 All right, we're back To the first public meeting of the Pema showdron fan club. Yeah, I didn't even know was that that's so good I forgot Have you started reading the book? I have I'm about I'm about halfway through, but it's it's sort of like when I can think of it I really like it. So it's dense though, but yeah, it's very dense and tiny little print like there's a lot of words in that Lots Anyone who's watching who didn't watch that episode by the way What we're talking about is the book living beautifully with uncertainty and change Which is one of my favorites and Pema children is the best and she's like this badass, New Yorker 80 year old Buddhist nun with a shave head who shaved head who lives in Nova Scotia And she's just about as zen as they come not zen in the school of Buddhism You know and the sort of Yeah So that will come up today to a today's topic. Oh, by the way for those of you who are unaware Next to me is Lauren Rosen Licensed marriage of every therapist from the great state of California and might now frequently monthly collaborated We do these once a month we pick a topic and we yammer about it for about 20 30 minutes So and this oh no, I you mirrored us. I thought I was gonna get it, right, man This is drew linsellata. He's the dot anxious dot truth on Instagram And he's awesome, and he's got books and podcasts and check them out if you're here from my page Yeah, so today we're gonna talk about This is a topic we stumbled upon about an hour ago And this is something that I found interesting when I was reading through some of the Marty Sief and Sally Winston's books I think it was the intrusive fire intrusive thoughts book and they talked about this like I Stressed out when when you we get stressed out intrusive thoughts tend to get stickier and louder and harder to handle And I thought oh, this is a thing that I had never considered But and I think certainly I'm sure you see it in your practice specializing in OCD But I think if all the anxiety disorders this becomes a thing I every single day I see it such and such happens something terrible happened I lost a pad or my marriage is breaking up or whatever it is and now I'm back to square one in my recovery It happens So this is clearly a thing stress will do that to us Yes, absolutely. I mean, I I don't know about you. I was thinking about it I have a lot of personal lived experience of this as well that I can look back and the times in my life when my anxiety has flared back up and I've resisted it have been at times of increased stress and even down to the first Flare up of my life that I you know retrospectively can say oh that was likely to be OCD or anxiety I Don't know. Do you have similar experience? Yeah, I think One of the things that I learned along the way to recovery which for me was panic disorder or the gorophobia I discovered that Every stress in my life instantly morphed into panic and fear So no matter what I was feeling if it's something that made me angry within 30 seconds I was afraid if it was something that made me really upset of some of said within 30 seconds I was just afraid so for me I said I I saw that the that link between sort of stressful situations or stress triggers and fear that way it just everything Would immediately morph into oh now I'm afraid here comes a panic attack Fascinating. Yeah, and as I went through the process that happened less and less But it would still happen a jet started to fall away, but it was the propensity was still there Yeah, yeah, and I see it now in the community where people will say oh, I've been doing so great I've been doing great for three or four months and really on on a good trajectory And then such and such happened and for the last week I got sick or I got COVID or whatever have now I'm right back to square one. Yeah. Yeah, and of course as we've talked about before It's not like you're actually back to square one because you never lose the the knowledge that you have and yet What tends to happen when I and what I see from others and what I've experienced myself is that I forget I revert back to this. Let's resist anxiety. I don't want to feel this I don't want to have this emotion and I don't want to have these thoughts So let me let me try and fix it again, which gets me stuck or it gets the people that I work with stuck but the idea of I've completely fallen back it does it happens a lot like When there are big life changes we see it a lot I think of relationship OCD or postpartum OCD and and where these flare-ups tend to happen around these huge life events like usually a Significant relationship has initiated or you're having a child or really these are things that that That I think of that list. I wish I had it where it's all of the stressful life events and it's not Happen yeah, but it's more than that It's like this whole long list and it's got a numerical value Assigned to each stressful event and says like if you have above this score Right like this is indicative of a large stressor and it doesn't matter if it's the you stress or good stress Or distress more bad stress. It doesn't it really doesn't matter in the end. No People struggle and I don't have this experience myself, but I've seen a lot of people struggle even when the stress is Positively triggered in a way definitely a new house. We're moving to our dream house and yet. I'm a basket case now. Yes Yeah, moving is stressful for everybody no matter where you're moving. So Totally. Oh, and then you fix the tendency to fixate on what's like getting everything right if you have something that's this Lotted dream of yours that's coming to fruition any small thing It's I don't want to have this contaminated by the experience of panic or the experience of generalized anxiety or the experience of intrusive thoughts So it's almost like And it happens on birthdays and holidays to the additional stress of this now has to be perfect actually Makes it more likely to be sticky because you're in that initially resistant zone Yeah, that's okay. That's interesting. I had not considered that before it has to be perfect That's yeah, good good the air called good stressor can be a problem also then I guess Yeah, I mean, I think it's one one way to look at it and certainly something that I see come up with my clients I think one of the things and again when when reading about it in the Seaf and Winston book, you know the way they made it sound which makes sense to me fatigue when you're fatigued you're sleep-deprived You're physically ill you're under a large load of stress life stress and you said, you know, well, it's like I revert You know, I revert to the resisting and I think a lot of people will misinterpret it as it came back But I would agree with you. No, no, no it we the way we're relating to it We've just gone back to old habits and we tend to fall back to old habits because We lose that resiliency that that we built somehow it melts away for temporarily and It's so normal. Okay, so it's like if you're learning a new sport, right? So I'll give an example Hilariously, I have decided to play a little golf not because I'm any good at it or particularly athletic But because my step-sons and my husband are playing so I'm like, all right I'll give this a go and you know, you learn all of the specifics like how to grip the club and how to swing and blah blah blah how to stand Now as soon as it takes so much concentration when you're building this new habit this new ability to Bring together all of these ideas and then all of a sudden some stress comes about in fact Usually it's in the form of somebody staring at me Like watching me and all of a sudden it's like it all goes out the window and I think the same thing is true with the The skills that we talk about using for anxiety and OCD are so counter to our sort of natural MO as human beings That when there's stress, of course, we default back to like no I don't want to have this experience or or have that tendency to default back anyway Yeah, and I think our ability because it does what we're doing is work where it takes work to run counter to our instincts And we just I don't know it's fatigue. It's cognitive load It I don't know what it is, but we just seem to lose that ability and so it feel people will want to say It's back or I'm having a relapse or it came back or I'm back square one, but really and truly that's not true It's just oh we reverted to some old habits Because we lost the ability to be flexible and and flex those new muscles and use those new skills They just forgot them. Yeah. Yeah, we started to struggle again against it instead of accepting moving with it Navigating life with it in tow that kind of thing. Yeah, and it's interesting because you're right and you can see that in almost every You know every facet of life sports is a good example It's interesting. I was watching a hockey game the other night naturally naturally back to our origins fire and ice And you know one team was playing really really well and everything's going great They're dominating the game, but as soon as the other team sort of shows up And so they pick up their game now now that first dominating team is under pressure They're under duress and it starts to fall apart. How could that be the very same guys who are playing positionally perfect hockey? Five minutes ago or now playing like college hockey and they're getting killed. How could this be? Yeah, that's so I think it's not This is not probably unique to the anxiety complex. It's probably just a human function in general Absolutely and trying to practice something that is counter not necessarily intuitive Under stress is hard. Yeah like golf Yeah, yeah, but I think large stressors to and I this is why when when I when we were talking about it earlier and Discussing what we were going to talk about why I said I would immediately go to groundlessness and get all about children The Pema children fan club Is because what happens when especially when there are large stressors, but honestly, it can be with any sort of stressor we get in touch with the fact that everything is constantly moving and When we're going about our lives and things are relatively Unchanging right from day-to-day and we're in a habit It there's a comfort to that and there is this illusion That everything is always the same and safe and fine and everything's gonna continue on the way it is And then all of a sudden something changes and it's like what like It cues you into the fact that we're we're not standing on solid ground everything is constantly shifting and changing and that just is a Florid place for our anxiety and OCD to blossom That's a really good point. It's like a slap in the face. Yeah. Yeah Yeah, I because I guess if you're being dragged around by anxiety and panic or OCD or compulsions and truce of thoughts all the time You're just trying to find some stability. Yeah, yes And you manage to build it and then something yanks it away and you discover nothing is stable Nothing and that's a hard. It's a hard realization to come to it is And it's the ultimate truth of life, right? There's never any stability and the more the quicker you can get to Sort of dancing on the moving blocks that you're walking over instead of trying to make them stable Because it's not a possibility. It's like saying like well, there shouldn't be any earthquakes. It's like, okay Try to stop an earthquake. Good luck. Yeah, so if you recognize, okay The world the earth is gonna quake sometimes How do I learn how to walk over the earth as it's moving as opposed to Not that I'm suggesting people should not take shelter There's an actual earthquake but the metaphor Um, yeah, how how do we learn how to How to navigate shaky ground instead of trying to make the ground less shaky So much of this I think if we go beyond anxiety and recovery, this is why we practice things This is why we rehearse things. This is why Teams practice so that when another team is pressing on them They can still perform even while under duress and I think Whether it's you're practicing your ERP and you're resisting of your compulsions or exposures, whatever it is Or just life in general just practicing being resilient and yeah walking on the moving blocks all the time Then we don't we tend to not get taken by surprise. I guess when it's right in our face Totally and I would add to that meditation practice Mindfulness practice that's the same. It's the same idea. How do I how do I relate to things? And how do I practice relating to things so that when things become challenging that becomes More of the default or it's easier to pivot toward that um And just because I know that I can get pretty esoteric like to to ground this in in like the specifics I feel like could be helpful and talking so what does it mean to move Like move with the moving blocks or walk with the moving blocks versus trying to to hold the ground still If we look at panic disorder that looks like accepting the possibility that at any step along the journey You might stumble And experience panic right that that that might happen Um, that's what it is to accept that the blocks are moving is to accept that the feared outcome might happen That is not necessarily right. You've been walking for a while or you You maybe at some point in your life. We're walking for a long time without having panic Um, but that if it does you'll navigate it as it comes as opposed to Again getting down on your hands and knees and trying to hold the ground together which is a fool's errand and Causes you more anxiety because you're like, why can't I do this it should I should be able to do this um Yeah, I think if you tie that into you know, sort of the the premise that we're talking about today too When the blocks move all the blocks move so Okay, the blocks of my panic disorder are moving because I had a panic attack again after Six months of not having one But all the blocks in my life moved so a stressful thing happened I got sick or someone I love got sick or I lost someone in the family or I got a promotion at work or lost my job All the blocks move. Why would you think that only the job blocks are moving? Right? All the blocks are moving including the anxiety and mental health blocks and and relationship blocks everything moves Yeah, actually to that end if you if we talk about it in the context of like postpartum OCD And the like all the blocks moving it would be like expecting that you were going to have a child And that all of your life wasn't going to change around that Yes, that's really good. Would be ludicrous, right? Possible right exactly. Yeah, because here's this thing that's completely shifting and Learning how to navigate this this new setup of of the blocks and moving and then as soon as you get used to it Something else shifts something else changes Which is why it's not about getting the blocks to stop move. It's about learning how to dance on the blocks moving and it's so funny I find this this is a fascinating discussion I'm digging this because so many people if you ran some memes and cliches across them about This sort of thing like all of everything is connected to each other and life is one big holistic experience It would be like, yeah, yeah, definitely But then when confronted with that well, I lost my job and the rest of my life rippled also Why doesn't this happen? Yeah, but you just you just liked all those memes about life being one big connected Holistic experience, but now you want to deny it when you actually have to live that Yeah, I'm not picking on anybody, but it's just one of those things and then you Have that mistaken conclusion that like well all the blocks moved from under me So therefore I have failed in my recovery and it's back and I'm having a relapse. No just the ripples happen Yeah, including that. Yeah Yeah Yeah Shoot something of what you just said to lit up Something in my mind and then it Can you tell your golf golf clubs? No, I No, it's gone. It happens at least once one of these things now I'll come back. I'm sure. All right. So then something happens. There's a shift in some part of your life There's a stressful situation some terrible event happens or some great event happens And with the ripples go through your whole life and now you have an impact on your recovery or whatever you want to say it is What do you tell somebody? What would you tell somebody? So I think a lot of it is in the way that we view these moments because I think that It can be viewed as an opportunity for practice I actually Honestly, some of the conversations that I have are a lot like the one we're having now are saying. Yeah, look you've touched into groundlessness Here it is. It was here all along. You were sort of Blind to it You weren't it wasn't particularly apparent that everything was able to shift but then things shifted and you're like Whoa, everything could shift again and again. What if it does and the reality is yeah, it might But we know that large shifts don't happen all that often and so I guess we got to Take a leap forward as though this is the new ground you're working with until it shifts again yeah Okay, I dig that I also dig then there's also that unrealistic expectation that some people might have that You know, I guess and it's I understand this. I'm not picking anybody if you're suffering You know for a while you are trying to eliminate that clearly We all it's our nature. We want to do that And I think there's the reality it says well I'm just trying to create a stable calm like you said in the beginning a stable on quite like no suffering Nothing, I don't want any of them trying to get rid of all that And then I think these are the times when you get slapped in the face. No, sorry Nobody gets out of this thing that way You're still human and you will have emotions and you will have Reactions and you have to learn to integrate them again in a healthy way. So this isn't a failure It's just now we're gonna Gonna put another piece of the puzzle in here. I think Yes, absolutely that yeah, you're you're just you have another chance to To reorient with with everything that is and you're right. Nobody nobody gets out of this unscathed That groundlessness is is for everyone so I think the judgment too of the situation the situation itself can't I cannot allow this situation I was trying to you know, listen, you have no choice Judging the situation as this shouldn't happen or why do I feel this way? Well, you just you just lost someone close to you or something major happening in your life Why wouldn't you feel this way? Of course, you're going this way trying to not feel it at all is not Like trying to hold the ground together Yeah, so that's so unreal and very unfair people put that unfair expectation on themselves It is and I think part of it is the larger expectation that we should always have our stuff together, you know Yeah, yeah, that's all this What's that? Yeah, we should be able to control all of this somehow. Yes Yeah Yeah, so that when things are are shifting when we feel off kilter that there's something wrong with that instead of No, no, that's that's what it is to be a person, right? Like It's not going away. It's okay That's a really good point. And you know, that's a groundlessness thing. That's there's that's woven to so many different things. That's Acceptance and commitment therapy ACT acceptance. The acceptance part is that is a shared human experience. We suffer. We have problems. We feel things Deal with it. This is what it is. And we don't get away. We don't get to not have that So, you know, I think that that's a big part of this Puzzle too for a lot of people that may forget. Well, they go so so caught up in feeling And I understand it becomes maladaptive that I don't want to feel anymore Right and they're hoping that the recovery process is teaching them to be almost robotic or not human anymore. Yeah, totally One of the things that the thing I think I sort of lit up on before was this idea that Even as we're talking about things that we were making it sound like I say the word dance And I like that because when I'm in it, I'm like, okay I'm like gonna dance with this like that that feels good to me But the reality is that we're talking about this in a broad way that doesn't sort of get at the fact that in the moment What we're talking about is really being willing to open to something that is terrifying. It's not it's not cute It's not pretty. There's it's not necessarily graceful. And so Knowing that like the talking about this experience versus being in the thick of it. It's Yeah, it's not always going to Look shiny and and cute No, and I think people tend to also they don't give themselves a fair shake because they're going to look to You know, what would lauren tell me to do my tools? I get asked all the time. How do I use my tools? Well, sometimes you don't like the tools are navigation tools. They're not tools of change Yes navigation So they're not tools of eradicating, right? Right like nobody I'm teaching you to have like a flamethrower of emotion that you just And that's it on like, you know, your therapist is teaching you that it also I think sometimes people have an unrealistic or a skewed expectation that the tools my tools Yeah, but the tools you're still going to feel the feels that's actually I I love that so much and it sort of Hit me a metaphor that that said that in terms of looking at tools Is as though you are navigating a stormy sea As a captain of a ship, right? You don't expect for your tools to make the sea placid Oh, that's really good. That's really good. Right. Well, it was from you. I've bounced. Yeah, what you're having you in there is a rudder Yes, not a weather machine. Yes And you and you might have you might have Some information about the way that the waves are going and all of that and You you might be able to you know, batten down the hatches so to speak I don't even know what that means, but that's a phrase so Yeah, exactly batten them down. So like and what I imagine that would mean is like is Just being like, okay, I'm gonna I'm gonna move through this. I'm gonna I'm gonna wait this out Knowing that storms always come and go But we're not waiting for it to go We're just learning how to navigate the ship while we're caught in the storm and in good weather. It's both Yeah, and I think this this storm analogy can be oh man We could use it for the rest of the time for sure I think people they will call themselves failures because the storm happened right Like but yes, you don't get to pick that, you know, and then Right, you don't get to pick the fact that a storm happened in your life. You didn't make that And I think sometimes they feel like yeah, but it was there But I saw it as if somehow they knew it or they could see it all the way there and they could run the other way I ran right in good Right, so you don't get to pick that you don't that's not a failure Having this happen and having maybe your OCD flare up or your thoughts come back or your panic symptoms go It's not failure that you didn't fail at all. You're just living your life Yes Yeah, no, I love that and I think the the idea that like well, I saw it coming potentially like I saw something I should have known and therefore I should have turned around it's like well No, you don't want your you don't want the storm to to change your course Not this particular one, right Are you gonna part of what you learned to do is to go through these right storm otherwise on your course Right, right because otherwise you're just bouncing to and from and you're never getting to settle in a place that That you are not settle in a place. I mean like you don't get to keep your course You don't get to go to the places that you want to go Right, you don't get to live in accordance with your values and your goals instead. You're bandied about by anxiety Yeah, that that's true But but I think in the end if you're doing this and I don't want to use this word but if you're doing it right, you know aircross right if you if you're If you're Respecting the process and letting the process take you where you want to be and you're down the road to recovery Then you do get to live according according to your It's important to you and that storm blows through You take on a little water and you get a little bit of a bad hair day as a result and blah and all that stuff But your values are still intact and when the storm blows past you're still going you're still moving in your direction Yeah, I go Just yeah, that a little bit of an interruption So the tools are to get you toward your goals and values not to avoid storms. Correct Yeah, they're not teleporting you to your goals and values have to get there And there are going to be storms and potholes and detours along the way and you learn to navigate through those That idea that tools are not tools of eradication. They're tools of navigation But there's a bumper sticker in there somehow. Wow, I think you just said it They're not tools of eradication. They're they're tools of navigation And there's there's an instagram post We'll do that together. We will do the samaras post for both of us. How's that? I like it. I like it Yeah, recovery tools are not eradication tools. They're navigation tools. Yeah Because I think and I love what you said about the storm because So many people think it's their fault that they they're back at square one because a storm arrived, which is just What no, no, you didn't do anything wrong. You're living a life and storms hit all the time And I think, you know, there's that realization also that if for somebody who's dealing with ocd or health anxiety or panic disorder Whatever it is when a when a ripple happens in your life because of some event that you cannot control nor predict Your ripple you'll feel the ripple in your ocd or your panic disorder or your health anxiety For someone else they might feel the ripple in their gambling addiction or their alcohol Or their whatever other bad choices they may make in life or other ways that they might begin to overeat Everybody experiences the ripple somehow. This is where our ripples are. It doesn't make it Or or failure. Yeah, it makes sense. Yeah, I know it totally makes sense. I think that it's it's makes Total sense because the the all of these mechanisms are ways for us to hold on Yeah, right. They're all ways for us to like we revert to Let's say ocd since we used panic disorder earlier Rayleigh I'm going to revert to trying to figure out this one small element of my life because if I figure that out then everything else is going to be okay as opposed to recognizing like no, no, I'm just feeling uncertain right now and um, there's no amount of Like of trying to figure that out that's going to get me the the sort of ease throughout Does that make sense? Yeah, it does make sense. I've even though that maybe they're you know The ripple in this part of life will trigger the need to figure out a completely different part of life. Yes Exactly. That'll calm everything down. I'll fix that. I can't fix this. I'll fix this and I don't make everything better Right, right. That's the promise. I think of anxiety disorders and ocd is that if I can make sure I'm never going to have a panic attack I'll be fine. Everything else is gonna problem. Yeah, it's gravy man. Yeah, I get it I actually hear people say that in a radio if I could just if I could just figure this one thing out Yeah, whether it whether it's you know, an ocd subtype expressing or a panic symptom, whatever it is Like just figure this one. Just this one. This is the one thing. Yeah It's a beautiful lie, isn't it I think it's it's probably a universal lie We see it come out in that area But I'm sure that we all tell ourselves that that universal lie in a lot of different ways everybody so Which is maybe where there's so much benefit in recovery because I think the people who have to go through this for one reason or another because of anxiety generalized anxiety or panic disorder or phobias or ocd or whatnot that They start to see it happening across their lives and they they don't let even as much The cursory emotional states Get them off course. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, that's you're correct. That's you're right Cursory emotional states is a great phrase. That's our band name. That's the that's the disco band Cursory emotional states That is so good colon fire and ice I don't want to let that go States is yeah, okay. That's a band name. I'll take it or at a minimum. That's a debut album. Sure. Yes All right, we're at about the 30 minute mark. So we'll wrap it up. What do you how do you want it? So somebody is in the mid and to think of this right now They had oh my god, something terrible happened or i'm under this under the gun and i'm right back square one What would you help? You're always only a step away from pivoting Back to acceptance back to the tools back to navigating things as they are As opposed to trying to resolve something that can't be resolved. So it's okay. You know how to do this You've done this before We're just gonna we're gonna practice here. We are there's feelings and and thoughts and An uncertainty and and this is an opportunity. Here we go I love it one step away from pivoting back to you know back to where you know what you have to do Yeah, well, we'll wrap it up there. I can't do any better than that. You can't are you sure? Wow Yeah Anyway, that was good. I always love these. We'll be back I maybe next time we will do q&a. Yeah Yeah, I'll we'll put up questions on instagram people and then we'll answer questions and I love it. Yeah, so anyway for those of you who are not I put up on the screen for those of you Are not following lauren. She's right there at the obsessive mind on instagram And if you're not following drew He's there. He's got anxious dr And he's awesome. So go follow him. Yeah, it's gonna be good So we'll put this up on my youtube like we always do and wherever else you're gonna find it It's great. Put your comments. We'll do our best to answer them as best we can and we'll see you guys Next time. Thanks lauren on the flip side. Bye. Let's awkwardly