 Monday afternoon. So you know what that means. Let's get everything cooking here. Let me get the chat up so you guys can see each other as usual. Got my fancy background here. We're going to leave that. We get the chat overlay up. So let's see how many folks roll in. Just let me know that you're here. Let me know that everything's working. Let me know that you can hear me and we'll wait for some folks to roll in. What up Kathleen? Hags in the his house. I'll drink some coffee here. I almost didn't make it today because my camera had focus issues. Go figure. Like it decided it didn't want to focus. So here we are. Anyway, yeah, we'll wait for everybody to pop in and we'll get cooking in a couple minutes. This is episode 55 of Recovery Monday and today the topic is tell me how to do the things that I don't want to do. And this is kind of a silly topic in a way. It sounds silly but we have to talk about that because sometimes when people get stuck with like, I know what I have to do or I have to not do in some cases and I know what I should be doing but I just can't bring myself to do it. Like tell me what to do next. We're going to talk about that because we're not careful that can become an endless loop and a trap that makes you feel bad about yourself for no good reason. So we're definitely going to talk about that. Yeah, I think the camera was anxious. I don't know what happened. It decided it wasn't going to focus. So commenting from YouTube, Bethany is today as opposed to from Facebook. So I like to change up there. You know, you got to keep things, keep things, you know, shaken up, I guess. Very good. Glad you guys are here and can hear me. Everything's working. Hey, Christine, fellow strong Islander. Nice to see you. So let's get into it. Let's talk about this a little bit. Before we do that, I do want to remind you of one thing. I'm going to put this up on the screen. So this coming Wednesday, I'm mentioning it because a bunch of you guys have asked about it. The webinar that I do on Distress Tolerance with Joanna Hardis is coming up on Wednesday. So two days from now. But this time we're doing it in the evening East Coast time. So it's seven o'clock East Coast time on Wednesday coming up. A bunch of folks were asking about getting to the webinar and asking when we're going to do an evening one after hours. So that's what we're doing. So that URL right there, bit.ly slash tolerating distress. Or if you just go to my website at the anxioustruth.com, it's right there on the homepage. You can click on over to link. There's a registration link right there. So that's coming up on Wednesday and two days at seven p.m. East Coast time. So anybody who was waiting for the evening one, this is the week that we're going to be doing it. So let's pop into the topic, which is tell me how to do things that I don't want to do. And this is one of those topics that I hate. It kind of sucks because I wish I didn't have to talk about this, but I do. So often we get to a point where either it's in the beginning of this process and you're starting to learn to do the new things, right? So you're reading, you are, you know, maybe listening to the podcast, you have my book or Claire Weeks or whoever, whatever, whether it's my material or anybody else's. And you know what you have to start doing, but it's all about doing really scary things and difficult things. So you get kind of right to the edge of like, I know I have to do this, but I can't seem to bring myself to do it. So that's the people who are sort of getting started in recovery. Super common. And then this also happens sometimes, excuse me, when you're already sort of in the recovery process and you start to loop backwards a little bit, I don't mean you're sliding backwards, but you do that whole, I'm having a setback thing. I can't remember what to do or people will sometimes come into the Facebook group and they'll talk about a particularly challenging time, which happens that is part of recovery. Be nice to yourself. It's not in a straight line up. So sometimes people get in, get on the rocks a little bit and they're having a bit of a challenging time. And they'll start to say things like, I know I wasn't supposed to Google my symptoms, but I've been Googling frantically for two days and I'm in a spiral or I know I shouldn't be retreating, but I haven't left the house in two weeks because I'm struggling again. I'm in a setback. I know what I have to do. I just can't seem to bring myself to do it. And then they'll ask, so does anybody have any tips or can anybody tell me what to do? So those are the two places in the recovery process that we see this either in the beginning when it's new to you, when you haven't really started doing scary things yet, you just know that you have to and you're, and you want to start doing them. Or you have been making some progress and maybe you're in a bit of a challenging time and you declare setback and you've decided I'm going to stop doing the things I was doing and now I need somebody had to tell me to start doing them again. So here's where it gets tricky because I mean, Lord knows I spend enough time trying to come up with words. I write them. I speak them into microphones. I speak them into cameras. And people like me, not just me, but people like me. And we're always trying to educate. We're trying to inform. We're trying to help inform your actions. We're trying to inspire, encourage. We can create platforms like this where a bunch of people can come together that share common experiences and encourage each other and cheer for each other. All of those things, right? So we hope that we're doing that. And I'd like to think that I am, but at some point, my words end, right? Or the encouragement, the cheerleading, whether it's from strangers in a Facebook group, or whether it's from your family or your friends. Sooner or later, we hit the end of that where there's no more that I can say, or there's no more that Kimberly could say, or Josh or Joanna or Jenna or whoever. Claire Weeks. There's only so much she could have said, even Claire Weeks, right? Or in the Facebook group, there's only so many times you can hear the same things again and again and again. And it comes down to, I now have to make a personal decision to do a thing that I'm not sure I'm capable of doing. And I'm really scared to do because it feels so wrong and it feels so dangerous and it feels reckless to do this. And what if something goes wrong and the terrible thing really does happen? What if I allow my intrusive thoughts and I really do do them? I get that, right? So we do hit that point where we are faced with a personal moment where it's just us and us, right? So I had that in my recovery. I think we all have those in our recovery. They're sort of macro level and they're also micro level. We have them every single day, all day long. Now, every human being experiences those things in all parts of their life every day. We all have little moments of decision, little moments where we have to pick between doing this and doing that. In recovery, the same thing happens. We have moments where we have to choose what we're going to do next. There's just no way around that. And that is between you and you, just like it was between me and me. Those are the moments where it truly, and I've written about this like in the anxious morning, and I did a whole podcast episode in this when the program stops being a program, the programmness, the instructions, even the encouragement and the cheerleading breaks down in those moments. And now it's just you and you. And I wish I could give you steps or things to do in those really scary moments where you don't want to do the scary thing or you think you can't or shouldn't. But that's the moment that you decide I'm going to leap or I'm not going to leap. If you decide not to leap, that's okay. I'm not trying to tell you that you must do that. Ultimately, you may know that you have to do that, but sooner or later we hit a point where it is an individual moment and none of us gets to escape that. The group can't come with you, your family can't come with you. I mean, physically, yes, you might have somebody with you say an exposure. But in that moment where there is a behavioral change, that's just you and you, right? There's nothing else. It just comes down to that. And there are those moments in that. So I'm always really careful because a couple of weeks ago, I think here on Recovery Monday, we talked about how it pisses me off when people boil this down to just do it. He's just saying just do it. No, we talked about that. There's so much more nuance in that. But there are, on the flip side of that argument, sometimes the reason why people will say, oh, it's just do it, he's just saying just do it. Because yes, sooner or later you do literally come down to that do it or don't do it. I would take the just out of that. Like it's not just do it. Do it is a big deal. It is a big deal. Don't let anybody tell you it's just do that. So where can you be? In those moments, I think there are two things. And it's funny because talking about the webinar that's coming up on Wednesday, Joanna and I just spent an hour or so on the phone. We're working on the program together. And we had a little discussion about this. She joined me last week on Recovery Monday. She'll come back from time to time and she brought up something really good. It's like there are moments that we have to hit and I had them in my recovery where the pain of staying still is greater than the pain of taking the leap. So I think part of it is that part of it is that and those moments will vary based on where you are in recovery. They'll vary based on what's going on in your life. How stressed are you? How resilient are you? How are you feeling about yourself that day? So there are a lot of variables that go on come into play here. But I think especially in the beginning, you may be in a situation where it's like, well, I hear you saying these things, Drew, and I'm reading and I see everybody doing this in the Facebook group and I see how it's supposed to work. But if I back away from the from the cliff, for instance, because you see it as a cliff, you're gonna, I'm telling you to jump off a cliff. You literally see it like you're jumping off a thousand foot cliff and there's nothing but death in front of you. Whereas for those of us that are ahead of you on the recovery curve or somebody like me that's producing this information, I know that it looks that way. But when you jump, when you jump off that cliff, oh, there's only three feet and there's a net. Like you can't see that until you jump. But I know to you, it feels like I'm telling you to jump off the cliff. And you may not want to jump off the cliff because you're just not ready to. Okay, so I mentioned in the description of this little livestream that excuse me, that we have to be careful about continually coming back to, I just can't seem to get myself to do it. Someone tell me how, but someone tell me how there must be something, Drew, can you give me another step? Is there tips? Are there anybody have any tips for me? You have to be careful about that because at some point there is a little bit of introspection where you have to say, okay, well, this is that me. It's just me and me moment. There's no more words that I can probably get from people here to help me. Am I actually ready to do this? Because in the moment where you decide to back away and not jump off the cliff, right, and go back to whatever the situation was, I'm not going to do the exposure. I'm going to bail. I'm going to say no to the whatever the wedding have to go to, whatever we all know. Or I'm having, you know, major feelings of anxiety here. And I want to do my compulsions to sue that temporarily. And I do the compulsions. Okay, we all understand the context. Because when you do that, the pain of what happens an hour later, where you discover I skipped another school concert or I skipped another birthday party, or I tagged along with my wife again when she went shopping because I was afraid to be alone, or damn it, I Googled my symptoms again, or damn it, I did my compulsion again to make myself feel better. You'll feel bad about that decision. You will feel bad about that decision at some point. So when you're at the edge and it's time to take that leak, you do it because it's either I'm going to feel really bad if I take this leap and bad means I'll be really afraid and unsure and feel vulnerable and all of those things. And if you don't take the leap, you're going to feel bad that you didn't take a leap. So which is the greater pain? And it's okay if you were at the point where the greater pain is the leap. So you know what, I know I'm going to feel crappy about this in an hour if I back away or I run away from this, but I would prefer that crappy feeling to the fear of going forward. So I think it's important to recognize that and everybody reaches the jump point, if you will, the leap of faith, the leap, the jump, the whatever point, jumping off the cliff, taking the leap of faith, we all reach the leap point or the jump point in our own time for our own reasons. That's where you do start to get when people say, well, everybody's different. And I know that, you know, yes, I'm talking about mechanics that are common to pretty much all human brains. And the everybody's different argument does apply. And this is one of those slots where you put everybody's different. This is where it applies a lot. Because your individual circumstances, your personality type, your belief in yourself, your sense of self efficacy, the past experiences in your life, all add up to when you decide to get to the leap point and leap or not leap. So be careful of always coming back to, I know what I have to do, but I can't seem to do it. Why can't I seem to do it? Well, you might not be ready to do it yet. That's okay, you might not be ready to do it, but be careful of falling in the trap of continually circling back to think that you're missing something, or that there's more words that I can give you, or that the Facebook group can give you, or the Instagram subscriber chat can give you whatever. Because if you keep cycling through that, where you keep going to external sources, and people keep giving you the same words again and again and again and again, I keep giving you the same words, and you still aren't ready to leap, you can draw the conclusion that like, oh man, I'm the worst, and I've seen this happen. One of the more heartbreaking things I see in this community is people who will openly declare to whoever's watching in the comment section that they are clearly weak, broken, and worse than everybody else, and stupid, I don't know, oops, my screen blanked. I forgot to turn off the screen blanking software. I blew it. I've been pretty good with that the last couple of weeks, but I blew it this time. Hang on, let me turn that off. So yeah, where they circle back again and again and again, and then wind up declaring to the world, I can't get it something, I just am not smart enough, or I just can't seem to get this, why can't I get this, and understand the difference in this topic, tell me how to do things I don't want to do, between I don't understand, which most of the time when you get to the leap point, the leap of faith point or the jump point, and you back away, it's not because you don't understand, it's just because you might not be ready to do it for whatever the reason. So be careful about always cycling back through, tell me again, tell me again, tell me again, I'm never going to get it, I'm stupid, I can't get this, why can't I get this, something is wrong with me, that is to use one of my phrases that I evidently use quite often that is not required, like that's not being nice to yourself at all. If you are not ready to take the leap of faith for whatever the reason, you are willing to tolerate the discomfort of staying in whatever the restriction is, more than you're willing to tolerate the discomfort of going into the fear state and the taking the leap and the discomfort and doing the hard things intentionally, that's okay, that you are entitled to make that choice. I am never here to tell you to jump, I am only here to sort of, and people like me, to sort of give you information that can get you to the leap point, tell you that it's safe, assure you of that, reassure you a few times, put you in a encouraging environment, but if you choose to not leap, that's okay, I would not look at you as like something's wrong with this person or you're failing, certainly not disappointing me, you wouldn't be disappointing Dr. Weeks, it wouldn't be anything like that, right? So that is you and you at that moment and when you're ready, you're ready and just understand all the things that go into the point of okay, I'm now going to do the thing that I really, I don't want to do, I'm afraid to do, today I'm going to do it. I could point to a few different things, I've written about some of them, there were tipping moments for me where the pain of staying where I was got too much and it was much better to just say you better just come and effing kill me because I'm not living like this anymore. That happened for me. That happens for a lot of people. How I got there was completely individual to me and my life circumstances at the time and leading up to that moment. So how you get there is going to be completely individual to you and your life circumstances as well, right? So if there's any questions in that throw them in, I'll go through the comments here, we'll see what we got going on here, 16 minutes in, it's all good. So what I want to do first before I go into the comments, I really want to try and stay focused on this because this is such a big deal. It's such a big deal because seeing people reach the conclusion that something is wrong with them because they're not ready to jump off the cliff. What looks like a cliff to you is heartbreaking. There's nothing wrong with you. There isn't a soul walk in this planet today that wants to intentionally jump off a cliff because you think you literally are jumping off a cliff. I'm using a metaphor here to your death. Nobody wants to do that. I mean, I don't know, maybe they're at that 0.0001% of the population that runs toward those things, I guess, but I'm going to guess that there's 70 people in the room right now, ain't one of you, one of those people. I'm not one of those people. So sometimes we make the mistake of thinking that people who get better, people like me or people who are better, like people tell me this all the time, oh, you're different, you're different, you're special, you're confident, you're this, you're strong. I was afraid just like you are and it's okay to be afraid. So I had to get to the point where the pain of being afraid was less than the pain of feeling like I was failing and that I was not, you know, that I was stuck. So it's okay to be in that spot where you're still trying to work up to the point because nobody wants to do this. It's not a crime. Nobody reads my books. Nobody reads my podcast. Nobody listens to my podcast. Nobody reads a Claire Weeks book. And then just immediately just decides to go out and start doing the scariest shit that can imagine. Nobody does that. So be realistic and be nice to yourself. And don't keep going back to find out why you can't get it. Do I really not understand? In which case, by all means, you know, keep asking questions if you don't understand. That's what that's what I'm here for. But if you understand you just can't seem to do it, well, that's between me and me. And I'm just going to have to get myself to the point where I can do that. You want to vocalize that I'm frustrated. I think this is what's keeping me back. You know, you talk about it. It's nothing wrong with that. Just don't beat yourself up and keep going back to tell me to jump, tell me to jump. No, I'm never going to tell you to jump. I'm not going to tell you to jump. No one's going to tell you to jump when I can tell you how to jump. You get there the way you get there and and we can cheer for you while you do it. Okay. Fair enough. So let's go through some of the comments here and let's see what we got here. Hello, everybody. Okay. Kathleen says I'll put some stuff on the screen. I didn't want to go to Disney. I'm sorry that I keep here. Let me put this over here so that I'm still sort of looking at the camera. I have this huge screen, a giant screen in front of me. So when the comments are over here, I'm literally so far away from the camera lens. Anyway, so Kathleen says that she did not want to go to Disney or Universal this week, but he did it anyway. Then I got home and laid in bed for a day, which is kind of cool, but I'll put it up on the screen. But there's a thing where like, okay, Kathleen went on the trip that she was afraid to go on. She went anyway, and then was probably like legit beat up and tired, right? Like a trip to Disney with the kids. Jesus. I can't, I'm in pretty good shape, but that will wear me out too. So I get that. And that's like a man, I did it. I did a hard thing. I met the challenge. I'm tired of taking the day off. Totally cool. Good job, Kathleen. Very good job. Let's see. This setback has been super fun. I don't want to do these things because didn't, okay, this is going to put this up on the screen. We have our representative from Twitch checking in. Hey, Becky, this setback has been super fun and I don't want to do these things because didn't I already? Geez. Man, I get that. The frustration in that comment comes through loud and clear. If you have been down the road and you've made some progress and you felt like things were getting better and then the wheels kind of fall off on you and you find yourself exactly what Becky's in the position that Becky's talking about right here with, you know, I know what to do for some reason. I've stopped doing it. That can be super frustrating. But in that situation, just remember that, oh, I did leap. I was leaping. I'm remembering that it's scary and I'm sort of following that fear again, but look at how capable I was when I did leap those previous times. So remember that in this situation, the idea that your setback, and this is sometimes people hate when I say this, but when you recognize that you helped to make a setback by the choices that you make, I helped to make my own little setbacks for sure. They might have been small, but I made them when I made missteps and I intentionally chose to do those things. But there is so much power in that because you can remember like, oh yeah, I was doing really hard things and I stopped doing them. So I'll do them again because I can do it. I've done it before. I can do it again. So I get that frustration though because it's really easy when we fall, we get into setback air quotes. So you know, I don't like that word, but we get into setback. It's really easy for us to externalize that and sort of look at it as it's something that's, it's something that's happening to us. A setback is happening to me and we forget, we give up our power and forget the role that we play in it, not blaming, not blaming yourself. Like I did a podcast episode on the difference between responsibility and blame. You always want to take responsibility. You never want to blame yourself because those are two very different things. But do not forget the role that we ourselves play in manufacturing recovery setback, whatever it happens to be. Like we, we're in that system. We influence the system. That's not a problem. That's a win. That's a bonus. Don't leave that on the floor. Your power is there. Okay. So Debbie wants to know, let's see, how do, how, my question is to how to start doing things you used to do. Well, excuse me one second here, drying out a little bit. So Deb, it's a good question. And the answer to that is incrementally, right? So I don't know your particular situation, but typically speaking, what we would say is, let's say that you have kind of spent the last, I'm going to make stuff up. I'm totally making stuff up because I don't know you. You spent the last year retreating and avoiding. And a lot of people will say, like your gorophobics will say, well, I've been mainly in my house for the past three months. I go out to three different places only when my partner is with me under specific circumstances. And I really miss going to the beach or going to the park. For instance, how do we start going to the park again? Well, if you're in the situation where you've completely withdrawn from those things that you used to do, you start doing them incrementally and you start working toward them. So don't ever forget that if, again, you have to apply this to your own circumstance, but in the case of say an agoraphobic, who's been sitting on the sofa for three months, it's perfectly okay to start to work toward going back to the beach by simply getting off the sofa, getting dressed and walking around in the garden for a while. It is totally 100% a valid way to do it. So how do you do that? You start to move toward the things that you used to do. You might not necessarily have the ability to reliably just start doing them completely again, but it's okay to approximate them and work toward them. So you practice moving through those uncomfortable feelings that you've been trying to avoid. All right, so hopefully that helps. Bessie, I'm going to get to that comment, by the way, that anticipation thing, because it's a big deal that we could talk about that. Let's see. I'm doing the same thing. Can't move on and challenge myself in a run. Okay, so let's throw this up here from doing the same things. Can't move on and challenge myself in a run. This is a tough spot, Yolanda. I feel you on this. I get it. We can certainly root for you, but that's that situation where so many different things come into play here. I'm in a rut. Everybody, like, listen, even people who are not anxious, who are not in anxiety recovery, get into ruts in their lives, and we get like, I don't want to do this. I'm feeling my motivation as well. You can allow that to happen. You also are living your life and you are being a human being while you recover. So just be careful about, well, this should never happen. I should never get in a rut. I should never struggle. That's not true. That's not fair to yourself. Like, we're also human and living normal human ups and downs while we recover. It's part of the deal. All right, so let's keep going into the comments here. No, no, no. How do you deal with breaking down an exposure? Okay. Throw this up here on the screen. Hello, Louise. How do you deal with breaking down and losing your shit? I guess during an exposure and the setback, then you actually are not okay when you do it. So here is where my job is to completely challenge that assertion. Okay, so you broke down. Maybe you cried. Maybe you hyperventilated. Maybe you felt really afraid. Maybe you ran home. The basic premise of almost all of the stuff we talk about here is that declaring that you could not handle that because you didn't like how it feels is wrong. Like, I don't care what happened there. I don't care if you wound up at the hospital where they told you you had a panic attack and then you went home. It doesn't matter. Nothing happened in the end. So if we don't challenge that and you decide, nope, I felt bad during the exposure and I won't ever allow myself to feel bad again, you are defining exactly what perpetuates the disordered state. So you have to challenge that assertion. I felt horrible. I felt afraid. I was crying. I was whatever I was asking for help. But in the end, I didn't need the help. And crying is just crying. And what I felt, I felt, but nothing bad happened to me. It's so important to go directly at and challenge that. Now, you are entitled to the opinion that I will never do that again. That's okay. But you can't reconcile the two. I think that's a really important point. Like, again, that's one of those personal decisions that has to be made. You cannot say I want to do this and I want to keep telling me what to do and also hang on like hot death to the assertion that that was a disaster. The two do not cannot coexist. So admittedly, one of the reasons, and this ties in pretty well to today's topic, I think, one of the reasons why some people get right to the jump point or the leap point and won't leap is because of that. There's part of the leap is the willingness to abandon the old insistence, the fear driven insistence that this is horrible. This is terrible. I can't do it. If you hang on to that and I want to try and do both, I want to keep saying it's terrible, horrible and unhandleable and also do the scary thing. That's so not fair. You have that immovable force and irresistible force and immovable object. Like you're giving yourself no win there. So if you're not willing to challenge that assertion, that breaking down and exposure is, and you're not willing to challenge that is not really the worst thing to ever happen to mankind on planet earth, then you wind up in a little bit of a stuck position. But that's okay. You have to work that through. You got to work that through. This is a good comment. It's interesting. I feel like I'm using my therapist to avoid actual exposures. I have to stop doing that. There is a huge, I wish I could see your name again. The restream doesn't show me if you're in the Facebook group, but that is a hugely insightful comment. And I really appreciate you fist bump for that comment. Oh no, did I ruin my focus? Okay. So it's a really insightful comment. I will tell you that one of the things I would suggest that you do in this situation is bring that to your next session. So when you walk in the door to your next meeting or whatever, if you're zooming telehealth whatever with your therapist, I would say that I think I'm using you to avoid actual exposures. I come and talk to you and I ask questions and we talk about techniques, but I don't actually do them put that on the table. And like hearing you say that would probably be very useful for the therapist. I know that if you are my clients, when I'm practicing, I would want to hear that. But I would also say that some of that your therapist may already know this and maybe trying to gently move you out of that. So my guess is that they probably already understand what you're doing. My job would be to say, okay, we have to start making some progress just coming in for an hour a week and talking about recovery. I'm not helping you. So bring it up. It's okay to talk about that stuff. That's what they're there for. Very insightful. Great comment. Thanks, Bessie. I'm gonna throw this up. Episode 58. I don't know what episode 58 is, but evidently, it's a good one for this topic. I'm not sure what episode 58 is, but for any podcast episode, you can always find it if you go to the anxioustruth.com slash and then the number 58, you will get the podcast episode that Bessie is talking about. Thank you, Bessie. Awesome GBG books are delivered. Cool. Hope you enjoy that. That was a weird thing, by the way. I have a couple of books. I got all kinds of author copies from Amazon and stuff. So I put them on my Etsy shop. If anybody wants to buy a signed book, just go to my Etsy shop and you can order them. It's only a few left. That was weird. Signing books was weird. I don't know if I want to do that again because it felt weird. Hey, Matt, what's up, buddy? Let's see here. I know that, okay, this is good too. Throw it up here. Again, sorry, can't see your name. I know discussing my anxiety symptoms is not a good thing, but I just can't stop. So there's two things that happen here. Number one, discussing your symptoms brings you a sense of safety, soothing, right? It's part of it. If I keep talking about how I feel, people are going to tell me that I'm okay. If I keep talking about that my heart is racing, somebody else will tell me that their heart is racing and that they were okay. So talking about your symptoms is 100% a safety and soothing ritual. There's no doubt in my mind that that's what it is, especially when that's your default. I immediately need to tell somebody about my symptom so that they can save me if I need it. So that's, there's that. And the second thing is that talking about your symptoms can be part of this avoidance thing, right? So what's easier to do? Go into say the Facebook group and talk about symptoms some more or go and actually face the symptoms. And sometimes we mistake that and we say, okay, if I'm reading and I'm discussing and I'm posting on the Facebook group and I'm in the conversations and I'm watching the live streams, then this is recovery. But I don't actually do the things. I just consume all the content and participate in the community. That can be sneaky because we get start to see that as I'm doing recovery. And I see people do that also sometimes with reading books. Like I'll buy another book. I'll buy Josh's notebook. I'll buy another Claire Weeks book. Did you read about this book? So I wrote a book. I'm reading that one now. Like after you've read your 10th anxiety book, that starts to become an avoidance thing for sure. Anyway, but you're not alone in that. It's okay. Just notice you're doing it. And at some point, yeah, you're gonna have to say, oh, I'm doing it again. So catch when you're doing it and shut it down. So it's okay. Practice. Let's keep going. And I could tell you now that I have a lot more tolerance from putting in the hard work the last few years. I didn't want to go to Disney, but it was doable because of all the homework. I know I put Kathleen up on the screen a lot. I'm a huge Kathleen fan. And if you guys have not heard Kathleen's episode on my podcast, you should totally do that. Don't know what number it is. But if you just go to my website and search Kathleen, you'll find it. So this is a great comment. And we talk about the fact that exposure work is additive, right? So it does add up. And this is one of the reasons why we talk about if you want to get to Disney, start by sitting in your garden, which sounds ridiculous. If you want to go on vacation with your family, start by showering with the door closed like you used to. Because every time you come into contact with those uncomfortable and difficult experiences, internal experiences, the emotional experiences, the fear, those are internal experiences, you're trying to avoid those. But every time you come into contact with those, you build a little bit of resiliency. You build a sense of competency. Like you build a better understanding that like, oh, I didn't take me down again. I handled it again. And those things add up. So all the work that you hear Kathleen did in the podcast episode she did with me gets her over the hump to, I don't really want to go to Disney. I'm feeling a little down on this, but I'm going to go anyway. That sense of competence and confidence that comes with the work carries over and keeps propelling you forward. So it's a big deal. Good job. Hello, it's me. Says Marina. Let's see here. At work, but I made it. Welcome, whoever you are, because I can't see your name. The weather, okay, ready? The weather always seems to get in the way of my walking exposures. Now, I can't see your name again. So you could be coming to us from the Arctic circle where there's, it's nothing but ice. Who knows? And it's 40 below Fahrenheit. That's possible. But I will say, I will say that sometimes we have to say it's raining, but I'm going to walk anyway. And I drove in ice and snow and rain and the dark. And I did all of those things because I'm not saying you have to push yourself into being frozen solid in the winter. There's a limit. And we want to use some common sense here, but be very careful about deciding, well, I want to go out and walk today, but oh, it looks like it's going to rain. Can't do it today. Or oh, it's raining out. Do you have an umbrella? I know that sounds horrible, right? That's good. There's nothing as bad weather only bad clothing. Okay, fair enough, right? So consider that the fact that it might be wet outside is not necessarily automatically a reason to skip your walking exposure that day, or do a different exposure that day. Do something else, right? Do something else. That's possible. Let's see. I don't know how to do exposures for swallowing. No, you don't have to do, okay? So this is, I don't know how to do exposures for swallowing normally. There is no swallowing exposure. You're swallowing all day long, right? So your exposure is swallowing abnormally. So you have to don't think of it as like, you had to find a way to practice swallowing. You have to find a way to stop trying to practice swallowing. Like you swallow whether you want to or not, because it's just what human beings do. Your saliva builds up, you swallow, you eat, you drink, you swallow. So even though, go ahead and let it be wrong, let it be abnormal. This happens when people feel like they have a fear that they're going to choke or it's just not right. It feels wrong. Something is wrong. You have to fix this. Don't fix it. So your exposure with swallowing is just swallow when you have to and then just let it be wrong. Go ahead and let it be wrong. So it's removing the fixation that you have to somehow practice or fix your swallowing. You don't. It's like trying to fix or practice your breathing. You don't have to. Your body knows how to breathe. Not going to talk about the meds thing. You're right. So I can go to a Bill's game, drive it on myself, let my thoughts get the best of me. Go Bill's. Okay. I'll put a little go Bill's. I spent four years in Buffalo. That's where I went to college. I go to Bill's game, drive myself, do lots of things that I couldn't do before, let my thoughts get the best of me. All right. You know what? It happens, man. Sorry I can't see your name, but this is a good post. Like it happens, right? Shit happens sometimes. Not every day is going to be up, up, up, up, up. Some days are going to be harder. Some days you're more stressed. Your brain gets a little stickier. It happens. Sorry, man. Celebrate the wins and keep going the best you can. Let's see here. The exposure may be feeling terrible and not present and looking at others seeing normal makes me panic more that I'm crazy feeling terrified. No, no, you're just afraid. So Louise, like back up, hang on a second here. Like that's a lot of words to describe a catastrophe that doesn't exist. I'm not minimizing your emotional experience because I do understand what that feels like, but I, okay, I feel terrible and not present. Well, that is like, well, I must create this feeling. I must be, first of all, what's present? Screw present. Throw the word out. I don't want to hear the word present anymore. It's out of your vocabulary for the next two weeks. You don't have to be present. That's one of those ridiculous generic mental health wellness guru things. Forget being present right now. Like just be, you can just be. And that assertion that like, and then I'm crazy for being afraid is a hundred percent, I'm going to throw a monkey wrench right through the glass on that one. I'm going to shatter that. It is, you're not, nobody is crazy for being afraid. You are legitimately afraid in those moments. That is legit 100% real fear. And if anybody who's watching even beyond just Louise know that your fear is a hundred percent legitimate real fear. It's not crazy fear and you're not failing for being afraid. Human beings learn to be afraid of a lot of things, including sometimes our own bodies and our own minds. It's really no different than being afraid of anything else. There's just no danger under that fear. That's what we care about. But judging yourself as, you know, oh, I'm crazy because I'm afraid and I'm not present, not working. You're going to have to start to break that narrative because that's not, that's just not fair to yourself. You're not crazy for being afraid. You are legitimately afraid. If this wasn't legit fear, then nobody would be watching right now. Everybody would just instantly get better and I wouldn't have to do this. So be nice to yourself. That's not cool. It's a hamster wheel. When you tackle one obstacle, it's time to tackle next. Okay. Let's see here. I'm not going to get to all of these. Where are we? 241. I can do a couple more minutes. No, no, no, no. Me at Christmas to hide from the, okay, let's let me scroll down here and see if I can get the ones that would be most productive for me to answer. This one is, okay, Ellen's comment. Pretty decent. Okay. It's a hamster wheel. Just when you tackle one obstacle, it's time to tackle the next. So this is where I go back again to they are additive experiences. So stay connected to the principles that drive your recovery activities. And what I mean by that is if I panic, I'm going to use panic. It could be anything, could be health, anxiety, intrusive thoughts. You're going to have to apply it, right? I'll use panic as an example. If I panic in supermarket A, then, and I allow that to happen, it's okay. I get through it. I don't like it. It was really scary, but I do that. I do it again and again and again. Supermarket B and C are challenges for sure. But my experience in supermarket A carries over to supermarket B and C. That's why recovery doesn't take 50 years, right? You don't have to learn to do everything again in your life. You're really only learning to kind of do one thing, which is to relate in a different way to the fear of your own thoughts, your own body, that sort of stuff. So you're right, Ellen, for sure. That makes this frustrating because it feels like I'm rocking and rolling here and then something else comes up. That's true. Just remain connected to the principles of the process that say, yeah, but even though I think it's different, like, man, I was doing so great. We went to the beach over the summer and I was having a good time, but now I have to go to this damn wedding. Know that the beach and the wedding are the same thing, for example. So try and stay connected to that. It can maybe make you feel a little better about the fact that you're being very normal, if you will. Hope that helps. So let's move the comments over here too. So I'm not looking six miles away from the camera. Anticipation is, oh yeah, I wanted to get to this. This is a good comment that Bessie throws up here. Anticipation is the worst to try to flip it and smile like I love this while brains can be super smart. They can also be tricked. In my morning newsletter, a few weeks back or maybe a month or so ago, I wrote about this and I stumbled upon a really interesting study that was done, believe it or not, in a business school. This was not psychological research. It was business research performance sort of thing. And they studied this and there's quite a bit of literature that talks about this, which is reframing anticipatory anxiety as excitement, which sounds ridiculous. But the reason why it can work is because anxiety and excitement feel the same. So some people try to, and they compare this, like so in the literature in psychology, the literature says when we try to say, I'm not anxious, it doesn't work because clearly you are anxious, clearly you are, right? You can't reframe one emotion as another when they have no common experience. They don't look or feel alike at all. But anxiety and excitement actually look and feel very much the same physiologically. And so there's a reasonable amount of data out there that says when people are coached to reframe their anticipation as excitement, they actually do perform better on anxiety producing tasks, like singing in public or public speaking. Those are sort of lab things. I get that. There's a difference between a massive panic attack and maybe singing karaoke. I get it, but there's validity there. So, Bessie, thank you for bringing that up. You could try it, man. You could try it, see what happens. I also wrote, I think last week about, if you're not listening to, if you don't get the morning newsletter, you should go check it out. It's like go to the anxiousmorning.com. I wrote about another little silly thing, which was using your own name, talking to yourself in the third person actually shows itself to be reasonably effective and making a little bit of space between you and your thoughts for you and that inner dialogue. Like so, as opposed to, I'm okay. This too shall pass. I got this. That little break for a second to say, talking to yourself, come on, Drew, you can do this. You know what to do, Drew. Believe it or not, there's a fair amount of data that says when we refer to ourselves in the third person, it's a decent way to put a little space between our thoughts and ourselves, which is so important as part of this. And it can help. There are little tricks like that. And it's less metabolically expensive than trying to squash, you know, feelings and convince yourself or rest your attention somewhere else. Like sometimes these little things matter. Love this stuff. All right, so let's keep scrolling. Those coming to New York City, love it. Looking so far too. And I'm glad you're looking forward to it. Welcome to this part of the world. I hope you have a good time while you're here. I refer to myself as Bozo and it works. I've done that. Maybe not Bozo, but I've done that. I do. Come on, man. I'll talk to myself all the time. Come on, man. Come on. I didn't even know I was doing that. That has been a lifelong habit of mine. That when I'm in a bit of a bind or I want to push myself a little, I do refer to myself in the third person. George is getting upset. It's a thing. Okay, so let's see here. Thank you for clarifying that episode, Bessie. I appreciate that. Ellen, this is a good comment. I'll throw it up here. Ellen's on a roll today. How do we help someone else that keeps talking about their symptoms? I feel mean when I keep seeing, I hear you say feeling, but you are okay. Then they get mad at me. They will get mad at you. I will tell you that this is a really good comment and I appreciate you trying to help somebody that clearly you are friends with or you care about. Here's what I would say. I would say I know that it makes you feel better to talk about this, but I also know that I'm not helping you if I keep listening to you repeat your fear again and again and again. So I know you can do this. I'm here for you to watch you and support you while you do scary things. So let's do that together. That might be a little bit more of an encouraging way to do it. Just saying you're okay, you're okay to dismiss it. I get why you would say that, but for me, like as crazy as it sounds, I know people say this all the time, but what would I say? So you see like maybe the way I interact with the community, maybe in the Facebook group or whatever, I rarely if ever respond directly to a fear. Like I feel like I'm going to go crazy. My response is like, okay, go crazy. I never, never really say you're okay. It's okay. You're going to be okay. So get out of that habit and just remind them that like I, you want me to tell you that you're going to be okay. I'm not going to tell you that because I know that you can do the hard thing of letting this sensation of the symptom be there and working through it. I believe in you. I can do that. I'll stand here with you while you do it. That's a good way to go. So hopefully that helps. Let's see. I struggle. Let me scroll down a little bit more. There's a lot of comments. I'm not going to get to all of you guys today. I'm sorry. I wish I could. Where is this comment about? Stick with me. Hang on. I can't find it out. All right. I lost it. It was Beth. Beth said something about I, here we go. This is the one. Sorry about that random scrolling moment here. I struggle with sticking with what I know helps me. I guess my feelings take over my mind so I get skewed how to keep yourself on track. That's pretty much what we talked about at the beginning of this stream. There's a lot of factors that go into that. There's the pain of retreating back to the old ways outweigh the other pain or not. Just trying to think of it that way. It's really difficult to tell somebody how to be motivated. I can't tell you why you should do it. I can only tell you why it works when you do it, but I can't give you your why if that helps. Can avoidance? No. The answer to that is can avoidance eventually cause depression? No. I would not make that assertion that somehow avoidance becomes depression. Depression is a thing that many, many people might experience from time to time. We know about it. It's a common thing. It is not automatically a death sentence. It's not something that you need to be constantly monitoring for. But no, avoidance does not cause depression. People worry about this. If I feel bad, will that automatically morph into depression? No. You can't connect those two things. That's not a connection that you can make. Let's see. A year ago, I couldn't make it to my front door. Let's see what Ian has to say. Then I got a buggy in a few minutes. Keep challenging myself. I'm not sure that I get this again. I keep challenging the drive each day and get to the same spot, not making it past that point, but seeing progress driving home. Okay. Well, I'll throw this up really quick. So not making it past the point, but seeing, but driving home more calmly. Yes. Is that a little bit of progress? Yes, it's it's progress. But at some point that's that it's between you and you. Today I'm going to drive past this point. I would expect you to drive home more commonly because there is almost instantaneous relief. If you hit the point that this is the no fly zone, I can't go over this line and you turn around and go away from it. There's an almost instantaneous sense of relief that comes with that. So I'm not surprised that you feel better on the drive home. The fact that you're feeling better more quickly on the drive home is a good thing. It's not a bad thing, but at some point you're going to have to drive past that. I can't tell you how to drive past it. You're just going to have to do the scary thing. I wish I could, but I don't have an answer for that. No bad weather, just bad clothing. Let me scroll down to the bottom here and see what we got. You start to start driving around the box. Okay. I'll throw this up real quick here. This is people will often, so I'm going to say this, I won't drive anymore because my rational fear of driving off the bridge crashing on purpose. Okay. So I'm not going to address the specifics of driving. So I know that's what you want me to do. You want me to give you special tips about how to drive when you've decided that these thoughts will make you drive badly. But I just want you to notice how important that thought is to you. It happens to be connected to driving. At the moment, the fear has connected itself to driving and the thought, the content of the thought is I might drive off this bridge. But the content of the thought never matters in this, in this situation. So it's important to understand the principles that we're talking about here. You want a way to, how do I drive and guarantee that I won't actually crash on purpose or drive myself off the bridge? The object of the game there is you, you don't try to find that certainty. And yes, I see Phil as you're saying it. I just sit with my freak out. Yes. Yes. So I advise you to start to learn a little bit more about intrusive thoughts and the process of like exposure and response prevention. So learn a little bit more about the principles of that, as opposed to how do I drive if I feel like I'm going to drive off the bridge? Learn a little bit more about what this is. The podcast that I did with Marty Sief, I don't know which podcast episode that is, but if you go to the anxioustruth.com and just search the word intrusive, you will find some podcast episodes that talk about this and may give you a little bit more of an understanding of the principles that we're talking about. But the content of your thought, even though you think it's really scary and important, doesn't matter. There's no difference between what if I drive off the bridge intentionally and what if I make a peanut butter sandwich? I know you don't believe that and you're going to say you're crazy, but that's true. Anyway, and I'll end with how do I stop micromanaging my breathing? Go ahead and not breathe. Like the answer to that is go ahead, don't breathe. Like try to not breathe. Breathe wrong. Go ahead, let yourself breathe wrong. That's that thing where it's like, well, if I have to micromanage my breathing or somehow it'll be wrong. Well, it's already wrong because you're trying to micromanage it. So really it's letting go of the process and understanding that if I just let go of this process, my body's going to breathe. You couldn't not breathe if you wanted to. So there's a certain amount of letting go there for sure. How do I do it? You won't want to do it because it's going to be super scary and you're going to get a weird feeling about your breath and you're going to immediately want to jump back into making sure you get a deep enough breath and timing it and do all your other things. When you get a weird feeling about your breath, you leave it there. Leave it there as uncomfortable as that is. Anyway, guys, we are done 50 minutes. Yeah, I got a book out of here. Thanks for coming by. You guys are super awesome today. A lot of really great comments. I'm enjoying these more and more as we do it. I'm going to put this back up on the screen. Again, only because so many of you wanted us to do this webinar in the evening. So Joanna and I are going to do it on Wednesday night, seven o'clock, New York time. Go check it out if you want to, if you want to see more information or you want to register for it. It's a small group. It goes for about two hours. You're in a Zoom room with me and Joanna and usually anywhere from eight to 12 people or so. We talk about the concept of distress tolerance and applying distress tolerance to the recovery process because that's really what this is. It's a stress intolerance problem. Anyway, so hopefully it's been helpful. We'll be back again next Monday. We'll do it again. Thanks, everybody. This is going to stay up, by the way, again on my YouTube channel. Always the easiest way to find it would be to go to my YouTube channel and find the Recovery Monday playlist. You can rewatch this as often as you want. See you guys next week. We're out.