 All right, we're back. I don't know why we decided that we are officially or semi-officially calling this the fire and ice series. I know. No idea why that even started. Was it something about you playing ice hockey? Oh, that's what it was. It was ice skating and hockey and you're in like Southern California where it's always warm. So, yeah. Yeah. All right, so that makes me fire in you ice. That makes you fire in me. Oh, it's fine, I'll be ice, I'm good with that. Ice, ice, baby. Ice, ice, baby. Anyway, everybody, welcome back. Again, is Lauren Rosen at the Obsessive Mind on Instagram. What up, Lauren? What up, Drew? How are you? I'm good, I'm good. So, today we're gonna talk, we'll have a little chat about process, like being involved in the process of recovery or being 100% focused on the outcomes of recovery and why that matters. Yep. Because it does, it matters a lot. It matters a lot, it does matter a lot. So, Ged, what do you got? Oh, well, I think actually the first thing that jumped into my mind is that if we're outcome focused, we're actually missing out on what the aim of recovery is because we're actually not accepting the presence of thoughts, accepting the presence of feelings like anxiety in order to make them go away, which so many people are at the start of treatment. And if that's the focus, if that outcome is what we're after, then we're actually, we're really not moving toward recovery at all. So, instead, the sort of being in the process of it, it's much more about how do I develop a better relationship with this moment? How do I be more accepting of these thoughts and this feeling that's arisen instead of fighting it and trying to change it and trying to mold it to the way that I want it to be? Which does make perfect sense. And we all want it to go away. And in the end, I've said that sort of thing and people will be like, you mean it never goes away? And I'm like, no, that's not really what we're saying, but... But in some ways, it's like, it depends on what it is. Yeah, right. Right, like the feelings, no, your anxiety is not going away because that's actually really an important evolutionary... Yeah, we need it. Yeah. But... And maybe your predisposition toward trying to sort everything out and get rid of... Like the initial inclination toward getting rid of anxiety doesn't necessarily go away, but we can practice and learn how to behave differently in the presence of anxiety over time. And yeah, it's not like saying that it never goes away isn't the same thing as saying we always suffer to the same degree. Oh, I like that. Yeah, you can't say it. Well, everybody's after, does it ever go away, but that's better. Like, no, no, no. I like to use stupid analogies because that's what I do on the stupid analogy guy. So I always like to say, like, imagine... I don't know why I get so... I love a good... I love a good stupid analogy. Stupid analogy. Yeah, that's stupid analogy day. So I like to use chicken salad sometimes, peanut butter. I'm a big sandwich analogy guy, clearly. Very good. I just like to explore that in therapy one day, but imagine you develop an irrational fear of a chicken salad. Chicken salad sandwich, which you could do. All right, now I'm not minimizing the suffering of panic disorder and OCD and those sort of things at all. We've both been there, both of us. Yes. But imagine you develop an irrational fear of chicken salad and you are truly suffering because of your fear of this chicken salad sandwich that's in your refrigerator. But if you learn to not be afraid of it anymore, the chicken salad sandwich is still there. Right. Just don't care and actually you might have it for lunch. So it's a completely different relationship. Right. It doesn't go away. Oh, I don't think that's a stupid analogy at all. I don't think that's a great or dumb analogy. I think it's a great one. Damn. I think you crushed it. All right, we're out. Mic drop, we're done. Done, we're done. That's it, eh, people? No, that's it. Because it's not, we're changing our relationship to the thing. But that's all predicated on having a different process with it and being accepting of it when it shows up. And it were just like, I want to feel differently about this. I want to have a different, like, I don't know, like an initial experience of it. That sort of misses the boat, I think. It does, because then you become completely outcome focused. But you can't get the outcome without the process. So you really have to be, let the process, there is no outcome in the end. But you could probably say that for anything in life. But in this situation specifically, you really need to embrace the process and forget the outcome or else you're going to be in a really frustrated place after a while. Yeah, I was actually, I was working on a post for social media yesterday that's an Albert Camus quote. And it was something like, if you always are searching for happiness, you'll never find it. And if you're always looking for the meaning of life, you'll never get it. And I think that that's what we're talking about here is that if you're not in the process of it, you're not in the experience of it, and you're just trying, and part of this is just trying to understand it cognitively. Like, how do I figure this out and get to the place as opposed to like, I'm just going to be with this? I don't know, I'm getting pretty esoteric now. And these are hard concepts to portray in words sometimes. It's very nuanced, there's a lot of subtlety in that. But I think, and then people start to wonder like, okay, fine, so I'm process focused, but what does the outcome look like? But what will it look like? And it's so strange, because my own experience was when I got, and look, I didn't intentionally say, well, I'm going to be process focused now. I just, that's what happened. And in retrospect, I could say, oh, look, yeah, I really became process focused and didn't care about the outcome. But then suddenly I would have these moments where it's like, oh, the outcome is here. I didn't know when it arrived, and I didn't know how long it would stay and it would come and go sometimes. But I would begin to have moments where I wasn't searching for a particular way to feel, but yet I was starting to feel that way. And I didn't identify when it happened. It's not like, oh, I went and grabbed it. I didn't, it just sort of arose out of the process. Right, it came, it's sort of the fruition of these small actions that over time, you start to have a different experience of things, but it's not the, and it's never a solid outcome. No, no. In the beginning it was little windows and they got a little bigger and bigger, and you know, but there was never a moment where I was grasping for a specific experience and oh, and the switch went on and I had that experience that almost never, I don't think it ever happened. It just sort of organically happened and I didn't know when it did, but it did. Right, well, and the surrender, in order to get there, you have, what you're describing is like, okay, I'm not gonna figure, like I'm not gonna know. And then it all of a sudden, it started to reveal itself to you. And that's essentially the surrender of the figuring it out. The problem is that it's sort of like saying, I'm gonna type A my way to relaxation. I'm gonna understand relaxation, I'm gonna figure it out and then I'm gonna get there. If I do all of these things, then I can relax. No, no, the only way that you find relaxation is if you breathe into relaxation now. Right, that's a good point. This really gets very philosophical, but I'm here for it, I dig it. That's about, I think that's our jam actually. You and I tend to go like deep. Yeah, all of a sudden we're veering off into this whole different plane, but it's good. Yeah, a little bit, but it does apply. So let's talk about the process for, and what that kind of looks like, and before we hit the record button, I was talking about my moon mission analogy. Yeah, someone did. It's not a special analogy by the way, I think it's a good one. So what does the process look like and how do you get more process focused? So when we decided to land people on the moon, before that happened, there was like a ton of intermediate steps. We had to design a rocket, and then we had to model that design, and then we had to test the rocket. And we used the rocket as an example. So there was a bunch of tests. Sometimes they were failure, sometimes they were successful, but after a successful rocket test, if NASA said, oh, forget this, we're not on the moon yet. This isn't working. They would have never made it to the moon. They had to say, well, no, this is a process. And today we're going to test this rocket. Tomorrow we're gonna do something else. And tomorrow we're gonna do something else. And sooner or later, it will add up and we will be on the moon. But I think when people get outcome focused, they know each individual step in the process does not bring you to recovery. Right. They add up, you have to let them add up, or you're gonna be screwed. Right, or you can view it as every step in the process is recovery, is recovery by itself, but you're just not, it's not this big a-ha that you think it should be. Yeah. And no, I love that analogy. And I think so much of it is about being willing to be bad at something. Sometimes, especially I think when you're, when there's a state of kind of suffering involved and you're trying to extract yourself from it, any failure to extract yourself from it feels like this isn't working. I'm not clearly not doing this right. Right, or that it's, even if you don't necessarily, the fact that it feels clumsy or you're not quite sure how to do it, it reminds me a lot of the analogy that you were using because I think early on in treatment, it's like, I don't know how to accept this. What is this? And I can think of it in so many other iterations in life where you're learning to do something new. Yeah. And you have to be, in order to get good at it, you have to start by being totally confused and not good at it. That's true. And that keeps you process focused because if you're trying to make sure, am I doing this right? Did I do that right? Would this be recovery? Which is really, I think, common in the early stages. I'm sure you see it all the time in your practice. Yeah. Every step of the day becomes a recovery step to the person who's new because they wanna, should I have done this? Was that right? Should I be drinking this tea? Should I have said this? Should I have read that? But then after a while, you start to, I don't know why. You kinda just kinda lean into a little bit. It's like, okay, it is just gonna happen organically here. Yeah. You have to be willing to not know what you don't know or accept, like, I don't know what I don't know yet. It's a hard place. Right, right, which is hard. I think some people never get out of that place of recovery where, or it takes them a lot longer to get out of that place where it's like, well, what's the right way to do this for recovery? But that misses the whole point because again, that's very much outcome focused. How do I do the thing now so that I don't feel anxiety later versus, okay, well, this seems like the good enough choice. I guess I'll go with it and I'll see what happens. But because anxiety disorders and OCD are so predicated on an intolerance of uncertainty, that it's like building that muscle of being willing to not know is so much about, that's what allows us to be in the process. Which is when you said before, like, no, no, no, the process is each individual step is actually recovery and that like, I love that. That's really good. I mean, I have some notes on that that one day might become something I don't know where every experience stands alone to a certain extent. They're additive, but they also count each one stands alone as an experience. Absolutely. If you're willing to accept that that's what the process looks like, you can get the lesson of that experience. If you're outcome focused, you will often reject the lesson of the experience that it didn't turn out the way I want. Well, what did you want? Well, I wanted to not feel anxious when I did my ERP homework. Yeah, but then you missed the lesson of the homework. Right, which is that you learned how to be anxious. Good job, right? Which is actually way more important, funny enough, right? Is learning how to feel the feelings. Yeah, yeah, that's like, you're already anxious. You have to learn to be better at being anxious. Exactly. Nobody wants to hear, but that's a real thing. Yeah, and that's where true freedom is, is if you get better at being anxious, if you get better at feeling those feelings. I also think it's interesting because there's actually relief too, that you can access in the moments. It lives alongside in the process, alongside anxiety, but accepting uncertainty, for instance, which is something that comes up in OCD and anxiety treatment across the board, that there is something very relieving about not having to figure it out. And that stands alone too. There's also something terrifying about it, right? It can't stand alone, but if you actually appreciate the release as well, this is back toward the process element of being in the process instead of the outcomes, how can I appreciate the deep breath that I just got, knowing that I don't have to figure it out, that also happens to coincide with the racing heartbeat that I can't figure it out. Yeah, that's really good, because more than one thing can be true at a time. We know that that axiom there, and yes, you could still be anxious. That's really good, actually, because I can think of times, I'm sure you can too, where the anxiety didn't change, like the level didn't really change, yet I felt still as anxious as I did before the exposure or during the exposure, yet also felt some relief at the same time. Yeah. Because I was experiencing it a little differently or processing it a little bit differently? Well, and I think this is interesting, we can't get rid of feelings. We can, however, take steps that are likely to cultivate new ones, right? So getting rid of sadness, not so much, practicing gratitude is likely to cultivate additional joy. It's not guaranteed, but then I'm just using that as an example. And I think the same thing goes, is we can't get rid of fear. What we can do is cultivate a sense of empowerment. And I think that's kind of what you're talking about, is that that too, or speaking too, is when you take that action, you may not feel a reduction in your anxiety, but you may feel a boost in your sense of self-efficacy, and that feels good. Oh, it feels really good. Yeah, I did it. I did it. Yes. It didn't get me. Like it's still here, and I wish it wasn't, but look, I did it. I did that thing. Yeah. Yeah, there's something to be said for that. Yeah, absolutely. And if you're not gonna be process focused, if you're just worried about getting rid of it, you would miss that. You would miss that lesson. Yes. That you would totally miss that lesson. Reality tells you that nothing bad happened to you, but if you're focused on how you feel, like I want to change the way I feel, I want to make new feelings, then you'd miss that lesson. Right. Which is a shame. Which is really a shame. And I think that part of the problem with outcome focus is that when you start recovery, you don't know what the outcome looks like yet because of the huge paradigm shift that's required to attain recovery, I think. You're 100% right. So we're breaking this down like absolutely. If anybody's brand new at this, like these two are terrifying me. I'm not gonna know. I have no certainty. I don't even know what it's supposed to look like. Oh my God. Let's break it down. Should we break it down? How can we make it more tangible? Yeah, we should probably make it a little more tangible, I guess. Because when we're throwing so many things out there, which are true, these are not untrue things. However, it makes it sound like you'll never know anything, you'll never come to any answers. And to a certain extent, that's true. It's totally true. And the big difference is you are going to feel likely differently about that. If you practice accepting, if you are in the process and every time something comes up, you're like, oh, here it is, right? Let's get really tangible. Let's talk about a different, some type of anxiety specifically. What do we wanna go with? Oh. Go see your- Yeah, go see, that's fine. Okay. So if every time that you have a thought about murdering somebody, which happens in OCD. Yeah. Just walking along and all of a sudden, oh, okay. If every time you practice accepting the presence of that thought, if every time you practice allowing for the feelings that have come up in relation to that thought, like maybe that thought brought about a sense of anxiety, then ultimately you're developing a better relationship with those experiences so that when they come up, you're more accepting of them. They don't have to go away. You don't even have to have a different experience, but you are changing. One, yeah. One of the, you know what I do this morning newsletter and coming up in a week or two is that exact lesson. We're not trying to change the anxiety we're changing ourselves. It's a stationary and we change around it so that we experience it a different way. Yeah. Yeah. That's it. Yeah, so like that's what you're doing and that is tangible to a certain extent. Oh, I can control that. I can change my reactions. I can learn new lessons. I can take new directions. So even though we're painting this horrible picture of uncertainty and like groping in the dark, I'm like the roller coaster from hell. It's not really true. We are steering the ship to a large degree, but we're steering directly into uncertainty and being okay with that. I can steer through uncertainty. Yes. That's just the difference between being on a roller coaster and being excited and being on a roller coaster and being terrified. True. That's a good point. Which I'm not a great, I'm not a big fan of roller coasters. So I don't know. I don't know. I guess you got it. Yeah. Yeah. I'll shoot something that you said though was, I was gonna go off of it. But I lost it. The anxiety is a change we do. I saw it, like your eyes kind of widened when I said that a little bit. So I don't know if that was the trigger. Well, and I certainly think that that's true. That anxiety doesn't change, but we do. We do. And our power here, I know what I was gonna say. I think because when we're after this outcome of feeling less anxious, oftentimes feeling more confident, because certainty doesn't exist, but confidence, right? Like, oh, I feel sure of this. I feel certain about this. That if you go from the focus on outcome and confidence to a focus on process and bringing your values to bear on any given situation, so finding a quality that you want to embody and bringing that to the table, oftentimes I'll encourage people to focus more on bringing courage to the experience. What's interesting is I think ultimately they're experienced very similarly, right? The thing that people are after when people are after a sense of confidence is actually something that we can breed in ourselves when we focus on bringing the value of courage to the table. Does that make sense? It makes 100% sense. I've written about that too. Like, you guys are appreciating the fact that you might hear from me, you might hear from Lauren, you might hear from Kelly, you might hear from Josh, you might hear from it, and we all wind up coming back and making like we're all plagiarizing each other. Totally. I've written literally about that, that courage is a thing that breeds competence, which then breeds confidence when you engage in that repeatedly. So yeah, you can't make confidence, but you can act courageously. Yeah. Yeah, which I'll lead to that. Absolutely. Because what you're looking at is, oh, I'm proud of myself for showing up in that way. Yeah, yeah. And then you get to take the lesson. When you approach it that way, I like that more of a value-centric approach. Yeah, I'm proud of myself. I did a really hard thing because you can always validate that. Yes, this was really hard. I'm not saying to ignore that part, but this was really hard and I'm proud of myself. I did a good thing and that gives you a little bit of space and then you can take the lesson of the experience as opposed to I'm still anxious or I'm still having those thoughts. Yeah, and it's, yeah. The empowering piece is at the end of it for me because you don't get that from things negative experiences going away. You only get that from staring them right in the face and going toward them. Yeah, you get that based on what you did, not what the experience was, how you interacted in that context you get from it. Yeah, let's get a question as an OCD specialist. So we're talking about being process focused. So what about in that situation where your clients, things can get really sticky up there and start to get into that groove and worrying about, am I doing it right? Am I doing it right? Is that something that you see is a little bit more prevalent in the OCD population? Am I doing it right? Am I doing it right? Yeah, absolutely. And that gets down to like obsessing about compulsing, which is really, I think if we're talking about the same thing, like, oh my gosh, am I doing this correctly? And what if this doesn't lead to- Right. Right, like what if I don't recover because I'm doing a compulsion right now, for instance? Is that kind of what you're speaking toward? Yeah, I mean, if I can, let me just make sure they clarify this. But the, am I doing it right is a thing that we were talking about that earlier on. Like in the beginning of recovery, almost everybody gets focused. Am I doing this right? Is this right? Should I be doing this? Yeah. But some people I have found they do, their thoughts are a little stickier at times and they're likely to fall into that groove of thinking sometimes. And sometimes the thinking is I must analyze every word I say about my anxiety. I must analyze every exposure, all my homework, everything I read. Like I have to continually play that again and again to make sure that I'm doing recovery right. Yes. Am I doing what Lauren said? Am I doing the homework right? Did I do that ERP exercise correctly? That has to be really hard. Yeah, yeah, it is really hard. And I think that, but that's the thing is ultimately it's the same issue. Yeah. Is if you look at it from a process perspective, we're just trying to fix the uncertainty that I'm not gonna recover perfectly or thoroughly. Yeah, that makes sense. Right, so if you accept like, yeah, maybe I am, maybe I'm not doing what Lauren would tell me to do right now or encourage me to do right now. Maybe I'm totally going counter to everything every OCD specialist has ever said. I don't know. I guess we'll see. Let's see what happens. Maybe I'll do it differently tomorrow. Who knows? Yeah, well, right. And I'm not saying that you should be completely like flagrant about it, but you know that at a certain point you have to accept like, yeah, maybe I'm not gonna drink the tea and then I'm gonna feel more anxious. Oh well. Yeah, but it's interesting because allowing yourself to actually possibly be doing it wrong is the best way to do it right. Yes. Yeah. It's such a... There's a paradox for you if you ever wanted one. Man, this stuff makes my brain explode. It's so interesting though. It's crazy when you think about it. I understand it's so hard for people to, it's hard for me to put my brain around it too. Like if you wanna make sure you're doing it right, just go ahead and do it wrong. Yeah. And you're doing it right. It's crazy. Totally. Yeah. You're doing it right to the present moment and don't try to figure anything out. Well, that's good advice right there. That was worth the price of admission right there, folks. So. Yeah. Very good. What else you got on process? Anything in particular before we wrap it up? Right, our usual 25, 30 minutes here? Yeah. No, I mean, I think just trying to be with each, I guess coming off of that comment I just made just being with each moment as it comes and being willing to be surprised by whatever outcome ends up occurring because that's ultimately, that's reality anyway. Yeah. Yeah, we don't, you're right. Outside of anxiety, OCD, anxiety disorders, that is life anyway. Right. We're not gonna control the outcome because we're spending a bunch of time churning about it. We're trying to figure that out. It sucks, but what we want is a little concern to the universe. Yeah. In all of life, in all of life, not just recovery. And so those are lessons, you know, you talk about being process focused and working the process to get there. Those lessons carry on past the therapy room. They carry past your recovery. They serve you well for a very long time. Yeah. That level of understanding and learning to work that way carries on when you're done with therapy. Trust me on this one. Yeah, in ways that have nothing to do with anxiety disorders or OCD. Would you say that you are living your life differently than you otherwise would have before you had to go through your struggles? 1,000% on so many levels, right? I mean, I'm obviously like, my career has been my own experience, but no, I actually, I was just talking about this book. It's one of my favorites, Living Beautifully with Uncertainty and Change by Pema Chodron. My kindle budget is going through the roof. What's that? My kindle budget is through the roof. I'm not doing that one. Do you know what? One of my favorite things in the world to buy this book for people. So if you like a good hard copy of something, I will gift that to you. Oh, you are a very generous human being. I appreciate that. Sometimes. But anyway, the book is not geared toward people with OCD or anxiety. It just so happens to relate a lot to four people who have those conditions, but learning how to know, except that we can't know anything is freedom. And so I found that that has changed my whole life. I'm, you know, in terms of my ability to relax with life as it is instead of trying to, yeah, get everything on my terms. So, yeah. No, I agree. The process of recovery starts to become the process of life past recovery. It just is. Yeah. I've seen you throw stuff with quotes out there on Instagram. I know what you want. I like that stuff. I always, I love that stuff. I mean, you will find threads in those. There's a reason why you will, you can draw a straight line from Epictetus to Aaron Beck. Literally. And there's a reason for that. So. It's so true. What about you? What other thoughts do you have on the process versus outcomes discussions since we're rounding out the. Yeah, we're running. I think, I would say that I would probably leave people with this. Understand that it is difficult to become process oriented. I don't think it's the human default. I really don't. I think our default is to be outcome oriented. So like everything else that we learn and this crazy thing that we all do together, it is counterintuitive. It's difficult. It's challenging. It doesn't feel right. Sometimes you have no idea. Am I doing this right? Is this process? I have no idea. And you are in many ways denying that, ah, that strong desire for the outcome. I get that. So when you are struggling with falling back to being outcome oriented, everybody does in all parts of life all the time. As much as I would like to tell you that I am, you know, I would never call myself evolved because I'm like devolved in many cases, I think. Ah, true. Yeah, but in the end, like everybody, I'm sure you fall back into that too in various aspects of your life. You start to realize like, why am I so frustrated? Last night was a good example. I was really frustrated last night over something that I wanted. And I had to really think about that. Why am I so frustrated? Oh, because I want something that I didn't get. That's not normal. The normal is to automatically I wanted it. I didn't get it right then and there. I was frustrated. It took me a while to work through that last night. Right. Right. And then accepting that you're frustrated, right? That's not, it's not intuitive. It's like, I don't want to be frustrated. Well. So if you've fallen to those old habits and you're getting frustrated, but it's okay. Like we all do that forever. Because it's a process, right? And let's get really meta here as we sort of end this is like, we're not trying to get to a place where you're always processed. Because guess what? That's an outcome. That's really good. We could talk about this. I can keep you on here for the next hour. I have that problem sometimes. The process becomes an outcome for me. It's sometimes the way that I work. And then I get a little bit too focused on, on the, and the process becomes a project by itself. Like, no, no, no, no, no. And I have to put the brakes on and stop and return to the present moment and be still, let everything fly away. And then, okay. Hang on here. What are we doing? Just one moment at a time. Yes, very good, very good. So, so good, so good. I love these. Me too. Yeah, these are really good. Anyway, so I have Lauren up on the screen at the obsessive mind on Instagram. So go check her out for sure. And do you have your name on your fancy thing? So that if, I'm pulled up right now. Well, if people are joining from my site or my social media presence, please follow Drew. He is so fabulous. And he says great things all the time that are probably gonna support you in your wellbeing. So, just saying. If you need silly analogies on your guy. Come on. Yep. And not so silly ones as a matter of fact. Anyway, thank you, my friend. We'll do it again next week. We're doing this every month. This is good. We've done like three months in a row. I'm very proud of us. Me too. From on top of it. We schedule once a month and you guys will hear from us and fire nice, we'll be back. We're so ridiculous. Ridiculous. How's anybody even watching to the end? If you made it this far, we appreciate it. Congratulations. Yeah, very good. All right, we'll see you guys next time. Bye. The end button, awkward pause.