 So, what about GAD? What about OCD? What about health anxiety and social anxiety? Well, people ask me about those things all the time. We're going to talk about it today because it's Monday, which means it's Recovery Monday, Episode 12. Let's get cooking. So, let's see who rolls in. As you guys pop in, just let me know that you can hear me. Let me know everything's okay. I'm going to put the chat overlay up so you guys can see what's going on. I will remind you that we are doing an episode, I mean, a lesson out of this book every Monday. That's where we call it Recovery Monday. We're taking lesson by lesson out of the anxious truth, which is my recovery guide. You can find that on my website at theanxiestruth.com. We're just going lesson by lesson through the book every Monday. So, we're going to be here through the spring. And thank you, Anna. Appreciate it. Hey, guys. So, we're going to keep going until we run out of chapters in this book, Lessons in the Book, and then maybe we'll start working on 7% slower. So, today we are going to address a very, very common question that I get asked all the time, which is, how does this apply to GAD? Or how does this apply to OCD? Does this work for health anxiety and that sort of stuff? So, we're going to talk about that now for our GAD friends in the room, especially. This is going to be for you. I'm going to wait for a few more folks to pop in. Hey, everybody, what's going on? Happy holidays. Eric, good to see you. Nath, what's going on? Debbie's here. Thank you for letting me know that everything's working. You can hear me. Appreciate it. So, I think the technical part of this stream is working again last week. We had some problems and it was not in the Facebook group. So, sorry about that. So, let's get into this a little bit. Let's talk about, the first thing I'm going to talk about is OCD. So, this book, when I wrote The Anxious Truth, my own personal experience was generally speaking the panic disorder and agoraphobia. And I would probably guess that maybe 50% of all therapists and clinicians may have diagnosed me with OCD, depending on the day that I went to go see them. So, I did have a lot of intrusive thoughts and mental compulsions for a while, but I would not really say that I was necessarily an OCD sufferer. So, I dealt with those intrusive thoughts. They hammered me. They were all about death and dying for the most part. And then they were about being poisoned. And they were harming my kids. So, I had all of those things, but I'm not sure that I would necessarily say that I was an OCD sufferer. I think that was mostly triggered by the fact that I was just constantly anxious and my brain was just fried at the time. I was just exhausted. So, let's talk about OCD for a second. I did not write this book for people that have OCD. And I do not claim to be an OCD expert. So, it would be OCD is not really its own thing, but it does come with its own set of challenges. And I would always, always, always suggest that if you're dealing with OCD, that you seek out sources that are specifically for OCD and people who are qualified in OCD and trained extensively on treating OCD. OCD can be really nasty. So, the principles of recovery pretty much apply across all these different disorders. You just apply them in different directions. But I always like to tell people if you're dealing with OCD, reach out to people who know OCD. If you cannot find yourself an OCD therapist, there are organizations out there like NoCD that are treating those things. So, always avail yourself of qualified help when it comes to OCD. It's so important for me to say that, right? So, let's talk about OCD and GAD and health anxiety and social anxiety. People ask me all the time, like, well, does this work for health, say health anxiety? Does this work for GAD? Or what's my exposures? Like in the book is full of how to do exposures. I wrote toward panic disorder and agoraphobia because that was primarily my experience, right? It's what I know best. But people will ask, how do I do exposures for health anxiety? Or how do I do exposures for GAD? How do I do exposures for social anxiety? How do I do exposures for OCD falls along the lines of exposure and response prevention. But generally speaking, what I wrote in The Anxious Truth is always about doing things, right? So, the anxious truth is about doing. So, the recovery principles that I always rely on are geared toward doing. So, if you're having a hard time driving, you have to drive. If you're hard time staying home alone, you have to stay home alone. If you have a hard time going to do the school pickup, you have to do the school pickup. So, it's always about doing things because the principle is always we do the things we are afraid to do. We experience that discomfort, that anxiety, that panic, that fear in a new way without reacting to it, without trying to save ourselves from it, without resorting to all of our safety mechanisms and the rituals that try to bring that anxiety or that fear level down. And we learn from that experience that even though we feel that way and we have that fear and that panic and that anxiety, that we're okay. And that is the path of recovery. So, if you have GAD or you have social anxiety or health anxiety or OCD, then how does that apply? Well, the same rules generally apply. You're always trying to go toward the things that are going to trigger, that discomfort, that anxiety, that fear, that vulnerability, that uncertainty. And your job is to learn to navigate through those things in a more productive way. So, if you have health anxiety, for instance, people will say, Well, I don't understand what my exposure be in health anxiety. Well, if you have health anxiety, especially at a certain level, your exposure is just living all day long, like you're constantly looking for some indication that there may be something else wrong with you. There's pains, there's this, there's COVID is out there. So now that's in your head. So the issue with like something like health anxiety is you already, you don't have to seek out the triggers, they're kind of already there. And the same thing would hold true in a way with OCD. You don't, you do have to, in ERP, you're going toward the triggers for sure. But you don't necessarily have to seek out the triggers, they're there. So with, and with GAD, same thing, your triggers are already there. So you don't really have to seek them out. Your job is to react to those triggers in a new way. So let's talk about health anxiety. Whenever you get to that point where, like you feel Melissa's just something that we just, Tonya just said, muscle aches and twitches. Okay, so we'll use that, for example, I'll put, we'll use this as a good example. And this kind of applies across multiple contexts. So we'll talk about this for health anxiety, but it's just one, we're just going to address Tonya's symptom here, right? So in the end, the deal here is Tonya feels, you know, muscle aches and twitches, and that triggers her health anxiety, right? So that triggers the, you know, the, oh my God, what does this mean? Is this dangerous for me? Am I, is this mean I'm going to have some sort of paralysis? It's the beginning of ALS. What is this? So I'm sure that that triggers just an avalanche of scary thoughts and what ifs and conjecture and trying to predict. And then that triggers, let me go Google, let me look for symptoms, let me go ask people if anybody else has twitches, let me tell my partner again that I'm twitching so that my partner can tell me for the 200th time that it's okay. Let me ask my doctor for the 17th time if they've maybe missed something. So it'll trigger all of those, those are the safety behaviors, those are the escape behaviors, those are the soothing behaviors that come along with health anxiety. The trick would be to feel the ache and the twitch and then not do anything about that. So in this case, it's not about doing. You didn't have to do anything like that health fear is there anyway with you. You have to work on not doing, which is not doing all the response that usually comes with those things. So for people with health anxiety, it is absolutely a 100 percent not doing solution. So when you think that you must Google, when you think that you must ask, when you think that you must make another doctor's appointment, then you have to work on not doing that. That will make you incredibly uncomfortable and afraid. It will feel wrong. It will feel reckless. We're going to bring that up a few times today. But in the end, nothing happens then. So you begin to learn bit by bit that it is not, it is not a thing that you have to continually engage with. And that's generally the approach with health anxiety. So how does that fit in? What's the difference between somebody with health anxiety and somebody with panic disorder? Somebody with panic disorder has to do things. And then somebody with health anxiety has to not do things. You have to not engage in all of those escape things. And the escape things could be, could be mental also, could be thinking about it, ruminating, thinking, thinking, thinking. How can I be sure? How can I be sure? How can I be sure? Right? So in the end, you, there is, and I'll wrap up quickly with health anxiety. We'll move on to Gad. There is courage there too. So for the agoraphobic who is leaving their house to do a highway drive exposure, that takes tremendous amounts of courage and bravery, especially in the beginning, because you're intentionally facing scary things. The same thing would hold true with somebody who has health anxiety. If you are not going to respond to that threat in your brain that says, yeah, but maybe the doctor missed something, or I better check my blood pressure again, or I better check my heart rate for the 27th time today, then you're going to be afraid and you'll have to be brave. I'm going to have to let that question be unanswered. But at the same time, I'm going to have to try to engage in my life, which means I'm going to have to engage with life while I'm afraid, uncertain, and feeling vulnerable right now. And over time, that habit can begin to change. So that's kind of the skinny on health anxiety in the end. So now let's talk about Gad for a second, right? A lot of Gad people, same thing. With Gad, most people will tell you with Gad that they're not afraid of the anxiety, which you probably not. But after a while, you just start to get really sick of it. People with health anxiety are also not afraid of the anxiety, generally speaking. They're afraid of the outcome that they think their symptoms represent. But Gad people will tell you, well, I'm not afraid of anxiety and I don't have panic attacks, although people with Gad can have panic attacks now and that can happen. But they'll say, well, I'm not afraid of it and I'm not avoiding anything. I'm still doing everything, but I can't seem to figure this out. I can't stop it. It's always with me. So with Gad, your job is to disengage from the, I have to solve this. I have to solve this. I have to figure this out. I have to figure this out. And what I have learned, and I'm going to give you the benefit of just crowdsourcing thousands and thousands of people over the last 10 years that I've gotten to interact with, there have become some real patterns that really go underneath Gad. So a lot of people that will tell you that their Gad sufferers are also problem solvers. They are fixers. They are caretakers. They are warriors, W-O-R-R. They constantly worry because they think that worrying is a sign of love or caring. They are ruminators. They are over thinkers and over planners. They are people, pleasers and perfectionists. And a lot of times people will tell you flat out like, oh yeah, I'm a warrior. I worry all the time. I worry about everything. I worry about my kids 24 seven. I have to worry about my kids. I'm a mom. I'm a dad, right? You have to worry about your kids. But I'm anxious all the time and I don't know why. Well, you know, if you're going to be a perfectionist, a people pleaser, an over thinker, a ruminator, a planner, a warrior, a fixer, I'm the person who takes care of everything in shoulders, the load, then sometimes it won't really be any mystery as to why you're anxious all the time, right? So that's part of the deal with Gad. Like, yeah, somebody just said, that's me. I know when I say those things, a lot of people say, oh my God, like you're in my head, you just described me to a T. So I did, I will, I will interject here a little bit and tell you that I did a podcast episode on Gad. I don't remember which one it was. I'll put it in the comments later on. I guess, or if anybody has that link, I'll put it in. If you go to my website, the anxious truth.com and search for Gad GAD will find the episode on Gad where I talked about all these underlying Gad drivers. So a lot of times people will just say, oh, it's just a catch all diagnosis. We don't really know what causes it. But there's a lot of momentum around the idea that Gad is really based on some, some thinking habits and beliefs about thinking and problem solving and the way you interact with the world that drives that anxiety, except you just see it as how you are. It's normal to you. So you don't understand that, oh, wait a minute, this is what's triggering this all the damn time. So one of the most interesting things that ever came up in a conversation about Gad was in the Facebook group where somebody was insistent that she didn't understand. I don't understand why I'm anxious. I'm not afraid of anything. I'm not afraid of having a heart attack. I'm not afraid of him going insane. I'm not afraid of any of this stuff. And in the, as the conversation went and you start to leave little breadcrumbs, this person said, so we'll get, you know, give us an example in it. She came to the conclusion that like, well, when she planned to go to the movies with her partner, they were going to the movies on a Saturday, the cinema, if you will British person, they're going to the cinema on a Saturday. She's already planning and worrying about where they're going to park the car on Wednesday. And that was like a light bulb moment like, oh, wait a minute here. I tried to live my entire life controlling, planning, always knowing, having everything in the row, nothing can be left for chance to chance. Oh, wait a minute, maybe that's why I'm anxious all the time. So the other thing that I want to talk about with, with Gad is the misconception that people that maybe have panic disorder or agoraphobia don't have background anxiety. We do. People who have panic attacks are generally also anxious all the damn time between attacks. It's not like we have panic attacks and then we're just awesome. And then until we have another panic attack, there's a level of background anxiety all the time with those, those form the disorders too, right? So some common misconceptions. So what are the principles of recovery as applied to Gad? Well, you have to start to find, but what am I doing here? Am I trying to solve everything? Am I trying to control everything? Am I trying to do all of that stuff? Well, I'm going to have to leave those questions unsolved, sometimes unasked. I'm going to have to leave problems unsolved or undiscovered. I'm going to have to leave my worries unanswered. And that's what's going to bring up that discomfort and you start to learn a new relationship with that. And you can over time. There's a lot of really good stuff that's happening in metacognition and metacognitive therapy where you learn a new relationship with thinking and ruminating because there's so much of that that goes on and get. So your job is to let that discomfort be there and understand like, Oh, every time I try to solve it frantically and furiously, I'm adding to the discomfort because I can't solve these problems. So that's kind of the way that works with Gad. So let's move on really quickly. These are quick overviews, by the way, very quick overviews. And I'll go through, I promise I'll go through some of the comments. So social anxiety. I did a podcast episode. I urge you go to the anxious truth and search for social anxiety and check out the podcast episode I did with Sadie, who does a podcast called your social anxiety bestie. Sadie is awesome. She was incredibly open about her journey with social anxiety and how it required not only CBT and some of the stuff that we talk about, but some other forms of therapy also, because in many instances, one thing that I've learned a lot about over the last year or two about social anxiety is the shame aspect to it. So what generates the anxiety in social anxiety? Most people will think, well, you're shy and you don't want to be seen because you don't want to be judged. But in many cases, the judging is happening internally. So people with social anxiety many times get that way because it's not that they fear being judged, they are already judging themselves as inherently flawed or broken or unworthy. And they're afraid that that will be seen by the outside world. So Sadie talked about that. That was really great. She's undergone multiple different kinds of therapy to start to overcome that. She's doing great. So I don't claim any expertise on social anxiety or even experience with it. Surprise. I'm not a social anxious person who knew who saw that coming. But I can tell you definitely go check out her podcast. It's called your social anxiety bestie. If you go to the anxioustruth.com and search for Sadie, S-A-D-I-E, you will find her. So that's the deal on social anxiety. And then again, OCD, OCD is in a situation where here's the thing that's tough about OCD. OCD can be all of these things are life impacting. In many cases, this is my opinion based on what's going on in the community and what I see and what I've heard very smart people who are well versed in OCD talk about. OCD can be a little bit tougher sometimes than the other stuff because it can drive you to the brink. I get that. And that's why I always say see qualified help. And the principles of recovery with OCD are very similar, right? You are going to go toward the discomfort and you're going to leave those intrusive thoughts unanswered. You're not going to engage in your compulsions. You're not going to engage in the rituals that are designed to bring you relief when you have a scary thought or you feel like you have to engage in a repetitive behavior. So in these instances, again, the principles are you go into the discomfort, you move through it as opposed to trying to alleviate it with the rituals. With OCD, it might be a little bit more, the relief becomes a little more ritualistic and rigid, but the same principles apply. And that's why the gold standard for treating OCD is things like ERP, exposure and response prevention. And really, if you look at exposure and response prevention, you could apply that to panic disorder and agoraphobia and health anxiety and everything else. We're always about changing our reaction and our response to the fear always. That's really the magic in recovery, not trying to find ways to not be anxious, not be afraid or not let it happen. You let it happen and you have to start to change the way you react to those things. So that's how this works. That's how this works. It is, if you look at people that read the anxious truth or they listen to me, they're listening to the podcast, I clearly have a bias toward panic disorder and agoraphobia and then people ask, how does that relate to GAD or OCD or health anxiety, social anxiety? That's how, right? That's how. So let me go through some comments here and I will see if I can answer them really quickly. There's a lot of people here. I knew this would be popular. So I'm going to go back to the beginning and try and grab some comments and see what I have. Is it even possible to have panic disorder without GAD? Those are diagnostic labels that I'm not going to throw around to be completely honest. It's a reasonable question. Is it possible to have panic disorder without GAD? Well, it depends on how you define GAD. I think in terms of somebody that would diagnose you, a clinician that's going to diagnose you with GAD, panic disorder probably wouldn't because your worry is specific and about panic attacks, whereas usually the worry with GAD is amorphous or unknown. So there's that. Do they coexist oftentimes? Yeah. In fact, there's a book I'm reading right now where they talk about comorbidity across these disorders. It's so high. It's so high. The incidence of what we call comorbidity where they appear together is so high that often these things sort of overlap and twist together. It could be hard to tell them apart. As someone diagnosed with OCD, I think your content has helped tremendously. Well, I'm happy that it's helping you. Thank you. I mean, the principles are there. I just never claim to be some sort of OCD expert in any way, shape, or form. So let's see. I'm having lots of health anxiety these days. Why do physical anxiety symptoms mimic the things you're worried about? Well, this is kind of a weird, there's a meta answer to that in a way, which is the same thing that people say like, why does OCD always attach to things that always attack the things that matter so much to you? Well, if it was attacking things that wouldn't, it wouldn't be a problem, right? You wouldn't call those intrusive thoughts. If health anxiety was about things that you didn't care about, it wouldn't be called health anxiety. So that's why. Why is not, it's the thing you don't have to know. Why? The question, the problem is you feel things, you interpret them incorrectly. And if you go to my website, again, TheAnxiousTruth.com, the health anxiety episode, the last one that I did, I've done two of them, one by myself and one with Ingvard Henriksen, who is a, no, that's Ingvils, last name. I can't remember the doctor is a Norwegian psychologist, but I did two health anxiety episodes. The last one that I did, go listen to that one. It's, that's an uncertainty problem. You interpret them, you know, incorrectly, you refuse to tolerate any degree of uncertainty about your health. You magnify things, you distort things. So if there's a 0.01% that you might get COVID, that will become a 90% chance in your head and that's not going to work out. So that's kind of the deal with health anxiety and why it feels like it's attacking what you care about. Of course it is. Let's see here. Eric is sick of having the symptoms as opposed to being afraid of them. That's pretty common. That happens, you know, as you get along the road to recovery, you start to just get angry at it. Like, I'm not even afraid anymore. You're just pissing me off. So that's not, that's a good sign, dude, to be honest with you. So let's see here. Dizziness from us the year 247, horrible experience where I couldn't move. Okay. So sometimes we are informed by things that actually happen to us. I get vertigo, like legit actual vertigo will happen to me a few times a year maybe. And it is 100% incapacitating. So if you think that you are dizzy, try having vertigo and that is what dizzy feels like. So sometimes we have bad experiences. And as human beings, we are programmed to not want to repeat those bad experiences. That's 100% true. But when you say, I don't know how to get past that, the answer here is that if you treat every feeling like you're dizzy, as if it is an emergency, then you make it an emergency. So it's difficult, but you have to really be able to put a pause in there and say, okay, am I in the situation that I was in years ago when I had vertigo or had a vestibular problem, whatever it was? No, I'm not. I'm just really afraid right now, which makes me sort of feel off balance. But is this an emergency right now? You have to really be able to put that pause in and say, well, if I keep treating this like it's an emergency, then it will remain an emergency. And that sounds really harsh, but that is kind of the truth, right? So there you go. I'm going to keep going, keep going. This is smart. Okay. So I blocked WebMD on my browser. I still find myself about to Google a symptom almost hitting search. That is excellent. That is exactly what somebody with health anxiety has to do. Like I so want to look on WebMD to see what this thing on my skin is. I have to do it. I have to do it. And then you don't. And then if you do it again and again, and I see Donna here, by the way, Donna Zieglerwood, hey Donna, Donna is a textbook example. If you go to my website and search Donna, D-O-N-N-A, you will find a podcast episode I did with Donna. Donna literally had to refrain from checking her blood pressure almost second by second. So much anxiety over her blood pressure, health anxiety with that. It's a good story. So Donna was gracious enough to share. She will kind of tell you what it feels like to do that. But blocking WebMD, deciding to not check your blood pressure, throwing away your Apple Watch or turning off the heart rate monitor, these are scary things to do because it feels like you're leaving yourself open to something horrible. But that's the object of the game. Just because you think it's something horrible, then you can't, you know, just because you think it's something horrible doesn't mean it is. So we need to learn that it isn't horrible even though we think it is. So this is good. Let's see. I have learned to ask myself before Googling that would it help me or not? The answer is no. That is excellent. That's progress too. That is putting, be able to put that space, right? You got to put that space in between the fear and the reaction to the fear. In the beginning, that's almost impossible. And you will say, I have no choice. It's just automatic. It's just automatic. Like people who panic will say, it's just automatic. I have to throw myself on the ground and scream. But you start to realize that no, that's not automatic. Like there actually is a space. That space may only be two seconds wide, but it's a space nonetheless. And you can make different choices in that space. So good job. Good job not Googling. Let's see. Okay. So most people, I will tell you this, the two hardest groups of people for somebody like me to communicate with are people who have a metaphobia, the fear of vomiting, and people who have health anxiety. Now you might say they're the link, but they're really kind of not. Ametaphobes will insist. They will go to the mat, man. They will throw down and tell you that vomiting is no doubt the worst possible outcome that there is in the universe. So none of what I'm saying could possibly matter to them. It can't possibly because I clearly don't understand that vomiting is real and it is the worst thing to possibly happen to any human being in the recorded history of humanity on planet Earth. So hematophobes are really hard to communicate when it comes to the principles of recovery. People with health anxiety are running a close second because of exactly this, which by the way, that's a great screen name. I appreciate it. I feel like health anxiety is the hardest. It's hard to trust the doctors and believe that it's just anxiety. You will, you will because there's never 100% certainty with health anxiety. Never, right? There's never 100% certainty about anything in life. We are swimming in uncertainty every day in almost every aspect of our lives. But for people with health anxiety, they take the uncertainty around their health. And if there is a 1% chance that the doctor could be wrong, that isn't zero. And unless it's zero, I will not tolerate it. And so they go on a frantic quest to try to make that uncertainty zero and have 100% ironclad guarantee that never ever exists. So health anxiety, and if you listen to my health anxiety episode, in my estimation, is an uncertainty intolerance problem. It has nothing to do with your actual health. It has to do with your inability to want to tolerate uncertainty, especially focused on your health, because you will say, but if I don't get a checked out, then something could really be wrong. And that would be irresponsible. I have a family, I have kids, I have blah, blah, blah. I have to get a checked out. People with health anxiety will dig their heels in hard all the time. No, you don't understand. I can't take that kind of chance. Okay. But if you're going to get checked for the 17th time at a doctor for the same exact thing, because you're convinced that the previous 16 doctors missed it, you can make that choice. Everybody's entitled to make their choices. And I would respect that choice. But then it's hard to do that and then come back and say, but how do I stop doing that? So health anxiety is tough. It is tough. So what's this one? I'm going to try and go faster down because this is going to go forever if I don't. My guide causes physical symptoms. Correct anxiety does include physical symptoms. That's actually not news, Michelle. So congratulations. Quite normal with that, which return makes me think that something's seriously wrong. It's so exhausting. I'm not afraid. Just the gap is messing me up. Well, in that situation, you're in that thing where it's like, well, when those physical symptoms pop up, you're going to have to treat them like they are not an emergency again and again and again and again and again. And then after a while, your brain, which is just in a sensitized state and thinking that it is protecting you, but it doesn't have to, it's wrong right now, sooner or later, get the message. But anxiety will make physical sensations. That's just the way it is. Just the way it is. So let's see here. Somebody mentions perfectionism. Perfectionism, a lovely family trait that I think I'm going to just let go. That is hard, by the way. That is hard. It is hard to let go of those traits. When I did the GAD episode, I was loaded with that. I did a live video. I'm actually writing a little bit about that now. Those labels, those traits, because people who exhibit the traits that tend to be attached to GAD also tend to want to wear those traits sometimes as a sign of achievement or honor. So it's really hard for somebody who is a perfectionist to let go of perfectionism, even though they know it is driving bad things, because being a perfectionist also seems like an achievement. I'm the person who gets it right. I do it right. I produce amazing work. Being a chronic worrier, somebody who worries all the time, especially somebody who doesn't worry about themselves, but other people, they know that it is driving them into like a really bad place mentally, but sometimes they will hang on to that because, well, but that means I'm a good person if I worry about you. Of course, I'm going to worry about you. So one of my more popular podcast episodes is about worry. So if you go to The Anxious Truth and search for the word worry, W-O-R-Y, you'll see a whole episode that I did about worry. Because worry is not a plan. And I'll give you the bad news about worrying. Nobody feels you're worried but you. So you could be worried in the deepest parts of your heart about me. I will never ever feel that. And it will have no impact on my life. That's a hard truth about worry, but that is the truth. So let's see what to do when you worry it's not OCD. Yeah, okay, this is, this is a good, there's a good comment here. It illustrates that cycle and write this vicious feedback loop. What do you do when you worry it's not OCD and how to get past worry that you're depressed, there's something deeper wrong. That is a vicious cycle, right? So you, and by the way, the fear that you will become depressed, even though you're not depressed now is incredibly common. But that's part of the issue here, that feedback loop, okay, well I have to treat this like I'm, like it's just a thought. But what if it's not just a thought? So I better do something to guarantee or show myself that I'm not depressed. I have to prove to myself that this thought is wrong as opposed to I just have to let that thought be a thought. It's really hard, dude, really, really hard. I get that. Okay, here you go. I'm sorry, I can't see your names in the Facebook group. Restream doesn't show me your names. The thought of leaving problems unsolved gives me more anxiety than the thought. I get that in a big way. So just a couple of episodes ago, I did an episode called learning to live recklessly in parentheses, but not really, because when you leave your problems unsolved or questions unasked or worries unanswered, it feels irresponsible. It feels morally and ethically wrong sometimes. And it feels reckless. It feels downright dangerous. That's what makes it so scary. And it makes it hard to change those habits. You're difficult. How am I doing today? How am I feeling? I'm doing good. Thank you for asking whoever you are. Appreciate it. How do you start to believe? I'll try to answer these as best I can. We're at about the 30 minute mark. I usually try to cut these off. How do you start to actually believe deep down that you can't solve or plan the future, even if you know it logically? The way to do that is to just let the chips fall where they may, right? So you can think about this forever. Like, I know my overplanning isn't actually doing anything. I know all this. I know it logically, but yet you'll do it anyway, because you think it actually is doing something. So the only way to do that is to act differently. And a lot of cases, like, and again, this is not therapy, is that medical advice or anything like that? But in a intervention called metacognitive therapy, which I've been just buried in lately, it's been really great to learn all that stuff. There's your relationship with thinking and how you think that thinking is a good way to interact with the world as a default. And then you begin to learn when you replace thinking with something else, what can I do instead of planning more now? What can I do instead of ruminating? You start to get the message after a while, like, oh, look, I left that unsolved and unplanned and it worked out anyway, right? When you engage in the thinking, when you're engaged in the planning, the overplanning, more planning, more thinking, and then things work out, you think it's because of all the thinking that you did. So you want things to work out without all of that so you can see, like, oh, the thinking never did anything. So it's really tough, right? So let's see here. Let's talk about more about the simmering anxiety or panic disorder and agoraphobia. Well, generally speaking, so I can give you my experience and I think the experience of many other people here that I'm going to scroll down even more. Yes, people who have panic disorder and agoraphobia have that simmering level of anxiety all the time, primarily because we're just afraid to be anxious. Like, so we're terribly afraid to be anxious. You open your eyes and the first thing you do in the morning is check to see how you're feeling. Oh, no, I'm anxious and you're off to the races. Sometimes that spikes into panic. Sometimes things come up that will make you do things like leave the house. Well, panic attacks will pop up and you're just waiting for the next thing and you're just on a hair trigger all the time. So people with panic disorder are just like this with their fingers crossed all day long fingers and toes and legs crossed hoping that nothing triggers them, which will put you in that situation where you're just simmering all day long. All right. So let's see here. I'm going to scroll down to the bottom. Sorry, guys. I can't take them all. No, no, no, no, no. Unmanaged, gag led to panic disorder. Could be possible. The physical symptoms are so difficult to disengage with. I will always validate that this is a difficult thing to do because you think if you disengage with them that you are in some sort of danger. The only way to learn that you're not is to let the danger be there and then discover. Oh, it wasn't actually. Oh, Donna, this is good. Wasn't actually danger after all. This is really good. Change from a crisis to a problem. That is so good because life is full of problems. Right? We all have Donna fist bump to you on that. This is the best comment today. There life is full of problems. We all have problems. We have things we have to address, solve challenges. That's normal. Life has those things. Not everything is a crisis. Even if you think it is not everything you feel in your body and not everything that pops into your head is a crisis. But in these states, we treat them like every freaking thought is a crisis of some kind. So what Donna is saying here is actually a really good description of what recovery looks like. Things that were once crisis level become just problems. Donna, that's great. Thank you so much. I appreciate you. Um, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Can childhood trauma be linked in any way to health anxiety? I'm really not the trauma guy to be honest with you. So I don't, is it possible? Sure. Our experiences in life matter. Everything matters. That's true. Did your childhood teach you to be overly afraid of just your health? You'd have to maybe ask yourself, you know, am I generally anxious and am I overly cautious in all of life? Or is it just a health thing? So it's, it's possible. I'm sorry. I don't have a good answer for that. Let's see. Oh, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. I'm going to keep going. Oh God, I'm not going to put up the IBS second brain thing, but I'm going to just say this, the research, and I know you're going to say, but there's research and I'm going to, let me just, for anybody that's watching right now, your gut is not your second brain. All the research that has to do with that says that your gastrointestinal tract, which does in fact contain things like serotonin, that's not news by the way, and it's not revolutionary, is involved in signaling to your brain things like satiety, craving, hunger, surprise. Your gastrointestinal tract is involved in signaling to your brain things that are involved with eating and digestion and water is wet. So that's not news. It does not mean that your gut is a second brain. That research, the people who originated that are on their knees begging, please people, like that's not what we said. Like they did not imbue your gastrointestinal tract with executive function yet that stuff is rampant on the internet now. Now I'm not saying IBS isn't real. IBS is 100% real. A lot of people suffer with that, but that second brain stuff makes, it gets my goat because a lot of people suffer for a very long time with these disorders because they're trying to solve it with probiotics or fermented foods and no. So let's see here. I'm going to kind of scroll to the end guys. I wish I could answer these all, but I can't. Here we go. Courage. I'm going to maybe leave you with this one. Kat, thank you very much. Courage plays a big role. You're telling yourself have some courage in the end. And this was one of the earliest podcast episodes I did like seven years ago. It was just entitled Courage. This is the part that nobody ever wants to acknowledge. So I say all the time these things are hard. These things are scary. This is difficult stuff to do. In the end, we have to be courageous. When you face a fear that you know in the back of your mind is illogical, but it feels so real to you, that requires bravery. And in the end, we all have some measure of courage in us. I believe that in my bones, you just have to, you just have to learn to express it. And part of that is taking an initial leap of faith. So when you're not feeling terribly courageous, or you think that you're weak because you're afraid, that's not true. Everybody gets afraid. The most courageous people in the universe are afraid. Courage is not being, is not the absence of fear. Courage is acting even though you are afraid. And what makes that so scary is that that first action is a leap of faith into the unknown and into an abyss that you are sure will kill you, but it won't. So really important, really, really, really important. Alright guys, I think we have pretty much wrapped it up. This is 36 minutes is enough for one of these. We will be back again next week. Next week we get into chapter three. So that'll be the Monday after Christmas for I believe this is the end. Yes. And by the way, you know what I'm going to say. It's fine. So next week we'll hit chapter three. Chapter three gets into where we actually start going through what the solutions to this problem is. It's all about changing reactions, right? So if in fact you want to read along and you don't have a copy of this book, that's where you can get it right there, the anxious truth.com slash books. And then one last thing for those of you who haven't seen, but I've been talking about it all the damn time on January 3rd, the first episode of the first issue of the anxious morning will come out. That is a free email newsletter that will come out every single morning, like in the wee hours of the morning, New York Times, so that you guys will generally wake up to it unless you're an Aussie or a Kiwi, in which case it's the anxious afternoon for you guys. But it's a free email newsletter. You can get that. Just go ahead to this URL, which is the anxious morning dot email. Go ahead and sign up. I'm going to start sending them out on January 3rd. It's 100% free. And I'm doing it because I could actually write 300 to 500 words to you every day without you having to wade through the social media fire hose algorithm to find good stuff. It's just good stuff handed to you in your email inbox. You can read it whenever you want. You can save it. You can go back to it. It's just a better way for me to interact with you. And it's something that I'm trying and there's already over a thousand people signed up. I'm so excited. So go sign up for the newsletter if you haven't. And I will see you guys next Monday. For those of you who celebrate Christmas, Merry Christmas. Happy holidays. I hope that it's a good day and a couple of days for you, at least a couple of days off. For those of you who are struggling during the holidays, I feel you. We will try to keep reaching out so you have some place to talk about that. And yeah, see you guys next week.