 we say, I want to get better. We should try to set some goals along the way because it helps us remain objective in interpreting our progress and how we're doing. So it's Monday, which means it's Recovery Monday. This is episode 23. Let's roll. I'm gonna put the chat overlay up. Standard rules apply as you guys pop in. Just let me know that you can hear me. Let me know everything's working okay. I will let me know where you're from. Let me know how it's going. We have a lot to cover today in this episode. So I'm gonna kind of gallop through a lot of stuff. I'll just do a quick reminder. We are teaching lessons right out of this book. Every Monday, Recovery Monday is essentially right out of this book, The Anxious Truth. So if you do not have a copy of that book and you wanna grab it, it's on my website at theanxiestruth.com. And today we are talking about lesson 4.3. So lesson, chapter four in the book is all about kind of creating your recovery plan. And lesson 4.3 is about the need to sort of set goals. So we're gonna go over that. Buffalo went to UB. UB grad right here. So yeah, I was in the School of Architecture up there a while ago. I'm not gonna say the exact, you know, you see the gray in the beard. Anyway, hey Carol, hey Helen, what up everybody? Buffalo driving coming up. Don is here, what's up? What's going on? So yeah, good to see everybody. Like I said, we have a lot to get through today. So I'm just sort of kind of lop through the topic today. And I gotta look at some notes. I even had to make notes on my own damn book. Then I promise we're gonna talk a little bit. We're gonna do some Q and A. I promise I will look at your comments. But let me sort of get through this first and then we'll go and do some comments. And before we get started on making goals, let me just also acknowledge our GAD people in the room, generalized anxiety people here. The, I don't have panic attacks, but I'm just anxious all the day, all time people. We're gonna talk about you too. I promise that this stuff applies to you as well. So just stick with me here. So everybody wants to get better, right? We all want to get better. And so if you ask somebody like what your recovery goal is and understand that this is a little bit weird because I also talk a lot about not being outcome focused but being process focused. Nonetheless, we do have goals, right? We do have outcomes that we're looking for. So we can all say like we want to get better but I want to get better is really vague and I want to get better really puts us in a position where we could very subjectively interpret each individual event, each individual moment, each individual day, a week at a time. So if we stay really sort of amorphous and like, well, my goal is to get better. Of course, everybody's goal is to get better but it helps so much more when we can identify specific goals that we want to reach along the way to getting better because when we make them sort of concrete and well-defined and we break them up into little chunks if we can and we make them wherever possible measurable. Not everything in life is measurable. So this is not an exact science here. There's no specific math and exact science to making your goals in recovery but we just want to try and take the subjectivity out of it and make them break it down so that we can well-defined the things that we want to be able to do. What can we not do now that we want to be able to do along the way to recovery? So if you are, say, agoraphobic in your homebound maybe going on a cruise around the world is where you want to get to but that's not where you go on day one. So first we're gonna start with walking out the door and hanging out on the front steps and then walking around the block and taking a short drive. So that's why we break this down and we say, okay, well, one of my ultimate goals to get better but along the way, I need to learn to do this. I need to practice this, this, this, this and this and that's why we want to set goals because if we don't then and we don't make them measurable wherever we can again, life is not always measurable but if we leave it all too subjectively then we fall into that trap of how I felt. I felt really bad today. So it's a setback square one. I felt really bad or this was scary so it must have been wrong and we lose sight of the fact that no, no, I actually am doing things that I wasn't able to do two weeks ago or a month ago or two months ago. I set a goal to be able to go grocery shopping by myself and I just did it. I was scared but I did it. Like I reached that goal, I did it and you see how that takes away the, oh, it was horrible, it was a nightmare, it was hell and then you declare failure when there was no failure, it was actually a victory. So it's the reason why we want to make a recovery plan as best we can within the limits of what life kind of throws at us is that it helps keep us sort of honest in terms of how we evaluate our progress and how we judge what we're doing. That matters. We get trapped in that sort of the trap of judging ourselves really harshly and throwing in the towel when we don't really have to. One sort of adjunct topic to this is the idea that you might wanna keep a victory journal or a success journal that goes along with this. Today I plan to take my first drive on the highway to do one exit or one interchange on the motorway and I did it. And then you write that down. You reach the goal, you set a goal, you knew what it was, it was measurable, you did it, you wrote it in your success journal. See how that's very different than just sitting around and bringing your hands over how you feel all the time. Okay, so that's why we want to sort of make goals along the way as opposed to just saying I want to get better because we all wanna get better. And along the way there's gonna be steps, right? So if you are in one state today to completely try to wipe out that state and again, the example I gave was maybe an agoraphobic person who is a little bit homebound or sort of modified agoraphobic because a very small safe zone or I can only go out with my safe person and you really wanna be able to go to your cousin's wedding which is across the country in six months, that's great but there are steps that have to happen along the way. One of the reasons why we like to make goals to and break them down, and we're gonna talk about sort of the fear ladder here and breaking them down that way too is a lot of people get stuck either they get stuck going too slow like they're so afraid to do scary things and so reluctant and resistant to it that they try and take tiny little, the tiniest baby steps which is okay if that works but they either err on the side of going too slow so I don't wanna trigger myself but kind of triggering yourself as part of the deal it's kind of the purpose of this or you get that thing that's like no way I'm tired of this, I'm gonna run this thing over I'm gonna cure this whole thing in a week and they run all the way to the far end of the goals and that tends to blow up in people's faces. So when we set out a fear ladder and we start to break this thing down and we say okay we're gonna go from the sort of easiest stuff to the middle stuff to the hardest stuff then it gives you a plan to follow. The other good reason why we make a plan and put goals inside that plan is because you don't have to think about what to do. Anxious people are terrible decision makers I know I was. So when I woke up in the morning and my stomach was in a knot and I was terrified and I was super anxious like I was every morning I didn't have to think in that state well what do I have to do today? What should I do today? I already knew what I was doing today. I get up, I run my morning routine I get in the car, I drive. So another good reason to have goals is that it gives you something to do that you don't have to decide to do in the moment where you're a little bit overcome by fear and emotion for terrible decision makers in those situations we make decisions based on fear not based on recovery if we leave it to chance and how we feel from day to day. So that's one of the reasons why we do this too. So let's talk about in the book I talk about building a fear ladder and so you work up from the easiest stuff to the hardest stuff and we break it down from like the most basic short term goals if you're homebound I wanna be able to at least go and pick up my kids from school that's a short term goal. It's like immediately impactful in your life maybe a middle goal which is wanna be able to go back to work part time and then a long term goal which is I wanna take that cruise around the world or I wanna move to Japan and live there. So we break it down sort of into categories so you can work it systematically the best you can. Now, within each of those categories we kinda do wanna mix it up, right? So more and more information comes out of the clinical field now especially the last 10 or 15 years that says varied experiences are the way to go. So you are working a fear ladder but you wanna kind of mix up your experiences also because that tends to lead to a more durable and lasting recovery. One of the things about sort of old school traditional CBT and exposures that it was great but the relapse sort of numbers were a little bit high and those relapse numbers start to really drop when we start to do this and we mix up our experiences over time. So instead of maybe like, well, I'm gonna drive around the block every single day for six months while I'm gonna drive around the block I'm gonna take a walk, I'm gonna go to the park you mix things up along your plan, right? So you make your plan and you set your goals and you mix those things up. You don't mix up like, well, today I can just sit in my garden for 10 minutes and tomorrow I'm gonna get on a plane and fly to Switzerland. Like that's not mixing it up but we're gonna talk about what happens when life happens but we do wanna have varied experiences within those categories and you mix things up now with that. And then the other thing that we have to remain aware of, I'm getting there I'm loping through a lot of material I promise I'm gonna look at your comments in a second. Another thing that we wanna be aware of is that we're not only just recovering, right? So life is also happening at the same time and we have to allow that to happen. So there are plenty of times when life is just gonna throw events at you that says, hey, look, I know that you're on your fear ladder you're really only walking around the block but you've gotta go to the dentist. You just have to because you've got a serious dental problem or there's a family event or a birthday party or something with your work or school requires that you go outside of your comfort zone. That's gonna happen. We don't get to decide that life must stop while we recover. In fact, really and truly, I almost want you to be able to embrace the fact that life is going to happen sometimes because we kind of want life and recovery to look like each other. So later on in the book, I wrote, recovery is life and life is recovery. And as you go further down the road they really begin to blur and they just become one thing. So we have to almost embrace the fact that life is gonna throw curves at us it's gonna make us meet bigger challenges than we're ready for at any given time. You just have to know that that's gonna happen. It might be unpleasant. You might really be scared when you do it. You might struggle through it, but we have to do those things too. So life happens outside of our plans, outside of our recovery plans, outside of our goals. We have to meet those challenges as best we can. But being realistic about what those are gonna look like can really help us do that. So we have to be mindful of that too. And then the last thing I wanna go over before we sort of address that but I'm anxious all day long thing, I see the comments, I know you guys are like but what about people who are anxious all day long? What about that? So I think you have to also understand that when you get to this point in recovery and you've decided, okay, I'm gonna make a plan I'm gonna start setting some goals and now I'm gonna start working on those goals. So it's all great to sit in your kitchen with a worksheet. You can download a fear letter worksheet from my website but you can sit in your kitchen and write down your goals and make a cool looking journal of what you're gonna do. But then you have to actually start doing these things. So this is sort of the moment where you go from talking about recovery or learning about it mainly like psycho education stuff to into work. Now you have to actually start doing the things. So this is where the doing starts happening. And a lot of people will find out and I wanna mention this today and like Claire Weeks wrote about this too in her books and most people that talk about the things that they talk about will acknowledge us at some point when you start doing the things that are on your goals list you may be tempted to say a week later, OMG, it got worse. This is making me worse but it's not really making you worse. And I wrote about in the book in more detail what's happening is that when you start doing things so if I'm doing nothing but hiding from those bad feelings all the time and I stop hiding then I will feel those feelings. So you will be tempted when you start to feel the feelings as you're doing the things on your goals list and you're doing your exposures you're meeting your challenges you may be tempted to say, this is making me worse. Well, no, you've been hiding for a year and now you're not hiding anymore so now you're going to actually feel the things. So what I was trying to tell people is you're not getting worse, you're feeling more like you're feeling more that's important because many, many people will find that it almost seems like it's getting worse before it gets better but it's not getting worse when you stop hiding you stop hiding. If you're trying to learn how to swim is an algae you use all the time and you wanna really learn how to swim and you read books about swimming and you listen to podcasts about swimming and you watch videos about swimming and you think about swimming but you never jump in the water because you're afraid to jump in the water. When you jump in the water for the first time in that swim lesson and say, I'm gonna do it you're gonna discover that you're wet and you wouldn't jump out of the pool and say, oh my God, oh my God, I'm wet. You would know like, oh yeah, now that I'm in the pool I'm gonna get wet and that's exactly what's gonna happen, all right? So that's really important. So let me go through the comments a little bit and then we're gonna talk about, I see some of the comment, let me address a specific thing before we go into the light sort of the gad thing and take some comments because sometimes I can catch you guys as you scroll and buy to see what it is you're talking about. One of the things that people tend to do in recovery and look, I understand because I know how that feels. I remember very clearly how it feels to be you right now. I was you and I know that when you are desperate, you are desperate. But sometimes what happens is that people kind of roll into these talks, which I'm very happy to do and I love doing them and hopefully they're helpful. And the topic is this today, the topic is A today, but all I wanna do is come in here and demand that Drew answer my question about X, Y and Z. But recovery doesn't always work that way. So I'm gonna be honest with you, there's a reason why I wrote this book the way I did because there's a lot of information and this book lays it out in a logical sequence. You have to know the concepts, then apply them. So it's really hard, if all you wanna do is just jump to my topic, I need to know about this now because I feel this now. Make this thing feel better for me right now. Like I'm afraid of this now, so I wanna talk about this now. But it doesn't always work that way. Being an active participant in your recovery and advocating for yourself sometimes means, okay, I know I'm a little bit frantic here and I want an answer for my current fear right now, but maybe I gotta stop and learn a little bit or think a little bit about how this process works. So I know how my question even fits into the process. That's kind of important because I saw some comments that have literally nothing to do with today's topic, but I understand I'm not annoyed at you guys. I'm just trying to point out that sometimes you have to help yourself by taking a step back and saying the frantic demand to answer my current fear right this minute is not really working out for me so well. So let's talk about the GAD folks and the people who say that, well, I'm anxious all the time. Then I'm gonna look at the comments and we'll do some questions, I promise. So even people with GAD can come up with a recovery plan. Now I didn't write about this. This is not in the book. I was admittedly in the anxious truth I was specifically writing most likely to people who have panic disorder and agoraphobia and things like that. However, if you are one of those people that just says you're anxious all the time, your plan can exist also, your goals can exist also. So for instance, somebody with GAD has usually has habits and traits underneath those that anxiety, perfectionism, people pleasing, over-planning, control issues, like all of those things. I'll give you a typical old thing. Like I see something that sounds wrong and I have to correct it. Like I can't hear wrong things. I must correct them. Or I can't act on anything without making sure that it'll be okay with everybody first. Or did I get this right? Or am I doing it right? Or did I plan for every possible outcome? So this is a little bit nuanced. You have to start to recognize some of those things. I'm a type A person, I'm an overachiever. I'm the person who takes care of stuff. I'm a problem solver. And your plan, part of your plan is I gotta start to really look at what are some of those typical GAD traits that apply to me, right? So I'm gonna call this anxiety that appears all the time that I am a little bit afraid of. And I know most of you guys will say I'm not afraid of it. Okay, but you don't like it and I understand you don't like it. And, but you call it a mystery. I don't know why I'm like this and I can't get rid of it, but usually there's not a mystery to this. So when I taught, yeah, okay. I'm sorry, I just caught it in the comory. And so people who have all day anxiety, first of all, people with panic disorder and agoraphobia also have all day anxiety. I don't want you to think that people that have panic disorder or agoraphobia panic, it's over. And then they're like super calm until the next attack, it's not it. It's not it at all, right? So I think what winds up happening is part of your goals in terms of GAD is, yes, you need to be able to get up and live your day. So what am I doing to try and avoid the things that make me anxious? Well, a lot of people with GAD will say nothing. I avoid nothing. I just live my life. Just that I live my life every day with my teeth gritted, white knuckling my way through because I'm just always anxious. Well, then the next thing would be, well, how exactly am I living my life? And I'm gonna throw something out here and I think you're gonna know. I kind of think you're gonna know. I'm not gonna say anybody's name, but if your approach to your anxiety is to always ask for, it's okay to be anxious now, right? Is it right to be anxious now? Should I be thinking this now? Is this okay? I had a thought, is that thought okay? And then come back the next day and you engage in the habit all the time. And as an example, and then wanna say, I don't know, I can't get rid of this anxiety. Okay, but do you see how the habit would fuel the anxiety? So part of your goal setting would be like, I have to start to recognize when I'm doing that. Not do it, so a lot of GAD is not doing as opposed to doing like an agoraphobic is, but first you have to start to recognize some of those things and think about, okay, what of those traits can I start to peel back on a little bit and work on going through the discomfort of not seeking reassurance, not over-planning, not overthinking, what else can I do? It's more than I can say in the short little video, but planning does apply to GAD too, maybe not specifically the way it does for an agoraphobic, but you can't just sort of randomly say, well, I'm anxious all the time and I want it to go away. It's a mystery, I don't know what it is and I live my life and that's all I wanna tell you and I wanna get better. You gotta dig a little bit, right? So some of that stuff matters. I understand, I know you're working on it. I know you're working on it, but that is just one possible trait. There's a whole lot of that. If you are one of those people, the trait of constantly seeking reassurance, am I doing this right? You may be driven by I do everything wrong. I need to make sure everything I do is right. I don't think I'm capable. My emotions are gonna be too big, so I have to do everything that I can to make sure I never feel them. There's a lot of things that go under that. Again, it's beyond the scope of this little video, but planning matters for GAD too. You gotta do a little digging and start to own some of those traits and say, okay, I've got to work on those bit by bit. So let's go through some comments here. And let's see, where are we? 20 minutes. I could do about 10 minutes of comments, very good. Like I said, we had a lot today. There was a lot in this to try and loop through so I know what's going on here. What's up, everybody? Everybody said hello, thank you, thank you, thank you. Let's see here. Maria says, at first I was making progress and I was managing, but these last ones, I feel kind of stuck in them and I'm making progress. Okay, so I won't put it up on the screen, but I'll put it up really quickly. It's kind of a big comment. It's one of those I have to look over. There's always one of those everyone. So Maria's saying that she feels like getting, she was making progress and it starts to get stuck. And that's really common. So if you are feeling like you are making progress, you were making progress, but now you feel like you're stuck, I would kind of bring it back, especially in the situation that you mentioned where you're like going to the supermarket and things like that. So if you're working a panic disorder or a goryphobia plan and you feel like, well, now I'm stuck, well, what's the next thing to do in your plan? Like what's the next thing? So we make our plan and we make our goals. Like, well, do I have to back up a little bit? Let me back up a little bit and repeat some of the old stuff. Stuck usually means, I don't like the way I feel when I do these things. And I'm not willing to tolerate it at this level. So it was easier in the beginning. And as I move up my fear ladder, it's getting harder and I don't want it to be harder. So I'm going to say that it's stuck because I don't want to do the things. Sometimes that's it. Like stuck is, I don't want to go any further than this, but you have to, you have to just keep moving up. But sometimes you also have to back up. That's why I talked about, you know, sometimes we have to reevaluate our plan a little bit. We judge our progress a little bit and say, okay, based on my plan, how am I doing? You may have to back up a little bit. They have to adjust a few things. It's all doable, but underneath a lot of that stuckness can be like, well, it's getting harder and I don't really want it to be harder. So I'm going to say I'm stuck. So you got to be careful about that. Let's see here. Let's scroll down here. What about heart anxiety would be the recovery ladder? Okay, that's fair. So the theory, understand that you're working from easiest to hardest. So for somebody who has like a heart focused anxiety, and I had that, it would literally, you're probably spending all of your time trying to not let your heart beat too quickly. Right, so I can't do anything. I know people that wouldn't walk upstairs, wouldn't walk too fast. I know people that wouldn't ever bend over to turn, you know, to tie their shoes because when you stand back up again, your heart rate goes up a little bit. You become super sensitive to that. So a fear ladder for heart anxiety would be, you have to start working on getting your heart rate up a little bit more, a little bit more, a little bit more, a little longer, a little longer. So it's almost like a textbook graduated exposure plan if that's your problem. But the issue now is that, well, first that could just literally be, and I did two episodes on this. If you go to the anxioustruth.com and search for the word exercise, you'll see two of the most popular podcast episodes I ever did years ago, called why does anxiety make, why does exercise make my anxiety worse, right? And in that situation, it doesn't, you just, you're just feeling the things you don't want to feel. So I talked about that. You could literally just stand up and walk in place. If you're afraid to do that, then you start there. Then you start walking around the house, then you start walking outside of the house in your garden, then you go for a walk around the block, then you start to jog a little bit for 60 seconds. That's the fear ladder for heart anxiety. So there you go. All right, let me scroll down a little bit more here. No, no, no, no, no. Okay, I'll throw this out here. I end up being pulled back. So Jackie, I would ask, well, what does, what does that mean I get pulled back? Usually I get pulled back means it got scary and I bailed. Like I was okay, I could do this, but then when it got scarier, I'm bailing out. But that's a choice that we make. This is the thing that sucks about this and I hate having to say this, but I had to confront this for myself. Like we do have choice here. We do have choice. If you want to keep saying, well, my breathing or my heart rate is pulling me backwards on the fear ladder, no, no, you're choosing to follow a fear that has never, ever, ever come true. If you're in the room and watching me right now, then that fear of I can't breathe and my heart is a problem has never actually been true. Real fear, just baseless. And sometimes we decide, nope, I'm gonna follow that. I'm gonna go back to following that when I get really scared. I'm gonna run away from my exposures, but then I'm gonna say I'm being pulled back. So you have to really be honest with yourself and say, well, what has pulled back me? What has pulled, hey, Twitch, what up? I get my obligatory one Twitch viewer. So be careful about that I'm being pulled back. I got scared, then I got scared and I thought, okay, sometimes you get scared. We have to do these things scared. The scared is the whole point of this. The being scared is the whole point of this. So one of the things that sometimes blows the goals and the plans out of the water is people forget that part. Oh, it's supposed to be challenging. It's supposed to be scary. It's the fear that teaches us the lesson. So if you're hoping to move up the fear ladder and somehow find a way to do it so it's really not that scary, you will be disappointed and you'll start to feel like this isn't working and I can't make progress. The fear is the whole point. Like without the fear, you wouldn't have to do it. It wouldn't be called exposure. It would just be called life. So keep that in mind. I hate saying that, but it's true. Oh, no, no, no, let's see here. Let's see. Oh, Bonnie wants to know, mixing up the exposures is that kind of new. It is a little bit new. Like if you went back to sort of old school, CBT, you wouldn't have heard that that much. I mean, life sort of makes us mix up our exposures, but the idea of using specific worksheets, even the fear ladder that I have that you can download from my website almost implies that you have to do one wrong and then the other. And I even implied a little bit of that in my writing, but the book was written two years ago and we learn as we go. And at some point the book will get updated. So yes, it's a little bit new, but again, we mix up our exposures within reason. We don't go from like walking around the block to a cruise around the world, but yeah, mix things up. And the part that you said I like to do enjoyable exposures, yes, 100% that. So if you have stuff that you like to do more than others, you got to do the crappy stuff, but do stuff you like to do. We want to make our recovery process look as much like life as we possibly can, which isn't always easy. In the beginning, we're manufacturing stuff to do. Like I don't want to walk around the block. I have no reason to do that, but you do that to trigger the fear. And then over time you start to try and make it look more like life organically if possible. A lot to talk about in a short video, okay? Let's see, I'm the king of lists. Let's see here. Well, some of this, I'll just, I just a big comment. Lucy's talking about what about feeling physically exhausted. They don't have to go toward the fear, feeling dizzy, blah, blah, blah, but my body actually has to rest. Well, yeah, like this work is tiring. So I will tell you that, you know, I would go out and do my exposures every day. And yeah, by the end of the day, I was tired. Like it actually even helped my sleep to be honest with it because I was genuinely like exhausted, man. Like it does take a lot out of you and that's okay. But the thing that we have to care about in terms of being physically exhausted is, yes, this is hard work, but sometimes being completely destroyed after an exposure is a really good indicator that you are just hanging on like hot death, trying to get through it so you can get back to your safe place and get it over with. That is exhausting. That is more exhausting than letting go. I'll tell you right now, because I've been there, I've done that. Like I lived a long time that way and that will wear your ass right to the ground for sure. So if you are a wreck after every exposure, you got to really ask yourself, am I just pushing through this to get it over with so I can get back to the safe bubble? That is really tiring work. That being said, this is exhausting work. It's exhausting mentally, it's exhausting physically. That's okay. It's like people when we work hard, we get tired. Be careful about declaring that fatigue or feeling tired is another problem. Like human beings get tired when we work hard, that's okay. Allow the tired and go ahead and rest when you need to rest, totally fine. Like you're allowed to rest at the end of the night. Rest, it's all good. But we have to be really careful about, well, now I'm tired and now I've tacked another, see now I'm tired, I'm doing exposures and now I'm really tired, now I'm exhausted. Yeah, okay, you're supposed to be exhausted. It's like saying, well, I started lifting weights and now my arms are sore. Yeah, they're supposed to be sore. So we have to be careful about calling the fatigue another problem. Well, see, that's a problem, can't allow that. I'm afraid of feeling like that. It's okay. So let's see here. A rendition of an offspring song. I don't know if it's sure that I know an offspring song, but I don't know why they cracked me up so much. Put it up on the screen. I'm never gonna take these guitars out of the wall and play for you guys. I'm just, it's never gonna happen. I posted one video, I think it's on my Instagram if you wanna look in the highlights where I did record a David Gilmore cover about two years ago and I put it up and that's probably the end of that. Like I play for me, that's it. It's just, it's a thing I do for myself. Let's see. I need to work. Let's see, I need to work, but I'm scared to. A lot of what ifs, I can't handle it if I panic there, if I lose control. The fear ladder in that situation to call is pretty much exactly what I wrote. Like you're not describing a special circumstance. You are describing almost textbook disordered anxiety. Like I'm gonna feel things if I go to work and I'm afraid to feel those things. So your fear ladder is, yes, anything that triggers those things. So sometimes you don't have a choice. If you have to go to work, you have to go to work, but you can also work on like, where else do I get really uncomfortable? Because I think I'm gonna snap or I can't handle it. So it's not so much, understand also that we build a fear ladder almost to manufacture the bad feelings, right? So I don't care if you're in the supermarket or at work or driving around the block or on the highway. Like that almost doesn't matter. Where you are is only a means to trigger the feelings and the thoughts that you fear. So the fear ladder is really just a way for you to incrementally and practice triggering the things that you have been running from. You don't run from work. You don't run from the highway or the supermarket. You don't run from the dentist. You run from how it feels when you do those things. So the fear ladder is based on how can I practice feeling those things intentionally? What will help me practice feeling that? So it's hard for me to say, Nicole, in your specific instance, I don't know, but use that as a guiding principle. What can I use? What can I practice that will trigger these things that I'm afraid of? So you have to learn that like, yeah, I'm really afraid that I'm gonna snap and lose control, but I'm gonna have to let that fear be and move through it. Let's see here, thank you. Helen just said, or a while ago, it's practice to learn how to cope with the symptoms. We do this to learn that we are okay, even when we feel certain that we are not okay. That's the reason why we do this. So you have to kind of, we are intentionally feeling not okay. It's just a shitty deal. I hate that we have this deal, but it's a deal we got. And I'm saying this over and over and over. So we have to work that process. So there you go. Jason, this is a good comment too. I'm gonna scroll quickly to the bottom because we're getting a little over 30 minutes and I got some stuff going on, but one thing I fail at is making a plan and not sticking with it. So the reason why I like the idea of making a plan, again, within reason, you cannot plan every minute of life. You can't do it. But sometimes we, without that plan, we become directionless a little bit in our recovery. I'm like, well, today I'm feeling really good today. So I'm gonna do some recovery stuff today. And I do good for a few days, but then I have a few bad days. So I stop and I retreat and I rest, rest. And then, you know, I kind of do another thing when I feel good. The plan and the goals tell us what we have to do to get better without having to evaluate if we should do it or not in any given day. That's the value of the plan and the goals. If you, and I said this in the beginning of the video, if you leave it up to evaluating day by day, what I think I should do today or what I can do today, it becomes really hard to be consistent. And then you judge and make decisions based on how you feel and then you wind up being frustrated down the road. So I don't wanna make it sound like you could become a robot. I make a plan and I make goals and I follow them one by one and I walk up the steps of the ladder. It's sort of that, that's true, but it also has to fit into your life, but there's a reason why we do this because it's a balance between making it up as you go along, life happening randomly and having a plan to follow. A plan is one of the most, the nicest things you can do for yourself. Like instead of just putting yourself in this aimless quagmire of like making it up as you go along, you don't feel so good, a plan can really help you. And like, believe it or not, it can really help you because it takes away that pressure of like, oh, I just, I haven't gone out for four days because I haven't been having a bad week and then you get down on yourself. Like save yourself from getting down on yourself. It's a really, really nice thing to do for yourself. Okay. Let me scroll down quickly to the bottom here. No, no, no, no, no, no, starting to feel, okay, getting where I'm asking you. Are you feeling a little worse? How do we, okay, I'll put this up real quick. What you said about starting to feel things more equals feeling a little worse. How do we distinguish between that and getting worse? That's a lot of thinking. So the answer to that is, that's just a lot of thinking. You're not required. So in the Facebook group, Lisa, I don't know if you're here but one of the admins, Lisa Wiffel-Dust in the Facebook group, she said something to somebody yesterday, I think it was, that was brilliant. She said, you're studying your anxiety, man. Like some of that is that like, well now when I feel stuff, I need to analyze, well, do I feel it because I'm doing recovery wrong or I'm in bad habits or I missed up, did I miss a step, did I miss a podcast? Is this supposed to be this way? When in reality, it's just, I feel stuff now. I feel a thing, okay. Well, whatever I feel today is what I feel today. I'm gonna have to move through it. So I take the answer to that, trying to determine, I need to know whether I'm doing it wrong or whether I'm not doing it wrong is be careful about getting caught in that. Like, no, no, I need to know, I need to know. I need to analyze what's going on and why I feel the way I feel. So be careful. Let's see here. Okay, and I'll throw this up real quick. And then we're gonna have to wrap it up because I don't have much more time. I guess my confusion is the people that are still going about their day working, picking up kids and having anxiety but also don't like the anxiety. I'm not sure what's confusing about that. They're going about it and they don't like it. Nobody likes it. Nobody likes it, but nobody wants to feel that way. People that do not have anxiety disorders that walk around having anxious days don't like it either. They just don't analyze it and think about it and want to know if it's right and how to fix it and what does this mean? And oh my God and my thoughts and my thoughts. So that's the difference. That's where it becomes disordered, which is where we all are. And that's why we're here in this room together and that's okay. But again, I'm not sure what the question is there. Like, well, they're going about their day and they like it and how come I can't like it or how come I can't care? Some of that is self-referencing like, but I gotta know, I gotta know. I have to understand, I have to analyze am I doing it right? As opposed to just letting it go. I'm just like, well, today it was supposed to be, there you go. Yeah, how do you do exposure when you're doing all the things? Yeah, but how are you doing all the things? So yeah, we talked about that a little while ago, right? So let's see here. Okay, Adele brought that up. This is good. Like this is a good comment right here. I'm the one who takes care of everything. It has to be in control. That's certainly not helping you. So if you find that you're anxious all the time, that's one of those things that like, oh, I can work on that. I can work on that. And there's ways you can work on that. Like leaving things undone. Like not answering your question, not even asking the question. That's hard. So for somebody who is, say, has that issue, right? I need to know I have to take care of everything. I'm the person who takes care of everything and plans and knows all the contingencies, not doing that planning feels wrong and unsafe and reckless and irresponsible. That's the same as the agoraphobic who has to go and drive two miles from their house to practice. They're terrified to do that. The GAD person that drops the perfectionistic trade or the planning trade or the people pleasing trade, it feels terrifying. But those are the things that you can work on. So there you go. Again. Let's see. I'm gonna scroll down to the bottom. I'm sorry, I can't get to all of these. I just know I can catch up to all of these. Sorry. And I think that's I'll do one more. It's exercise and diet, good for anxiety. Exercise and diet is good. Exercise and diet is good for all human beings. We should all do that. It is not good for anxiety. Exercise is an excellent form of what's called interceptive exposure. So, you know, you could look at it that way, but no, this is not a diet problem and you cannot exercise away your anxiety. These are good things to do for yourself. So eat well and take care of yourself and move your body definitely. But those are not good. I don't think it's good for anxiety. I would never say that, never. We'll scroll up a little bit and I think we're good to go here. One of the best things I've read, this is no edge that you're gonna fall off on. Okay, well, this is good to know. I'll throw this up. This will be our parting comment from Stacy who's really worked hard and done so well. Stacy, you've done a great job. One of the best things I read is that there is no edge you're going to fall off during exposure. It just feels that way. And regardless of what your edge may be, your heart breathing, because you're driving, you're agoraphobic and out of the house or you're confronting your panic or you're dropping a gad trait or you have health anxiety and you have decided to not tell anybody that your finger is tingling today. I see you. I see you. I know you. That is your exposure today. And you feel like there is an edge you will fall off of, but there's no edge. And the exposure going through the discomfort is meant to teach us that there is never an edge that we fall off of, all right? So there you go. My girlish figure has been enhanced by moon flies. I don't even know where that comment comes from, but that's the best comment I'm gonna see today because I don't understand any of it. All right, guys, that's it. I'm out of time. I gotta go. We jammed a lot into a little amount of time today. So for those of you who's hung in through the whole thing, thank you very much. Becky on Twitch, representing on Twitch, thank you. Thank you, my one Twitch viewer. And we'll be back here again next week. Next week is, what is next week's lesson? I was trying to tell you in advance, right? So it'll be the same time, same time, Mondays at two o'clock Eastern. I don't even know what next, here we go. Next week is, it's an exciting to watch we leave through pages. Oh, breaking things into small pieces, lesson 4.4. Breaking things into small pieces. So next week, same time, Mondays, two o'clock Eastern time on YouTube, Facebook, Facebook page, Facebook group, Twitter, Twitch, where the hell? Everybody, you can watch wherever you want. And this will stay on YouTube and in the Facebook group and on my Facebook page. And I don't think they stay on Twitter or Twitch. I have no idea. But that's where you can find everything. And again, if you want a copy of the book because you want to read along with us, just go to my website, the anxioustruth.com. Thanks everybody for hanging out and listening to me like rapid fire at you. Maybe next week we'll go a little slower and I won't have so much to say. Thanks a bunch. I'll see you.