that one because it'll cover the whole. So Patricia says, tired, shaking, just done well, even when I don't feel anxious. Yep, heart, blood work, everything is good. How can it possibly go? Okay, it's just so crazy to me. Patricia, it's crazy to everybody. So in the beginning of this, or if you're never exposed to other things, right, it's easy to just keep, stay focused on that. But my body feels so bad 100%. The very first episode I ever did of this pod of my podcast is called anxiety is physical anxiety disorders are cognitive. So I would never take that away from you or or negate that you 100% feel anxiety physically 100%. And is it possible for to create that? Yeah, it's 100% possibly create that somebody sitting just in the safest place that they have in the world can instantly have a huge panic attack that comes with tremendous amounts of physiological changes. Yes, anxiety can do that to you fear can do that to you. And it doesn't mean just panic attack. Just in general, when I was an anxious mess 24 hours a day, seven days a week, I had so many different things happening in my body, I can't even write them all down for goodness sake. And either my body completely changed itself completely, or when I stopped being afraid of it, I stopped noticing them and they sort of went away. So yeah, that that that's that's really common. Yes, it can do that. It totally can do that. Let's see here. It's not an either or kind of thing. Alright, so let's see here. It's not an either. It doesn't have to be an either or for some people, it is some people can't find a root cause right there is there is none believe it or not. And this is a thing that this grinds my gears. There are truly people in the mental health community, including some professionals that will 100% insist no, no, no, everybody has a wound. And if we do not find it, then there can be no healing. And frankly, I am buying that. So some people it is either or we exist that we're out there. But it's a little bit of a combination of both sometimes part of healing is losing the fear of something part of it is addressing repressed emotions. Losing the fear of the symptoms isn't necessarily connected with addressing repressed repressed emotions. If those repressed emotions are bringing up the symptoms. Yeah, you sure would want to want to, you know, address that for sure. But not being when you become afraid of the symptoms themselves, then a lot of times trying to deal with just those emotions, turns out to be frustrating because well, I'm still afraid of it though. And then when I'm afraid of them, even though I found that I was repressing a memory, it's still happening. Why is it still happening? Well, because you're afraid of it happening. So it's tough. It's tough. Not these aren't these aren't like really super clear answers all the time. I wish they were. I wish they were. Let's see here. Having a success. No problem. I'm going to scroll through a little bit more. Where are we 26 minutes? Sometimes I think going too far for my comfort zone on my own is like watching a scary movie. I'm stuck in my zone. So Kat says sometimes I think of going too far for my comfort zone on my own. It's like watching a scary movie. It is like watching a scary movie. And then when you do it, it feels like you're in a scary movie. So that's all that's correct. Using the word 100% a lot today. That is correct. It will feel like you were in a scary movie. But the key word Kat is feel like feel like. So this sucks. And you know, it comes up all the time. But in the end, yes, it is scary. But we have to go into that fear and move through it. So how do I break through usually the missing ingredient there that people don't want to hear about is the word courage. Like you do have to be brave to do this work. I mean, hell, you really got to be brave to do a lot of mental health work, whether it's moving through anxiety and panic, you know, overcoming your agoraphobia, like Kat's talking about or anything else kind of got to be brave to do all this work. So at some point, you're going to have to do things even though it feels like you're in a scary movie, you got to do them anyway. And that's how we learned Kat that you're not really in a scary movie. It only feels that way. It's only felt that way. So let's see here. Good. Michelle, I'm glad to hear that you are starting to feel better. I've had to practice the physical stuff. Okay, this is good. This is good. So this is what I was talking about before. So Anne has said she has to practice the physical stuff first, then deal with the other stuff. It was like eating the elephant one by at a time, which is such a good analogy. I always love when people bring that up. Had to eat an elephant one by at a time. So Anne is a good example of somebody that had to do some of this mechanical work first to make enough room and space so that she could address some of the other things. That's pretty common. Let's see. No, no, no, no. Okay. This is, this is another good comment. Thank you guys are killing it today. And I love again, I always want to mention that I see you guys talking to each other and I love that I love when you're helping each other out, rooting for each other. It's a person in my life that really triggers my anxiety and I can't avoid them. But the more I work on my anxiety, the less they trigger me. This is a really good point. First of all, really good work because you see how that is intertwined, right? It's really, really good that you that you're doing that you're feeling you have less anxiety when you're around that triggering person. But but I always have to say we recovery, anxiety recovery is never about learning to float except willfully tolerate like legit abuse or manipulation or danger, never. Right? So while it's good that you're learning to maybe not you're not reacting the same way to that person. And I'm not saying this person is manipulative or abusive just in general. We are never part of this journey. Claire Weeks never wrote about learning how to tolerate and float through abusive relationships, or abusive situations, or legit dangerous situations ever. I never wrote about that. None of my friends have ever written about that. This is never about that. So good job with the work you've been doing to help that. But when we find that we are in legitimate situations where people are damaging us, really damaging us, we're we're not required by recovery to learn how to float through that or surrender through that ever, like ever. So let's see here. I'm going to kind of scroll down at the bottom here. I think I want to give up looking for the root cause. Okay, by all I understand that I can hear your frustration in this, right? Going to give up looking for the root cause because I've had so many experiences that could have been the root cause. Maybe maybe and I'm sorry because it sounds like you've been through some tough stuff. So that's that my heart goes out to you. I'm sorry. Sometimes just focusing on the mechanical stuff can actually change things. So give it a shot for a while. Let's see here. Oh my goodness. This is a good question. This is somebody who truly has read this book, right? Actually not this book. But this question comes right out of my first book, which is called An Anxiety Story. You'll find that one on my website too. That one you can actually download as a free mp3. So if you go to the anxioustruth.com and click on that book, you can actually download that and listen to the story as a free mp3 if you're so inclined or you can get it on Smashwords as a free ebook or it's super cheap on Amazon. That comes right out of that the first time I ever had a panic attack. That song was playing and if you guys aren't old enough to know a band called Mr. Mr from the 80s. Alright, I'm a little older than most of you what can I tell you and that song was playing. So how do I feel? Honestly, I don't really feel anything with it now. It's actually a little bit of a humorous thing just because of the ridiculous like oh no, when you're having a panic attack the first one ever and you think you're convinced that that's what it feels like to die. You do not want to hear a shitty 80s band like chanting things out of the Latin Mass. You just don't tell you that that was not good. Let's see here. Well, okay, this is a Krispy Kreme. I'm going to answer a few more and then we're going to end it because I'm just about at the end anyway. How am I supposed to do when I feel anxiety symptoms 24 seven even when not anxious? Well, it's hard to say that you're not anxious but yet feeling symptoms but the answer to that would be nothing like you don't have to do anything in the end like these symptoms do not require some sort of special response. They're not hurting you in the end. They're uncomfortable. You don't like them but part of the issue is like yeah, but I'm feeling them and what do I do with those? I have to make them go away. Everybody wants them to go away but we do not have to take some sort of special evasive action for anxiety symptoms ever. Okay, let's see here is the anxious truth on audio because I lose interest in reading books. The anxious truth is on audio. You can, again, if you go to my website and look for this book which is right on the homepage, they're all linked on the homepage, you will find a link to get it on all sound on Amazon, on iTunes, on Audible, any place you can get an audio book. All sound is great. So yes, the links to get it on audio are all there. Let's see here. This is good too. A couple more and then we'll go. Oh my god, life is a highway. Now that's in my head. Hope you're happy. Now I have life as a highway in my head. After looking for years, I've determined that maybe no root cause. That is freeing in a way. That's good. I mean, in a way. It's nice to know. Like I've dug and dug and dug and I can't find anything. Look, I don't know if I have a root cause. I may never know. Maybe I had a root cause. Maybe it didn't. It doesn't matter. I don't have a need to find one, to be honest with you. So it doesn't matter in the end. Let's see. Very good. Kirsten, you're doing great. Doing a lot better with the advice. Good job, Viola. Hang in there. Keep going. Life is a highway. I'm going to skip the leaky gut thing. It has nothing to do with this. You can hate me if you want. You might want to unfollow because you're going to get almost no, no like response from me on leaky gut. Leaky gut does not make somebody afraid of their own freaking heartbeat. It just doesn't. And I know that there's, I'm going to rant for 30 seconds here and I'm not picking on you, Joanne, but just be aware that if you're going to follow this particular community, you're going to hear me really aggressively discredit that. The whole gut brain connection, all that research, it doesn't say that what you think it says. All right, so it's important. Let's see. From Croatia, you're very welcome. Sorry for the euro from hell. All right, folks, no problem. I can forgive all of you for sticking life as a highway. Who did that? Life is a highway. Somebody, before we go, tell me who did life as a highway. Why can't I think of the person's name? But anyway, all right guys, remember we are going to do these every Monday until we run out of lessons. So we're going to be here into the spring for sure. Again, we're doing every Monday here on YouTube and Facebook and even Twitter. Anybody that's watching on Twitter, hey, I know you can't comment, but welcome to what we're doing lessons out of this book. We'll see you guys next. I'll tell you what, let me tell you what next week will be. Next week is lesson 2.8 in the book, which is, oh, we talked about OCD, health anxiety, GAD, and social anxiety next week. And then I believe we are on to chapter three after that, which is where we get into the meat and potatoes of this stuff. So there you go. No, but that definitely wasn't Joe Cocker. It was, oh man, I can't, now it's gonna, now I have to look it up. Life as a highway was, oh whatever, we can't think of it. I'm gonna think of it as soon as we get done. But definitely wasn't Joe Cocker. I know that. All right guys, I will see you next Monday. We will do OCD, health anxiety, social anxiety. We'll talk about those ancillary topics and how I fell short in this book addressing them, because I clearly did. And I'll see you guys next week. Thanks for coming by. This will save, by the way, on my YouTube. Thank you, thank you. Thank you, Red Dog. Love it. Maybe did Rascal Flats redo life as a highway? They could have. This is where the age is starting to come into it. Anyway, see you guys next week. This will save on YouTube. It will save on my Facebook page. It's not in the group this week. And I will post on Instagram shortly. So if you need to come back to it, do that. And I will see you guys later.