 We are live, welcome everybody. Recovery Monday, episode number 51. Today we're gonna talk about a common misconception in this community. We'll just wait for folks to show up as you pop in. Let me call up the old chat overlay here so you guys can talk to each other. Just let me know that everything is good. Let me know that you can hear me, which I'm pretty sure you can, everything is green. Let me know how everybody's doing today, where you're coming from. Remember that if you're in the Facebook group, I'm only gonna see Facebook user. Like Facebook, man, they just take away your identity. So just remember that that's unfortunately nothing I can do about that, that's because of restream. But yeah, just say hello when you pop in. If you wanna say hello in the chat, we're live on Facebook and the Facebook group. We're on Twitch, we're on Twitter. I don't think a single person ever watches on Twitter. And we're on YouTube. Billy, what up, man? Good to see you. So yeah, we're gonna talk about a common misconception in the community that a lot of people hear. What up, Brooke? Hey, Lee, what's going on? Where's everybody from? Is everybody doing today? We're gonna chill out for about 40 minutes or so. I am back to classes this week. So I have a ton of reading to finish today. So I can't hang out extra long today, but we will make the best of it like we always do. It's always a good time with you guys. So what we're gonna talk about today is a common misconception that people have, which is that they think that I'm saying that you have to just learn to deal with it, like forever. So I just have to learn to be okay with panicking or having intrusive thoughts or having OCD or whatever it is or health anxiety forever. Is that what you're saying, Drew? And no, that's definitely not what I'm saying. So I wanna talk about today. I wanna talk about why that is a common misconception. What drives that? There's cognitive distortion there for sure. Hey, yo, what up, Bessie? Hey from Pittsburgh, what up? We don't have nice weather here. Hey, Nat, what's going on? UK is here. It is stupid warm here today. Like it is not, this is not natural. It's like 74 degrees in New York today. It's not supposed to be 74 degrees Fahrenheit, by the way. Centigrade would mean like we're on the sun, I think. So yeah, no, it's really unseasonably warm today. It does not feel like fall at all. So kind of weird. Hey, New Zealand is here, what up? I, Trent, I believe you're probably the furthest person away. But that's always the case, right? For our Kiwi friends. Welcome, glad that you're here. Carol from the UK, it is hot in Florida. What a surprise, it's 88 in Florida. Gee, that never happens. Hey, Omar from India, all the way from India, amazing. So anyway, what do we have about 50 people? Update on my cruise. It was amazing, a few moments of panic, but I didn't give a single shit about it. Good job, Aurora, that's so excellent. I saw that you posted a couple of pictures, but it was great. So I'm super proud of you, excellent. Anyway, 50 people here, that's cool. Let's get into this a little bit. Hey, Nicole, Marie, what up in Pennsylvania? So why do people think that I'm saying this? Like, so are you saying that I just have to put up with this forever? Is that what you're saying? And no, that's definitely not what I'm saying. But I, and it does get me a little bit going. Like I will admit that it sort of winds me up a little bit when I hear people say that, because I've never said that. I've never said that you have to just put up with it forever. The solution to this problem is not just deal with it, just deal with it for the rest of your life, it's fine. I'm never saying that. But I do understand why people hear that, I think. Because generally speaking, if you are in, I know a lot of people in the comments right now that I recognize are a little bit near the end stages of recovery and this isn't the same situation for those people because it does change as we go, right? But I do understand that in the beginning, if you are new to this, a lot of times you're just really frantic and desperate to feel different, right? And believe me, I totally understand this. It does get a little bit into that situation where it feels you're just frantic, you just want to feel better. I get it, you want it to stop, you want the thoughts to stop. You don't want to be afraid. I get asked every day how to stop the fear of fear, how to stop this and I get that. So if you hear somebody like me say to you, no, no, no, no, you don't understand, like the goal is not to stop it, it would be very easy hearing through that lens where there's a little bit of desperation, you just want to feel better, which I completely understand that everybody wants to feel but I'm not, nobody's doing anything wrong here. But I totally understand why through that lens you might say, what do you mean, don't stop it? So you're telling me that I just have to deal with it and I might say, no, no, no, no, what I'm saying is you have to learn to navigate through it. And then as a desperate person who is hearing through that catastrophic lens and there's cognitive distortion there, by the way, you're black and white thinking, you are either going to tell me how to be better now or what you're telling me is a nightmare, right? So that's black and white thinking, that's cognitive distortion, but it's okay because you're afraid and confused. You're not doing anything wrong. I cannot stress that enough. But you may hear through that lens, well, if you're not telling me how to feel better today and I hear you saying things like tolerate, surrender and accept, I cannot possibly imagine how those words are going to help me. Okay, I totally get that. So you will hear only the literal interpretation of those words and then extrapolate into disaster land because that's what anxious minds do. My mind used to do that too. And say, that guy said that the answer is to just learn to live with it or learn to put up with it, learn to just be with it forever. And that's not what I'm saying. So when we learn to deal with it now, we learn to put up with it now, to live with it now, so that you don't have to live with it forever. But I think the disconnect there is generally in the part of the equation that says, no, no, no, when we put up with it now, when we learn to live with it now, we learn through that experience that we're okay when we put up with it, when we live in uncertainty, when we face the fact that we can't know everything and can't protect ourselves against everything, when we face panic, even though it's super scary and may trigger a lot of memories and bad feelings, it still doesn't hurt me. You're missing that part of it that says that experience teaches me that I can have a different relationship with this panic, right? Or this anxiety, or these intrusive thoughts, or this health anxiety, or whatever it is you happen to be struggling with, right? So you are in the mindset that says, no, no, no, no, that can't possibly be right. Do not tell me that I'm okay during a panic attack because you're wrong. Okay, you're allowed to have that position for sure. But always remember that what I'm talking about here is based on the assertion that you are okay even when you're afraid of your health, even when you're afraid of panic, even when you're afraid of scary thoughts, you're still okay. You've always been okay. Not optimal, not desired, but not actually unable to handle things. So for people, especially in the beginning, that all they hear is, I'm clearly not okay. I'm just supposed to stop this. Tell me how to stop feeling this way. I understand that you can't make that intermediate leap to understand that I'm not saying, just put up with it forever. I'm saying that we learn not to put up with it, but we learn to surrender to it and navigate through it today so that we don't have to put up with the way you feel today forever, okay? It's important. It's really important. And I understand though why people hear it this way. And I understand why sometimes people get a little bit flabbergasted and frustrated and throw up to hands and like, I'm asking you for help and you're just telling me that the answer is to just learn to live with it. But you're only hearing half the answer because you can't even conceptualize what goes into the other half of that answer. Which I get, again, nobody's doing anything wrong. I don't have a problem not angry at anybody, nothing like that. Nobody's committing a crime here. Nobody's ruining their recovery. It's just a logical sequence of events. If you can't possibly conceptualize the connecting part that gets you from the first part of the answer to the second part where things get clearer and no, no, no, you don't have to put up with it forever. Then of course you're not gonna hear or pass the literal put up with it, surrender, allow. Like, would that mean allow forever? I'm gonna feel like this forever because I know you just want somebody like me to say it's okay, you'll never panic again. Or it's okay, you'll suddenly be okay with your health. It's okay, you'll never have intrusive thoughts again. And since we can't tell you that, that's a process that you go through to get there and that there's never a guarantee, never, never, never a guarantee that you'll never be anxious or never have a scary thought again. Nobody can guarantee you that. If you have anybody who's guaranteeing you that they will keep you from panicking ever again, run. Because that's not real. Since we don't give you that guarantee, you only hear, oh well, I guess I just have to panic for the rest of my life and learn to be okay with that. And that's simply not true. Right, so it's the inability to conceptualize that middle part that says, oh, I'm okay. I'm okay even if I don't, even if I don't, even if I panic, I'm okay, what, what? And I completely get the resistance there. I totally, totally, totally get that resistance. It is normal in the beginning to have that resistance. And at some point, the work that we do little by little breaks down that resistance and then you get it. So one of the toughest things that I have to tell people and somebody, a very smart person pointed this out to me this morning and it's a legitimate question for sure. This person said, you know, so often I will say, you have to, you don't, it doesn't, it's not that you have to accept that it's going to be this way forever. But you have to be willing to say, I'm okay even if it is like this forever, okay? Just chew on that for a second. I'm not saying it has to be like this forever but you have to be accepting of the fact that even if it was like this forever, you would be okay. And this person I was in conversation with said, that's a really extreme level of acceptance that you're asking for. And my answer to that is correct, it is. It really is. That's a tough one because that's part of the paradox. Like we need another paradox. This is nothing but one paradox after another which makes this confusing and it makes it frustrating and it makes it counterintuitive. I get all of that. This is why it's so hard to deal with sometimes and so frustrating. But the paradox is if I could be okay having panic attacks for the rest of my life then I will likely not have panic attacks for the rest of my life but I can't leapfrog the middle thing to just get to the end, right? So I'm gonna use panic attacks. This applies to all the things we're talking about. I'm having panic attacks today. I want to never have a panic attack ever again. That's not realistic. So I at least wanna know that I don't have to panic every day anymore and I won't be afraid of it anymore to have a normal life even though I might panic now and then. So now that's the new end goal. So first thing is you gotta change that end goal. Now to get to that end goal, I have to go through a middle stage here in the middle that says, I'm gonna have to be okay if I never get there. The only way to get there is to be okay never getting there. You can't leapfrog that and get to the end part without the middle stage which requires a huge leap of faith, a tremendous amount of acceptance and the ability to at least entertain the possibility that people like me and sound like me that talk about these things are right or are at least not steering you into the abyss, right? We don't have to be right. We just are saying, hey, we know this to be the case that even when you let go, you're okay. Letting go doesn't mean you're giving in to some sort of healthcare that you don't actually have. You're afraid you have, right? So letting go doesn't mean you have a psychotic break just cause you think it means that. Letting go doesn't mean that you lose control and cry and panic forever and never ever stop just cause you're afraid that that will be, right? So you have to understand that we're telling you this because we know those things to be true and many of us like me are coming from that lived experience. And if you're in my Facebook group, you see other people who share that experience, right? That says, hey, maybe what Drew was saying or what Claire Weeks said or anything like that. Any of those people, I saw somebody just mentioned Marty Seif and Sally Winston, what they say, what Kim says, what Josh says, you know all the people, right? So what Claire Weeks wrote, man, it was right. I didn't like it. But okay, you know, they were right in the end cause none of us are asking you to live like this for the rest of your life. That would be, think about that for a second, try to be objective for just a second and step back, take it, just to put a little space between you and the emotion for just a second, right? So imagine that if we go all the way back to Seneca, to Marcus Aurelius, to the great Buddhists, the great Taoists go all the way up to the 1900s, to the pioneers of behavioral therapy, CBT pioneers, first wave, second wave, the third wave people, Claire Weeks, Marty Seif, Sally Winston, Dave Carbonell, me, Josh Fletcher, Kim Cullen, whoever, pile us all together, is it possible that every one of those people dating all the way back to the beginnings, the origins of this approach, if you will, which can be found all the way back in Stoicism, Buddhism and Taoism, could we all be telling you that you have to panic for the rest of your life? Is that possible? Could we all possibly be telling you to do dangerous things that letting go is a danger? Just think about that for a second. Forget just me. Forget just me. How many people do you hear that sound like me? Or write books like I write, or their books kind of came before my books or they came after, but we're all saying very similar things. How many people do you listen to on a daily basis on Facebook or Instagram that sound like me? Would we all be telling you to do dangerous stuff? So think about that for a second. So that's why you have to move through that middle part where you have to let go, where you have to accept, you have to surrender, you have to tolerate, you have to float. I don't care what the word is, but you cannot get to the end part where I have less panic, less fear, more acceptance of my health, whatever it is, less interest of thoughts. You can't get there without going through the middle. And if you are absolutely unwilling to even conceptualize the middle part with the acceptance and the surrender and the floating and the taking a risk and the taking a leap of faith and trusting people like me, then you can't see the end. And to you, it just looks like I'm saying, just live with it for the rest of your life. The answer is to panic every day for the rest of your life and feel terrible. Nobody ever, ever, ever said that, all right? So it is so important. I know sometimes you hear it that way and it feels like it boils down to that, but that's not what any of us are saying. The other thing that I'll mention, and this is a thing I didn't do today, I don't know what I wrote about today. I have to look at the anxious morning, I don't know. But I think next Monday, a week from today, I talk about just do it. Like just do it is another one of those like serious misconceptions that really grinds my gears. Oh, so what it comes down to is just do it, is that it? So I rant a little bit about that on next Monday's edition of the anxious morning. If I'm pretty sure it's next Monday, sometime next week, just check it out. But so there's, so I just have to live with it forever and just do it. Those are the two huge misinterpretations that kind of get to me, just do it really frost me. This one is a little bit more heartbreaking, the, are you telling me I just have to panic or have health anxiety or have OCD for the rest of my life? No, none of us is saying that. But again, it's so counterintuitive and requires navigating through a bunch of paradoxical shit to get from the, I feel terrible now and I want to feel better, all right? So that's important. What else can I tell you? I think that's about it on this. I mean, 15 minutes is probably enough, but we'll take some questions and comments. If you guys have questions or comments about that, that's totally fine. I'll answer them the best they can. Hey, gotcha. Glad you made it. Let's see here. How is everybody doing? Oh, let's see. Bessie always is good for a comment. Hey, Bessie, I used to say it all the time. This is just who I am. And that is a little bit heartbreaking, right? Everybody here, people say that. This is just who I am. Now, there's also some wisdom in that and there's a little bit of freedom and power in this is who I am. So for me, I'll relate it to me personally, right? Oh, by the way, hang on a second. Let me check one thing. Stick with me for one second, guys. I'm gonna bore you for two seconds while I check something on my phone. Ah, no, no, no, no. Sorry. I thought somebody was gonna pop in with me. I used the link. Oh, hang on. Sorry. I hit somebody who's gonna pop in with me. So I'm gonna invite them in now. There you go. Sorry about that. Okay, so this is a heartbreaking thing to see. This is just who I am, but I'll relate it to my own personal situation. And I think, oh, wait a minute. Yes, this is just who I am, meaning I might always have a propensity to be a little bit more anxious. It's possible, but that's okay. Because that doesn't define my entire life. So I can live with all of my, whatever, my traits, my quirks, my weaknesses, my flaws, my strengths. I could be fully who I am and still be okay. So while that might be a little bit heartbreaking when people say, oh, this is just who I am, on the flip side, there's also power in that. But this is just who I am. It could be a good thing, but it doesn't mean I'm just going to be a hot mess dumpster fire forever. It doesn't mean that at all, right? So really important. So let's pop in here. I'm gonna put this on the screen. How do you surrender in health anxiety? I've done it driving or socially, but I can't translate it to health anxiety. That is that, that's that thing where like, I can't tolerate anything less than 0% odds of a health problem or 100% certainty of my health. There's no special, I can't answer that Christina, unfortunately, I cannot tell you how do you surrender to health anxiety? Health is the thing that you fear the most, like somebody who fears that their sanity will go away, they fear that the most, or somebody feels that in the moment of anxiety, their heart is gonna give out. You don't fear that, I know that. It's just your special fear for you and you will say, but I cannot afford to take a chance with my health. So I must hang on to that resistance and I must stay with it. Well, the issue there is, you can choose that if you want, right? You can totally choose that if you want, but then you stay in the situation you're in. So at some point with health anxiety, you are going to say, I know that I'm distorting the chances that something is wrong here because I can't tolerate anything less than total 100% assurance. I won't tolerate it, so I'll still hang on. But if I let go, nothing will actually happen because that intolerance isn't changing reality at all. So your insistence that, no, no, no, no, I can't take that kind of chance. I have young children or whatever it happens to be. I have to be careful about my health. You take it to an extreme that I don't, that many people without health anxiety don't. So the surrender is really a leap of faith. At some point, you have to say like, I'm gonna have to take a chance on that, but you can choose to not take that chance, but then it's not fair to you if you keep coming back and asking the question again and again. So at some point, it does come down to like, you know all the information, now you're just gonna have to be brave. I hate that, I hate telling people that, but there is some truth in that, I hope it helps. This is a good question from Carol, hey Carol, what's the best thing you took from Claire Weeks? The best, that's really good. The best thing I took personally in terms of my own recovery, what helped me most from Dr. Weeks was that she literally described everything that I was feeling, like verbatim. I know she was writing 20 years before I read the book, Help and Help for Your Nerves, but when I was reading that book, I felt like she was literally writing the book to me. So on a personal level, what did I take from Dr. Weeks? That, like on a professional level, if you will, what I definitely take from Dr. Weeks even to this day is her uncanny ability to describe this to laypeople. That was her greatest contribution, was she made it, excuse me, she made it accessible to the average person. And she is the person who used the phrase bewildered, right? You are bewildered. And so when I started The Anxious Truth, my book, with you are lost, confused, afraid, I'm literally, that's an homage to Dr. Weeks on line one of the book, because she was the one who said, you're just confused, you just don't know what this is. She was, today on Instagram, I'm talking about psycho education. Dr. Weeks was the preeminent psychoeducator of her time and maybe of our time too. I can't be sure about that, but if she was alive today, she'd probably still be doing it a hell of a bang of job. So that's what I took from her personally and professionally. That's a great question, Carol, thank you. Lily is supposed to be joining me. Lily had the wrong link, it's all messed up. Ah, we'll try it again. Sorry, Lil, if you're watching, I don't think you're here. That sounds good, we'll coordinate that. Last time Lily tried to join, it didn't work out technically and then the links aren't working today. We'll figure it out. Okay, so let's see here. Just got back from Vegas, had to travel. Yay, I always like to put good news up on the screen. Good job, Stacy. You know, I've never been to Vegas. Ever been to Vegas. Good for you. What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas though, right? So we don't need to know what happened. Something like that, I don't know. Good for you. So let's see. Marie, how are you? Good to see you. I'm confused about the concept of floating, tolerating and acceptance. Is it the same as habituation? It is not. Habituation is in there. Now I don't know which of my podcast episodes, watch me type. So fun today, making me, I'm liking you watching me use my phone and type. It's good. Habituation. It is podcast episode number 226, right? So podcast episode 226 actually talks about this. No, acceptance. When Dr. Weeks wrote the word accept and acceptance, she was living in a world where habituation was the primary thing, right? Primary thing like you'll get used to it or if you stay in it long enough, the anxiety goes down or the discomfort goes down and then you're okay. That's habituation, right? But what we're talking about today and what I'm definitely talking about is not just based on habituation, meaning you get used to it and the anxiety eventually comes down so you're okay. Yes, that matters. But what we care about in floating and acceptance and surrender is I don't need it to go away. I don't need it to go away. Again, we're back to the paradox that I talked about 10 minutes ago. So I was talking about big scale, like long timeframe paradox, but on the short term minute by minute, same paradox. Like I have to, I know that even if it doesn't go away, I'm okay. That's the only way to get through. So if we're talking about starting your journey to fully recovered, that's a long timeframe and you have to go through that middle ground of acceptance and allowing and I'm okay even if it happens. But on a short term, if you talk about an hour of your life today feeling anxious, the same rules apply just on a smaller scale. That make sense? So it's not just habituation, it's also the willingness to say, what did I learn from this? I'm really afraid, but nothing that I fear ever happens to me. Like it doesn't. And so now the fear itself has become the fear and I just don't wanna be in that state but I'm still okay. I don't like it, but I'm okay. So we have to be willing to learn that if we stop trying to save ourselves, we still wind up okay. That's the part that we call inhibitory learning that was in that podcast episode. I inhibit my save me response, but I still wind up in the same place as if I did the save me response. So no, it's not just getting used to it. So floating and accepting, a lot of people make the mistake of saying, if I float and accept and surrender, that's a way to make it go away. Like habituation would say, it will decrease, it will decrease. Ultimately, it does start to do that as you get good at this. But in the beginning, surrender doesn't mean that it goes away. It means it goes away faster than it does if you fight it. But one of the biggest mistakes that people make is they think, oh, if I just surrender and float, I'll end it. And then if it doesn't end fast enough, this doesn't work, it doesn't work, I don't get it, I'm accepting, correct. So acceptance is, I wrote it in the Facebook group, I made a post about this, write this down, acceptance is not a shield, acceptance is a welcome map. So acceptance and floating is, come on, come on in. Come on, panic, come on, intrusive thought, come on, hell things, come on in, come on, you can do it. I'm in, here I am, I'm over here. So a lot of people think that surrender, acceptance and floating will be, when it happens, I'll accept. And then it will go away. And I'm okay as long as I can make it go away. Whereas we want, no, no, no, it's a welcome map. And even if you don't go away, I'm good, I'm okay. It's not what I wanna be, but I'm still okay, it can't take me down. A lot of words, a lot of words. Sorry guys. Let's see here, hello from San Diego. This is good. For those of you who did not hear Kathleen's episode of my podcast, you should go check that out. She did a great job on the podcast. I have trips to Disney and Ireland next few months, I'm super excited to tell intrusive thoughts to take a back seat. That's a really good explanation of what that sounds like, by the way. That's what acceptance and surrender sounds like. I know you're gonna sit in the back seat and then like jaw at me the whole time. I know you're gonna jaw at me the whole time, go ahead. That's what it is. So if you're not at that stage where you're willing to say, okay, okay, heart pound away, okay, brain, tell me I'm gonna go crazy. Okay, whatever, tell me this is gonna happen. Keep drawing at me. Go ahead, I'm still gonna go on my trip. You can come with me. If you're not at that point, then that is a good clue as to why it's not, air quotes working, right? You're hoping for it to go away in the surrender, but that's not really, again, you gotta go through that middle. There's that middle part that everybody hates before you get to the other side, you're trying to leapfrog it. A surrender, it makes it goes away, it doesn't. Good job, Kathleen, it'll be a good trip. Let's see here. It would be so amazing if there was a program with you where you get to weekly group calls. All right, let's talk about that for a second. So I am doing Instagram subscriptions now. We do Friday Instagram lives with just subscribers. People come up on with the cameras and we talk and we chat. So that's as bad as close as I have now and we are gonna be doing monthly Zoom calls, but it's super important to remember that in my own view, although many people would say that even at the stage in a matter of my education I'm not licensed, I'm still in the master's program, many people would say, well, you could run groups. And if I was working for an organization they would probably have me running groups. But I don't believe that it's ethical to do that. That's my personal belief. Like I don't have, I could pay a clinical supervisor, I guess to work with me on that, but the closest we could do is stuff like this or Instagram lives that I do on Friday for my subscribers, Zoom calls, but those Zoom calls are not going to be therapy. That's not group therapy at all, right? So I loved the interaction, I like to be able to help, but we have to be really careful about how we define that. But the closest we got is probably the Instagram lives on Friday. No, no, no, let's see here. Okay, this, I'll put this up because a lot of people say this. Excuse me. What's the difference in getting on with your life whilst British, anxious and distractions are avoiding? If I get out of my life but still feel anxious it's not really getting on with life. Who said that? I'm a hundred percent going to challenge this right here, Christina. Who said that? So if you are anxious then your life is not, you're actually not getting on with your life. So you're gonna throw away all of the stuff you're doing. Everything you do gets completely thrown in the bin. I'll go British with you. Thrown in the bin because you're anxious. That's part of what drives this. No, no, no, no, I'm anxious. So therefore none of this counts and I must never feel anxious ever. Well, Christina, I'm not really picking on you but it's an example of how many people think. No, no, no. If I'm sad, if I'm angry, if I'm disappointment, if I'm anxious, if I'm afraid, if I'm uncomfortable, all bets are off. Since when? Like sometimes I wonder how we, collective we, not anybody in particular, we, the royal we, get into this mode where it's like, oh, negative feelings, negative emotions, adversity, psychological adversity, no, no. All bets are off, I have to fix it immediately. So one of the modalities that I a hundred percent, I'm sure I'll be using in my practice is acceptance and commitment therapy. And one of the foundations of acceptance and commitment therapy, ACT, is that there is a certain amount of adversity built into human life, that's just the way the world is. But somehow or other in the West, especially in the last couple of hundred years, we have absolutely pathologized that to the point where somebody will literally look me in the face and say, if I'm anxious and all bets are off, this isn't working, I can't handle it. I can't help you then. Because if you think that you're supposed to always like this, only happy or only calm, then there's no way in the world to exist that way. It doesn't exist. So that is part and parcel of the stuff we have to accept here and learn. And I know I'm ranting a little bit. And Christina, by the way, I'm not picking on you personally, I hope you know that. It's just a good question that brought that up. But I would challenge that, that if you're out living and you're doing what you're doing with the people that you love and whatever and engaging with life, how does it not count because you're anxious? That it's giving it so much power and calling it some sort of problem that you have to automatically fix. Sorry, all right, next. My husband and I, I was trying to follow like the conversations that are going on without me, which I freaking love. Oh, this is, hang on a second here. I gotta put this on screen just because this might be the best screen name in the room right now. A kid and her wacky adventures, welcome. I don't know. I don't know. Maybe I know you, maybe I don't. But that is the best. Thank you so much. Trying to just let it be there, but I'm really suffering. I'm trying to let it be there, but I'm really struggling because it's not natural for me to let it be there. It's not normal for me to let it be there. It's not intuitive for me to let it be there. This is difficult. I'm uncomfortable. I'm afraid. I'm unsure. I feel vulnerable. There are many ways that you can objectively describe that without using the word suffering. Now, I'm not trying to minimize how you feel. I understand how it feels. I lived that way for many, many years. But be careful about I'm suffering. Are you not saying you're not, but I want you to challenge that a little bit. Look at all the words that I was able to use that probably accurately describe your situation that also leave a little room for you to have power there as opposed to just this is suffering and I can't handle it. It's too hard. Really an act, an AC, we say act and that's what we say ACT, but an act suffering is a universal thing is one of the basic premises. They actually use the word suffering. I think they do that on purpose, but be careful about that. I know it's difficult. This is not, be nice to yourself because trying to let it be there is not natural. It's not normal. It's not intuitive at all. So this is all new to you. It's really hard. What else do we have? But yes, thank you for the screen name. It really made me laugh. Love it. It's always about acceptance. Hey, you know what? I'll put this up on the screen. Sorry, I can't see your name. One thing that dawned on me the other day I was having a conversation with somebody else very smart. That's very important to me. Who pointed out there are similarities in different messages that are across different topics, but keeps coming back to the same sort of core message that we hear here, H-E-A-R, H-E-R-E, and anxiety recovery. And that is because so many of the great philosophies that the world has seen, even faiths, spiritual practices, whatever you wanna call it, often come down to the idea that it is always about acceptance. So even beyond the topic of anxiety disorders, you will find people who make their life on the idea that it is about just acceptance. It isn't about what happens to us. It's about how we react to it. It isn't about demanding that the world or the universe be a certain way. It's about being the best we could be whatever comes at us. So that's a good, we could do that for hours and hours and hours. I love that stuff, but it kind of does come to back to acceptance. And that goes beyond this topic, by the way. So let's see here. Once I got to the mindset that I could be anxious, it'd be okay. Huh, putting it up. Great comment. Thank you, whoever. Sorry about the name thing. Once I got to the mindset that I could be anxious and be okay, I became more okay with being anxious. And that more okay with being anxious doesn't mean forever. To bring it back to today's topic, it doesn't mean, oh great, this is just cool. I'll just panic for the rest of my life. Even though conceptually, you might have to be resigned to that. It doesn't actually work that way. But you don't know until you do it. That's also part of this too, which I know is a big ask. Like I'm asking you to do things that don't make sense until after you do them. So I understand why it's so hard. I really do. Let's see. Let's keep scrolling down here. This is good. I'm a huge fan, needing to know for sure by Sally Winston and Marty Sief is perfect for this. Huge fan of everything they write. I have their latest book on my bookshelf. I will admit I have not finished reading it yet. But yeah, anything that Marty Sief and Sally Winston do is really good. They're giants in the field. I'd recommend all of their books wholeheartedly. This one's especially is a good one. Also overcoming and wanting and intrusive thoughts is really good too. It's packed full of like really good psycho education, especially for those of you that feel like no, no, the thought is gonna make me do a thing. If you look at the episode of the podcast where Martin Sief was on my podcast, he literally said, he addressed this directly. People are afraid that scary thoughts become uncontrollable impulses. They don't, right? That's just not the way they work. So he talks about that stuff all the time. They're really great. Love those two. Let's see here. Let it go, words of wisdom. True. Let's see here. It's hard to accept things in your life having so much problems with this and it's not just about anxiety, it's about everything. Okay, that's common too. I'll put it up on the screen, but remember also guys, remember that life is also happening. So life is gonna throw shit at you. There's gonna be crisis. There's gonna be stress. There's gonna be heartache. There's gonna be grief. There's gonna be all those things. Unfortunately, sometimes we're in the thick of the anxiety. We're also dealing with that at the same time. Don't ever try to engineer away your humanity. We're never saying that it's really important. So sometimes life makes this even harder than it is. I don't have any wisdom for you, Neff, but just to put it out there and we know that sometimes that happens, right? Sometimes that happens and we could just do the best we could do. So good question, good comment. Sorry that you're struggling right now. Let's see here. Well, thank you, Aurora. That was very nice of you to say about my Instagram subscription. Ooh, so good. GBG always has good to say. I tolerated sensation so long while living my life that my brain started to see them as normal. Uh-huh, uh-huh. In a way that's a little bit of habituation, but there's also that idea that like while I was living and my heart was pounding while I was changing the oil and I learned that I could change the oil with my heart pounding. And then the heart pounding stops being important. So another misconception or another misinterpretation is that how do I not care? How am I, are you saying, you're just saying I'm not supposed to care about this? No, no, no. I'm saying that you can learn that you don't have to care so much. Maybe we'll do one on that one too. Am I supposed to just not care? No, no, like you're gonna care. It's okay to care right now. So when Jason says that his sensations became normal to him, I would almost guarantee you, and Jay, if you wanna pop up on the screen with that, that's fine, he cared. He cared a lot probably, but over time he learned experientially that he didn't have to care so much. Then you don't care. But in the beginning, yeah, go ahead, care. I ain't telling you to not care. You can't just decide to do it. So let's see here. It's really about accepting and happening. Rowan, is you having a long string of anxiety? Does that feel like forever? Ooh. Man, you guys are on fire today. What time is it? Okay, I can do another 10 minutes or so. It's really about accepting what is happening in the current moment. And if you are having a long string of anxious moments, does that feel like forever? You're not used to staying in now? It does. It does. And I think also there's that distortion and the frantic nature and the catastrophic feeling of all of that that says, if I'm anxious for three hours, it feels like three years. So I get that. We have to be careful about that whole idea. If it goes on too long, it's too much. It's lasting forever. I understand why we use words like this. That's people who will say, I'm just, I panic all the time. I panic all the time. Well, do you? But you don't, but you don't. Anyway, so let's see here. How do you get to the stage where you are not scared by being better at being scared? That's a crappy answer. And it sounds like some sort of ridiculous nonsense. But how do I learn to, one of the very first things I ever posted on Instagram, I believe, was one statement that said, you have to be scared to learn how to not be scared. So if you're trying to stop being afraid, you're backwards. Like first you have to get better at being afraid, then you learn that you don't have to be afraid. That's how that works. Let's see here. All the regular hot anxiety girls are here. Oh, so good, so good, so good. I've been fighting for so long. Oh, okay, Ellen, thank you so much for saying this. This is, I appreciate you sharing this. This is really common also. I've been fighting for so long. Even when I thought I was surrendering, I still did it to get rid of the feelings. Thank you so much, Ellen. That's, I appreciate you saying that out loud. I try to pay attention to that now. That is super sneaky. I do not begrudge anybody this. And again, nobody's doing it wrong. You're not making a mistake or committing a crime. If you are still kind of, but I really want it to go away, I'll do this. I don't want to do this, but I'll do it so that it goes away. Ah, I can't get so fruit, super frustrating. And that gets sneaky, really sneaky, but that's a hard lesson to learn. That takes some time. That's why, one of the reasons why this takes a while, we don't just get better in five days. I wish we could, but there are so many little subtleties and there's so many variables that go into this. And I think sometimes it's easy if your primary source of help, especially is social media-based, it could be really easy to just hear, like to go back to today's topic, oversimplified messages, like learn to live with it for the rest of your life, just do it, feel the fear and do it anyway. The same, it's the same thing told to you over and over and over by the same people on Instagram every day. Oh, my brain said this and then I said this and then I did this and then I wasn't afraid. Like, yeah, that's true, but there are so many nuances and variables and individual things that go into this that it's one of the reasons why it takes so long and it's such a crazy, jagged path. And we always have to remain sensitive to the fact that everybody's path looks a little bit different and there are different obstacles in your experiences matter. So don't let anybody oversimplify this for you. It's not necessarily, it's not super complicated, but it's also not easy. So simple messages sometimes give you the idea that it's easy or it's a simple fix, which it's not. So let's see here. It's tuning in late. Hey, Amy, how's it going? Trying to accept. I'm just gonna scroll down to the bottom here. Does anyone have any? Make sure you eat. We're gonna skip that one, that's not a thing. I assume this is in for a metaphobia. I will talk about a metaphobia for a second. I made a post in the Facebook group a couple of days ago about a metaphobia. And here is why I talked about a metaphobia. For those of you who don't know, maybe you have a metaphobia and you don't know, that is the fear of vomiting, nausea or vomiting. So people who are a metaphobic are afraid that they might be nauseous or might vomit. And for so many people that get into an anxious state, an anxious state affects their tummy, right? Now I wasn't really one of those people. I don't have a nervous tummy, I never did. I was more of a heart and lungs guy. Some people are heart and lungs guys end nervous tummy guy, got to run to the bathroom or I feel nauseous, my stomach is turning out, I feel like I'm gonna vomit. That's so, so, so common with anxiety. We don't question it if somebody says, oh my God, my stomach was doing flips, I was so anxious. Nobody would question that. We would all know what it means, right? So for so many people that have a metaphobia, one of the things that makes it really hard for them to recover is they hear the message about exposures and facing fear and acceptance and floating while they will also try to hang on to, but I have a metaphobia so I can never vomit. So I wanna do exposure and I wanna intentionally be afraid and I wanna go toward my fear, but at the same time I also have to protect myself from anything that might even remotely bring about the possibility that I will get sick to my stomach. That puts many people in our community here where they can't make progress because they're trying to teach their brain something, but at the same time, they're trying to hang on to the fact that yeah, but I can never let that happen. So if that happens, then all bets are off. It's a disaster. That is very difficult. So yes, it is the same as in a metaphobia. If you're a metaphobic and you're trying to hang on to the, I know you're not trying to hang on to them up. I'm not telling you you wanna be a metaphobic, but for many people they just draw a fence around that. There's a wall around a metaphobia. Sorry, that's just gonna be here. I'm a metaphobic so we're gonna have to work with that. It puts you in a really, really hard situation. Like if you draw a line around that and say we don't touch this, this just has to stay here, but I also wanna get better, really, really hard. And a metaphobia, you could hypothesize about is it the vomiting itself? Is it feel like physical danger? Is it a loss of control? Is it because of lessons you learned in the past? All of those things, all of them, could be all of them, could be any, all, none. It doesn't matter. In the end, the same lessons apply. Like I'm okay even if I'm nauseous, even if I vomit, it's actually part of the human condition. It happens to every walking human being at some point. Like at some point it does, right? You can't help it. So, yes, the lessons become the same regardless of why you may be a metaphobic. The way to get past it is very similar, right? My boyfriend just looked at me and said, sound familiar? I'm not sure who said, who that is because I can't see your name, but I assume you're talking about the metaphobia thing. And that's difficult. That's really difficult. So, there's, I can go on a personal experience with one particular person who did not say she was a metaphobic, was trying to do exposures. She was literally grinding herself through a torture chamber again and again and again because the real fear was that if she got too anxious, she might vomit. So every one of her exposures was literally just a torturous merry-go-round until she stopped and said, well, I gotta deal with the metaphobia. And then everything changed. But she had to make some hard choices to actually deal with that. And except like, this is an irrational fear, regardless of where it comes from, I'm gonna have to go toward that. So hopefully it helps. All right, so let's see here. Hot anxiety, guys. You guys. Oh, no, no, no, no, no, no. I don't wanna comment on what a therapist said in this situation. I'm sorry that he said that or whoever, let's say. Hello, Cardiff Wales. Welcome, Robbie. People who are in here. I'm just scrolling, trying to get to the end. I felt like Claire was in the room. Let's see here. You are not alone. Loads of therapy, the way Claire. One, I will say this. No, let me hide this for you. Oh, hey, let me put something up. Hey, put Bestie up on the screen. Sorry, Clark, I didn't mean to keep you up there too long. So one of the things that I wanna say is that sometimes the form of CBT does matter. And I'm gonna run at a time, but I wanna say this because I think it's important. The form of CBT does matter. Now, if this was 1986, you would be going through a form of CBT that was entirely based on the idea that you challenge your thoughts and replace them with new thoughts. There's worksheets, there's thought records, there's fact checking, there's all that stuff, right? This is very prominent. I'm gonna say it, because I think I know enough because I work in that area enough and with therapists from the UK, especially when you're dealing with the NHS, especially with the NHS in England, where a lot of times it's very quick training for NHS therapists and CBT, and they learn very old school CBT methods, and that's it. So a lot of times people will say, I had CBT and it didn't work, but the CBT was based only on those second wave things, which second wave would be, oh, well, those are irrational thoughts, so we learn to challenge and change them. Whereas now CBT has evolved to the point where that's a useful foundation building, but we really care about changing your behavior and the thoughts follow behind. So sometimes when you say, well, I've done two rounds of CBT, if it was nothing but worksheets and journaling and fact checking and thought records and finding evidence for and against your rational thoughts, yeah, that will often fail. That will often fail. It doesn't mean you're broken. It just means that that isn't really the way brains work. We know that now. It seems very rational to say that, but that isn't actually the way our brains work. We know this now. We're knowing it more and more and more. So the success rate with third wave therapies, which are more focused on behavioral change than thought change is much higher and the relapse incidence is much lower. Like that's not a question, that's a fact. Like we know that from clinical data, right? So be careful in thinking that somehow, while CBT didn't work for me, well, what did the CBT look like and what did the therapist do with you? Can't answer the question, but be a rise of that. That's a good question. You guys are killing it with questions here. Hang on, let me just see. Let me just check one quick thing. It's a hassle. All right, a couple extra minutes because they're really good. They're really good comments here that I want to turn to address, hang on. Man, you guys are on fire today. I'm gonna scroll down to the bottom because I just saw some stuff that was really interesting. Let's put this up. Kate, this is a good question. Do you feel that CBT is useful to neurodiverse people? So this is not a thing that I claim any sort of special knowledge or expertise on at all. In fact, I would probably say that I'm reasonably undereducated when it comes to neurodivergent populations, right? I think in that situation, we do have to be sensitive to the fact that what we think has been theorized for people who are typically not in that population might not necessarily have the same impact on somebody who is in a neurodivergent population because there's Asperger's or a sensory processing situation or autism in some way, shape, or form, right? So I can tell you that people who are very well trained in dealing with neurodivergent populations are literally waving their hands and like, help, help, we need more clinicians who are trained to deal with these specific issues, right? So CBT, is it useful to neurodiverse people? It could be, but it also might not be. And it really, what I can tell you is that we are pretty sure at this point that we need a little bit more focus on that, right? So I know I didn't specifically answer your question, but keep in mind that if you see the world differently than other people, which is not a problem and that's why we use the word divergent instead of disordered or broken, then sometimes the assumptions I make about the way you perceive things might not match how you actually perceive them. I don't have an answer for you, but it is a definite issue. So thank you for bringing it up, I appreciate it. It needs to be talked about more for sure. Let's see what else we have, we'll do two more. Two more, two more. Let's see, I'm going to surrender to surrender for gallbladder attack. Well, that sounds like no fun at all. Let's see here. Dissociation is not a special thing. I know everybody wants to say that DPDR is special. How do I handle that? Same as every other symptom. It's not a special symptom. I know it's the scariest one for you, but it doesn't make it special. So let's see here. Very few and far between decent therapists in the UK, you're right. Somebody else said something about, where the hell is it? Unfortunately, I see the queues for therapy are long 10 months, I get it. Let's see, unfortunately that sort of stinks. Oh, here we go. I'm sorry, again, I can't see your name. This is the last one I can do, because I got to run, but what do I think about EMDR? I think that EMDR shows a lot of promise in a very specific area, right? So I can tell you that EMDR has become, whoops, sorry, that's an upcoming event. That's where I got to go. But EMDR has become the really like the popular therapy of the last year or so. And what tends to happen in therapeutic circles, I'm not picking on any particular therapist, but what happens in a lot of therapeutic circles is, a therapist is really encouraged to use modalities that resonate with them, that they think seem right. So as much as I will beat the drum as much as I can about being evidence-based and science-based, and I believe that in the area that I'm focused in, we are the most science-based of just about all the therapeutic community. I'm probably throwing down a gauntlet, somebody's gonna argue with me. But other than that, we're told to be evidence-based, but we're also told to incorporate the things that ring a bell for us, that feel right for us. So when EMDR came on the scene and people were using it for trauma resolution, a therapist who really identifies with trauma, with healing, with growth, with healing pain, with inner child work, loves that, latches onto that. And then sometimes we'll say, well, then EMDR is for everything. And unfortunately I've seen that, but EMDR is not for everything. EMDR has a lot of really good results in trauma resolution. It helps people process those old memories and relive those experiences in a safer way where they can stay connected to the present and not go off the rails into flashback mode. So it could be good for that, but we have to be careful because EMDR is not indicated for treating things like panic disorder or OCD because it itself becomes then, oh, I need flashy lights and I need special eye movement and I need special imagery and I need to rub my hands a special way when I panic. So it's not so good for the things we're talking about here. Could you use EMDR as part of trauma resolution therapy while you're working on your anxiety disorder? Yes, it has a place. It's just not an anxiety cure. So a clinician who's well versed in that will tell you, EMDR is not a bad thing. I don't use it to treat, for instance, OCD. But yet there are many, many, many people out there that have latched onto the EMDR thing and decided it's for everything. I don't understand that, but trust me, it's not, all right? So sorry, I couldn't answer every possible question. I went a little longer than I wanted to, it's okay. But for those of you guys who wanna come to these, we do them every Monday, so I see a kid in Haraki Adventures again, great, great screen name. If you subscribe to the YouTube channel, subscribe to my YouTube channel, they all stay here for sure. They'll stay here forever in their own playlist and I don't know if you get notified or not, maybe, maybe not, but subscribing to YouTube is the best way to get these because it's the easiest way to watch them. They do show up in my Facebook group, they do stay in the group, they do stay on my Facebook page, but Facebook is a disaster and it's hard to find them once they're gone, so YouTube is the best way for this. Instagram, yes, you can go to my Instagram bio, the subscription choice is there, if you guys wanna check that out, you can cancel that at any time, if you do check it out, you won't hurt my feelings, I won't even know, so it's totally fine, if you wanna give it a whirl, but I'm digging it, because it's a smaller community, they get to interact with people a little more closely. On the 19th, I'm doing the Distress Tolans webinar with Joanna Hardis again, so that's up on my website, all the stuff is there, just go to theanxjustreets.com and check it out. You guys, whatever, I don't know what the topic's gonna be next week, if you guys wanna make suggestions or whatever, let me know, but we'll be here. Anyway, thanks for hanging out with me, I appreciate it, see you guys next week.