 recovery. We do things for a reason. It's not random, and we don't make it up as we go along. It's Monday, which means it's the 24th episode of Recovery Monday. So let's look at the ideas of methodical, systematic, and incremental right now. So let's see who is popping in here. We're going to put the chat overlay up as usual. Get you guys cooking here. Just let me know everything's cool. First one in. Just let me know you can hear me. Everything should be good. Like I said last week, I think we got the technology nailed at this point, so we probably don't have to worry about that. Just let me know how you're doing. Yo, what up, B? Let me know where you guys are coming from. Let me know how you guys are doing. This is a little bit of a shorter lesson today, so we'll maybe have a little bit more time just to do Q&A and that sort of stuff. What up, Kat, John is here, or Yana possibly from Germany. I don't know. Kristi, what up? Thank you for letting me know that this is working. I will remind you guys that this is the 24th one of these. We've done this for 24 weeks, and I count the last eight. There's eight more to go. So every week, on Monday, we do a lesson out of this book, The Anxious Truth. This is my recovery guide. We're just going lesson by lesson. The book is broken down into chapters, and those chapters are broken down into lessons. So today, we are chapter four, lesson five, which is the last of chapter four, and next week, we'll go on to chapter five. So today, we're going to talk about lesson four. That five is called the overall plan, the method, the system, and being incremental. But huge disclaimer, I'm fanatical about telling you that this is not the true method. We are methodical in recovery, but this is not my method. I didn't invent any of this. I never take credit for that, and I hate when people say this is my method. It's not the true method. So today, we're going to talk about the idea of being methodical, working within a system, and being incremental because it sort of matters. So hey, what's up from India? Jackie's here. Donna's here. What up? Hey, spring? Yeah, it's sort of spring here. We're getting warm. It's a little breezy, but not too shabby, you know? So let's get cooking here. We got 30 people in the room. I know everybody's going to sort of roll in as they can. And let's talk about the idea of being methodical, systematic, and incremental in your recovery. I'm going to read a little bit out of this chapter today because there's some good stuff in here. It's not what I want to start with is the fact that this is not like a random process. The reason why I say that we want to be methodical and work within the consign kinds of a system is really there's two reasons for that. Number one, if we don't do that, anxious people have a tendency to want to sort of make up recovery as they go along. And that's bad because it will lead you into the trap of like trying to decide day by day what to do to try to get better. And when we are in an anxious state and we're afraid, we don't make good decisions. We start to make our decisions based on how we feel that day. If we don't know what we're going to do ahead of time, or at least have a rough idea or know why we should have a plan, then we fall into the trap sometimes of just like sitting and like, well, let me see how I feel today. And then I'll decide what I do today, which is not a good way to recover. We also fall into the trap of getting really discouraged really easily because we forget why we're doing this. So we want to be methodical so that we can eliminate some of that. It actually helps us to remember that, well, oh, yeah, we're working within the confines of a sort of a method and a system here. We're not winging it. We're not going by the seat of our pants. We're not making it up as we go along. We're not being robots. Like this is not a robotic process. But it also can't be a random process that you sort of feel your way through depending on how each day is going. You know, life is organic. It's going to change. Things are going to be fluid and you're going to have to have some flexibility. But generally speaking, we do want to remember that we're working within the confines of sort of a method and a system, if you will. It really helps because one of the pitfalls is too much subjectivity. In many instances, we are trying to take out subjective judgment and opinion in the recovery process and be as objective as we can. And working methodically and systematically and incrementally helps us. We're never going to be completely subjective because we're humans and not completely objective because we're humans and not robots. But we can give ourselves the best chance of kind of staying on track as opposed to going off the rails for no good reason. So we're talking about working within the confines of a method, really. And the way I started this was being methodical means understanding that you will be following a process and trusting that process. So when you want to jump ahead four steps, stop and trust the process. Like that's part of sticking to being sort of methodical. The other part of being methodical or understanding that you're sort of sticking within this framework is that you should probably really think about the type of anxiety related information that you're going to consume while you're going through this process. Because if you start to you're shooting all over the place, and I'm just going to look for every possible solution to every possible symptom and everything I think of, and you're going to consume a wide just bury yourself in anxiety related information all day long, that isn't necessarily helpful. So if you decide, well, I'm going to sort of do it this way, then do it that way. And you're going to have to leave the other stuff sort of behind at least for now. Now, you may decide some part of the way in that this way to do it isn't for you. And that's okay. I respect that. That's not a problem. For whatever reason you may decide, I don't want to do it this way anymore. And that's okay. But if you are going to try to do it this way and also try to hang on to, well, you know, let me look at my gut health and let me look at my supplements and let me look at, you know, my self soothing behaviors and let me look at all those other things. At the same time, things get really muddy. So you kind of want to commit to whatever recovery plan you decided to execute and stick with that, at least for a while, it helps you be consistent. Because there's so many wide ranging sources of information that come at this from different angles that you could get really overwhelmed and confused if you don't just decide, no, no, I'm going to do it like this at least for a while. So consider that. When we're talking about being systematic, this is the part where, and I hate using the word systematic, but we have to because, again, I can't stress enough, we're not trying to be robotic here. Like this isn't, recovery isn't a step by step by step. And you do this in one, two, three, four, five. And it always works this way. And it's predictable. But we do want to be somewhat systematic so that, like I said in the beginning of the video, we stay out of the trap of making it up as we go along. When we don't do that, we just, then all the subjectivity comes in, all the judgment comes in, start to assess things based on how you feel from day to day. And that's not really good. The other benefit of trying to work systematically is that you know that like, okay, I'm just going to follow a plan. This is a system and I could just follow the system without having to make decisions on the fly on days that I feel like crap. All right. So it helps you to understand that, well, I do have to be systematic here. Like what was I planning to do today? Well, the system says do this, or I mean, you know, my plan says to do this, so I will do this and it doesn't matter how I feel. The other benefit of working sort of systematically is that you remember that you can always come back and review. Part of this, and I say that here, part of the system is you can come back periodically and review. How's my progress? Not how am I feeling? Not is my anxiety gone, but have I been accomplishing my goals? Am I driving further? Am I staying home more often? Am I doing all, you know, am I refraining from Googling my symptoms because of my health anxiety? If I stop seeking reassurance. So I'll discuss this, a plan for GAD. There is, you can make a plan for GAD. It might not look like an agoraphobia plan, but you can do that. So we'll talk about it. Hang on there. But when you work in this way, it gives you the opportunity to say, okay, I'm going to go back and judge my, you know, review my progress now and then I might have to adjust things a little bit. What am I doing well? What am I not doing well? But again, understanding why you're doing these things matter, right? So that's why I say you really want to be methodical and systematic. The other thing that I think is really important here when I say be incremental, right, methodical, systematic, incremental, is we always want to make sure that we are moving forward all the time. Now, it doesn't mean every day you have to push further and further and further. But when things start to become easier, a certain thing starts to become easier. It's kind of human nature to say, okay, well now I can do the school run in the grocery shopping and I can stay home a little bit and okay, I'm good. Like I'm good. I can stop now. And when you stop, that's when you run the risk of building that dreaded, what I call the acceptable bubble, which is you teach yourself how to do some stuff, but you've learned to do things without maybe panicking or without maybe being terribly anxious. But that's it. The bubble is here and anything that bursts that bubble or anything that presses on you at all collapses the bubble and then you'll feel like you're back at square one or life will throw you a challenge that is beyond the stuff that you have worked on and it'll be like, oh, I haven't been working on stuff for months because I've just been okay going to the grocery store and just doing my little life. So we have to be careful about that. We want to be incremental so that we say, and in the beginning of the book, when I talk about sort of making your goals, like if one of your goals is to be able to take a vacation across the country, then you work toward that. That might not be something you could do all the time or one of my goals is I want to go back to school or one of big goals, like big things that you would never think of doing because of your anxiety problem. You work toward those things. Like, all right, most of my life is pretty good right now, but I still know that I don't want to have any restrictions. So what can I do now to make sure that I keep going? That's the incremental part of this. So methodical, systematic and incremental keeps us on course. And it keeps us aware of why we're doing these things. Remember that everything here has a why. And I'm going to sort of wrap up the lecture part of this by reminding you again, we do not do hard and scary and difficult things to recover just for the sake of doing hard things. And especially if you're a dude watching me right now, I think you guys will probably relate to this. And you have been involved at all with consuming personal development, personal growth or self-help information online. The idea that somehow you must do warrior things because it shows that you have character and it's hardcore and not just dudes, I know women here too, but we're not doing these things for the sake of doing hard things just to say we do hard things. There's a reason for this. And if you lose sight of, well, why am I doing the scary stuff? If you lose sight of why or you don't fully understand the why, then it starts to feel patently absurd to do challenging and scary things all the time. So understanding that you're working inside sort of a system and a method keeps you from falling into that trap too. Like why am I doing this to myself? Oh, that's right. I know I'm doing this because I have to learn. I have to learn some new lessons. That is a big deal because I think sometimes people get a little bit, oh, copper's chiming in. I think people get a little caught up in that. Like, well, why am I doing, they forget why they're doing it or that ridiculous message of like doing hard things just for the sake of it. This isn't a character building exercise. This is all about learning. We do it because we're trying to learn. So that's really important for me to say because you can really fall into a trap if you don't remember that, why we're doing it. It's about learning. It's a classroom. So there's that. Okay. So 11 minutes in, like I said, it was pretty short. Sorry, Cop decides he just wants to be involved. So let me look at some comments here and let's see what we got here. Let's see here. Somebody says I'm okay still feeling the skips. Okay, you're allowed to feel the skips. That's fine. He'll get tired of barking sooner or later. That's totally fine. Still feeling the skips. Unfortunately, if again, if you're in the Facebook group, I can't see your name, only Facebook users. So I don't know who that is, but it's okay. You can feel the skips. That's all good. Jersey's here. Julie would up these here. Jenny's here from Austria or Australia. I assume Australia. Oh, Sean says still dealing with the skips. Okay, that's fine. Let's see here. Method is widely needed on bed. Okay, let's put this up here. It is. So a method or a framework to work in is needed on bad days without a doubt. Like it helps keep the help keeps it out of the weeds on a bad day. It's easy to become really frantic and not know what to do. Like I just don't know what to do today. What should I do today? Like you can't make a decision. So having a bit of a method or a system to work in is really, really helpful on the bad days because you don't have to think you just have to do based on what's sort of the method in the system and your plan says to do. Which, by the way, is a tremendously kind thing to do for yourself. So some people would look at this and say, I have to make a plan. I have to have steps. There's a method. Like that seems cruel. It seems mechanical. It seems robotic. Where's my humanity? Where's my soul? Like, no, making a plan for yourself so that you don't have to make decisions when you're frantic and under the gun is a really kind thing to do for yourself. That's a way more human way to do this than like pushing yourself and dragging yourself through mud and forgetting why and then wondering why you're so broken. Like that's not cool. So work with a plan and work methodically and systematically. It's kinder to yourself. It just is. Let's see here. Let's pop this up real quick over the top. Big comment. I feel like what if I'm not doing enough but then I don't have the emotional reserves to do more? I've been making progress by driving alone and driving further each time. Okay. Oh, God. I get you on the gas prices. The whole world is feeling that right now. But be careful in this situation. Like it's so interesting to see people do this. And I did it. Everybody does it. It's just human nature. Look at how in one half of the sentence you say, I'm making progress. I'm doing better. But then there's always a but. But, but, but it feels like I should be doing more. But I'm tired. But okay, just end the sentence with I'm making progress. I'm getting better. I'm doing better. Why does there have to be a but? So catch that. When you start to qualify that, like I'm going to tell you about my progress, but then I'm going to wipe out the progress by adding the doubt to it. Recognize, oh, I'm thinking, I'm just thinking that's just a thought that I should be doing more. I'm thinking about the fact that I am tired from doing this work. Okay, you're allowed to be tired from doing the work. So you don't have to add stories on top of it. This is why we judge based on what we do, not what we think, not what your brain tells you is wrong or right, not what it whispers in your ear. What have I been doing? I've been doing better. End of story. That's it. You don't have to say any more than that. That's really important. That's another part of being kind to yourself. Catching that and saying, well, I'm not going to engage in that conversation. I don't have to have that conversation with myself. I'm doing better. That's it. That's all I need to know right now. That's important. Hey, Trinidad, what up? Okay, so let's put this up here. So Jessica says it's so hard to set a plan for GAD health anxiety and OCD. And that is patently not true. So just because your plan doesn't look like an agoraphobics plan doesn't mean that you have to just randomly be thrashed around by your anxiety every day and not know what to do. That's not true. Like you know what's going on. If you have OCD, you know that you are dealing with particular obsessions and compulsions that you want to do to eliminate the discomfort of that. You may be working with a therapist. Hopefully you are with an OCD specialist who gives you ERP homework to do. There are things that you can be doing. That is part of your plan. If you have health anxiety, the first part of your plan is to say, well, I do all of these things in reaction to when my brain tells me I might have cancer or I might have this or I might have that. I have to identify the things that I do and my plan is to stop doing them. That's a plan too. Like today I will not Google anything about my health. That's a plan. So no matter how scared you are when you wake up in the morning that you have some disease that you really don't have, my plan says that I'm not going to do any research about that disease today. That's a plan. You plan to not do that. And GAD is similar. I've talked about GAD. I have GAD, go and listen to the GAD episodes of my podcast. There's a plan for GAD too. Like okay, what am I doing every day? What am I doing every day? I'm thinking about how I'm thinking. I'm being perfectionist. I'm being a people pleaser. I'm overplanning everything. Like the first step in your plan with those things is to come to grips and sort of have a come to Jesus meeting with yourself. Like what am I doing? And now I have to start to plan to not do those things. So if you're a GAD person and you also want to claim, lay claim to the ground that says, but I'm the person that takes care of the whole family and has to do everything, well, part, step one in your plan is to understand, oh, that's not helping my GAD at all. And now today my plan is I'm going to leave some stuff undone or questions unasked or unanswered. So you can do that. It's just a little bit more nuanced. And you have to, in those situations, you really have to be honest with yourself and say, what are the things that I'm doing that are fueling this problem? Now I have to start to plan to not do them, right? So it's not, you know, sometimes it makes me crazy a little bit. Like people with GAD will insist that there's no plan because I'm just, I'm just anxious. Yeah, but there's a reason for that. Sometimes there are habits you have to really, really see in yourself and start to look at and you work on not doing things, right? So there you can plan that it just looks a little bit different than the agoraphobics plan, whereas your plan is generally learning to start to phase things out instead of phase things in. It's in simplest terms. It's, yes, it's more complicated that, but in simplest terms, that's what we're talking about. Let me pop this up real quick here. Okay, so let's pop this up. Sometimes it's so difficult to follow the exposure plan when everyday life itself feels overwhelming. I started working again, and that was a huge step. I feel stuck because when the job is done, I'm so exaught to do more exposure. Okay, but in that situation, like life could also be an exposure, right? So life is also exposure. Like you don't have to necessarily be doing other things. If that job is challenging for you, then it's perfectly 100% okay for that to be the challenge that you meet today. So sometimes we lose track of the fact that like, well, is this a hard thing for me to do? Yeah, I'm doing a hard thing. I went back to work that challenges me. So okay, you keep going. Like, that's okay. Again, building that story on top of that, like, oh, I went back to work, which is a huge win, a tremendous win. But, but then we qualify the win by saying, and now I'm tired and I don't think I'm doing enough exposures. But you just, you had a huge win. You're back to work. Like, you're meeting that life challenge. We're learning to reengage with life again. So acknowledge the win and use that to the best of your ability and revel in it in a way and then you fit your other exposure work in where you can. That's okay. You don't have to listen to your brain when it's so well, you're not doing enough. Now you won't recover. You're not doing enough. Like, recognize those patterns. Throw this up real quick. I was doing well the last few months. Now I feel more anxious in the last few weeks. Okay, like, this is not a process of not feeling anxiety. So, okay, now you're feeling anxious. Congratulations. This is where you get to use your new found relationship with anxiety. Because if your only measure of progress is, I feel better, you're missing the point. Like, so now you get to practice this new relationship with a new reaction to being anxious. And it starts with not throwing your hands up and declaring a giant setback because you're anxious again. You might be anxious today or you might be anxious tomorrow. What are you going to do with that? That's what we care about. And that's the crux of this. Really important. All right. So, Julie, what up? Let's see what Julie has to say. What to get back to the gym? But I am not patient and I want to go see changes right away, but it's keeping me scared to go to the gym because of the letdown. Okay. I'm not sure is this an anxiety question, because in the end, I want to go back to the gym. But I know that I won't see any, I won't see any progress in the first three days. So then I won't go to the gym. So I won't be let down. Like, you're going to have to just go to the gym. And I think this, this recurring themes here that like, I might feel a way I might have an emotion. I might have an emotion in patience. I might have an emotion. Yeah, I'm kind of judging myself because I'm a little bit out of shape. Like, you have to just, you're going to have to go to the gym and work on feeling those emotions as they come up. Right. So I understand that, but look at all that sort of self-flagellation that's going on. I won't do a thing that will ultimately help me because I'm afraid of judging myself and feeling things about myself while I do it. These are things you just, we just have to work through. Pop up here. Let's see here. Scrolling, scrolling, scrolling. Bethany is saying hello to Copper. I see he does. I guess he got tired now. He's done. Let's see. I'm on a cross country vacation in Tennessee. Let's see. GBG is here. I love it. Going to Georgia tomorrow. I shoot a YouTube video doing everything in our increments when I feel excited. Okay, love it. Love it. Love it. Love it. So this situation where like, well, this is a challenging thing to do, but taking it an hour at a time. I'm just taking one hour at a time. And the anxiety is definitely pushing a situation where it just wants you to live the entire day now. I want to show, I want you to experience all of the fear you're going to have for the next 24 hours or until you pass out because you're so tired now. Like, let's process it all now, but you don't have to. Like just take it five minutes at a time, 10 minutes at a time, an hour at a time. That's really, I like your strategy, dude. Very good. No, no, no, no. Let's see. Sharon. Hey, Sharon. I love the idea of continuing beyond the comfort zone of, okay, I conquered that because it doesn't give room for unexpected exposures. Yes. Very good. So the reason why we do want to always go out of that comfort zone is that we don't get to control life all the time. So a lot of people make that mistake. Well, I solve these four or five problems and I could do 80% of life pretty comfortably. So I'll stop. But what about the other 20% and then when you get invited to your cousin's wedding or there's a graduation or you have to go to the dentist, then it becomes a 10 alarm disaster that you have to go to a wedding. But it didn't have to be because you've pushed beyond that comfort zone. The world becomes your safe place, your ability to like forklift your recovery across contexts and situations. And Sharon, for you, for your OCD, like, okay, well, if you're subtype shift, if you worked a little more, and I'm not saying that it's, oh, you're not working hard. And I'm not saying that, but I like the way you related it to OCD. So if there's a subtype shift or something comes up, okay, well, I can rely on the experience that I have when I did that extra work. So that's, you know, it's really good. That's why we do that. Otherwise we could get stuck. Okay, let's see here. How do you know how often to do exposures for scary feelings? Say the same from start to finish. That's okay. Because the exposure is to the scary feeling. We are learning to move through the scary feelings. So you always at the end, you always have to say, I was really scared and nothing happened. So you want to do those exposures every day. If you if you can, like if you're dealing with OCD or something like that, your therapist would give you ERP homework to do every day, if not more than once a day, your exposures should be daily. So don't fall into the trap of thinking, well, since I'm scared, it means I should do them less. I should back up. No, it means you should do them more. You don't have to push yourself into oblivion, but you should do them more. And the point of the exposure is to be scared. That's why we do them. And it's perfectly okay that you're scared from finish, some of the start to finish. Don't expect that within the confines of one exposure, things are really going to change that much. Right. So you just got to keep moving through that. No, no, no, no. I'm going to put this up on the screen, even though it's like symptom specific, but only to say that there is no symptom specific thing. Can you help me with the strategy to overcome the passing out feeling? Yeah, feel like you're going to pass out and keep going. So I only want to put this up to illustrate that there's no special like this is one of those common things that says, okay, I understand all the stuff for all the other fears, but my fear that I'm most afraid of give me the special technique for my special fear. So the hardest anxiety symptom to overcome and the one that needs the most work is the one you're afraid of most today, which very possibly is different than the one you were afraid of a month ago or two months ago or six months ago or a year ago. And you might be afraid of a different one in two more weeks. So the same rules apply all the time just because the idea that you might that lightheaded feeling when you stand up might scare you most doesn't mean it's any different. Have you ever passed out from tying your shoes? The answer is no. So you just have to keep repeating that. I know I sound like a cold hearted bastard when I say that stuff, but it's true. You can't look at, well, this is my special symptoms. So I need a special tip for it. You actually don't. Here's an agoraphobia question. In the context of agoraphobia, would you recommend making weekly schedules in terms of exposures? Yes, I definitely would if you can. Now, I do understand that sometimes life happens when I did my work. That's exactly what I did. I knew that the first thing I was going to do in the morning was get up, put my feet on the floor, run my little morning routine and get out and go do my driving exposures. That was my plan and I executed it every day. And then I knew, well, based on what was going on my schedule, I could also go out again at one o'clock in the afternoon or two o'clock in the afternoon that day. Or some days I couldn't go out again in the afternoon. But yes, in fact, I wrote it in the book. It's in here in part of making the plan. I would put them on your calendar as often as you can. Again, life happens and sometimes we have to adjust, but put it on your calendar because if you don't or you resist that, you fall into the trap of waking up in the morning, seeing how you feel, and then deciding what you're going to do that day. The most valuable progress comes when you take action no matter how you feel when you wake up in the morning. Now, if you wake up in the morning and you have the flu or stomach virus and clearly you don't do your exposures that day, I mean anxiety-wise. If you wake up and you're really anxious, you don't make the decision, oh, I'm not going to do anything today because I'm not having a good day. That's exactly the day that you have to do stuff. And look, it's on my calendar. Now, the calendar doesn't make you do it, but it helps you to make that commitment and remember, oh, this is when I really have to do it most. So, schedule it. I'm a fan of that and I hate schedules, but one of the things that the recovery process taught me is the value of a schedule and sort of blocking at that time and I use that lesson now. So, let's go down a little bit more here. We might get all these. I kind of did that. Still going on with life, kids carrying the anxiety and thoughts. Okay. So, what do I do in response when I notice that I'm anxious and what do I do when I start having thoughts? What do I do? So, you have to answer that question. What do I do when I notice that I'm anxious and what do I do when I start having thoughts that I don't like? Answer that question and then your plan is I have to stop doing those things. I'm going to have to change direction on that. So, that is that thing where there is a plan. Okay, you're out and you're doing the stuff, but if you're going to go out and do the stuff all the time and every time you have a scary thought, you latch onto it and start engaging with it and having a conversation with it and wondering why and what does it mean and am I going to be okay and does it mean that I won't ever recover and does anybody else have this thought? Well, then it doesn't matter that you're out and doing life because that's not the problem. The problem is that relationship with those thoughts. So, you have to really look at it and say, what do I do when I notice I'm anxious and then what do I do when I notice those thoughts and my plan is how do I stop phasing those things out which will be super uncomfortable. So, when your brain wants you to engage in an extended conversation about an intrusive thought that you have and you refuse to do that because you just engage behaviorally elsewhere, it will be as scary to you as the agoraphobic who's trying to go into the frozen food section. Make sense? So, that's it. Scroll down, scroll down. This is good. Sorry, I don't see your name, but my plan includes not checking body things. That's a huge, huge thing. For some people that have health anxiety, they get skin focused. So, literally checking body things. I know people that have gotten really stuck with like taking pictures of their skin, taking pictures of themselves every day. They take 7, 8, 9, 12, 15, 50 pictures of themselves, selfies in a mirror, just to see if there's anything different so that they can be sure that nothing is wrong. Okay, I got to take less of those pictures every day. I have to do less checking. So, that's really good. Excellent. Let's see. Let's see. Jax asks, what's best to tackle first, agoraphobia or monophobia? I can't do exposure gradually. It's either my mother goes home and says, okay, time to go home. Let her go home and try. Either way. So, they're both the same. Believe it or not, they're just two different expressions of the same fear. Agoraphobia is if I go into particular context, most people will see it as leaving the house, but if I go into particular situations, then I have, you know, I might panic and I might feel these dangerous things, in which case I need to save myself or be saved. Monophobia is what if it happens any time at home and nobody's here to save me. So, it's the same exact fear just expressing in two different ways. So, really, Jax, work both at the same time. You will find that if you get better at staying home alone, you will actually get better at the agoraphobia at the same time. If you start working on agoraphobic exposures, the monophobia gets better at the same time. Now, your brain doesn't necessarily understand that. So, let's say that you figure out and you're out driving all over the world and you're not agoraphobic anymore. When you do have to stay home alone those first few times, your brain's going to say, oh, but we can't do this. This is different. But you'll see that it's easier than you thought it was. And they both kind of resolve at the same time. Just two different expressions of the same fear. Okay, let's see. It's a big, big one. And then I'm going to scroll down to kind of the end here. I can't hardly travel. I can't drive out of town, have at ups and downs. I have went out of town and drove out of town many times. Some months, it's like falling right back into the same little patterns, worrying about what could be. Well, unfortunately, Patricia, I feel for you because I do understand what that feels like and I know how rough that could be. But that pattern that you fall back into is I'm worried about how I feel and I'm going to run from it and I'm going to retreat from it and I'm going to, I feel like it's an emergency. I feel like how I feel is an emergency. And so I will treat it as an emergency and therefore your brain gets the message, oh, it really is. And that means you run back home and you don't go far and you can't leave the town. So as much as it really stinks, the only way to break that habit is to do that scary thing that you run from. There's really no other answer. I wish there was. But that's the pattern. Like, oh, I'm going to treat it. It feels like an emergency. So I'll treat it like it and I'll run back home and then I'll just stay home for the next three months. And I'll try again three months from now and I'll get a little ways. But then when it starts to feel like an emergency again, I treat it like an emergency and I run back home and we treat again. So this is a crappy deal, but it's a deal we have. And the only way to break that cycle is to understand that, well, I have to stop treating it like an emergency. I'm going to have to start to move through this fear because you're always okay, even though it feels so unsafe, you're still safe. You're always safe. You always have been safe. And running home has never saved you because the good news is you never had to be safe. Right. So I hope that helps. And I feel for you. I do. Okay. Well, I'll put this up for Susie here. The picking yourself up again and again, it's not starting again and again, but the picking yourself up is the recovery. Like the win is in the picking yourself up. So the win here is, oh, anxiety came back and I worked with it. I felt really anxious, but I got up and I did my stuff anyway and I engaged with my life, whatever that looks like anyway, that's the win. The win is, you know, in a way, not to sound dramatic about it, but, you know, while I got knocked down, the win is not, is getting up. It's not failure because you got knocked down. It's only a win when you get back up again. That's the recovery process. It's really important. So you can't really, that's not being very nice to yourself when you say that, like, well, I just have to, I'm starting again and again. You're not starting if you learn a lesson every time you get up. Right? So, and if you are doing that again and again and again, congratulations, you're doing it. You're actually doing it. You just have to accept that lesson that, look at me, I keep getting up every time it knocks me down. It can't keep me down. It can't take me out. So accept the lesson and know that you're actually doing really well with that. That's not failure. You're not starting again, but it feels like you're starting again because you're going to, it sounds like you're not really accepting the lesson that like, oh, I'm always capable of moving over. It doesn't keep me down. It doesn't pin me down. Like I keep getting back up. That's huge. That's huge. All right, so let's see here. When you're playing, oh, very good. GBG says, I like, so you know what? Here's one thing I love about you guys. There's 64 people here, a little smaller crowd today, but there's a wide range. There's people at the beginning, people at the end are already recovered. They're kind of done with the journey, people nearing the end. Either Sam pops by, GBG is here. I love how you guys mix together and, you know, that's such an encouraging message. And I appreciate that. I love when you guys are supporting each other. That's probably the thing that makes me happiest. So thank you for that. Appreciate it. So let me scroll up here. Laura says, hey, Laura, I hate when you're right. I need to schedule it better. Yes, scheduling is a hugely helpful tool. I didn't want to schedule. I didn't want to schedule. But when I scheduled, it got better. Things got better. I'll try and take a few more rooms at the end, and then we're going to wrap it up 35 minutes. So you keep doing the exposures is the key that it will get less scary. Biggest problem is being okay with being scary and doing it anyways, having the belief in myself that it will be okay. All right, Joanna, so yes, we do the exposures not to make it go away or not so that it gets less scary. The last sentence there is the key. You do the exposure to learn that even when it is scary, oh, I can trust myself to be okay. I know in the beginning, you think that you won't be and you don't trust it. But the point of the exposure is exactly that. So I learned that if I faced a fear and moved through it, oh, look, I was okay. And then I was okay again and again and again. And that's when you begin to overcome that. And now I can start to trust that I am okay. And so we start small with tiny exposures, that's okay, which you learn, well, when I'm afraid, I can move through it. I can tolerate it. I can build a new relationship with this. And I always wind up okay. And that's where you start to turn the corner of like, oh, look, I can trust myself. I can trust my body to take care of me. I can trust my brain to take care of me. I'm okay. So that's the key. Don't worry about when it gets less scary. Worry about going yourself that, oh, look, I can trust myself. Just forget the scary part. It's going to be scary. Just look at reality. It was really scary. But nothing happened. Therefore, oh, look, I can trust myself a little more today than I did yesterday. Hopefully a little more tomorrow than I did today. So just be patient with yourself and recognize that you're showing yourself, you're proving to yourself that you can trust yourself. That's the important part. Don't worry about the scary part. It's going to be there. Let's roll here. I become okay. So Patricia says, okay, just to follow up quickly with Patricia because we're at the end. I'm going to wrap it up. I become obsessed with my heart rate. Okay, so now I've been there. I used to walk around all day long with my hand here all day long. The people that I work with, the people in my life, they would know my hand was always here. It was always here. So I get that 100%. But again, you're treating your heart rate like an emergency. You feel like it is, you think it is, and then you treat it like it is. So a good first step for you, Patricia, would be you got to take your hand down. You got to take your hand down. And that might be a thing you have to practice every five minutes. Where's my hand? Put it down on the table. Put it down on the table. Put it down on the table. It'll feel really uncomfortable because you think you need to be checking your pulse to stay safe. But if you break that a little bit, a little bit, a little bit, then that's kind of how you start to move forward. But I understand. I do understand. I was there. A fear of embarrassment is super common. The fear of fear is more like a fear of embarrassment. So people interpret the fear as, in different ways, the top fears that come or the top feared outcomes of fear and panic and anxiety is death, permanent incapacitation in some way, psychotic breaker insanity, making a fool of myself or making a scene being embarrassed. Those are the top, by far. So fear of being embarrassed because you think that the fear will, oh my goodness, what if they see me shaking or what if I start to cry? Very, very, very common, very, very common. So it's the same rules kind of apply like, okay, well, somebody might see me shake or somebody might see that I have a panic attack, but that's okay. That's not the end of the world. So for the person who thinks they're going to die, they move through the exposure and don't die and then discover like, oh, I didn't die again. And your, your would be, oh, look, this is really embarrassing. But look, the embarrassment didn't kill me and nothing bad really happened. So same rules. All right, guys. So that is it. Thanks for coming by. We start chapter five next week. We'll be the same time. And then chapter five in the book is all about, right? I think this is the end. Yeah, chapter five is really the last chapter. And in chapter four, we were talking about making a recovery plan. And now in the next chapter, go over the principles of how to actually execute that plan, getting your friends and family in order and arranging your schedule and prioritizing things and all that stuff. So we'll start that next week, same time, it'll be Monday at 2pm Eastern time right here, same place. These stay in the Facebook group, my Facebook page on my YouTube, I even post them to Instagram, but I don't think anybody on Instagram wants to watch a 40 minute video. So, but they're there. And that's it. I appreciate you guys coming by. I'll see you again next week. Same bat time, same bat channel for the next topic. We got eight more left. So we'll be doing this right more weeks, and then we'll have to figure out what to do with that. All right, see you guys next week.