 Hey, before we get into today's episode, I just want to let you know that on February 11th, I'll be hosting this workshop, Panic Attacks Explained. If you have been trying everything to try to get rid of recurring panic attacks and nothing is working and you feel that something might really be wrong with you because you can't seem to fix this problem and you don't understand what to do next, then this workshop might be for you. You can go to the anxioustruth.com slash panic for all the details. If you can't make it on February 11th, I will make the replay available after that. So go check it out. I hope you find it helpful. Let's get on with today's episode. Hi, I'm Drew and you are listening to or watching the anxious truth. This is the podcast that covers all things anxiety, anxiety disorders and anxiety recovery. So if you're struggling with things like panic disorder, panic attacks, agoraphobia or OCD, this is the place for you. You know, everybody wants to feel okay, but before we can do that in the context of anxiety recovery, we should probably define what okay even means and we should be mindful of the problem that we create when we place conditions on our okayness. So let's talk about that today. Hello everybody, welcome back to the anxious truth. This is podcast episode number 244, recorded in January of 2023. I am Drew Lentz, a lot of creator and host of the anxious truth. If this is your first time here, you've just stumbled upon the podcast or the YouTube channel, welcome, I'm glad you're here. And if you are a returning listener or viewer, of course I'm glad that you're here. Thank you for coming by. So this week on the podcast, we're gonna talk about the idea of conditional okayness. What does okay even really mean in the context of anxiety recovery and what happens when we place conditions in our ability to be okay. But before we get into that, just a quick reminder, the anxious truth is certainly more than just this podcast episode or this video. There are 243 other free podcast episodes that came before this one. There are three books that I have written on anxiety and anxiety recovery that are being read by tens of thousands of people around the world. There's a webinar I do every month with Joanna Hardis on the art and science of distressed tolerance. Then there's a bunch of free social media content and other goodies that you can find on my website at theanxiestruth.com. So I urge you to go over there and avail yourself of all the resources. Please, they're there, take advantage. And if you are enjoying this work and I'm helping you in some way, and you'd like to find a way to support it in some way, all the ways you can do that are on my website also at theanxiestruth.com slash support. Financial or monetary support is never required but always appreciated. And any way that you support this work or whether it's just tuning in to listen, liking a video, subscribing to the channel or rating the podcast, thank you very much. I do appreciate it. You absolutely make this worthwhile for me to do. So today's topic, conditional oakeness. What does that mean? Conditional oakeness is what I have called it when people try to learn to be okay, which is what everybody wants to do in anxiety recovery, but they accidentally create conditions around what has to happen before they can be okay. And the goal of recovery, this is the tricky part, is to learn that you are okay even if. Right, so that is a very powerful statement. I am okay even if, even if what? Well, even if I panic, even if I am anxious, even if I have a scary or intrusive thought, even if I am uncertain, even if I feel vulnerable, I am okay even if these things happen. And when we decide that it is not okay and we are not okay in those situations, that's when we begin to build avoidance rituals and soothing rituals and escape rituals designed to get us away from those experiences. And those are the lifestyle modifications that define the disordered state we're always talking about here on this podcast and this YouTube channel. So in recovery, we are trying to learn through experience of doing difficult, hard things like exposure, we talk about that all the time, that you are okay even if. So hang on to that thought, even if is gonna be a key phrase. But before we get into the flip side of that, let's talk about what okay even means. Because I think it's important for us to recognize that in this context, okay doesn't necessarily mean optimal or perfect in any way. In fact, it probably doesn't. It doesn't mean that you're gonna feel awesome. It doesn't mean you're gonna be happy. It doesn't mean you're going to be calm or relaxed. It doesn't mean anything in particular. We don't get to demand particular states of being and trying to do that and trying to only get to a positive place where you are only calm, only happy, only relaxed and only contented is a big ask for any human being and tends to lead you down a bad path where you can wind up frustrated and stuck. So in the end, what do we mean by okay? Is okay about how you feel? Well, I think I would be silly if I said it isn't. To a certain extent, you will measure okay by how you feel. We can't get around that. It's human nature. But in the end, I think we want to measure okay by how capable and competent you feel. How capable and competent do you feel and how confident then are you in your ability to move through these challenges like panic or discomfort or distress or uncertainty, scary thoughts, anxiety symptoms. How competent and able do you feel to be able to move through those things and come out the other side? That, I think, is a big part of how we need to define okay. Now, when you get good at that and your belief in your ability to do that rises over time, and we talked about this in last week's podcast episode, that a feeling of positivity tends to follow along naturally as you're feeling of competence and confidence rises. But as you begin to believe this, because you are doing it actively and experiences are showing you that you are in fact capable, even though you've always believed that you haven't been, then you start to change, then the way you feel does begin to change. So, okayness is absolutely about how you feel, but it's primarily about how you feel about your own ability. What do you think about yourself? Do you see yourself as competent and able to tolerate this distress, to accept, to float, to whatever willfully tolerate, pick your word? That is really where we want to hang our hat in terms of defining okayness as part of recovery. How you feel in your emotional state is a bonus. If that's positive, then that's great. But we can't only decide that being okay means you feel okay, not necessarily true. So what then is conditional okayness? If we are concerned with getting to the point where we believe that we are okay even if, then conditional okayness, the opposite of that, is what we aim for when we say I'm okay as long as. So the two operative phrases here in this episode of the podcast, even if versus as long as. See the difference? I'm okay as long as means you have placed conditions on your okayness. I can only feel competent. I can only feel capable and able. I can only feel that I can trust my ability as long as, and usually the conditions that start with as long as is as long as I'm not too stressed, as long as I have no symptoms, as long as I don't panic, as long as my intrusive thoughts stay away, as long as I am not triggered. So conditional okayness is I feel pretty good and I think I'm gonna be able to get through this as long as these negative experiences that I've been trying to get away and avoid don't happen. That's conditional okayness. And there's a difference between as long as and I'm okay even if, because when we place conditions on our okayness and we decide that we're only okay as long as, we then kind of aim in the wrong direction. And we start to look at recovery as the act of eliminating triggers or the act of making your symptoms disappear or the act of learning how to never get triggered. So you wind up engineering a life full of even more avoidance where you say, well, I'm okay as long as I learn how to never panic. I'm okay as long as I never have to do anything really scary. I'm okay as long as I have somebody with me. I'm doing so much better. I'm okay as long as I'm never home alone or as long as I never have this particular thought. So you see that that becomes highly engineered and it becomes hard to maintain and more than anything else, it becomes really fragile. So why do we care about shooting for okay even if as opposed to okay as long as? We really care about that because we do not want a fragile recovery. I have talked in the past about a concept that I call the acceptable bubble. And if you go to my website at the anxioustruth.com and just search acceptable bubble, you'll find some podcast episodes that talk about that. What is the acceptable bubble? The acceptable bubble is that thing where you engineer your way into a life that's okay. It's acceptable. You can do most of the things. You can handle day-to-day life. Usually it's predicated upon learning how to do the things again as long as, see the phrase, you don't panic when you do them for instance or you don't feel anything in particular when you do them. So the acceptable bubble is where you're better than you were and that's certainly not a bad thing. Like don't take that away from yourself but we have to be careful that we do not engineer a recovery that's based around either getting around or away from our challenges because in the end more durable lasting recovery that becomes portable across a wider section of life is based on learning to go through the challenges. So we go through the challenges when we decide that we can be okay even if we are challenged as opposed to being okay as long as I am not. You have to stay in touch with the differences there because they kind of matter. So how does that sort of look in the real world? Well, if you've ever heard somebody maybe in my Facebook group or in this community say that they were doing so well and doing so much better which is great we always love to hear that and we cheer for that but if you've ever heard somebody say I was doing so great but now I'm back to square one there's a really good chance that that was prefaced by the building of an acceptable bubble which was based on building conditional okayness. So somebody who learns to do the school run again without panicking somebody who learns to be home alone for an hour without panicking somebody who learns to have certain thoughts but not others and somebody who learns how to handle some challenges but not others where they draw a line around those other challenges is building that conditional okayness and an acceptable bubble that can be fragile so that when life does in fact throw those off limits challenge back at us which it will because we don't get to stop that from happening that's when somebody like that often will be seeing crumbling. So their recovery was going so well because they were defining so well as I wasn't having thoughts I wasn't having sensations I wasn't overthinking I wasn't ruminating I wasn't panicking so I was really doing so well but then the minute one of those too much challenges comes up because it will everything crumbles to dust and they feel that they are back to square one and have to start all over again and that is discouraging it doesn't mean you are back to square one we've talked about this many times we've talked about setbacks and what to do about them but it will feel like all the work has been for nothing and you have no hope and this is just not gonna work out for you and you hate to see that that's heartbreaking it doesn't have to be that way and sometimes it's just a small adjustment along the way so what I would ask you to consider today as you listen to this podcast or watch this video is am I building conditional okayness am I okay even if or am I okay as long as and is my definition of okay in alignment with the goals of recovery or am I just sort of hoping to feel good all the time and trying to find a way to engineer a life where that happens so that is my two cents on the idea of conditional okayness and why we kinda wanna be careful about how we define okay and then we have to be really mindful that we don't fall into the trap of accidentally bolting a ton of conditions around the idea of being okay so if I can leave you with one thing it would be that you should shoot for being okay even if you are challenged not okay as long as you are not so that is episode 244 of the anxious truth pretty much with a bow on it you know it's over because tell me that you do a lie I will play you out as I always do with Afterglow by Ben Drake who is a friend of mine and who wrote this song at least in part inspired by this podcast several years ago is giving me permission to use it and I appreciate that if you wanna know more about Ben and his music his website is bendrakemusic.com go check him out if you are listening to this podcast on iTunes or Spotify or some platform that lets you rate or review the podcast leave a five star rating if you dig it maybe take a minute and write a review cause it helps more people find the podcast and that means more people get help and that's why we do this anyway if you're watching on YouTube like the video, leave a comment subscribe to the channel you know all the things and thank you so much for coming by I hope you have found this helpful I will answer comments if you leave them on the video I promise at least twice a week I will circle back to YouTube and answer comments so if you have a question that's a good place to put them I hope you've enjoyed it I hope you've got something out of it I will be back again next week with another podcast episode I do not know what I'm gonna be talking about but I'll be here and remember as always this is the way you know you'll never get another chance to go and live your life through the pressure like an atom bomb you keep on dancing like it's your last song