 questions and answers about anxiety and anxiety recovery. These questions all came from my YouTube audience. So if you guys are on YouTube and you submitted some questions, there's a good chance that I'm going to answer, you know, as many of those as I can. So hopefully I'll get to your question. And we even had a question come in on threads. If you are using threads, which is met as new thing. I know I was like really down on threads for a long time, but I'm actually finding that I'm enjoying it a little bit. So I actually invited some questions from threads too. If anybody is on threads that wants to follow along there. So let's wait for some folks to pop in. I don't know how many people we're going to get. We are officially now in the holiday season here in the US of a actually kind of anywhere the holidays are celebrated. So I had a long weekend was Thanksgiving weekend. It's cold again. Winter is here. It is what it is. So we'll do what we can. So we'll wait for some folks to pop in and then we'll start to take some questions. I don't have as long today as I normally have. We're going to try and end it around 35 minutes or so because I have a bunch of stuff happening today that needs to be taken care of. Let's put the chat overlay up so you guys can talk to each other. Just a quick reminder if you're coming from the Facebook group. Restream is going to show you just as Facebook user. I'm sorry. That's just the way it works. But yeah, so you know, do the best you can. If you want to tell me your name before you ask a question, that's totally fine. If you're coming from any other platform, I will in fact see your name in the chat. So that's great. So let's talk about it here. I know a lot of you guys in the comments section want me to answer questions right away in the comments. But I asked people to comment on a post on YouTube. So we're going to really kind of get to that. And we're going to do those and then we'll see what we can get to the comments after that. So let's see. Hello, everybody. Hello, Wayne. Hello, Kailin. Katie. Shauna, Vicki. Good to see you. Just to see how everybody's coming in for a hello, Carol. It is cold in the UK. It's kind of cold everywhere, at least in the Northern Hemisphere. So it is what it is. All right, so let's get to some questions here. So we'll get right to it. We've got 50 people in the room. That's a decent showing. And let's get to it. So let's go to the first question. This one came in from Threads. And this question is, let me put this over here. I get the feeling that this is different for everyone, but here it goes. How long does the amygdala take to desensitize after a major anxious event? I'm in recovery from a major onset of OCD over the summer and I'm in such a better place, which is awesome. But that damn cashew size bit of my brain still sends me a few false alarms a day. So the question here is about how long it will take your amygdala to sort of desensitize or stop firing off after an anxious event, if you will. Now for some people, that will be I had a panic attack. And now I feel like I'm on a constant wave of recurring panic attacks. It triggered me again. I'm back to it. How long does it take for my brain to calm down? For this particular person, they had sort of an OCD flare up over the summer and they're still having instances where their brain is firing off false alarms every day. Unfortunately, the short answer to that is, I don't know. Like nobody can really tell you how long it takes for your amygdala to get the message and therefore to sort of quiet down and to understand, oh, I don't have to keep, I don't have to keep alerting here. Now it's a little bit different because in OCD, those thoughts are just going to happen, right? And like all people have, all human beings have scary, anxious thoughts or unusual thoughts or repetitive thoughts sometimes. But what you're asking, what you really want to look for in that situation is what am I doing when those thoughts come? What am I doing when I feel that discomfort? It's not so much that the discomfort is happening or that the thoughts or the symptoms are being triggered. It's what do I do with those? So how long does it take for that to calm down? It's very different. Some people have it happen really quick. That's true. Some people, it takes longer. There's really no way to say. You just want to try and give yourself the best chance of teaching your amygdala or your lizard brain or whatever it is, your oversensitized brain, that it's okay to sort of quiet things down and not be so hypervigilant and not be so on alert and not, you know, send danger signals all the time. The best opportunity you can give it is in changing, consistently changing the way you react when you are in fact triggered. That's the way to give yourself the best chance of that, but however long it takes, it takes. So there's almost no way for anybody to say, well, it's going to take this long. That's why it's super critical when you hear people, especially in social media circles, say things like, you know, guaranteed panic cure. I guarantee you will never have a panic attack again. If you take my course or you sign up for my workshop or whatever it is, you can't have that or seven days to be panic free. I've seen that sort of stuff. There's really no way to guarantee that. We can't really know. Generally speaking, the therapies that I'm always talking about are shorter duration for sure, but there's no way to guarantee like this is the way it's going to go and it's going to take this long. Okay. So let's get to the next question here. Since we had a long holiday weekend, and I will move it over so you guys aren't looking at me reading my screen over there. Since we've had a long holiday weekend, I find myself being ironically thankful. We have Thanksgiving here in the States for my disorder experience and the confidence I've realized from it. Do you have, I guess he's talking to me, does Drew have any, well something, my keyboard is no debt, but that, do you have any elements that you are particularly thankful for pertaining to your entire experience? That's a good question. And it's something that I talk about quite often. I've been known to say that there's gold being forged in the fires of anxiety. But before I answer the question, which was posed to me, which is, do I have anything that I'm particularly thankful for in terms of what I took out of my recovery and my anxiety experience? Let me just be careful here because don't let anybody tell you that like, oh, there's so much wisdom in your anxiety. It's telling you things. It's teaching you things. You should be thankful for your anxiety. No. When you are struggling and when I was struggling, there was no way in the universe that I saw this as something I was supposed to be thankful for. Like, oh, let me be thankful for this experience and no, while you're in the middle of the experience, you will be anything but thankful for it. You will be anything but grateful for it. That sort of stuff only comes afterwards. And unfortunately that seems to be the case. It only comes later on that you discover like, oh, I can actually look back on the experience and take things out of it. I can tell you that you are learning things as you go. That will help you down the road and stay with you for the rest of your life. But while you are in the middle of it, no way, no way are you feeling in any way grateful for that. So I don't mean to sort of like say that, oh, you should be grateful for this. So that anxiety is wise in some way. Disordered anxiety is not wise at all. It's completely stupid. It makes no sense. It doesn't have a real basis underneath it. It's erroneous. It's misguided. There's no wisdom there. But what did I take myself out of this? I think one of the things that I've probably took out of the experience that I could say, if you could make me pick one thing, it would probably be my ability to assess. I'm going to say a threat. But threat has a very wide definition in this situation. I am so much better at threat assessment. And by that, I mean what's actually important in any given moment. So when you spend so long and you guys in the room can totally understand this, treating everything like it is urgently important, right? You are under threat. You are terrified. And you feel like things are just absolute. Hang on a second here. Let me just take a look at what I got going on here. This person I'm going to put user in time out. I'm not a big fan of other coaches and people like that to try to slide in to piggyback on this stuff. So anyway, I think for me, the threat assessment is one of increased ability to determine what is actually a threat and what is not more accurately or more generalizable would be what is important and what is not in any given situation at any given time is greatly enhanced. The things that I would think are super important these days, very few things are super important or urgent or demand immediate, urgent, evasive, frantic action. Very, very few things. And I take that completely to sort of, I will attribute that completely to my recovery process. And that has helped me in a long way throughout the rest of my life since my recovery. And it will stay with me for the rest of my life. So I think that the increased ability to be more discerning as to what requires immediate action and what isn't that important is something that I definitely learned. So let's see what's going on in the comment section real quick. And then we will see what we got going on. No, no, no, no, first day back at work. Hey, Lane, good job, very good. I will tell you guys that if you what you're hoping that I'm going to talk about your symptoms, I'm not I'm not going to talk about symptoms. I almost never, ever, ever address particular symptoms. Because as you heard me say, it is they are all the same. There is no symptom that's any special. There's no symptom that requires special attention. There's no symptom that requires special instructions or evasive action. They're all the same. Anxious bodies do things. And there's they're all the same. So I'm not really going to answer questions about Can you talk about this particular symptom? So next question that we had from YouTube was, Hey, Drew, I've come a long way in recovery from agoraphobia and I no longer fear panic attacks, but I do fear agoraphobia if that makes sense. I'm worried that a panic attack may trigger avoidance behaviors and lead me back into a agoraphobic state. Basically, like I've forgotten the lessons because I'm in such a fearful state. Basically, I don't feel the panic attack sensations, but I do fear the behavior changes. I may be more susceptible to making any thoughts on how to address this concern. I don't fear the panic attack sensations, but I do fear that I will make behavioral changes because of them. So see how there's a little bit of a there's a little bit of a dichotomy. There's a little bit of a mismatch there. It's hard to say I don't fear it anymore. But I do think that I'm going to make behavioral changes if I do panic or I do get really anxious. In the end, and this goes to setbacks, reversion, whatever you want to call it, I've done a ton of I've done podcast episodes about setbacks. I've done, but what if it comes back? Josh and I just did and disordered. We did a an episode of disordered not too long ago on reversion and setback. We talked about this stuff. There's the difference between I am reverting to old habits. I'm reverting to old habits. I'm afraid and I'm doing it the old way again. And I think that I might do that. I think or I worry that I might revert to old habits is a thought. It's the same thought as what if I never get better? Well, what if I never get better is just a thought. It's not a prediction. It's not something you have to be careful about. It's not something you have to do anything about. What if I go back to my own behavioral habits is a thought. It's not a thing that has to happen. But if you do find that you have been triggered after a while of maybe not being triggered, and you sort of accidentally revert to those old habits or those old ways of dealing with anxiety, you do go into retreat, you do go into avoidance, you can't not know that. So just asking the question indicates that increased level of metacognitive awareness that you would know, oh wait, I'm doing that thing again, that where I'm retreating. I'm doing that thing again where I'm asking about my symptoms. I'm doing that thing again where I'm treating myself like I'm fragile or in danger. So when you catch it, you go back again. So this is one of those things that people get really stuck on. What if I never get better? What if I start to avoid again? Well, you're trying to predict things that haven't happened yet and might never. But if they do, well, what would you do? Just go back to the new ways as best you can. So this is one of those questions that I totally get, but it's similar to the what if I never get better? I keep thinking what if I never get better? Then go ahead and keep thinking that. It's just a thought. It's okay. So the same thing here, I keep worrying that I might revert to old avoidance habits. Okay, well then go ahead and worry about that. You can't stop your brain from having those thoughts, but you don't have to take any action based on those thoughts. And if you know that you might be doing that, then you have to battle as a ready one. Oh, I fell back into old habits for a couple of days. Time for me to get back on the horse. That's a good thing, right? So hopefully that helps. Next question. We have about four or five more of these that we're going to get through. How far am I into this? 12 minutes? Okay, we're doing good. And then I'll probably be able to go into the comments. Let's see. I've just listened to your do the opposite episode. As a chronic people pleaser, I've always done the opposite of what I actually wanted. Eventually it led to breakdown and subsequent agoraphobia. I vowed I was always listened to what I wanted and not what everyone asked of me. But I think that level of self care turned into stay safe, do nothing. Could you offer me some strong words about how I can do the opposite and not wind up back where I was when I used to do the opposite? Okay. So do the opposite in the context of anxiety recovery is I want to avoid. I want to retreat. I want to try to stop those uncomfortable feelings. I want to get away from them. I want to try and manage my body to the emptied degree and micromanage my hormones and make sure that I'm never triggered and try to keep my life like this. That's what I'm talking about. That's what you want to do when you're afraid. You want to get out of the uncomfortable, afraid feeling. And so you do things to try and manage that, stop it, run away from it, avoid it, flee it, escape it, be safe from it. Do the opposite is I'm going to have to allow myself to be afraid and uncomfortable right now. I think there's confusion in this question because as a people pleaser, do the opposite is well, I don't really want to go to that party, but I have to go to that party. Otherwise people might not like me or they'll think I'm being mean. Okay, true, that is the opposite. But that's a different opposite. That's a totally different thing. That's like trying to equate, well, I really like vanilla ice cream, but I keep eating chocolate. So I keep, I'm doing the opposite and that's bad. That's a, yes, it's the opposite, but that's not the opposite I'm talking about here. So I'm only talking about when you feel that the state, your emotional state, meaning I'm uncomfortable, I'm afraid, is something that you need to avoid. That's when you do the opposite. So hopefully that helps. I think you've got, you have to do the opposite almost universalized in your life, doing the opposite. I understand that a people pleaser is doing the opposite for the sake of other people, but that's not what we're talking about. We're talking about doing the opposite and going toward your fear, like surrendering to it, tolerating, willfully accepting it, all of those things, practicing, getting through it and navigating through it. That's the opposite that I'm talking about. I can understand, I can see where that might be a little bit confusing, but hopefully that helps. Different opposite. So let's see what's going on in the comments real quick. I'm going to scroll up. I'll get, I'll get back to these. I just want to see if anything's happening while I'm reading these questions. Consistent. All right, we'll get back to those. So let me go to another question from the YouTube audience that came in on my post from Monday, Sunday, whenever, today's Monday. Do you think I drew? Drew, do you think that anxiety was worth it? If so, what do you think you've gained now that you're on the other side of it? So this is similar to the other question. Is there any part of my anxiety recovery experience that I'm particularly grateful for? The one that I said I was particularly grateful for was an increased ability to discern what's a threat and what's important and what is not, but do I think it was worth it? It's a hard question. I will often say, and I mean this, I'm not making this up, that I would do it again if I knew that I was going to turn out to be who I am now and learn the lessons that I learned. I would do it again. Do I want to do it again? No. So was it worth it? It's a really good question. It's making me think because I might say that maybe it was worth it because I'm not sure of another experience that would have taught me these lessons as well as this experience did. These are lessons that a lot of people, they read books and they follow gurus and they go to weekend retreats to try and learn these lessons and sometimes, as much as we want to learn the lessons, we can't because there's no imperative to learn them and I think that my anxiety situation created an imperative I had to learn the lessons. So it may have been worth it in air quotes, if you will, because I probably did a better job of taking these lessons on because I had no other choice. It forced me to confront these things and learn these lessons, but I'm not sure it would be worth it otherwise. Like I would do it again to learn these lessons. I would like to say that, well, yeah, but there were probably other ways to learn those lessons, but what I have, I don't have a good answer for that. It's actually a really good question. One day when I'm done with school and everything, one of the projects I will do is a book called Lessons from the Panic Zone, which I have about 20% written, it speaks to these kinds of questions. What did I take out of the experience? What lessons was I learning when I wasn't, I didn't know I was learning them, but I look back and say, oh, that taught me this, I will write about that one day. And this is a really good question that this will follow me into that book, I think. Was going through anxiety worth it? Yes, in some ways, no one others. But again, let me reiterate what I said earlier, while you're going through it in no way, shape, or form, what I expect anybody to think, oh, this is so worth it. Like you just want out, I get it, totally fine. You don't have to think that it's worth it while you're going through it. So good question. Thank you. Let's go to the next one. I've gotten really far in my recovery. I'm at a point where I keep searching for more and more to expose myself to. That's really great. I still have a few things I'm avoiding, but at the same time I'm living my life and exposing myself to things as they come and I'm open to it. Awesome. That's really great. What is a good balance between forcing yourself to expose yourself to things you avoid versus just living your life and doing things when you have to? This is an excellent question. There's no hard and fast rule on this. Everybody gets to make their own choice here and I can't give you like universal advice like, oh, this is definitely do this. I would say you have to look at the times in your life when you are factoring anxiety into the picture. So when you have things to do, things come up, there are challenges, you're triggered, whatever, you're under stress. If you have to include anxiety and how you might feel and if you feel capable of handling that and if you're afraid of that into the equation and that's happening on a regular basis, then there's probably things that you still should be pushing yourself to work on. If there are things that come up once every four years, it would be hard to argue that you have to intentionally try to practice those things that you almost never have to do in order to get better. That's a practical consideration. It would almost make no practical sense to do that. So you really have to look at what is the impact on my life? If my anxiety is at the point right now, my recovery is at the point where 99.99% of the time, I'm not even thinking about it and every once in a while something will be a little scary to me and I do it anyway and, okay, I'm all right, then I don't know. It's hard to say. Do you want to push it? Then push it a little more, I guess, but it sounds like you might not have to. But if you feel like, oh, no, it's still playing a reasonably major role in my life and factoring into a lot of my decision making and I'm weighing anxiety in as a variable, then there probably is a reason to keep pushing. The danger of not pushing or the danger of saying this is good enough while it's still pressing on you. I'll give you an example. If you have been stuck on your sofa for a year and a half and now you can go to the supermarket and take the kids to school and maybe go out to dinner with your partner once in a while, but I still can't go too far and I can't really leave the house without a safe person and vacation or going on a holiday is right out of the question and I'm still terrified and having panic attacks and huge amounts of anticipatory anxiety before holiday gatherings with the family. Well, you might be tempted to say, yeah, but I'm much better than I used to be and that's good enough. But there's still a lot of impact there and the danger is when you get to the good enough, but yet you still feel a lot of anxiety and it's pressing on you. It's not good enough. But again, everybody gets to make their own choices here and I get to tell you what to do if that makes any sense. So really good question, really good question. I wish there was a good black and white answer for you, but unfortunately, like most of this stuff, there's not. If there was, I would give it to you. So let's get to the next question and we'll go into the comment section. I have two more questions to do. Now that you're almost done with school, is there anything you would change about the anxious truth book? That's a good question. That book which was published in 2020, so it's now three years and change old and by the way, if you have purchased the anxious truth, thank you so much. In my wildest dreams, I would never have thought that book has sold tens of thousands of copies for an independent author with no publisher. That is huge. There's a lot of people that read that book and a lot of people read that book because their therapist asked them to read that book. I'm immensely proud of it and I'm so grateful and thankful to all of you who have supported that book. I have wanted to do a second edition of that book since I hit the submit button at Amazon on KDP. There's always something else you can add and if you ask anybody who's written a book like that, like the anxious truth, down the road, whether it's a week, two weeks, a year, two years, we would all say, oh yeah, I want to change this, this, this, and this. For me, it's I want to add things and that's already a big ass book, but I have things that I would like to add to it because there are things that I know I left out. Here's the interesting part. It's not because of my formal training over the last 18 months in my grad program. I would say there's very little that I've done in my grad program that would make me want to change that book or revise it in some way. What does make me want to change the book and revise it and add things is you guys and hearing from you and talking to you and having conversations with you. Will there be a second edition of that book one day? Yeah. Or a companion book that goes into some of the things that I just didn't have the time to add in there or maybe wasn't aware enough in terms of what was important in the community. So there'll either be a second edition of that book one day or there'll be a companion book to go along with it. I've talked about writing a book that's focused on GAB and health anxiety and those things where it's the similar, like accept, allow, tolerate, surrender, but in the opposite direction, the doing things versus not doing things. So maybe that, I'm not sure. But that's a great question too. Surprisingly, it has nothing to do with school. At the risk of tuning my own horn, my formal training is teaching me that I know plenty about anxiety disorders. What I'm learning is not the theory of anxiety disorders. I already know a lot about that. And I'm proud of that because I spent a lot of time learning that stuff. It's other stuff. It's the process of being a therapist that I'm learning about more than anything else. But yeah, I'll revise that book one day. And the last question before we go into the comment section, I see your comment down at the bottom there behind my window. Is it normal to experience lack of drive or just constant fatigue and lack of willpower? That's two different things. The whole process of recovery I find so hard because I just don't have any drive in me. I am seriously lacking in determination. Okay. So first of all, it sounds like a struggle and I'm really sorry. The person that asked the question, if you're watching or on the replay, it's a tough spot to be in for sure. And my heart goes out to you. But there's two different things there. There is fatigue, which yes, fatigue is part of the process. Doing scary things, facing your fear, navigating through being triggered, intentionally allowing yourself to have scary thoughts or panic attacks, doing things that terrify you that you don't feel like you should do because they don't feel safe. That will wear you out. It will wear you out physically, it will wear you out mentally, it will wear you out emotionally, right? And that's why the topic of self-care is important. Everybody gets to take a break. We get tired. You're going to get tired. That's true for sure. But I think what you have to really look at is the other part is I don't have determination or willpower. That's different than I'm tired. If you're tired, it would be harder to tap into determination and willpower. There's no doubt about that. But the drive to get better is almost independent from fatigue. Everyone will experience fatigue. Unfortunately, the desire or the drive to get better, I'm not going to call it willpower. I'm going to call it maybe discipline or commitment. And this is not accusatory. I'm not saying that you're doing it wrong. The person answered asked the question, sorry. But when we get tired, our motivation and our commitment will go up and down. There's no doubt about that. But it's hard to find a way to tap into those things. You have to really find a way to tap into why you're doing these things. I always tell people it's not enough just to do scary things. You have to recognize why you're doing scary things. I'm doing this so I can learn lessons. What did this teach me? Otherwise, you're just repeatedly doing scary things. And then, oh my God, that was so scary. Oh my God, I barely made it to that. Oh my God, this is exhausting. Yeah, it would be hard to find motivation or willpower. I'm trying to use the words of the person who asked the question or determination in that. Always connect back to why am I doing this? What is the purpose of doing scary things? What is the purpose of doing exposures? What is the purpose of tolerating, accepting, surrendering, floating? All of those things, allowing myself to be triggered. If you can stay connected to the purpose of that, you're still going to have crappy days where it's frustrating and you feel like it's not going fast enough and you're angry and all of the things. That's okay. You're allowed to be human. But sometimes it's a little bit easier to stay connected to that sense of determination or commitment or discipline and recovery. If you remember, oh, that's right. This is why I'm doing this. If you forget why you're doing it or you're just doing it because you think, well, he said do scary things. So I'll just keep doing scary things, but it's not going away. Yeah, your determination or your willpower will begin to sag in a big way. So always be connected as best you can to why you're doing these things. I think it kind of matters. So for those of you who sent in questions ahead of time, thank you so much. I appreciate it. I could do about another five or 10 minutes. So I'll go into the comment section and let's see what I can get. 85 people in the room. The audiences for these are getting bigger, which is kind of cool. I appreciate you guys hanging out. And I could tell it's a good live stream when the audience number doesn't go down. So let's scroll up to the top here and see what I can do. Some of the things, some of the questions I'm not going to answer because sometimes it's you, sometimes you get in the habit of like, well, I know the answer to this, but let me just ask it again just so I can hear him say it again to make myself feel better. So some things I'm just going to skip. I talked about symptoms. I'm not going to talk about symptoms. Let's see here. It is a whole vibe. The gloomy lighting is a whole vibe. I'm going to change some stuff around with camera stuff. I'm actually going to set up another area where I could do these live streams and record videos that that will probably ready in a few weeks. We'll see. But yeah, so things are changing. I have an irrational fear that fast food restaurants poison me and I know that sounds super weird. That doesn't sound, he'll put it up on the screen. It doesn't sound super weird at all. As a matter of fact, that is a fear that I had to not not food. I mean, I guess I felt that the food in my house had been poisoned and I just had that irrational fear that like somebody clearly like, you know, somebody, somebody clearly poisoned this orange juice container in the factory. So I can't drink from that orange juice. It is very common. So don't beat yourself up for having that fear. It's actually very common. Anxious minds will come up with all kinds of what we would think would be ridiculous fears, but they feel real at the moment, right? So don't beat yourself up for that. Let's keep going. Hey, Jen, panic and pairs. Nice to see you. Hey, Mara, how are you in the UK? Let's see here. I'm not going to talk about tingling and numbness. Cold and gray Moscow. Welcome Moscow. It is cold and gray there, I'm sure. Hang in there. Winter doesn't last forever, right? In recovery, is it normal to feel weird? Yes, let's throw this up. This is a really common question, too. Is it normal to feel weird or off? I like off, right? So amorphous. I just feel weird or off when you don't have anxiety anymore. It is. It's very common. As a matter of fact, I think this is more common than you think. And I've heard people interpret this as I'm waiting for the anxiety to come back, which makes sense. Like if it's been smacking you in the face for so long and it stops, you're always going to be like waiting for it to smack you in the face again. Totally normal. Give be patient. Give yourself some time. That will quiet down. It really does. The idea that you feel a little bit off, I've heard people interpret that as, well, I feel so empty now. Anxiety used to be there all the time and now that it's fading away, I feel empty and I don't know what that means. It's a disturbing feeling because anxious people hate a change in how they feel. So if you went from this level of agitated all the time down to this level and it feels empty or dull, that's a threat. I feel different. So that's a threat. I have to dig into this to see if it's okay to feel that way. And the other thing that I've heard people interpret this as is somehow, does this mean I'm depressed because I'm not anxious anymore? They interpret it as that and they're wrong. Or am I bipolar because I'm anxious and then I don't feel anxiety and I feel empty? No, that's not, that's not what bipolar is. So yes, getting used to not being anxious is a thing. I used to think like Jesus, I used to have a full-time job being an anxious person. I got fired from my job as an anxious person. So that was really weird and I didn't know what to do with that. So yes, it's very common. Very, very common. Let's keep going here. I'm not going to talk about whether anybody, I'm never, ever, ever going to answer a question about whether you should take meds or stop taking meds. I'm never going to answer that question. I know you guys email me about it. You ask in the comments. I'm never going to answer a question about whether or not you should stop meds, stay on meds or take meds. I'm never going to answer that. It's individual and I have no business advising you on medication, zero. So just, I know I'm really being a little aggressive on that, but just for the record, you can answer me that question all day long. I'm never going to answer it. Can you talk about exposures for GAD? GAD doesn't need exposures. GAD is the exposure. So as a matter of fact, if you listen to Disordered coming up on Friday, which is December 1st, is our GAD episode. I have done episodes. I have two episodes on the anxious truth about GAD with Dave Carbonell and one I did myself. And then Josh and I are going to have an episode in Disorder that comes out on Friday. And we talk about that because people would gather like, well, what are my exposures? You're in it. You're actually in your exposure. That feeling of like I'm worried and I don't know why I'm worried, but I have to worry and I'm a thinker. I'm an overthinker. I'm keeping track of everything. That's your exposure. That's actually your exposure. So GAD, the state of anxiety fueled by worry and overanalysis is the exposure you're in it. So the exposure there is like, I'm going to have to leave this big and stop trying to fix it and stop trying to fix everything and see what happens. So it's important. I'm going to ask that you guys not give each other vertical, not give each other medical advice. Vertigo is a symptom, not a disease. Okay, so just I don't do that, please. We're not here to like suggest diagnoses of medical disorders, medical issues to people. That's not okay. So please stay away from that. Thank you. And again, I, you know, a lot of symptom talk here that I would prefer not, I don't want to make a space for that. I do not want to make, I don't, I make this space every other Monday. Please don't use it for that. And don't give each other suggestions about medical issues. I know you think you're helping. There's a reason why we should not do that. So it's very important. Let me explain that really quickly. How much time do I have left? A couple of minutes. Let me explain why I say that, because in the situation where you are dealing with an anxious mind, suggesting things, even though you think you are helping can often drive the person you are talking to into a compulsive, obsessive frenzy of asking doctors and Googling and reading and all those things. That's why I say you can't do that. I know you guys mean well, but number one, it keeps us stuck on. I have to fix my symptom and treat it like it's special and treat it like I need to find a solution to it or, or else I can't live. And the second thing is you can accidentally send somebody into a frenzy of trying to figure out a medical diagnosis. So you, I know everybody means well, but we can't do that. It's really important. Let's see here. Do you use the same approach or SSRI withdrawal? Again, I'm not going to talk about that stuff. I did three episodes of the anxious truth where I talked about my own experience with medications. You can go back and listen to those three. I kind of said in that, those episodes, it's an individual choice. I cannot give you medication advice. Sure. Just, just keep, just keep doing it. No problem. Let's fix that. Let's fix that right now. Okay. So we're done with that now. Let's see. Let's go up to the top here. I can't give you SSRI advice. Is it the same? I will tell you this because people ask this question all the time. People will ask, do I have to be off my, do I have to, Sammy, please stop. I'm asking you nicely or I'm going to boot you out of this. Please, Sammy Joanne, stop. You can't do that. It's not okay. That's what my last time going to say. I'm going to ban you. We won't come to any of these anymore. I know you mean well, but it's not okay to do that. So let me go down here. People will ask all the time, do you have to stop taking SSRIs for this to work? All I will tell you is there are people in this community that are on medications and will stay on them? Totally fine. I have people who are not going to stop or who are going to try to stop taking their medications. Totally fine. And I have people who have never been on medications and are not going to do that. You know, they don't want to take medications. Totally fine. All, everybody's welcome in all of those cases. So I can't tell you, I can't advise you on that. Let's see here. I'm going to scroll down and get, try and get as a few more if I can. Let's see here. Constant fight or flight to just relax. I'll put this up on the screen. I'm in constant fight or flight. Any recommendation to just relax. You kind of can't just relax. It's not, it's not a thing that you could just decide to do. Give me tips on relaxing. You can only teach yourself that it's okay to relax by doing the best you can to relax even when you're not calm. That's a very roundabout answer, but it's important. Just relax is not a thing that I would ever say because it sounds like you could just decide, well, just do this magic thing and you'll relax. There's no such thing. You can only learn through repetition that it's okay to relax by trying to relax when you think it's the last thing you should do. Let's see here. I'm going to go down. I'm never going to get to all these comments guys because we're running out of time very shortly. No, no, no, no, no, no. Let's see here. People pleasing, letting go. I'm going to keep going. I'm sorry. I'm scrolling, scrolling, scrolling here. Would you say some of this seems to stuck about being stuck or how to respond to all day physical? These are some questions that I've heard again and again. I can't answer all of them. We're trying to find a unique question here. Yes, I will answer this one because this is one of those things that sometimes people will ask me this. Be honest. How you felt when the anxiety hit you? Be honest. Like, do you think I'm lying? Do you think I'm pretending that I was afraid? I was effing terrified. So I get this. I'm not taking it personally, but I will point out that it's very common for an anxious person to look at a recovered person or a recovering person with like the side eye. I don't think you were really that afraid. You couldn't possibly have been afraid. If I connected you with the people in my life who saw me back then, they would confirm. So yes, I was effing terrified. Did you actually say I feel like I faint? Let's see if I faint. I did. I actually did. You can choose to believe that I didn't say that because you think it's impossible for you, but I did do that and people do that. So yes. I'm not angry at that question, by the way. It's a fine question. But the side eye is a common thing. Like, I don't know. These people say that they're getting better, but they can probably not as bad as me. They didn't really have a path. I've had people say, you've clearly never actually had a panic attack. I'm like, okay, move along then unsubscribe, I guess. So it's a thing. More med questions. I'm never going to answer. How would you know what you've been working towards when being an anxious person has been your identity since you were young? That's a good question. And then I get a boogie. I'll maybe do one more after this. When being an anxious person has been your identity since you were young. Well, in this situation, this is the whole like, I'm going to have to try something different. So as a young person, we, we could go, we could talk about this for hours, for weeks, probably personality theorists would say that, you know, starting with PSA would say that like, okay, well, we develop our personalities and we become who we are by exploring and trying and taking risks and, and, you know, falling and scraping our knees and getting back up and trying again. And that's how we develop our personalities and identities. An anxious person who's decided, I shouldn't do any of that stuff. You would have to start to take those risks now. Now, some of the tricky thing is when we do it a little bit later in life, maybe we don't have those caretakers around to say it's okay to fall on skin, your knee, I'll pick you up and send you on your way. I know you can do it. That's where you start to self-parent a little bit. I'm glossing over this in a huge way. But it's, it would involve going through that same process of risk taking and exploring and trying new things, even though it seems like I can't do that. That's too scary. But that's how we learn. I would say not even as a young person or as a child, but that's how we change throughout our entire lives. We try different things, even though we don't know if we're going to like them. We don't know if we're going to be good at them. Maybe they're scary. That's how people do it. So I get that might seem like, ooh, that seems like a tall order. And it is. Don't get me wrong. I understand where that would sound like, oh, I can't do that. But I would say that's the direction you probably want to look in. That's a big, big question. It's a great question. We could talk about that for months. I'm going to scroll down closer to the bottom. Let's see. How do we know if I'm depressed? Okay, I'll throw that up because this is a really super common thing, too. And then I get a boogie. But how do we know if I'm truly depressed or just sad from my anxiety? Well, sometimes you don't. But just keep in mind the thing that where anxiety will say you should be careful of depression, anxiety and depression, two sides of the same coin. All these ridiculous things will go through your head that you hear in social media circles that are not necessarily accurate. And then the fear of depression, am I depressed? Am I just sad? Am I depressed? I'm kind of a low mood today. Is that depression? If you're struggling under the weight of the fear that you might become depressed, then this becomes an impossible question to answer because anything that is in happiness or at least something well defined like an anxious or fearful state, you may interpret as depression. Depression is not just sadness. I will tell you that. So somebody who has diagnosable depression is way more than just sad. Okay. Oh, I didn't mean to put that up. I'm sorry. Well, maybe I did. I don't know. So depression is not just I'm sad. Depression is way more than I'm sad or I'm in a low mood. Depression is loss of interest, loss of motivation, inability to handle small tests. There's a whole, whole pile of things. Most of the time, a person who is becoming depressed knows that they're becoming depressed. They don't generally have to ask because a lot of things change and they change at a level where you say, this isn't exactly right. This isn't exactly right. So let's see here. Yeah. How do you know if you have pots or panicked to ask a doctor? So nobody on the internet should diagnose you with either pots or panic disorder. Nobody, not me, not anybody else. The internet should not ever diagnose you. And then let's see. This is the last comment that I'll put up because I appreciate this comment. Premium. That's a good name. This is so surreal. I empathize and was the same as a lot of these folks. Once you get a bit recovered, you see the patterns from others with the way they are asking questions. It is super surreal. You are 100% right. It is very surreal. And I would say that you guys should probably, hang on here. We hide that, should take that comment to heart because a lot of times you are relating to anxiety a certain way. Now, if you're in the struggle right now, you only know this is how I see anxiety. This is how I see panic. This is how I see my OCD. This is how I see scary thoughts about my health or my symptoms. This is how I see them now. What you don't understand is as you go down the process, you won't always see them that way. So when you look at somebody who is further down the road, say somebody like me or somebody who's further down the recovery road, maybe not yet recovered but working on it. They've come before you. They're ahead of you. They have learned to relate in a different way. So often you will look at present you, today you and the way you see your anxiety and fear and think there's no way those people could possibly be doing that. But that's, I get that, but they're doing it because they've gone down the road further and they've taken those risks, taken those chances, done those scary things, done those brave things and they've learned lessons from it and they've changed. And their reaction and relation to anxiety and fear and uncertainty and discomfort has changed. So we all have things that sometimes people will say, well, I used to hate that particular food, but for some reason now I like it. I'm not trying to equate panic attacks or agoraphobia or OCD with Brussels sprouts. But if you never liked Brussels sprouts, but somehow you do now, it would be very difficult for old you that hated Brussels sprouts to possibly fathom that you like them now. But yet that does happen. It's a very simplistic analogy. And again, I'm not trying to minimize what we're talking about. It's not vegetables, but that analogy isn't entirely inaccurate also. So anyway, guys, I am out of time. Unfortunately, I can't hang around for 42 minutes anyway. I kind of have to hit the road. So we'll throw some stuff here. If you are interested in all of the goodies, somebody mentioned the anxious truth, which is the book that I wrote, my other books, all the podcast episodes, disordered with Josh Fletcher courses and workshops that I do, all of this stuff free and otherwise are absolutely on my website all the time right here at the anxious truth.com. Go check it out. And please you can go to the anxious truth.com. There's a little magnifying glass icon in the corner of the screen or in the hamburger menu. If you're on a phone and search for what you want. Can you talk about if you put in heartbeat or heart or dizzy or vertigo, you're going to find that in a podcast episode. I probably did five years ago. It's possible. So avail yourself of those resources and use the search tool as best as you can. And that's it. I will be back again in two weeks. We don't do these every week, but we do them every two weeks. Then next week we'll have another episode of the anxious truth. Every Friday is an episode of Disordered that I do with Josh Fletcher. That's at Disorder.fm. The next bunch of episodes of the anxious truth are something that I'm going to call the foundation series where I'm going to go right back to the very basics and we're going to do probably six to eight episodes that cover the very basics of this. For those of you that are new, those will be really valuable. For those of you who want to refresher, we're going to be a little bit more video oriented, a little bit more YouTube slanted and try and teach things a little bit more effectively than they did in the past. Thanks for hanging out, everybody. I'm out. If you ever want to hang out here and come back and see these again, subscribe to my YouTube channel because they're all in a playlist called Recovery Monday. That's it. See you in two weeks. See you on Friday on Disordered. See you next week on the anxious truth.