 This week on The Anxious Truth, we have a guest on the podcast. It's a story about benzodiazepine withdrawal, but more important, it's a story about knowing the difference between pain and suffering and how not to fall into a perpetual victim mindset. So my new friend, Jennifer Swantowski is here. It's a great interview. I know you're going to dig it. So let's get going. Hello, everybody. Welcome back to The Anxious Truth. This is podcast episode number 223, recorded in July of 2022. Probably going to be seeing this somewhere around the end of August. I'm not sure. Anyway, I am Drulence, a lot of creator and host of The Anxious Truth. I am happy that you are here. This is the podcast that focuses on all things, anxiety, anxiety, disorders, and recovery. Now, before we get started on this week's podcast episode, I just want to remind you that The Anxious Truth is more than just this podcast episode. There are hundreds of other free podcast episodes. There's a ton of free social media content. There's a free morning newsletter called The Anxious Morning. As of this recording, I have written three self-help books. On anxiety and anxiety recovery that are helping tens of thousands of people around the world. All of those things can be found on my website at theanxiastruth.com. And if you are finding my work helpful and you would like to help me keep it free of sponsorships and advertising, all the ways to do that can be found on my website at theanxiastruth.com slash support. It's always appreciated, but never required. So thank you to all of you guys for your support. Appreciate it. So today we're going to talk to Jen Swantowski. Jen is a clinical social worker, a therapist, if you will, practicing in Houston, Texas. She's written a book called The Waiting Room, which is a book about her continuing journey through medication injury and benzodiazepine withdrawal. And this could have been a book about symptoms and managing doses and tapering methods and herbs and ways to manage your symptoms, but it is not. This is really an inspiring and I think encouraging and educational story that Jen has written. As soon as I read the book, she sent it to me. She was kind of to send me a copy to read. As soon as I started reading, I immediately reached out to her because I knew that you guys would want to hear what she has to say. So today we're going to talk about all of those things. We're going to talk about the difference between pain and suffering. We're going to talk about staying out of the victim mindset. We're going to talk about having to make that shift and at least consider that there might be a better way to do it than you're doing it right now. So I think it's going to be really encouraging, whether you're going through withdrawal right now from a Benzo and SSRI, or you're just dealing with recovery, anxiety recovery. I think the things that Jen has to say are going to be really important and really impactful and I'm super thankful that she was here. So let's get on to the interview. It was really good. And then I'll come and wrap up at the end and I'll tell you all the ways to find Jen in her book and we'll just kind of have some final thoughts. So seeing a few. Alrighty. Hey, Jen. Hi, Drew. How's it going? I'm doing great. Thanks for having me. You're welcome. Thanks for coming on early in the morning. You're an hour behind me and I appreciate you getting up early. Yeah. So so as I was saying in the intro, Jen is a, I'll let you give yourself, give the reader's digest version, but as a practicing clinical psychologist in Texas has written this book, which I'll put up on the screen. And this will be all in the show notes, the waiting room. I love this book. I just read it. Jen was nice to send us a nice copy. I'm digging it. And I reached out right away because we need to have this conversation. So tell us a little bit about, tell us what you do. Yeah. So first, let me just say that I'm a, I'm a licensed clinical social worker, but I have a PhD in clinical social work. It's a little different, although, you know, they kind of go hand in hand. People sometimes call me psychologist, social worker. And, you know, unfortunately, after 26 years of an amazing practice, found myself in a situation where I had to deal with some medication injury and a fallout from an antibiotic that kind of went awry after a couple of doses. And that landed me in the land of benzodiazepines and specifically Xanax. And I found myself unable to come off of it. Yeah. And, and so it's been a couple of years now of working through that. And the waiting room, the book that you're talking about was really just, you know, kind of my way of, of both staying sane while I was going through the process and also trying to, you know, it was really birthed out of my attempt to figure out what to do to help myself in this rather than just kind of lay back and, and wait for it to ride itself out. I began to kind of look into what, what tools, what philosophies, what ideas, what psychological constructs could, could be helpful to myself. And to maybe other people going through something similar. Yeah. Yeah. And the book comes, that comes shining through in this book. I mean, it is really, to me, uh, we were talking before we went live, like Jen could have wrote a book about how to, how to tie trade and how to, you know, what drops to do and how long to wait and what supplements and herbs and how to mitigate your symptoms and withdrawal, but you didn't write that book. And I, I was saying, I so appreciate that because I think what you wrote is much more valuable. Well, thank you. Yeah. Thank you. You did not have anxiety problems before this, this sort of, I did not, not, not in the clinical sense, you know, in, in, you know, in, in going through 40 plus years, right? I had certainly my stressors. I had my ups and downs. I was a, you know, a clinician. I have a big family. So yeah, there's definitely been times in my life where I felt, you know, kind of stress induced aches and pains, ailments, uh, maybe a little burnout here and there, that type of thing. But no drew nothing, nothing like what I've experienced and what I think a lot of people that tune into your show experience, cause you talk about these things. So nothing like, um, you know, the various manifestations that I've experienced now, um, which are kind of part of this withdrawal process that you're going, you're still going through now. Yes, you're still, I am. Yeah. I'm still actively tapering, you know, and I probably have quite a long way to go and that, and that's been an interesting point. Cause people have said, well, why didn't you just wait to write your success story? And I've had to explain, well, you know, my point in writing the book wasn't about, um, you know, getting to this reflective place on it and looking back. It was really about like in the moment and for, you know, that's what you're doing with folks too, right? Like you're not just, you're, yes, you're, you're a success story, but you're, you're talking about that, your process and you're telling your story and you're weaving it through because there is this in the meantime of having to employ a mindset, right? A new mindset that we probably would have never learned to truly employ had we not been faced with this. And so that's why I kind of chose to do it while I was in the middle of it. If you ask me, I would 100% call this a success story just because you're not at the end of the taper doesn't make it not a success to me. Like, yeah, yeah, and I actually, I think so too, Drew. You know, I think I can see light at the end of the tunnel. I can see hope. And I think that's a big part of that mindset too, right? Whether you're going through a chemically induced anxiety like I am, or you're going through, you know, what, again, so many of your listeners probably experience where, you know, one day they had an anxiety and all of a sudden they have a panic attack and they're faced with something or they're in a chronic stress situation or whatever it is. And we have to have that hope while we're in it. That's part of the mindset. You know, is that realization that it's not a lifelong condition. It's not a terminal chronic doesn't have to be a chronic condition. Yeah. And I think that to me, the big success story here in this book, even though again, you're not finished with your taper and you're still, and I love how you you're so honest about like, Hey, it's a struggle sometimes still, like this is not all sunshine and rainbows. And I appreciate that honestly, because that's life. But yeah, what I love about this, and this is such a cliche thing. And I'm sure even when you wrote some of this, you understand that, oh, God, I hear this so many times. I can't believe I'm writing this. I don't know if you've ever had those moments, but. Oh, yeah. Coming to the realization in the middle of this, that there is a difference between pain and suffering is such a huge pivot point. Now, I lived a withdrawal experience through from an SSRI, so I can relate to that. And what you're going through with Benzo withdrawal is the same as people are going through right now and dealing with their anxiety disorders. The difference between pain and suffering to me is a huge part of this book that you wrote. And that's to me, the success. That pivot right there. Well, I really appreciate that. I think that's very true. And that was a hard, that was a hard concept to grasp, even though, you know, in my life before all of this, being a therapist and I had worked in grief and loss and trauma and things like that. So I was very much aware of kind of the intellectual difference that I saw between pain and suffering. But when it's your pain, right, there's nothing worse than your pain, right? It gets fuzzy quick, that pain or suffering. And so I think you're right that part of what I was hoping to convey in the book and also continue on a daily basis to try to, you know, just employ in my own life is I think that that pivot point between pain and suffering is that attitude. And I think that's why I talk about Victor Frankel and talk about stoicism and bring in various ideas because it's not that it's like that saying goes, it's not that you have no symptoms. It's when the symptoms don't have you and they don't have you when you have kind of shifted into, OK, this is what I've got, you know, and it's like that Stockdale paradox I talk about in there, which is, you know, the idea that, you know, I believe I will be OK one day and there's certain things I can do to help myself and there's certainly things I can do to make things not worse. But today may not be that day and I still have to do what I have to do to work towards that. So I totally agree with you that that difference between pain and suffering, although it feels very slight when you're in it, it makes a world of difference. It is there's such a nuance there. And I think one of the hard things about trying to convey that and I've run into that, too, is it can really quickly sound like you're invalidating somebody's pain. So that's and like you said, there's nothing worse than your pain. I get that. And when trying to teach the lesson of the difference between pain and suffering, it is difficult. So I understand that some people might be listening right now and think, well, clearly, then she doesn't understand how I feel. He doesn't understand how I feel like we probably do. And I do understand that it's validating. It can. It can be. And that's the last thing I want to do would be to further gaslight people, right? Because I think that's part of what I also write about in the book is how easy that is to have happened to be gaslit, right? And so I think you're exactly right. It's a fine line. And it's certainly not saying, hey, if you're still in pain, you're not doing something right. That's not it. When I heard your story about your own anxiety experience, right, you had three really, if I remember correctly, three really distinct, very, very, very long, painful episodes with this. Was that because you were a bad person? You weren't working hard enough? You weren't, you know, no. And it's not a statement against that. But I agree with that. And the idea that the worst kind of pain is your own, for sure. And that constant working towards how can I not get just sucked down into the weeds over and over and over again? And I think that's just that thing we have to keep practicing, hopefully. And it's a good point that you make. Yeah, and that was a tough one, I think. For me, it was, it becomes a gradual, like I have to at least consider the possibility that maybe there's a difference in pain and suffering and maybe there's something I can do about this. It's not a thing that you wake up one morning and discover like, oh, I just had a huge mindset shift and suddenly I'm not suffering anymore. For me, it wasn't that. It was a gradual, oh, I'm gonna have to at least consider that there should be a different way to do this than I'm doing it. Absolutely. And I also think, just to be transparent, on a regular basis, I'm in the weeds. So it's not a state that I've achieved, right? It's an ongoing, it's kind of like mindfulness, right? Like you don't achieve a state of mindfulness. So I can have a really bad week or really bad month or really bad day and I can find myself back in that place and I can feel myself falling back into that hopeless, oh God, we're never gonna get out of this. Here we go again, I can't believe it. All the stuff that happens and I give myself some grace or try to at least in those moments to know those times are gonna happen. I'm not gonna get it. There's no perfection in this and there's no, there's no metal, there's no metal for this. This is such a, I think your podcast and my book and all these attempts that we make so people don't have to go out alone. And at the end of the day, you do to a certain extent. It is a hero's journey and it's not a trajectory out of hell that's just linear. It has lots and lots of turns and dips and it can be scary if you don't understand that. Well, some of it is so much, I spend a lot of time and effort trying to get people to remain focused on process as opposed to outcome. But it's really difficult as human beings, we do not want to feel pain, we want to feel better. So I do understand that. Like I really am focused on an outcome which is feeling better, but it's so hard and especially in your situation and anybody who's going through a Benza withdrawal, SSRI withdrawal, you can't make it feel better. We were talking about that earlier. Like no one that's only accepting Claire Weeks'ing through this makes it go away, only time will. So it's a different animal in a way. It's not, there's no doubt about it. And so you're basically asking yourself the question while I'm waiting for time to pass, is there anything I can do that, and the way I look at it is, okay, if this is gonna be another couple of years of my life, when this, when enough time has passed, right? I would love to come out of this with better skills than when I went in. And so even though it might not be helping me today in this moment, this hour, this week, my belief is kind of the process might yield a stronger, more resilient me. And Drew, maybe this replies to kind of, all of your listeners, but I know it certainly applies to me and a lot of people I talk to, but there's a quote, I think it was by John Grayson. He was talking mostly about OCD, but I think it applies to so many of us. And he said, it's the feeling of going insane while you're sane enough to witness the event. And I think that was a perfect way to describe anxiety, extreme anxiety, and also medication withdrawal. And so you're right, there's not a whole lot in that moment you can do to necessarily make it better. So the question is, can I do some things here to not make it worse and maybe in the long run, there's gonna be an additive effect that's gonna benefit me. Yeah, which is such a great outlook, even though not necessarily comforting in the moment or impactful in the moment. So I do understand. You know, that's first of all, it's a great quote from John Grayson as a legend in the OCD community for those of you can look them up. I would recommend anything that John Grayson says. So go ahead. But I think that's a great quote because the awareness, I'm still sane enough to witness the event, but awareness has also benefits too. So when you say, hey, look, many times I wind up in the weeds and I do fall back into that. But having cultivated this approach that you've cultivated and that you're trying your best to use, there's an awareness at some point that, oh, I'm doing it again. Oh, I'm doing it. I'm back into my old victim habits. That's gotta be so valuable. Yeah, it is. I mean, just yesterday, this is kind of perfect timing because just yesterday I was having kind of a rough day and I found myself spending hours, in essence kind of reassurance seeking, looking at things online, trying to find other people's experiences, right? And I caught myself. It took me a couple hours, but I caught myself and I was like, okay, Jen, you could do this. You could keep doing this, but it's not helping you. You're not feeling better. You're not getting any relief in this. And it pulled me a little bit back out of those behaviors and got me kind of, you know, kind of pointed back in the right direction. But again, I think it's important to know, like, you know, there's no state of enlightenment, necessarily while you're in it that you achieve and from that point forward, you know, all of your attention is focused in a very particular direction. It's very up and down. Yeah, yeah, that's great. I love that. There's no state of enlightenment that suddenly occurs and you're good to go. Doesn't happen that way. Yeah, so so much of, it's interesting is when I got the book, Jen sent me the book, I opened it up and I just thumbing through it and I texted you within like 10 minutes because there was so much stuff that jumped out at me immediately. So I'm seeing quotes from the great Stoics and I'm seeing references to Lao Tzu and things that I hold dear and that helped me through my process. So I think it's great that you've kind of latched on, not latched on, but you've adopted some of these philosophies that I can relate to in a big way and I think are so helpful. But in the end, to me, it always was, this person is not a clinician, not a therapist, that I think I will never forget Lisa who was involved during my protracted SSRI withdrawal on a website that I was on. And she said, you just have to act as if and all those philosophies that you and I can go on and on about, I'm sure for hours, to me, ultimately boiled down to, well now I'm just gonna have to act as if, I'm gonna have to do the best I can in the moment with what I have right now. So I know it's not optimal, but I can still do the best I can, acting as if I'm still capable, even when I don't believe that I am. Does that ever enter into it for you? Yeah, no, it's kind of a critical point to it. And I'd spent months, I'll just be honest, I spent months kind of bed surfing, waiting for something to shift, and I soon realized it wasn't gonna happen that way. And I became, as I'm sure many of your listeners probably can relate to, my world became really small, really fast. And so there was this kind of fake it till you make it, I hate that saying actually, but it's true. And so I began to, I had been a therapist for 26 years, so I gave a lot of primacy to, if I think it or feel it, I must try to understand it and unpack it, and sit with it, and it must mean something. And so it was really kind of strangely foreign to me, to, with my own self, to suddenly say, so what? You're having that thought, you're having that feeling, you're having that sensation, oh well, it is what it is. And you could sit here on the bed and will it away, which doesn't work. Or you could get up and you could try to engage in your life. And every once in a while, I don't know if this happened to you while you were in your situation, but if I'll get engaged with my family or whatever, something will click in for just even, I'll get glimpses of myself. And it's like Claire Weeks talks about, you build on those glimpses, because if I can have a glimpse for five minutes, well then it's possible that I could have a glimpse for a lot longer than five minutes. And so that was key for me to begin to try to put myself in situations that were uncomfortable. I couldn't wait around to feel comfortable to enter them because it wasn't happening. I did wait, it never came. And then I would get these glimpses and I might still overall be wildly uncomfortable, but I was getting little view, little views of myself and that began to kind of build back my confidence a little bit that this could be, there could be another side to this. Yeah, those small windows, right? In the withdrawal world, windows. Yeah, yeah, I know those terms. Let's go, we're gonna go a little off script if you don't mind, because this isn't necessarily withdrawal related, but what you just said as a therapist for 26 years, it's ingrained in me to latch on to every thought and feeling I have an unpack it and honor it and analyze it and figure out and I can get meaning. And I think sometimes what makes the shift that you have made in the way you're approaching your situation even more admirable is your willingness to say, well, that's not working for me in this context, in this context. And I know you listen to my podcast, they know you're involved in other information that sounds like what I'm putting out, which is great. We are often people like us, I will tell you a very quick, I think you relate to this, in a room full of 150 therapists in training and last week when I was on site in my grad program and 30 seasoned clinicians who are professors, you get that blank look when I say things like that, well, not every thought matters because are you kidding me? And so we get a reputation as mechanics and engineers and cold, heartless manipulators of behavior and we don't understand the human spirit. But sometimes I just love that you were able to embrace that like, well, I'm gonna have to drop this for now here in this. Because I think many people just have a hard time with that but my thoughts are the most important thing I have. Yeah, my thoughts and my feelings are myself. And I think, yeah, this has been a huge professional identity crisis a little bit for me as well, because I kind of valued myself as an empathic, compassionate, open-minded clinician. I think I am, I think I was. So you still are by the way. But, well, thank you, I hope so. But the reality is that my training was not really one that I think is helpful for a lot of people with anxiety and med discontinuation, right? Because the reality is, is I didn't learn about junk mail. I didn't learn about the junk channels of the brain. I didn't learn about, it was literally like if I'm thinking or feeling this, then I must need to sit back and really see what it means about me, what the deeper meaning is, what it's symbolic of. And so yeah, I can really now think about, wow, one day when I go back to being a clinician, I will be a very different clinician. I do think there are people that obviously specialized in things like OCD or got these kind of second waves of CBT that have come out and things that have had better training and maybe more exact training on these. But it's been a little scary for me, honestly, as a clinician to realize like, wow, my approach or my philosophy wasn't gonna help a lot of people and it certainly wasn't gonna help me. Yeah, but it's not that it's not helpful at all. I'm not trying to call out the therapy establishment anyway. I mean, there's a lot of different ways to approach a lot of different problems. So this is not the solution to every mental health problem either. Absolutely, no, no, it's not. But I do think that when you're dealing with extreme anxiety and this is obviously what I'm dealing with in my discontinuation, giving a lot of power to every thought-filling or sensation that comes across my body or my mind screen, I think it is important to shift that. Again, it's a different mindset. And I think it can be a little scary, right? Because we wanna find therapists and I think they're out there. I've met many, I've actually met hundreds of them over the last couple of years. So I know that there's therapists out there that take this approach. I happen to think just personally that this approach makes the best sense or at least it has for me. And I think you're right, there's all different types of therapists and all different types of therapy and they all have their place and they can be very useful at different times. But it was a paradigm shift for me to say, I had intrusive thoughts in this, right? And to be able to think like that intrusive thought is not reflective of something that I want. It doesn't mean anything about me. In fact, if it means anything about me, it means the opposite. Right. Of who I am and what I want, right? So again, it was a real learning curve for me even after all those years working in the field. And so yeah, I feel very humbled by that. Well, I think again, huge amount of respect for I know the process that you probably had to go through to reach this conclusion. And I think the takeaway for anybody listening is, Jen has immersed herself professionally and dedicated her life to this and was confronted with maybe a bit of dissonance there between what I believe in and what I think is best for me now. So if you're struggling to adopt this sort of mindset or this approach, it's okay. Like you will start, yeah. And many, many people who are listening whether they're just dealing with their anxiety disorders or they're in a, I love how you use the term discontinuation. This is how you know somebody is actually living it because they know discontinuation is the official term. It's not withdrawal. But if you are in the process right now, it is not intuitive to drop thoughts and sensations on the floor in any way. It's gonna be a struggle to get that. That's that process of starting to move in that direction. It is. And then I think also just having listened to your story and so many other people's stories, whether they're in a discontinuation syndrome or not, when you're getting those rapid fire thoughts, feelings and sensations and you're not kind of finding the space between them, right? It can even be that much more challenging, right? How do I even carve out that space between, I feel like I'm swimming in a soup of thoughts and feelings and sensations rather than these discrete things that are coming at me, one hour this, one hour this. A lot of times people will describe feeling like they're just like kind of swimming in it. And it can be so hard to find that entry point to begin to carve out a little bit of space. Let's talk for a second before we start to wrap it up. And if you'd like to come back, I'd love to have you back as we go. Absolutely, I'd love it. Great, because I love these conversations and I think they're really valuable to people and I appreciate you sharing in this way. So one of the things that you wrote about in the book is how you had to really be careful about the information you were consuming and where you went for support at any given time. That was, I was kind of fist bumping when I read those parts of the book, coming to the conclusion that like, hey, sometimes the withdrawal forms are useful to me, but sometimes they're not. Right. Yeah. Yeah, that's a really important piece for me, even in an ongoing way. I think the forums saved my life. You know, it's all peer support driven, right? And so I learned a lot. It's how I learned what was wrong with me. It's how I learned how to taper. There wasn't, I didn't have unfortunately, somebody that understood that I might need a much longer process. That said, once I kind of got some of those basic questions answered, I felt the need to find other sources to go to. And that's where I found you and some other places where there was hope and there was strategy. There was a dialogue and a discourse that was happening around moving out of and moving through and accepting and allowing the state we're in. And I found if I went back to the forums, I could get sucked down these rabbit holes. Of people's stories where I'd be comparing their symptoms and sensations to my own and then I'd find hours would pass and I would feel worse. And so I think it became really important. We have to protect ourselves in this because I think one of the things I love about Claire Weeks is that trajectory that she discusses where suggestibility is the second piece of that trajectory. And we're so suggestible because we're so scared. And so we have to be incredibly careful about where we put our eyes and our ears during that process. Yeah, yeah. Let's touch on for a second as a final point. You talked about who you were able, who you would go to for support. Who can listen to how I feel again? How that had to change. At one point, you seem to come to the conclusion like I can't keep telling my best friend about how I feel today. Yeah. Yeah, well, I mean, when somebody hears your, and again, I think this is true probably for most people going through something similar. You know, when our culture is not one that allows for long-term suffering or pain, right? Stay with pain. We're not a culture that accepts that. We want a pill, we want to fix, you know, it's not okay that you are suffering or struggling or in pain for hours or days, let alone potentially months or years, right? So, you know, it was no failing on anyone's part. I think it's ingrained in us to say what can you take? What can you do? Can you get to this clinic? Can you go to this doctor? Can you do this? And so I had to basically kind of stop doing that because it wasn't helping me, it wasn't helping them. And they were just doing what I think people that love us do, which is they want to see us out of our pain. We want out of our pain, but we are learning that there's a real process to that and it's not necessarily a quick fix. And again, we're not, you know, with three-day bereavement leaves, you know, things like that, you know, we're not a culture that's dead, right? You know, there's just not a lot of room for that. Yeah, yeah, that's a good point. Very good, very good. So for those of you who are interested in Jen's story, her book is called The Waiting Room. And I will come back at the end of the interview, I'll wrap it up. And on my website at the anxioustruth.com slash 223 will be the show notes for this episode. We'll have some highlights of what Jen has talked about. I'll have a link to the book, I'll have a link to all Jen's places online, website and everything else. But is there anything that you would like to leave people with one gem, no pressure, just sum it all up in one sentence, no big deal. One gem. One gem. One gem. Yeah. You're telling them gem. I think they're ENNS. I think I want to go back to that quote that I said earlier, which is it's not when you stop having symptoms, it's when the symptoms stop having you. Yeah, that's great. And that is what we can control, right? That's that piece that wisdom in the serenity prayer that exists, right? The wisdom to know the difference of what we can control and what we can't. And that mindset, that practicing of that shift in our mindset, I think is very critical and key. And so I think there's a lot of hope in that. Yeah, excellent. That was a great quote. Where did that come from? You know, I don't know. And I want to give the person the right credit. I want to say I heard Sally Winston say it. You know, she's a talk about a lot of intrusive thoughts. I think I heard her say it. So I'm going to quote, I'm going to give Sally Winston the credit. That's fine. She deserves credit for a whole lot of things, so. She does. You never say it. Let's say she said it. It's totally fine. And thank you so much. I appreciate it. We'll do it again if you're up for it. I'm sure people want to hear more from you, but I'll be back in a minute. We'll wrap it up. I'll give you all the links so you can go get the book if you wanted. I highly recommend it. It's super inspiring. And I'm glad we ran into each other. Me too, Drew. It's been a pleasure. Yeah, yeah. Okay, I'll be back in a minute. Thanks guys. Okay, we are back. I so enjoyed that half hour or so that I got to talk to Jen about her experiences and the lessons that she is learning and the way she's putting them into practice. And I do hope that you find it helpful, inspiring, encouraging, hopeful in some way. I will definitely have Jen back on the podcast at some point soon. We'll sort of follow her progress. She'll share her experiences with us. We were talking a little bit after the interview. There's a bunch of different topics we could talk about that involve medication. The thing that I wanna really point out in a big way is that I appreciate that Jen is not making this a referendum on medication. The fact that she stays pretty neutral on the topic, understands the value of it. I've said this many, many times. It's an individual choice. There are benefits. It can help you in certain situations 100%. So I appreciate that Jen takes such a respectful approach to this and does not want to engage in pharma bashing and med bashing and med shaming. It's great. So I just wanted to point that out. This is not a referendum on medication in any way, shape, or form. This is just one person's experiences and the way that she is learning to navigate a difficult situation. So that's it. That's it for episode 223. If you want to find Jen online, I have it up on the screen if you're watching on YouTube right now. Her website is jenniferswanphd.com. But if you go to my website and the show notes for this episode, theanxiestruth.com slash 223, I will link all of Jen's stuff. I will give you a link over to Amazon if you would like to buy a copy of The Waiting Room. It's a really great book. It really is. I'm never going to tell you to buy a book, but I enjoyed this one. So I'll give you all the ways to get it. And that's it. We are done for episode 223. You know it's over because music. After Globe by Ben Drake. You guys know this by now. So you can find Ben and his music at bendrakemusic.com. There's a surprise. So go check him out. Great human being, great musician. Tell him that I said hello if you do. And I will leave you asking you a favor if you're watching this, if you're listening to this podcast on Apple or Spotify, someplace where you can leave a rating or review. Leave us a five star rating if you dig the podcast. And if you really did the podcast, take a second and write a short review because it helps other people find the podcast and hopefully get some of the help that they're looking for. I appreciate that. And if you're watching on YouTube, subscribe to my channel, like the video, leave a comment. I'm digging, interacting with you guys on YouTube. I enjoy getting in there every couple of days and answering comments and hearing what you have to say. So that's great. And then of course, I have to tell you also to hit the notification bell so you know when I upload a new video. And that is it. Thanks for coming by. I appreciate your time and attention. We will be back next week with another podcast. I don't know what I'm gonna talk about, but I will be here. And remember, as always, this is the way. This is where your story begins. You got the feeling that you're gonna win. Yeah, you're doing fine.