 buddy. It's another Monday, which means we're going to do recovery Monday once again. Um, let's wait for folks to start to pop in. I will put the chat overlay up like we always do so you guys can sort of talk to each other. Let me pop that up on the screen really quickly. So let me know where you're coming from. Let me know how you're doing. Happy Monday, another week, another day, another dollar. I don't know. Today we're going to do something a little bit different. Today we're going to answer questions from my Facebook group over the weekend. I posted a Q&A thread or I guess that was yesterday really. So Sunday and we get a ton of, um, uh, ton of really cool responses. So I'm going to go through a bunch of those questions. We're going to answer them as best that we can here. Uh, hello from snowy Nevada. Yeah. Stuff is getting crazy out West in the U S the crazy amount of snow up in the mountain regions way more than usually do insane, like really been crazy. So anybody who's in this crazy amount of snow right now, like hang in there. So the only thing I was thinking is maybe it would be good for the drought in the Western U S, um, I know that when the snow melt comes, uh, hopefully this will really change things because you guys have tongues hanging for quite a long time. So anyway, we'll just wait for a few more folks to pop in, uh, just a quick reminder that if you are coming from the Facebook group, I'm not going to see your name. I'm only going to see Facebook user because that's what the restream does. But, uh, you know, what can I say? Um, so I see that the only, I don't know why only, why am I not showing up? Let me turn off the chat overlay and then turn it back on again. I don't know. Maybe we, maybe restream is having a problem here. The only thing that was showing up was Twitch. So only Becky from Twitch was showing up. Hello from St. Louis. So I, if it doesn't work out, what can I do? I'll just read the, the comments out of the chat, but I don't know for some reason why it's not working on the screen right now. Uh, hydro. Yeah. They're not showing up. Don't know why. Um, well, we'll try to get a little wild. This cannot stand. I believe that I'm with you. Like, clearly we have a problem here. Yeah. It's for some reason, only the chat from, um, Twitch is showing up on the chat overlay. And I don't know why. All right. I'm going to turn it off. Unfortunately, which means you guys aren't going to be able to see each other. Uh, and what you're saying, but, uh, or maybe you, well, I don't know. Um, but yeah, it looks like only the Twitch comments. So thanks for the comments, Becky. I appreciate it being my, my, my main Twitch supporter. So we're going to get into some questions here. There were a lot of questions, so I probably won't take any of the questions in the comments just because this was really for the folks in the Facebook group to ask and there were a ton of questions. So I'm going to start to go through them as best I can here. I will look in the comments as best I can. Um, I did try turning it off and back on again. If I turn it back on again, somebody, somebody make a comment, give me a YouTube or a Facebook comment. Let's see. Let's see if it goes back in. We'll, we'll try it. Hello, Sean from sunny Florida. Hi, Drew. Hi, everyone. Hey, Katya. How are you doing? Nope. Unfortunately, for whatever reason right now, the only, uh, messages that are showing up in the chat on the screen are from Twitch. I don't know why. Um, so it's not going to work. Sorry, guys. Um, I know one of the favorite things is for you guys to be able to talk to each other. But, uh, for some reason, this is not working today. Oh, well, we gave it a shot. All right. So let's get into this before it gets any longer. Um, I'm going to just take some questions kind of in the order that they were, uh, posted. So the first question, and I won't say names, uh, because in case outside the group, which I know you are, um, this is a pretty common question. My over the years, let me read it here. I found over the years that my anxiety has changed from being afraid of bodily sensations to fear of specific thoughts. I don't have anxiety going anymore or driving anymore for the most part, but I do have a fear of what if I get these crazy thoughts? And of course those can happen anywhere. My question is, how do I work on this? Uh, I struggle with coming up with a plan and what that should look like. Okay. It's a really good question. And it's something that most people will ask at some point because people will look at it as, um, somehow thoughts are different. Like, well, I don't, I'm not having panic attacks anymore, which would be great. I'm not afraid to drive anymore. That's great. But I still have scary thoughts. So what's, what do I do about that? But what about scary thoughts? And really the answer to that is there's really no difference. Now you might not need to make a specific plan for scary thoughts, but sometimes we do when we call that officially ERP, where you actually plan to go toward the thoughts to speak them out loud, to write them down, to record them and listen to yourself saying them, you could do that sort of work if you want to. And especially for working with a therapist, that might be a thing that is recommended or a course of action that you take. But anytime you have those thoughts, your, your response is the same. Well, here's an opportunity to go ahead and have the thought that I don't like to have and to leave it be and to practice going through it. So there's really no special new plan. If the problem is thoughts instead of sensations, the thoughts are going to come up when they come up, because we can't decide that they won't, we can't tell them not to come up. It's just the way it's going to be. So in that situation, you're just going to practice moving through the thoughts when they come up, or you may try to do some ERP type work, if especially if you have somebody direct you in that where your exposure is to literally say the thoughts or write them down or record them or listen to them, that sort of stuff, write scripts and stories about them. But remember, when you do that, the object of the game, whether they come up sort of naturally and organically, and you have to work on, you know, not engaging with them, or you trigger them intentionally, you're always working on like squashing the response, right? That's why ERP. So what we care about is when you do have the thoughts instead of going to Oh my God, oh my God, I had the thought I better better prove it wrong, I better do my compulsion to prove it wrong or get away from it. You can't do that. So hopefully that helps. Let's see. I'm sorry to ask. I can't take every question because there was like a lot of questions, but I'll do my best. I'm sorry to ask this again, but I'm really too scared to accept my constant DPR. Okay. So this is going to be sort of a blanket answer. In this case, the person that asked the question is asking about depersonalization and derealization. That's DPR. So if you're new to this, and you hear people talk about DPR, what they're talking about is depersonalization and derealization DPR. That's that feeling where you feel like you're not real. You're not sure if you're real anymore or the world feels weird and unreal. That's what that is. So I'm too scared to accept my DPR. This comes back to the concept of what accepting is. So what you're really asking and whether your symptom is DPR, a specific thought that you find incredibly disturbing or scary, another physical symptom like being dizzy or at a breath or your heart racing or nausea, no matter what it is, the answer to that is always the same. And like, well, acceptance has nothing to do with whether it's going to be there or not. So I'm too scared to accept it is actually just a statement that says, I'm going to keep fighting it. I will keep fighting it. I will keep trying to fix it. I will try to keep making it go away. And I will keep trying to save myself from it. So unfortunately, there's no magic thing that I could tell you about like, well, here's a special technique for DPR. They're all the same. And that is I'm too scared to accept it means I'm too scared to stop fighting it. So all I can remind you is that you are fighting it is literally doing nothing. So no matter whether it's a thought or a specific sensation like DPR or some other anxiety symptom in your body, the fighting it is literally doing nothing. It's accomplishing nothing, except for fueling the fires of that cycle that says, this is too much. I got to I have to save myself. I have to save myself. And then you think you save yourself. So you keep trying to save yourself. So there's really no special tip that I can give you to say, well, here's how to be specially brave and accept DPR. There's no special tip for that. At some point, you have to decide I can I can keep fighting it if I want. You're allowed to make that choice. Or I'm going to have to stop fighting it one day and just let it be. So acceptance, forget the word acceptance. It's resistance. I'm too scared to stop fighting it. So I'm going to keep resisting it, sometimes reframing it with that word can help. And unfortunately, dropping the resistance means you have to sum it up some courage. There's just no way around that. So that's that question. And that's there was a bunch of questions like that, but they all centered around different sensations or specific thoughts that people will say, well, I want some special tips for this special thought or this special symptom. But that's a blanket answer that really kind of goes along with all all the symptoms and all the thoughts. Yes, all the thoughts, even thoughts about your health, even thoughts about death, even thoughts about harming yourself or harming somebody else, which is different than active suicidal ideation. I have to throw that out there as a disclaimer. If you actively want to do something to harm yourself, that means get immediate in person health right now. But if you're worried about that you might have thoughts about suicide that you don't want to do. That's just another scary thought, right? It doesn't it doesn't come true. So I need to clarify that. Okay, let's keep, let's keep going. I'll try to get through as many as I can. I'm finding it hard to see the light at the end of the tunnel. This is this is also it's going to happen, right? So and again, there was a couple of comments like that. They're you're going to have days where you get discouraged. You're going to have days where recovery isn't going fast enough. You're going to have days when you you might be worried that it's not working. It's not going to get any better. This is as good as it's going to get or I'm going backwards. There's nothing you can do about that those days are going to happen. When you have those days, the best thing that I could tell you to do is to remember that those days are to be expected. Now the person who asked the question good job, by the way, and again, I'm not going to say your names. But you know, I've chatted to a friend. I'm giving myself some love by cleaning the house and having a shower, things I don't want to do but I know future me will appreciate. So this is really the best thing you can do when you feel like I'm just frustrated and I feel like it's never getting any better. I think there's two things, except the fact that you're going to have emotional reactions to that. You're going to feel disappointed or angry or frustrated or despondent. You may feel despair. You're allowed to feel those things. Let yourself feel them, let yourself express them, let yourself process them, talk to a friend, write it down, whatever it happens to be, like you're allowed to do all of those things. Then do yourself the best to pick yours to do the best you can to pick yourself up and do something that in this case, this person really, really great comment, which is I did something today that future me will I know will appreciate. It doesn't have to be huge. You don't have to like, you know, jump up and run around the world or get on a world cruise or climb at Everest. You're not going to fix it and recover in one day on the day that you feel like you're never going to recover. Just do your best to give yourself some space to feel what you have to feel. Then do your best to sort of get up and do something no matter how small it is just to just to have a little bit of forward progress and not just wallow in it for days. So that it's going to happen. It's crappy, but that's just the way the process works. Expect it to happen. And remember the emotional reasoning trap. I feel like I'm never going to get better and the emotion over that is really strong. So I'm going to treat it like it's true. You're allowed to feel things and think things. It doesn't mean they're going to be true. Okay. So let's go back to the over here. I'm going to keep moving things around. So I'm not looking away from you guys. How to take it small when your biggest fear is being left alone for days. It really rarely happens for me. Okay. So the question here is if there's something that you are afraid of and that doesn't really happen. So in this situation, the person is afraid to be left alone. This is a common thing. If you knew we call it monophobia, monophobia is the thing that develops often alongside things like panic disorder, agoraphobia and OCD. That is the belief that people are saving you when you panic, when you're anxious, when you have that storm of thoughts, you're safe people, you're trusted people, the people you trust to keep you safe are somehow keeping you safe. And if you're not with them, if they leave you alone for a couple of hours or a day or a couple of days or a week, then who will save me? That's what that is. And you sometimes can't practice that. So if you have not been left alone because you're going to great lengths to never be left alone or never be left alone for air quotes too long, and then life throws something at you like your safe person has to be out of town for a few days, there's no way to work up to that. What I will say is in that moment when you're confronted with it, you will frantically say, oh, what can I do? I need a technique quickly because I haven't been alone for more than two hours in three years. So I need something to do because now my partner or my safe person or whoever is going to be out of town for four days. What do I do? There's nothing you can do. At that point, you're just faced with a four day challenge. So you're going to have to recognize that this is challenging. This is way out of my comfort zone. I am going to be anxious. I am going to be afraid. I am going to frantically try to wiggle my way out of this. That's all supposed to happen. I'm going to do the best I can to remember the principles to accept the fact that I am being challenged right now. I'm not failing if I'm afraid. I'm not failing if I want to call for help. But do I really need to call for help? And what can I do? And you just have to kind of get through it an hour at a time. And people often have that type of experience and discover, wow, like it was really hard for the first few hours. It was really hard the first night. And then it seemingly got easier and easier. And I could tell you for personal experience that I have worked with with many people who were 100% sure that like, oh, my safe person is going away for five days. There is no way I can do this. At the end of the fifth day, we're saying like, I can't believe this is me. I actually enjoyed yesterday. I enjoyed a lone time. I did stuff that I haven't done in a long time on my own in the house. I put on the music that I don't usually put on. That can happen. So except that this isn't going to be a challenging situation. But then take a lesson out of the out of the experience that says, I can't engineer my life to only be alone for 20 minutes at a time or an hour at a time or three hours at a time. I have to keep going toward things that scare me. I have to keep working toward all of the fears because the fear of being alone is not a special fear. That's based on the idea that if you get too anxious or you have symptoms or thoughts or sensations, you have to be saved. So you work on that again and again and again in all the different contexts so that the next time you have to be alone for more than you are allowed hour or two, it's not a new thing. So take what you can from the experience and let it motivate you to say, oh, clearly I need to work more on this belief that I need to be rescued. So that that would be what you do there. Let's keep going. I'm not going to answer questions about medication. I never do. That is between you and your doctor. There's nothing anybody can tell you about that. So if your doctor is convinced that you have a chemical imbalance, nobody on the internet is going. We may disagree, but I cannot offer you advice there and you should not take advice from somebody who does not know you when it comes to that sort of stuff. That's just not OK. A couple of questions about people who are trying to help their kids through this. So I did do an episode of the podcast. It was going back probably two years now with Dr. Jackie, J.A.C.Q. You if you just go to the anxious truth.com and search for kids and children, you'll see the episode he did. She was really great. Dr. Jackie specializes in kids and adolescents and anxiety disorders in that population and helping families. And the rules are generally the same with kids. There's a lot more a lot more information in that episode. So you go check it out. And if you are trying to help somebody, a young person in your life, thank you for being compassionate and kind and wanting to help them, especially, of course, if it's your own child. But the rules are generally the same. There's a couple of little caveats, depending how old the kid is because kids are younger kids don't have the ability to conceptualize things the way adults do. So we have to maybe have a little bit of a different approach. But generally speaking, the rules are the same. So one question was, you know, my son is living a life full of restrictions and doesn't go to school and misses his whole life. What do we do? Well, the rules remain the same unless he's really little and cannot conceptualize things at all the way we do. Once you get into that, you know, adolescent and teen years, he kind of can. And unfortunately, the rule the same rules are going to apply. So it's there as a parent. It's really hard because you want to soothe your child and comfort your child. I get it. I have two girls. I have two daughters. They're kind of grown now, but still. So it's a little bit tough as a parent because you want to be supportive. You want to be a cheerleader. You want to encourage. You want to do all of those things. But in the end, it's, you know, they're going to have to do scary things just like you would have to do scary things. And it's really hard for a parent because you want to resist the urge to accommodate that fear. Working with a professional is kind of important, I think in that situation because mom and dad cannot help with recovery. You can be supportive in recovery, but it's a very difficult situation for mom and dad to play surrogate therapist, accountability partner, exposure director. Like it's hard. Dr. Jackie did talk about taking your family approach, but that's when the family gets educated and can be active. So having outside help, if you can get it is a big deal. If you have somebody in your family, somebody asked about I'm seeing signs of OCD in my brother. There's I mean, it's again, you can you can open a dialogue, of course, but you know, there's nothing wrong with that expressing concern, showing your love like, listen, I'm really concerned. I see these things. Do you know about this? Have you ever talked about this? You're really playing the role of supportive psychoeducator in that situation. So like, hey, if you ever have any questions or I've noticed this about you. But the only thing that I can say is sometimes even a close family member where there's no conflict, there's nothing but love and respect there. Well, not take kindly to that. You cannot force somebody, even a family member, to confront this. You can't do that. It does not ever work that way. In my opinion, I've seen people get armed with information that they get in therapy or recovery or from my books or podcasts or people like me and then really, really want to give that to people that they care about and love and those people they reject it. I'm I don't want to hear it. Don't talk to me about that. There's no problem or no, I'm not doing it that way. You have to respect that person. There's nothing you can do in that situation. So the best you could do is to offer psycho education and offer unconditional support and encouragement and know that like, hey, this could be a really hard thing to do. I can help educate you on it. I could help find find you some help. Maybe I can cheer for you while you do it, but you can't make them do this stuff. That never, never works. Let's see here. This is good. I see a comment here from Bethany. It's also important not to project their own issues too much on others. This is really common with anxious parents. So thanks, Bea, I appreciate that comment, which is, oh my God, like my son or daughter is having anxiety issues and I'm freaking out. Well, you have to ask, are they freaking out or are they just anxious over school or peer pressure or kid stuff? Like how are they handling it? It's really important that we don't just assume that they feel how we feel, but an anxious person will do that. If I see that my daughter is anxious, oh my God, she must be, she's going to have panic disorder. She's going to have agoraphobia. That isn't necessarily true. So be careful about jumping to that conclusion. That's really hard. So let's see here. But thank you for being supported. That's really great. I've had, let me see what else I have here. I have had anxiety for 20 years. I'm learning how, I'm learning now how to surrender, not engage with my intrusive thoughts and shift my focus. Great. As I go through my practice, I imagine it takes long for my nervous system to get regulated. Well, there's two things there. Number one, if you are new in this process and new could be like two months. So this person says that they've had anxiety problems for 20 years, right? So even if you started this new way to do it or whatever you want to call it, system method, I don't know, approach two months ago, that's two months versus 20 years or even two years or a year, it's a long time. So yes, patience, patience, patience. The threat response that gets out of control, overactive and sort of off the rails is triggered quickly. That's that evolutionary imperative. You need to make that protective system easy to turn on, hard to turn off. So it does take a while. The second part of that is be very careful about saying, well, I'm doing these things. I'm going to accept, I'm gonna tolerate, I'm gonna refocus all the things. And I'm waiting to feel different because of that. What you're looking for is I act different. That's your measure of progress because you can't force yourself to feel any different. You can only act different and that's where the mechanism comes in here. So over time, you will start to discover like, oh, geez, it doesn't seem as important anymore. So I think the more accurate statement is as you go through this process, how you feel isn't so much that it changes. Oh boy, I feel so much better. It's just like, oh, I don't focus on it so much anymore. It's not as important and urgent. It's not an emergency like it used to be. And then secondarily, you start to think like, oh, yeah, I guess I am feeling better then. But first you'll notice I don't have to worry so much about how I feel. That's what we're looking for. That's the most important part. So be careful about that. And as far as nervous system regulation, I am so not a fan of that phrase. And I'm not a fan of that phrase because it somehow implies that we should be trying to control the operation of our nervous systems. A thing that was generally not ever designed for us to be able to control, our autonomic nervous systems, especially you're completely out of our control, we do not get to regulate those things. So what I tell people all the time is, surprisingly, when I stopped trying to regulate my nervous system inadvertently, which is what I was, I guess, doing accidentally, my nervous system figured out how to regulate itself. It didn't need to be regulated. It needed to be taught some lessons. And then when I started to act differently, well, the cues were different and my brain processed things differently. And suddenly what was an emergency wasn't anymore. So even now, if I have a panic attack tomorrow, does that mean my nervous system is dysregulated? No, it's doing what it's supposed to do. It's just doing it in a more proper or a healthier or more well-adjusted, less maladaptive context. So be careful about hammering away trying to regulate your nervous system. Your nervous system's gonna regulate itself as it knows how to do that. So let's keep going here. How are we doing here? 22 minutes. I'm sorry for the chat. I'll put it back up on the screen again. Let's see if maybe they fixed it, but I have a feeling probably not. I'll see if anybody gets up there great, but I'm not holding out hope on this stream. So how important is the meditation relaxation part of this? I know we don't do it to get rid of anxiety. I ask because A, I haven't been incorporating it. Okay, so I'm not sure what the rest of the question would even be. Like I haven't been doing it, so tell me again that I should be doing it. Physical therapists for my concussion reminded me how important relax is in chilling the excessive fight or flight. Okay, so in that situation, he had me do a proven position on the table and deeper breathing. I don't know. Highly regarded sports medicine center. Okay, so please explain the use of relaxation and a recovery. So in this situation, person, unfortunately, it is just twitch. Sorry guys, it's just not working. Yeah, I appreciate you guys being able to chat with each other across platforms too. I don't know why it's not working today. I'll have to ask Restree. They might be having a problem. So in this situation, the person is dealing with an actual injury, a concussion in that case, and the person who's helping rehab from the concussion, which is a real injury and has a protocol and it's a real thing, is suggesting different relaxation and things like that. That is true because in that situation, people with concussions are told to avoid excessive stimulation. You have to give your brain a chance to sort of rest and come back to kind of its normal functioning. And again, that's the concussion as a brain injury. So you're waiting for your brain to heal. And I know personally people in my life who've been through concussions and that's what it looks like. Take it easy, take it easy. No excessive stimulation, no long time looking at screens, no loud music. You got to ease into it, okay? So that's how it fits in there. The role of relaxation in recovery and meditation is it's a focus tool. For me, we practice meditation to learn how to pay attention or what not to pay attention to, more than anything else. So meditation isn't about achieving a state of calm or relaxation. Meditation is just about learning how to focus. So meditation is just about learning how to focus or not focus, if you will. So when your brain is screaming at you, pay attention, pay attention, brain freeze, meltdown, symptoms, heart attack, stroke, going crazy, gonna stab the dog, your response to that because you've practiced paying actively paying attention to what you want to pay attention to. The answer is I hear you, but I'm over here right now, brain. So you just keep chattering and I'll be over here. And the relaxation part of that, like in terms of progressive muscle relaxation and those type of exercises, is just to learn what relaxation feels like. So I don't tell anybody to do progressive muscle relaxation so that you can instantly like, ah, like chill out during a panic attack or a big anxiety spike. It's not gonna work that way, it's just not. So if you're trying to practice things like PMR, progressive muscle relaxation, so that you can use it when you panic, no. You practice it so that you know what that even feels like. A lot of people who start to practice those things when they're not in a panic or not at a super high anxious level, discover like, wow, I didn't even know I was holding tension in all these different places in my body. So we're using the principles that you can relax your body even though you're not calm because you can be physically relaxed or more relaxed and not be calm at the same time. Those are two different things. They do not automatically get glued together. So we practice those things just to get good at moving through those experiences without latching onto the fear and riding it into the ground. That's what we use it for. But you do have to kind of practice it. So, you know, it's kind of hard to say like, well, I don't do them, so tell me why I should be doing them. I tell you why I should do them a lot. I'm a huge believer in that and most people, clinicians who specialize in anxiety disorders agree with that. Like these are good skills to be practicing. So, can feelings and emotions be warped by anxiety? If I feel something strong, we could anxiety be at play or is it my true self? Ah-ha-ha, the true self. Yes, what anxious people feel everything like up here. So a feeling that normally would be sort of down here if you were just living sort of a regular life or a not anxious life becomes a red alert. Everything is a giant red alert. So yes, it 100% can warp distort. That's those cognitive distortions, emotional reasoning. We talk about those sort of things all the time. So 100%. And notice the, I need certainty. If I feel something really strongly, is this my true self? Well, feeling something strongly does not equal anything. It just is feeling strongly. So a feeling, and I forget, I don't know if it was David Burns who wrote Feeling Good, talked about this or it comes out of ACT literature, I don't remember. But a feeling, the intensity of a feeling is only a reflection of your state at the moment. It's not a reflection of your being. Like, so okay, you're really anxious right now. So yes, you feel these things very intently, but, and then anxious people will then say, well, since I feel it's so strong or it feels so real, it must be real. And then I have to treat it like it's real, but I know I shouldn't treat it like it's real. So let me ask again for the 10,000th time, are you sure that's not real? Is you sure it's not my true self? Are you sure that I don't really think this? So no, the intensity of the thought or the emotion in our context has nothing to do with it being indicative of your true self or anxiety is trying to give you a message or the universe is sending you a message, no such thing. A thought may be strong or not, doesn't matter. So let's keep going here. I'm sorry, I lost track, here we go. I've been working with the therapist pretty well. My last part is traveling, fine. Okay, so this is somebody who's saying they've been working with a therapist, making progress. Excellent, good job. That's really hard work, patch yourself on the back. And they're afraid of flying and traveling because that's a thing that you just can't really practice that much, that's true. So there's two things. And yes, I did have my own personal experience. The way I finally knew years into the process that I really was truly recovered was when I had to start flying again. I didn't have a reason to fly for several years. And then when I did, yes, I was really nervous. And I thought like, well, I don't like to fly anyway. I've never been a great flyer, I'll do it, but I don't love it. So I had regular like fear of flying nervousness because I'm just a nervous flyer anyway and always have been my whole life. But then there was also the, ooh, this is the test. This is the big test, this is it. I'm in a tube of aluminum 35,000 feet in the air for four hours, what do I do? So I did, I had some anticipatory anxiety. I did question myself, I wasn't 100% sure. So yeah, I was certainly nervous about flying. But all of the work I had done taught me that, oh, yeah, well, what's the worst that can happen? I might panic in the airport, I might panic on the plane, maybe. And I was able to truly say, maybe, and I know it'll end, it'll be fine. So I'll have a really crappy first third of the flight and then it'll be over. And that in fact turned out to be the case. I got anxious, I was flying nervous, not anxious nervous. And then I was cool. So that's pretty normal. But how can you work on that? If the problem is, well, in a plane I can't escape, I'm trapped for four hours or two hours or 10 hours, then you have work to do on the ground. Because for me, it was truly that I had reached the point where it was like, it doesn't matter how long I'm on this plane because nothing that happens on the plane, short of it crashing, which is really my fear of flying, but nothing that happens on the plane is that consequential. I don't want to panic on the plane for 10 hours. But even if I did, that would be okay because it wouldn't be a disaster. So that's two things. Keep working on everything you can work on on the ground because you need to get to the point where you are confident that your recovery is forkliftable. You could forklift your recovery into any, like, oh, I'm really recovered here in the mall. I'm really recovered in the next town over. I'm really recovered two states away. I'm really recovered in a different country. But if I have to fly, oh, that's different. No, I take my recovery and I put it in a pallet and I forklifted into this other context and I have some confidence that that will work. Even I wasn't 100% confident, but I was confident enough and it turned out that it was fine. So let's see. I can't seem to push through my bubble of two minutes from home because I'm afraid of anything 15 minutes away. I will be panicking till I get home. Okay, that's not really a question. And sometimes I'm gonna call out the repetitive nature of but I'm afraid, but I'm afraid, but I'm afraid, but I'm afraid. Correct, you are 100% afraid. And in that situation, the first time you asked that question of me or Facebook group or your therapist or something like that, you're gonna get all kinds of support for like, yes, this is super scary. We know it is. Nobody's denying that it is. But at some point, just stating I'm afraid becomes completely counterproductive. Then you are allowed to choose to not do it if you want. You can make that choice. Everybody is allowed to make that choice. But at some point that you will gain nothing from just continually making the statement, but I'm afraid, but I'm afraid, but I'm afraid because I don't have any more words for what I'm afraid. I know you are. And I know that this is a big ask. I'm not asking you to do it. I'm just telling you that this is the way I believe it works. And a lot of the people around you in the Facebook group believe it works too and they're doing that. But I just, that's not a question. That's just a statement. I'm afraid. I'd be too far away from home and I'll panic and I can't allow that. I understand. But following that is what got you to the point where you have to ask me this question anyway. So I know that sounds really brutal. I'm not trying to minimize it. And remember that when you see people in that cycle and you know they've been in it for a long time, then this might be the way I answer that. If this is somebody I'd never seen before and is brand new with that, that answer is gonna be very different. But you have to keep in mind as you go through the recovery process that the questions that you asked a year ago or six months ago or five months ago can't be the questions that you're answering that you're still asking five months later or a year later. That actually isn't helpful. The people who are trying to help you can't keep answering those same questions. That sounds really brutal, but it is part of the process that would change over time. Everybody's gonna have questions. Everybody's gonna hit bumps. Everybody's gonna make mistakes. That's okay. It's not a crime. But the way we would answer those questions on day one would be very different than the way we respond to those questions on day 80, for example. So hopefully you understand why I'm saying it that way. All right, let's see. Let's keep going. Let's keep going. I'm gonna have to skip some of them. Where are we, 33 minutes? Here's a question about overdoing it with exposures. Is there such a thing as too much? Well, this is a tricky one because it's really very contextual. We do care about flooding experiences where you bite off more than you could chew without proper expectations, without proper coaching or education or helping you through that process. Flooding experiences, if you have proper expectations and somebody is helping you manage that, can be really helpful. That is where you take big bites out of your recovery. But that's kind of rare. Most people don't have that. But most anxious people will be 100% convinced that they can overdo it at any minute. So flooding is a very rare situation that we rarely have to encounter in recovery. If daily life is just, I'm gonna do four things today that I'm afraid to do. When two months ago, I wouldn't do any of them. An anxious person will automatically assume that I am this close to the too much line where I'm gonna break something and something bad will happen because I will overdo it. If you always know why you're doing the challenging thing and you have your expectations are set up accordingly, this is gonna be hard. Now you could choose to not do that hard thing this week because it's been a tough week. There's a lot going on at work. I had an argument with my partner, whatever, like I'm not up to it this week. Cool, you made an educated decision. Like it's too much this week because I have a lot on my plate, that's fine. It's too much just because I think it'll be too much and somehow break me and I can't handle it. Remember that the assertion that you can't handle a challenge is what got you there to begin with. So almost all anxious people are in a situation where they will worry that every exposure could be the one that breaks them or they can do too much. But no, I don't believe that in very rare cases is there too much exposure, very rare. But at the same time, you also are allowed to rest. This stuff will tire you out. So do your work and then rest, that's okay. I need to put that in there. Okay, this is a common thing to sue people in a row. One person asked about, this is really two different things, but illness, people will say all the time like I got sick and now I'm back to square one. But again, we go back to the same concept sometimes over and over. You got sick, which was truly impactful. Regardless of what the illness was, hopefully it's a minor illness. But regardless, many people in this community will say, I was doing great and then I got the flu or I got an ear infection or I had a really bad stomach virus that lasted for four days, which can happen. That happens to people sometimes. And now I'm a mess and I'm anxious all the time and I'm right back to square one. What that really means is I got afraid because my body was feeling things that I'm afraid to feel. And so I have decided in the last week or two that I should go back to doing the old things that I used to do. I will constantly scan my body. I will maybe Google for symptoms. I will keep looking in the mirror. I will ask if I look okay. I will want to talk about it all the time. So back to square one and I have to start over is just I have decided that doing it the old way that I was moving away from is a good idea now because I'm really scared. So when you view it that way, then you start to see like, oh, wait a minute, I have some power here. This isn't like, oh, I got a germ, I got sick and now it's completely out of my control. How you feel might be completely out of your control. That's true. But what you do with that is still something that you get to say it. So just be careful about declaring that when you get sick, you go back to square one. Well, when I get sick, I just go back to doing things the old way because that seems like the safer bet right now because I'm afraid again. Consider that. It seems much less dire when you look at it that way. As opposed to just out of my control, what do I do? There must be something. There is something. You can go back to doing the way that you were doing when you felt like you were getting better. That's hard, that's scary, that's challenging. You have to be kind to yourself. You have to acknowledge that you're doing a difficult thing but that would be the way you respond to that. Grief is another one though. Grief is a big one, right? So grief is going to make you feel all kinds of things. Grief is something that every human being encounters. It's grief is terrible because grief means there's a loss. There's something negative has happened in our lives and we would all come to a consensus that yes, losing a loved one, losing a beloved pet, a friend, a partner, those are negative events that nobody wants to happen to them. So when you are dealing with a loss, the only thing that you can really do is to recognize that the process of grief is going to come with all kinds of thoughts, all kinds of emotions and those emotions may vacillate and oscillate. You might feel sadness, you might feel despair, you might feel regret over maybe lost opportunities, things you didn't get to do with this person you lost. You might feel anger, you might feel resentment, you might feel a bunch of different things. They are all gonna come bubbling up in that grieving process. So you just have to know like, well, I'm supposed to feel these things now. I'm supposed to feel this. The problem with somebody who's stuck in an anxiety disorder is everything I feel, the feeling itself becomes the problem. And so it's not fair because the natural process of mourning that loss and dealing with that sense of grief that everybody has to go through from time to time is an important part of sort of healing that grief and going through, get to the other side. But as opposed to focusing on the loss and why I feel this way, anxious people will just care about the feeling itself. So the best advice there is that's where being nice to yourself really matters. I'm supposed to feel this way now. This is because I am human, I'm supposed to feel this way. You know, deciding that I have to get rid of the feeling or that it means something more or it's special or it's scary. I have to kind of step away from that part. So there's really two parts there. There is I feel things because of what happened and then I'm responding to the fact that I feel things. So the best you could do is you got to drive a wedge between those two things and do the best you can to maintain a little bit of an air gap between I'm sad, I'm despondent, I miss this person, I'm crying normal. I'm freaking out because I'm crying and I'm sad and I feel big emotions and I think that means I will become depressed and kill myself automatically because I catastrophize over my emotions. That's the part you don't need. That's the part we could say, well, wait a minute, I could take a step back. I could put a little air gap between those two things and just try to navigate the grief without gluing the fear of the grief on top of it. So tough spot and I'm sorry for your loss. One person asked, is it normal to fear and avoid filling out the fear ladder and exposure planner? So believe it or not, if you're watching the stream, Josh Fletcher and I just recorded the first three episodes of our new podcast and we answered this question in one of those podcast episodes, we talked about it. So congratulations, you made it onto the new podcast and I'll give you a link in a minute if you guys wanna check that out. It's not out yet, it's not gonna be out for a little while but I'll give you a link. You can go get on the mailing list. But yes, it's incredibly common. In fact, we were kind of talking about it a little bit and The Anxious Truth is a book that has, there's tens of thousands of copies of it out there. My estimate is that 25% of those have either only been read the first two chapters or never been read. So it's really, really common for anxious people to be afraid to see what they actually have to do. So for instance, people who read The Anxious Truth get so fired up over chapter one and chapter two because that's the feel good part where I tell you it's not your fault and I explain how you got here and I explain the mechanism and why things haven't worked for you and everybody loves that part. But then when they get to chapter three, many people just, boom, slam the book down and walk away because it makes them anxious. Oh, shit, I have to actually do stuff now. That's not a problem, nobody wants to do scary things. It doesn't mean you're weak or failing or incapable. It's a natural reaction to not wanna commit to do difficult things. So if you're anxious because you have to commit to for the next five days, I will get up every morning and walk around my neighborhood for 10 minutes and that scares the hell out of you. Yes, it is normal to be anxious about that. Totally normal and incredibly common. But recognize that when you make that commitment, you are facing down, you've been facing down a path that has not helped you. Let's make that assumption. If you're watching today, you may have tried a bunch of things that haven't really worked for you. So you've been looking down a path that hasn't been truthful for you. At some point, the first step is to face another path. Maybe it's this path and hopefully this works for you. But just turning to face that other path is a step. It actually, that's a step. Like deciding to commit to those things and even consider that you're gonna fail out to feel latter and you're gonna do one of those things, then that's a step. You are changing direction and you point the ship this way into a storm. Now I'm gonna point the ship this way to get out of the storm. Just turning the wheel and facing that direction could be anxiety producing. It could make you feel vulnerable and uncertain, but it's a step. So pat yourself on the back for doing that. It's really important. So hopefully that helps. It's a good question. What else do we have here? My GP called and asked me, I don't want to do that. I stopped taking it. I was obsessed. Okay, this is a blood pressure thing. Blood pressure, people get easily obsessed with their blood pressure. There's no hard and fast answer to this. In this situation, the person said, my GP called and asked me for a blood pressure reading as they haven't got an up-to-date one. Okay, so that's just good health advice. You're a general practitioner, you're a family doctor, whatever you want to call it. Let's keep track of your blood pressure. That's cool, nothing wrong with that. But when asked to take a blood pressure reading, now the anxiety kicks in. I stopped taking my blood pressure because I became obsessed with it. So I'm afraid to take it ever again because I think it will kick off the obsession. And I get that. Some people get so, they get very obsessed with it. So if they do have to go to the doctor and have a blood pressure reading taken, they are freaking out for a week before because they know it's gonna be high when they get there because they're gonna be anxious. Then they get caught in the loop, but then I have to explain that it's because I'm anxious. Then he's gonna want to do this. Then she's gonna put me on medication. Then it might be in this. And the thinking storm, the white out blizzard conditions of thinking in your head just starts. That's one way this can appear. But unfortunately, there's really no way out of that other than, oh yeah, I'm thinking, I'm thinking again. This has kicked off a thing I am afraid of. So I am thinking furiously trying to find my way out of this fear. That's gonna happen. So I'm just gonna have to come back to present and deal with the appointment that day. And if my blood pressure is high when I get to the doctor, I will deal with it then. Because thinking about it and planning about it and ruminating about it and worrying about it changes no outcome at all, zero, nothing. I will talk to the doctor about it that day. Now, for somebody who has stopped taking their blood pressure because it became an obsessive thing or it was a compulsion for them to check it. If you have stopped checking your blood pressure, it means that you resisted the compulsion. So if you used to be a compulsive blood pressure person and you walked around with your cuff all day long, you check your blood pressure eight, nine times a day, which is not unusual in this community. And now you don't check it at all. Congratulations, you resisted a compulsion and discovered, oh, I don't have to do that anymore. So I know that you'll think like, oh, this will trigger me again and I'll go right back to that. But you know more than you did then. You have actual experience that says, even when I don't check my blood pressure, I'm okay. Sometimes it's difficult to not check it, but when I resist that, I'm okay. So for somebody who was compulsively and obsessively checking blood pressure to have the doctor say, can you please check your blood pressure is an amazing accomplishment. Do not throw that out and just automatically assume that if I check it one time, I'm done. Like I'm gonna go right back. No, you won't, you know more than that already. You can make choices. You might feel a little discomfort. You might feel the pull of that cuff, but you know what you did the last time and that you bring that into the experience with you. So in a way that's throwing out all of your accomplishment, which is not fair to you. Like you're capable of taking your blood pressure without going back down the rabbit hole again. Okay, there's a couple more left and then I'm gonna end it. I truly hope you can address this question after recovering from panic disorder for 12 years, then it made its appearance again. Okay, it's hopeless recovering again, struggling for three years, major life changes moving to, hang on. I can't seem to adjust or have faith and I make progress and then I regress. I make progress and then I regress. That's the point that I would jump in. So all the other words in the question I would tend to just consider is window dressing, I make progress and then I regress. That regression, that regression is a choice. There is a level, there's a measure of choice in there. And I know that sounds like I'm blaming you for going backwards, I'm not. I'm pointing out that there is always a choice. We always have some choice. If we deny that, then you can click out of the video now. If you insist that there is no choice and you must regress, something makes some external force controls you, then I'm not gonna be terribly helpful to you. But if you made progress and then you choose to start retreating again, then you made progress. Like you've shown your ability to do it and then you abandoned that ability. So the best advice I could give you there is to look at the progress that you made. Like, well, then I regress, well, then I choose to start doing things the old ways again. Again, that's that thing. Well, I got really scared, so I went back to old habits. Well, what can I do now? Go back to the new habits, even though that's difficult. There comes a point at which you, you're making progress, but it's difficult and then you decide it's either too difficult or it's not coming fast enough and you give up and you go back to the old ways. But you did make progress, you were making progress. So I don't have a good answer to this other than to recognize the choice inherent in the statement and then I regress. Then I chose to start following my fear again. So you didn't give yourself time to get over the hump, but you clearly were on the way to that. Like you've done it. So every time I go backwards, I go backwards to the old ways again. Yeah, but I made that choice and now I can make a different choice. Yesterday was yesterday, today's a brand new day, tomorrow's a brand new day. I have another opportunity to make a different choice, one that moves me closer to what I actually want. So it's important to stay connected to that. You were doing it, you can do it, you've shown it. And the last one would be, before I end it because I do have another call coming up, is it okay to do something while waiting for a panic attack to end? Sure, like you don't have a choice, you're always doing something, even if you're doing nothing, you're doing something. Or is this distraction, my intention isn't to stop the panic attack for some reason, I can't twiddle, my thumb is in a way for it to end. That's could be difficult because again, and I love the question because he, the person who asked the question actually addressed intention, intent always matters. I'm trying to run away from it, I'm trying to make it stop, I need to distract myself or I can't be okay unless I distract, hang on a second. Okay, that was a what's that message. So yeah, the person is trying to get a potential, all right, I know I have a call coming up, sorry guys, is trying to do something special to get away from it to make it end. These are the activities I do when I panic. I gotta quit the app, sorry man. This way it doesn't keep coming in. So as long as you're not trying to run away from it or kicking into activities that are designed to regulate your nervous system or activate your Vegas nerve or make it stop or ground yourself, then you're good to go. To me, I think it depends. Some days you literally do just sit and wait for it to end if that's the context you're in. And on other days you are doing something, life and panic happens and you decide, well, I'll just keep doing life as best I can. Both of them are okay. So it will vary from context to context. It's totally okay to do something while you wait for your panic to end, but that's the key. Like, I'll just keep doing the best I can at this. I might not do this task as well as I would if I wasn't panicking, that's 100% true, but I'll do the best I can and I know that if I don't make it the most important thing in the room, it will come down and I'll be back to where I wanna be. Okay, so that is all the questions from the Facebook group. I will go through the chat. I would love to go through the chat. I'm sorry that the chat didn't work so you guys couldn't talk to each other cross-platform, which is great, but unfortunately this is, I can go through a little ways, but I can't do anything, let's say here. I can't start answering more questions because I'm kind of out of time. So we'll do it again next week. I believe, oh, you know what? I won't put it up on the screen. What's the difference? But yes, Josh and I did record the first episode of the new podcast. The podcast is actually called Disordered. So if you're on my mail list, you already got a link, but if you go to disordered.fm, yeah, I can type that, check it out, disordered.fm, okay, I typed it. Hopefully it shows up in whatever platform that you are. If you go to that, you can jump on the mailing list. We're still working on social media stuff. First episode should be out very soon. It's really good though, it's really good. I'm actually excited about this project. So that's it, we'll be back again next week. This will stay on my YouTube channel in a playlist called Recovery Monday. It'll stay in the Facebook group. It'll stay on Facebook itself. Hard to find it there. The best way to do it is to subscribe on YouTube and come back to that playlist if you wanna rewatch it again. I'm sorry, I couldn't take your questions today. There is a podcast on existential anxiety, death anxiety, check it out. I can't give you, I can't tell you how to fix that in a little live. But thanks for coming by. Hopefully a chat will work next week, but take the bed with the good, I guess. See you guys next week, we're out.