 Recovery Monday episode number 61. Today we're going to talk about anxiety symptoms, panic and exercise. I posted about this over the weekend on TikTok and Instagram and man, did it get a lot of traction. So people clearly want to talk about this. So we will talk about it today. We'll go over some of the basic principles that I want to lay out for you guys, especially if you are in a situation where you keep hearing that exercise is really good for your anxiety, but then when you try to exercise, you end up feeling more anxious or you even panic. We're going to talk about that all today. So let's get the chat overlay up so you guys can see what's going on. So I can see what's going on. I do not need headphones today because it's just me. So thank you be appreciate the thumbs up. See, it's like code. I already know what Bethany is telling me. She can hear me. So that's always good news. Anyway, has everybody doing well? We'll wait for everybody to sort of file in. Oh, we got our second Twitch person. Hello there. I don't know how to say your name. I, I exodia. I don't know. Um, hope I'm getting that right. Listen to 50% of the comments of the screen right now are from Twitch. This is a milestone. This is an absolute milestone for the anxious truth. Anyway, we'll wait for everybody to show up. I know this is a pretty popular topic. A lot of people were talking about, hey, you know, I have this problem. I really want to exercise or I feel like something's wrong with me because when I exercise, I feel worse or it triggers my panic. So I'm going to talk about all that. Hey, Billy. Hey, Julie went up. I had a momentary paper over. He's in. It's a Twitch breakthrough. It is completely a Twitch breakthrough. So, uh, yeah, this is no joke. Like we're getting huge on Twitch. We have two viewers now. Whoops. Um, I have a ton of stuff on my screen right now, so I'm trying to organize that. Um, as we're waiting for everybody to file in, everybody just let me know how you're doing. I hope everybody's okay. Let me know where you're coming from. Uh, if in fact you are coming from the Facebook group, I won't see your name. I'll only see Facebook user because technology sucks. But, uh, yeah, that's what's going on. And before we get started, just a quick reminder, people have been asking me, um, and yes, people actually have been asking me. That's like such an influencer thing. I've got so many questions about, and they've gotten zero questions about that. I will never do that. Like I'm literally being hasty about that. So I'm going to put this up on the screen. Um, this coming Saturday, which is February 11th, I am running my panic attacks explained, there it is this way. I'm running this workshop, which people seem to be interested in, uh, essentially, especially if you are new to this whole thing and the stuff that I talk about seems completely ridiculous. Like, what does this guy talk to you about? I have to intentionally panic. It this workshop kind of display, uh, talks about all of that stuff. It's 90 minutes via zoom. You're completely anonymous. You're not on camera. No, we'll see your name. So I have a whole slide deck. You get that like there'll be about 30 minutes worth of Q and a in the comments section over there and everything. So it's going to be great. And then the replay will be available afterwards. So that's this coming Saturday, uh, February 11th, that noon Eastern time, just hit the, the link below here. Uh, if you want to check that out. So anyway, that's my little, uh, advertisement for that. Got to pay the bills and all that. So anyway, holy moly three, we have three trip, three Twitch people. Is this what's going on right now? I'm, I'm a little bit disoriented by that. Twitch is taking over, man. Um, anyway, so let's get into this. Um, that's me. Exactly how you do exercise and walking gives me panic attacks. I swear I'm going crazy. Okay. So let's get into this. I mean, it seemed like a pretty popular topic. I don't know. Maybe it's not, we'll see. But, uh, one of the things that you hear all the time, like, you know, common anxiety or mental health or just wellness advice is like exercise is great. And let me be perfectly clear. I am a fan. Like I'm a gym rat, or at least I have been for many years. Maybe I'm slack and lately, but I have big, big into strength training. Always try to keep myself in shape. I'm a big fan of the gym and exercising in various different ways. Just getting outside and moving around. So I am a fan of exercises, no doubt. And in my own recovery, when I was in the thick of it and I decided to go back to the gym, because I didn't, I had lost a lot of strength and I wanted to go back to the gym and start lifting. That was really challenging for me. Cause I went through a lot of what we're going to talk about today, but it turned out to be a huge benefit. And I'm not talking about it decreased my anxiety. I'm going to talk about it a different way, but exercise as in a, as a recovery tool for me turned out to be huge, a huge deal. Uh, it was a big, big bonus for me, not maybe in the way that you think, so we're going to talk about that. But every, so everybody hears about how exercise is so good for you. It's good for your, it's good for anxiety, but then many, many people wind up super discouraged or they think that they're broken or there's something especially wrong with them because when they try to exercise, they initially feel worse or they feel more anxiety or they get really scared or they panic during, during exercise. So I want to talk about today. It's really, really, really common. Like this is not a, an uncommon thing at all. So what I want to address first is the idea that just because the whole world is telling you that anxiety, that exercise is really good. Air quotes, good for your anxiety. If you're struggling to exercise because you're sort of afraid of the sensations in your body, that doesn't mean that there's something wrong with you or that you're especially broken or that you'll never get better. I promise it doesn't mean that at all, which is the main point that I want to make today. People wind up getting super discouraged. They get down. They feel like, oh man, like everybody says this is supposed to help me and it's actually making it worse. Something must be wrong with me. That's really, really common. I promise nothing is wrong with you. Like when you exercise, if you are in a situation where you're dealing with panic attacks, where you are really worried about the sensations in your body, you're terrified of your heart. You're terrified of heavy breathing. You're terrified of the pounding sensation. You don't like sweating or getting hot or cold. Like you're trying to keep your body calm all the time because you're so afraid of it. When you start to exercise, you're not keeping your body calm. It's the opposite of it. You're sort of riling your body up intentionally. So exercise becomes an exposure for you. That's all that is. So instead of seeing exercise as like an anxiety fix or a shield or a calming thing, which that sort of conventional wisdom seems to indicate it might be that like, oh, if you have anxiety, you should exercise every day. It's really good for anxiety. If you hear that, you would think, oh, I'll start exercising because it will make me feel better. Or people will say, they'll think, oh, it means that I'm going to burn off the adrenaline. I hear that all the time. I'm going to burn off the adrenaline. We'll talk about that. That's actually not the way that works. But and so they look at the idea that anxiety is helped by exercise as like, oh, if I exercise, I will be calm. I will it will lower my anxiety level. And then they discover that it has the opposite effect initially and they freak out needlessly. So I want you to really think about, I just want you to think about the idea that exercise is an exposure. So if you are dealing, if you're dealing, especially for people that have panic disorder, agoraphobia, anything that revolves around, I'm afraid of my own body. Like I'm terrified for my heart to be too fast or I can't. I don't want to breathe too heavy. If your problems lie there, that exercise is actually an exposure. So think of it that way. It's a challenge and expect it to be a challenge. So you have to temper those those expectations. So when people say like any exercise is so good for anxiety, dropped out of the floor and just hear exercise is good for anxiety because it's an exposure. It's an exposure that I can do. And it might help me in the long run, but it might be challenging for me today and that's expected. That's normal. It doesn't mean that there's something wrong with you or that you're hopeless. Again, I know I keep repeating that, but it's heartbreaking for me to see that because people will always say, this is universal. Like it's universal good advice, exercise. And then they struggle and they think like nothing works for me. So don't fall on that trap. My heart goes out to you if you feel like you're broken because you've been reluctant to exercise, put it to you that way. So let's sort of break it down and I have if you go to my website, the anxious truth dot com and use the search tool, just put in the word exercise and you will see two two podcast episodes from years ago and the videos are old. You'll see I look very different, but called why does exercise make my anxiety worse? Part one and two. And then you will find one that I did with Jenna Overbaugh only about two months ago or so. We talked about the physical sensations of anxiety and exposure, right? So check that out. You want me to listen to those three podcasts, very popular. So here is the deal with the physical sensations of exercise. We actually can use exercise. And this is how I used it. So when I tell you that exercise was a huge boom in my recovery at a big bonus to me, it's because I used it as interoceptive exposure. So what is interoceptive exposure? And if you go listen to the podcast episode I did with Jenna, not too long ago about exercise and anxiety symptoms, we talk a lot about interoceptives. Interoceptive exposure is that thing where you would might be working with your therapist and your therapist would make you do things like sit in the office chair and spin around to intentionally get dizzy or breathe through a straw to intentionally feel short of breath or run in place or your jumping jack or push-ups to intentionally sweat, get hot and rise your and raise your heart rate. Intentionally, we do it intentionally so that you can begin to change your reaction to those sensations. And instead of going into panic mode and freak out mode, which you will, but instead of then running, trying to stop it, quickly popping your zanax, bring your heart right down, you learn to not do that and let it resolve. And you begin to understand that like, oh, OK, my body does things and they're not dangerous, even though I find them disturbing right now. So you would intentionally do that kind of work. Interoceptive just means it's it's you do this intentionally. They are you're intentionally triggering the internal sensations that you feel and you're trying to use those experiences as exposures. So if you're an agoraphobic and you are doing exposure to try and drive around your neighborhood or you are have OCD and you're doing exposure in the form of ERP with your intrusive thoughts or whatever it happens to be. Well, interoceptive is just another form of exposure where you intentionally do a thing to bring up a thing that triggers your fear and your panic and then you work on rolling through that. So at some point I will I'll see if I post it like in my Instagram stories. I think I already posted in the Facebook group. If you just search for interoceptive exposure on YouTube, you will find some videos. They're not terribly exciting. You'll find some very poorly produced, very dry, boring videos, which is the type of videos that good therapists always seem to produce. And that's why the people with the best information have the smallest YouTube channels. But you'll see that there are some therapists who have done that. Either they're teaching other therapists or they're showing what interoceptives look like, or they've gotten permission from a client to film a session. And you'll see how it works. Like in one, there's a series of videos where the therapist has a woman jog in place and, of course, it raises her heart rate. He does it with her. And when she stops, she's you could see she is visibly, visibly afraid. She is reacting the way she normally would because it feels like a panic attack. She's afraid of her heart and he just sort of coaches her through like, OK, let's just let it come down and let it come down. And she works on that, right? So that's what interoceptive exposure is. So exercise in many ways is an interoceptive exposure. So if you have been completely sedentary because you're terrified to raise your heart rate, then solving this exercise problem is perfectly acceptable to do by just getting up and walking in place or doing a light jog in front of your sofa. Anything that raises your heart rate gets you breathing a little heavy and makes you uncomfortable counts. So if you have been terrified to exercise and you have done no exercise for two years because you're treating your body like it's made of glass and may shatter at any moment, then you don't have to start by going to the gym and trying to bench press 400 pounds. That's or run, you know, a seven minute mile. You don't have to do that. It's perfectly OK to start by just doing anything that raises your heart rate or makes you breathe a little heavy or maybe makes you get warm. Any of those things count any activity that intentionally brings about those those sensations counts and will help you move back toward that time where you can exercise, right? So but here's the important part about that. You have to use the exercise again to bring it back around not as a cure for your anxiety problem and not as a shield or a way to calm down. At first, you're going to say, oh, today I'm going to take 15 minutes of my day and intentionally make my heartbeat really fast, which I'm terrified to do. It's going to be super challenging, but like I'm going to do it anyway, and I'm going to practice. The most important part of this, though, is when you do trigger yourself intentionally, whether you go to the gym or you go outside for a walk or you just walk in place in your living room. It doesn't matter when you do intentionally trigger yourself and you find yourself like in, oh, my God, oh, my God, mode. The most important part about that is to let let it ride. We can't fall back on like, oh, my God, I better go ask somebody. Is my heart OK? I better start checking my pulse. I better check my Apple watch. I better you have to refrain from all the things that you generally do when you feel the sensations that you deem are dangerous. So that's probably the most important part of this. If you decide to try to push yourself into some exercise and then the minute you get uncomfortable, you immediately stop. You run out. You get off the treadmill. You run back home. You take your pills. You whatever you do, you're then that wasn't a really that wasn't a great experience for you. Except if you do do that, which can happen now and then we never get it perfectly, we will stumble as we do it. You have to circle back around and say, well, OK, what did I do there? I ran from the thing that I asked my body to do like I literally asked my body to respond that way. And it did because it's an amazing machine that has this capability. And then when it did what I asked it to do, I ran and tried to get away from it. So even if you try some exercise or some physical activity and you so-called fail because you run away from it or you try to escape from it, look back when it's all over and say, OK, what did I do here? How can I learn from this and how can I modify that experience a little bit so that next time I can hang in with it a little bit longer for another couple of minutes, five minutes, maybe. Maybe it means I got to drop the intensity a little bit. OK, that's fine. It might take you a little while to find that sweet spot. So it's perfectly, perfectly, perfectly OK to experiment a little bit and just find the part where you put yourself right into like that freak out zone and then stay in it. I'm going to stay in it for a minute today. I'm going to stay in it for two minutes today. I'm going to stay in it for five minutes today. I'm going to let it ride and then I'm going to stop and then I'm going to let my body go back to its normal state. Just remember that you have asked your body to elevate its operation. So you will breathe more. You will sweat. You will feel hot. You will feel different things in your muscles. You're changing your blood pressure when you do that. You're changing your galvanic skin response. You're changing all the things in your body and you are keenly in tune with that. So you'll feel all of it. Remember that not only are you getting the natural elevation of those functions because of the activity, the exercise or whatever you decide to do, but you're also triggering your fear. So when you stop, let's say you get off the treadmill, you're walking on the treadmill, you get off the treadmill. Oh, my God, oh, my God. And you find that your heart rate is not instantly coming down. Remember, I asked my heart to beat faster. It did. Now I'm afraid so it's going to beat even faster than that. So you cannot expect that you can immediately escape the sensations. You will have no choice but to ride through it. Let your body come back down to its normal resting state for a person that does not have an anxiety problem when they stop exercising. It takes a while for their heart rate to come back down. Like if I go on a bike ride and I look at, you know, the way my whoop strap or whatever measures that, I would see that I don't jump off the bike and go from 130 beats per minute down to 60. And like in 30 seconds, it doesn't happen that way. It takes a while to come back down. So expect that it will take a while to come down and expect that it will take a little longer than maybe your neighbor or your sister, your brother, your partner that isn't anxious because you're so afraid of feeling that and you all you want it to do is to calm down really quickly. All right. So that's sort of the skinny on exercise. People will say, well, how to get, how do I get started? Slowly, as slowly as you need to, it doesn't matter. It counts. It counts. Remember that for people like us, initially, when you begin to exercise again, you're almost not even doing it for the benefits of the exercise. So my first month in the gym, I cannot say that, like, oh, man, I started building muscle and getting stronger. The first month in the gym was almost a pure exercise in the intercept of exposures. I had panic attacks in the gym. I was uncomfortable in the gym. I did walk out of the gym. I never ran home, but I did walk out a few times, go back to my car and take a minute to compose myself. I did do that. And that's OK. You could do that. So if you want to take a break and then go back into it, you can totally. That's OK. You can do that. Just always stay in touch with why you're doing what you're doing, what you expect to happen. Don't be surprised by it and understand that. Like, oh, I'm doing something really difficult now and I'm going to be brave. I'm going to try and get through this so I can learn from it. The biggest lesson you will learn, lessons that you can learn from this. Again, how you use exercise, not as a cure or as a shield or as a fix. But what are the lessons that exercise can teach somebody with an anxiety disorder? It taught me that I had to stop treating my body as if it was like a sliver away from death because it never ever was on my most anxious days when I was convinced that my heart was going to stop or go into some sort of, you know, life incompatible arrhythmia. I would think of phrases like that or I felt like I could not breathe enough and I was going to suffocate or I was going to pass out or whatever was going to happen. I was always, always wrong because I can't be that way on Tuesday convinced that I'm this close to just shattering into a million pieces. And then on the very next day, going to a gym, getting the squat rack intentionally drive my heart rate up to 160 beats per minute, lift all this weight, sweat like crazy, feel shaky like a baby giraffe and still wind up OK. I could not reconcile those two things. So the logical conclusion for me was I am treating myself like I am fragile for no reason. It taught me that all of those things that I feared in my body, I did not have to fear. It was a huge jump forward. So keep that in mind. That is the lesson that you can learn from this. That is the lesson that you can learn from from going back into exercise or physical activity, take that lesson, shoot for that target, know that you can go slow, know that you're going to stumble now and then it's OK and go from there. Right. So remember that you cannot tell yourself anything about this when you commit to having the experience. It's the experience that matters more than anything else. So I am going to commit to have an experience. I'm not going to try to tell myself that I'm OK, I'm OK, I'm OK. You might do that to frame the start like, OK, I'm going to do something really hard. I'm terrified that this is going to hurt me, but I know I'm OK logically. So I'm going to go do that. Once you're in the middle of it, you have to refrain from it's OK. It's OK. I'm OK. You got this. You got this. Just let it play out and act as if as best you can. There is no danger. So you can you could totally use this. OK. So I've talked for long enough on exercise. What makes us think we're so fragile? That's a good question, Jen. I as a very good question, but anxious people tend to treat themselves as if they are psychologically and physically incredibly fragile. And it is absolutely a distortion that recovery shatters in the end. You're not teaching yourself that you are perfect in any way, shape or form, but you are teaching yourself that you are far less fragile and far more capable in the case of exercise physically than you think that you are. OK, so let's go to the comments and see what we got here. Let's see if we have that big crowd from Twitch still. I'm all pumped up about Twitch skincare recommendations coming soon, says Bethany. Yes, I will be doing my skincare line shortly. If you ever see me launch a skincare line, that means I've been abducted by aliens and you guys need to do something to rescue me quickly. So that's just a running joke and now there will be no skincare line. Um, anyway, let's see here. It's two days before GBG's birthday. Well, happy birthday, Jason. Early. Let's see here. Let's pop this up. Yeah, we're going to do a get ready with me. That's going to be exciting. That's me like literally cursing that it's early in the morning and just like trying to get my beard to not look like a crazy person. Exactly how do you spell exercise and walking gives me panic attacks. I swear I'm going crazy exercise. I don't laugh, but exercise is one of those silly words that I will struggle to spell sometimes exercise. Restaurant, we all have words that like for some reason we I'm a pretty bright guy, but I can't spell exercise. I always went to typing it three times. So I get that. But yes, the fear that it makes you feel like you're going crazy because everybody else is telling you like, oh my God, if I didn't exercise, if I wasn't in the gym every day, I don't know what I would do. I have to take my I have to exercise for my mental health down the road. Exercise can be that for you. Like down the road, as you get past this, then you can wind up in a situation where, oh, yes, it's stress management. It feels great, blah, blah, blah, it's all good. You know, so down the road, it can be that initially it's not going to necessarily be that it's more of an exposure exercise and it's to teach you that you can exercise. That's kind of it. Now, this is not to say that you might not feel better after exercising. You might. It's very possible. And that was a good sign for me when I felt like, oh, man, I'm really glad I went to the gym. That's how I knew I was kind of got past that initial hurdle. And it was actually starting to have those wider benefits that people talk about all the time. So let's see. Did I battle anxiety? Yes. If you go to my website and look at the books that I've written, you can get a book called An Anxiety Story that tells the story of how I did that for 25 plus years. Panic disorder, agoraphobia, probably diagnosable OCD, clinical depression, been there, done that. You can actually get that book for free. Just follow the links or download the MP3 for free and you'll hear the whole story. So yes, I 100 percent have. I have to be kind here and point something out. I cannot address everybody's individual questions. And today's topic is on exercise and anxiety. So I cannot just I can't just answer the questions that you desperately want me to answer right now. You cannot get better in a YouTube live stream and I cannot fix you on YouTube. It's just not a thing. So everybody's always welcome here, but remember the limitations of the platform that we have because they see some frantic comments in there. I'm not going to single anybody out, but you can't don't come into an event like this hoping that me or anybody else is doing it is going to give you some sort of stage wisdom and help to fix you in a in a YouTube live stream where there are 70 other people watching. You can't do that. Let's see here. OK, what does Julie have to say? Hello, Julie. Good to see you. This is what's keeping me from the gym. My two have been a used gym person now. I hate myself. OK, so this is where things get dicey. And like the I hate myself is 100 percent a an unneeded thing, but it is a real thing. So what I mentioned that a couple of days ago, I was chastised a little bit like, oh, let's hope that people don't hate themselves. But as we can see, people will fall into that trap. You're just afraid. You're just afraid. You're allowed to be afraid. So the part where, hey, I am really afraid because I've learned to be afraid of these these sensations. OK, I'm allowed to be afraid, right? I'm allowed to be afraid. The part where it's like, well, now I'm a giant failure because I'm afraid and I don't exercise anymore. That's not required. And that is a pattern that for some people, Julie repeats again and again and again and again. You got to really look at that. It's really important. So let's see here. Let's see here. Norway is beautiful. I'm not going to argue with that. OK, this is common. This is really common. So Christine says, once was a gym rep, now afraid I will drop dead there. So when I posted on Instagram and TikTok, I got more of those comments than anything else. I'm so sad that I can't be a gym rat anymore because because I feel like I'm going to die in the gym. But this is that that thing where, like, unfortunately, the experience of the gym where you think you're going to die is to show you that you don't, that that's OK. Your body is certainly capable of that. So it's certainly scary, though. I get that. This is good. Seven percent slower doesn't apply to the treadmill. True. True. But you could start. You could start slow. You could totally start slow in the treadmill. When I first got my treadmill, which is in my basement and owes me nothing, it's so old now. But I was walking at a very slow pace. I had not exercised for a very long time. So I was totally out of shape. I was much heavier than I am now. Like it was not a good situation. And I would walk super slow. So but it counted and I would panic anyway. I would panic walking two miles an hour on the treadmill because it just was like, oh, this is too much. So it's OK to start slow. Let's see here. Feeling broke in Norway is a good Norway is a good country. I'm not complaining. OK, this is cool. Resistance exercise could be middle ground. Always listen to my spirits and keep it to your tone. Hey, look, any exercise is good, right? So we don't want to poo poo any exercise or say anyone is better than any other. Resistance training, which is kind of my jam, I force myself to do cardio because I just I just want to be fit. But I would prefer to train for strength than for cardio vascular fitness. I just have to make sure I do cardio. But be careful about trying to find a common like a be careful about trying to find a safe way to exercise. It's OK to start small. If you are not a strength training athlete or you're not into lifting weights or you're not into resistance training, you don't have to decide, well, I'll try resistance training because it might be gentler. Like, yes, that's possible, but also resistance training is anaerobic in nature. So you're going to drive your heart rate up anyway. Just not it's going to go up and down and up and down and up and down. So there's almost no way to do any sort of exercise that is not going to make you freak out. But if you want to lift, lift. If you want to run, run, but just modify those things and start small if you have to. That's totally OK, but good comment for sure. Well, this is good. I use exercises deliberate, but I dare to the anxiety with lots of profanity mixed in. Fair enough, I have done that. In fact, you guys have heard me talk about like the silly Rocky movies. I'm a fan of the Rocky movies. I have used some of those soundtracks back in that back in the day to sort of motivate me when I was really struggling with that stuff. I would sometimes use some of those Rocky soundtracks to help me get through, like, you know, push through that. Like, no, no, no, you are not taking me down and I would keep going. So I like that pretty cool. Looking at the comments. Everybody's wishing Jason happy birthday. This is cool. OK, here you go. I was nauseated the first few times I tried to go back to exercise and earnest. I needed to hear this. Yeah, like all of the things, like all of the things will happen. If your anxiety manifests as nausea, as needing to go to the bathroom, if if you get depersonalized, if you have impending doom, thoughts of impending doom, if you feel like you're going to go crazy, it will trigger all of the things. So this is not just triggering physical sensations any way that you experience anxiety. This will trigger will trigger that. OK, so, yeah, the nausea sucks. But let's see what else we have here. OK, here this is really common. I become afraid of causing permanent damage to my body. Like, in a way, this is where an anxious person takes something that's supposed to be different. Now, listen, if you have an injury or some sort of problem that you have to accommodate, then, of course, accommodate that, of course. And it goes without saying, I should have said in the beginning, the assumption here is that you are physically healthy and can exercise. For most of the people in this room, I would almost guarantee that everybody in this room has been told multiple, multiple times or most of you by multiple doctors that you are fine. You are an anxious person. Right, so if you do have a medical condition that that says you either can exercise or have to modify that, please, make sure that you stick with that plan, like work with your doctors on that. But assuming you have been given a clean bill of health and you do not have any restrictions, then look how an anxious person will take a perfectly healthy body that's been confirmed again and again and again, have a thought about, I'm going to permanently damage myself if I exercise too hard and latch on to that thought and treat it like it's real. So I understand that you are afraid of that, but this is where we challenge those things. We have to. Let's keep going here. Let's start telling myself, building my strength from the... Oh, okay, this is cool. Valerie, hello, Val. I've spent a month or two telling myself I'm here at the gym building my strength, even when the heart would pound like crazy, now it's fine. And what was a great turning point for me too, which I can, you know, I'll relay some of my own experiences, when I started getting really like jazzed, pumped up, excited like whatever, throw the toxic masculinity at me out of care. But when I would get all pumped up, like after a really heavy set or I hit a personal record in the gym, I would be super excited about that. My heart would be pounding. I would be like literally like gasping for air, but I would be really excited that that was happening. So amazing how the same things that kept me glued to my sofa most of the time or laying in my bed like became a source of excitement and achievement for me. So that's the way things could change. Good job, Val. It's like getting through it for two months, right? That wasn't easy. Good job. I know that was hard. Let's keep going here. My wife told me I could do yoga or I can eat. Oh God, I'm gonna put this up on the screen. I could do yoga or I could have a soup, but I can't do both together anymore. Alrighty. We'll just let that say. Suede dogs love the name. I put on four stone. How much is a stone? My UK friends, a stone is 11 pounds, 14 pounds. I can't, I never remember. But on a four stone by being too afraid of the gym, I've gone a few times. I always just walk on the machine slow because the vertigo is always there. I cannot go with any speed. Okay, 14 pounds. There you go. I remembered. Thank you, Becky. So in this situation, it's perfectly okay to walk at a slow speed that is a perfectly acceptable way to start that is not failing or anything like that. But in the end, I think you have to really look at the definition of vertigo. And now you hit like one of Drew's hot buttons because I actually experienced literal room spinning vertigo. I can tell you that you would not be able to be on a treadmill if you were experiencing vertigo. You're experiencing that disequilibrium feels like I'm dizzy thing that anxiety will make you feel, makes me feel, makes many, many people feel. But be careful about saying I have vertigo because other people will hear that as the room is literally spinning. I'm nauseous. I might be vomiting. I cannot physically stay upright. My eyes are shaking and can't focus and the world is literally upside down. That's vertigo. So you gotta be really accurate sometimes in the way you do that. I'm feeling like I'm dizzy, but I'm on a treadmill and not falling over. So be careful about that. But start super slow, man. It's totally fine. Not a failure. Oh, let's see. Twitch is representing. Love it. Let's see here. I'm gonna keep scrolling. Yes. Thank you. Who anybody should get checked. I get checked out by a doctor, of course. Like I said, thank you. Good comment for sure. So here, I'll throw this up here. Is exercising good for muscle tension? So maybe you came in late. It's certainly possible. We do not decide to exercise because it's good for fixing things. So is it good for muscle tension? Most people who are not dealing with an anxiety disorder would say, well, yeah, it's a real stress management tool for me. Like it makes me feel better. I know my mood is better when I exercise every day. I feel more relaxed. So yes, but if you are tense because you're afraid of your own body, we are gonna trigger some of the fear of your own body when you start to exercise. So do not go into this as a, this will fix my symptoms. Down the road, it can have those sort of benefits, but don't expect it to right away. Is it good for muscle tension? I don't know. That's a good question. I would probably be individual. It depends on the type of exercise you're doing. For me, am I more relaxed in general when I'm working out on a regular basis? Yeah, sure. But sometimes I'm also much more sore because I do that type of exercise where I'm gonna be sore. So an exercise can help you maybe if you're stretching, if you're doing yoga and things of that nature. I don't know. It might be good for muscle tension, but don't go into it hoping that it is a cure for that particular anxiety sensation or symptom. Oh, good. Christine, love this. I'll do it when I feel better. This is always the past excuse. You will never do it then, which sounds so harsh, but an every anxious person will say, I'm gonna wait till I'm ready and you're never ready. I'm gonna wait till I feel better to do it and then you never feel better. Or you think like, hey, I'm feeling pretty good right now. You get on the treadmill or whatever. You lift some weights, you get on your bike, five minutes into it, your heart is racing, you bail out. Oh, see, that wasn't right. I did the wrong day. That wasn't a good day. So you have to challenge that. It's important. Okay, let's see here. Oh, good job, Yolanda. I love this. I get wrap, I have to go and sit down. I was walking in the woods once with my daughter, started panicking, froze for 20 minutes. I didn't. I walked a lot further. There is a lesson there. So when I said initially that one of the important things about going back into exercise or physical activity is you have to be aware of that response and you have to do your best to inhibit that response. So for me, at first I would sit down. So when I was getting that like, like my heart would be pounding and, you know, I would start to feel like, oh, am I getting lightheaded now? Which depending on the type of exercise you're doing, you might intentionally get lightheaded. Like anybody who is, I'm not a big leg press fan, but anybody who's done light presses on a light press machine or any sort of heavy squats, when you're done, you're lightheaded. That's just the way it works. I would immediately have to go and sit down on a bench. And then I had to start telling myself, no, no, no, you could stand up. Just stand up for a minute. And that, that changed a lot. So good job. Really good. Let's see here. Tiff for morning anxiety. Anxiety in the morning is the same as anxiety any other time of the day, except it's the morning. So when you are anxious in the morning, be anxious and do your best to move through that. The same rules will always apply. It does the time of day doesn't really matter. That's not really the topic today. So, but I want to suggest it anyway. Oh, yes, this is a good one. This was me at topic beats. So that's that skipped heartbeat. And it's so weird that we use so many different terms for this. The common term that people will use as palpitation, but people often say, I'm having palpitations to describe a rapid heartbeat. Okay, you can feel your heartbeat when it's rapid. So technically that would be palpitations, palpable feel, but this is the whole like irregular heartbeat thing. So I have that like every once in a while, my heart will naturally throw PVCs benign PVCs, premature ventricular contractions. I've been checked a million times. If you are having those things, make sure you get checked out. Every human heart does them. If you're cardiologist, your GP, I've checked you out and said, yeah, yeah, it's normal. Your heart's cool. It's not dangerous. That was a difficult thing for me too. So I used to walk around waiting for a topic beats, waiting for PVCs. And if I experienced the PVC at two o'clock in the afternoon on a Monday, I would be done until like Wednesday, no joke. Like it would throw me into a absolute scanning loops, loops of scanning, loops of scanning, sit down, check, check, check, and I would treat myself even more. Like I was this close to my heart stopping and I was super fragile. And I got to the point in the end where once I had to make a leap of faith and say, if this happens, it happens. Like I'm gonna have to move through it. I got to the point where if I would push myself too much, I've talked about this like super sleep deprived, overworked like crazy and still at the gym at five o'clock in the morning and like pulling really heavy barbells out the floor. I could go through a set of deadlifts for instance, holding the barbell in my hand and have PVCs and just keep going. And they wouldn't last very long. I'd get one, two here or there and then they didn't become an extended event. They just, they happened and then they were done. So hopefully that helps. Ectopic beats, as long as you have been examined and you have been told your heart is fine, they are not dangerous, then they don't change that. In fact, my cardiologist at one point said, by the way, you should exercise more. That was the advice I got. That was my own personal experience, I'm not giving you medical advice, but my cardiologist is like, yeah, I should make sure your heart's healthy, go do it. Okay, cool. This is a different animal. Exercise induced asthma. I am not telling you to go to the gym if you have exercise induced asthma. That is between you and your pulmonologist, you and your general practitioner. I cannot even begin to stress this enough. This video is 100% not medical advice that tells anybody with asthma or some sort of medical condition to go to the gym. You will have to ask, I know I'm being really harsh about this, but you must ask your doctor is that question. You cannot ask a guy in a YouTube video what to do with your exercise induced asthma that you just can't. And anybody that wants to answer you in a YouTube video that isn't your doctor, don't listen to that person. So take that up with your medical providers. Let's see here. Well, this is good. I like it. Don't hate yourself. Well, it's easier said than done, true, but I direct my anger and frustration at it. Robbie, I dig this. I really like this. So you guys in the Facebook group have seen me say sometimes like, I know sometimes I'm really direct and harsh, but I am direct and harsh at your anxiety and your irrational fear, never at you. So don't be harsh about you, don't beat yourself up, but see that those irrational fears are not you. You don't wanna be that way. If you wanted to be that way, you wouldn't be watching this video. So what Robbie's saying is really good. Like I can direct my anger and my frustration at the anxiety, not me, because they're not, that's not me. Like I don't wanna be that way. I dig that. Great comment, man. Appreciate it. Let's see. Oh, no, no, no, no. Keep going here. Okay, this is, I'll throw this up because this is a pretty good one. Heart already pounds with panic before starting. I used to have the same thing. I panicked several times going into the gym because I knew what I was gonna do. It was no fun. That was no fun at all. I feel for you, I get it. But that would be also common. If you begin to have anticipatory anxiety as you're getting ready to exercise, that's to be expected. And I had to learn to just move through that. So I started many a workout already with my heart probably up at 110 beats per minute, probably, but I also never measured. It was very rare for me to measure my heartbeat. First of all, I didn't have a way to do it. I didn't have a device on my arm at the time, but it was very rare that I would actually check my pulse rate in the gym ever. But I'm sure it was pretty high before I even started some of those early workouts. Okay, Jen says, I tell myself, if I dropped out, I dropped out, at least I have an AED device there. So I knew where the AED devices were in my gym. There were three of them. The gym that I went to was closed. It was a big, enormous facility, right? It's not there anymore. But there were three of them, and I knew where they were. And I will admit that in the early stages, remember when I said I would have to go and sit at a bench, I would intentionally wander a little closer to one of those because my anxious brain would say every second counts. That was my anxious brain, so I get it. But that is a way to frame it. So what Jen is talking about here is a, not a, I need to, I will do this to guarantee that I'm okay, I will use this to frame my actions. Hey, listen, I'll have the best shot because there are some people trained to help me here. If it happens, it happens, I'm gonna go forward. I'm gonna do a thing. And this is a statement I can use to propel myself into doing the thing. Good job, Jen, like it. This is good. So yoga or Pilates, like, oh, these are gentle exercises, right, I could do that. Even the gentle exercises for people who are afraid of their own body will be triggering. So Bethany, this is a great, great comment. Don't be harsh with yourself. If even Tai Chi, which the Tai Chi qualifies as exercise, I'm being an exercise knob, but even gentle like Tai Chi or anything like that yoga could be triggering, it's okay. If you get triggered, it's okay. No easy way out from the Rocky Sound Tracks. That's a good one, that's a good one. Let's see here. I read, you read, I write. So consider that. I read that you should avoid doing extensive exercise for recovery. So I'm not sure why anybody would say that. I know why people would say that. Here's where I have heard that before. Where I have heard that is in the case of people who are going through medication withdrawal. The medication withdrawal community has a list of guidelines longer than I am tall about the things that you're not supposed to do. Eat, sniff, read, listen to, like don't wear certain clothing, don't turn on certain lights. They probably hate the LED light because it triggers you because of the flicker rate. Sorry, those fluorescent lights. So I've heard that in the withdrawal community like anti-depressant withdrawal or benzo withdrawal. And I've also heard it in the we must regulate our nervous system community. And so there are people who advocate treating anxiety problems like the ones we're talking about here by retreating from anything that's stimulating at all. I don't agree with that. Like that's not my theoretical orientation here. So I don't agree with that. We should just retreat and always try to keep our bodies like this. Now, am I saying that things like emotional dysregulation are not real? No, I am not saying that. But I do not believe that we should be retreating to fix this problem. You can mask the problem or live with it that way, but if you wanna actually solve the problem, retreat is a bad idea. This is good, Jess, let's see here. I exercise regularly, but it feels impossible to carry on when I'm struggling with my OCD. I just noticed that my watch band is the same color as my shirt. Maybe I am a fashion influencer and I just don't know it. I exercise regularly, but it feels impossible to carry on when I'm struggling with my OCD. I get so depressed and anxious that it feels like I'm gonna have a heart attack. Okay, so there's the answer to the question right there. I recognize your name, Jess, I know you've been around for a while. It feels like, feels like is the enemy. Like especially if you're gonna go back into the gym or start getting into physical activity, again, you really have to take the words, the phrase feels like and it's forbidden material for a little while. I'm not gonna make my decisions based on what it feels like. It's very important. Not minimizing the OCD thing, by the way. Just be careful about saying, well, I'm having a lot of stress over these thoughts or my OCD is flared up. So then it feels like I'll have a heart attack. You're gonna have to act even though it feels that way. This is good. Exercise is not the enemy. Really nothing in this is the enemy. In fact, Wednesday's podcast episode is called, Do You See Anxiety as a Monster? Is anxiety a monster? Is it your enemy? Is it like an invading army? So it really and truly I think nothing is the enemy here. Like we turn our own bodies and minds into the enemy. Let me modify that. We perceive our own bodies and minds as the enemy because somebody with like OCD doesn't decide to turn their mind against them. But we begin to perceive our own bodies and minds as an enemy and really there's no enemy here. Sometimes we personify anxiety and we talk about it as like an enemy that we wanna beat. I get that because there's some motivation in that. I'm cool with that. But we can't treat it like it's an enemy. Because it's not. Let's see here. I'm not sure that I understand this totally and we're almost at the end of the comments and I'm gonna wrap it up because we're 45 minutes in. Is it my anxiety getting worse or just me being hyper focused and symptom focused? Ah, love this, love this. So this is the same question that gets asked when people start to do exposures in general. So anybody who has spent a lot of time running and retreating from these problems and then decides I don't wanna do it anymore. I read Claire Weeks, I read Drew's books, whatever. I dig Josh Fletcher or Jenna Overbaugh, whoever. I'm gonna do it their way. Cool. When they first started doing it this way, they will say, oh my God, it's made me worse. But really what winds up happening is when you stop hiding from a thing, you feel it all the way. So let's use an example. If I get on a treadmill and I start running on a treadmill, my heart will go up. If I immediately stop and take a Xanax for instance, for example, then in 15 or 20 minutes, it will drive my heart rate back down artificially. And so if I don't take it 20 minutes later, my heart rate will still probably be elevated both from the exercise, depending on my cardiovascular fitness and from my fear of my heart rate. So what I say that I'm worse, no, I would say that I took away the safety shield, like the shield against the feeling. And now I feel it more. So that's a really good question. It's very nuanced, but it is normal to feel it more. If that makes sense. Good comment, man. Really good. You guys are great. Let's keep going here. Okay, fair enough. I'll take this one real quick. I'm sorry when I make you guys read. I truly believe my worry could make my heart go so fast that it will give out a car as a heart attack. Okay, like I totally get that. You don't have to convince us that you believe that because everybody in the room has had thoughts. I've had thoughts like that that I was 100% convinced were legit. That is real. That is a real fear. You absolutely fear that that will happen. You do not allow anybody take that away from you. I'm not gonna take that away from you. However, the way to break that is to go ahead and test it. So one of the things that makes this stuff so difficult for so many people to do, all the stuff I'm talking about, not just anxiety is you are literally in your mind, you are risking something really big because when you believe like, no, no, no, I truly believe my brain is 100% convinced that if my heart goes too fast, it will give out, that amorphous, what do you think will happen? It'll explode like, you know, what will you think will happen? But your brain will write the script that says your heart will give out or it will explode or something bad will happen and you will die. So when you decide prove it, you're basically telling your brain, go ahead, prove it. Let's go do that. Let's go make that happen. How risky does that feel? Incredibly risky, but it's the only way to have the experience that teaches your brain, you are wrong, man. Like you can keep saying that as much as you want. I keep arguing with you with words. You're not listening to me. You keep telling me that the fear is real. So now I'm going to make you prove it. I'm going to go and raise my heart rate. Oh, look, I didn't die again. What do you got to say about that brain? Look, again, I didn't die. What do you got to say about that brain? That's the only way to do this. So it's, I get that you think it's real. I do. Let's see. Nope, I'm going to give you a big no on this one. Not you personally, Val. You're doing a good job. Some intense exercising can increase cortisol. I would urge everybody in the room to forget the words adrenaline and cortisol. Like I know people hate when I say that, but forget cortisol. Like you are. So you're intentionally modifying your activity to try to control your endocrine system that is just doing what it's being asked to do. So I'm going to back off on some exercises. I don't want too much cortisol because I can't handle how I feel if there's cortisol in my bloodstream. That's a barrier that I would if I was finished with my license and you lived in New York and you were my client, which you were not and I am not finished nor licensed, I would make you tear that barrier down. So I'm never a fan of when people want to bring adrenaline and cortisol to, as if they want to manage them into the conversation. It's a dead end to try to manage parts of your body that were not ever designed to let us manage them. Nature wasn't stupid enough to give us control of certain buttons, that one included. So we're about at the end here. I'm going to run out of time. So sorry, I can't get all of them. Let's scroll down and see if there's anything. I'm never going to get to the end of this. Sorry guys, a lot, a lot of stuff here. A person, I'll end with this one because this is a common one too. And then I get a bookie. A person with anxiety, should they wear Apple fight? No, I think that they should not. To me, I would not have an anxious person, especially one who's fixated on their physical sensations and things like heartbeat. I would not wear an Apple watch at all. So like when people say, oh man, like I was doing so great last night, I was watching a movie with my husband and then suddenly I had a thought or I got triggered and my heart rate was 122. The first thing I would say is, how do you know your heart rate was 122 and why did you need to know that? So I would not do that. I would not wear that. I mean, you could turn off the heart rate monitor I think on an Apple watch, I'm pretty sure. So if you wanna wear like a smart watch, see if you could turn off, see if you could turn off the heart rate monitor because it will do you no good. Down the road, a heart rate monitor can be a really useful thing, right? So I mean, I'm still wearing the whoopka for my workout, but like I, I've been wearing an Apple watch lately again and it is useful for me, but I'm not afraid of my heartbeat anymore. So that would be my answer there. Okay guys, I think we are done. Sorry, I can't answer every one of the comments today. I tried the best that I could, but hopefully this has been helpful. It is going to stay up in my YouTube channel. Hey, I'll put the caption up again, so everybody knows what it is. This will stay up on the YouTube channel. If you're not subscribed on YouTube, you should totally do that because it's the easiest way to find these videos. What else can I tell you? If you wanna go check out the Panic Attack workshop that's happening on Saturday, just go to my website, theanxistruth.com, it's right on the homepage. And I don't know, we'll be back next week. Don't know what we're gonna talk about. I never know where we're gonna talk about next week. Never, but we'll be back. We'll do another hour next Monday. Hopefully it's been helpful. Thank you everybody. And thanks for being so supportive of each other in the comments. Always makes me happy.