 Hey there I'm Drew and you are listening to or maybe watching The Anxious Truth. This is the podcast that covers all things anxiety, anxiety disorders, and anxiety recovery. So if you're dealing with things like panic attacks, agoraphobia, OCD, or health anxiety, this is the place for you and I'm happy you're here. This week on the podcast we have two absolute legends in the field of anxiety and anxiety disorders. Drs. Sally Winston and Marty Seif are here to talk about anticipatory anxiety. That's that thing where you know you have a scary or challenging thing coming up and you begin to get really anxious, panic, or worry excessively about it for even weeks before it's going to happen. So let's get to that right now. Hello everybody, welcome back to The Anxious Truth. This is podcast episode number 247 recorded in February of 2023. I am Drew Lincellata, creator and host of The Anxious Truth. If you are a first time viewer or listener and you just sort of stumbled onto the podcast, welcome. I'm glad you're here. I hope you find it helpful. If you're a returning listener or returning viewer, welcome back. It's good to see you. So this week on the podcast we have Drs. Sally Winston and Marty Seif on to talk about anticipatory anxiety. That's that thing where you have a challenge coming up, a big exposure, a family function, a trip, a flight, what a doctor's appointment or a dentist's appointment, and you know that it's going to be scary for you. You know it's going to be challenging and difficult for you. So you begin to get really anxious or you panic or you begin to ruminate and think and worry excessively about the event long before it even happens. That's anticipatory anxiety. And it's incredibly common no matter what variant of an anxiety disorder you're dealing with at the moment. So we're going to get into that. They just wrote a book called Overcoming Anticipatory Anxiety, which we will talk about in the interview. The interview lasts about 20 or 30 minutes. It's chock full of great stuff from two people who absolutely know what they're talking about. But before we get to it, just a quick reminder that The Anxious Truth is more than just this podcast episode. There are 246 other free podcast episodes that came before it. There are three books that I've written about anxiety and anxiety recovery. There are courses and workshops and webinars and all kinds of free social media content all on my website at theanxiestruth.com. If you're following my work and you dig it and you want to find a way to support it, all the ways to do that are also on the website at theanxiestruth.com slash support. Financial support buying something is never, never required, but always appreciated. And no matter how you support this work, whether it's just writing a podcast review, giving me a five star rating or hitting like on a YouTube video, I really appreciate it. Thank you so much. So go over to theanxiestruth.com and avail yourself of all the resources. Now let's get into the discussion with Marty Seif and Sally Winston on anticipatory anxiety based on the book that they've written. Come back at the end afterwards. I will give you all of the links, the ways to get the book and all their other books and all the other good stuff that we talk about in this episode. You can find everything by the way at theanxiestruth.com slash 247, which is on the screen below me if you're watching on YouTube. Anyway, that's enough of me rambling. Let's get to it right now and I'll be back at the end to wrap it up. Okay, everybody, as promised here with me in the studio, which is the same office I'm always in and I guess their studios are doctors Seif and Winston on this side and there are authors of so many of the books I know you all love. I know I'm a huge fan today. We're going to talk about this one. We're talking about anticipatory anxiety because it's this is your newest, your latest I assume. Yes, it is called overcoming anticipatory anxiety and it is written by these two pioneers and I know for most of you guys heroes in the field and I'm fanboying a little bit here. So hang in there with me. But yeah, we'll walk through the whole anticipatory anxiety thing. It's a huge topic in this community for sure. It stumbles a lot of people stumble on it. So if you guys are into it, we'll just kind of walk through the book. What made you I'll throw that to either of you. What made you write this book? What was the impetus to write this one? Well, I can answer that very easily. I've had considerable anxiety in my life. And as I struggled to kind of overcome that anxiety, it became very clear to me that there was a distinct component of anxiety, which could only be described as anticipatory anxiety. And can I go on and talk a little bit about anticipatory? I mean, anticipatory anxiety is really the anxiety or discomfort or distress that you feel before you do something that makes you anxious or uncomfortable. And although it's not a diagnosis in itself, it's really connected to just that every disorder that has anxiety or obsessive compulsive disorder, it's connected to lots of some mood disorders in some way. And it's and it's a it's it's really ubiquitous. And it is extremely common. So if you are concerned about taking an elevator tomorrow and you're worrying about it, that's anticipatory anxiety. If you have to give a presentation and you're concerned that it may not come out and you're thinking about it the day before, that's anticipatory anxiety. If you have intrusive thoughts and you're worried about yelling something out in a classroom and you're walking to the classroom, that is anticipatory anxiety. There's sometimes there's a real big cognitive component to it where you're worrying about it. And sometimes you can just wake up with a stomach ache and realize that, oh my goodness, I have a test today that I didn't study for. That's the concept of anticipatory anxiety. So I suffered from it and I've experienced it a lot in my life. And it felt to me that it was something that we should write about. Yeah, I would agree. It's kind of a normal part of the human experience, even outside the realm of an anxiety disorder or mood disorder, everybody, like, oh my goodness, I have a presentation to give. I'm so nervous about it. That's a normal part of human experience because we have an imagination and we think about what's coming up. But the reason we wanted to write a book is that if you think about it, anticipatory anxiety is the primary driver of avoidance, avoidance behavior, either behavioral avoidance, like canceling something or trying to get someone else to do it for you, or making excuses all the time to not do something, or experiential avoidance, which is a way of being in the situation, but also trying really hard not to actually be there or experience it. So because avoidance behavior is so much a part of what drives the disability of anxiety or the things that get in the way of living well, if we felt like this was a topic that was underrepresented and we wanted to address it. I am amazed that nobody has written this book before. I don't know that anybody has written a book specifically on this, but you're right, it bridges all of the different diagnoses. You see it all over this community, regardless of the struggle that anybody has. They deal with anticipatory anxiety. So one of the things that I loved about the book is the way you step through a bunch of different things, which is great. But I always like to acknowledge the challenge that it presents. So people that are listening today are dealing with panic disorder. They're dealing with agoraphobia, the name of the OCD, health anxiety. And in the end, those challenges are hard enough. Anticipatory anxiety always seems to make the challenge seem even harder than it already is. It's almost people interpret it as confirmation that the challenge is in fact damn near impossible. Is that right? If I'm as anxious as I am now and I'm not even there and it's three weeks from now, what will it be like when I'm actually there? And so what we do know is that anticipatory anxiety lies. It doesn't tell you the truth about how things are really going to go or what's really going to happen. It's not a predictor. It's not a warning. It's not a sign. And yet it sure feels like it. Oh yeah, feels like. So it goes back to the, and it goes back to the idea that anxiety is a great blocker. It's a great trickster. It kind of fools you and in lots of different ways. Yeah. It also, but it's also very helpful for people to be able to distinguish the fact that there are, there is the anxiety of something that they're concerned about. For example, I'm afraid of flying. Okay, there's that's that's a good one because people often worry about it for a long time beforehand. And there's the actual anxiety or distress when a person is in the situation that they're concerned about. And then there's a separate component anticipatory anxiety. And sometimes being able to separate that between the two conceptually is really transformative for people to say, Oh, this is anticipatory anxiety. This is my imagination in some way. Furthermore, it's a really good once you get a person to focus on the fact that they're that this is anticipatory anxiety. It's a really good way to help them focus on the method and they how can I put it the mechanism of anxiety generation because when you're sitting in your room and you're living on a Tuesday night, getting freaked out about the flight that you're supposed to take on a Saturday morning, there's no excuse you're actually in your imagination. There's no way that you can say, Well, I'm afraid that the plane's going to correct. No, you're really in your imagination now. And that's a helpful conceptualization people and helps us make the point that we want to make that somehow we in some way with our imagination and our thinking and the way we perceive our bodily reactions that we somehow sort of generate the distress that we feel, which is super powerful. I think if you can get people to get on board with that idea, because so many people in the community we're addressing see the anxiety itself as the problem. So yeah, they're nervous about the challenge because you wrote anticipatory anxiety is being afraid of being afraid of being afraid, which I Yes, that's the third. That's that's the it's the fear of the fear of the fear. It's like third. And I think that's pretty accurate. Would you I think that's correct? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, would you Dr. Winston, do you have anything to add on that? Let me give an example of the fear of the fear of the fear just because it sounds so weird when you just say it that way. But the example that we use, I think we use it in the book is I'm afraid of a bee. That's fear. Then I'm afraid that if I see a bee, I'll have a panic attack and drop dead of a heart attack. That's fear of fear. And then I have a camping trip coming up in three months. I'm scared I'm going to see a bee and have a heart attack and die. It's not worth it. I think I'll cancel. That's fear of fear of fear. And you may have mentioned it, Sally, in just a minute ago. I don't remember, but certainly another way of thinking of anticipatory anxiety, it's the avoidant component of anxiety. It's the aspect of anxiety that says, let me stay away from it. Oh, yes, you mentioned it a number of times. Sally avoided either physically or, you know, just sort of imagine that you're not there in some way. Yeah, experiential avoidance. I think to what the mechanism is could be really helpful for them because often I hear people declare failure because they're having anticipatory anxiety already. Like that's I'm not failing already because I feel so I love when you say, well, yeah, just recognize what's happening. You're afraid, which is allowed, because you're afraid of being afraid of being afraid. It's not a failure. Now, and in fact, when you when you get better and even are able to do all these things, anticipatory anxiety is usually the very last part to go because we can't help ourselves from thinking forward into the future and imagining what might happen and also having memories of things that have happened that intrude into our awareness. So getting out that door, getting over the hump or pressing the submit button or whatever it is that the action is is affected by anticipatory anxiety, even after you've been doing everything pretty well. It's just our body remembers our mind remembers and and we go through the same mechanisms. You know, and we have, you know, if you have an anxiety problem, and you have a sticky mind, which is one of the things that we talk about a lot, you tend to make the thinking errors and the looping kinds of round and round thinking that sticky minds give you. And that doesn't necessarily go away. So you again get tricked by your mind. That's just part of that normal human experience also, like expecting anticipatory anxiety to go away forever permanently is not realistic because everybody gets nervous about stuff. Now, as a matter of fact, it's the opposite. There are people who comfortably do things over and over and over again, and still experience episodes or surges of anticipatory anxiety prior to do that. And to some extent, if a person says, okay, this is my anticipatory anxiety, I know from past experience, it's, it's, it's a poor predictor. I know from past experiences, when I'm in that situation, I do find it's a way of managing that anxiety in the present. You know, I tell people, anticipatory anxiety is real anxiety, but it's anxiety generated by and it's anxiety generated by your present thoughts. But the content of the thoughts are about something in the future, but it's present anxiety. And to pay attention to that. And when you're in that situation. Yeah, I had a question today from somebody exactly on that. Well, they have a problem with needles and they're doing so much better in their recovery. But if I know that I'm going to the doctor and they're going to stick me, even though I've had it done a thousand times, I am freaked out until they do it. And then I'm totally cool. So I think it's a great illustration. There are enormous numbers of illustrations of anticipatory anxiety. Partly as I've had so much anticipatory anxiety in my life, I couldn't think of it. But for example, one of the issues that the people who have trouble with elevators who have panic in elevators in some way, it's, it's sometimes a difficult issue to, to, it's a difficult anxiety to manage in some way. Part of the reason is that it's mostly anticipatory anxiety. If you speak to someone, they're in the elevator. And what they're really worrying is when I get to the floor and the elevator stops, will the door open? So it's all anticipatory anxiety. And so the actual exposure is just that one second when they wait for the pause for the door open. Or another comment is lots of people who, who are afraid of flying, they, they have anticipatory anxiety about, about turbulence. So they're on the plane, worrying, and that's anticipatory anxiety, will we hit bumpy air? So it's really, it's, when you think of it that way, a lot of our anxieties are in anticipation of what I think frightens me. Yeah. Yeah. Which makes perfect sense. Living in the future. Yeah. It's not always about fear, though. We should also add that sometimes it's about a situation that you think you might not be able to handle or something that you know is going to be disgusting or something that causes you to get angry every single time it happens. And if you find yourself unwilling to experience the emotion or the physical sensations, then you get anticipatory anxiety because you keep hoping that that won't happen. And you keep trying to do something in the present to make the fact that that is likely to happen or might happen go away. And so the struggle with the anticipatory anxiety and the struggle whether or not to commit to do the thing that you said you were going to do, that actually increases the anticipatory anxiety. And one of the things that we know is that avoiding a decision about going or trying to make a commitment sort of maybe with a back out plan is actually less helpful than deciding you're going to go no matter how you feel. But that waffling back and forth, the indecisive. Waffling, you can call it waffling, it's actually reinforcing in our model, it's actually reinforcing the anxiety, the anticipatory anxiety, avoidance. And Sally brought something up. When you write a book together, because Sally and I co-author lots of things, sometimes by the end of the book you sort of forget who wrote which part and who thought of this thing. But I know that Sally, I mean this is definitely Sally's input. At one point, because she brought it, we say that commitment is the antidote to avoidance. Okay, and I know that that's Sally's input, I'm pretty sure you do. And I think that's a really important issue because the fact is avoidance is what maintains anxiety and commitment, no matter how you feel, is in the long term what actually is the therapeutic process, the therapeutic ingredient that reduces anxiety in some way. And I think a lot of what we talk about in the body of the book are subtle ways in which people try to avoid and then we give them an approach that says, okay, here's how to commit. I think we maybe use the word therapeutic, surrender and commit or something. But it's the notion of I'm going to do it, I'm reducing my avoidance and that's going to help me overcome the same anxiety. Yeah, I think one question I think people usually have is, so are you telling me that if I commit, and I see this all the time, like my family really wants to go on vacation, but I'm still not sure because I'm just getting over my agoraphobia. And so they don't want to buy the plane tickets, I'm going to buy them, no, I'm not. And so people, well, if I hit the buy button, are you telling me that I won't be anxious anymore? And the answer is no, it means you probably will, but at least now you have a path to move through it more productively. Yeah, that's one of the brilliances of the original Southwest model that you could cancel anytime. And that's actually a problem for people because if you know you can cancel, then you don't settle in your mind that you're going. And that back and forth actually escalates your anxiety. But the minute that you do buy your ticket, what happens is that you feel a sense of being trapped and your anxiety does go up. But the important thing about this is that if you understand what anxiety is, you understand it's not dangerous, that it's distress, but it's not dangerous. You're not going crazy. It doesn't mean you can't go. It doesn't mean that you are in danger in some way. Your body is giving you false alarm signals. And you have to understand enough about anxiety so that you don't respond to the false alarms as if they're true alarms. Sally, actually, when you're mentioning that, it reminds me. The two general suggestions that we make for people is we'd like people to have a, to change their, a change in perspective. That's what we're talking about, but also a change in attitude. There's a natural, and what that means is to lean towards anxiety rather than to get away from anxiety. So when you buy your ticket, and I had a lot of experience with that because I ran the spirit flying group for, for 19 years, we were, and I would insist that people buy their ticket after the first meeting. And there was a lot of resistance. But, but when people did it, they realized that they were leaning towards anxiety. You know, it's, it's the notion, you know, you can be silly about it. I tell people, look, a day without anxiety, it's like a day without sunshine, you know, because the fact is it allows you to really learn to practice exactly what we're talking about in some way. So it puts you into that, into that mode. The real issue is people buy it by a ticket, they get anxious, but that in their mind is not a commitment because then they say, well, I could always go out, maybe I can get a credit and all these kind of mental machinations, these are actually many avoidances, or as you would say, waffling or back and forth. The notion that I'm leaning into anxiety, and I'm not going to allow myself to consider the possibility of not doing it, that's a much more productive therapeutic perspective. Well, that puts the target on just the plane that flight and onto the rest of your life also. Like if I get better at this episode, it helps me later, not just now. Yeah, the important thing is to understand what leaning in really means, because people think that it means that, first of all, that you have to accept being miserable forever, which is not what we're saying. But also people tend to do something called white knuckle or force themselves to do things that they're scared to do with the attitude of hoping that it's over as soon as possible, trying really, really hard not to feel anxious, pushing at themselves in some way that actually isn't very helpful. And that's what we call paradoxical effort. Because one of the things that we're aware of is that effort inside the mind works very differently from effort outside the mind. If I want to move a table, I will put my hands on it, put in effort and push, and hopefully it's not too heavy a table and I can move it across the room. But if I have a feeling or a thought or a sensation in my body, and I put in the same kind of effort, stop the thought, get rid of the sensation, make this go away, it works backwards. It actually makes it all worse. And so understanding that the inside of the mind doesn't respond to that kind of effort that you need to be willing to feel what you're feeling, experience what you're experiencing and not feel like you have to do something to make it go away. And most of the people that we run into, of course, are problem solvers, action people, people who want to figure out a way. And the idea that the way is to not do anything and to allow the experience to unfold is extremely difficult. It's not a natural position to take. And so that is part of the training or the message of the book is that it's not natural to you. What's going to be natural is to look for a solution, find an answer, analyze this so it'll go away in all of the ways that people's problems solve in the real world. And it doesn't work for this. One of the things that you guys wrote in the book that I had a big highlight on was which what I want to do is in our last 10 minutes, I want to connect it to GAD because you did and I had a huge highlight there because it seems like anticipatory anxiety and the traits of somebody with GAD are a match made in heaven. Like the problem solving thing you're just talking about. Then I'm going to talk about how you start to deconstruct some of the beliefs that justify the worry. And then how are you going to get somebody to start to practice moving through anticipatory anxiety? So the GAD thing, when you connected that, that was one of those fist pump moments, like yes, 100% correct. This is your experience, I'm guessing. They come hand in hand, I would guess. We've believed for a long time that generalized anxiety disorder can be looked at as the OCD light because the way that it works is even though the content may not be bizarre or strange, it may be things that other people worry about too, the way that it works has the same structure as OCD. It starts with a what if and then that's your imagination. And then there's something at the end of the sentence, what if something? And then the other side of worry is some attempt to make the worry go away and that occupies the compulsion place. Usually the compulsions in generalized anxiety disorder are all in your head. So they're obvious. So when they're not obvious, so that when people say I want to stop worrying, they don't realize that the worry actually has two parts. There's the pop up what if, and then there's the attempt to make yourself feel better or make the what if go away or make the anxiety or the disgust or the upset that went with the what if go away. And that alternates just the same way as it does in OCD. So it very much is part of a continuum. And I think for people like that that gets stuck in those worry about worry thinking about thinking cycles, you also talked about justified anticipatory anxiety where people want to stand up for it saying no, no, this is why I'm supposed to think about this continuously and obsessively. So I think that sort of goes down the road where now you talked about deconstructing some of those false metacognitive beliefs. Can we go through those? Well, the concept, first of all, that worrying about, well, to back up a little bit, worrying can often start out as what we call problem solving, trying to solve a problem. And we would say that real problem solving comes up with some sort of solution or temporary solution or action plan. And then that looping stops. Worrying is really what if thing about something that either doesn't have an answer, or you don't have enough information to get an answer, or those are two of the major things that worry about. And as a result, people often believe that worrying has great beneficial effects. Number one, it keeps them motivated. Number two, it sort of makes sure that they're not lazy and keeps them vigilant in somewhere. Something bad happens, I'll be prepared for it. When in fact, when bad things happen, most often they come from out of the blue and they blindside us in some way. The other thing is that people often think that they have no control over worrying. And if we go back to what Sally said, that there's a two-part component to worrying, very often the what if pop-ups thought we have very little control over, but we don't necessarily have to answer it if we take what we consider a metacognitive approach and say, wait a second, this is worried. It's looping thoughts in some way. I don't have to respond to it. I can say, okay, that's my worried thought and I can go on in some way. It's the attempt to answer the unanswerable when you believe there's some benefit to it in some way. Some people believe that we're, I'm sorry, Sally, you're going to say something like you're, I'm sure you have more to say about this if you want. Well, I mean, we could, we write together whatever you talk, I have things to say, but I was also thinking about the function of worry of people thinking that they're loyal to whoever, if they're worrying about someone, that that's somehow an act of loyalty or love to worry about them, which of course, all it does is make you distressed. It doesn't keep them safe or do anything for them. The other piece of it is that because the way that a worry is constructed with a what if and a something, people have a what if that's about this big, and then they have an it is cancer, what if it is cancer? And then their response is, oh my God, cancer, I've got to think about it. What can I do instead of looking at the what if, which David Carbonell calls let's pretend, it's actually your imagination. And just being able to identify that lets you see that it's the way that you're thinking and not cancer, that's the issue. I have one more comment to make about about worrying, which I think is sort of interesting because I've queried a lot of patients about worrying and patients who I consider to be pretty solid. I mean, a lot of them say, you know, believe it or not, I actually feel that worrying really increases my real life chances of something good happening or protecting myself or someone. There's a kind of almost magical protection that goes on with worrying. So the way you think about it is people don't like to worry, but they don't like not to worry. They feel too vulnerable that they don't worry in some way. So it's a complicated process. So when you're trying to work somebody through this, and you're trying to get them to the point where they start to take that more mindful approach, and they start to do that therapeutic surrender, they really have to leave these faulty beliefs behind, whether it's a sort of a gad loop or it's an anticipatory anxiety about something else or legitimate life stuff. You're dropping your beliefs on the floor or at least healthy skepticism. At least question it with that sort of skepticism in some way, because it's very hard for people to drop it. And, you know, as Sally often says, our goal with patients is to reduce their suffering. And if they can just not hold on to those beliefs quite so rigidly, and they don't worry as much, their suffering is reduced, and we're helping them in that way. So it's not all enough in each other's concept. We could probably go for another hour. I know that everybody's going to dig this, but let's get to the part that I know everybody's going to want to ask. So I'm riddled with anticipatory anxiety. What would these two people tell me to do? And by the way, just read the book, because there's a lot to go over here that we can't do in a half-hour podcast. But what's the general goal? You start to deconstruct those beliefs, start to look at them a little bit skeptically, understand what the process is, so you can start to realize what's going on. What do I do? How do we get out of this? Well, Sally is up with a four-part thing, which I think she should talk about. One, two, five, yeah. It's an acronym dance, which this is going to test my memory here. The first D is discern, or distinguish, or designate, or basically label the thoughts so that you know that you're in anticipatory anxiety land. So you've got to figure out where you are. A is accept, which means don't start pushing away at it and trying to get rid of it. N is no all kinds of no's, no engaging with it, no struggling with it, no analyzing it, no pushing on it, no trying to get rid of it. C is commit to the action. And E is embrace whatever you're feeling along the way. And let time pass, embrace the moment and allow time to pass, which is a very difficult skill, but it's sort of central to all forms of modern anxiety treatment, certainly starting with Claire Weeks and going through all the different things up to today. Let time pass right out of the Australian grandma manual, everybody. You got five out of five, though. You didn't even have to think about that. That's congratulations. You passed the driver's license test. Yeah, yeah. So I appreciate you guys taking the time here. I think that's a great, is there anything else you want to add? I mean, we don't have to end now. I'm trying not to keep you guys, I know you're busy, but you know, those are sort of the five steps, but I would urge everybody, if you want to know more, I will link this and I'll come back to wrap up at the end so you can go get the book. But there's so much really great information. And the thing that I loved about it is this is not just old school. When you guys are not newly licensed, you've been at it for a little while, clearly you have a reputation. And I love how you are right here in the 2023 in this book. It's not, this is not old school worksheet thought challenging stuff. So there's so many great concepts here, so many concepts in this book. Yeah, it's just to mention, it is the third of a series. And if you read one, two, and three, it might make a little more sense. One is the overcoming unwanted interests of thoughts, not just any interests of thoughts, but unwanted ones. The second is needing to know for sure, which is really about checking compulsions and reassurance compulsions and subtle kinds of compulsions that people might not realize are compulsions. And this is the third in the series. And they do sort of follow from each other, although they each stand alone as well. And one of the things that has them that ties them together are these three characters that we have in our minds that everyone has. Worried voice, false comfort and wise mind. And we don't introduce that trio until quite far into the overcoming anticipatory anxiety book. But the illustrations of the dialogues among these three voices are useful ways of being able to observe your own voices and then see what you're doing. So I would encourage people to think about reading the other books as well. I will link them too. I've read them all. They're all outstanding. Excellent ways to explain so many of the things you hear in this podcast again and again and again, like just another set of voices that do a great, great job of explaining. So I appreciate you guys coming on. It was really, really great. I appreciate your time so much. You're welcome here anytime. So thank you. Yeah. What I'll do is, yeah, I will come back at the end. If you guys hang out to the end, I'll come back, wrap it up. I'll give you a URL to go to the anxious truth.com slash 247 to get the books and any way that you guys want to need to send people to find you. I will do that. So thank you very much. Nice talking to you. Okay. Well, that was amazing. I have actually had Dr. Seif and Dr. Winston both on the podcast before individually having them together today was really kind of a special thing for me. I will admit I was doing a little bit of the fangirl thing for a little while there. I'm not above that, by the way. Don't judge me. Anyway, there was a ton of great information in this podcast episode that I think would be helpful because like was mentioned in the interview, anticipatory anxiety is a common theme not only with all human beings because all human beings get nervous about scary and challenging things, but especially across all variants of different anxiety and mood disorders. I think Dr. Seif pointed that out. So hopefully there was a ton here that you can use. If you would like to know more about that and I'm not a fan of hawking people's books here, well, maybe my own, I guess, but this is the book that we talked about. It's called Overcoming Anticipatory Anxiety. I did get to read it. They were generous enough to send me a copy. It is a great book. I would recommend it along with the other books that they've written and Dr. Winston talked about in the in the podcast episode. So if you go right down here to the anxioustruth.com slash 247, that's the full show notes for this episode. I will include links to this book and their other books. And I think they just put out a great blog article on psychology today. I'll link over to their psychology today blog. They are a great, great resource to take advantage of everything they have to offer, and they are welcome on this podcast anytime they want to be. So that is it. That is episode number 247 of the anxious truth on anticipatory anxiety in the books. You know that it's over because I have to hit the button and turn up the music that is afterglow written by my friend, Ben Drake, who wrote the song at least in part inspired by this particular podcast. And he has let me use it for the past couple of years. I'm grateful for that. Find more about Ben and his music on his website at Ben Drake music.com. And if you are listening to this podcast on Apple podcast or Spotify or some platform that lets you rate or review the podcast, leave a five star rating if you dig it and maybe take a minute and write a review because that helps other people find the podcast and then more people get the information and the help that they need, which is kind of why I started doing this in 2014 to begin with. Of course, if you're watching on YouTube, I'm going to hit you to hit ask you to hit the subscribe button like the video, leave a comment at least twice a week. I circle back around and go through my YouTube comments. It's always a great discussion there. Thank you guys for your support on YouTube. And that is it. We are done. Share this with everybody that you think might be helpful. I'm happy to support as many of you as I possibly can with this type of information. I will be back again next week to do another podcast episode and another video. I don't know what I'm going to talk about next week, but I will be here. And remember, as always, this is the way