 And I always have to watch the screen. We're live. Okay, very good. What's up guys drew here that anxiety guide calm back again with Billy from anxiety United in the UK. How long sup bill. So we are going to continue our anxiety 101 series this morning and we're going to do we're going through an article that I wrote many years ago I will link the article in the video description on the website wherever you're watching so you can go check it out and we're going through an anxiety 101 article that I wrote many moons ago we're just kind of going section by section today we're going to talk about symptoms which is a popular topic of course, but not so much talking about symptoms talking about how to not react to symptoms and that reacting to symptoms is one of the major things that fuels the cycling keeps things kind of upside down for you. So, like I said you can read through the article follow the link we'll link that over there but Billy and his infinite wisdom watch talk about the poll you did on anxiety united video and we'll link Billy's video to So it's about I don't know it's probably about four three or four years ago maybe no it won't I'm telling the lie the poll was about three or four years ago the video was about a year ago. But we basically did a poll on the top symptoms that affect people so I made a list of symptoms that were popular amongst also for us or a lot and just told them to pick the one that was most prevalent for them the one that really affected them. And we just left the list and it we had over 5000 votes in the poll, and then I just collated the results created a video just putting them in order as we went. And we've got a list of the 10, and I don't know if we want to run through the list and just maybe touch on why they might happen but we don't want to spend too much time on actually focusing on why symptoms are happening because we're trying not to focus on them aren't we we're trying to get away from the reaction and they're not important. But from the list that the 10th one on there was headaches. Should I just run through the list? Yeah, let's run through the list and then break them down. We've got headaches. We've got dizziness. We've got jelly legs or weak legs. We've got heart palpitations sweating. I feel like I'm doing it like a chart here. It's not a chart. We've got tension and muscle aches, shortness of breath, digestive problems which covers all kinds of nausea, diarrhea or all the usual. Rapid heartbeat and the number one which was chosen by the percentage was like crazy off the scale and that was fatigue and exhaustion being the most common symptom that affected people. That's interesting. I think that probably is not so much a symptom of a panic attack but anxiety in general. Yeah, yeah, maybe the after effect of stress and exactly. So if you're always anxious and always at this high level it's natural to kind of feel worn out and beat up all the time so that makes sense. So I think when we go through and it was a pretty decent poll on your website and then Billy has a video that talks about these top 10 symptoms too. We'll link that so you can go watch it. And the reason why we want to go over these symptoms and we'll talk about a few of them and maybe why they happen for a little bit of reassurance. But this is not so much about comparing symptoms and really dissecting why we have jelly legs or weak legs. It's about learning to acknowledge how you feel physically, acknowledging the symptoms and then moving on and not focusing on them. So we're going to talk about them a little bit which is focusing but really what this video is all about is trying to learn to not react to them and not focus on them. That's the point. Yeah, so we wind up in a situation where we start to feel these things and we'll use these 10 as a pretty good example. I'm sure that there's 100 others that if you're watching the video or listening to this podcast I'm sure you can have 20 other symptoms into this mix. And that's the problem isn't it? It is. We'll always miss something and somebody will then think oh god this must be something else because they haven't mentioned. You do get that quite often. That's not the case. We could sit here all day. We could. We could actually do. We could probably do a year worth of videos. Just one symptom per video and just keep going. So maybe what we should do is talk about that a little bit. You know, I think we, one of the most popular topic that I think you would agree with this that I see online where people gather to talk about anxiety and panic and things like that is comparing and checking symptoms. Yeah, definitely. By far, medication is also a big one. What can I take? What can I swallow? But I think does anybody feel is the number one question? Does anybody get this? Yeah. Yeah. I need to know that I'm not the only one. Exactly. And I think it's pretty normal. It's pretty normal. People we want validation for the way we feel. We want reassurance that we don't have some special form of anxiety or some real disease that's going to kill us. So I think that makes sense. You want some reassurance and you want to think about, especially at first, when you first go down this road, you really, really focus on your symptoms and how you feel physically a lot. And that's pretty normal. But once you've started to understand the explanation behind them and you also hear that, hey, there's 10,000 other people within an arms reach that also get jelly legs or weak legs. Once we understand those facts, if you will, about the symptoms, then it's time to learn to just not react to them, right? Yeah. Definitely. So if we go, we talked about maybe going through a few of these to just sort of explain them away. And I think we can use that as sort of an example of how you go through this process. Yeah. We could maybe talk about the numbness and tingling, which is a big symptom for a lot of people. So let's kind of walk everybody through this. So you're experiencing anxiety or panic and you're new to this game. And when it happens, you start to experience numb numbness in your fingers or toes or tingling or your nose can tingle if we ever had that or your nose and your lips are tingling. I had this exact same thing on Saturday night. Sure. It's very, very common. So yeah, yeah, it was what do we do? Right. The first time it ever happens, it's freaking terrifying. You may wind up in a hospital. You think you're dying and perfectly normal. Everybody goes through that phase. But when it happens again and again and again, what do we do? So what causes the nimble? The first thing you probably wind up doing is you'll go to forums, you'll reach out to other people and say, who else has this? Yeah, yeah. Right. Who else has this? And then you're likely to find a million people who say, I have it too. And then you'll also start to find explanations as to why you have numbness. I cannot say the word numb today. Numbness and tingling in your extremities or your nose, your lips, your cheeks. The explanation for that is the carbon dioxide levels in your blood. That's your breathing. So I learned that the hard way during a wicked panic attack like my sophomore year at college. Right. A long time ago. I'm not going to say the year, but... And I remember my nose started tingling, my lips started tingling, my hands and feet started to go numb. My hands actually kind of, you could see the camera, kind of went up in this position, like in a claw. Yeah, yeah. And my toes cramped up. Yeah, yeah. And I thought for sure I was done for. And we can explain that away because that is over breathing. So when you're... When you're doing that or when you're doing... And you're sighing over and over to try and relax. You're over breathing. And when your carbon dioxide levels in your blood get screwed up, you're hyperventilating. And that is a common symptom of hyperventilation. Absolutely 100% predictable. That is what your body will do if you over breathe. Which so many of us do when we get into a panic situation. And it's a simple explanation. Right. And you probably find it across the board. Yeah. Being far off. Simple explanations for pretty much all of the symptoms and sensations in it. Hmm. I just got a odd message. Yeah, it's true. So let's follow numbness and tingling to the logical conclusion that we're trying to get to here which is not reacting to it. So now you've experienced it even if it's new to you. You search it out, find it that other people have it on the internet. You find out what the explanation is for numbness and tingling. And in fact, if it were to continue to happen and you would keep over breathing, you would just pass out from hyperventilation and it would go away. And you'd be perfectly safe. So now what do we do next? So now you're getting into an anxiety situation. What do you do? The thing for me usually. Oh yeah, yeah. The thing for me though is though once I've seen the reassurance or read and find the explanation, a couple of days will pass and then it will just move on to something else and we'll go again. And the cycle continues. I think that's people get so frustrated with. You'll have one certain symptom. You'll read about it. Maybe it will just pass in time naturally as it would anyway. And then you'll get onto something else. But then when you come because it's like a loop and you come back to the tingling fingers next time you have this, because you've now learned something else, you forgot what caused this and you just go again. That's what it does for me. That's a really good point. That's a really good point. So for you, once you kind of learn what it is and you've got that reassurance and you can explain it, you stop reacting to that. But you move on to the next. Yeah, yeah, that's how it feels. I've just got to throw this out because I know I'll forget it. But during the last three weeks, I've been giving those who watched the video previously will see that I was caring for my dad when he came out of hospital. So I've been going to his house like three, four times a day, getting out of the house, spending hours at his at a time and not thinking about myself. But the last week has been a bit more difficult like I've been doing his shopping and we've been eating a few takeaways, going through drive-throughs and that. But the thing that I've been using in my head is just telling myself that I love whatever it is that's happening. So, example, I was sitting in the drive-through to you at McDonald's the other day and I was feeling the weird sensations that I get when I'm sitting there. And I just said to myself, I love feeling like this. And it really, it was weird. The power that it gave me just because I love this. I love feeling like this. And any symptom that I've come across for the last like week I've just thought to myself, I love it when this happens. And it's really made a complete difference on the way that I've sort of carried it over. I've not thought about it. I've not dwelt on it. I've just like accepted I love feeling like this, whatever it's been. That weird. No, that's actually really, really excellent because if we follow through the numbness and tingling to the conclusion here which is to learn to let it be there and not react. What we're talking about here is not going into oh my God mode. Oh my God, I'm tingling. Right? So, okay, you notice it. My nose is tingling. My lips are tingling. Move on. My philosophy would generally be you just have to let it be there and don't react, don't engage in an inner dialogue. Start talking about it with yourself. Don't start analyzing it. Don't wish it away. Don't white-knuckle through it. Oh my God, I can't wait till this is over. Yeah, yeah, that's it. Just let it be there. That's exactly the opposite. Right. And I think but your strategy you've come up with. I've just been welcome. Right. Come on in. It's just as good. So for me, it's kind of a do, I try and do nothing and just let it go but yours is good. It's really good. Like bring it. Come on, bring it. Bring it. Yeah, yeah. Love it. I have used that from time to time and recently I just used that. I know there's somebody probably listening or watching right now that knows it has seen me do that. Right. It's almost an anger thing for me. When I use that, I get into that mode where it's like, that is all you got. Like you've got to bring it. Yeah. Don't be bringing that weak shit into my house. So I try and get angry at it and ask for more and you're right. It tends to almost diffuse things really quickly. The only problem that I have like it, I was, I went to the shop with my wife like a couple of days later. Right. We're walking down the shop and I'm feeling a bit edgy and she's like, come on, you love this. And I'm like, Shut up. Yeah. I could say you can't. Time and a place. No, no. I'll say, I'll say when I love something. That is, that's really funny, but that's good. So we're talking about not reacting to symptoms. And you know, I didn't expect to take this twist, but in a way there can be a positive reaction too. I was just going to say, yeah, just don't react negatively then. Exactly. So you're going to react in fear. So you're either going to react with complete and utter indifference. And you have to learn how to do that. Or you're going to react like you did. Confront it. You know, I love, I love feeling like this. I love when I can't feel my lips. It's awesome. Some people pay to feel like that. You know, okay. So let's talk about that for just a quick second. That is true. That is very some people pay to feel like that. So, you know, lightheaded, floaty, unsteady. There are people who pay good money to buy substances that make them feel like that on purpose. So that's a pretty good perspective right there. And it's all about how we interpret things. Yeah, yeah. So one of the things that I wrote in the article if you're reading through is, I mean, I gave a couple of examples. So if you're, let's talk about short of breath because that's a big one. So if you're feeling short of breath, just let it happen. Right. So there's a couple of ways that you can go that. What would happen? Don't run to an open window, you know, to try and get air into your lungs or standing in front of a fan to try and force air into your face. I've done all of those things. Yeah. What I tend to do with shortness of breath is it's hard to ignore feeling like you can't breathe. It's probably one of the hardest things to ignore because survival is what it is. But what I'll usually try and do is just stop for a second and actually take a breath like a belly breath, you know, the perfect control of my breathing right now. So I might not be breathing very effectively because I'm in freak out mode, but I can control this when I want to. And then, then I move on. So with tightness of the chest, the same situation I used to find I would be poking and prodding and trying to like find different positions that it would go away and they get all kinds of crazy stuff. And what I was doing is trying to escape it and I was giving it a whole lot more power than it used to be. And the same thing with the hot and cold flashes, the same situation if I get really cold I would run to the air conditioning doctor, a fan, or, you know, I'd want to take my shirt off or something like that. And those are rituals that survived for a long time for no good reason. They're still in my repertoire but same situation you have to learn to just be hot or just be cold. There was one for me the other day. My daughter had a bike for her birthday and I was putting it all together like fixing the seat and the handlebars and stuff. And when I finished it it was so much, it was so weird I just felt like I could barely stand. My legs felt really weak. Interesting. But then, yeah, I tried not to give it too much attention but this is again reacting in a positive way. I stood here and just started doing squats and stuff just to prove to myself that my legs were fine. And then after I'd done that I don't know whether I just hadn't woke up properly or whatever but I just convinced myself that they were fine. I still had strength so I am kind of reacting but I'm trying to do it in a positive way and I confirmed to myself that I'm in no danger with back to that. Yes. Reassuring that statement in my mind. That reaction, that is a very positive reaction because it's the same reaction that if you're working with a behavioral therapist who's helping you with CBT, cognitive behavior therapy those are exactly the things that that therapist would ask us to do. So, because really you're challenging your thought like okay my legs feel slightly different than they did five minutes ago. I'm worried about this. I'm afraid of that so I need to challenge that thought and how can I challenge it? Well, I'll prove to myself that my legs are pretty fine by doing some squats. So it's really solid or I feel like I can't breathe but hang on let me take an actual breath. I can breathe. I'm fine. So rather than just using the reaffirming statement in your mind you're actually performing an action. Yes. And so sometimes that's good. Like you know I have had to say to myself many times like hey look I'm still standing upright or I'll walk across the floor very slowly and deliberately and say look I'm in perfect control of what's happening right now. Yeah, yeah. Let me pick up this phone spin it around and put it down. Look I totally but there's that fine line between challenging your thoughts through action and distracting yourself. Yeah, yeah exactly. So why do we not want to react to symptoms really? What's when we react to them what happens? We're empowering them aren't we? We're making them believe and we're also making ourselves believe that whatever we're doing to stop it or to distract is going to keep it away forever I guess. Yes, that's true. That's not the case is it? And they're not important. That's the main thing is that then they're normal physiological responses to stress or adrenaline or whatever it is. Sure. It's normal and everybody would experience it. And I think you know when you wind up in a doctor's office or hospital emergency room with a panic attack and how many times have the you know nurses and doctors look at you you figure your one heartbeat away from the grim reaper and they're all looking at you like it's just Tuesday to them. There's no urgency at all and you just you know we've seen this a million times your body's supposed to be doing this right now so you know in a way yes and so when we when we pay them heat or we react negatively oh my god trying to escape them trying to fix them trying to get away from them you're right we're reinforcing a mistaken belief here. What a question. Yeah. Do you think do you think that people that suffer with anxiety and that they feel the sensations more or is it just because we're more aware so is the the rapid heart if I have a freak out because a car's coming towards me am I going to feel worse symptoms than a person that's never had panic and a car's coming towards them or is it going to be exactly the same it's just that because I'm thinking about it so much that it would feel worse to me or what I think I suppose the body's response is the body's response and I guess right whoever so and I try to think about that all the time so you know if my heart is beating at 140 beats per minute it's the same as your heart beating 140 beats per minute it's the same exact thing I think I think you know what I used to have and I still have them sometimes if I let myself get run down I get an irregular heartbeat it's completely benign it's perfectly fine they call PVCs, benign PVCs and every human heart has PVCs from time to time and when it was explained to me by it was explained to me by multiple cardiologists way back in the day it's an abnormal part of a healthy heart we all have them you just don't always feel them but when I'm run down when I'm anxious when I'm completely focused on my own body I feel them like acutely whereas somebody else when I describe it will say oh yeah sometimes like I feel like I have to cough it's like a little flutter that's all that's the only thing they think oh yeah once in a while that happens to me they don't think about it at all and so I think that we may we experience our symptoms more severely than other people normal people are experiencing those same sensations because we are so focused on them that's my theory it's the awareness yes I don't know if they're any more severe a human heart beats the way a human heart beats you know when we're in an adrenaline there's not that much variation in how our bodies react really so I just think when we focus on them we magnify them in our head and that's perhaps where the problem with the safety stuff and the distraction and focusing so much when we make them seem so much or we're so aware and they just become everything your whole focus is symptom focused it's just everything it is so the key is to lose the reactions to those symptoms and just get away from it and in certain ways decouple the symptoms in a way the symptoms themselves are not the disorder we talked about this last time you made that point and it's spot on they are not so when you have a racing heart or weak legs or you're dizzy or depersonalized all the time or any of the on our list here we're shaking through clearing that sort of stuff that doesn't that's not your anxiety those are symptoms or manifestations of the anxiety that's not the disorder so I try and decouple them and think like well if somebody on the side of the road just had a narrow escape they almost had a horrific car accident they may be sitting in their car right now with their heart pounding and they're sweating and they're all keyed up and they're nervous and that person is feeling the same exact things that I might be feeling right now but they're not afraid of that they're not afraid of that it's just fine my heart's supposed to be beating right now it's nothing they're more concerned with the fact that they almost get hit by a giant truck to be fair if you'd nearly been hit by the truck you would be probably thinking the same way they had because I find when I'm in a situation that's sort of beyond your control you deal with it so much better and suddenly you become normal in a way like oh yeah wow that was a really close call I almost got slammed to the side of the road by this giant truck and you know I'll feel anxious and my heart might be racing but there's no anxiety involved in that you're not standing there thinking oh god here we go again jeez that was close right and then you're really focused outward onto the event that caused the problem to begin with so yeah there's a lot to that so let's talk about how because we're getting on 21 minutes now I know we can ramble you and me so let's talk about how to start ignoring your symptoms your solution is pretty good I like it like the positive reaction challenge it accept it yeah yeah I'm trying to make it sort of a thing where I'm not sitting there saying I love this love this you know I'm just saying as soon as it happens or as soon as it enters my head I just use it and then I just get rid of it sort of thing so I'm not using it as a distraction it's not I'm not sitting there saying I love this love this yeah and constantly thinking about it I'm just saying it and moving on with it so that's what's working for me at the moment well that's not bad I think it's a good approach like you are you're going to acknowledge it my heart's racing and that's it so you might take it another way yep my heart's racing I love feeling this way and that's it and then you move on but the way we do this is with our coping techniques that we talked about I think we already did coping techniques breathing relaxation clearing your mind I believe we talked about that a while ago I used it I used it on Saturday night I'd been at my dad's and came home and I was hungry on the bed for like five minutes I didn't have any plan to come back downstairs or to do anything I hadn't eaten at that point and that's something with me like when I'm hungry I start getting sensations it's weird but that's another day but I just lay there for five minutes cleared my mind just regulated my breathing and then I was up and I came back downstairs and everything was absolutely fine so rather than spending two hours freaking and then probably ending up doing exactly the same thing just chilling out for five minutes but doing that straight away even when I was I could feel it building sort of thing I did it straight away and then it was done and there was no panic and I just carried on I think that's great and that's an illustration of you pop upstairs lay down and it sometimes is the hardest thing to do because what you're basically saying is I'm not gonna move I'm not gonna pace I'm not gonna run I'm not gonna fidget I'm not gonna when you do that you lay yourself horizontal close your eyes you have no choice but to be in those symptoms they're just gonna be there yeah yeah and that is super valuable to learn how to do that and just breathe and just let them wash over you I weren't sure whether that was sort of being defeated though like should I have just sat downstairs and just let it go and let the panic come over but I don't know whether like that's a tough one to call I don't I would not call that being defeated at all I would call that progress because I did do something to react to them but the thing that I did I don't know the best way I could I could answer that would be when I had to first learn how to do these things I would have a certain I'd have to you know try and find a quiet spot away from people I might be lower light there were a lot of requirements for me able to do this but as I got better at doing it like I could be having a wicked panic attack right now and you would have no idea so exactly the more yeah the more that you do that and learn how to get in that mindset you could do it anywhere yeah so you're learning the skill or perfecting it so now you did it upstairs lying down in your bedroom but you know if you do it enough you'll be able to do it sitting in a chair in your kitchen then you'll be able to do it in your car or in the supermarket it won't matter so no not a defeat at all I would say no when you say it like that it's yeah yeah so learn what works yeah so I think the bottom line here and I feel like we rambled a lot but I think we've tried to acknowledge the symptoms everybody goes through go online check to see everybody else has it get validated understand what it is explain it and then learn to use your coping skills or an active response like you have bring it I love this to just let it be trying to beat away your symptoms is bad that the beating away or the running from the symptoms that's actually the disorder like I'm terrified of this I need to save myself from this that's the disorder so and that is anxiety yeah you're becoming anxious about something else as well as not being able to go out the house or whatever it is yeah you're now scared about going out the house or sitting at home being dizzy right yeah because in the end being scared to go out of the house is all about how you might feel when you go out of the house if I go out of the house I might get dizzy so I can't go you know so yeah once we learn to not react to them and just let them be there we've taken the power away and when you don't feel when you don't fear you make a huge a giant giant leap forward because I think we have to acknowledge before we wrap it up I think the difference between saying for instance I'm afraid to leave my house I'm afraid to go to the supermarket if you've been in a supermarket where there was a shooting that's a different animal you may you have actually you've experienced real danger in a supermarket and you can quickly develop that phobia but when you don't want to go into the supermarket because you're afraid that your legs will wobble and you'll have to hang on to the cart or that you might pass out that you know because you don't want to go to the supermarket not because there's danger there it's because how you might feel so stop being afraid of how you feel just feel that way yeah and so that's the case that we can't react to symptoms that's what this one is all about that's it that's it think we need to add anything else to this one no just I don't like the search in the forums I know I don't think people should do it I think maybe if you can speak to your doctor just to get that reassurance but going back and constantly seeking I don't think it's not beneficial I think once you know the answer whatever you just got to trust in it trust yourself I think there's we talk about Occam's razor all else being equal the simplest explanation is usually the one and that's a real thing that's a real scientific principle or at least a logical principle and so once you've seen 100 other people say I get a headache too or I get tired too or I get numb and tingly as well well move on so my philosophy on that is in the beginning everybody's going to search and Google and compare and that's normal but at some point you have to draw a line in the sand for yourself and say this is my limit I know why I'm numb I'm not going to look at that I'm not going to talk about it anymore because no doubt you'll probably come across one person that had something bloody serious and then that's it that's another downside of searching like especially a Google don't use Google yeah and it's really difficult WebMD you know all those things they're good sites but you know they're also trying to give you the most information possible so to find out that you know like having to clear your throat could also be something horrible yeah and when you're when you're sitting there suffering with a symptom you're going to describe it in search engines as horrific right like the whole world is spinning and you know and obviously it's going to come back with scary things but if you were to really put in I'm maybe over breathing right right but in the heat of the moment we're not thinking about too much over breathing yeah yeah we're just thinking that we can't breathe short of breath can't breathe yeah yeah but you can and after in terms of the breath thing after like four or five minutes of saying you can't breathe when does the logical brain kick in and say well yeah yeah I have been not breathing for ten minutes that sounds silly right when you say it but I'm still able to type yeah right I'm typing I'm texting like how could I of course I'm breathing if I wasn't breathing I wouldn't be able to do these things so yeah so the key here is to take the power away from the symptoms and stop reacting in fear once you learn how to do that you make a huge leap so the next episode we're going to do is sort of accepting that there's no comfortable way to do that and that plays into this a little bit like just sitting with those terrifying symptoms is horrifically uncomfortable but there's no other way so we'll talk about that in the next episode yeah yeah let's wind up because we're now going on in about a half hour um as usual symptoms yeah as usual symptoms we can talk about it for days and days and days what do we how are people going to find us how are they going to find you Billy they want to know more are you breaking up on me dude they can find yeah yeah yeah yeah twitter twitter.com you got me I got you now you're back yeah you're back right yeah facebook youtube that's okay it's always anxiety united all the all anxiety dot com sounds good I'm thinking of redoing the website but I don't like the website of them I don't like the idea of the social thing it's just not I don't know it's tough it's tough to compete with facebook facebook own social exactly that's it I was thinking and maybe this is completely off topic but just like content sharing like images and motivational stuff maybe they can sure anybody wants to check it out they can anxietyunited.com .co.uk either of those two yeah so you can find me at thatanxietyguy.com you can listen to all the podcasts there youtube.com thatanxietyguy same thing on twitter facebook blah blah blah and as always if you have comments or questions throw them at one or both of us down below I will link Billy's channel on my version of this video I'm sure he will do the same back at me I'll link Billy's symptom video too all means add to the view count and I guess that's it we'll be back next time yes alright dude I'll talk to you in a little bit