 this week on The Anxious Truth. We're gonna talk about the idea that you don't have to recover if you don't want to, so let's get into it. This is episode 214 of The Anxious Truth podcast. If you are new to the podcast, I am Drew Lincelada. I am creator and host of The Anxious Truth. This is the podcast where we cover all things anxiety, anxiety disorders, and recovery. So if you're struggling with things like panic attacks or panic disorder, OCD, health anxiety, agoraphobia, this is a good place for you to be. I'm happy that you're here. And of course, if you are returning to the podcast or the YouTube channel, welcome back. I'm always glad that you are here. This week we are going to talk about the idea that you don't necessarily have to recover. And that choice is yours and yours alone. But before we get into that, I just wanna remind you that The Anxious Truth is more than just this podcast episode. There are three really good books on anxiety and anxiety recovery that I have written over the past couple of years that are helping tens of thousands of people around the world. You should check those out. There are 200 and somewhat other podcast episodes all free. There is my morning newsletter called The Anxious Morning. That's free. And there are links to all of my social media content. That's free, all of which you can find on my website at theanxistruth.com. So take advantage of the resources. If you are enjoying my work and I'm helping you in some way, shape, or form, and you would like to find a way to help me keep this work free of advertising and sponsorships, then all the ways that you can support it can be found at theanxistruth.com slash support. That is always appreciated, never required. So however way you support this work, whether it's financially or just by being here, subscribing to the podcast, subscribing to the YouTube channel, leaving a comment, I appreciate that, I really do. So this week we're gonna talk about the idea that you do not actually have to recover. That's true. And that might sound crazy coming from a guy like me because I spend so much time talking about recovery from things like panic disorder or agoraphobia. But in reality, you don't have to recover. You have the right to choose to not do any of the things that I talk about and write about and make videos about or make social media content about. So I do not have the right to tell you to do anything, nor does any other mental health content creator. So I don't care who it is. Whether it's me or Josh, Fletcher, Kim Quinlan, whoever, Allegra Kaston, Jenna Overbaugh, you know all the usual suspects. You hear us talk about these things and you may feel that you are not ready for that or that that is not really for you. That sort of stuff isn't for you, it's not right for you. You have always the 100% unalienable right to make that choice. So as ridiculous as it is for me to say, you can choose to do whatever you want to do to address your anxiety disorder or not do whatever you don't want to do. And I do not get to pass judgment on that. So this is a weird thing to talk about because a lot of people would think, but you know, shouldn't I get better? Well, I would love it if you got better. That's why I do this. I don't do it so that you don't get better. But in the end, I don't get to decide that. Only you do. And only you get to decide whether or not what you think I'm saying is right for you or anybody that sounds like me. Yes, I'm coming at this from a cognitive behavioral standpoint, which means that you have to intentionally do scary things. You have to intentionally do difficult things. You have to go toward the things you fear. You have to go toward your triggers. And that is unpleasant for everybody. And many people will decide that, no, no, I don't want to do it that way. Or that type of recovery doesn't apply to me and that's okay. You are welcome to make that decision and make that determination and then act accordingly. So I think one of the things that I really want to throw out there, and this isn't going to be a terribly long podcast, is that I don't judge you for that. I can only speak for myself, but I'm thinking that anybody else that does this thing that I do probably has at least some compassion for you and your situation maybe has also lived it like I have. So I have no need to judge you. If you decide that I am wrong for you and the things I am talking about don't apply or you don't like them or you think I don't know what I'm talking about, I still 100% support you as one human being to another and respect you and respect your right to make that decision. But that means that one of the things that you will never find for me is I will try to teach you what I can and inspire you and motivate you and connect you with a community of people who might do the same and allow themselves to share their experiences with you and maybe leave some breadcrumbs for you to follow along the way. I can do all those things and people like me can do all those things but I can only speak for me on my podcast and my YouTube channel. I can do those things. What I cannot do is to try to convince you that you should recover. If you do want to recover, I think that what I'm talking about is the way to do it but I'm never going to try to convince you. I'm not going to plead with you to get better. That is not a choice I get to make and that is not something that I can influence. I can tell you that I think in my bones, in my heart that you can get better, that is 100% true. I'm never going to stop saying that. I know that you can and I think that everybody can and I think that the approach that I take is the proper approach or otherwise I wouldn't be talking about it and writing about it and going to school for it and doing all those things. But knowing that you can or believing that you can doesn't mean that you should or that I get to tell you to recover or tell you to do these things or force you to do these things. And if you decide to not do these things, it's not up to me to call you out or shame you or embarrass you or somehow even interact with you in any way. So I think this is really important. I think some people start to get a little bit caught up. The community is very active. The community is very vocal. I appreciate the vocal support. I know that people feel very passionate when you start to find a thing that works for you. All you want to do is talk about it and tell everybody about it. And I get that, totally get that. Let me look at me. I find a thing that worked for me and I turned it into this whole thing, three books and grad school and getting to be a licensed therapist when I'm done and all of those things. So yeah, clearly I got so enthusiastic about it that I turned it into sort of my new life. So I get that. And a lot of people in the community get very enthusiastic. They get very vocal. They want everybody to do it this way. And some people get a little bit overly enthusiastic and they get very defensive and they get a little bit protective of me and my words. And so if you run into that sometimes, please know that that's not a thing that I would necessarily condone. And when I can control it, like in my Facebook group for instance, I'm always careful to let everybody know that nobody has to defend me. Nobody has to defend this way that we do this. Nobody has to defend a cognitive behavioral approach. Everybody does what's right for them or what they believe is right for them. Because what you believe is right for you, I think in that moment, who am I to say that it is not? I might not agree with you, but it doesn't mean that I'm right and it doesn't mean that you're right. We don't know. But in the end that moment, only what you believe is right matters. It's the only thing that matters. Yeah, there are certain situations where people may be determined by a court, maybe can't make that determination for themselves, but we're not talking about that. In this situation, I believe that if you are watching me or listening to me right now, you are an able-bodied person of sound mind, even though you may be dealing with things like panic attacks or goryphobia or OCD, you are of sound mind. You get to make your own choices. I don't get to dictate that to you and don't let anybody else do that either. So while this may seem like a weird thing for me to talk about with you for eight or nine minutes in a short podcast episode, I think it deserved its own podcast episode. I will do social media posts on this. I might even do a morning newsletter on this because I gotta say it in all the forums that I can be in, I think, but it's important for me to throw that out there. In the end, you don't have to get better. If you made the choice to continue to be the way things are, you believe things the way they are, and you think that that is the choice that you can best fits you or that is the thing that you are most capable of doing, then, like I said, as one human being to another, I would still support you and root for you and hope that that works out for you. If you decide that you totally wanna get better but you wanna do it a different way and you don't like the way I do it, I would still respect you, support you, wish you well, come back and let me know how it's going. Somebody's car along clearly is going off. Maybe you heard that, maybe you didn't. But yeah, that's the message of today's podcast. It's short, probably less than 10 minutes in the end. They're not all gonna be 15, 30, 45 minutes. So that is the deal. Don't let anybody bully you, pressure you, or shame you into doing things that you may not be ready to do or might not think are right for you. And I should talk about that for just a quick second before I finally do wrap it up. There is a difference between deciding that no, no, I'm not gonna do this. This is not right for me. Totally fine, I get that, no problem. I don't take it personally in any way. Look, I don't take it personally when people tell me that I don't know what I'm talking about. I never take that personally. I have people every day, all day long that will tell me, you don't know what you're talking about. You've never had a panic attack. Okay, I don't take that personally at all. It's all right. So you can be in that camp or you can be somebody who kinda thinks that this sounds right but you're just not ready to do this, kinda have to be ready to do it. Sometimes being ready means just the point where frustration and anger outweigh the fear. That's a story that I could relate to in a big way, like just that's it, enough is enough. One of my more popular videos that I made a couple years ago was about that, reaching that point where like, that's it, you're gonna have to kill me. I would rather die than continue to live this way. Sometimes you have to get to that point to be ready to do this sort of work. And that's okay. Not everybody is ready. You may come to this community and come to this podcast, come to the material that I produce, similar material that's on the internet, just not ready for it. You might not disagree with it and you might think it sounds about right but you just might not be in a place where you're ready to start to do that work and that's okay. Keep reading, keep listening. You can avail yourself of all the content. You could be in the community. Everybody's welcome. I'm still gonna root for you and cheer for you and I'm sure everybody else will as well. And when the day comes that you're ready to do the work, maybe you'll do the work or maybe you decide to not do it. The point here is it's all up to you and you get to make whatever choices that you make. As long as you make those choices aware of the consequences then who am I or anybody else on the internet or anywhere else walking the planet or in the known universe to question that, shame you, judge you, force you into other ways to do things, we don't get to do that. You are your own person, your sound mind. You can make your own choices and it's okay. So that is it. That is episode 214 in a nutshell. It's a short one and a little bit different. Again, like last week, no music, no intro, no outro. I'm just trying to bang these out as quick as I can. School starts again on Monday so I'm just trying to get as many of these ready and queued up to be released as I can. So even though there is no afterglow playing which is the song you hear at the beginning at the end of the podcast, I will still credit my friend, Ben Drake, for writing the song and letting me attach it to this podcast. I appreciate that you could find Ben and his music at bendrakemusic.com. I will ask you the same favor that I always do. If you're watching on YouTube, please subscribe to the podcast, subscribe to my channel, hit the notification bell so you know when I upload, comment. I love commenting and interacting with you guys on YouTube now. Like the video if you're listening to the podcast on Apple or Spotify or some place that lets you rate or review the podcast. Leave a five star rating if you like it. Maybe take a minute and write a quick review. Helps other people find the podcast. And that is it, thank you for your support. Hopefully this has been helpful. Maybe I've let you off the hook a little bit. Maybe you have at least affirmed your belief in mankind because trust me, I still support you no matter what choice you make. And I know many, many other people do. And that's it, thanks for coming by. I'll be back again next week. I do not know what I'm gonna talk about, but I will be here and remember this is the way. Or maybe it's not, you get to pick.