Stay ConnectedKimberley Quinlan, an anxiety specialist for over 15 years, delivers Science-Based Solutions for Anxiety, Panic, Depression, OCD, Social Anxiety, Health Anxiety, & other difficult emotions.
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Common treatment of derealization and depersonalization Kimberley Quinlan SUMMARY: Derealization & depersonalization are common experiences of anxiety. In this episode, we take a look at the definition of derealization and depersonalization. We also explore the common symptoms of derealization and depersonalization and the treatment of derealization and depersonalization. I also explore mindfulness and CBT skills to help you manage your discomfort and anxiety. In This Episode: The definition of derealization The definition of depersonalization Explore the symptoms of derealization Explore the symptoms of depersonalization Comparing derealization vs depersonalization Common treatment of derealization and depersonalization Links To Things I Talk About: ERP School: https://www.cbtschool.com/erp-school-lp Episode Sponsor: This episode of Your Anxiety Toolkit is brought to you by CBTschool.com. CBTschool.com is a psychoeducation platform that provides courses and other online resources for people with anxiety, OCD, and Body-Focused Repetitive Behaviors. Go to cbtschool.com to learn more. Spread the love! Everyone needs tools for anxiety... If you like Your Anxiety Toolkit Podcast, visit YOUR ANXIETY TOOLKIT PODCAST to subscribe free and you'll never miss an episode. And if you really like Your Anxiety Toolkit, I'd appreciate you telling a friend (maybe even two). EPISODE TRANSCRIPTION This is Your Anxiety Toolkit - Episode 227. Welcome back, everybody. I am so grateful to have this time with you. As you know, I promised this year would be the year I doubled down and get really into the nitty-gritty of some of the topics that people don't talk enough about regarding anxiety. Today is so in line with that value Today, we are talking about what is derealization and depersonalization. These are two what I would consider symptoms of anxiety. I see it all the time in my practice. I see it reported and commented all the time on Instagram. If you follow me on Instagram, we put out tons of free information there as well. This is such an important topic. And for some reason, we aren't talking about these two topics enough. My goal today is actually to give you a 101 on derealization and a 101 on depersonalization. We can touch upon derealization disorder and depersonalization disorder as well, but at the end, I want to give you as many tools as I can to point you in the right direction. Before we do that, let's do the "I did a hard thing," because we love that, right? The "I did a hard thing" is a segment where people submit the hard things they're doing. The main reason I do this is because, number one, you're my family. We're all in this together. But number two, often people, many years ago when I started the podcast, people were like, when I started saying it's a beautiful day to do hard things, which I say all the time, a lot of people were saying, "But how hard does it have to be? And how do I handle the hard things? Can you give me an example?" And so, these have been just such a wonderful way to share how other people are doing hard things. This one was submitted anonymously, and they said: "I've struggled with suicidal ideation for a very long time. And after years of therapy, self-discovery, and lots of hard work, I'm finally accepting that I am better off in the world than out of it." Now I just have to take a deep breath and nearly cry because this is seriously the hard work. Sometimes when we're talking about "I did a hard thing," we're talking about facing one small thing or one large thing, but I really want to honor Anonymous here and all of you who are doing this really long-term work and deep, deep work around really acknowledging how important you are and how much the world needs you in it and on it. So anonymous, I love you. You are amazing. I have such respect for the work that you've done and are doing, and thank you. Again. I think we don't talk about suicidal ideation enough either. In fact, I should really do an episode on that as well. I respect you and I'm so grateful you submitted this week. Okay, here we go. I have some notes, which I rarely use notes for episodes, but I didn't want to miss anything. I've got so much I want to share. I will do my best to break this down into, like I said, a 101, small bite-size helpful tools. You will hear me, as I talk, taking little deep breaths and that's because I have to practice slowing down. Just a little off-topic, when I'm doing podcasts, I get so geeked out that my brain races, and I'm all over the place and I'm talking fast and I have to slow down, "Kimberley, pump the breaks, lady." Let's together take a breath... and let's just be together. First let's talk about derealization. The definition of derealization is that derealization is a mental state or a psychological experience, it could also be a physiological experience, where things feel unreal. Not like, "Oh, that's totally unreal, man. Amazing." I'm talking where they don't feel real. When you have derealization, you might feel detached from your surroundings. You don't feel connected to what's going on around you, and people and objects may also seem unreal. Often people, when they have derealization or derealization disorder, feel like they're going crazy. Actually, they feel like they're going crazy. Not just the term that people use on the street. They actually feel like they're losing touch with reality. When we talk about derealization disorder, we'll talk about that here in a little bit, but we could use them interchangeably. Lots of people have derealization without having the disorder, but to have derealization disorder, you have to experience derealization. So I'm including them both there. Now the prevalence of derealization, I wanted to just give you this information because I felt it was very validating. I myself struggle with derealization and depersonalization. It was really validating for me to hear that more than half, more than 50% of people may have this disconnection from reality at least once in their lifetime. 2% of people experience it enough for it to become some kind of disorder, just like derealization disorder or even a dissociative disorder like amnesia. If you're concerned, you can go speak with your doctor or your therapist, or a licensed therapist for an assessment if you're concerned about it. A lot of people who I have seen have already been to the doctor, gotten cleared. Schizophrenic is often a very big concern. People often feel that they've been misdiagnosed. Now derealization is similar, but distinctly different from depersonalization, which we would talk about here soon. Some symptoms of derealization include feelings of being unfamiliar with your surroundings. You feel like you've never been there before, or you may feel like you're living in a movie or a dream. You may feel emotionally disconnected from your loved ones or colleagues or friends. You just feel very numb. Like I said, you're just very out of order. Things feel very strange. Your surroundings and the environment also may appear distorted, blurry, colorless, two-dimensional, or artificial. I remember the first time I ever had derealization. I was sitting across from a client and I was an intern. I was very anxious. I've talked about this on the podcast before. I was sitting across from them and all of a sudden, their body looked like a caricature of themselves. The caricature is where their body is really small and their head is huge. I was looking at my client, trying to be a therapist, and I'm thinking what happened. All of a sudden, their neck was very, very small and short and their head looked gigantic. It looked like a drawing, not three-dimensional, but two-dimensional. And that was so concerning to me. I freaked out. I got through the session. Thankfully, again, I had tools to use. But it was really scary. It actually brought on some panic later in that evening because it didn't go away for a little bit of time. Now, depersonalization, the definition of depersonalization involves feeling a detachment, not from your environment like in derealization, but from your own body and your thoughts and your feelings. Think of it like it's like you're watching yourself from an outsider. I always say it's like you're flying on the wall, looking at yourself, or it's like looking at a movie of yourself. Now, symptoms of depersonalization include feelings that you're an outsider observer, like I just said. You're disconnected to your body again. Others report that it feels like they're a robot and that they don't have control of their movements. Again, you feel like you're watching yourself and you don't have control of what's going to happen next. Another symptom of depersonalization may include the sense that your body and legs and arm appear distorted. They may feel enlarged or shrunken. Some people report that their head is wrapped in cotton. That's a different symptom. Another example I always use with my patients is often when I have depersonalization, which isn't very often anymore, is I'd look at my hand and I couldn't tell if it was my hand or not. I didn't feel like it was my hand. Again, really scary, can feel really concerning in the moment. Now you may also experience some numbness, whether that's emotional or physical. Some people say all of these symptoms are similar for derealization as well. You may feel like your memories lack emotion. Again, you're disconnected from your own experience. So, that can be an additional symptom of depersonalization. Now for both, I'm going to talk about them together now. For both, the duration of these symptoms may last just a few minutes, they can last a few hours. Some people, particularly if you have derealization disorder or depersonalization disorder, it can be days, weeks, and months. In that severity, I would encourage you to go and speak with a mental health provider who is trained and can assess you properly. Now, to be diagnosed with derealization or to be diagnosed with depersonalization, there is no lab test. There's no scan you can have. It requires a trained professional to review your symptoms and give you the diagnosis. You could probably, by listening to this, define for yourself whether you have the criteria to meet this classification. But if you're wanting to be sure, I strongly encourage you to seek professional help to get that diagnosis. Now, the prevalence of the struggles almost always start in late childhood or early adulthood. The statistics, this is why I have my notes today, the average age starts around 16. 95% of cases are diagnosed before the age of 25. Not always, but that has been the common statistics that they're showing. I think that's really helpful to know. Now, that being said, what do you do from here? The treatment of depersonalization and derealization is often CBT (Cognitive Behavioral Therapy). Basically, what we do, and this is a lot of the work that you probably already have skills if you've listened to a lot of the podcast episodes – a lot of it is around practicing your mindfulness tool. The first thing I want to let you know is it doesn't mean you're going crazy. I totally get that. It feels like you are, but it doesn't. The good news is, when you can't stop appraising it as "I am going crazy," you'll actually start to notice it's just a really strange feeling, but it doesn't mean anything is wrong. I once had a teen client who told me, he said he was laughing and we were giggling together. He said, "The crazy thing is some of my friends pay a lot of money to feel this way by using drugs," and he says, "I have it for free. I have this strange feeling, this out-of-body experience. And I don't even have to be under the control of a drug or a substance." He said, "When I looked at it from that perspective, I stopped appraising it as if it's dangerous." And that was a game-changer for him to stop appraising it as if it is a dangerous problem. For me now, when I have derealization, it usually occurs when I'm driving. I used to panic that that meant I was going to crash. But then when I just said, "Okay, I'm just having a feeling and I'm going to let it be there." I'm not going to do anything about it. I'm not going to judge it negatively. I'm going to allow it to rise and fall on its own. And I'm going to put all of my attention on just staying present. Now your brain is going to say, "Yeah, but present is bad. Present is terrible. Bad things are going to happen. What if you're going crazy?" And your job is actually to practice just letting those be thoughts, because that's what they are. They're thoughts. Just because you have them doesn't mean they're facts. Lots of people have derealization. The clients I've had who've had severe derealization and derealization and depersonalization disorder, they now say, "Yeah, it happens. No big deal. They just go about my day." Now in the early stages of treatment, you're going to hate this idea, but it works, is we actually used to purposely induce this sensation so that they could practice tolerating the discomfort without responding in unhealthy ways or in compulsive ways. We would sit them down and spin them around in a chair. We would have them stare at the wall. We would have them look at really psychedelic YouTube videos where the colors and the patterns are all wavy like seventies, like psychedelic. And we would practice inducing the feeling. From there, they would practice willingly allowing the discomfort and going about their day, being gentle with themselves, engaging in the things they value. Of course, they might feel great, and that's okay. You can slow down a little and do what you need to do. But ultimately, when you have depersonalization and derealization, the goal is simply to do nothing at all. Crazy. When I tell my patients that, they're like, "Oh my goodness, you're either crazy or you're brilliant." By the end, usually, they say that this treatment, not me, but the treatment is brilliant, because it teaches them not to be afraid of it and not to try and live their life avoiding it. I've had patients report that they've avoided things at great length just to avoid the experience of depersonalization and derealization. And when they avoid it, it just keeps them stuck and keeps them scared and keeps it happening more. The other thing I will add is, do not check to see if you're derealized or depersonalized, because just the act of checking for it, like a mental check, can actually bring on the symptoms. Now, that's easier said than done. Am I right? Yes, it's very hard. I know it's easy to say, "Just stop doing that." But if you're engaging in a lot of checking behavior, sometimes it's helpful to catch when you are and bring yourself back to the present, do whatever disengagement skills you can use to get you back into the present moment. Again, we don't want to push the discomfort away, but we also don't want to give too much hyper attention to these sensations and symptoms. If you're struggling with these symptoms, go and see a mental health professional. You can quiz them, ask them if they have skills in this. Look on their website, see if they've got any information about it that will help you to get the help that you need. Thi…
Full show notes at the publisherSUMMARY: Overcoming Health Anxiety is possible! Today, we interview Ken Goodman and his client Maria on overcoming hpyochondria using Cognitive Behavioral Therapy. In this episode of Your Anxiety Toolkit Podcast, you will learn key concepts of health anxiety and how to overcome their health anxiety. In This Episode: What it is like to have health anxiety The key concepts of treating Hypochondria Tips for managing fears of death and cancer. A step-by-step approach to overcoming health anxiety. Links To Things I Talk About: https://www.kengoodmantherapy.com/ Quiet Mind Solutions ERP School: https://www.cbtschool.com/erp-school-lp Episode Sponsor: This episode of Your Anxiety Toolkit is brought to you by CBTschool.com. CBTschool.com is a psychoeducation platform that provides courses and other online resources for people with anxiety, OCD, and Body-Focused Repetitive Behaviors. Go to cbtschool.com to learn more. Spread the love! Everyone needs tools for anxiety... If you like Your Anxiety Toolkit Podcast, visit YOUR ANXIETY TOOLKIT PODCAST to subscribe free and you'll never miss an episode. And if you really like Your Anxiety Toolkit, I'd appreciate you telling a friend (maybe even two). EPISODE TRANSCRIPTION This is Your Anxiety Toolkit - Episode 226. Welcome back, everybody. If you have health anxiety, hypochondria, health anxiety disorder, or you know of somebody who has health anxiety, you are going to love this episode. I mean, love, love, love this episode. Today, we have Ken Goodman, who's on the show. He's a clinician who's here with his patient and they're sharing a success story, a recovery story of health anxiety, and it is so good. I am so honored to have both of them on. It was so fun to actually interview other people and the way they're doing it, and look at the steps that were taken in order to overcome health anxiety. And this is the overcoming health anxiety story of all stories. It is so, so good. I'm not going to waste your time going and telling you how good it is. I'm just going to let you listen to it because I know you're here to get the good stuff. Before we do that, I wanted to do the "I did a hard thing" and this one is from Dave. It says: "I've been trying to get back into meditating regularly. I was sitting at a desk this morning, reviewing my work emails. And I told myself, before I get even further in my day, I need to meditate. I did a guided meditation, even though I felt a strong pull inside to go back to work. I kept getting caught up in my thoughts, but I just kept telling myself it doesn't need to be a perfect meditation. I said the goal today is just to be able to sit without being busy for three minutes. Nothing more. It was hard, but I did it." Dave, thank you so much for the submission of the "I did a hard thing" segment, because I think that meditation is so important. In fact, I keep promising myself I'm going to implement it more into this podcast. And Dave has really looked at some of the struggles people have with meditation. And look at him, go, it's so amazing. Totally did it. So amazing. Dave, thank you so, so, so much. I love it. If you want to submit, you may submit your "I did a hard thing" by going to KimberleyQuinlan-lmft.com. If you go to the podcast page, there is a submission page right on the website. And from there, let's just go straight to the show. I hope you enjoy it. Kimberley: Welcome. I am so excited for this episode. Welcome, Ken and welcome, Maria. Ken: Thank you for having me. Maria: Hi, Kimberley. Kimberley: So, as you guys, we've already chatted, but I really want to hear. This is really quite unique and we get to see the perspective of a client and the therapist. If I could do one of these every single week, I would. I think it's so cool. So, thank you so much for coming on and sharing. We're going to talk about health anxiety. And so, Maria, we're going to go back and forth here, but do you want to share a little bit about your experience with health anxiety? Maria: Yes. I think I've had health anxiety probably for like 15, 20 years and not known about it. Looking back now, everything comes clear when you see the multiple pictures that you've taken of certain lumps and whatever five years ago. I'm like, "Oh my gosh, I have so many pictures that I've taken and so many different things." But yeah, I've been struggling for a while I think, and had multiple doctor's appointments. Until I realized that I had health anxiety, it was an everyday struggle, I think. Ken: Well, you came to me and you were mostly worried at the time about ticks and Lyme disease and skin cancer, but you told me that for the previous 15 years or so, you were worried about other things. What are those things? Maria: Well, I was mostly completely obsessed with moles on my skin and them being cancerous. And I was scared of ticks. I would not be able to walk through any grass or go hiking. I was scared that I would have to check my whole body to make sure that there were no ticks on me. I was completely scared of Lyme disease, and it just completely consumed my life really. And they were the main things. But looking back before that, I think that I always had a doctor's appointment on the go. I would book one, and as soon as they said, "You can book online," That was it for me. I would have one booked, and then I'd go, "Oh, what if there's something else next week? You know what, I'm just going to book one for next week, just in case something comes up." I am a terrible person when it comes to that because I'm taking up multiple doctor's appointments. And I knew that. But it was trying to reassure myself, trying to control the situation, trying to control next week already before it even happened. So, yeah. MARIA'S SYMPTOMS OF HEALTH ANXIETY Kimberley: Right. What did it look like for you? What did a day look like for you pre-treatment and pre-recovery? Maria: Some days it could be fine. I remember days where nothing was bothering me. It was such a nice feeling. And then I was scared because I never knew what was going to trigger me and it could be anything at any time. And I think that was the not knowing. And then as soon as I would latch onto something, I would come to the phone, I'd start Googling over and over again, hours of Googling and then checking. And then it was just ongoing. And then my whole day, I was in my head my whole day, just what if, what if, asking questions, going back to Google, trying to find that reassurance that of course never happened. Ken: Yeah. You tell me that you would take pictures of your moles and then compare them with the cancerous moles online and do those things. Maria: Yeah. And I would book-- and interestingly enough, looking back now, I went through a phase of always having a doctor's appointment. And then I also went through a phase of completely avoiding the doctor as well, not wanting to go because I didn't want them to say something that I knew was going to trigger a whole host of anxiety. So, I've gone through multiple doctors. And then once you start the doctor's appointments, then you're on a roller coaster. Because you walk away from that appointment, never feeling, or for me, never feeling reassured. Or feeling reassured for maybe a few minutes, and then you leave, and then the anxiety kicks in. "Oh, I never asked them this," or "Oh my gosh, well, what did that mean?" And then the what-ifs start again and you're back to square one. So then, you go, "Oh, no, I didn't try just what they said. I'm going to book another appointment and this doctor is going to be the doctor that reassures me." MANAGING DOCTOR VISITS WITH HYPOCHONDRIA Kimberley: Right. Or sometimes a lot of clients will say to me like, "The doctor made a face. What did that face mean? They made a look and it was just for a second, but were they questioning their own diagnosis and so forth?" And I think that is really common as well. Ken: Well, the doctor will say anything and it could be something very simple like, "Okay, you're all good. I'll see you in six months." And the person will leave thinking, "Why would he want me to come back in six months if nothing was wrong?" Maria: Well, that's interesting that you would say that because I think probably at my lowest point, I was keeping notes about my thought process and what I was feeling when I was actually going to the doctors or waiting for the results. And actually, I thought it might-- if I have a few minutes to read what I actually was going through in real-time, I know it's probably very relatable. Kimberley: I would love that. Maria: I had gone to basically a doctor's appointment, an annual one where I knew I was going to have to have blood tests. And they're the worst for me because the anticipation of getting the results is just almost worse than getting the results, even though-- Ken: Did you write this before we met? Maria: No. While I was seeing you, Ken. Ken: In the beginning? Maria: Yeah. When you'd asked me to write down everything and write down what I was feeling, what I was thinking, and then read it back to myself. And this is what I had written down, actually, when I was going through the doctor's appointment and waiting or had just gotten the results. Kimberley: If you would share, that'd be so grateful. Maria: So, my blood results came back today. I felt very nervous about opening them. The doctor wrote a note at the top. "Your blood results are mostly normal. Your cholesterol is slightly high, but no need for medication. Carry on with exercise and healthy eating." "Mostly," what does that mean? "Mostly"? I need to look at all the numbers and make sure that everything is in the normal range. "Okay, they're all in the normal range except for my cholesterol. But why does she write mostly? Is there something else that she's not telling me? I need reassurance. I'm driving down to the doctor's right now. I can't wait the whole weekend." I go into the doctor's office and ask them, "Is there a doctor who's able to explain to me my results?" The receptionist said, "No, you have to make another appointment." I explained to her, "You don't understand. I just need somebody to tell me that everything is normal." Finally, this nice lady saw the anxiety on my face. She calls the doctor over to look at the labs. The receptionist shows the doctor the one lab panel, and he says, "Everything is completely normal. Nothing was flagged. Everything is completely fine." I thank him so much for looking and walk away. As soon as I get outside, I realize I didn't ask him to look at all the lab panels. What if she meant mostly normal on the other lab panels that I didn't show him? When I get home, I look over each one multiple times and make sure that each one is in the exact number range. After looking over them four or five times and seeing that each one is in the number range except for my cholesterol, I still feel like I need to have her explain to me why she wrote the word "mostly." The crazy thing is I'm not concerned about the high cholesterol. I can control that. I don't know what she meant by the word "mostly." I'm going to send her a message. And I'm going to ask her to clarify. I have to believe that she would tell me if something was wrong. I wish there was an off button in my head to stop me worrying about this. Ken: I remember this now. I remember. And this was in the middle. Maria was really avoiding going to the doctor and she had overdue with some physical exams. And so, we really worked hard for her to stop avoiding that. She got to the point where she felt good enough about going to the doctor. And she really, I think I remember her not having any anticipatory anxiety, handling the doctor very well, host the doctor very well, until she got the email and focused on the word "mostly." And that sent her spiraling out of control. But the interesting thing about that whole experience was that we processed it afterwards, and that whole experience motivated her to try even harder. And then she took even bigger strides forward. And within a couple of months, she was really doing so much better. And I think it's been over a year now since that and continues to do really well. Kimberley: Yeah. Thank you so much for sharing that. I actually was tearing up. Tears were starting to come because I was thinking, I totally get that experience. I'm so grateful you shared it because I think so many people do, right? Maria: Yeah. And there's always and/or. You go into the doctor's appointment, they tell you everything. And because your adrenaline is absolutely pumping, you forget everything. And then you come out and you go, "Oh my gosh, I can't remember anything." Then the anxiety kicks in and tells you what the anxiety is like, "Oh no, that must have been bad. That must have been--" yeah. Ken: And that boost in adrenaline that just takes over is so powerful. You can forget any common sense or any therapeutic strategies or tools that you might have learned because now you just get preoccupied with one word, the uncertainty of that word. Maria: Yeah. I would have to have a family member come in, my husband to come in and sit in the-- it got to that point where he would have to come in and sit in the appointment, so then after the appointment, I could have him retell me what was said, because I knew as soon as the adrenaline kicked in, I would not be able to remember anything. ROADBLOCKS TO HEALTH ANXIETY TREATMENT Kimberley: Right. Ken, this brings me straight to the next question, which would be like, what roadblocks do you commonly see patients hit specifically if they have health anxiety during recovery or treatment? Ken: Well, unlike other fears and phobias, the triggers for health anxiety are very unpredictable. So, if you have a fear of elevators, flying or public speaking, you know when your flight is going to be, you know when you have to speak or you know when you have to drive if you have a fear of driving. For health anxiety, you never know when you're going to be triggered. And those triggers can be internal, like a physical sensation, because the body is very noisy. And everyone experiences physical sensations periodically and you never know when that's going to happen. And then you never know external triggers. You never know when the doctor is going to say something that might trigger you, or you see a social media post about a GoFundMe account about someone that you know who knows someone who's been diagnosed with ALS. So, you never know when these things are going to happen. And so, you might be doing well for a couple of weeks or even a month, and suddenly there's a trigger and you're right back to where you started from. And so, in that way, it feels very frustrating because you can do well and then you can start becoming extremely anxious again. Another roadblock I think might be if you need medicine, there's a fear of trying medicine because of potential for side effects and becomes overblown and what are the long-term side effects, and even if I take it, I'm going to become very anxious. And so, people then are not taking the very thing, the medicine that could actually help them reduce their anxiety. So, that's another roadblock. Kimberley: Yeah. I love those. And I think that they're by far the most hurdles. And Maria, you could maybe even…
Full show notes at the publisherSUMMARY: Many people ask me, "Why do I have anxiety?" and the truth is, there is no clear-cut answer. However, in this week's episode, I give you nine possible causes of anxiety and what you can do to manage anxiety in your daily life. Some causes are in your control, and some are not. Either way, it is important that you are super gentle with yourself as you explore some of the reasons for anxiety in your life. In This Episode: NINE possible causes of anxiety for you in your life What you can do to manage your anxiety How to overcome anxiety by changing small behaviors Reasons you experience anxiety may include Genetics Caffeine Distorted Thoughts Behaviors Trauma Environment Stress Management Lack of Tools Isolation (lack of community) Links To Things I Talk About: Time Management for Optimum Mental Health https://www.cbtschool.com/timemanagement ERP School: https://www.cbtschool.com/erp-school-lp Episode Sponsor: This episode of Your Anxiety Toolkit is brought to you by CBTschool.com. CBTschool.com is a psychoeducation platform that provides courses and other online resources for people with anxiety, OCD, and Body-Focused Repetitive Behaviors. Go to cbtschool.com to learn more. Spread the love! Everyone needs tools for anxiety... If you like Your Anxiety Toolkit Podcast, visit YOUR ANXIETY TOOLKIT PODCAST to subscribe free and you'll never miss an episode. And if you really like Your Anxiety Toolkit, I'd appreciate you telling a friend (maybe even two). EPISODE TRANSCRIPTION This is Your Anxiety Toolkit - Episode 225. Welcome back, everybody. Today, we are talking about the causes of anxiety, why you are anxious and what you can do about it. This is a topic I feel like keeps coming up with my clients like, "But why? Why is this happening?" And I totally get it. Now, a lot of the times, I encourage my patients the end goal, jump straight to the end goal is we don't want to spend too much time trying to solve why we're anxious. That in and of itself can become a compulsive problematic behavior. But I wanted to just address it because I don't think I have addressed it yet in the podcast. I thought now is a good time to really just look at some of the reasons we humans are anxious. I'm an anxious person, my guess that the fact that you're listening to Your Anxiety Toolkit means you or someone you love is an anxious person. So, let's talk about why we're anxious. What are the causes of anxiety and what are some of the reasons we are anxious. Now before we do that, we want to, of course, do our "I did our hard thing" segment, and this one is for Bradley. Bradley wrote: "I was at a family event and had to see a family member I haven't seen in four years. I said a firm, no contact boundary with her since she was so toxic. And as much as I tried, I knew I could not control whether she came or not. Seeing her was very hard, but I gave myself loads of self-compassion and allowed that moment to be very difficult." Oh, Bradley, this is so good. "I was pleasant to her, but I did not engage beyond what was necessary. I took multiple moments throughout the event to check in with myself and see what my body needed." This is so good and this is such great modeling of how we can regulate and monitor ourselves, giving ourselves kindness as we do hard things. I love this. Thank you so much for sharing it. This is really super inspiring. I think we all need to practice this one a little better, myself included. I hope that that brings you some inspiration before we move on into the episode. Thank you again, Bradley, for submitting that. I love hearing the "I did a hard thing." Let's talk about why you and I, and we might be anxious. 1. Genetics Reason number one is genetics. I think that if I'm with a client and they ask me, this is usually the spiel I would give them, which is, genetically, a lot of us are set up to have anxiety. What that means is somewhere in our lineage, our parent, our grandparent, someone had anxiety and it is quite a genetic trait to have. As we go through these, I'm really wanting you, just as a side note, to think about these things, but we don't want to use these as an opportunity to blame other people. We don't want to blame, of course, our parents or our grandparents. It wasn't their fault. Obviously, they probably had it passed down from somebody else as well. But as we move through some of these, I also don't want you to displace blame onto yourself, and we can talk about that as we go. But genetics is a reason that some of us are anxious. I'll give you a little bit of a piece of my personal experience here, is I often-- I mean, I know every anxiety tool in the book and there's been many times where I've visited doctors or psychiatrists and they ask me about anxiety and I'll say, "Yes, I have anxiety." They'll say, "Well have you had therapy? Have you tried medicine?" "Yeah, I've tried all of those things and I'm highly functioning and I have a wonderful life." But I also have to accept that some degrees of anxiety are just genetic. I'm not going to get rid of them all. In fact, I don't want to get rid of all anxiety. I want to use this as an opportunity to remind you that this is not meaning that it's a list of things you now have to go and fix. Not at all. This is about just being aware of what's going on. Hopefully, at the end, we'll talk more about this, is you can then acknowledge what might be bringing the anxiety on, but then go straight to your toolkit. The tools are the most important part here –acceptance, not judgment, willingness, compassion, being mindful. Go straight back to your tools once you've listened to this podcast because that's going to be the most important piece. 2. Caffeine The second reason you might have anxiety is because of caffeine. A lot of people report that if they have too much caffeine, they get jittery and it sets off a nervous response in the body where the brain then sends out a whole bunch of anxiety hormones and chemicals in the body. Caffeine mimics anxiety, which then means that now you have more anxiety, because when you have anxiety and you experience something like it, usually, if you go, "Oh my gosh, yeah, something must be wrong," your body proceeds to send out more and more and more and more anxiety. Caffeine can be one, but I will also tag on additional one here, which is alcohol. A lot of my patients have reported that if they're drinking too much alcohol, they do feel that same jitteriness the next day, which then causes their brain to think something is wrong. Therefore, again, send out more anxiety, chemicals and hormones, something to think about. 3. Distorted Thoughts Now, the third is really important. I've done podcast episodes on this before, and it's distorted thoughts, catching your distorted thoughts. If you are at the supermarket and the man or woman next to you drops the cereal box all over the floor or they drop a can or a glass bottle, and it shatters everywhere, you are naturally going to have anxiety. Normal. Anyone would have anxiety. It's a big shock to the system. But if you then have distorted thoughts about that, like that means it's bad luck, I did something wrong, I've humiliated myself, they're going to be judging me – there are so many different distorted thoughts. I'm just using this as an example. Or another example would be you are interacting with someone at the bank and you have then following the distorted thought of like, "They are judging me. They think I'm stupid. I I didn't handle that well." Maybe you have the thought bad things are going to happen and you're catastrophizing. Those thoughts will create anxiety. Now again, if you go back and listen to those episodes back a few weeks ago, you will remember me saying, we cannot control our intrusive thoughts. I want to make that really clear. There are a lot of thoughts you are having right now that you have no control over. What I'm talking about at distorted thoughts are the thoughts on how you appraise a situation. Let's say you have a thought, let's say you have harm obsessions, and you have a thought like, "What if I wanted to hurt somebody or so forth?" That you can't control. But if then you appraise it going, "I'm a terrible person for having that thought," that's the distorted thought that you can actually work on. Those distorted thoughts can cause anxiety as well. 4. Behaviors Sometimes our behaviors can create anxiety. Avoidance is one of them. You would think that avoiding your fear makes anxiety go away. Makes sense, right? But actually, it's not true. The more you avoid things, the more you actually increase your anxiety about that thing. If you've avoided something for a very long time, let's say you avoided flying. Now, even the thought of flying is going to give you anxiety. So, behaviors can cause anxiety as well. Now, this also includes compulsive behaviors. It includes reassurance-seeking behaviors. It includes rumination in your mind, mental compulsions. Behaviors can increase the degree in how your brain responds. People pleasing, this is a big one for me. If I'm people pleasing, trying to make everybody happy, no one upset, you would think, oh, that's a good thing. You're being a kind human being. Well, yeah, except it then creates a lot of anxiety at the idea that someone doesn't like something you did or that they're upset with you about something that you did. Now, you haven't built up a tolerance to just the fact that we can't please everybody. These are ideas on how behaviors can actually cause anxiety. 5. Trauma In the mental health field today, everybody is saying everything is trauma. It's like, "You've traumatized me. I was traumatized by this." It's important that we-- and this is for another conversation, but I'm going to slide it in here. When we talk about trauma, where I'm actually talking about life-threatening trauma. Not to say that we call it little "t" trauma. There's big "T" trauma, which are life-threatening events, war, assault, witnessing a death, and so forth. There's some examples. It doesn't include all of them, but that's what we call capital "T" trauma. There are little "t" traumas. We all have little "T" traumas and they can cause anxiety. I'll give you an example. When I was a kid, we went through, in 1992 I think it was, this devastating drought. I grew up on a farm. We really needed water and the whole environment was just desperate for water and we didn't have enough water. We had to pay to have a truck bring water just so that we could have baths. It was really scary as a very young child to be afraid of not having enough water to drink. It was scary. We could call that a little "t" trauma. Still to this day, when my kids, my son just spends forever in the shower, I start to notice I get anxious when he's in there for a long time because my brain is telling me we're going to run out of water. That's an example of why you may notice some anxiety show up. Now I can correct that and remind myself that I live in times where there's no drought or that we have excess water and so forth. And that's where I check those cognitive thoughts and errors of my thinking. But the trauma itself can cause the anxiety. Again, I want us to be really careful around the word "trauma" because I don't want us to be using "trauma" about all the things, because that actually isn't good for our brains either to keep telling ourselves we were traumatized. That actually can create anxiety in and of itself. 6. Environment You all have experienced this. Even though I don't know you and your beautiful face, this you would have experienced in the last few years – the environment of COVID creates anxiety. Seeing people with the mask at the beginning of COVID, I'm guessing you would've had a bout of anxiety. Being around loud noises can create anxiety. Being in countries or regions where there are discord, conflict, war, they can create anxiety. Being in an abusive household, the environment of abusive household can create, of course, anxiety. Having someone around you who yells a lot and screams and throws things can create anxiety. There we're going into the line again of trauma, but we want to consider environment. 7. Stress Management A big one for right now as well. If you have an incredible amount of stress on your plate, you will naturally have anxiety. If this is you, I'm going to encourage you to consider taking some of the stress off your plate, if possible. I know it's hard. Some of you have double jobs and family and chronic illnesses and medical, mental illnesses. It's hard. But anywhere you can, ask yourself, is there a way I can make this easier or simpler so that I can reduce my stress? 8. Lack of Tools Now this is a big one for me because I get really grumpy and cross. That's an Australian term for everyone who is an Australian. When you say you're cross, it means you're angry or very grumpy about something. I get really cross when people who claim to be anxiety specialists give these strategies that actually make anxiety worse. Sometimes people do have generalized anxiety, but the tools they've been given can actually make it worse. Telling people just to use oils – oils are fine. I have nothing wrong with oils. I actually, PS, love oil. But if that's your only skill and only tool that you have and your only agenda for recovery, that's not going to help. It's actually going to create more anxiety because you're going to keep getting frustrated on why it's not working. If your only tool is to, again, another gripe I have that makes me very cross – ah, so funny that I get so upset about it – is people who talk about thought-stopping, like just think about a big red stop sign. That is not a helpful tool. Sometimes it works for some people. But if you have a repetitive intrusive thought, that is not going to work. It's actually going to make your anxiety worse. Lack of tools is an important one. I'm even going to say be critical, even of me when I'm giving tools. Really stop and ask yourself, does this work for me? Because I don't know each and every one of you and all the intricacies of what's going on for you psychologically. Always stop and ask yourself, is this helpful? I like to give you as many science-based tools as I can. I try not to just decide of a strategy that I use and just use it. But I want you to be really critical of everybody. Be very wise in your selection of who you choose to get advice from. That's just a little piece to think about. Like I said, I always say this, take what you need and leave the rest if it's not helpful. 9. Isolation The last one is important. It's not last for any specific reason, but it's isolation. If you are in isolation for too long, meaning that you're alone, you don't have community, you don't have connection, your brain will naturally get anxious. Sometimes people love isolation. I myself love isolation and quiet and to be by myself. Oh, it's so good. I just love it. I just can sit and be still. It's good for some people, but too much isolation, prolonged periods of isolation often can cause anxiety, because we are community humans. Humans are built on community and tribe and needing each other. That goes back thousands,…
Full show notes at the publisherSUMMARY: In today's podcast episode, we have Dean Stott from DLC Anxiety talking about his experience with Panic Disorder and Overcoming Panic Disorder. In his upcoming book, Greater Than Panic, Dean talks about what it was like for him to experience agoraphobia, panic disorder, and other struggles after the death of his father. Dean spread an inspiring story about overcoming panic and how he is Greater than Panic. In This Episode: What it was like for Dean Stott to have Panic Disorder How he overcame panic disorder using CBT and Mindfulness How Dean created DLC Anxiety, an online platform that helps millions with panic, anxiety and other mental illnesses. Tools that he found helpful to manage his Panic Disorder while also grieving the loss of his father. Links To Things I Talk About: DEANS BOOK GREATER THAN PANIC Amazon link Episode Sponsor: This episode of Your Anxiety Toolkit is brought to you by CBTschool.com. CBTschool.com is a psychoeducation platform that provides courses and other online resources for people with anxiety, OCD, and Body-Focused Repetitive Behaviors. Go to cbtschool.com to learn more. Spread the love! Everyone needs tools for anxiety... If you like Your Anxiety Toolkit Podcast, visit YOUR ANXIETY TOOLKIT PODCAST to subscribe free and you'll never miss an episode. And if you really like Your Anxiety Toolkit, I'd appreciate you telling a friend (maybe even two). EPISODE TRANSCRIPTION This is Your Anxiety Toolkit - Episode 224. Welcome back, everybody. We have an amazing guest, a very, very sweet friend of mine. I am so excited to have on with us Dean Stott from DLC Anxiety. He is a true legend. Dean is on the episode today to tell his story about going from having a fairly severe panic disorder to then creating a mental health platform with over 1 million followers. He's now all about creating mental health awareness sharing with people. He's such a cool human being. And I'm so honored to have him on today. We talk about his recovery, which you will get a lot of hope from because, like everyone who comes on the podcast, he really did the work, which is so cool. But then we also talk about the role that social media can play in mental health recovery, things to look out for, how to handle trolls, the benefits of being online, especially social media. If you have a mental illness, we go through it all. And it's such a great episode. So, I'm so excited to have Dean on today. Before we get into the episode, I want to give you the "I did a hard thing" for the week. This is from Nicole, from the Netherlands, and she said: "I did a hard thing and I get very anxious when I have to call my doctor. My heart rate goes up and I get all trembly. So, I tend to avoid calling the doctor. But because I had been feeling dizzy, I had to get my blood checked. Afterwards I would have to call the doctors for the results, except I didn't. I told myself if there was anything serious, surely they would call me. I kept this up for almost two weeks and then I suddenly thought I really should call for the result. So I pushed in the numbers to the doctor's office, feeling all kinds of nervous. I was very tempted to just hang up. While I was waiting, I thought, why did I do this? What if I get bad news? But then I had another thought, if it's bad news, all the more reason to hear it. So I hung on and I faced my fears. Turns out I have a vitamin D deficiency. It's not very worrisome, but important to fix. I'm so glad I phoned the doctor, even though I REALLY DIDN'T WANT TO. Nicole from the Netherlands." Nichole, I love this story. And the thing I love the most, and for those of you who want to submit for this, please do go. I'll leave a link in the show notes. But Nicole, I love that you detailed what got you to do it, how you did it, what thoughts you had to shift up to get yourself to do the hard thing. You walked us through step by step and it makes my heart want to explode with joy. Thank you so much for sharing it. Amazing, amazing, amazing, amazing, amazing work. I am so, so impressed. So, thank you, Nicole. I love it. Let's get over to the show where we can hear all about Dean's recovery. ----- Kimberley: Welcome, Dean. I am so happy to have more-- actually, as much as I'm happy to have you on the podcast, I'm just happy to have chats with you. Welcome. Dean: Thank you so much. Thank you for inviting me, Kim. Kimberley: Yeah. So, I feel like I know you and your story pretty well. But I would love for you to share your story with my listeners because I think you have some really great stuff to share. So, can you share whatever you're comfortable about your recovery? Dean: Yeah, sure. So, basically, once upon a time, I was going through a panic disorder. So, dealing with four panic attacks, maybe four or five panic attacks every single day, where I get the worst period. And yeah, I went through a panic disorder, did my own research, a lot of science research, CBT research, mindfulness meditation, and curated my own plan out of recovery with the guidance of a really good support network, friends, and mentors, who'd been through an anxiety disorder and come out the other side and fully recovered from the panic disorder. I then wanted to take that feeling of the support that I was given from my older mentor, the friend that had been through it. I wanted to share that with as many people as I possibly could. So, I came up with DLC Anxiety. So, at first, I remember sitting down and I was like, "How can I get this message out to as many people as possible?" And I was thinking of local support community groups, like the Alcoholic Anonymous groups where people go and it's a supportive network between each other. But then I was just so eager to try and get it even more on a global stage. And I saw what Instagram does and I just thought it would fit nicely in there, because I did see that there wasn't many mental health communities when I first started. So, I thought there was definitely a nice place for it to fit there. So, yeah, I started to tell my story on Instagram. People started to relate, and it was a snowball effect from there. And now we're over a million followers in the community, which is fantastic. Kimberley: So cool. So, I think that the whole concept here is really to look at what-- let me backtrack a little bit. So, in your recovery, did you do it all on your own? Did you have a therapist? What was that process like for you? Dean: Yeah. So, my father passed away. Like any people, any male in that situation, I bottled up the feelings that I was going through and tried to carry on with going to work and trying to get back into my daily routine. Almost putting it to the back of my mind because I wasn't-- well, I didn't have the techniques to cope with that and I'd never cope with loss before. So, it was from that bottling up of the grief that the panic attacks started and occurred. So, when I first started having panic attacks, the first thing I did was go to the doctors who then referred me onto a grief counselor, but just specifically to address the grief side of things and not the anxiety, not the panic attacks. Regarding the anxiety and panic attacks, that was me curating, delving into a lot of psychoeducation, which I found very useful, learning about the system and the symptoms of anxiety. Now I'd done Psychology at university and done CBT before. So, it is like not I'd never--I knew the basic concepts of anxiety, but learning more about it and learning about the scary symptoms where you think-- firstly, when you have a panic attack, you really think that you're going to die. It's a really, really scary thing to go through. And yeah, to start learning about that was super important for my recovery. Kimberley: Right. And so, let's talk about community, why do you feel the community aspect was so important for you? Tell me about the idea of creating a mental health community for someone, let's say, who's suffering with panic disorder or grief or OCD or anxiety. What's your thoughts on that? Dean: Yeah. So, when I was going through panic disorder, I felt isolated, I felt alone, and really, I didn't really want to bring it up to people around me because I just didn't think they'd be able to relate to me. I thought these symptoms was just something that I was going through and something that I'd have to stick with for the rest of my life. I thought that was me, that I was going to be Dean who has these panic attacks. And I was going to have to navigate my way through my daily routine. And I think when I opened up to my mentor, a close friend of mine, who was working with me at the time – when I opened up and he shared his experience, it was the biggest weight off my shoulders, knowing that someone else had been through not the exact same story, but it experienced all these scary symptoms that felt isolated, felt alone, but more importantly overcome an anxiety disorder. And I think it was that inspiration and motivation that really helped me in my recovery. So, yeah, having an important-- so, DLC is Dean's Like-Minded Community. So, it's a community full of like-minded people on anxiety recovery journeys. Some people are at the end, like myself, I don't deal with panic attacks anymore, but some people are at the start, some people are in the middle. And they can all relate to each other no matter where they are on that journey. And then what's beautiful about the community is where you see them sharing tips and experiences that work for them. And I know you speak about it highly as well, having an anxiety toolkit, because some tools might work for one person, but then might not work for another. But I think it's very important to get as much information out there about all the different range of tools, so then each person can individualize their own recovery. Kimberley: Yeah. So important more now than ever, I think, given that the degree of mental illness is so high given COVID and isolation and everything. Okay. So, you have this platform. I love it. Very much, I loved being a part of your community. Why do you think that that is the most important piece, the community aspect? Can you share a little bit about what you see and hear from your community and why that's so important? Dean: Yeah. So, again, so many DMs from people saying that they just feel connected. They feel hope, they feel inspiration, they feel motivation. Not only for me, who's at the head or the founder of the community, but of all these people that are going through it, jumping over a million people worldwide. We know mental health. It doesn't have a face, it doesn't have a color, doesn't have a social structure, it doesn't matter what you're working as it can affect anyone. And I think that's why it's really important and became an integral part of the community, was the interview series that I started doing with firstly mental health professionals from around the world. So, CBT professionals like yourself, Kim. Then we've had psychiatrists, psychologists, doctors. And having just as much information about anxiety and anxiety recovery, I think has been a super important part. So, again, it's not only having this community, it's having the psychoeducation and real good-- I'm in a real good place now where I can guest on who I've joined a world-renowned within the space of anxiety. And also, we've had so many celebrities, musicians, actors, actresses come on and tell their own mental health stories where they struggled or where they've been vulnerable. And that's really related to the community as well. Because obviously, people work at celebrities, people work at musicians and they might not know that just too, they're going through a mental health disorder. So, yeah, having people like that come on and tell their own stories has been super, super beneficial for everyone as well. Kimberley: Yeah. See, the cool thing is that the science, this is why I'm really fascinated in, is the science of self-compassion says that there are three components of self-compassion. One being mindfulness, the second being common humanity in that reminding yourself that you're not alone in your struggles is the second most important part of self-compassion. The third being self-kindness. Now the reason I love this is I know for myself in the areas that I struggle, if I look at an account and I can see that a million people follow a mental health account, it gives me a sense of common humanity that there are a million people struggling with something. If you see an OCD account and it's got 60,000 followers, you're like, oh my God, that's a lot of people. I must not be alone in my struggle or an eating disorder account. Or I love some of the autism accounts. I think it shows that it gives you permission to see that you're not alone. And I love that. It's such a beautiful piece of the work. Dean: Yeah. And especially where you just mentioned self-kindness as well. I think that's an important subject just to speak about, is that when you're going through an anxiety disorder, you have this inner critic that's telling you that you're never going to come out of it, that you're not good enough, that maybe this is happening to you for a reason. When you come across these communities of people who are on their own journey of recovery might be a little a few more steps ahead than you, and you see that they have a positive outlook, some of them, on recovery and they are making steps. I think knowing to change that in a narrative and have that self-love and compassion is super important when it comes to anxiety disorders. Kimberley: Yeah. And that's the benefit of social media right there. I think social media gets a really bad rep, but we have to weigh the pros and cons because there are lots of pros, right? Dean: Yeah, no, 100%. What I'd say is this is how I define it, is that if we just take Instagram and our mental health community so all the mental health accounts that are doing great, I see just like a safe haven corner of Instagram where people can go to and feel supported and connected and learn more about mental health in general. An app, like you say, can have a negative effect on people. And I think people speak about the algorithm and obviously, it's all guessing what the algorithm's going to do next, but I think we can actually use the algorithm in our favor. And if you just bear with me on this, if you think about all the accounts that you're following, so if you're following all positive mental health accounts or self-compassion or self-care, self-love, then the algorithms are going to spew that out to you in your own feed. So, what are you doing? You're starting to change that in a narrative like in your digital world, because you open up your app and you start to see all this self-love and positivity. So, you can definitely use the algorithm. So, I think it's super important in taking a look at who you're following and seeing, does that benefit your mental health? And if it doesn't, then I don't think you should be following them. Kimberley: Yeah, I agree. Actually, I just was saying yesterday that I was just scrolling my-- I'm rarely on social media just to scroll. I'm usually there to do the work I do. My son was sick. I was sitting there wasting time. But the cool thing is the suggested was all cool stuff. It was really cool. I was like, "Oh, I love all these new ideas and these new looks." And I was really appreciating what was being suggested to me, even though I know…
Full show notes at the publisherSUMMARY: We all know that self-compassion is am important tool for anxiety recovery. In this weeks episode of Your Anxiety Toolkit podcast, I address a common concern; "What if I dont deserve self-compassion?" This is such a common reason people do not provide themselves with compassion. In this episode, review the reasons YOU DO DESERVE SELF-COMPASSION and some key concepts and self-compassion mediations to help you practice self-compassion. In This Episode, we cover: Self-Compassion Definition Reasons people feel they do not deserve self-compassion Ways to manage feeling unworthy of self-compassion How to practice Mindful Self-Compassion Links To Things I Talk About: Self-compassion Mediation: Here is a link to several self-compassion meditations from previous episodes. https://kimberleyquinlan-lmft.com/episode-2-lovingkindness-meditation/ https://kimberleyquinlan-lmft.com/ep-134-giving-and-receiving-meditation/ https://kimberleyquinlan-lmft.com/ep-110-this-compassion-practice-tonglen-meditation-for-anxiety-will-change-your-life/ Episode Sponsor: This episode of Your Anxiety Toolkit is brought to you by CBTschool.com. CBTschool.com is a psychoeducation platform that provides courses and other online resources for people with anxiety, OCD, and Body-Focused Repetitive Behaviors. Go to cbtschool.com to learn more. Spread the love! Everyone needs tools for anxiety... If you like Your Anxiety Toolkit Podcast, visit YOUR ANXIETY TOOLKIT PODCAST to subscribe free and you'll never miss an episode. And if you really like Your Anxiety Toolkit, I'd appreciate you telling a friend (maybe even two). EPISODE TRANSCRIPTION This is Your Anxiety Toolkit - Episode 223. Welcome back, everybody. It is a joy to be with you again. Thank you so much for being here with me. Thank you so much for putting aside your valuable time to spend it with me. I feel so honored. Today, we are talking about a question. And in effort for us to respond to this question, we're actually going to ask ourselves some questions and I'm going to have some questions for you, and you're going to think about them, hopefully, and then make some changes if you think that is what you need. The big question of the week is: What if I do not deserve self-compassion? Now, one of the most common questions I get is this question, particularly when I'm with patients and we're discussing the idea of practicing self-compassion or kindness towards themselves. Often, that is a question they ask, what if I don't deserve it, or they may even make a statement like, "I don't deserve self-compassion." Now, this is particularly true for those who are very self-critical and blame themselves for certain things that have happened either to them or that they have done. Like I'm saying, it's like things that were accidental, things that they didn't have control over, or maybe some things and mistakes that they did make. This is a really important question for us to explore. I'm going to hopefully get to explore it with you. Before we do that, I would like to do the "I did a hard thing" for the week. This one is from Sophia. Thank you, Sophia, for writing in and telling us your hard thing. Sophia said: "I suffered from OCD starting when I was 19. My hard thing I did was I reported my stepfather in for sexual abuse that occurred when I was nine when I found out I wasn't the last victim. It took me 28 years to get to this place. And let me tell you, OCD really played into my intrusive thoughts. It made the process so much harder. But I did it and I feel like I'm out of the web of manipulation from my stepdad. This podcast helps so much and the book for self-compassion and fear workbook my OCD therapist recommended to me. I saw your podcast listed in the first few pages. Thank you for being a part of my support system without even knowing." Wow, that was an amazing "I did a hard thing." Thank you so much, Sophia, for sharing that amazing hard thing. You are showing up and facing fear and pulling your shoulders back and living your life according to your values. That is impressive. I'm so honored to have you share that with us and really do wish you the best. You are doing amazing things. Okay. So, let's move into the bulk of the podcast in terms of let's talk about what if I don't deserve self-compassion. This is so important. I'm going to first pose to you the first question I have for you, which is, who actually deserves self-compassion? If someone says to me, "Well, I don't deserve it." I'll say, "Well, who does? What do you have to do to be warranted of compassion? Who does deserve it?" I really pose this question. I really hope you answer it. I would like actually you to sit down and ask yourself, "Well, then who does?" And you will begin to see very quickly, I'm guessing, the rules in which you have for yourself that keep you stuck. Oh, the people who don't have these thoughts, the people who don't make mistakes, the people who are perfect, the people who look like they're happy and are doing well. Or often people will say, "Everybody else is off the hook. It's just, I'm not off the hook. Everyone else can be imperfect, mistake makers, but not me." You'll quickly learn the rules of your life. I want to ask you, do you want to live by those rules anymore? Because this is not playing games. This is your life. Do you want to keep holding yourself to those rules that you just listed off? How does it benefit you to continue to hold yourself to that high, high standard? Often, we say, "I shouldn't have these feelings. I don't deserve it because I'm weak. I don't deserve self-compassion because I'm not valuable. I don't deserve self-compassion because of the content of my thoughts. The content of my thoughts is too heinous." Okay. So, there you might want to look at, again, what are the rules and do you want to live by those rules? Because the truth is, you can't control your thoughts and you can't control your feelings and you can't control life a lot of the time, almost all of the time. And so, again, do you want to live by those rules? Next question: Are you beating yourself up for something that's not your fault? Meaning can you control your thoughts? Because my thoughts aren't my fault. I know my feelings aren't my fault. I know how I interpret things aren't my fault. That's usually coming from years and years of being trained to think that way. I know my beliefs aren't even my fault. I actually think we're just creatures of habit and we were raised to believe certain things and we are going to make mistakes. I'm going to say this again: What would you have to do to warrant deserving self-compassion? Often when we actually explore this, I really, really hope you start and actually write your answers down to these questions because when we stop and we look at like, okay, so if you don't deserve self-compassion, we really know the benefit of you practicing self-compassion so much so that I am in the process of creating a course that will teach you. I've already written a book for people with OCD, but I'm creating a minicourse on how to practice self-compassion. It's that important. I want everybody to have access to it, not just those who have OCD. That is a big part of my mission, is to get everybody to be practicing self-compassion. Let's say we really understand the benefits of it. We know it's important. We know it can increase motivation, make you more successful, decrease procrastination, make you feel like a better sense of self. It can help you achieve your goals. So many benefits. It actually reduces inflammation. It gives you better wellness and health. It increases life satisfaction. So many benefits. Let's say we want you to do it because it's healthy, just like you would exercise because it's healthy, or you would go get it to the dentist because it's healthy. What would you have to do then to be warranted and deserving? And often then, again, you're going to be very clear in terms of this list of things. I'm going to ask you, are the list of things even realistic? Really, if you said, "Okay, I'd need to no longer have these thoughts and I would have to have changed the past and done something different. I'd have to regulate my emotions all the time. Never snap at my children and never say something silly at a party." Is that even possible for any human? Really for any human, is that realistic? Do you actually think you can actually achieve that really honestly? This is a question. This is not rhetorical. This is an actual question. The chances are, when you really answer it, the truth is, you're not giving yourself self-compassion because you don't feel like you deserve it. But the truth is, you will never be able to meet these rules that you've created for yourself. I don't want to say that as if I'm blaming you. We've all done this. But I want you to be really honest with yourself in regards to, you're never going to get to the place where you practice self-compassion if you keep those high level of rules, those perfectionistic rules. And then you miss out on this wonderful opportunity for your mental health and for your physical health, and for your wellbeing. Here is another question: What would you have to feel in order to offer yourself self-compassion? Meaning how would you need to feel about yourself? What emotion would you need to feel in order to feel like you deserve it? What would you have to experience about yourself? Not the rules, but like would you have to. Some people say, "I don't feel like I deserve it." It's a feeling. The reason I ask this question is because often people will say, "It's just a feeling I get. Sometimes I feel like I do and sometimes I feel like I don't, usually depending on whether I've checked off all of these boxes." But it's still a feeling that you're going off because it's different. It's not like you get your notepad out and you check the boxes. It's a feeling. I might pose to them, could you actually offer yourself self-compassion without the feeling and just do it anyway? It's a very, very radical thought. What a radical idea that you might offer it to yourself even though you don't feel like you deserve it. Could you offer it because of what you've been through or because of the checkboxes that you haven't checked? Meaning I believe, and I've said this on the podcast before, and I'm going to say it very, very clearly here for you, I believe the more that you suffer, the more you are deserving of self-compassion. It's not the more mistakes you've made and the more you've suffered, the less you deserve it. It's actually the more you deserve it. "Oh, I've made a lot of mistakes today." Oh, you're even more deserving of self-compassion. We want to offer more to you. Oh, you are having a really hard day with some really hard emotions and some strong emotions. Oh, even more of a reason to offer compassion. Now, usually when we talk about this, clients will say, "No, that's just letting yourself off. That's just getting out of jail free card." I'm going to offer to you, like let's trick this belief and check made it a little bit if we were talking chess, is self-compassion is not a get-out-of-jail-free card. It doesn't mean you stop holding yourself accountable. It's actually what helps you towards change. You are saying, "I don't deserve self-compassion. I need to suffer and be criticized and punished because of something that happened." Does that actually move you towards perfection? No, it doesn't. It doesn't create any change. In fact, it keeps you now doing behaviors, like I said, self-criticism, self-punishment, which keeps you stuck in a cycle of feeling bad and negative thoughts and feeling depressed and feeling hate towards yourself. Very little good comes from that. That is not getting you out of any problem. It doesn't lead you towards being the best version of yourself. In fact, it leads you towards more and more suffering. Mindful Self-Compassion Offering mindful self-compassion doesn't absolve you from what happened in the past. Ideally one day you will forgive yourself, but that's a different topic. Forgiveness is not self-compassion. You can do both. You could forgive yourself as a form of self-compassion and you could be self-compassionate, which could lead you towards forgiveness. But here, what I don't want you to think of is that people who are self-compassionate are just like, "Oh no big deal. I just totally did a terrible thing, and it's not a big deal. I don't have to beat myself up because that would be unkind." No, that's not what we're talking about. And no one does that. If that's the case, you're not practicing self-compassion at all. Self-compassion is just simply offering kindness towards suffering. That's it. It's not ranking you higher or lower and the good or bad person. It doesn't mean that you don't matter. It doesn't mean that your pain doesn't matter. It doesn't mean that you can't hold yourself accountable and take responsibility. It just means the absence of beating yourself up and meeting your pain with kindness and compassion instead of criticism and punishment. The thing you've got to run mind yourself, and this is a huge thing I'm doing this year, is really trying to identify what's working and what's not. I do a lot of therapy. I think a lot. It's one of my best skills and one of my biggest flaws, is I think a lot, I feel a lot. And it's not a bad thing, but I'm really trying to be more efficient and effective. Meaning, okay, what's the right amount of being responsible and taking responsibility? Because you could do a little bit, which is really responsible and very helpful. But then if you do too much of that, that doesn't make you a super responsible person. It means now you're moving into self-punishment. So, too much of one thing can be good and too much of one thing can also be bad. It gets you into trouble. So, how can you be effective with the behaviors that you engage in, is the amount of criticism or self-punishment or deprivation of compassion, which is what we're doing here and talking about, does that bring you benefits to your life? It's an important concept for you to think about. Whether you think you deserve it or not, or whether you feel you deserve it or not, is it effective? We'll come right back to one of the first concepts, which is, just because you think it, still doesn't make it true. So, just because you think you don't deserve it doesn't mean you don't deserve it. It just means you're having thoughts that you don't deserve it and thoughts aren't always right. We recently did a whole episode on guilt, quite a few months ago, but the whole concept was just because you feel guilty doesn't mean you've done something wrong. Our brains make mistakes all the time. So, just because you think you don't deserve it doesn't mean you don't deserve it. We think messed up, scary, wrong things all the time, and the truth is, anxiety lies. Depression lies. OCD lies. Panic lies. Chances are, a lot of these beliefs you have around self-compassion are also just lies. We want to move you towards recogniz…
Full show notes at the publisherSUMMARY: This week's episode is incredibly inspiring, with Lora Dudek talking all about getting real about OCD recovery. Lora shares her experience of having harm obsessions and harm OCD and how she managed being a mom during ERP. Lora also shared some wonderful ERP activities she did to help her keep track of her exposures. In This Episode: What OCD Recovery looks like for Lora Her experience with Harm OCD What kind of Exposure and Response Prevention (ERP) Lora used for harm OCD How she used ERP and recovery to decide what her values were (starting a career in ERP) Links To Things I Talk About: Lora Dudek OCD Contact info: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/therapists/lora-dudek-lockport-il/935049 https://www.graceandgratitudecounseling.com/ourtherapists ERP School: https://www.cbtschool.com/erp-school-lp Episode Sponsor: This episode of Your Anxiety Toolkit is brought to you by CBTschool.com. CBTschool.com is a psychoeducation platform that provides courses and other online resources for people with anxiety, OCD, and Body-Focused Repetitive Behaviors. Go to cbtschool.com to learn more. Spread the love! Everyone needs tools for anxiety... If you like Your Anxiety Toolkit Podcast, visit YOUR ANXIETY TOOLKIT PODCAST to subscribe free and you'll never miss an episode. And if you really like Your Anxiety Toolkit, I'd appreciate you telling a friend (maybe even two). EPISODE TRANSCRIPTION This is Your Anxiety Toolkit - Episode 222. Welcome back, everybody. I am so happy to be with you today. Oh my goodness, I'm going to tell you a story, totally off-topic. But today's episode is number 222, and coincidentally, it's coming out just by coincidence the week of February 22, 2022. The reason that that is special for me isn't because I have any kind of affiliation with numbers, it's that I have this amazing memory of when I was very young. It was the 9th of the 9th, 1999. My mom, who is the most amazing human being in the whole world, had a 9/9/99 party, and everyone had to bring nine of something, nine flowers, nine chocolates. You could bring whatever you wanted. Nine of... We had nine of everything – nine shrimp on the plate, nine prawns. In Australia, we call them prawns. It was such an amazing memory. I told my children that we were going to do something similar because I just feel like that was such a beautiful memory. And so, I feel like I'm beginning that whole celebration with you because coincidentally, it's episode 222 on the week of 2/22/2022. Oh my goodness. I'm sorry. I know that has nothing to do with the episode, but it is a story that is so near and dear to my heart and I just wanted to share it. It isn't actually an off-talk topic because I really do want to bring some more joy to this episode and I really do want to slow down and enjoy with you all. It is a huge part of my goal for this year. So, thank you for sitting in that joyful story with me. If you would like, I hope you do something with twos, if you can, on that day, something fun. Buy yourself 22 flowers, say 22 nice things to yourself, whatever it may be, because these are very much once in a lifetime experiences and memories. Today, we have Lora Dudek with us on the podcast. Now, to say that I am a Lora Dudek fan is an understatement. I love this human being. She is such a shining light, especially for people who have OCD and want to feel like there is hope. She has such a beautiful story, such a hard, but beautiful story, and a real authentic, genuine story to share. I am honored to have her on the show like I am to have so many people come on who have a recovery story to tell. I particularly love when I can be a part of it and I was a part of their story, or CBT School was a part of their story or ERP School was a part of their story. And so, it is just such an honor to have Lora on here. She's talking about what recovery looks like for her. The reason I love this idea is, recovery is different for everybody. I really wanted you to get an experience of what it looks like for someone who has really done the work. Like I said, so many of our podcast guests have done the work and Lora is no exception. So, I'm going to head over and let you guys listen to that. Before we do that, I first want to do the "I did a hard thing." This week's "I did a hard thing" is from Fabian, and they said: "Hi, Kimberley. First of all, thanks for creating the room to write about my anxiety. I am recovering from OCD, and today I was at the dentist for a tooth filling. I don't like it because my mouth is blocked and I'm scared of getting enough air. And moreover, I do not like to get injections." Oh my goodness, Fabian, I feel you on this one. "I was able to face both and stay very present with the body sensations like cold hands, many, many thoughts, high heartbeats. It was a hard thing to finish the week and I'm happy that I did it. I will have to face it again in February 🙂. All the best to you and your team." Amazing, Fabian. I feel you on so many levels. The dentist is so hard for me. No matter how many tools I use, it's always going to be hard, but you did the hard thing. And that is what I love. So, thank you so much for contributing your "I did a hard thing." I am honored and major props to you. Okay. Let's get over to the show. Kimberley: Welcome, everybody. I am so excited about this episode today. We have Lora Dudek. She is now a Licensed Professional Counselor, but when I first met her, she was going through her own journey, and I wanted her to share her journey with you today. Welcome, Lora. Lora: Thank you so much. I'm so excited to be here. Kimberley: Oh my gosh. Okay. So, we've already pretty much cried before we even got on today together, which is beautiful. And so, I can't wait to get into this whole conversation together. You and I met online many years ago, and now you're a therapist, which just blows my mind, helping people. Can't believe that. So, that's amazing. Do you want to share with us your full-circle story? Lora: Yeah, absolutely. So, one of the things that we were just talking about was that I started listening to Kimberley's podcast back in 2017, somewhere around then, when I had been newly diagnosed with OCD. This is a total full-circle moment for me because she was such a-- I just called her a 'lighthouse' back in the day. My own story really started when I was just a kid. I mean, I was a little girl and was having intrusive thoughts. My intrusive thoughts have always been harm-related. As a kid, I didn't obviously really didn't know what that meant. I had a big obsession with death. I was very, very scared to die and other people around me dying or me somehow hurting them. But when I was little, it always just manifested as telling someone I was scared that they were going to die, and then them reassuring me that they weren't going to die, which is such an interesting thing to look back on. No one ever knew that. But that's where the reassurance started. I was looking back. I can see these areas of my life that were impacted from the get-go really. And then when I had my daughter in 2014, the anxiety just became absolutely overwhelming. From the moment that I knew that I was pregnant, there were just basically constant thoughts about something bad happening. I felt the entire time that I was pregnant like, I don't know how to describe it really. Maybe nine months of almost getting ready to attend a funeral truly is how I felt, because it just seemed so heavy, already knowing I was going to be really responsible for this life. While I was pregnant, I even got one of those sonogram machines or the fetal heartbeat machines. I would be sitting at the office and have an intrusive thought that something had happened to her, and I would rush home and I'd make sure that her heart was still beating. My doctor knew me very well because I was basically calling every other week with something that might be wrong, that never was. And then once she was born, it really manifested as just constantly checking on her. These intrusive thoughts that something really bad was going to happen to her, that I wasn't going to be able to take care of her, and constantly asking my husband at the time that I'm an okay mom. I can do this. I'm able to do this. Those went on really. These thoughts and that heightened anxiety went on for-- she was 16 months old at her first Christmas or her second Christmas, sorry. We traveled with family to go see family, and I was putting her down for her nap and ended up laying down beside her. She fell asleep and I fell asleep next to her. It was in a bed. When I woke up, my first thought was, oh my God, is she breathing? I thought I had smothered her. And so, I put my hand on her chest and I could feel that she was breathing and I went to get up and walk away. I had the thought, what if she's not? I was like, "Okay, let me check one more time." That is where I say the walls came down, because from that moment on, it was like, there wasn't any-- the checking just got out of control and it flipped. It got into this area where I was scared that something bad was going to happen to her, but now, I was going to do something bad to her. It just changed flavors really quickly. We got home from that trip and I told my husband. He had to go on a business trip for two days. I basically didn't sleep for two days. "I thought I'm going to hurt her. Something awful is going to happen to her. I can't take care of her." Just going out of my mind. I used to get up and check on her, probably 10 times a night, to make sure she was still breathing. At this point, I became so scared of myself that I would block my bedroom door at night with my dresser to make sure that I wasn't going to get up and do something to her. I was like, "Whoa, something's really wrong here." So, I looked up an Anxiety Specialist and went and saw her. It took me about a couple of months seeing her and building rapport with her to actually let her in on some of the thoughts that I was having. I remember very vividly. It was an early morning appointment. It was a 7:00 AM appointment. The night before I barely slept, because I really did think like, this is it. I'm going to get hauled away tomorrow. I'm going to tell her these thoughts I'm having, and this is going to be the end of me. And so, that morning, I kissed my daughter, I kissed my husband. I walked out the door and got in my car and I was like, "All right, that's the last time I see him for a while." But I got into my therapist's office and I broke down. I'm like, "I have these thoughts that I'm going to hurt my daughter. It's the worst thing in the world." She was like, "Do you want to?" I was like, "Oh my God, how could you even ask me that? She's the most important thing in my life." She asked me a couple of other questions. But then she said, "Do you know anything about OCD?" Through my tears, I was like, "Yeah, I do. I know OCD. I'm not clean. In fact, I'm really messy. I don't even know why you're asking that." I was frustrated. And then she told me about intrusive thoughts and compulsions, and it was the biggest light bulb moment of my life. Everything just started making sense really from some of my earliest thoughts. I do have to say it was a bit of a relief at the beginning. So, that's the story. That's how I got diagnosed, and it started a whole new part of my journey. Kimberley: Yeah. So you had relief. Lora: Yeah. Kimberley: And then what was your emotion? Lora: Yeah, I mean, the relief was like, I'm not crazy, that it was so like something has got to be really wrong with me. And then it was just like, whoa, I checked the box for everything she just talked about with this disorder. And then the emotion, after a little bit, the emotion became like, this is going to take a lot of work. This is going to be a level of acceptance that was like, I started getting acclimated to what exposure therapy was. She didn't practice exposure therapy, but she was amazing in the sense that she was like, "I have the person for you." She knew enough, which is so important-- Kimberley: Yeah. Thanks for that. Lora: Yes. To send me to an OCD Specialist. That therapist was amazing. She laid out for me how this was going to work, what we are going to do. It was a relief at first. And then there was a lot of grief. There was a lot of heartache, realizing how much this disorder had taken from my life. Ignorance can be bliss sometimes. I think that I dismantled that notion through doing ERP and exposures, and it became a very interesting part of the journey. Kimberley: I know, I was thinking about you. You were saying you got in your car, you said goodbye. And then you had to walk back to your car and drive back to your house, right? How is that? Lora: It's like, I mean, I have some health anxiety too, so I always liken it too. I walk into a doctor's office thinking this is going to be cancer. And then I walk back like, "Okay, now I just go back to life." Kimberley: Right. I can just have this image of you, walking back to your car, going, "I guess I'm going home now." Lora: Yes. And I got back. My husband was like, "Hey, you doing okay?" I was like, "I got to tell you what just happened. This is what they said. Did you know that obsessive-compulsive disorder is like this?" And he is like, "No, but I mean, makes a lot of sense." Kimberley: Yeah. How crazy. It's so amazing that you had that opportunity. Again, we know that that's not a lot of people's stories, so I'm so happy that you had that experience. Lora: The thing, Kimberley, is that I do want to point out that I had been seeing someone for anxiety almost my entire adult, different therapists. This is the first time. Like, I said, I would have these harm thoughts, but I was just like, push them away, get rid of them. This was the first time I'd ever come head to head with being actually like, "I'm responsible for a little life. This is all on me." It felt like I wasn't going to be able to live the life I truly wanted to live. Other times, it was just like, okay, I can walk away from it. I can find some way to not be around it. Now I'm talking about my daughter who means more to me than anything in the world. Something has got to give. Kimberley: Yeah. That's really helpful to know that you have been in therapy. Lora: Yeah. Kimberley: When I had previously done a presentation with you through the International OCD Foundation, and you shared about your exposure board, this whole idea blew my mind. The reason I really want the listeners to understand, when I teach ERP, I'm literally just teaching my way of doing it and I love hearing other people's way of doing it. It's the same, but it's different. And so, I'd love for you to share about that as an idea for people. Lora: Yeah. Well, what started as one of the biggest, I felt like, almost hindrances of my pregnancy was that at the time I was pregnant, there were seven other women at my work that were also pregnant. I remember seeing them all being so happy. And then they had their babies and they were so happy, and they were-- obviously, it wasn't like, we're not going to blow this up like some kind of blissful totally time. They were new moms too, but they were going out and doing stuff. And that's all I wanted. That's what I wanted so badly, was to have those experiences with my daughte…
Full show notes at the publisherSUMMARY: Today, we are going to talk with you about the 7 common struggle you have with time management. Do you find yourself constantly looking at the clock? Or, wishing time would go faster? Do you feel like your to-do list is so long that you will never get them done? Or, do you feel like you never have time to prioritize yourself? In today's, podcast, we talk all about your relationship with time and why it is a HUGE part of managing anxiety, depression, and stress. In This Episode, we address the 7 common struggles you have with time management. "I don't have enough time" "I have so much to do" "I have so much I want to do" "I struggle to start and stop activities" "I don't a good understanding of how long things take" "I don't like structure" "I hate being told what to do with my time" Links To Things I Talk About: ONLINE COURSE Time Management for Optimum Mental Health https://www.cbtschool.com/timemanagement Episode Sponsor: This episode of Your Anxiety Toolkit is brought to you by CBTschool.com. CBTschool.com is a psychoeducation platform that provides courses and other online resources for people with anxiety, OCD, and Body-Focused Repetitive Behaviors. Go to cbtschool.com to learn more. Spread the love! Everyone needs tools for anxiety... If you like Your Anxiety Toolkit Podcast, visit YOUR ANXIETY TOOLKIT PODCAST to subscribe free and you'll never miss an episode. And if you really like Your Anxiety Toolkit, I'd appreciate you telling a friend (maybe even two). EPISODE TRANSCRIPTION This is Your Anxiety Toolkit - Episode 221. Welcome back, everybody. I am so thrilled to have you here with me today for Episode 221. Oh my, how is that possible? We are getting so much feedback, such amazing feedback from last week's episode. I wanted to additionally offer you one more bonus piece of content from our new course, which is called Time Management for Optimum Mental Health. You can check it out at CBTSchool.com/TimeManagement. It is a course. We have it for $27. It's a mini-course, so it shouldn't take up a ton of your time, and it's me showing you exactly how I manage time. Now, the reason I created that course was because so many people were reporting to me – clients, followers, listeners – that COVID has destroyed the rhythm and the routines that they had, and that they really want to find a way to implement during their day time to do their therapy homework, do get exercise, maybe have more pleasure in your life, maybe reduce overwhelm, a lot of overwhelm because the to-do list is always so long. Am I right? The to-do lists are always so long. There seems to be a never-ending list of things to do. So, I added all that in, showed you exactly how I did that. Again, you can go and check that, or you can click the link below in the show notes. But as a bonus to that course, I did a Q and A where people submitted their questions. I have addressed that in that bonus, and I'm today giving it to you free in today's podcast episode. If you want to get a feel for what we're covering, you will have some reference to the course throughout, but you don't need to purchase the course to get benefit out of this episode today. However, together they would be really beneficial, I'm sure. Today, we're going to cover a couple of main topics. Here I'm going to give you some overview. Some of the questions people or the concerns or roadblocks they had around time management were things like, "I don't have enough time. I have so much to do on my to-do list." Another question we will cover in today's episode is, "I have so much I want to do. I just can't, again, find time." Someone brought up-- multiple people, forgive me, brought up that they struggle to start and stop activities. They struggle to get the motivation to get going. And then once they're going, they have a hard time transitioning into other activities. We address that as well. Someone posted in that they struggle with having a good understanding of how long things take. This is one of the reasons I have myself had to use a lot of time management, is I was underestimating how long things were taking and I was leading to a lot of anxiety and overwhelm. We also address people who don't like a lot of structure in their life and we also address people who don't like scheduling and don't like time management because they don't like being told what to do with their time. We're going to address all of that today, but we also go much deeper into that in the time management course. You can run over there if you want to take a look at that. Before we get into the show, let's do today's review of the week. This one is from Sheffie, and they said: "Wonderful resource! You can't help but love Kimberley." Oh, that's so kind. Thank you, Sheffie. "She has such warmth and sincerity, is positive and funny, and spreads so much good into the world. On top of all that, she's a gifted clinician who does a great job sharing her knowledge with others. And she does all this with a lovely Australian accent." Oh my goodness, this is so kind. "All of her content is fantastic, but I especially love the podcast because each episode is packed with so many nuggets of wisdom that are applicable to so many situations. They're thought provoking and I find myself pondering them for a long while after. They're also a good length - great content without going on for hours, very digestible." Thank you so much, Sheffie. That is so kind. Actually, one thing, as I'm really listening and reading that off, sometimes I know I've mentioned this before, but creating a podcast can feel really lonely because I'm talking into a microphone. Sometimes I don't know if things land for everybody. I'm talking about what resonates for me and what I know has resonated from my clients, but it's never really sure, like how is anyone feeling about this? So, just getting your reviews actually is very heartwarming to me. So, thank you. It actually helps me to feel like I'm on the right track and I'm helping and I'm bringing value to your life. Thank you so much, Sheffie. Please do go and leave a review. It does help me so much in my heart, but so helps me just to get more followers and listeners. All right, let's get over to it. Let's talk today about your relationship with time. Let's address some of these common roadblocks to time management, and I hope you find it incredibly helpful. Have a wonderful day, everybody. Welcome, everybody. I am so excited to be here with you to talk about your relationship with time. Now, this is an interesting topic, I think, and one that very much relates to our mental health. I personally find a lot of my thoughts are around time and about my belief that I don't have enough of it. This has probably been a very big part of my own experience of suffering because I keep telling myself, "I don't have enough of it." I really want to see whether this is true for you. Now, I did a poll on Instagram and asked my friends there to give me their biggest struggles with time management. As you may know, I have a full course on time management specifically related to managing mental health, how you can make time for your recovery, how you can make time for things that really benefit your mental health. A lot of the times we end up getting our to-do list done instead of scheduling in pleasure and downtime and rest, and we don't rest and have pleasure until we've got our list of to-dos done. But the problem is, the to-do list is always longer than the day. Am I right? We cut all of these submissions of things that people struggle with, a lot of the topics we discuss directly in the course, but a lot of them I wanted to discuss today specifically related to these struggles and the relationship people have with time. The first one here is, "I don't have enough time." Now I have two answers to this concern. number one, chances are, you are right. You don't have enough time to do the things that you are pressuring yourself to do. Now, I understand that many of you have jobs and you're going to school and you have children or you have loved ones and you have your own chronic illnesses or mental illness. So I agree. The list of things to do is very, very long. But I've wanted to first just ask you, is all the things on your to-do list being demanded of you, or are you demanding them of you? It could be one or the other. I just wanted to ask you, because I know for me, there are lots of things that I get demanded to do. I have to work. I have to make money. I have to be a mom. These are things that I really value and I want to take care of. But in addition to that, there's a lot of things on my to-do list that I actually don't have to do. I place those stresses on myself right. Now we're not here to blame. I never want this to be about blaming ourselves, but it's helpful to inquire. What things on your list do you have that actually create more stress? Is it helpful to add those things on your list? Is there a way you could maybe give yourself a break from the long things of all the things you have to do? Assess for yourself what's important. Is it important to me to get this done? But here is the thing. As we talk about in time management, the online course, is I have so many things that I value. I have so many things I want to do. I have so many ways I want to show up for people and friends and family. At the end of the day, it's unrealistic. Even though I want to do it, I don't have the time. To reflect, I don't have the time. Yeah, that's true. Sometimes the most compassionate thing I can do is to acknowledge that and be more realistic with the projects I put on my to-do list. Often I'll speak with clients about, are you taking too many courses? And they'll say, "No, I have to. Everybody is taking this many." And I'll go, "But is it working for you?" If you're really honest with yourself, does taking that many courses benefit you and give you time to recover from your mental illness? Does saying yes to volunteer, while volunteering is an incredibly valuable and helpful thing, are you in a place in your life right now or a season in your life where you can do that in a healthy way that still prioritizes your mental health? Just questions to think about. You may have some strong reactions to these, and I would inquire if you do. I'm not suggesting anything here, except I want you to inquire what is best for you. Now on the flip side of this, I can also say, even on the days when I've managed my time and my to-do list, I still just have the thought. "I don't have enough time. I don't have enough time. I don't have enough time." And that's my relationship with time. It's not great. My personal relationship with time, I have a long way to go. My relationship with time, as if it's a thing, is when I look at it, I say to it, "There's not enough of you." But I only have 24 hours. You only have 24 hours and we have to negotiate with what we want to cram into that 24 hours. It can be whatever you like really. You can sleep for as long as you think you need to sleep. You can work, you can go to school, you can take up whatever hobbies. Your job is to decide what's best for you based on your values and your family and your needs. The next one is, "I have so much to do." Again, we have a relationship with time. When it's not about time, it's about our to-do list. I really want this time management course that I've created. You can go to https://www.cbtschool.com/timemanagement. If you haven't already, if you're listening to the course right now, I want you to really, really think about the to-do list and reassess the to-do list. If it doesn't need to be done, I would encourage you to consider taking it off. Now, I understand, a lot of things on the list have to be done and I want them to be done, which is why you should, if you need, take a look at the procrastination episode and module, and you can maybe look at that as well. But like I said always, a lot of the thoughts we have about time are either facts or the mindsets that we have. So, we may need to think about how much pressure we're putting on ourselves. Another very small shift to that thought is, "There's so much I want to do." Now, here is another, this is very important. I personally, as a human being, there is so much I want to do. I have such passion to do this project and write that book and to create that podcast. I have all these things and hobbies I want to do. It's a wonderful thing. Some of you may not have that experience right now and that's okay. Sometimes depression and anxiety can take the passion out of things. But a lot of you, I hear because you want to get things done and you can't find a way to put it into your schedule. I really want to encourage you to start to do these things you want to do, but you have to be realistic about time. A part of the reason I made this course and not other courses is that this course could be a very quick make. Meaning it didn't take me six months to make some of my courses. The Time Management course is-- what is it? Almost 100 minutes or 120 minutes. It's easier for me to do this than to create a six-month-long course. I did it in small 20-minute increments. I want to encourage you that if your relationship with time is saying, "I have so much I want to do, I don't have enough time," find in your schedule 10 minutes to start, because 10 minutes today and 10 minutes next week and 10 minutes the week after that, before you know it, you will start to have some momentum, even if it's 10 minutes a week. A lot of times we don't do things because we tell ourselves that there's not enough time and there's too much to do. Instead of just giving yourself permission to just do little baby steps, create what you can in small amounts of time. Somebody had written, "I struggle to start and stop activities." This is very, very important. A lot of people struggle with time because getting going needs a lot of created momentum. The thing to remember is that motivation, and I will create a full mini-course on this very soon as well, is motivation is not something you just get. It's not inherent. You don't wake up with it. Motivation is something that you have to really create of your own. You have to cultivate motivation. You have to harvest motivation. It's something that you generate on your own. So to start an activity, usually, you will need to look at first what's getting in the way. We talked about procrastination in last week's episode and in other modules of this course. That's a big one. Starting usually means you have to generate motivation based on willingness to be uncomfortable, cleaning up any negative thoughts you have or critical thoughts you have about doing the activity. Setting time and reminders to remind you, because sometimes really honestly, you're busy. You're a busy person or you're an overwhelmed person. So, you will need timers and reminders and calendars, but it's really generating that activity. One of the best things to do is to keep in mind or to draw on a piece of paper or write it down, how you will feel when it's done, what it will look like when it's done, like a vision board almost, but it's okay. Put some time into it, like what…
Full show notes at the publisherSUMMARY: In this episode, we review how important it is to address procrastination, as it impacts so many people in so many ways. We also will review how procrastination is the same thing as avoidance and how people can work towards implementing time management skills to help them build a routine that helps them get the things they want to get done. In This Episode: We outline procrastination definition and procrastination pros and cons. How procrastination is simply an avoidance safety behavior. How to manage procrastination in , Anxiety, OCD and OCD recovery Our new course called Time Management for Optimum Mental Health Links To Things I Talk About: ONLINE COURSE Time Management for Optimum Mental Health https://www.cbtschool.com/timemanagement Episode Sponsor: This episode of Your Anxiety Toolkit is brought to you by CBTschool.com. CBTschool.com is a psychoeducation platform that provides courses and other online resources for people with anxiety, OCD, and Body-Focused Repetitive Behaviors. Go to cbtschool.com to learn more. Spread the love! Everyone needs tools for anxiety... If you like Your Anxiety Toolkit Podcast, visit YOUR ANXIETY TOOLKIT PODCAST to subscribe free and you'll never miss an episode. And if you really like Your Anxiety Toolkit, I'd appreciate you telling a friend (maybe even two). EPISODE TRANSCRIPTION This is Your Anxiety Toolkit - Episode 220. Welcome back, everybody. How are you? Really, really, how are you? How is your heart? How is your mind? What's showing up for you? How are you? I really want you to check in, in case you haven't checked in for a while. How are you doing? It's important. Let's make sure we check in. Today, we're talking about procrastination. It's one of the most common questions I get when I'm doing live calls on Instagram and Facebook, like how do I manage procrastination? A lot of you are also managing perfectionism and it's getting in the way of you doing the things you want to do or doing the things you have to do. Because I get asked this so much, I actually wanted to show people how I do it. So what I did is I created a whole mini-course, it's called Time Management For Optimum Mental Health. You can get it if you go to CBTSchool.com/TimeManagement, or you can click the link in the show notes below. It's a full course of showing you how I manage time and why I manage my time to help manage my mental health and my medical health. A lot of you know I have struggled with a chronic illness. Time management has been huge in me staying functioning and managing mental overwhelm and a lot of procrastination. In the course, it's only $27, it's a mini-course and it shows you exactly-- I have recorded the screen as I'm showing you exactly how I do it. If you're interested, go over and check it out. I'd love to have you take the course and put it into practice. Now, one of the things about this episode is this is actually me giving you a sneak peek into the course because it's one of the bonuses of the course to talk about procrastination. So I wanted to share it with you here on the podcast as well. You will hear me refer to the other parts of the course as you listen. That doesn't matter. You'll still get everything you need to know about procrastination and how to manage it today. But yes, if you've already taken the course, you probably have already listened to this bonus. But for today, let's talk about procrastination. Before we head over into the episode, I wanted to do the review of the week. This is a review from Sadbing, and they've said: "Desperately needed. I am an LICSW that has searched high & low for a podcast that delivers quality content. I felt relieved to finally find one! This podcast provides an honest depiction of how anxiety shows up in people's lives & gives you effective feedback on how to live with it. Thank you!" Thank you, Sadbing. Thank you so much for that amazing review. I do ask that anyone who's listening, please, the one thing you can do, this is what I offer freely to you all. If you get a second, just click below, in whatever app you're listening to, and leave a review. It helps me so much reach all the people. The more reviews we have, the more people will trust the podcast and continue listening to this free resource. So, yay. All right. Let's get over to this episode about managing procrastination. I hope you find it helpful. If you want to learn more about time management, head on over to CBTSchool.com/TimeManagement, and you can get a mini-course for 27 bucks. It's amazing value for a short period of time and a short amount of money. So, yeah. All right. So happy to have you here with me today. Thank you for giving your time to me and trusting me with your precious time. I will see you after the show. Welcome. You wouldn't have a time management course without really addressing procrastination. Procrastination is, number one, the biggest question I get, which is another reason why I wanted to make this course, is because it's so common. It's such an easy trap to fall into. It's such a human trap to fall into to procrastinate. But I wanted to take a deep dive into procrastination today and talk about some skills that you can practice to manage procrastination. Let me really just dive into, first, what is procrastination? Now simply put, procrastination is an avoidant safety behavior. What does that mean? When human beings assume or see or assign things as a threat, our mind does that. So our mind will assign something as threatening, whether it be, "I have to write this email." It could be as simple as writing an email. It could be, "I have to present something. I have to get a project done. I have to go and exercise." Our brain will present that as some kind of danger or challenge or threat. Now you might be thinking to yourself, there's nothing dangerous about exercise or writing an email, but there may be for you because doing that means you have to have some uncomfortable feelings. Maybe shame, maybe anxiety, maybe irritability. Anger might show up. Guilt might show up. Because those emotions are uncomfortable and maybe if we haven't developed skills on mastering those emotions, events like writing an email or exercising or doing a project may be experienced as dangerous or a threat. When our brain interprets things as a threat, naturally, it is going to set off the alarm and try to either get you to run away from it, to fight it, or to freeze. That's how fight, flight, and freeze response. And the most common as humans is avoidance. We avoid the thing that will create discomfort for us, and simply put, that is what procrastination is. Now, why do we call it a safety behavior? We could call it a compulsion. But we call it a safety behavior because not everybody does it compulsively, but they may do it to create a false sense of security, a false sense of safety. As human beings, we want safety. It feels good to feel safe. It feels good to feel like, "Oh, I don't have to face that hard thing." So, yes, we consider it a safety behavior. Now, does that mean that you're bad and lazy or not good? Absolutely not. Everybody engages in safety behaviors. It's a human part of life. But what we want to look at here is, is it creating trends in your life? Is it creating impact or consequences to your life that create more discomfort and more distress later? Most of the time people say, "Yeah, I avoid," and it's getting to be a problem. If that's for you and that's happening to you, you're definitely not alone. Now, how do we manage procrastination? The first thing is identify what it is you are avoiding specifically. Don't just say, "I'm avoiding the email." Don't just say, "I'm avoiding exercise," or "I procrastinate." Don't say those things. I mean, you can, but ideally, you will stop and go, "Okay, what is it about the email that I don't want to tolerate? Ah, writing an email brings up social anxiety for me," or "Ah, writing the email reminds me that I'm really behind on that project. Writing that email brings up shame because last time I spoke to them, I said something silly or something like that," or "I don't want to exercise because, ah, every time I exercise, it creates discomfort in my chest and it makes me feel like I'm panicking." So you'll identify the specific thing that is causing you to avoid specific. You might even get a specific like I did. It's the physical sensations I don't want to feel. Or it's the thought that this was my fault that I don't want to think. You may get to the bottom of that. Now, of course, if you guys know anything about me, I'm always going to say, it's a beautiful day to do hard things. The only way we can overcome these strong emotions, particularly fear and guilt and shame, is to stare them in the face. Our job, and this is what I'm going to encourage you to think about, is to really look at, yes, avoiding. What is the pros of avoiding this? And then on the right-hand side, you could write this on a piece of paper, what are the cons? What are the consequences of me continuing to avoid this thing? Now often when you write that down, that in and of itself is a motivator because you're going, "Oh my goodness, writing the email is uncomfortable for the duration that I write the email, not writing it is uncomfortable, even when I'm not working on it, because I'm constantly nagged by the fact that I have to write it, or it's constantly sitting on my list or I constantly see it in the schedule." A lot of you in, and we're in the Time Management course – a lot of you have avoided managing time because putting this in the calendar makes you face the fact that you've got something scary to do. Now, you will see me, I'm holding my hand on my chest right now and I'm sending you much compassion because these are really difficult things. These may seem easy for other people, but they're hard for you and me. And so we must be compassionate with the fact that they're hard. Here is what I'm going to say: Being compassionate can actually take some of that pain away. It won't take it all. You still have to do it. You have to ride the wave of discomfort. It will rise in full as you go. But you can also be gentle with yourself and reduce your suffering instead of criticizing yourself or how hard it is for you. Don't compare how it is for you compared to your friend or your seatmate or your neighbor. This is what you do. You practice compassion before you do the activity first. I'm sorry. You commit to doing the activity. You put it in your schedule. You write down when you're going to do it and how long you think it's going to take. And then you practice compassion. "Wow, I'm going to be really gentle with myself as I ride out the emotions and the experience of doing that thing." You may want to get a partner, an accountability partner, who can help remind you and support you as you do the thing. A lot of my patients have an accountability partner. They're like, "It's three o'clock." They're texting, "It's three o'clock. I know you're about to do a scary thing. Good job. Keep going. Don't stop. Don't back out. I'll be right here. You text me as soon as you're done." See if you can do that. If you don't have someone to do that, be that for yourself. So it's in your calendar. You're going, you're gentle. You're going to do the thing. What I personally like to do is keep a notepad down next to me as I'm writing an email or recording a podcast or doing something that creates anxiety for me. I jot down the thoughts and feelings I'm having. Not a lot, bullet points. Like, "Oh, I'm having the thought that this is not helpful. I'm having the thought that this is not good enough. I'm having the thought that this should be better. I'm having the thought that I made a mistake. I'm having the thought that this should be going fast or better." Like I said, and you may start to notice – and this is true, I've seen a lot of patients say – as you write it down, it's the same five thoughts over and over and over. When you're not aware of that, it feels like 55 thoughts or 55,000 thoughts. But once you have it on paper, you will see, often our brain is just repeating the same thing. When you can see that, you can go, "Oh, brain, I'm sorry that you're sending those messages. Thank you for showing up. Thank you for trying to alert me to the possible dangers, but I have avoided this for so long, and it avoiding it and it procrastinating only delays and continues my suffering." And you feel your emotions. You ride them out. You tender with yourself as you do the thing. And that's how you get through it. Once you're done, you must celebrate and say kind things and congratulate yourself. Don't forget that stage because that's so, so important. But the main point to remember here is that avoidance keeps you stuck. Avoiding the thing you're afraid of is actually what then creates some depressive thinking, some hopeless thinking, or helpless thinking. "I'll never be able to... I won't be able to... I can't..." We really want to be careful of that type of thinking, because that is the thinking where depression lives. Again, the more you face the things that are uncomfortable, you will build a sense of mastery of that. It won't go well the first time, I promise you. Most of life is trial and error. I have found the only way to move forward is to practice failing. Here is what I'm going to ask of you. As you practice this activity or practice of not procrastinating, of facing the thing you're afraid of, of doing the thing you've been avoiding, I want you to practice or remind yourself that you are really not growing if you're not failing. I'm going to say that again. You're really not growing if you're not failing, because if you're only doing things that go well, chances are, you're avoiding a lot of things. If you're only doing things that are going well, the chances are, you're not building mastery with the hard things in life, and life is 50/50. We know this, that life comes with 50% good and 50% hard. We have to practice failing so we can learn how to be better. This whole course is about that. You're going to practice not procrastinating. You may or may not succeed. That's not really the important part. The important part is that you look at the data, the data being, how did it go, like that reassess stage, which we have as one of the steps in the course. Look at the data, what worked, what didn't and what do I need to change? This is not a perfect practice. It's going to be changing as you change. And so having the ability to adapt and having the humility to say, "All right, it's not working. What do I need to do?" This has been probably my biggest struggle in my entire life, is I avoid looking at the data of what's not going well. If someone tells me what's not going well, I get offended instead of going, "Okay, this is not personal. It's just data. How can I use this data to help me not make the same mistake over and over again?" Often what I'm doing, I'm churning out a lot of content and I'm not looking at the data when the data could help me to say,…
Full show notes at the publisherSUMMARY: Today we have Amanda White, an amazing therapist who treats anxiety, eating disorders and substance use. Amanda is coming onto the podcast today to talk about her book, Not Drinking Tonight and how we can all have a healthy relationship with alcohol. Amanda White talks about ways you can address your relationship with alcohol, in addition to drugs, social media and other vices. Amanda White also shares her own experience with alcohol use and abuse and her lived-experience with sobriety. In This Episode: Do you have a healthy relationship with alcohol Why we use alcohol and substances to manage anxiety and other strong emotions How to build a healthy relationship with alcohol. How to manage substance abuse, anxiety and substance use in recovery. Tools and tips to manage alcohol use and abuse Links To Things I Talk About: Easiest place to get Amanda's book with all links amandaewhite.com/book Instagram @therapyforwomen My therapy practice therapyforwomencenter.com ERP School: https://www.cbtschool.com/erp-school-lp Episode Sponsor: This episode of Your Anxiety Toolkit is brought to you by CBTschool.com. CBTschool.com is a psychoeducation platform that provides courses and other online resources for people with anxiety, OCD, and Body-Focused Repetitive Behaviors. Go to cbtschool.com to learn more. Spread the love! Everyone needs tools for anxiety... If you like Your Anxiety Toolkit Podcast, visit YOUR ANXIETY TOOLKIT PODCAST to subscribe free and you'll never miss an episode. And if you really like Your Anxiety Toolkit, I'd appreciate you telling a friend (maybe even two). Episode Transcription This is Your Anxiety Toolkit - Episode 219. Welcome back, everybody. I am thrilled to have you here with me today. You may notice that the podcast looks a little different. That is on purpose. We have decided to update the cover of the podcast. It now has my face on it. There were a lot of people who had reached out and said that the old podcast cover art looked like a gardening podcast. And I thought it was probably time I updated it. So, that was something that I had created years and years and years ago. And I'm so thrilled to have now a very beautiful new cover art. Okay. This episode is so, so important. I cannot stress to you how overjoyed I was to have the amazing Amanda White on the podcast. She's a psychotherapist. She's on Instagram, under the handle Therapy For Women. She's so empowering. And she talks a lot about your relationship with substance use, particularly alcohol. But in this episode, we talk about many substances. And this is a conversation I feel we need to have more of because there are a lot of people who are trying to manage their anxiety and they end up using alcohol to cope. Now, this is a complete shame-free episode. In fact, one of the things I love about Amanda is she really does not subscribe to having to do a 100% sobriety method. She really talks about how you can create a relationship with alcohol based on whatever you think is right. And she has a new book out, which I am so excited that she's going to share with you all about. Before we get into the episode, I'd first like to do the review of the week. Here we go. We have this one from Epic 5000 Cloud 9, and they said: "This podcast has absolutely changed my life and made my recovery journey feel possible. After completing ERP, I felt lost and confused as to why I did not feel 'better'. Kimberley has given me so many tools to build my self-compassion, grow my mindfulness skills, manage OCD, and do all the hard things." So amazing. I'm so grateful to have you in our community. Epic 5000 Cloud 9. So happy to have you be a part of our little wonderful group of badass human beings. I love it. Let's go right over to the show and so you can learn all about Amanda and this beautiful, beautiful conversation. Have a wonderful day, everybody. Kimberley: Okay. Well, thank you, Amanda, for being here. I'm actually so grateful for you because you've actually brought to my attention a topic I've never talked about. And so, I'm so happy to have you here. Welcome. Amanda: Thank you so much for having me, Kimberley. I'm excited to chat with you. Kimberley: Okay. So, tell me a little bit about you first. Like, who are you? What do you do? What's your mission? Amanda: Yeah. So, my name is Amanda White. I am a licensed therapist. You might know me on Instagram from Therapy For Women as my handle. I'm also sober and I'm really on a mission to destigmatize sobriety and destigmatize the idea that you can question your relationship with alcohol. And it's really why my Instagram page and everything I do isn't sober only focused because I want it to be something where people who maybe aren't necessarily sober or haven't thought about it can, in a safe unstigmatized, unpressured way, also explore their relationship with alcohol. And that is what led me to write a book. And my book is called Not Drink Tonight. Kimberley: So good. So, I already have so many questions. Why wouldn't one question their relationship with alcohol? Because what I will bring here is a little culture. I'm Australian. Amanda: Yeah. I was going to say. Kimberley: I live in America. The culture around drinking is much different. I have some great friends in England, the culture there is much different. So, do you want to share a little bit about why one wouldn't maybe question their relationship with drinking? Amanda: Absolutely. I think I can only speak for America specifically, but I know enough people in England and Australia, too, that there is a culture of drinking is good, drinking is normal. We watch our parents or adults drink when we're young. We think that's what makes us an adult. If you look at the media, you look at movies, TV shows, it's what everyone does when they're stressed. Women pour themselves a glass of wine. Men pour themselves a bourbon. So, I think that we're just raised in the society that doesn't ever question their drinking, because alcohol use is so black and white, where you either are normal and you should drink alcohol and it's what's expected, or you're an alcoholic and you should never drink alcohol. And there isn't a lot of space in between. So, if someone questions their alcohol use, people assume that they're an alcoholic. Kimberley: And so, now let me ask, why would we question our relationship? What was that process like for you? Why would we want to do that? Some people haven't, I think, even considered it. So, can you share a little bit about why we might want to? Amanda: Absolutely. I think it isn't talked about enough of how much alcohol really negatively impacts your mental health. For a while, I know doctors used to talk about there are some heart-healthy benefits of alcohol, which new studies say is not true. There really aren't any benefits to drinking alcohol in terms of our health. But really, I think especially anxiety and alcohol are so intertwined and people don't talk about it and don't think about it. And what I want people to know is when you drink alcohol, it's a depressant and your brain produces chemicals because your brain always wants to be in homeostasis. So, your brain produces anxiety chemicals, like cortisol and stuff like that, to try to rebalance into homeostasis. And after alcohol leaves your body, those anxiety hormones are still in there and it creates the phenomenon where you end up being more anxious after you drink. There's other mental health effects too. But I feel like, especially on this podcast, it's so important that people realize how intertwined alcohol and anxiety is. Kimberley: Right. You know what's interesting is I do a pretty good amount of assessment with my patients. But really often, I will have seen them for many months before-- and even though I thought I've assessed them for substance use and not even abuse, they will then say and realize like, "I think I'm actually using alcohol more than I thought to manage my anxiety." And I'm always really shocked because I'm like, "I swore I assessed you for this." But I think it takes some people time during recovery to start to say like, "Wow, I think there is an unhealthy relationship going here." Is that the case from what you see or is that more my population? Amanda: No. Absolutely. Because I think it's easy to lie to yourself. Maybe not even lie, just like not look at it because again, it's so normalized because we have an idea in our head of what someone with a problem with alcohol looks like. We don't consider ourselves to have that problem. But just because we aren't drinking every day or we're not blacking out or something like that doesn't mean that we might not be using it to numb, to cope with anxiety, to deal with stress. Kimberley: Right. You know what's funny is I-- this could be my personal or maybe it is a cultural thing because I always want to catch whether it's an Australian thing or a Kimberley thing, is I remember-- I think hearing, but maybe I misinterpreted as a young child that you're only an alcoholic if you get aggressive when you drink, and that if you're a happy drunk, you're not a drunk. You know what I mean? And that it's not a bad thing. If it makes you happy and it takes the stress away, that's actually a good coping. So, I remember learning as a teen of like, oh, you get to question what is an alcoholic and what's substance abuse and what's not. So, how would you define substance use versus substance abuse? Or do you even use that language? Amanda: I mean, yes and no. I use it in terms of it exists, and it is part of the DSM. So, it is in terms of, I do diagnose when needed and things like that. A lot of times though, I think the current narrative and I think people spend so much time trying to figure out if it's use or misuse, that they miss out on the most important question, which to me is, is alcohol making my life better. Kimberley: Yeah. Amanda: And if it's not, if it's right-- I have exercises in my book and I talk a lot about like, what are the costs of your drinking, and what are the payoffs? And if it's costing you a lot or it's costing you more than it's bringing to your life, I think that is where you should question it. And I think your life can change. You can go through different things in your life and maybe that's when you can ebb and flow with your questioning of it, especially people get so obsessed with the idea of whether they're an alcoholic or not. And the term 'alcoholic' is completely outdated. It's not even a diagnosis anymore. It's now a spectrum. So, to me, that word is just so outdated and unhelpful to think about really. Kimberley: Right. And even the word 'abuse' has a stigma to it too, doesn't it? Amanda: Right. In the DSM, it's alcohol use disorder and it's mild, moderate and severe. But it's wild thinking back. I mean, I was in grad school. Oh my gosh, I'm going to date. I don't even know how long ago, 10 years ago. Kimberley: Don't tell them. Amanda: A certain amount of time ago, I just remember being in 'addictions class' as it was called and we were talking about what is the difference between use and abuse and what makes someone an alcoholic. And I think people also get very attached to being dependent. It means it's abuse. And it takes a lot to become dependent on alcohol physically. So, we're just missing out on so many people. I say often, we can question so many things in our life. I'm sure you do too with your clients. I question how their sleep habits interact with their mental health. We talk about how getting outside impacts their mental health, all these different factors. But for some reason with alcohol, which is a drug, we don't question it or we are not allowed to. Kimberley: Right. Yes. I will address this for the listeners, is I think with my clients, one of the most profound road, like if we come to the edge of the road and we have to decide which direction, the thing that really gets in the way is if I put a name to it, then I have to stop. And that can be, a lot of times, they won't even want to bring it up – be in fear of saying, well, like you were saying before, is that meaning now-- as soon as I admit to having a problem, does that mean I'm in AA? Is it black and white? I think that there's so much fear around what it means once we really define whether it's helpful or problematic. That can be a scary step. What are your thoughts? Amanda: Yeah, I completely agree. And that's why I really believe in looking at it as a spectrum, especially I think about disordered eating, right? It's like, we know that based on studies, if someone engages in disordered eating, they're more likely to develop an eating disorder. So, in my book, I coined this term 'disorder drinking' and how I really think we need that term where people can-- it makes the barrier to question your relationship with alcohol much lower, where I find in my practice because I work with a lot of people with eating disorders. People are very open about saying, "Yeah, I'm maybe engaging in some unhealthy, disordered eating. I don't know." But there's a whole step there before maybe you recognize that you have an eating disorder, where I really think that that is what we need with alcohol. We need to be able to talk about how, like, yeah, most of us in college engage in disordered drinking. It's not super healthy, the way that we drink. Or we may go through a period of time in our life because we're super stressed or something's going on, where we engage in that. And that doesn't mean that you have, for sure, a substance use disorder or you're addicted or you have to never drink again. But I think it's important to recognize when we start to fall into that so we can change that pattern. Kimberley: Right. Particularly with COVID. I mean, alcohol consumption is, I think, doubled or something like that in some country. And I think too, I mean, when we're struggling with COVID that we have less access to good tools and less access to social. So, people are relying on substances and so forth. Yeah. So, what is this solution? There you go. Tell me all your answers. What is their options? How might somebody move into this conversation with themselves or with their partner or with their therapist? What are the steps from here, do you think? Amanda: Yeah. So, I think that the first step is to try to take a break. I think 30 days is a good starting point. A lot of times, if people just start off by cutting back, they don't really get any of the positive feel-good benefits of taking a break, which is why I recommend starting with taking a break first. Obviously, I believe in harm reduction. And if you are in a place where you can't take a break, moderation is definitely a good tool and better than nothing. Kimberley: Can you tell what harm reduction, for those who don't know what that means? Amanda: Yeah. So, harm reduction is the idea that rather than focusing on completely eliminating a behavior or especially completely eliminating a substance is we think about cutting back on that. And I think about specifically, if someone is in an abusive situation, if someone has a lot of trauma going on and alcohol is the one thing that's keeping them afloat, that to me is like, of course, I'm not going to say you must quit cold turkey or something like that. And even if you're t…
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