 Nobody recovers in a vacuum. We have friends, we have family in our lives and they are going to be around you and be an influence. So on today's episode of Recovery Monday, we're gonna talk about how to get them on board with your recovery plan. So let's get at it. Alrighty, you know the deal. We're gonna put the chat overlay up on the screen. As you guys pop in, just let me know everything's working because I'm pretty sure it is. GBG is here. Let's put this up on the screen so you guys can talk to each other. We are, I will remind you guys before we get started that we are on episode 28 of Recovery Monday where we are just taking lessons out of this book every Monday, The Anxious Truth. This is my anxiety, agoraphobia, panic attacks, anxiety recovery guide. If you do not have a copy of this book and you would like to find it, you can get it on my website at theanxiestruth.com. So check that out. We just do a lesson out of this book every week. We have been for the past 27 weeks. So here we are in 28 with only a few left to go. Today we're gonna talk about getting your family and friends on board with your recovery plan because they matter. Like I said, in the opening, you don't exist in a vacuum here. There are other people that are in your life and this is gonna impact them and they're gonna impact you. So let's talk about it. Hey everybody, what's going on? Let's see, we got Kendra's here. Brian Gonzalez, what up man? Hey fellow Long Islander, what's up everybody? So let's get into this. I don't wanna be too abrupt, but we have a lot to cover today. So I'm gonna kind of go through the book a little bit and take you through why I wrote this chapter and this lesson in the book. And really in the end, you have to remember, there are people in your life, you have family, you have friends and they are going to look at your recovery through their own lens, which is different than your lens. They're going to influence you. You're gonna influence them. Like they're kind of part of this in a way. So we should kind of work on that a little bit. Family members and friends, people who are close to us, they could be both a blessing and a curse. So the good thing, what do we want them to be? We want them to be cheerleaders. We want them to be encouragers. We want them to empower us. We want them to inspire us. We want them to root for us and pick us up when we fall down and remind us that we can do hard things. But sometimes they can also be a curse because they're gonna look at recovery through their own lens. They're gonna have judgments. They're gonna have opinions. Sometimes they make those opinions known. So things can go really well with family and friends. Sometimes things can go really badly with family and friends, even accidentally. So it is a good idea to think about a little bit how you're going to arrange that, how you're gonna get them on board. And there's a couple of ways that you can do this. You have to ask like, what are you going to ask them to do? What are you gonna ask them to not do? Think about how you want your people to be involved. And then there's a couple of different ways you can go about getting them involved. You may wanna sort of do like the big family sit down, a big family meeting and talk about it openly if that's what you do. You may talk to individual people privately, each on their own, if that's what you do. Whatever works. So there's a bunch of different ways to do this really when you get down to it. I can't view life from YouTube. I don't know Carol, I got people from YouTube so it seems to be working. But in the end, however way you choose to talk to your friends and family to sort of get them involved with your plan, I just went through in this lesson a couple of things that you need to be aware of as you do this, right? So the first thing that I wrote is that everybody needs to, I'm gonna read right from it here. Everybody needs to know from the start that you are not asking for opinions or judgments on the soundness of your plan or the approach you're about to take. That is a big deal. You have to kinda draw that boundary. Now, sometimes the people close in your life will understand why you're doing that. Maybe they've taken the time to educate themselves as well and they're all on board and they're gonna cheer for you while you do hard things. Sometimes they're not gonna understand and they're gonna wanna talk to you about sort of what they know, air quotes about anxiety and they're gonna kinda jump in there and say, no, you don't do it that way, this is crazy, it doesn't make sense. So you almost have to draw that line and say, look, this is what I have decided to do. If you're gonna go down this route, you almost have to say, this is what I'm gonna do. And I know you might not agree with this, but I'm not asking you to agree with it, I'm asking you to support me on this. So that is kinda number one on that. It can be difficult for people, either they just think they know and like, no, no, no, we don't do this. They may have a completely different idea of what you're supposed to be doing or even if they just care about you, it can be really hard for people who care about you to watch you intentionally be uncomfortable. That's not easy, none of us wants to see the people that we love uncomfortable or afraid or like doing hard things on a regular basis. It almost seems like why are you putting yourself through this torture? So it's okay, you almost have to be up front and say, I'm not asking for your opinion or even your blessing on this, I'm just asking for your support, all right? And the second thing that you could really do is talk to them about just like the nuts and bolts of scheduling and logistics. So we talked about the need to prioritize your recovery, to commit to it fully, to sort of arrange your life accordingly so that you can work on this stuff. Well, that might mean that you need some help from your friends and family and you could talk to them about that, rearranging schedules, maybe who could pick up on, you know, other chores that maybe you can't do right now. There's a couple of different ways you can go about that, right? But you got to talk about that too. The third thing, and this is a big one, you have to explain to the people close to you that you are not asking them to calm you down and that you are not asking them to soothe you or make you feel better. That's really important because often the people who care for us would automatically think, and I get this, it's because they care for us, they might automatically think, oh, my job is to make you feel better, I have to fix this for you. So you have to be really clear upfront and say, look, in order for this to work, I need you to not automatically decide that your job is to make me better. Like it's, you can't make me feel better. That's not a thing. So, you know, tell them that it's okay that like you're gonna see me afraid, you might see me panic. Like you can't just run in and try to make me feel better. I need to learn how to make myself feel better. So I just need you to sort of stand by and just support me while I do that. That's an important point. So the other point number four that I'll go through is you got to tell everybody that you want, what I basically wrote is tell your family and friends that you need motivation and encouragement, not accommodation, right? So it's important that they encourage you and try to motivate you and root for you to stand on your own two feet and do the things you need to do as opposed to just doing them for you. That's a tough one, right? They're not helping you if they accommodate your fear and just do everything for you while you retreat. So that's important. Number five, you may choose to not involve your friends and family. That's 100% perfectly valid. You can choose to do that. I myself pretty much worked in silence most of the time. I said, okay, this is what I'm gonna have to do. You guys are gonna see me do some stuff that might look a little weird to you. I just have to do what I do and then you're gonna have to just let me do that. Just wind me up and let me go. So if you, and the other thing that I had to promise was if I need you, if I do need you, I promise I will come and get you and ask you, right? So it's important to do that. If you think you want to work in silence, that is 100% you're right. You're gonna have to draw that boundary and say, I'm just gonna go do this thing. If I need you, I will reach out to you and I know you're gonna be there. But otherwise, don't ask me how I feel. Don't ask me how it's going. You have a right to do it that way too if you want to. Okay, there is no right or wrong here. If that works better for you, then by all means do that. I can tell you one of the reasons why I chose to do that to sort of work in silence is because I didn't want people to ask me anymore how I was feeling. Like you stop asking me how I'm feeling. Even when you can see that I'm obviously in distress, you can't ask me how I feel anymore. That was so important that for me, and I just tend to be a little bit more silent anyway. That's just I'm not a big sharer. So, but that was important. It helped sort of draw the line to say, if I need you, I'll come and get you, I promise. And they were okay with that. They went with it, it was good. Let's talk about celebrating milestones. What we always talk about, like celebrate your wins, make sure you acknowledge your wins, make sure you acknowledge your progress, which is important, we have to do that. But talk to your family about how you want to do that. Or talk to your friends about how you want to do that. You might want them to be like really super encouraging and make a big deal out of it every time you do something good. If that is good for you and that works for you, that motivates you or makes you feel good, then by all means do that. You might not want them to say anything at all, okay? Because, you know, and I get this, like, oh boy, I went to the supermarket today and all you're thinking is like big deal. Everybody goes to the supermarket. Why is it such a big deal that I did that? So I get that. You may decide, you know, I'll tell you when we're gonna celebrate or you may decide, hey, if you wanna hoop and holler and like pat me on the back and have a big, you won't touchdown dance every time I do something good, do that. All right, so that's totally fine. You have to just decide how you wanna handle that. We always want to acknowledge our achievements always. Do not just sweep them under the rug and go back to beating yourself up and being down on yourself, but just try and set some ground rules as to like, okay, how, you know, how do you wanna handle that? How do you wanna really sort of celebrate if you will? Or, you know, do you wanna just be quiet acknowledgement or do you wanna get really boisterous and celebrate all your big wins? Whatever, whatever way works for you is okay. There's no right or wrong there, right? So this is kind of tough. One of the things that I just, I just wanna say how I wanna put this. I mean, you can read the book, but number seven point that I talked about was asking for people's patience. Now, this is a tough one because depending on how long you've suffered, they might be out of patience, you know? And I've talked about this in earlier podcast episodes when I talk about how to relate to your family and the people close to you. So you have to ask them for patience. It's really hard sometimes for them because your situation is impacting them. That's true. It always helps to say, look, I'm going to do my part in this as best I can. I'm going to be consistent. I'm gonna do the work. I'm gonna do these hard things. I'm committed to this. And in exchange, now I need you to be patient with me. And even when you get frustrated because you think I'm going kind of slow, you're gonna have to express that somewhere else. They have a right to express it, you know, or maybe, but just they can't dump it on you. You have to ask for that courtesy. Please don't dump that on me. Maybe you need to schedule regular conversations with your partner or however, you know, your closest people are like, you know, we'll talk once a month, we'll go over it. You can lay out your concerns. That's okay. You aren't impacting their lives and they are impacting yours. You just have to ask for some patience and some kindness here. Please do not dump on me when you think I'm going too slow or you're out of patience with me. I understand this is touchy because given what's going on in your family, they may have already decided I'm kind of out of patience and now you want more. So you're gonna have to work on that the best you can, but it is, you should ask for that. Like I need your patience here while I work because this doesn't change overnight. On the flip side, you have to be willing to commit to the fact that you do, you can take small steps, baby steps count, we talk about it all the time, but you have to take them consistently and you have to increment. So if you are holding up your end of the bargain, I have found in many cases that it becomes a lot easier for your people, your tribe, your crew to be patient with you if they can actually see, oh, look, she's doing it. He's really doing it, they're doing the work. I know for me, it worked out so much better when people could see that I was making progress. I didn't go from agoraphobic to like going around the world in two weeks. It didn't happen, but the progress was evident and it became a whole lot easier for people to be patient with me. So that's important. And it sort of leads us to the point about kind of believability. And this is related to patience. This is another really touchy subject and it's a hard one to talk about. You may be in a situation where your family is having a hard time or your friends are having a hard time getting behind this because they may have seen you say multiple times, that's it, I'm over this, I'm so over this, I'm gonna get better, I'm gonna fix this only to not fix it. So sometimes that happens and sometimes we have to at least acknowledge that in really sort of difficult conversations and there's some vulnerability there for sure. Like I know that I have told you 15 times over the last two years that I'm gonna get better. I'm gonna have to ask you one more time to go with me on this. So this is a tough one. It is a tough one because if they've heard it so often they may have a hard time having belief in you because they've heard you say that you're gonna do this before. That's really difficult. We have to remember that they are also human beings and they have a lens and they have feelings and they have all of those things and they have perceptions and they have experiences too. So sometimes the way to address belief is to say, look, I know that I've said this before but now I'm armed with a bunch of knowledge. I understand the mechanism. I was maybe in the wrong direction before. The things I was trying was never going to work. I fully understand that I have to be brave now and I'm committed to doing that. It's kind of important. These are hard conversations to have but I think we have to address them in a way. That idea of belief where they're having a hard time believing that you're actually going to do it this time is a hard conversation to have but you have to have it anyway or maybe you don't. Maybe your family is just 100% behind you and they believe in you completely and it's all good and that's great but if you're getting sort of that side eye because yeah, I've seen this before, that's a tough one. Sometimes we do work in silence in the beginning because people then can see, oh, look, something is happening and then those conversations can become a little bit easier to have, all right? So that's basically the points that are in this lesson. If you want to, there's a lot of words here. So if you want, make sure you have the book and you can read through it for sure but that's sort of the reader's eye just version. So at the 14 minute mark, we'll take a couple of questions about this. I just want to point out that I do have and I'm not, I'm trying not to be rude but the comments are way down here, this huge monitor. So I got to look like a mile away to look at your comments. One of the things that I think you can do for sure is I do have multiple podcast episodes that I've done in the past. Holly and I did one way a few years ago. If you just go to my website, go to theanxiestruth.com and search for family. You'll see one that I did called how do I talk to my family about this or how do I make my family understand? And then I did another two-parter with Holly. We did one called someone I care about has anxiety. How can I help? That was a two-parter where we kind of talked to your family and your people and they can check that out. You can search those on my website also. If somebody wants to put the links in the comments here, go ahead. Those can be really helpful. I know that some people have had good success where maybe they're significant other or other, they're close friends or siblings have listened to some of my podcast episodes. I know people that actually read this book with their family, that's always really nice to see that kind of level of support because the family wants to learn right along with them. That's helpful too. So there's a couple of ways. Like, hey, you can get educated too. Let me show you what this is. You can give them a Claire Weeks book if it's not my book. You can point them at other resources like Kimberly or Josh or the books by Marty Seif and Sally Winston. You guys know what I talk to stuff I talk about all the time. Those could be useful resources for your family too when they don't understand. So try and make use of them as best you can. They sometimes make it easier to have these conversations. All right, let's look at some comments and questions here. I bought the books on the 24th of March. I'm still waiting for them to arrive. Cat, where are you, Dan? That's a long time. In most cases, when you buy the books from Amazon, they arrive within days. I have not known anybody unless you're in, I'm not sure what country you're in. That could be an issue. So let's see here, scrolling, scrolling, scrolling. Let's pop this up. Sorry, can't see your name. That's the way Restream does it clearly in the Facebook group. I've asked my son and husband to listen to your podcast and discuss the subject. They definitely understand it better after that. And you know what? Huge fist bump boom to your husband and your son for taking the time to listen and learn along with you. It is super critical. I'm not the only one providing this information. You know the folks that I work with all the time, they might be good sources also, but that really helps a lot that they're able to do that. Oh, hey, Nikki. Sorry, okay. I'm sorry, I couldn't see your name. Laura is here. Laura says, I just had this talk with my family. It was so tough, but so worth it all in love, yeah. These are hard conversations to have. Listen, somebody in the Facebook group, I believe yesterday and I don't wanna say who it is, but put a really great post up. Essentially, it was a little bit of a come to Jesus meeting with themself, like I have been kidding myself. I've been saying that I'm recovering, but I'm not really because I just do enough to feel okay and then I stop. That was a really heartfelt post that I have a lot of credit for that, give a lot of credit to that person to coming to that conclusion. When you sort of lay yourself bare like this and say, look, I have to do something here because this is unacceptable, that is a hard place to be. That takes a lot of courage. You have to be really kind to yourself while you do that and you really put yourself out there, really put yourself out there because even though the people that love you, love you, they sometimes accidentally can be really hurtful when it comes to that sort of stuff. So these are not easy conversations to have 100%. Let's see. I'll put this up here. Now, Carol, I know you're working hard and I appreciate your hard work. My husband a bit yesterday that might not want you to go anywhere is killing him. Today, he knew I didn't want him to help me do my exposure. Okay. See, sometimes we use that as motivation and we do have to understand. I know this is sometimes an unpopular thing. And by the way, Carol's working really hard. So Carol, I'm sure he sees that. But I know that these are unpopular things sometimes that they say, but these is the real world we live in. We don't exist in a vacuum. We have people around us. So I know in most circles online, as soon as you run into some friction with a friend or a family member or a partner, the folks online, oh, they don't understand. They don't deserve, if they don't, what is it, if they can't take you at your worst, they don't deserve your best. You get all those cliches, but that's sometimes a little bit enabling. Like, yes, we are worthy of respect. No one should be abusing us. No one should be being hurtful toward us. But they're also allowed to have emotions based on the way this situation impacts them too. Like, we have to work on all of that. It's silly to somehow think that, oh no, you just never allowed to say anything or you're not allowed to have feelings about the way I'm living. That's not fair. You know, we want people to be nice to us, of course, and we're all deserving of that as human beings, but we also can't live in a fantasy world where no one is ever allowed to be critical of us. They should never, they should just accept us unconditionally all the time on the basis of irrational fear. Because I will say this, if in fact you have some disease of some kind or some physical affliction, that's not your fault in any way. And I think we all would say that that's a slightly different thing. Like, okay, if I break my leg, then people are gonna have to help me for a little while because I've broken my leg. No one, they might be annoyed, it might be inconvenient, but nobody would be frustrated by that or angry at that or resentful over that. But if I just refuse to leave my house because I just won't, because I don't like how I feel when I leave my house and they know, they are a set of rational eyes when we can't be. They know that it's not rational. It's really hard to ask people to just accommodate that forever. It's, that's not fair. They don't have to do that. Katya is here. Katya says it was much more useful to have a conversation with my family and friends instead of explaining to them what happened. Ah, this is good. So that's one of the reasons why I included this particular lesson in the book. Because if you're always just reacting and describing, like let me describe how I felt, let me describe what happened, let me tell you what happened, that can start to wear them down after a while. It really can. And it wears you down too. If you're gonna keep talking about like again and again and again, like let me tell you about the panic attack I had today. Let me tell you about what I'm afraid of today. That's really hard. It's gonna wear everybody down. So having that conversation up front where it's like, okay, this is the situation. This is what I'm going to do for these reasons. Here I go, like, you know, we'll talk about it later, is a little bit easier for everybody to manage in the end. What up, Jason? I never say, hey, dudes and dudettes on your podcast anymore. I do not. That is correct. Interestingly, that you would say that today, somebody brought it to my attention that dudes and dudettes is a bit exclusionary. And guess what? It is. I even wrote about that today on this morning's email in the anxious morning. I talked about that. So dudes and dudettes was a catchphrase that I thought was kind of funny, I guess, until it was pointed out to me that not everybody identifies as either a dude or dudette. And so if I am going to live up to my ideals of being inclusive, then I cannot, I will not say that anymore. It was a reasonable request for someone to make of me and I was happy to accommodate that. And I'm glad that they brought it to my attention. Okay, let's put this up here. Warbird Tom, it's a good name, by the way. This is the sixth method of trying to get over 10 years of agoraphobia. A little worried about telling family, okay, all the other failed methods in their patients, why aren't you better yet? That's a reasonable fear. Is it a reasonable concern to have? I get that, really, I really do. And that's why I said, sometimes in the beginning, we do work in silence a little bit. Like, I'm not gonna say a damn thing because let me just do what I have to do and let me just start getting the ball rolling. And then once they can see the ball rolling, then I'll talk to them about it. That's okay, but you have to acknowledge, and I'm glad you're at least acknowledging it. It is hard for them to kind of have some belief after so many attempts. It always helps, though, when you can tell somebody, well, this didn't work because, or this didn't work because this was never gonna work. I know I tried hypnosis and that was never gonna work, so I'm sorry, that just wasn't ever gonna work. But I had to try it, because I didn't know at the time. The hardest thing to say is the reason why it didn't work is because I just kind of didn't do the work. That's harder to say, but sometimes it's really a big deal to say, yeah, I sort of contributed to making this. Like, I have power here and now I'm going to actually take that power and exercise it. Huge, huge, huge statement to make. So when you can say to somebody, well, it's, you know, yeah, I wasn't really exercising my power. I was giving it up. I was refusing to believe that I had influence. Those are powerful statements to make. It's really hard for somebody to turn their back on you when you're willing to say that. Like, this is why it's gonna be different this time, because I know that I have influence here and I have responsibility in this process. Let's see, my husband doesn't get it at all. Okay, we'll put this up here. My husband doesn't get it at all and refuses to talk about it, get very annoyed and a pretty high functioning with anxiety. That whole, well, I don't want to get into high functioning anxiety, but that sucks and those are realities too. So sometimes you have no choice, but to work in silence because the nature of the relationship is that that, nope, I'm not talking about that. Some people are just not that interested, sadly. Some people are just not good at relating at that level. There's a variety of different reasons, but we can acknowledge it for some people that is, in fact, problematic. Okay, oh, this is good too. So this is one of the reasons why I worked in silence. Having them in the plan encourages the safe person syndrome. Like, that is really one of the reasons, like stop asking me how I feel and I'm not going to tell you how I feel. Like involving them all the time and having them like right next to me and let me tell you what I did today, let me tell you what I did today, invariably leads to, let me tell you how I felt today. So I knew that I had to almost cut myself off. I almost had to cut myself off from that. So that's a good point. Let's see here, GBC's, okay, GBG says, oh, okay, cardiac care nurse. She's hundreds of people like me, she's supported, but she knows nothing is wrong. That's a blessing and a curse too because when they know that nothing is wrong. Now I've always used the analogy of, those of us who are parents when your kids were small and they were afraid to go to bed because they were afraid to be in their room, you were sympathetic and you wanted to make sure that you supported them and you weren't mean to them. But ultimately you made them go to bed so that they can learn that there was no monster under the bed because you knew that there was none. Now to your child or those of us, we were all kids too. When we were afraid, our parents maybe made us go to bed because they knew all your bedroom is actually safe. You have to learn that. The same rules apply here, the same rules apply. So the blessing there is that you can use your people, your crew, your tribe to be the voice of reason when you can't be. And part of that inspiring and encouraging and motivating thing is for them to remind you, you're okay now. You just have to do this hard thing so that you can see, we know you're okay. But now you have to see that you're okay. The flip side of it is the fact that they know that nothing is wrong whether you're in no danger can lead to frustration. So that's that blessing and curse thing for sure. Dan's here, what up Dan? I'm gonna scroll down a little bit quicker here. Where are we? 25 minutes. When you have a friend that has anxiety just as bad, ah, okay, this is big. Holly, this is a good comment. Thank you for bringing it up. When you have a friend that has anxiety just as bad, it's impossible to keep the friendship because you compare yourself with them. That's a tough one. And unfortunately these situations, these panic disorder, agoraphobia, the things we're talking about here, these anxiety disorders, they often do, they often do sort of like break friendships. I know I have friends I don't have anymore. I'm not gonna get them back. That was hard for me to come to grips with. I had to take responsibility for some of that. But when you are, and I said, now I was not doing well, they were normal. And that was a problem. So the friendships sort of broke as I disengaged from the friendships because I was afraid. And some friendships I got back some friendships I didn't. But when you become friends with somebody who is in the same boat, I have also seen that happen. Now, one of the things that sometimes happens like in my Facebook group, those of you who are in the group, it gets asked sometimes, hey, can somebody be my exposure buddy or my accountability buddy or my anxiety buddy? And we can't stop people from doing it, of course, but me and the admin team, we try to discourage it. Like, we can't tell you not to, of course. You're all grownups. You do whatever you want. I'm not your dad. But in the end, sometimes that can be really dicey. I always tell people like go to one place for support and go to another place for recovery in a way, like for your friendships. They're almost two different things. Now, your friends are clearly part of your world, but they sometimes can't really be intimately involved in your anxiety. They can support you in it, but it's hard to share that outside the bounds of, well, we all share this common experience and we're cheering for each other in recovery, but we're not intimate friends. We can become friendly and I'm happy about friendships in the group and all, but that can go off the rails really quickly. So I'm sorry that that happened. Ah, Holly, that sucks. And maybe as time goes on, maybe you guys will be able to repair that. You can totally save this, Laura, and show your family. I mean, I know you have a very supportive family, which is great, hope everybody does. But yeah, this stays on YouTube and all the places, Facebook, so feel free. Okay, let's see here. Ooh, let me get my one Twitch comment up. What expecting your family members to make allowances? Is that just another way of making your anxiety special? Well, I mean, not necessary. You know what? The only reason why I would say, well, you're trying to make it special is if you've decided, oh, no, no, I have to have them make allowances. I understand what you're saying, Drew, but you don't know my anxiety is so bad that I have to do this. And we hear this every day. No, no, you don't understand. I'm so bad that I literally can't do this. I must have my husband, I must have my wife, my partner, my mother, my whoever, do things for me. Okay, well, then you're calling yourself like specially anxious. But otherwise, asking them to make allowances for you is, I think, in a way, it's just, well, I'm gonna put this the right way. We can't go from zero to 60. We can't go from zero to a million miles an hour. We don't go from housebound to world travelers in a week. So there's always gonna be some accommodation because they are gonna modify their lives accordingly while you're doing the work. That changes over time as you make progress. But insisting that they accommodate you, you know I can't do this, I have anxiety. That's not helpful. Doesn't mean you're calling it special, but that's definitely not helpful in any way. Let's see, let's scroll down here. There's, I'm gonna put this up. Always have to put a Bethany comment up. These huge comments that I have to look over. They're special and there is legitimate issue that we need to take time to work through. Okay, cool. That's a good point. Pretty much every human being has something tough to work through at some point. Excellent. You know, Bethany brings up a really good point, like we're talking about anxiety and anxiety disorders all the time in this community, but they're not the only things happening in life. So you may have an anxiety problem. You may be agoraphobic, you may be dealing with OCD or health anxiety, whatever it is, but you also have other things that happen in life. Not everything is an anxiety problem. And so it's important to understand that these things do not exist. You don't exist in a vacuum and you have other issues in your life that are separate, although they exist alongside this anxiety, and the people in your life also have their own issues that they're going through. So it's important to remember that life is always happening. This is a pretty big deal here. I never expect my family and loved ones to make allowances for my anxiety. I want them to live their lives as normally as I can. I think that's really a healthy, when you get to that point, when you get to the point where you say, listen, you know, I can't, I don't want you guys to accommodate this anymore because that's not a healthy place for you to be in. That's a really strong place for you, like us, the sufferer to be in, the recovering person to be in. We just have to be really careful that we do not, let me get that off the screen, we have to be really careful that we don't turn that against ourselves though. Like I ruin everything, just leave me to rot in the corner. That's, you don't want to go there. So I liked the idea that says, no, no, no, I don't want you to accommodate me because I care about you just like you care about me. I'm gonna go do this work now and just cheer for me while I do it. That's one thing, but declaring I'm broken, I'm the worst, go on without me, save yourselves, I'll just die here alone. That's different. We don't never want to take it to there, okay? It's really important. Ooh, this is good too. Guys, you're on fire today with these comments. I love it. When anxiety hits, I'm a bit snappy and not looking for soothing. So I had to apologize in advance. That's so good. Like Katya, that's like, that's a lot of self-knowledge. Like some people get that way. Some people get super sad and weepy and crying. Some people get a little bit snappy. I know for me, I could get a little bit snappy. I like snappy is a good word. So having that plan in place or having that arrangement in place, like, listen, you don't have to come in and save me. Don't try to rescue me, don't try and soothe me because I'll probably be a little bit nasty right now. And it's not gonna work out well. So let me just work through it and then we'll talk about it afterwards. Excellent, excellent, excellent. Oh, this is good too. These are all good comments today. I tell my family after a successful exposure, most of the time they never realized that was anxious and somehow that helps because they are showing you, when you show them emergency, they show you, eh, that's gonna be one of the things this morning, I think on the anxious morning, I think it was Thursday or Fridays is about this. So that is that thing where they get to like show you, oh yeah, everything looked fine to us. But that's a lesson. You take that lesson. And I love, I tell them after the exposure. We talk about that in the Facebook group also, like people who I know were meanies, but like no live exposures. Like if you go live in the Facebook group, we're gonna take it down, we're gonna turn it off. And that's one of the reasons too, like do it and then post it and talk about it afterwards. So much better because then it's not a crutch. If you tell people beforehand, oh my God, I'm really nervous about doing this thing. I don't wanna go for my drive, my stomach, I feel nauseous and blah, blah, blah. That's a tough one. So I liked the telling after and I love being able to have them mirror back, like, oh, nothing looked that bad to us. Not that they're minimizing you, but they're showing you reality, which is really great. Very, very good. Very, very good. Oh, this is good. I always like to see, I'm glad that you're, I can't see it and just throw it up really quickly. This is good. So big high fist bump, high five to you on this. I can drive a car before I'm able to stay home. Very good, love it. You're doing that hard work. So I get no credit there. You are doing it. Let's see here. Oh, this is good too. Man, we're just gonna do comments for the rest of the day. I have a meeting with you or two, so I can't, but this is good. I now move in silence because I know everyone will start treating me like I'm fragile and I hate that. So not only can we hate that, but when we get treated like we are fragile, we start to act like we are fragile. So that's so important. I love this comment. I cannot love this comment anymore. That's really great. And this one comes right out of the seal. Actions speak louder than words. Truth, truth. People will be a lot more accommodating to you when they see you starting to progress. That fragile thing, Kendra, that's a great comment. Don't treat me like I'm broken because I've been asking you to treat me like I'm broken for years now. And I had to start to learn that I'm not broken. So stop treating me that way. And sometimes the best way to accomplish that is, I'm gonna just go over here on work and you won't even know until I tell you it, which is great. Okay, let's see. I think she gets a little frustrated. I'm just gonna scroll down as quickly as I can here. One of the best things I learned is, ah, this is big. One of the best things I learned is no one's anxiety is special. Each one has their own worst symptom. I know one of the more cheeky, I use the British term, one of the more cheeky things I ever did on Instagram probably about six, eight months ago that went over really well, but also got me a little bit of flame back was, I did a whole post, it was a slider. I'm like, hey, after a lot of research, bunch of clinicians and academicians and researchers, we know what the scariest anxiety symptom is you scrolled through. And basically the last slide was, whichever one you're afraid of today. And that's so true when you start to unmask that. It's important. Oh no, my anxiety is really special. Mine is worse, but this symptom, I mean, I know that you guys with your breathing, but this dizziness, that's a whole nother Hannibal. And it's so funny because I always try and say like, you're not special. In this situation, you don't wanna be special. There's actually comfort in not being special. You don't want to be special in this part of your life. Trust me, you don't. Because not being special also gives us a path out. Like you work the same way everybody else does, which is a really great thing. Okay, let's see here. Having a, let's see, I'm always grumpy. Okay, this happens. I'm always grumpy AF from anxiety. A lot of people are. It wears us down and it can get us, it can make us a little snippy. So again, some people will withdraw, get weepy and sad. Some people will get a little bit ornery. I know for me, I would get a little bit ornery sometimes. So, okay, I think we're at the end. That is the last comment. So we're good to go. Oh wait, Natalie puts a pain out. We're gonna end it here. So Nat says, is there any way I will retrieve all the live you had about the book because I miss lots of them? Yes, they all stay here on, they stay everywhere. They're in the Facebook group, but the Facebook group is super chaotic. So it's really hard to find stuff. They're on my main Facebook page, but they're also on my YouTube channel. So if you go to my YouTube channel, they're all on a playlist called Recovery Monday, all of them, all 28, and if there's gonna be 30 something when we're done, are in one playlist on my YouTube channel. That's probably the easiest way to find almost anything is just go there. So if you're not on my YouTube or subscribe, go ahead and check it out. They're all on a playlist there. Hopefully that helps. Ha ha ha ha. If a cake comment, cakes are special and excited as if we don't know who that is. Dawn is the cake queen. Let's see here. Now I want cake. All right guys, it's very good. Anyway, we're gonna wrap it up. This is good. We naturally made it under 40 minutes even though there was a lot to do today. You guys were on fire today, it was really great. Next week we are gonna talk about, we only have a couple of these left, man. Let's see here. This is 5.3 next week where you're gonna talk about 5.4. You would think that I would know this book by heart since I wrote it, but I don't. Next lesson is 5.4 about sharpening your skills. We're gonna talk about the needs of practice, your skills, relaxation, your breathing, your focus and meditation. That'll be next week. And then I think we only have a couple more after that. So we only have about three more weeks of this. So same time again, two o'clock Eastern on Monday. We'll do it again at this book. If you don't have the book, it's on my website, theanxistruth.com. If you are not subscribed to the Anxious Morning newsletter, why not? It's the best content I produce by far right now and it's free every single morning. Just go to theanxiousmorning.com, go to your email address and you will get it. Email every morning, podcast every morning. I love doing that. It's really my favorite thing that I do right now is that. And that's it. So we'll be back next week. Thanks for coming by. See you guys and I'll see you on Monday.