 Even when working with a therapist or a counselor, if you are listening to this podcast religiously or you are reading the books that I write about anxiety, unfortunately, some parts of the recovery process remain entirely your responsibility. Let's talk about that today on episode 227 of The Anxious Truth. Hello, everybody. Welcome back to The Anxious Truth. This is episode number 227 of the podcast recorded in September of 2022 for future reference. I am Drew Lynn Solada, creator and host of The Anxious Truth. This is the podcast that covers all things anxiety, anxiety disorders and anxiety recovery. If you are new to the podcast or just stumbled in on the YouTube channel, welcome. I'm glad you're here. I hope you find today's content helpful and all the other content helpful. If you are a returning listener or viewer, welcome back. Thank you for your continued support. Today, we are going to talk about the fact that unfortunately, no matter what help we reach out for, there are some parts of the recovery process for which we remain solely responsible. Now, sometimes we forget this, so I want you to take a few minutes today and go over these things. Before we get into the meat and potatoes of the episode, just a quick reminder that The Anxious Truth is way more than this podcast episode. On my website at TheAnxiousTruth.com, you will find 200 and somewhat other free podcast episodes. You will find a ton of social media content. You will find a link to a free one hour or more than one hour, like recovery 101 training video that's linked over on my YouTube channel. There are three books that I have written as of today on anxiety, anxiety disorders, and recovery that are literally being read by tens of thousands of people around the world. I'm very proud of those books. And there is a monthly webinar that I do with Joanna Hardis. She is an anxiety and OCD specialist practicing in Cleveland where we talk about distress tolerance and how that fits into recovery. So there's a ton of resource. You can find it all on my website at TheAnxiousTruth.com. Now, if you already have my books and you dig them and you haven't already head on over to Amazon and maybe rate them and review them because that really helps me out. And if you are enjoying my work, it's helping you and you would like to find ways to help me keep it free of advertising and sponsorships. All the ways that you can do that can be found at TheAnxiousTruth.com slash support. That is never required, but always appreciated. And however way you support my work, be it just listening, showing up on YouTube or hitting the like button, thank you very much. I appreciate you guys in a big way. So let's get on to the meat and potatoes of today's episode, episode 227, which parts of recovery are 100% on you and which parts were 100% on me when I was going through my recovery process. So this is a bit of an inconvenient truth that no matter how much help we reach out to in the form of maybe psycho-educational material and encouraging material on social media like the stuff that I'm producing, like this podcast, books, seminars, mastermind courses, webinars, even in-person help or tele-therapy with counselors, qualified counselors and therapists, no matter how much help we reach out for and how much help we get and how much we read and learn and get coached and advised by professionals, there are some parts of this process that remain 100% our own responsibility now. Quick clarification, responsibility is not blame. I actually did an entire episode of this podcast on responsibility and blame and the fact that responsibility is not blame and that responsibility is power. So you can go to the anxioustruth.com and search for responsibility and blame. You'll find that episode if you want to listen. But please, some people when I talk about being responsible immediately knee jerk to your victim shaming, like are you telling me that I'm irresponsible? This is my fault. No, that's not what I'm telling you. But when we acknowledge the parts of recovery that we are responsible for, there is power there. So I want to talk about some of those today because they're important and sometimes we miss those things. And look, I get that when we're struggling, when I was struggling, I just wanted somebody to fix it. I wanted somebody to take it away. I wanted Claire Weeks to make me feel better. I wanted my therapist to fix it for me in every session. But it doesn't work that way. So we do need to be responsible for some things and here they are. I'm going to give you a few of them. Could I cover every one of them in a podcast episode? No. But the first thing we're kind of responsible for is just showing up, right? You got to show up. And when I say you have to show up, I mean that sometimes literally you have to go to therapy or go to your Zoom sessions or whatever it is. That's true. You have to avail yourself of the resources that are available. So showing up means keeping your therapy appointments. It means making use of all the resources that you can find, right? So that's part of what is showing up. So I produced 200 and somewhat podcast. This is 227 226 podcast episodes before this one. I've written three books. I put a copious amount of information on social media and I'm not the only one. There are other people that sound like me. You guys may follow them as well. They are also producing lots of really helpful psychoeducational and encouraging material. Showing up means taking the time to avail yourself of those resources. Go and read and learn and listen and educate yourself as to the nature of the problem that you are dealing with. So you have to take an active role in your recovery. So when I say show up, that's what I mean. Like you have to be prepared to be an active participant in your recovery. It cannot be a passive thing. You cannot hope that recovery will be delivered to you, handed to you, spoon fed to you, IV dripped into your bloodstream. Unfortunately, it's a relatively simple concept, but it is hard to execute. We say this all the time. And there is a lot of nuance. So showing up means going to therapy, doing your therapy homework, making your appointments, and actually being an active participant in your recovery by going out and consuming the resources that are being given to you, especially when they're free. So that's on you. That is 100% on you, just like it was on me and everybody else that's ever recovered. The second thing that is your responsibility in the recovery process is to be consistent. And here's a little bit of bad news. These things that I'm talking about today are not things that can be taught to you. And that sucks. And sometimes that's why people forget about these personal responsibilities in recovery because these are not lessons that can be taught. I can't teach you how to be consistent. I can, we know what consistency is when I wrote The Anxious Truth. I wrote about consistency, but even in that book I said I can't, I have no tips and steps to be consistent. The step to be consistent is do the work every day. Well, how do I do that, Drew? Well, I can't tell you how to do that. There's some things that cannot be taught. You just have to do them. So one of your responsibilities is consistency in the recovery process. So when you're a therapist, if you're dealing with a therapist who's giving you ERP work to do and you have homework to do or you are working on your agoraphobia and you have exposures to do, you have to do those things all the time. You have to be consistent. We cannot do hit and run recovery. Well, I'm feeling frustrated today, so I'll go and listen to a podcast and ask some questions and maybe I'll take a walk around the block and then I'll do nothing for four more days. We can't help you if that's the way you're going to do it. So you have to find some measure of consistency in your approach. You're allowed to rest. Everybody's allowed to rest. This is tiring work. I'm not telling you to be a machine, but it is your responsibility to approach your recovery not only as an active participant, item number one, but here in item number two, to be consistent in the work that you do. It's important. It will matter. It will make your life easier. It will make your recovery more effective if you can be consistent with the work, but only you can be consistent with the work. Now, sometimes, like in my Facebook group, I hear people say, hey, who wants to partner up and be exposure or accountability buddies? Maybe. Maybe. I'm a little bit skeptical of that sort of thing. It's really kind of important that you find a way to be consistent on your own if at all possible. But if you want to partner up with somebody to kind of nudge each other and make sure that you're being consistent and have at it, but in the end, consistency is personal responsibility. It was my responsibility just like it is now yours. So number three that you are responsible for, and this is the one that everybody hates. And in a way, I hate talking about this. I really do because I do not have a way to teach you how to do this. But part of your responsibility is to find some courage because some of this process, especially in the beginning, because we talk about this all the time, you are taking a leap of faith. You are intentionally doing scary things. We are allowing the worst to happen to learn that it doesn't happen. We are allowing that horrible thing that we think we can't handle to happen so that we can learn experientially that we can handle it. All of that, especially in the beginning, when you're first starting, requires bravery. You have to be brave. You have to display some courage. That, in a way, is the dirty secret of all this that I think everybody knows, but nobody wants to ever really talk about it. And when I do talk about it, I kind of hate talking about it because then it gets boiled down and ridiculous things to feel the fear and do it anyway. Well, no. Yeah, but not really that. So we have to find a way to dig up some courage and display it. You are going to have to find a way to be brave. And the bad news, the worst part about the courage part of this equation is that I cannot teach you how to be courageous, nor do I believe can anyone else. Not because I'm the best teacher in the world. So if I can't do it, no one else can. I just mean that the concept of being courageous on a personal level and displaying courage and bravery is not something that can be taught. It's something that you have to do. You build courage by acting even when you are afraid. So just a reminder on the topic of courage and bravery. That courage and bravery does not mean you're not afraid. It doesn't mean that you find a way to be unafraid and just go out and do all the scary stuff and it's not scary. Courage is when you act even when you are afraid. And courage is something that you can build with consistency and being tenacious and incremental with your work. So yeah, you kind of have to be superhero brave in the beginning to do really little things that you would think shouldn't require so much bravery, but they do. But if you can muster that up to start to do these little things, then that courage, that sense of bravery can grow over time because every time you do something while you are afraid and nothing bad actually happens, you gain a little courage because you gain a little belief that, oh, this isn't scary. I can do this even when I'm afraid. Then you don't need courage anymore. You just do it. You know you're going to be afraid, but you know that nothing is going to happen to you. And you just do these things. You don't have to feel quite so courageous. But unfortunately, in the end, there's no manual. There's no steps. There's no explanation. There's no tips and tricks I can give you that will allow you to let go of the struggle, to surrender, to allow the psychotic break, to just let your scary thoughts and disturbing thoughts be. Those things are acts of bravery and courage. And while you're being brave and courageous, please be very nice to yourself. Congratulate yourself. Self-compassion and courage kind of go together. So when you do something really brave, man, treat yourself well because that is not easy to do. And if I had some steps though that would help you somehow be brave, I would give them to you but they just don't exist. So finding some courage and displaying that courage to take these initial leaps of faith and get the ball rolling, unfortunately, is entirely on us. It was on me and it's on you too. And the last one that I want to cover, this will be a relatively short podcast episode this week, is you have to not only show up and be consistent in the way you show up and find some courage, but if you're not really willing and open to have all of these experiences, then you're better off just not showing up. Now I know that sounds a little bit harsh when I say that, but there's a method to my madness, so hear me out on this. So much of this process demands that you are open to the process and willing to have the experiences that you need to have as part of the process. And this most often shows up in a broken way when people understand theoretically, like well I've tried everything else and that isn't working and this stuff seems really hard, but yeah it does make sense when I think about it Drew, like okay I think you're right here, so okay I'm gonna do it. I'm gonna do what you write about. I'm gonna do what you talk about in your podcast, but in your heart and in your bones you're really hoping that you won't have to have scary experiences. Like okay this guy says that I'm supposed to go toward my fear. These other people that sound like him on social media say that. My new therapist is telling me that I have to walk around with a knife in my hand, but I'm terrified that I might stab somebody. All really scary things to do. I don't want to do those things, so I want to get better, but I am not really open to actually having those experiences. So it's really that willingness to engage in activities that will trigger internal experiences. You will feel sensations in your body. You will have thoughts. You will have emotions. You will feel fear. You will have catastrophic thoughts and scary thoughts. Those are internal experiences. That's really the crux of all this, so no matter what you're working on. In the end it's the internal experiences that we try to avoid at all costs. I don't want to think this. I don't want to feel this. I don't want to interpret this feeling this way. I don't want to, I don't want my brain to keep telling me that I'm about to have a psychotic break. Those are internal experiences. And when we are unwilling to have them, then we build lives full of avoidance. And unfortunately in the recovery process we cannot continue to avoid those internal experiences by avoiding the external experiences and still get better. And that's a hard thing to say to people. There's a big audience listening to this podcast and trust me, as I speak this into this silly microphone, that is a hard thing to say to people because it sounds really rough. But I will tell you that there are people listening to this podcast right now and in the community surrounding this podcast that wind up inadvertently putting themselves in a bit of a merry-go-round of torture to a certain extent. And I know I'm dramatizing that, but it's not far from the truth because they're doing the things and they think they're supposed to do the things, but they keep doing the things and nothing is changing and they're not making any progress and not getting any better. And then they wonder why and then they start to think that they're the special case for which this doesn't work. Then they get down on themselves and then they wonder why they're so broken they can't do anything and that's not fair. That's just not a fair thing to do for yourself. So really without that willingness and that openness to have these experiences, you're just powering through and you can wind up in a bit of a self-defeating loop where you wind up in a bad place seeing yourself as somehow especially broken and without hope. And we don't want anybody to be there. So let me clarify just a little bit on the topic of willingness and openness to have these experiences. First of all, we can acknowledge that we might all call these experiences negative. We might objectively all agree that we want to call these negative experiences. And of course nobody wants to have negative experiences. So I'm not telling you that you have to like them. I'm not telling you that you have to want them, but what I am telling you is that you have to be at least willing to accept the idea that they might be negative in the moment, but they lead to positive outcomes on longer terms. So you have to be willing to accept that that methodology is valid. And then you have to be willing to do the things and have the experiences that you don't want, that you call negative, and that you don't like. So you can still not like them. You can still see them as negative on a short term in the moment, but you still have to be willing to have them and open to the experiences and the lessons that they can teach you. Right? So it's really important there. Some people think that when I say you have to be willing to do this, that I'm somehow saying you have to like this, or you have to want this. What you want is to feel different. I get that. You want to feel different. You want to feel better. I understand that is what you want. What you don't want is to feel worse. You don't want to feel scared. You don't want to feel anxious. You don't want to feel panic. You don't want to feel uncertainty and vulnerability. But we have to accept that if I feel those things now and I do them in a productive way, then I will feel them less down the road when I learn these lessons, these intermediate lessons. So that's where willingness and openness comes into play. You have to be willing to accept that this is probably the way to do it and you can disagree with that. But if you disagree with it, then you will probably want to kick out of the podcast now because what's the point? If you disagree with the methods, then you're not going to be willing to do these things. You're just going to be doing them just to try it and that's not okay. That won't work for you. So you have to be willing to accept the methodology and you have to be willing to have experiences and open to experiences that you don't want to have in the moment but that you know will help you down the road or at least are willing to accept the possibility will help you down the road. So that's the willingness and openness part of personal responsibility and recovery. Now I could probably keep adding things in here and if you guys want to add things in, I'm always open to that if you're listening on YouTube or you're in my Facebook group and you want to make comments about that, whatever it is. Sure, I want to hear it. I'm going to stop it there because I don't want to go on for two hours in terms of personal responsibility and recovery and I have been going a little longer than I usually like to in the last few podcast episodes. So I'll cut it off here. 17 minutes is about enough of my rambling and you know that the episode is over because music that is afterglow by Ben Drake. Ben wrote this song inspired at least in part by words that he heard on this podcast and he has been gracious enough to let me use it as the opening and closing theme of the podcast for the past few years. Thank you, Ben. You can find out more about Ben and his music by going to BenDrakeMusic.com and if you do, tell them I said hello, tell them that I sent you. If you are listening to this podcast on Apple Podcasts or Spotify or some platform that lets you rate and review a podcast, then leave me a five star rating. If you dig it and maybe take a few minutes and write a review because it helps other people find the podcast and then we can help as many people as we can. If you're watching this on YouTube, hit the subscribe button, hit the notification bell so that you know when I upload new videos. Like this particular video. If you have any questions or want to make a comment, go do that because I dig the comment section on YouTube now. That is it. We are done. Episode 227 in the books. I will be back next week with another episode. I don't really know what I'm going to be talking about, but as always, I'll be here anyway. And remember, as you wait for the next one, this is the way.