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.
The New York Times listed Your Anxiety Toolkit as one of the “6 Podcasts to Soothe An Anxious Mind” (April 27, 2024). We are on a mission to help people who want to thrive in the face of anxiety and other mental health struggles.
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The Self-compassion Workbook for OCD is here! Click HERE to learn more. This is Your Anxiety Toolkit - Episode 208. Welcome back, everybody. We are on the final week of the 30-day Self-Compassion Challenge. You guys, the growth has been profound to watch you guys, to hear from you guys, sharing what's working, what you're struggling with, the major strides you've made. I have loved every single second of it. I will be doing my best to compile all the audio. I think about 27 of the 30 days we did a live or the 31 days. We'll be doing lives and I will compile them into one whole little mini-course that will be free for everybody on the cbtschool.com. That is yet to come. I cannot wait to hand that over to you guys. We are on the final week and I wanted to address the elephant in the room, which is exhaustion. Today, I want to talk to you about managing exhaustion because the one thing I know for sure is you're exhausted. I'm exhausted. We're all exhausted. It's so hard to get motivation. It's so hard to keep going. So we are going to talk about it today. Here we go. Before we go, I wanted to do the "I did a hard thing." We do it every weekend. This is from A Life With Uncertainty. They said: "The last two years have been FULL of hard things. The hardest was telling my husband in therapy that our marriage was the main obsession during my worst OCD spike. I was scared and anxious. He wouldn't understand. It was such a huge exposure, and I pushed through without seeking reassurance. I CRIED A LOT, but so did he. The hard thing brought a softness to our marriage that I will always have, no matter what OCD tells me." This is beautiful. This is the work. Because what does anxiety take the most from us? The people we love. It impacts the people we love. It impacts the relationships and the things we get so much joy from. Holy smokes, A Life With Uncertainty, you are doing such brave, such courageous work. I'm so happy you put that into the "I did a hard thing." How incredibly inspiring. I just love this stuff so much. I really do. Before we get into the episode, let's do a quick review of the week. This is from Nervous Nelly saying: "I'm so grateful I found this podcast a couple of months ago. It has changed my whole approach to my own and my loved one's anxiety. This podcast provided so many tools that I practice using and learning to look at my anxiety differently. The biggest change is recognizing that when I'm having anxious thoughts more quickly before they go too far and the automatic responses that I wasn't even aware of, or should I say that I wasn't aware, were so counterproductive to my mental well-being. Thank you from the bottom of my heart and please keep doing what you're doing." Yay, I'm so happy to hear that. Nervous Nelly, welcome. I'm so happy you're here and let's keep going together, which brings me perfectly into this episode. As you know, we've been doing the 31-day challenge. I think I've been calling it a 30-day challenge, and I'm just looking at my calendar and seeing that there's 31 days in the month. We'll just be imperfect. We will move on. We are celebrating the launch of my first and only book called The Self-Compassion Workbook for OCD. One of the things I talk about most in that book and talk about most on this podcast and in CBT School resources is how to stay motivated because it takes so much to stay motivated. But what's interesting is, so many people in the comments this week said, sometimes it's not even about motivation. It's just about getting through the day. How do I get through the day? I wanted to share with you a self-compassionate concept that I use. It may or may not be helpful for you, but this is something I have dedicated my self-compassion practice to and I have really received some amazing benefits from it. I'll tell you guys a little bit of a story. As you all know, I have postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome with a nice side of generalized anxiety disorder in which I manage really well most of the time. But when I am unwell and I'm having a flare-up, which recently I've been doing really well, but I recently went through a horrific flare-up to the point where most days I couldn't get out of bed. I was doing all my sessions from an upright chair where I had my legs elevated. I would go to bed at 7:00 or 6:15 in the evening. It was just rotten, rotten, rotten, rotten. I was exposed to a concept called "the spoons concept." This was written by a person who suffered with Lyme. I'll put it in the show notes, the original article. What she did was she was saying, "Someone wants to ask me, what is it like to have Lyme disease?" Well, she assumed they knew because this person went to all of the doctor appointments and was with her when she was sick. She wasn't quite sure what they were asking until she realized they were saying, "What is it actually like to leave in your body?" And she said, "Well, think of it this way." She got all of these spoons out. I think she said she was in a college cafeteria at the time and she laid out these 10 spoons. She said, "For people who don't have this problem, they have unlimited spoons in their day, and think of each spoon as a degree of energy to complete daily tasks. So one spoon to make your breakfast, one spoon to have a shower, one spoon to go for a walk, one spoon to get to work, two or three spoons or five spoons for doing the day of work, another spoon to make dinner, another spoon to do your taxes and so forth." She said, "Most people have unlimited spoons. It just keeps going until the evening is done. They don't even really have to consider their energy and how they expend it. But for me, I want you to imagine that I only get 10 spoons a day, and I have to decide every single day how I use those spoons." This was profound for me because what I was struggling with was like, how come everybody else gets to have energy at the end of the day and I am a complete disaster? How come everybody else has breakfast, gets ready for work, goes to work, takes care of their children, comes home, makes dinner, does the taxes, and they're still not a grumpy, miserable mess at the end of the day? I realized it's because me having POTS or postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome meant that I too have unlimited spoons. I'm going to have to either refuse to accept that and keep using up spoons I don't have. One of the main concepts she talks about in this Spoon Theory is, if you go over your 10 spoons, it's not like you can replenish them. You're using them up for tomorrow. Basically, if you use 13 spoons today, you only have seven left for tomorrow. I've talked to a lot of my patients with OCD about this, and we really agreed not to become compulsive about counting spoons. I want to really make sure we address that upfront. This is not a science. It's a concept. It's a theory. But think of it through the lens of, if you overdo it today, you're going to have to accept that you've got less spoons tomorrow. I have found that I was living on minus spoons day in, day out. Well, in fact, month in, month out, maybe even year in, year out. No wonder I'm exhausted. No wonder I'm miserable. No wonder I'm anxious. No wonder I'm depressed. No wonder I'm exhausted. I have completely used up all my spoons. So now, I've had to accept that I only have 10 spoons and I have to make really skilled decisions on how I'm going to use them. It has also involved me renegotiating my day. I no longer choose to make breakfast and lunch in the morning. I do it the evening before. I asked for help. I do it in a way where I sit at the dinner table. I always finish first because I inhale my food. As my children and my husband eat their dinner, I'm making the kids' lunches for tomorrow. That way I'm not standing, I'm still communicating with them, but I'm getting something done, and that works for me. I've found many, many ways to manage this, but I also had to accept that some things literally had to go. The most compassionate thing I could do is to protect my spoons. Now, how does this apply to you? Well, the developer of this theory has now extended it to people with mental illness. She believes it's not just physical medical illnesses that mean people don't have a lot of spoons. People with mental illnesses also have unlimited spoons because their spoons are being taken up with fear, depression, panic compulsion. For you now, I'm going to ask you to consider, number one, you get to decide how many spoons do you think you get a day? Because it's not unlimited. If you have a mental illness, it's not unlimited. It's not possible. You will use up all your spoons and you will go over and feel worse tomorrow. So determine how many you have, and start to be very, very articulate and disciplined and intentional with how you use them. You're going to probably be like, "Yeah, I expected her to say this." But one for me is I'm no longer going to beat myself up. I don't have the spoons for that. Literally, that is my reason for not beating myself up. Besides the fact that it makes me feel terrible is I don't have the spoons for that. Sometimes people will say to me, "You need to do more in a certain area." I will say to myself, "Yeah, I wish I could, but I actually, at this time, don't have the spoons for it." Sometimes I opt out of major disagreements, not because I'm afraid of disagreements, but I don't have the spoons for a ton of conflict. I do that as an act of compassion to myself and an act of compassion for my clients and my family. If I burn up all my spoons, I'm a terrible therapist. No, that's not true because that's black and white thinking. I'm not at my best. I'm not at a place where I'm sitting, and I'm connected with my patient. So forgive me. I'm going to correct myself. I'm not a terrible therapist. That's black and white thinking. I am not connected as deeply as I would like to. What I do here is depending on the day, I may need to rearrange some things. For you, and I will give you a case study here. One of my patients had a huge exposure hierarchy. She knew she had to get it done. Her OCD was impacting her life severely. So we brought in her family, her husband, or her partner, and she had conversations with her family and her parents and said, "I'm about to embark on exposure therapy. It involves me doing a lot of physical and emotional work. How can you guys support me by helping me and managing some of the things I have in my life so that I can keep track of my own spoons, metaphorically?" Somebody dropped the kids off in the morning for her. She ordered in a meal service, if you have the finances for such a thing. Her immediate thought was, yeah, but come on, Kimberley. Everybody else can do it. Surely, I can too. I'll say, "In a perfect world, yes. In a perfect world where you didn't have OCD, you could do your OCD while dropping your children off. But you do have OCD, or you do have depression, or you do have a medical illness. For that reason, can you give yourself permission to ask for help, to redistribute your spoons? Can you do that for yourself?" Many times I'll give you a personal experience that happened to me. Just this week is obviously, I'm a little overwhelmed with the launch of this book. I also run a very medium-sized private practice. I have eight therapists who work for me. I have CBT School, which I'm so proud of, but does take up some of my time. I called my husband and I said, "I give up. I am in over my head. I don't know how I got here. I completely lost track of my spoons." He sat me down and said, "Open up your calendar. What's on your calendar for today?" I told him, and he said, "This one, this one, and this one, just cross it off. It doesn't have to happen today." My mind was like, "But come on, come on. It should be done today. It would be so much easier if it was done today. Life next week will be hard if it's done today." He goes, "Kimberley, you don't have the spoons for it today. You either rest today or you use up your spoons for tomorrow." And I'm like, "You're right. You're right." See, even I'm not so great at this sometimes. That's why everybody needs help. I'm never above the work here. I'm always learning myself, but it's dropping your pride. It's dropping the ego. It's dropping the expectations and saying the facts here that I'm exhausted. The facts here is I need a break, or the facts here is I need to shuffle things around so that I can do the thing I need to get done today for the future me. The example would be a lot of my patients say, "Well, if I take on the Spoon Theory, I have never got enough spoons to do ERP. It's just too hard." I'll say, "You need to do ERP so that you can get your spoons back. Because these compulsions are taking up a lot of your time, or your depression is taking up a lot of your time. We have to do your calm work. For your future self, something else has to go. Something else has to go." That might be that you don't get as much exercise. Or like I said, you get a meal service, or that you get your laundry done, or you slow down a little, or you don't see as many friends on the weekend. A lot for me has been in COVID. As COVID has started to loosen up a little, it's also going, "Wow, I'm feeling a little overwhelmed by all the social events." I still think I need to be protective of my spoons here. Not that I'm avoiding them at all, I'm just making logical, compassionate, informed decisions based on the facts of the spoons that I have. So I want you to think about this. Again, this is not science. I'm not saying ten spoons is all you get and all this stuff. It's not a science, it's a concept. I want you to think about it and see how it applies to you, because having a mental illness qualifies you for being someone who needs to take care of their spoons. Some people don't like the spoon concept and they prefer to use it like a cup. Like my cup is full of energy, or it's low on energy. How can I manage my energy levels? That's fine too. It doesn't have to be in this method. I just want you to think about how you can manage your exhaustion without letting everything go. The alternative is, get really clear on what has to get done and what matters to you and rearrange the rest of it. Let some of it go. Don't please all the people. Don't please anybody. For me, again, I'm really trying to not think black and white, because that uses up spoons that I don't have. Not to think catastrophic thoughts, like telling myself bad stuff is going to happen. I'm trying to not engage in that thinking because that uses up spoons that I don't have. Not ruminating about something I'm angry about. No, I don't have the spoons for that. The compassionate thing to do right now is to search the internet or to do what you enjoy. Do some crafts or take a nap, read, sit in nature, go slow walk, call a friend, whatever fills up your cup. All right. That was a lot. I think what I'm going to say here is, a big piece of that is acceptance. That when you're exhausted because you're handling a medical or mental or…
Full show notes at the publisherThis is Your Anxiety Toolkit - Episode 207. Welcome to Your Anxiety Toolkit. I'm your host, Kimberley Quinlan. This podcast is fueled by three main goals. The first goal is to provide you with some extra tools to help you manage your anxiety. Second goal, to inspire you. Anxiety doesn't get to decide how you live your life. And number three, and I leave the best for last, is to provide you with one big, fat virtual hug, because experiencing anxiety ain't easy. If that sounds good to you, let's go. Welcome back, everybody. This is a really exciting podcast today. We have back on the show the amazing Kristin Neff. Now, as you all know, we're doing a 30-day Self-Compassion Challenge and it is the perfect time to bring on Kristin Neff, who has written a new book called Fierce Self-Compassion: How Women Can Harness Kindness to Speak Up, Claim Their Power, and Thrive. Now, while the book is directed towards women, it actually is for everybody. So, we're speaking today in this interview about fear self-compassion and it's for everybody. It's particularly valid to those of us who are struggling with anxiety and have to really work hard at facing fears every day. I am so grateful we got to have Kristin on. She had so many beautiful things to say. If you like the episode, please go over and purchase her book. She too has a book out and again, it's called Fierce Self-Compassion, and it might help you really deep dive into this practice of fierce self-compassion. Before we get over to the show, let's talk about the "I did a hard thing" segment. This one we have is from Eric, and he has said: "I've been working on my anxiety about the heat by spending every day I can in the sauna of my gym. I work up a good full-body sweat, and it feels so uncomfortable, but I stick with it knowing it will pay off." Eric, this is so amazing. What an amazing way for you to stare your fear in the face, practice being uncomfortable. I love it. In addition to that, let's move right over to the review of the week. This one is from Emily. Emily says: "Kimberley consistently shares a genuine compassion across all of her podcast episodes. She's been a source of encouragement on my journey with OCD, anxiety, and depression because her message remains one of the consistent self-compassion while sharing a realistic perspective and the reality of mental health struggles." Thank you so much. You're so welcome, Emily. I am just so honored to be on this amazing path with you all doing such amazing hard things and really doing the hard work. It's really an honor to hear these stories and hear the hard things you guys are doing. That being said, let's move over to the show again. Thank you so much, Kristin Neff, for coming on. I just found this episode to be so deeply helpful with some profound concepts and I can't wait to share them with you. Kimberley: Welcome. This is an honor to have with us again the amazing Kristin Neff. Welcome. Kristin: Thank you for having me. Happy to be here with you again. Kimberley: Yeah. You have a new book out, which is by far my favorite. I am so in love with this book—Fierce Compassion. Yes. I actually have mine on my Kindle, so I was holding it up, going, "Look, it's right here." Kristin: Thank you. Kimberley: I loved this book. Thank you for writing it. This is so important for our community because you're talking about how to use compassion in I think ways that we haven't talked about before and is so important for those people who are suffering with anxiety or just any kind of severe mental illness or struggle. Can you tell me exactly what fierce compassion or fear self-compassion is? Kristin: Yeah. Well, self-compassion, in general, or compassion in general is concerned with the alleviation of suffering. It's a desire to help. It's the desire for well-being of others, and then self-compassion is of yourself. There are really two main faces that it has, the two main ways that it can express itself. There's tender self-compassion, which is really important, which is about self-acceptance. It's about being gentle, more nurturing, warm with yourself, soothing yourself when you're upset, really offering support, being with yourself and all your pain and all your imperfection, and really accepting a kind way. This is a hugely important aspect of self-compassion because most of us don't do this. Most of us think we aren't good enough or we criticize ourselves. We're really harsh with ourselves. This is huge. But it's actually not the only aspect of self-compassion. Sometimes compassion is more of a gentle, nurturing energy, almost like you might say a mother. Metaphorically, a mother or a father, but a parent. Fear self-compassion is more like mama bear, like fierce mama bear. In other words, sometimes in order to alleviate our suffering, we need to take action. Acceptance isn't always the right response when we're suffering. For instance, if you're in a situation that's harmful, maybe someone is crossing your boundaries, or someone is harming you in some way, threatening you in some way, whether it's society. Maybe it's racism, sexism, or some sort of injustice, or whether it's yourself. Maybe you're harming yourself in some way. Although we want to accept ourselves as worthy people, we don't necessarily want to accept our behavior. And so sometimes we need to take action to alleviate suffering. So, that could either be protection against harm. Sometimes it's providing for ourselves. This is especially for women, women who are told they should always self-sacrifice, they should always meet others' needs. Actually, sometimes for self-compassion, we have to say, "No, I'd really love to help you, but I've got something I need to tend to for myself." So taking action to meet your own needs. And then also motivating change. It's not self-compassionate to let behaviors or situations slide that are not healthy. So, really taking the action needed to motivate healthy change. But it comes from encouragement, not because "I'm unacceptable unless I change." The tender and the fear self-compassion, they go hand in hand. I like to say it's like yin and yang. We need both and we need them to be in balance. If they aren't in balance, it's a problem. Kimberley: Now this is so good because my first question was how to get it into balance, right? I love in your book, you have a little questionnaire. You fill it out, is there balance, and what side is that all? But can you share how people may get some balance if they're finding they're doing one of the other? Kristin: Yeah. It's a tricky question, right? Because sometimes we don't know, but we need to ask. Really the quintessential self-compassion question is, what do I need right now to be healthy, to be well? And just pausing to ask that question is huge. Usually, we're just doing our daily routine or we're striving to reach these goals that people tell us we need to reach. We don't even stop to say, "Actually, what do I really need to be healthy and well?" So asking that question is huge. And then you may not get it right at first. You may think, oh actually I thought I needed that, and I don't. Really self-compassion is a process. But it helps to know the different types of self-compassion. You might say, "Do I need a little tenderness right now? Do I need some acceptance? Do I need some softness and gentleness? Do I need to kick in the butt? Do I need to get going? Do I need to stand up? Do I need to speak up? Do I need to say no to people? Maybe I'm giving too much of myself in order to find balance." You really just have to ask yourself the questions. It's really the process of being committed to yourself that you're going to do the work necessary to be healthy and well. Kimberley: Right. You've outlined so many pieces of this puzzle, right? Particularly, and this is why I was just-- I think I reached out to you months before your book came out because I just wanted to hear your opinion on this. For people who are struggling with the inner bully, whether that be the disorder they have, or they're just very self- critical, it can be really hard to stand up to that. Almost feeling like it's just impossible. I've heard people saying like, "This is just who I am. I'm just going to have this voice." I'm wondering, you might maybe share where would somebody start with this practice? Kristin: Yeah. And then we also need to get in the different parts of ourselves, right? Because the inner bully, that's a part. We also have a part that's compassionate. We also have a part that feels bullied by the inner critic. So, we've got the person who's pointing their finger. We have the person that feels the shame. We've got all these different parts of ourselves. And really all of them need to be treated with compassion, but how that compassion manifests is going to be different. For instance, I have a compassionate motivation exercise in there, where sometimes what we need with an inner critic is we need to thank it. "Thank you for trying to help me." This may be the only language it has to try to help us, and it needs to feel listened to and heard. "Thank you so much for trying to help me." It's actually not been that helpful, but I appreciate your efforts. That's almost using more the tender self-compassion for the inner critic. But sometimes it needs the standing up. It's like the mama bear, like, "I'm sorry, I'm not going to listen to that anymore. You can't say that. It's not okay. I'm drawing a line in the sand." So that's part of it. But then also, we don't want to forget having compassion for the part of ourselves that feels criticized. People who say the inner critic, that's just who I am. Well actually, who they are is, there's a part of them that hurts from the inner criticism. There's a part of them that feels compassion for the pain of that. There's a part of them that's trying to help, keep themselves safe through criticism. Inner critics don't operate really to try to harm. They operate to try to help to keep us safe. I've talked about a lot in my book, my son has very harsh self-criticism and I can see he really believes-- by the way, I'm just going to turn this off. Sorry. It's going to be cooking for me the whole time. Kimberley: No problem. Kristin: My son really believes that if he's hard with himself, somehow, it's going to allow him to get it right not make mistakes. So, usually, our inner critic, some part of it believes that if we're harsh enough with ourselves, we'll get it right not make mistakes. And that's the safety behavior. So, we need to have compassion for that safety behavior at the same time that we don't want to be railroaded by it. It is complex. The human psyche is complex. Pretty much the answer is always compassion. But what form that compassion takes just depends on what the situation is. There's no one-size-fits-all. Kimberley: And I think that it's so important that you're addressing both the yin and the yang side. Because there are times when, let's say somebody's struggling with incredibly painful intrusive thoughts related to their OCD or their disorder, where they need to really just go, "Wow, this is so hard for you. I'm so sorry you're going through this." But there are other times where you have to be like, "Nope, we're not doing this today. We're not going to go down that road today." So, I think it's beautiful that you're bringing that Together. Kristin: It's funny, I have to use both sides with my son. He has both autism and OCD, as I was telling you, and anxiety just to make things fun. But sometimes what he needs is he needs my warmth and compassion. Just that caring, that tenderness. He knows always the bottom line is unconditional acceptance. But sometimes they need to draw boundaries. He's learning to drive, for instance, and he started having an episode while he was driving and I'm like, "No, you cannot do this while you're driving. It's not safe." Part of them doesn't have the ability to stop it, but part of them does. So, it is complex. Sometimes I need to appeal to that part of them that does have the ability, at least temporarily, to say, "I'm not going to go there. You need to choose. You need to stop up." Sometimes I say it almost really firmly and it shocks him, and it actually helps him to stop. So, it's complicated. Kimberley: It really, really is. Now, it's interesting because you and I were talking before, and I want to touch in because the first part of the book-- the book is directed specifically to women, but it also is addressed to anybody, I think. Kristin: Yeah. All people live both yin and yang. The reason I do it for women is because women are so socialized not to be fierce. And that's partly patriarchy. Women have been kept in their place by not getting angry or not speaking up. So, that's why it's written for women. But a lot of my male friends have read it and they say they get a lot out of it because first of all, all the practices are human. They're for all people, not just women. Kimberley: Right. But the reason I loved it is you did speak directly to getting angry, right? Kristin: Yes. Kristin: There's a lot in the front about getting angry. Is it helpful? Is it not? Do you want to share? I mean, I think a lot of people who are anxious are afraid of their anger or are afraid of that. So, do you want to share a little bit about how people can use these practices for anger? Kimberley: Yeah. Well, because part of the whole messaging of the book is anger communicates expression of compassion. Again, think of fierce mama bear, that ferocity, and think of someone who tries to harm someone you loved. There would probably be this arising of anger that comes up to protect. Anger is a protective emotion. Now again, anger can be problematic for sure. It's very easy. What's the difference between helpful and unhelpful anger? It's dead simple. Helpful anger alleviates suffering, unhelpful anger causes suffering. We know it can do both. But anger should not be undervalued as an important source of protection and compassion. It energizes us, it focuses us, it gives us energy, it suppresses the fear response, especially with people with anxiety. It's funny, my son is afraid of dogs. It's one of his anxious things. I taught him very early on that when a dog is threatening him to rise up and yell at the dog and flop his arms, scare the dog. He does that. It's funny, it also helps suppress his fear response for the dog when he does that because he's basically getting angry and yelling at the dog to back off. I have to say sometimes he overuses it, like he's done that with poodles at the park. I'm like, "Poodle is not a threat. Poodle will survive." In his mind, the poodle is a threat. So, being able to call on that fierce energy, one of the things it does is it does suppress the fear response. So, if you never allow yourself to be angry, it feeds into that fear response. That anger can actually be opposite to the fear response. Kimberley: Right. This is where this is so beautiful because actually, a lot of the work I do with my patients is, instead of being angry at the dog or expressing anger, is to talk to fear and set the…
Full show notes at the publisherThis is Your Anxiety Toolkit - Episode 206.
Welcome back, everybody. How are we doing? We are on week 3 of the Self-Compassion Challenge. So welcome if you are new and you haven't caught up with our Self-Compassion Challenge. We are doing a 30-day Self-Compassion Challenge for everybody, so everyone can dabble in their self-compassion practice, maybe strengthen their self-compassion practice, and hopefully thrive with their self-compassion practice.
Today, we're going to talk about the roadblocks to self-compassion. Now, this is coming directly from my new book called The Self-Compassion Workbook For OCD. However, even if you don't have OCD, this will apply to you. I did a poll on Instagram with almost a thousand people who wrote in and polled on the biggest roadblocks that they're having, and I've compiled it. Thankfully, I used it in the book. The cool news is there were so many people who agreed on those top eight roadblocks. So I wanted to share them with you today. We're going to go through each and every single one.
But before we do that, I would like to first do the "I did a hard thing" segment. Now, for those of you who are new, welcome. The "I did a hard thing" segment is where you write in and you tell me the hard thing that you have done.
Today's is from anonymous, and they have said:
"I just got on a ship for a daily trip and I forgot to take with me my medication. I don't use the medication that much, but I do feel safe when I have them with me. This makes me anxious, but I am choosing to manage my anxiety."
How cool is that? Sometimes things don't go as we plan, and we have to rely on all of our tools and it sounds like Anonymous is doing that in an amazing way.
All right. I have been doing a review of the week for people who submit a review for the podcast. However, as I'm recording this, the reviews have started to come in for the book and I couldn't help myself but share the very first review for the book. It made my heart explode. I was taking a walk. My friend called me to tell me there was a review, and I basically burst into tears. So here we go:
"I've read a number of books on OCD in the past, but Kimberley's emphasis on self-compassion and its place in the ERP process is so, so refreshing and so very important. This is a must-read for anyone with OCD or anyone helping a loved one through OCD. It is a beautiful day to do hard things."
Thank you so much for that amazing review. The reviews literally are changing my life. Oh my goodness, I can't tell you, when you write a book, there is so much anxiety involved, at least there was for me. And so to have people enjoy the book is just literally the most amazing thing. The most amazing thing. I had no idea. Number one, total massive respect to any author of any kind. Writing a book is very, very hard. And so, I'm just honored to be able to help people in that format as well as this format, and in addition to CBT School and in my practice. What a joy.
All right. Let's get to the show.
Let's talk about the Common Roadblocks to Self-Compassion. Now, the first one is related to OCD. Like I said, if you don't have OCD, stay with me because the rest are really going to maybe resonate with you, but this one is very much hands down, was the number one roadblock people reported who have OCD to have a roadblock with self-compassion.
1. "I do not deserve self-compassion because of the content of my obsessions."In the book, we go through each and every one of these in detail, but today I'm just gonna quickly knock each one of them out. So here we go.
Your obsessions do not determine whether you are worthy or deserving of self-compassion. The minute you say that, you're giving too much importance to your thoughts, feelings, sensations, and urges. So the big thing to remember here is, your job is to have these obsessions and not respond to them as if they're important, and to practice taking care of yourself, whether you have them or not, that this idea that you're not deserving of them is completely false. In fact, we talk a lot about calculations in the workbook. Some people like we have these weird algebraic calculations where we go, me + obsessions = undeserving, or me + intrusive thoughts = I'm a bad person.
I want you to keep an eye out for these little nuanced calculations that you have in your mind because they are dead wrong. Your thoughts are thoughts. Your feelings are feelings. Your sensations are sensations. You are not disqualified from being treated with respect and kindness because of them.
2. "I am not worthy of self-compassion because I have a mental illness."Now in the book, we use a case study where we talk about this idea of stigma around mental illness. I really want to urge you, as I do in the book, to start to break this belief that there is anything wrong with you for struggling with a mental illness. We have to be the change here. We have to lead by example.
If you have a mental illness and someone has shamed you, or you've experienced the stigma of that, your job is to be the change by treating yourself how you would treat anybody else who was struggling with a mental illness. And that would be with kindness and respect and care and nurturing.
You're not disqualified, again, because you have a mental illness. There is nothing wrong with having a mental us. That doesn't mean you're less worthy, less valuable, less successful, less lovable. We have to break through all of those faulty beliefs we have around mental illness because it's no different to a medical illness.
In my belief, the more you suffer, the more you tend to that suffering with kindness. It's not like, oh, well, some suffering is okay. We'll give some of my suffering kindness, but not the ones with mental illness because society has told me that there's something wrong with that, which is absolutely incorrect.
3. "I am too preoccupied with anxiety, panic, and uncertainty to practice self-compassion."This is a common one, and I fall into this category as well. Sometimes when we're anxious, we rush too much, we speed along, we try to push it away, and we don't stop to go, "Wait, maybe I could be just kind. Maybe I could just be really gentle with myself while I feel anxious. Maybe I could slow down and tend to my anxiety." Maybe that's the answer instead of trying to push it away or have it be gone, because that is the answer.
4. "It feels wrong to practice self-compassion."Now, this is a really good definition of what we would call "emotional reasoning." It goes under the cognitive distortion that, just because I feel it, it must be true.
Now, just because things feel wrong doesn't actually mean they're wrong. It's often because you've been taught for many years based on society or your family about what's right and wrong, and we've never stopped to question, is that even true? Because it's not wrong to practice self-compassion. In fact, it's effective to practice self-compassion. It's helpful to practice self-compassion.
We've already sort of declared you're worthy and deserving of practicing self-compassion. So your job is, even though it feels wrong, do it anyway. Do it anyway. It might feel awkward and weird to start with, do it anyway. It might feel bizarre and self-centered, do it anyway. That's what we want to do.
5. "Self-criticism and self-punishment are how I motivate myself."Whoa, this one is so strong for some people. So many of my patients and clients have told me in the past, "If I don't beat myself up, I'm going to turn, you know, it's the only way I get myself to do things." And I often say, "Okay, maybe that's true. It might work. You might find that self-punishment and self-criticism does motivate you. But is there possibly a more effective way? Is there possibly another way that you can motivate yourself? And yes, self-compassion can be used as a motivational force. Is there another way you could do it that actually doesn't create more problems?"
In the book, one of the main concepts I talk about is compassionate responsibility, which is where you honor what your needs are, and sometimes that you do need to get things done.
So you practice motivating yourself using what we call a kind coach voice instead of a critical voice. Both have the same outcome. Both are motivational. One tends to bring you down and the other one tends to cheer you on and make you feel empowered. Let's choose the latter. Let's choose the voice that says "You can do it. Keep going. You've got this. Keep trying. It's okay that you fell down. Just one minute at a time, get up and keep trying," instead of the critical voice and the punishing behaviors and voices.
6. "What if self-compassion makes me lazy?"This goes together with the last one. A lot of people are afraid that if they're self-compassionate that they'll just become some sloth that doesn't do things and lets themselves go. I'm here to say, no. If that's what happens, that's not self-compassion anyway.
Self-compassion is doing what you need to live a good life. It's not letting yourself off the hook all the time. Sometimes it can be to say, "You've had a rough day, it's time to rest." But a lot of the time it's saying, "Yeah, you've got some hard things to do."
Let's be so gentle and so encouraging of you as you do those hard things. The whole phrase "It's a beautiful day to do hard things" is a self-compassionate statement. You just didn't know it yet. We didn't call it that, but that's what it is.
The thing to remember here is, maybe you want to check your definition of lazy and weak. For me, this has been a huge part of my recovery, especially having a chronic illness and mental struggles. Is taking time off to rest really the definition of weak and lazy? No, it's just what human beings do. Humans need to rest so that they can restore themselves to go and do amazing hard things. Sometimes we're taught to believe that you should never rest, and you should never be lazy. And so you don't give yourself that basic need of restorative rest. So, so important.
7. "What if practicing self-compassion makes me snap or lose control?"Now, this is a big one, particularly for people with anxiety. This comes under the misconception that we must constantly brace ourselves for the worst. We must constantly be hypervigilant and hyper-aware of all the possible dangers. And so we have to constantly be scanning for danger, looking for danger, what's going on, what could go wrong. We know, number one, that that's compulsive in nature. It keeps you stuck in anxiety. But it also is a block, a roadblock to your ability to tend to your suffering, tend to the sensations that are uncomfortable, the feelings that bring pain to you.
So an exposure, we want to actually practice not engaging in those hypervigilant behaviors and practice being uncertain on whether you will snap or not, or lose control or not, and just tolerate the uncertainty of that. Sometimes self-compassion is an exposure in and of itself because when you're practicing self-compassion, you're not engaging in those compulsive rituals that keep you stuck in that cycle. It's really, really cool that it can be both an emotionally intelligent behavior, but also be an exposure. It's like to bang for your buck, I guess.
8. "Practicing self-compassion makes me self-centered."Now, we've had amazing guests on the podcast who have addressed this, but I will address it again. Being self-centered is not the definition of self-compassion. Self-centeredness is this idea that we're egotistical and everything has to be about me and so forth.
What I have found in my own practice is, the more self-compassionate I am, the more I'm able to tend to other people's needs and be aware of other people's struggles and difficulties because I'm connected to my suffering. The more I am aware and meet my suffering, the more I can acknowledge and be in relation with other people when they're suffering. I can sit with them and go, "Yes, me too." I can tend to their pain without having to make it about me because I'm there for myself. I don't need other people to make it about me anymore because I have already tended to my needs. I have unconditionally been there for myself, so I can be there for other people. It's so, so important.
So that is the top 8. In the workbook, I have room for others. There's lines where you could add your own and you might find you have your own roadblocks. They are valid too. Identify them and keep an eye on them.
The main work here is once you catch them, and you know they're happening, you can then move on to dismiss them and correct them and move towards tending to your discomfort, being kind while you ride the waves of uncertainty and anxiety and discomfort. It's so, so important. It's so, so important.
Let me go right to the top. You deserve this. YOU. Yes, you. I'm talking directly to you. I'm looking you right in the eye. I'm going to conclude this episode by saying YOU DESERVE SELF-COMPASSION.
You are valuable.
Your pain matters.
You deserve kindness and respect and tenderness in your suffering. Your suffering is important. It's not irrelevant. It's not silly. It's not childish. It's important. You deserve to tend to that kindly. I'm talking to you right now. I hope you're listening.
All right, folks sending you so much love. I hope that you're finding this Self-Compassion Challenge helpful.
Continue to follow on the lives on Instagram. That's where we're doing tons of live work. Continue to look at the emails. If you're not signed up for the newsletter, please do. You can go to cbtschool.com and click on Resources and we can sign you up there. Or you can click on the show notes, we have links there where you can sign up and you will get all the challenges that you need for each day and each week. They're Monday through Friday, we take the weekends off because that's the self-compassionate thing to do.
All my love to you. Really go and be gentle. Go and be kind. Go and honor and respect your own experience. It's so important.
I'll talk to you soon.
This is Your Anxiety Toolkit - Episode 205.
Welcome back, everybody. We are on week 2 of this Self-Compassion Challenge. For those of you who are new to the podcast, or didn't hear last week's episode, go back and listen to that. We are on week 2 of a 30-days Self-Compassion Challenge. My whole goal is that you learn how to treat yourself kindly and compassionately as you move through difficult times.
We are doing this to celebrate the launch of my very first book (The Self-Compassion Workbook for OCD), which I am so proud of and so excited about. Thank you to everybody who has purchased the book, supported me on social media, shouted me out to their friends and fellow followers. I cannot tell you how grateful I am. If you have got the book and you're enjoying the book, please do go and leave a review over on Amazon, share your honest opinion or share your thoughts on social media or with anybody you can, because the more people I can help, the happier. I am.
We are moving on today in this episode onto the second most important part of self-compassion in my mind. Now, this is taken directly from the book, even though the workbook is called The Self-Compassion Workbook For OCD. This is a concept I talk to all my clients about. It's something I constantly check in with myself about, and it has been probably one of the most important parts of my recovery in mental health in many, many ways. So I am so excited to share this with you.
Before we do that, I do want to go over and share the review of the week. For those of you who are new to the podcast or are old to the podcast, I love your reviews on iTunes. It helps me reach more people. So this week is from Looney Lovey. It says:
"A gift of a podcast. I am so incredibly thankful I found this podcast. I have experienced OCD since I was 10, and this has been one of the most amazing tools. I seriously thank God for leading me to this podcast every day. It is like having a therapist in your pocket. Kimberley is so sweet, and her openness and kindness make the listener feel so welcome."
Thank you, Loony Lovey.
The next thing I wanted to share is the "I did a hard thing." Now, let's take a step back here and really look at self-compassion as really being a hard thing. And so, a lot of you have actually written in and said, self-compassion was one of the hard things that they've been practicing. However, this week we have a hard thing from anonymous and they've said:
"I have a fear of disease. I recently had two close friends get a diagnosis where this would make me feel fear for myself and my family. I chose to show up for my friends and continue on a daily basis, working on my mental boundaries, not making their illness about me, and my fear is about that stopping me from supporting them. I struggle with feeling everyday body sensations in myself and wonder if I am next. But this is so amazing, this whole 'I did a hard thing.'"
Anonymous, amazing work. It sounds like you're really showing up and letting your values make your decisions, not your fear. This is so cool. This is just so cool that you've done that. Look at you go. Doesn't that just show that fear doesn't win, right? That love and connection and values win every single time. I just love this one so much. Thank you so much for sharing.
I have a ton of submissions, but I will share again very soon where you could put those submissions in if you're wanting to put your name in. Okay?
All right. Let's get over to the meat and cheese of the whole episode today.
So we're talking about a concept. Now, this is not scientifically proven, I have to disclose. This is my conceptualization of one of the main things that get in the way of self-compassion. I'm going to tell you a quick story.
When my son was in kindergarten, the teacher had this system called the clip chart. I want you to imagine the clip chart is just a piece of cardboard, and in the middle of the piece of cardboard, it's like a long narrow rectangle. In the middle is a peg. And the peg is put right in the middle and there is just a normal neutral face.
Above the peg are these different ladder rungs. There's a smiley face, there's "You did well," then there's a bigger smiley face. And then at the very top, there's this huge smiley face saying, "You get a treat."
Now under the peg is a sad face. And then under the peg is an even sadder face. And then under that sadder face is a really, really sad, but almost mad face. And next to it, it says, "Call your parents."
This is a ladder system that if a kid isn't listening, they get clipped down. If a kid is doing really well, they get clipped up. At the top, if they get clipped up enough times, they get a special treat, some toy from the toy box. If they get clipped down enough times, the teacher calls the parents.
This is what we would call a behavioral modification tool to help encourage kids and motivate children, usually five-year-olds, on how to act and how to behave. It's incredibly efficient. As long as it's not done in a shaming way, it can be a really motivating way of keeping kids feeling like they're being motivated in courage. They've got something to look forward to. They're working towards something.
The problem with this is, even if you haven't got a clip chart and you weren't given one in kindergarten, our society runs by a metaphorical clip chart. If you act well and you put a smile on your face and you get good grades, you get clipped up. If your body looks a certain way, you get clipped up. If you make a certain amount of money, metaphorically, our society will clip you up as if you're doing well.
Now, likewise, if you're struggling, often we clipped down. We do this to ourselves. Not only society, but we also clip ourselves down. "Oh, I didn't do well in that test. I'm going to clip myself down." Sad face. "Oh, I'm struggling with my panic today, or my anxiety today. I'm going to clip myself down. I did compulsions today. I'm going to clip myself down." We use this metaphorical motivation system all the time.
Now within society, we also have this inbuilt view on mental illness. This is also about racism, and there's so many different levels of the way your body looks, social media followers. Again, like I said, how much money you make. There's socially so many expectations put on us, that we also buy into that.
Sometimes, because we rely on this metaphorical clip up and clip down system, we use only this system to motivate ourselves, which ultimately means we're constantly on this checklist of how much we can get done so that we can feel good about ourselves. We're constantly clipping ourselves up and down as if worth depends on it. And that's the piece I want you to remember.
We do this, and we make this calculation, that if I'm clipping up, I'm worth more. If I'm doing my homework well, I'm worth more. If I don't have a mental illness anymore, I'm worth more. This is not true. This is all lies.
This is one of the main points I make in the book, which is, when we're stuck in a clip chart way of seeing ourselves, our identity, our worth, our value, we're constantly anxious. We're constantly afraid of dropping the ball.
One of the most compassionate things we can do is to drop the clip chart system completely, to recognize. This is what I say to my patients all the time. You're always at the top of the clip chart. Nothing you can do is going to drop your worth down – no mental illness, no body shape, size, color, hair color, short height, tall. None of that changes your worth. None of it. I'm specifically here talking about your mental struggles. You do not get clipped down worth-wise because of all of the struggles you have mentally.
I have had so many patients and clients tell me they don't deserve self-compassion because they're struggling so much with this mental illness, because it's putting their family out. It's impacting their loved one's lives because it causes them to do compulsions all night long. And therefore, they deserve to be clipped down. I don't agree with that respectfully.
Everybody is at the top. You're having a bad day? You're still at the top of the clip chart. You're having a good day? You're still at the top of the clip chart. Every single day, you deserve a treat, a fun, joyful experience. A pleasure, a reward. You got through the day. Celebrate. You don't get clipped down. We have to throw out the clip chart system.
Now, does this mean you have to give up trying? Absolutely not. Does that mean that you don't study for your test and you don't show up to work and you don't try to make life better for you? Absolutely not.
You do the things that you value. You do the things that fill up your heart. If you value getting a good grade in school, put in as much effort as you can because you value it, not because you're on this conditional worth system where you're just trying to prove that you're worthy and good.
Don't do treatment. I talk with my patients, why are you doing ERP? Are you doing it because you want your life back from OCD? Or are you doing it because you feel embarrassed or ashamed for having to do compulsions?
Neither is wrong, but the compassionate thing to do here is to move from a place of values, what matters to you, what makes you feel like it gives you purpose in this life, what keeps you connected to your loved ones – instead of clipping yourself up and down on this worth ladder, because that's temporary and it's conditional. We want our self-compassion practice to be unconditional. That's why we throw out the clip chart. It's unconditional.
You're having a hard day? You get self-compassion. You're having a good day? You get self-compassion. You're having a day where everything went wrong? You get to have self-compassion. We don't clip you down because of that. And that is the real important piece I want you to take away.
I want you to think about, if you had a clip chart, what are some of the things you've been telling yourself? I want you to write this in your journal, really reflect on this. What are some of the things that you clip yourself down for? What are some of the things you clip yourself up for?
Do you get engaged in this sort of mental worth calculation? "Oh, I'm worthy today because I A, B, and C?" Because that's not true. You're worthy whether you did that or not.
Do you beat yourself up because of things you've done? That's you clipping yourself down. You've said, "I've done something wrong. Therefore, I need to be punished."
The whole work we're doing this month is to move towards like we talked about last week, asking yourself, what do I need in this moment of suffering? The clip chart is usually one of the main reasons people don't give themselves what they need, because they say, "Oh, I did A, B, and C today. Therefore, I don't deserve it. I clipped myself down." I have to keep saying to my patients and clients, "No, no, no. You're at the top. You're at the top every single day. You deserve kindness and care and compassion and treats and pleasure and joy. But most of all, compassion."
So that's the concept of the clip chart. I want you to draw it out. Put the system. What do you have to do in order to be at the top in this metaphorical clip chart? What do you have to do when at the bottom? What bad things do you consider yourself clipped down to the bottom? And really reflect on, is this really kind? Is this a compassionate way for me to treat myself?
If it were up to me, my advice is, put yourself at the top. You get compassion every single day unconditionally. Throw out the clip chart. It works for five-year-olds in a classroom, but it doesn't work for you in a lifetime. It doesn't work for you in your life. You deserve more than that. You deserve kindness every day.
So let's take a minute. Let's slow it down and just check in, and just sit with this idea that no matter what, no matter what happens today, no matter how you acted or behaved or performed, no matter what grade you got on the test, no matter how you showed up, let's just reflect and honor that unconditionally, you deserve self-compassion.
If you hear a voice saying, "Yeah, but blah-blah-blah," whatever the blah-blah-blah is, is where your work is. If it says, "Yeah, but my thoughts are horrendous, therefore I'm disqualified from this," there is your work. You're doing too much judgment around your thoughts. If you go, "Yeah, but I did this one bad thing, it's unforgivable," I go, "Okay, send your compassion around that. Go hard on that. Because that's the thing that's getting in the way of you really tending to your pain and suffering the way that you deserve."
You might say, "Yeah, but I've got too much anxiety. I'm too sick. I'm just too unwell. I'm too messed up. I'm too hopeless. I'm a failure." We'll do some work around that. Reflect on that, because that's the roadblock, which we will be talking about in other episodes to come.
Alright. I love you guys so much. Really take a minute and receive the love I'm sending you right now, the compassion I'm sending you. I hope you're taking care of yourself. I hope you're facing your fears. I hope you're tending to your suffering as best as you can.
It is a beautiful day to do hard things. You knew I was going to say it. So I want you to lean in here. Double down on this practice. You deserve this.
Have a wonderful week, everybody. I love you. Talk to you next week.
Hello everyone!
Today is the day that my very first book is out in the world for you to get. I could just die of excitement. So, for those of you who don't know, I spent a large part of 2020 writing my first book. It is called the Self-Compassion Workbook For OCD: Lean into Your Fear, Manage Difficult Emotions and Focus on Recovery. I could cry. I am so excited that it is finally here. It was such a huge project in my life. Now I'm just thrilled to share it with you guys.
Now, what does that mean for you? You can go and purchase the book wherever you buy books. You may order it on Amazon if you don't have a bookstore near you. But in addition to getting the book, which is literally like, ah, I put my whole soul into this project – what you can do in addition to that is this month, for the month of October, we are going to do a self-compassion challenge.
Now, before you turn the stereo or your iPhone or your iPod off, stay with me because I really strongly believe that this challenge could change your life, whether you have OCD or not. I really want to focus this month on improving your relationship with yourself, improving your relationship with self-compassion, working through the roadblocks that you have. I'm going to be doing a lot of live instruction on Instagram and hopefully on Facebook as well, depending on technology. But if you don't follow me on Instagram, head over there, if you're not signed up for the newsletter, head over there, because my goal is to really nurture you through this process and get you having a self-compassion practice that is rich and fulfilling and healing. So, so, so important.
Today, we're going to kick it off right away. We're going to talk about the first main point I want you to do. Before we do that, let's do a couple of important pieces.
So first thing, we're going to do the "I did a hard thing" segment. This one is from Elle and she has said:
"I sat outside in 92-degree weather to eat my croissant. Even though being in overly hot places makes me anxious, I just wanted to be outside."
Thank you so much, Elle, for that submission. Really what I hear you saying is you were willing to tolerate heat, which is often a really big trigger for people with anxiety, but you did it because it's what your soul was asking for, which is a huge piece of what today's podcast is all about.
Now we'll move on to the review of the week. This is from Cynthia. She said:
"I'm so excited to share these podcasts with my clients. I was first introduced to Kimberley's clear and compassionate teaching style when I took ERP School for therapists, which is the CEU course. In the past three weeks since taking the course, I recommended both the course and podcast to my clients. So helpful. Thank you, Kimberley."
Yay, I'm so happy to hear that, Cynthia. All I have to say, it's all coming together. I feel like years of hard work of the podcast and courses and the book, and I feel like so many people are getting on board and they're starting to face their fears and they're learning these skills and it makes me so overjoyed. So, thank you so much, Cynthia. Thank you, Elle. I'm just feeling such gratitude right now.
Okay. Here we go. We are on Day 1 of the 30-day challenge to self-compassion. Now, I know I've done a lot of work on self-compassion before in the podcast. You can go back and listen. I've interviewed the most impressive people on self-compassion. You can go back and listen to those episodes. But for today, I want to go straight to the most important piece. We'll work through some other things later through the month and some roadblocks, but here is the main tool for this week. Are you ready?
I want you to take a couple of breaths. I want you to check in with yourself. You can do this in the form of meditation. If you're driving, please keep your eyes open on the road. But if not, you may close your eyes and check in with yourself.
Where is the discomfort and the pain in your body? Where is the suffering in your body? Is it in your chest? Is it in your shoulders? Is it in your head? Is it in your heart? Is it in your stomach? Is it in your fingertips? Is it in your legs? Where is the suffering? It could be all over your body, and that's okay. But just check in on where it's at.
And then I want you to ask yourself this one question: What do I need right now?
I don't want you to argue with yourself. I just want you to honor what first comes up. What do I need right now?
Sometimes our instincts are to say, "I want this pain to go away." But a huge part of self-compassion is honoring what's really happening. It's really this truth-telling practice where you have to accept, okay, that's not an option right now. Otherwise, you would've done it, right? You would've done the thing to remove the discomfort. If there's an itch, you probably would've scratched it by now.
Often the pains that we feel, the ones that cause us the most suffering are the ones that we can't simply get rid of the anxiety. We feel the depression, we feel the headaches we have, the stomach aches we experience, the grief, the loss, the anger. All the things, right?
So instead of bargaining with whether it should be there or not, I just want you to radically accept that it's there and ask yourself: What do I need right now? And often what you need is kindness. Some tenderness around the suffering.
And that might be the thing that you come up with. Before I segue to the next step, it might be to take a deep breath. It might be to slow down. It might be to rest. We're going to be talking about that throughout the month. It might be to actually give yourself some time to fill up your cup. It might be to set a boundary with somebody. It might be to say NO to something, as long as it's not something that you've previously been doing as a compulsion. We don't want to use self-compassion as permission just to do more compulsions, but really check in on what do you need right now.
And then, this is the next main piece of the homework for today, what do I need to hear right now? What do I need to hear? What would I love to be told? What would nourish me? If a warm kind loving friend came in the door right now, what would they say to me? What do I need to hear?
Your homework for this week is to say the thing you need to hear, all the time. It might be, "I'm here for you." It might be, "It makes complete sense that you're feeling this way." It might be, "I have your back." It might be, "I see your pain." It might be, "Your pain is important." It might be, "You are enough." For me, I will tell you the thing I have really had to listen to.
I actually just had a conversation with a dear friend who's a therapist. I put my hand on my chest and I say, "Dear sweet one, just be with your body and trust that it will hold you and carry you through this moment."
You'll hear that some of the statements I'm using, they're not saying, "We're going to make everything okay." They're saying, "I've got you. I'm going to be there for you. Your pain matters. It's important. It's valid. There's nothing wrong with you." That's the message I want you to encompass and embrace.
But it's going to be different depending on the moment. So what I'm going to say here is the advice that I need right now in this moment of suffering is going to be different in an hour. The advice I give myself in an hour, that compassionate check in is going to be different to what I need tomorrow.
And so your homework is ideally, get yourself a journal or a notepad or a Google doc form or notes in your phone, and I want you to do a check in every day, at least once, and write down: What do I need to hear right now? And put in what you need to hear right now. Because what you'll do is you'll gather a list of things that you can rely on, sayings and statements you can rely on, at times where you're so anxious and you can't even access your compassion itself, or you're just needing some guidance. These small statements can be a monumental part of your recovery, particularly when you're totally frazzled and panicked, and you've lost all ability to see the rationale. So that's what I want you to practice.
Your compassion practice, again, isn't an attempt to remove your discomfort, but to tend to it, to lean into it, to practice being your strongest supporter through your discomfort. I want you to strengthen that voice. It might be very, very, very, very, very shy. It might be very, very timid. It might be very insecure at this time. But with practice, this is a skill that you can learn so that voice in you sounds more like a mama bear, a strong mama bear than it does a timid, uncertain person.
That's your homework. I want you to check in, I want you to get yourself a journal and I want you to start to document this stuff. Dabble with it. See what works, what doesn't.
Some of the things that I've shared today might help, and some of it might not feel right to you, and that's totally okay. It's different for every person. That's why we ask the question: What do "I" need? Not "What does Kimberly need? What does the neighbor need?" but "What do I need?" Because I matter, and you matter. So, so important.
So, that's it. That's your homework. I want you to practice it. Come on back as much as you can to the newsletter, Instagram, social media. I'm going to be doing as much as I can, really trying to double down on people's self-compassion practice.
You don't have to have OCD to be a part of this. I'm doing it in celebration of the book. Now that I have it in my hands, you could see me right now, imagine me holding it, like gripping it, like so excited. Now that I have it in my hands, I feel like a light shone on these important practices and I just want you to take them on and have them in your life.
So, there you have it. I'll meet you back here next week and we will double down on the next piece. And the next piece is my absolute favorite topic, the favorite part of the chapter in the entire book. So I can't wait to share that with you. Okay?
All right, team. Go and be kind. Check in, strengthen that voice inside you. And I will see you next week for another episode of Your Anxiety Toolkit.
All my love. Don't forget. You know what I'm going to say? It's a beautiful day to do hard things. I don't ever want you to forget that.
Have a wonderful day, everybody.
This is Your Anxiety Toolkit - Episode 203.
Welcome back, everybody. Today's episode is all about why it is so important that we expose ourselves to our fears. It's one of the most common questions I get asked from my clients, right? Which is, why do I have to do this hard work? Why? Why of all the treatments is mine the one where I have to face my fears. Because my clients ask this all the time, I wondered whether you needed a quick pep talk just to get you back on track, to remind you why and to motivate you towards facing your fears, because it is probably the most valuable change of behavior that you will do.
Welcome back. I am so happy to have you here with me today to talk about that specific topic. Before we get started, I would like to quickly dive in to really set the scene today. We're going to talk about the hard thing, the "I did a hard thing" segment.
Today's hard thing is from anonymous, and they have submitted saying:
"I haven't drank coffee for over two years since my OCD breakdown because I was too scared. But today, I went to Costa and I had a caramel latte. I got heart palpitations for a few hours, but I sat with it.
This is exactly what I'm talking about. So, Anonymous, this is so good. I am so proud of you. This is the work that we do. And I'm going to use Anonymous' example here throughout the podcast to really tie this together.
All right, one more thing before we get moving, I want to do a shoutout to the review of the week. This one is from Hahajack, and they said:
"This is the best short therapy lesson. This podcast is amazing! I love that episodes are short and succinct. You can't say that you don't have time when episodes are as short as 10 to 30 minutes. If you are struggling with OCD or anxiety, this is a great podcast to listen to for extra therapeutic support in addition to therapy. I treat OCD and I learn so much every time I listen to Kimberley's podcast."
Thank you Hahajack for that amazing review. We are still doing the drive for reviews. So if you can go over to Apple podcast, leave us a review or wherever you listen. Once we hit a thousand reviews, we're giving a free pair of Beats headphones. I cannot tell you how much I love, love, love, love your reviews. Thank you. It helps me help more people reach more people. And that's what I'm here to do. All right, so let's get to the meat of this episode, right?
I, in the past – I think it's Episode 86 – did a whole episode called the Science of Exposure and Response Prevention. You can go back and listen to that episode once this is done. We talked about the science behind ERP, and I'm going to be using a lot of that reference to talk about why. Why do we stare fear in the face?
Instinctually, when we have fear – I'm just going to give you a quick education here – when we experience fear and our brain sets the signal off to say, "There might be danger, there might be trouble, please be alarmed," – when the anxiety hits our body and our cognitions, our natural instinct is to remove ourselves from the perceived danger. And that has kept us alive. It is an important process that we humans have and other animals have. It's an important piece that keeps us alive, like I said.
The problem is, that behavior, the removal of anxiety, the avoidance of the thing that created the anxiety is only effective if the danger is imminent, not just a thought about a possible danger, right? And so, if, like I said, there was a real thing that was happening in your life that is dangerous, yeah, you may want to remove yourself from it. But if you have a brain that's anxious like mine, where your brain sets off alarms quite often telling you, "Ring, ring, ring, something bad might happen. Ring, ring, ring, the future may have some problems. Ring, ring, ring, you're a bad person," and so forth – when we instinctually try to remove that, we actually reinforce the fear, the faulty fear. We reinforce the thought, right? And then what we are in a cycle of is thought, reinforcement of thought, thought, reinforcement of thought, thought, reinforcement of thought.
The whole reason we choose to face our fear is to break that cycle, right? If you have a thought about imminent danger or threat, and you respond to it as if it's important, your brain will continue to perceive it as an important and an imminent threat. If you have a thought about something that is imminent and dangerous, and you don't respond to it as if it's imminent and dangerous, your brain starts to learn not to set that alarm every time you have that thought. Your brain learns not to ring the alarm bell and send out all those anxiety hormones throughout your body. Right? And that's how you break the cycle. And we do that by – if you just happen to have the thought, you could do that by being aware that you're having the thought, observing the thought, and then not engaging in the avoidant or reactive behavior, right? That's hard, right? It's doable, but it's hard, right? Because you have to be aware and you have to be very mindful and you have to have a lot of motivation in that moment. I still strongly encourage you to try that and practice it every single day.
But what we can do to really help that process is, instead of waiting for the thought and then practicing not just engaging in that thought as if it's real and imminent, what you can do is purposely expose yourself and purposely bring on those thoughts by facing your fears. Right? Think of it like, you wouldn't just show up to a football game or a tennis game or a track and field event and just run and hope that your body will keep you going. No, we don't do that. When we know there's an event happening, we train for it. In a situation, we simulate the scenario, right? So we simulate the track and field event, or we simulate the soccer practice so that you can practice strengthening those muscles.
This is why it's so important that we choose to expose ourselves to our fears on purpose. You're training your muscles to respond differently. When it does have a thought, your brain's going, "Oh, she actually purposely had that thought yesterday. So maybe I don't need to set off the alarm bells this time. Maybe it's not as imminent as I originally perceived it to be." That is why it is so important that you expose yourself to your fears.
Now, like I said, there's lots of science behind that. You can go back and listen to the episode – it's number 86 – to get a little bit more, right? But the thing here to remember, and I always try to remind you, is it is hard. This isn't easy, right? So what you want to do is, as you go to face your fear and expose yourself to your fear on purpose, you want to keep in mind for yourself your own why. Why would I purposely do this hard thing?
We could use the example here of the hard thing, right? They wanted to have a caramel latte. They don't want to feel uncomfortable, but they want the outcome. They want the delicious, warm caramel latte, right? For you, be really clear on what you want to get back by facing your fear. Sometimes it's more time with family, it's to be able to get to work and not have to manage mental compulsions with work. For some people, it's to be able to get through school without having to double-check your work. For some people, if you have an eating disorder, it might be so you can be with friends and have freedom around food. If it's panic disorder, it might be so that you can do the things you want to do without panic-making your choices, right? If it's hair pulling and skin picking, it might be so that you can do your normal grooming without engaging in these behaviors. Right?
So there's so many reasons why we would practice facing your fear. And I want to give you this call to action, which is, get really clear on what you want, how you want your life to be. Identify what things you're going to need to face in order to get that life. And then go and face those fears. That's exposure and response prevention in a nutshell. In a nutshell, and it might feel really silly. You might be thinking, oh, I've got to do so many steps just to be able to get out the door or go to school, or to be able to have a dinner party or even get out of bed. Okay, that's all right. Break it down into small baby steps. For every time you face your fear, you're strengthening that muscle of being able to tolerate discomfort.
It's so important. It's so empowering. It's why I always say, it's a beautiful day to do hard things, because it's a total flip flop on what your natural brain wants to do, your instinctual brain, which is, it's a beautiful day to run away from hard things. So really remember that. It is a beautiful day to do hard things. Really think about what you want to be able to do with your life. Write down what fears you'd need to face to do that, and then go and face those fears. That's what I'm going to encourage you to do.
That being said, I, myself, am about to embark on a very, very hard thing, which is the exciting news. I'm almost done with this episode. I'm going to drop you my exciting news, which is the book, the Self-Compassion Workbook for OCD comes out literally next week. You can go to wherever you buy your books to get it. It's called the Self-Compassion Workbook for OCD. It is literally the example of facing your fears. I have quite a large degree of anxiety about this, but I am going to face it every step of the way.
That being the case, because I am so insistent on facing my anxieties about it, sort of feels like I'm putting myself out there a lot – next week, I am going to announce an exciting, what would we say celebration of the book. It is going to be a month-long celebration. I hope you come along for the ride. In order to really benefit from this celebration, you will need to sign up for the newsletter because I will be sending tons of resources for you. I'm going to try and get you to engage in self-compassion like you have never done before. I want to use this as an opportunity to teach you and deep dive into the practice of self-compassion like you've never done before. You can go at your own pace. I strongly encourage you to sign up for the newsletter. You can go to cbtschool.com to sign up and it will give you tons of information. But next week's episode, I'm going to tell you all about it, and I am so excited. So, so, so excited.
If you want a ton more information, you can go and follow me on Instagram. I'm going to be doing a ton of lives, talking about the book, reading through the book, showing you some of the exercises. I'm just so excited. I'm almost a little too excited. I'm probably going to burn out midway, but I'm going to do my best not to do that. But please do stick around. I cannot wait to share that with you. I will give you all the information next week. Yeah, so excited. And go ahead and get the book if that's something that would be beneficial for you.
Well, that is all I have to say for today. That is the core of this podcast – facing your fears compassionately, willingly, in a joyful way. Even I encourage you to make it in any way possible, joyful. That is what I want you to do, and I'm really so excited to hear all of the hard things that you guys are doing because that's what we're here for. If that's the one big impact I can make in my career, I'm going to be a happy camper.
All right. I am sending you so much love. I hope you are well. It is a beautiful day to do hard things. I love you so much. Take care of yourself and I will see you for a very exciting episode next week.The Self-Compassion Workbook for OCD is here! Check the link HERE for more information.
This week we interview Drew Linsalata, an amazing friend who has written an amazing book called, "Seven Percent Slower" Click the link below to hear more about his book! https://theanxioustruth.com/seven-percent-slower/ Kimberley: Welcome, everybody. This episode is for you, the listener, but it's actually for me, the podcaster, more than anything. Today, we have the amazing Drew Linsalata. I've talked about Drew before. We've done giveaways. We've done a bunch of stuff together on social media. I am a massive Drew fan. So, thank you, Drew, for being here today. Drew: Oh, you're so sweet. Thank you, Kim. It's my pleasure to be here. Kimberley: Okay. So, you, you are amazing, and I would love if you would share in a minute to people a little bit about your lived experience with anxiety. Drew is just the coolest human being on the planet. So, I'm so excited to share with everybody you, because I think everybody needs Drew in their life. Drew: Wow. Kimberley: But in addition to that, we are today going to talk about something. I'm actually going to try and drop down into my own vulnerability, and not just be the host, but also be the listener today because you are talking about one particular topic that I need to work on. So, first of all, tell me a little bit about your background, your story, and we'll go from there. Drew: Sure. So, unfortunately, I lived in experience with panic disorder, agoraphobia, and intrusive thoughts and things of that nature, clinical depression, on and off, from the time I was 19 years old – 1986 all the way to around 2008, in varying degrees. So, it was a very long time. I was in and out of those problems. They came, they went. I did all the wrong things for a lot of time, trying to fix those problems, even though I knew what the right things were, because I've always been a bit of a behaviorism and cognition geek. And it took me a long time to come around to actually solving those problems. I did the medication thing that didn't work out for me. And then I really just took the time to learn what I needed to do behaviorally, cognitively, using those evidence-based things that I know you talk about all the time. And I just used them on myself and I learned as much as I could from very smart people like you. And I went and did the work and managed to get myself through the recovery from panic disorder and agoraphobia and depression and all of those things. And along the way, the things that I learned, I just started sharing with other people, which is nothing that I invented. I never claimed that I invented any of this stuff. I just became a really good messenger, I guess, in terms of explaining. Well, I learned this and then I used it this way. And that led to just helping people online back in 2008, 2009 as I was going through it. And that led to continuing to do it. And that led to starting my own podcast back in 2014, like talking to nobody with a $4 app on my phone. But it just seemed like the right thing to do to try and pay the help forward, because I had a lot of supportive people who rallied around me. And that just one thing led to another. And here we are, and the podcast is just kept going and it has led to writing two books about this stuff. One is my story, and one is the recovery guide that I wrote. And here I am, still educating about this topic and advocating and supporting where I can and just trying to contribute to the community because I felt like the community, in its form that it was in 10, 15 years ago, was so helpful to me. And I just feel like I want to give as much of that back as I can. So, yeah. Kimberley: So you've written-- I'm giggling. So, for everyone listening, if you hear me giggling, it's not because it's particularly funny. It's just so ironic to me. You wrote a book called Seven Percent Slower. Drew: Yes. Kimberley: Now I probably tell my clients every single day they need to slow down. I have done a podcast on slowing down, but it is probably the safety behavior I fall into the most. And I don't do a ton of safety behaviors anymore that this one is just so ingrained in me. So, I read your book. Thank you so much. Not only is it an amazing read, but you're hilarious. I was texting Drew yesterday, just cracking out at some of the things that he says because it's my type of humor. I just love it. So, can you share with me why this one topic? Of all the things you could have written, why is this one topic? Why was it so important to you and why is it so important? Drew: It's a good question. Up until three, four months ago. I would have not thought that I would write this book. There was no plan to write a book about learning to slow down. But what I discovered was, Seven Percent Slower is the thing that I just came up with as a little silly mental device for me when I was struggling in a big way. I knew that part of what would happen when I would get really anxious and I would begin to panic, and I would just associate that with all those nasty things, I would start just really speed up. I would rush around like crazy. And I knew I was doing that, and I knew that wasn't helping me, but I was having a hard time catching it. And one of the things that my therapist at the time, she was like, "Really, you got to start to learn to slow down." So she gave me that good advice. Again, I didn't invent any of this. And I used to have to remind myself, I would literally walk around trying to remind myself like, "Slow down, moron. Slow down." I would be talking to myself. The no self-compassion there, like, "Slow down." And I was trying and trying and trying. And then for some reason, because I'm a fan of the absurd, the idea of trying to go 7% slower was born in like 2007 in my stupid brain. And it was just easy to remember, "Oh yeah, just go 7% slower. And it was just a little mental trick not to actually go 7% slower. Just remind me again to slow down. And it proved to be really helpful to me like that stuck in my head because it's silly. It's just a silly, arbitrary number. And I forgot all about it. I use it. I still use it to this day, but not really thinking of it consciously. And I have to tell so many people in the community surrounding my podcasts and my books that slow down. One of the things to do slow down – I started telling people, "Well, just try going 7% slower." It came back to the surface again. And the response that I got from it was astounding, like, "Oh, that's so great. Yes, I'm using it. I'm doing the 7% slower thing and it's really helping me." And I'm like, "Oh, there's a book. I need to write this." And that's how I dragged it back up from 10, 15 years ago. And I said, "I should probably write about this and tell people what it is." Kimberley: So, tell me how you implemented it in-- you've talked and I've heard you talk about exposures and some of the experiences you did. Can you just give me upfront for people who, first of all, want to hear about your story, what were some of the exposures you engaged in and how did slowing down impact it, both for how did it make it easier and how did it also make it more difficult? What was your experience? Drew: So I'll give you a typical morning for me. My biggest issue was-- again, my official diagnosis would have been panic disorder with agoraphobia, right? So I had a real problem leaving the house or being alone by myself or going any appreciable distance from the house. And so, a typical exposure for me, a typical morning for me when I decided I really have to fix this as I would get up, the minute I open my eyes, I put my feet on the floor, I would already be in a state of very heightened state of arousal and anxiety at that point because I knew it was coming. I was going to get dressed. I was going to get ready. I was going to hurl my butt out the door and start driving, which is the thing I was terrified to do. So, I did that every day, every single day. And right away, I learned within the first week or so like, okay, I get the principle of this, but I'm walking out the door in a blind panic. So I need to dial it back and start to work on just preparing to walk out the door first. So, I need to really acclimate to this first. And that's when I really started using the "Slow down, slow down, slow down." So, I would get up and I would be trying to get ready and rush around and drink water and do everything I had to do to get out the door like I was on fire and it was crazy. And I started to slow down that way. And it really was a huge help, but you're right, it also made it worse because-- and this is so funny because it came up in a live I did the other day on Instagram with Jen Wolkin. She talks about mindful toothbrushing. And that is really-- the act of brushing my teeth in the morning is where Seven Percent Slower really began to shine. I wrote about it in my first book. The first thing I did before I learned to drive again was to learn to brush my teeth slowly and mindfully while I was in a complete state of panic. Yes. And just the act of slowing everything down, all I have to do is take the cap off the toothpaste. All I have to do is put the paste on the brush. All I have to do is put the cap back on. All I have to do is pick up the toothbrush. I literally would have to break down my getting-ready routine into the tiniest, little tasks and just focus on each one of those and literally act as if I was in slow motion. So, I wrote in Seven Percent Slower that one of the ways I learned to actually do that was to exaggerate it in a huge way. To me, it felt like it was brushing my teeth in slow motion. I probably was, but it really helped because it was the opposite action. So, my amygdala is screaming, "Go fast, go fast, go fast." And I'm like, "No, no, no, I'm going to go slower and slower and slower." And it did change my state over time. And I was able to go out and start my drive and my exposure and panic all over again. But at least I was leaving the house at a level 5 instead of a level 8. But it did make it harder because when I slowed down, I would just feel all of the things. I just have to let them come and let them come. You know the deal, and your listeners, I'm sure, know the deal. So, it was tough, but it was also tremendously helpful to me. Slowing down was one of the biggest things that changed my situation, for sure. Kimberley: Yeah. And the reason I think this is so important, this one thing and I love that you're just looking at this one thing, is I think in that moment, for the listeners, we're constantly talking about how to reduce mental compulsion. And I think the slowing down helps with that too, right? I think about there's exposure, but there's also the time before the exposure and after the exposure where you have to practice not doing the compulsion. And if you're rushing, your brain's rushing and everything. And so, I love that you're even talking about before doing the exposure, you had to slow down. Drew: Yeah. I mean really, before the exposure was exposure itself, there's no doubt about that. And I had to come to the realization that like, well, the exposure right now isn't the driving. The exposure is literally putting my shoes on right now while I panic, putting on my coat while I panic, brushing my teeth while I panic. And in Seven Percent Slower, I wrote about accidental emergency multitasking, which that's the thing that I forgot. We were talking before we went in there. I forgot I wrote that. And I'm going through my editor's notes, and I'm like, "I wrote that, how about that?" But that's true because when you-- Kimberley: Good for me. Drew: Yeah, right. Good for me. go through. So, I remember really thinking that, like when you're in that crazy terrified state, I was trying to solve every problem at once. So, there was a lot of mental compulsion in there. I was trying to go through the drive in my head. I was trying to anticipate each turn. I was trying to beat back the panic before it even happened in my head. I was thinking about yesterday's drive and how difficult that was. And slowing down, meaning it put things-- it made me focus on what was going on right now. So, it was also accidental or backdoor water down sort of ghetto mindfulness practice. I'll take it though because it worked. It put me in the present moment and it took me out of emergency accidental multitasking mentally and physically. Kimberley: I think it's pure mindfulness, right? Drew: Oh, it definitely was. And there was no-- I mean, I wrote about this in the book too. I'm not trying to read the whole book to you guys, but yes, it is part of it. There's a whole chapter called Is This Mindfulness: Do I Need to Meditate to Slow Down. It's literally one of the chapters. And well, it kind of is. If you start to learn to go slower, you will accidentally become more mindful without having to go through all the overwhelming things that sometimes people feel mindfulness is. "I have to become grateful and of the present moment, and I have to learn to appreciate the now." No, you just have to slow down, and you'll automatically mechanically become more mindful. The rest of the stuff is window dressing. It doesn't matter. I wasn't grateful for brushing my teeth at all, but I was mindful of it, and it got me out of those compulsions in that crazy, anticipatory anxiety cycle. Let me do the exposures more effectively. Kimberley: Yeah. So, one of the things I love that you did-- and I actually did the homework. You'll be so proud of me. Drew: You did the homework. Did you use index cards? Kimberley: Huh? Drew: Did you actually use index cards, like I wrote about? I'm so old. Kimberley: I did. Usually, when I read a book, I do not follow their instructions because I don't like to follow instructions. It's not my style. Drew: I feel you. Kimberley: My husband always cringes when I go to make an IKEA piece of furniture because I am bringing out those instructions. Drew: It's going to be an extra draw leftover. We just know it. Kimberley: Oh, I could show you some photos. You would love, I tell you. But I did your homework. And this is what I thought was really interesting. So, I want to walk through. I'm going to try to be vulnerable here. I have noticed in the last week, since returning back from vacation, that my hyper-vigilance is going up a lot. I was noticing my anxiety wasn't so high, but I was engaging in a hyper-vigilant behavior. I think mostly because I'm now thinking about COVID, how to protect my children, and all the things. When we were away, we were far, far away from anybody. We didn't see anybody. So, I sat down, and I wrote the things that I do that I need to slow down at, right? And I'm just sharing it because I do the homework. I'm so proud of myself. Drew: I'm proud of you too. Kimberley: So number one is in the morning, I wake up and I sit up and I just go. I don't ease into the day. And then you talk in the book about how speed is like an escape response, right? You don't want to be in your discomfort. So, I thought that was interesting. These are ways that I've caught myself, right? So I jumped out fast. Like how can I not feel my discomfort about the day? Another one is I rushed during emails. And the big one, which I'm not happy about, is I multitask. Now I want to get your opinion on this as my dear friend, excuse me. Most people are probably multitasking, but why would multitasking be bad for anxiety? Drew: Okay. So, I…
Full show notes at the publisherIn this week's podcast, we talk with Allyson Ford about her journey with OCD and an Eating Disorder. Allyson shares how her journey with OCD began when she watched ERP SCHOOL, our online course for people with OCD. Allyson quickly realized that she had not only been working through an Eating Disorder but had also struggled with OCD. Allyson Ford shares these 3 main points on OCD Recovery: In recovery, don't wait for the fear to be gone. You must take the action while scared/anxious for real growth to happen. It will feel counterintuitive but that doesn't mean you are doing it wrong. ERP is terrifying and it's worth it in the end. It's so empowering to realize you can have anxiety and do the things you love anyways. Because it is so scary, you need a therapist that you can really trust- who is both skilled in ERP and compassionate/warm. Shame and myths about OCD keep us suffering for much longer than we need to. Two major turning points for me were learning about what real OCD is- I quickly identified signs and symptoms within myself since 8 years old. The next game-changer was finding a community of other therapists who live with OCD. I felt so embarrassed to be a therapist struggling with these issues- I felt broken and ashamed. It made work really anxiety-provoking. I attended Pure O Chrissie's Gamechangers retreat and that changed everything for me. I suddenly felt empowered and hopeful; this propelled my ERP treatment forward. Learning and applying skills for intrusive thoughts was also a game-changer. Learning that everyone gets intrusive thoughts and that they don't mean anything, learning mindfulness skills (bookshelf metaphor) for rumination and one-upping my thoughts/power stance were the most helpful. Knowing that the theme of my thoughts only points to what I value most was also helpful- it always boils back down to my work. I care so deeply about making a meaningful impact on my clients, and that seems to be what my OCD attacks the most! Allyson Ford, MA, LPCC is an Eating Disorder, OCD, and anxiety therapist with lived experience. Allyson graduated with her Master's degree from New Mexico State University and has since worked in a variety of settings including hospitals, schools, residential programs, and now private practice. Allyson provides virtual services throughout California and also does part-time work at The Eating Disorder Center with Jennifer Rollin. Allyson has a passion for integrating social justice throughout her practice and has a podcast available on Apple and Spotify called Body Justice. Allyson utilizes ERP, DBT, CBT, ACT, and IFS in her practice. You can find her on Instagram at @bodyjustice.therapist and her website: www.allysonfordcounselingservices.com This is Your Anxiety Toolkit - Episode 201. Welcome to Your Anxiety Toolkit. I'm your host, Kimberley Quinlan. This podcast is fueled by three main goals. The first goal is to provide you with some extra tools to help you manage your anxiety. Second goal, to inspire you. Anxiety doesn't get to decide how you live your life. And number three, and I leave the best for last, is to provide you with one big, fat virtual hug, because experiencing anxiety ain't easy. If that sounds good to you, let's go. Welcome back, friends. I am so happy to have this special time with you. Thank you so much for giving me your very valuable time. How are you all doing? Just checking in. I know it's been a really hard year. I know we talked a lot last week about suffering and how to manage that. If you didn't hear that episode and you're struggling, please go back and listen. Hopefully, it will connect with you and land up with you in a way that is validating and kind and builds some space for you and some safety for you. This is going to be a wonderful episode. It's actually an interview I have done with somebody who I met through ERP School, interestingly enough. I am so honored to have this week Allyson Ford. Now Allyson is an LPCC. She is an eating disorder specialist and OCD specialist and anxiety specialist. She has lived experience, which she shared, in those areas, and she shares her experience of finding out that she has OCD, talking about her eating disorder recovery. And the cool thing is, like I said, she will reflect a lot on how ERP School, one of our online courses that teaches you how to practice ERP all on your own and learn about ERP – she shares how that was a big game-changer for her. So I'm so excited to share with you this amazing interview. We talk a lot about the overlap between eating disorders and OCD. Even if you don't have one or both of the disorders, I encourage you to listen because I think that there is some amazing story and I think it's really cool to see stories of clinicians who have actually walked the walk. They don't just talk the talk. So I'm so, so excited to share that interview with you. Before we do that, let's go ahead and do the review of the week, this week's review. If you want to ever leave a review for your anxiety, you can. I would love to see it. We feature one review a week. This one is from StrongMom and she said: "A big virtual hug. I don't know how I found this podcast, but I'm so glad I did. Kimberley's compassionate and honest conversations about anxiety and OCD provide tools and strategies for facing fears, anxiety, and BFRBs. Her friendly, nonjudgmental tone about the challenges are so helpful to me." Thank you so much, StrongMom. I love hearing that the podcast is helpful. Before we get over to the main part of the show, we'd like to do the "I did the hard thing" segment. This is actually from someone you guys have had on the show before. This is from Alegra and she says this: "I let go of someone who I really cared about because it was the best thing for me, even though it deeply hurt." I think that that is such an important "I did a hard thing" because sometimes we talk about it as just doing exposures, right? Facing our fear. But sometimes the hard thing is letting go of something. Sometimes the hard thing is setting a boundary with somebody. Sometimes the hard thing is listening to our own needs and following through with our needs. So I loved this submission for "I did a hard thing." Okay. That being said, thank you to you all for being here again. I am so grateful. I know I say it and I want to keep saying it. Thank you. Thank you for spending your time with me. I'll head over to the show. ----- Kimberley: Welcome, everybody. I am so excited for this episode. We have with us Allyson Ford. Thank you for being here. Allyson: Of course. I'm so excited. Kimberley: Yeah. Okay. So, let's tell this story, and this is where I get so geeked out, is when I hear of people who've taken ERP School or taken one of my courses, and they'll either post it on social media or something to say, "Oh, this was really helpful." And then literally my life is like done. I feel so good. I'm so happy. And that's how I met you, Allyson. So, I'm so grateful to have you here. Would you tell us a little bit about you and anything you want to share about your own recovery? I'll ask questions as we go. Allyson: Yes, absolutely. So, my name is Allyson. Like Kimberley said, I am a licensed therapist in California. I work primarily with eating disorders and anxiety, and I have my own recovery journey with an eating disorder. I just recovered from anorexia years ago, and it wasn't until this year that I realized I also have OCD. For anyone that's listening, it's common to have both symptoms, symptoms of both. They really overlap. And so, I see it a lot in the clients I work with, and that's what prompted me to take ERP School. I was looking for resources to become more trained to work with clients with OCD. And then through taking the course, I was like, "Oh my gosh, I have a lot of this." And then I sought out an ERP therapist to work on things that were coming up for me, and it's been really rewarding. And so, now I really enjoy working with OCD as well. Kimberley: Wow. I have such big goosebumps on that. That's so fascinating to me that you would be doing continuing education units for yourself and helping your patients, and then realizing you had symptoms yourself. When you took the course or when you considered this learning, what did you think OCD is compared to now what you know about OCD? Allyson: Yeah. That's a great question. Because I went to graduate school, I knew that OCD was obsessions and compulsions, and I knew that the compulsions had to take up a certain amount of time of your day. But what was unclear is, what is an obsession and what is a compulsion? So, I still had this stereotypical image of OCD being like hand washing and checking the stove. And yes, those can be symptoms, right? But I was thinking about this the other day and I wish they would change the name of OCD in the DSM. I wish it was like Intrusive Thought Disorder because obsession, to me, sounds like, you think of it as something you like. Like, "Oh, I'm obsessed with this." We don't think of it as something negative. Like, an intrusive thought is scary. It's frightening. It's so unsettling. I wish I would've known that it meant something totally different than just not just hand washing and cleaning. Kimberley: Right. Exactly. Yeah. Like I said to you, that made my day to hear that because a big part of our mission is to help educate people who do think it's like organizing your cupboards nicely and hand washing and lining things up evenly and so forth. So, was that a great realization for you? Or was that a sad realization for you to be like, "Oh, there's more to it than this and maybe this includes me"? Allyson: Oh my gosh, it was terrifying at first. Actually, when I was taking ERP School the first time, I was like, I knew this wise part of me was like, oh my gosh, yeah, these are some things you're struggling with. But then there was a lot of not wanting to face that. So I think between the time I took ERP School till I actually got help was still like six months, and there was a lot of like reaching out to ERP therapists and then backing out. I was so scared because I knew through taking your course that I was going to have to face my fear. When you go through one major mental health disorder in your life – going through anorexia, I was so terrified to go through something like that again. I'm so scared to have another label. Especially being a therapist, there's like this extra stigma that we shouldn't suffer. And so, that was a huge part of it. Just the stigma of having a mental health diagnosis again. But yeah, it was completely and totally scary. Kimberley: Yeah. Isn't that sad though? And I agree with you. I resonate so much with what you're saying. Isn't it sad that as therapists, we're made to believe, or we take on the belief that we aren't supposed to be human? For me, everyone on my account and my listeners know I had anorexia as well, but I did a tremendous degree of compulsive exercise, and it always felt OCD-like. As soon as I learned about OCD, I had a similar feeling of like, this is exactly what I used to do. I had a fear, and to remove this fear, I would do this one specific calculated move. And so, I get what you're saying. You had already gone through treatment. Now that you know about ERP, did your treatment now look a little bit like ERP? Because for me, my anorexia treatment felt like ERP at the time. Allyson: Yes. I would say it was a blend. It was a lot of facing the fears, reducing the compulsive behaviors, but then there was a huge relational component too. And that's something I've been reflecting on with ERP, that sometimes I feel it's missing in terms of ERP training. It's like, we forget the fact that the relationship is the most important thing. Going through my own ERP, it being so terrifying, I needed to have a therapist that I really trusted that like, this is actually going to help me. So, yes, it was, I would say, a mixture of behavioral, but also just relational. Kimberley: Yeah. So, true. So, if you're comfortable sharing, would you share a little about the area of OCD that you have experienced? Allyson: Yes. So, I've pretty much experienced all of them minus symmetry and contamination. But other than that, I've had pretty much all the themes. The ones that have been the stickiest in terms of the most impactful on my daily functioning have been real event OCD, which is – and you can correct me – but when something has actually happened and then you fear it like happening again, right? Kimberley: Yup. Allyson: That one was the one that actually propelled me to take ERP School. And then I've had harm obsessions, like fearing that I was going to hurt someone, fearing I would blurt something out really mean. That's been a really big one for me. And then in the past, now that I know what OCD is, I can see that growing up I had fear or harm obsessions. Those were the main ones, but I've had all the intrusive thoughts. Kimberley: Yeah. And that's why I think it's true. I agree with you, in terms of the word, obsession is very misunderstood. Isn't it? It's very much related to this unwanted experience. And I think that was a really different-- maybe you could share as well for a lot of people with eating disorders. Would you say that the eating disorder was an unwanted thought or a wanted thought? Allyson: Yeah. So, that's where it gets a little tricky. So, we talk a lot about egodystonic versus egosyntonic, and I would say in general, egodystonic is anything that you don't like, right? You don't want to be thinking that. With eating disorders, it's tricky because you think you like it. But if you actually sit down and you ask the person, "Well, how is this impacting your daily life? Isn't this behavior in line with your long-term values?" they will say no. I've never had someone say yes. Even though it feels like you like the thought or it feels congruent with who you are, it's really not when you look at the long-term picture. I think that's an important distinction to make. Kimberley: Yeah. So important. And that's why I love that you're here because we don't talk enough about eating disorders here on the show as much as I would like. I think that those little nuances are so important clinically to be able to understand. So, thank you for telling us. Okay, you took ERP School. What was your main takeaway? You obviously had the takeaway of like, "Oh, this could be a part of my symptomology," but in terms of just what you've learned, what was the main takeaway for you? Allyson: The biggest takeaway was that in order to get better, I had to face my fears. I had to take away the compulsions, which were mostly mental for me. And that was really hard to wrap my head around, like learning mindfulness skills to stop ruminating. I just thought everyone obsessively ruminated. So, I just didn't know that that was a mental compulsion. So, identifying those and then retraining my brain. It was so hard. Like you said, I think in ERP School and in your podcast, you talk about how you might have to do it 500 times a day, like redirecting your attention back to the present – that was so true. It felt exhausting. So, those were my biggest takeaways – you need to face your fear and don't expect this to be comfortable. Kimberley: Yeah. I'm glad that's what you took. I got goosebumps listening to that in terms of you talking about how exhausting it i…
Full show notes at the publisherThis is Your Anxiety Toolkit - Episode 200.
Oh my stars, you guys, Episode 200. So exciting.
Welcome back to Your Anxiety Toolkit. I am so thrilled to have you here for Episode 200. Oh my stars, you guys, this is a huge deal for me. In fact, let me set you up for today's episode.
So, in Episode 100. We actually invited all the guests that we had previously had on the podcast and we had a celebration. If you want some fun, you should go over there and listen. It is such a wonderful episode.
I was thinking about what I wanted to do for Episode 200, and I'm not going to lie, nothing landed. Nothing. I just couldn't bring myself to throw a huge party for it. And I think that's what I wanted to talk with you guys about today in this episode, which is, who's suffering? Who's struggling? Who is having a hard time? Because I know I am, and I'm guessing you are in some way or another. I wanted to use this episode as just a time where we can talk about suffering and we can talk about what that looks like and what that means and what we can do when we're struggling. And so, let's talk about that today.
Before we do that, let's first do two new segments. In fact, one is new and one is a return of an old segment we used to do. And the first one is where I would like to read you a review of the week for the podcast.
This week's review is from Katie. Thank you so much for your review, and for all of you for writing a review. You guys do know that I'm giving away a pair of free Beats headphones once we hit a thousand reviews. We have a long way to go, but I am committed to getting there. And so, in the meantime, let's celebrate each of you as we go.
Today's review is from Katie and she wrote: "This podcast is a great resource that has helped me before I was brave enough to seek treatment. It's nice to know that I am not alone. The tools and conversation are authentic, helpful, and hopeful. Grateful for Kimberley's generosity in sharing."
Thank you, Katie, for leaving a review, and thank you to all of you for leaving a review on the podcast. It helps me to get reach ultimately, and that helps me to help more people with this free resource.
Alright, so the second part of the podcast is a return to the "I did a hard thing" segment. Now, we have actually upgraded this segment. And what we're going to do from now on is I have a form on my private practice website, where we launched the podcast. It's called KimberleyQuinlan-lmft.com. If you go over there and you click on Podcast, right there is a way to submit your hard thing. And so, we used to do it on social media and we used to do it via email and it was very, very messy. And so now, you get to submit your "I did a hard thing." We will take a look at them and we will do one per week. I am so excited.
I really believe that the "I did a hard thing" segment is literally the basis of this podcast. When people tell me or they DM me or they message me, or they tell me in person that they did a hard thing, they tell me as if this is a new concept to them that they've never, ever been encouraged to do. They tell me as if it's life-changing. And that's why I really feel like this is the core of this whole podcast, which is to come together as a group to do hard things. And maybe the hard thing isn't something that's hard for other people. That's totally okay. That's the whole point. If it's hard for you, it's hard for you. And I love celebrating that because sometimes, out in the world, we don't have people to celebrate with. And I think that needs to be such a huge piece of the work that we do, and it is such a part of the work that we do here.
So, to get us started, I'm actually going to do the first one. Now, I want to encourage you to think of your hard thing as just something that's hard for you. And then we can talk about here in a second what that may mean.
So, my hard thing for this episode is this, and I'm so excited to tell you this, is that Your Anxiety Toolkit Podcast hit 1 million listens. 1 million downloads, 1 million times people listen to this podcast and I could not be more excited. And this is why I think this is so important, is because as I went and I learned of this wonderful achievement, immediately, I heard a voice that says, "Yeah, but such and such got there in way quicker time," or "Yeah, but I know that some people who have way more successful podcasts than you do, they're going to look at that and they're going to be like, 'Oh wow, just a million?'" And immediately, that voice came in.
And so, what I want to encourage you to do is catch that voice when you recognize that you've done a hard thing. Because when you can catch the voice, you don't have to then engage with the voice and go, "Yeah, you're right. No point really celebrating that because other people got there easier and faster and better and all the things."
So, here today, I am going to celebrate this milestone. Thank you so much for you guys for supporting me because I never would have gotten there without you. And I want to invite you to go over. I will put a link in the show notes below where you can submit your hard thing, and there will be no judgment here. If your hard thing is getting out of bed, that is a massive win. If your hard thing is going to therapy like Katie's was, then that is amazing. If your hard thing is doing the 10 out of 10 exposure on your hierarchy list, then that is amazing. And I want to make sure every single week, we are celebrating one of you at least with your "I did a hard thing."
Okay. So, those are the two segments we needed to get started on. Let's talk about suffering.
So, here it is, you guys. I know you guys know a lot about my story and I was so lucky to have this beautiful summer where we got away, and I had so much time to heal and rest and be with my kids and it was magical. I'm not saying that to brag. I'm just sort of saying that if you have 10 minutes even to spend with yourself and rest, I cannot promote that enough. The resting is so important when it comes to our recovery.
And then when I returned back to LA, we had to come back and prepare for my children to return to school. The thing that really got to me is– let me just share with you really quickly about our vacation really quick – we decided to leave LA for the summer. We took seven weeks and we got in our SUV and our raft. We didn't get in our raft. We towed our raft and we brought that around and we traveled eight states over seven weeks. We rafted 65 miles as a family. It was wonderful. We rested, we played, we sang a lot of annoying children's songs. We listened to a lot of audiobooks, so that was wonderful.
But it was really interesting as we left Oregon down into California. The minute we crossed the border, all of a sudden, we were hit with smoke, and it was like driving into the apocalypse. Smoke was everywhere. We couldn't see 100 feet in front of us. And the closer we got to LA, the more I noticed my anxiety rising and my sadness increasing and dread and all the feelings. And then I got back to LA and really wanted to spend some time readjusting with my family. But all I could think about was, wow, everybody is suffering so much – COVID numbers and the fires and earthquakes and political issues.
I wanted to really slow down for you guys enough to validate your distress to validate the suffering and struggles you have. Chances are, you're dealing with all of that on top of some type of mental struggle or medical struggle. And so, I wanted to first just give you permission to take some time and validate that this is hard.
I find that when I speak about suffering with my patients and my clients, a lot of them often diminished their suffering by saying, "Yeah, but other people have it worse," or "My thoughts are irrational, so I shouldn't be this distressed," or "I have a home," or "Whatever it is, I shouldn't be sad."
But I want to remind you of this core important fact, which is, all forms of suffering are enough and are valid. Don't get into the comparison trap of who's suffering more and who deserves to suffer more and who deserves help and who doesn't. You deserve help. This is a very difficult time and we must hold our suffering and our struggles in a warm, nurturing position.
You know, you guys, I always sort of make the joke of imagining you are holding a beautiful, yellow baby chicken and their little bones are like, oh my gosh, toothpicks, but not like toothpicks because they're so frail. And if you were to hold them, you would be so gentle with the baby chicken. Your touch, your facial expression, your warmth in your voice would be so gentle. I want you to hold your struggles as silly as it seems like a baby chicken. Beautiful, tender, warm, kind, respectful tenderness. I really hope that you can do that.
The other thing I would encourage you to do – and I don't know if this will help you, it was incredibly helpful for me over the last two years – is to continue to remind yourself that suffering is a part of being a human. Often I get caught – and this was a big lesson for me at the beginning of COVID, which was a part of me, and also when I got diagnosed with postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome, I know a lot of you have struggled with this when you've been diagnosed with a mental disorder, whether that be OCD and eating disorder and anxiety disorder, a depressive mood disorder – is we want to sort of stomp our feet and say, "This shouldn't have happened to me." And by all means, please stomp your feet. Please have as much time to grieve that as you need. Again, there's no reason for us to invalidate our own suffering, but for me, it was really important to remind myself that humans do suffer.
As COVID happened, I had to keep reminding myself, COVID, while it's a huge issue and as harming so many people, is-- and I noticed I was like, "This shouldn't be happening. This is wrong." And I had to keep reminding myself, like, who says, it's wrong? Who said it wasn't supposed to happen? Who said that we were supposed to have a life that's only easy? Who said that we weren't supposed to struggle with mental illness? When it comes to mental illness, that's what we would consider internalized ableism, which is, this idea that we should always be in tip-top shape. We should always be thin. We should always be smart. We should always be able. We should always be capable and handle things well. That's just not human. It's never been that way. it should never be expected to be this way. You're allowed to suffer. You're allowed to have troubles and struggles and pain, and you're allowed to stumble as you try to navigate that.
And so, what I really want to remind you out when we talk about suffering is really taking away expectations that it was supposed to be easy and that it was supposed to be a free run. Now, I put in a caveat here, which is, you don't deserve this either. You don't deserve this suffering. It's not a form of punishment. I know a lot of people come with that belief that they are being punished for something bad they've done. You didn't do anything wrong. You didn't ask for this. This is painful stuff. And I really hope that all the compassion practices that we've talked about here on this podcast have given you the tools you need to support yourself as we continue to suffer and struggle.
Now, there's one last thing I want to mention, and that is hope and faith. I have had to wrap my head around these concepts during the last three years. How can I be hopeful when we have global warming or pandemics or hate against minorities? How can we be hopeful about this? This is where I'm going to encourage you to find hope in you, find hope in the community and the support around you. This community, if you haven't got a supportive community, look and focus in on this community and the people who are doing the hard things and who are searching and struggling and working through what it's like to have a mental illness. Bring your attention to those who've done what you are wishing you could do. There are so many advocates, you guys. I look to them every day. People who have lived experience, who have been through really difficult things and have come out on the other side – I look to them for hope and I use them as a little lighthouse for where I may need to go next. And I hope that I can be that for you.
But I really encourage you. As you're navigating your suffering in this time, I really encourage you to look to the people who are doing things the way you wish you could and just use them as your shining light. You don't need to do what they're doing. You don't even have to stop there but use them as a beacon of hope that together we can get there and that you will get there, and that together we can hold space for each other's pain tenderly, compassionately, respectfully. That is my hope for today.
So, that being said, Happy 200th Episodes. I always end the episode by saying: It is a beautiful day to do the hard thing. And I know you're all struggling. I'm struggling. I get teary just talking about this with you, but every day I say to myself, this is a beautiful day to do the hard thing. I'm just going to do one step at a time. I'm going to ask for help. I'm going to find my community. I'm going to celebrate my wins. if you can maybe put your attention there, I hope you can – maybe that will make the day a little lighter and the suffering a little less difficult to bear.
Have a wonderful day, you guys. I love you. I will see you for the next hundred episodes or more, the next million listens or more. I really am just honored to be on this journey with you.
Have a good day.
This is Your Anxiety Toolkit - Episode 199. Welcome to Your Anxiety Toolkit. I'm your host, Kimberley Quinlan. This podcast is fueled by three main goals. The first goal is to provide you with some extra tools to help you manage your anxiety. Second goal, to inspire you. Anxiety doesn't get to decide how you live your life. And number three, and I leave the best for last, is to provide you with one big, fat virtual hug, because experiencing anxiety ain't easy. If that sounds good to you, let's go. Welcome back, everybody. Oh my goodness, I am so excited about this episode and so deeply honored. So, for those of you who know me, you know how completely-- oh my gosh, I get so excited about meeting my mentors – people who have taught me so much as a clinician, who have taught me so much as a human being. Today's one of those days, you guys, I am so excited and so grateful to be able to have, like I said to you, my biggest mentors on the podcast. Today, we have on the podcast talking about shame, Dr. Christopher Germer. So, if you guys may remember, I did interview Kristin Neff before COVID about self-compassion, and Christopher Germer, who we have today, has co-founded the mindfulness self-compassion concepts and tools. They have workbooks, they have trainings, a website, and the work they're doing is so important. I strongly encourage you to go over and check out the work that they're doing, because it is life-changing. But today, what I'm so excited about is sharing with you a conversation I had with Christopher Germer about shame, and he really breaks down all of the things we need to know about shame. We talk about some things that I myself have still got a lot to learn. Some of the things he said today – I had to do everything in my power, not to be like, wait, stop, I need to be able to think about that for a second. I need you to say that again, because he just drops so many truth bombs, and he is so amazing. So, I'm going to stop going on about how excited I am because I have a total fangirl experience right now. I literally just got off the phone with Dr. Germer, and I'm going to share this with you. So, I hope you enjoy it. If you are somebody who has struggled with shame, you are going to love this episode and take a lot away because it is such an important part of all of our recovery and all of our well-being. So, enjoy the episode, everybody, and I will see you all next week. ----- Kimberley: Welcome. I am so honored, and I have such deep respect for today's interview guest. We have today Dr. Christopher Germer. Thank you so much for being here. Christopher: Thanks, Kimberley. Great to be here. Kimberley: So, I've actually been dreaming of having you on for some time. I really wanted to hear your thoughts about shame. I was at a presentation or a training you did in December, right before COVID started, and I loved what you had to say. So, this is the topic of today. Can you share with us, just give us a brief description of what shame is? Christopher: Well, shame is probably the most difficult human emotion. Shame is probably the most hidden human emotion, which is also why it's so difficult, because if we can't see it, we can't work with it. But shame is primarily-- it has two main aspects. One is it's a self-conscious emotion, which means we're kind of seeing ourselves in the minds of others, and there's also negative self-evaluation. So, what we're seeing in the minds of others, it's usually some scorn, something negative. So, those are the two main characteristics of shame. Shame also has a kind of-- there's kind of a global negative evaluation involved. In other words, we don't just think a part of me is kind of needing to be tweaked a bit. It's like, I am fundamentally bad or unworthy or incompetent or helpless. So, there's a kind of a global evaluation. So, that's shame. But at the end of the day, what shame really is an attack on the sense of self. So, guilt is a criticism of one's behavior. In other words, I did something wrong. Shame is "I am wrong." So whenever there is a self-attack, there's usually an element of shame involved. Kimberley: Right. And I think that's so interesting that you say, because it's such a huge component of someone who's struggling with a mental illness, or even just emotions, in general, is a lot of us when we're having a hard time, we move immediately to like, "There's something wrong with me." Christopher: Yeah. So, shame can either be the cause of different forms of mental distress or the consequence. So, when we think badly of ourselves because we're struggling, say with an anxiety disorder or depression, then that's an element of shame – thinking badly about ourselves, right? The self-attack. Or if we get negative messages from the culture, like if what we're struggling with, it's stigmatized or if it's a burden on somebody in our lives and they start to criticize us for what we're going through. So, in that way, shame is a consequence of some internal distress, but it can also be a cause. If we are beating up on ourselves or something that happened to us in childhood, and inevitably, for example, if we suffer a lot of criticism or neglect or abuse in childhood, we basically blame it on ourselves and we carry shame through our lives. Shame takes the form of self-criticism. It takes the form of self-isolation. It takes the form of self-absorption. Any of those ways of being have a serious effect on our mental health. If we isolate ourselves, then we get lonely. If we criticize ourselves, we can get anxious or depressed or anything. So, shame can be a cause or a consequence of mental illness, mental distress, and certainly anxiety. Kimberley: Right. I love that you identify that. So, I think a lot of us understand that you would experience shame and have some self-criticism in relation to that. Can you share a little bit about why you think we would alternatively isolate? Christopher: Well, it just goes along with the shame. Kimberley: It just happens. Christopher: Isolation is a hallmark of shame, but maybe one way of looking at it is evolutionarily. In other words, we have shame because in human evolution, it served the function, and the function it served was it kept the tribe together, and tribes that stayed together survived. So, when somebody sort of broke the rules, it jeopardized the tribe, it jeopardized the individual, and that wasn't good. So, what shame is, is a really intense emotion that we feel when we break the rules, and then the tribe excludes us. And that became hardwired in us through evolution because those people who basically felt shame stayed in the tribe and survived. So, therefore we have shame. The problem nowadays is that we could feel shame for just about anything that has nothing to do with survival. We can feel shame because my body type or my sexual orientation or gender identity, anything we could feel. The interesting thing, Kimberley, is that actually, we are more likely to feel shame when we are being devalued in a social context than when we do something wrong. It's quite possible we do something wrong, even something that violates our own standards. And we just feel just a little bit of shame. But when people treat us in a devaluing way, then we have a lot of shame. So, the question was isolation. Shame has always been associated with isolation. But what's really interesting is that in the tribe and among our ancestors, the way they got us back into the tribe, fortunately, was by making us feel bad, not by beating us up. If they had to beat us up to get into the tribe, that would be not good for the survival of the tribe. So, we learned the fine art of shame, and it feels like we're getting beat up and we just want to get back. We want to get back into the good graces of our friends and so forth. So, bottom line is that it's just the central part of shame to feel extra – kicked out of the tribe alone, desperately alone. Kimberley: See, that's so fascinating that you said. I'm going to have to relisten to this, this term around like, it's true. We could be physically hurt, but there's that emotional when someone says something about us and they attack us emotionally. That can be the most painful, heavy load. That can create a cycle of shame and all of those and isolation and criticism. That's so interesting. I've not heard it being explained that way. Can you tell me about self-absorption, though? Christopher: So, in a moment of shame, two things happen. One is we are stopped dead in our tracks. There's like a startle. There is a fear response. Sometimes there's like a moment of panic. So, that goes with shame. And then there's instinctive turning inward. This also makes good evolutionary sense because then the idea is you would turn inward, and then you would take inventory of what you did wrong and then fix it. So, that turning inward is a part of shame, but it's only helpful, Kimberley, when it's mild shame. In other words, if you, I don't know, mistreat somebody, and then you stop, you turn inward, you realize what you did wrong. And then you basically stop feeling ashamed, and a little bit, you start moving a little more into guilt, and then you apologize, right? People in the midst of shame, they can't apologize. They're too self-absorbed. But when it turns to guilt, then you can step out of yourself. You can apologize. And then the beautiful thing is when you are basically forgiven, or you're welcomed back into the tribe. So, that turning toward oneself, turning inward is part of how shame develop. But when we have not state shame or temporary shame or mild shame-- but when we have a trade shame, shame proneness, intense shame, chronic shame – we get stuck in self-absorption. We get stuck in turning in on ourselves. We get stuck in rumination. We get stuck in obsession. This is a direct fruit of the shame experience. So therefore, when people ruminate in a-- I say, if you're having obsessive-compulsive disorder or something, and you're just ruminating all the time, there's often a shame component because this is just how we're wired. Kimberley: Right. It's so interesting that you say that, and it is. I even know, I can say personally, if I've done something wrong, there is sort of a-- I think what you're saying is the self-absorption isn't in a critical way. You're saying it as criticism, it's more of that you're just stuck on "Did I, could I, why did I, should have I, why did I do that?" And you're stuck in that cycle. Christopher: You get stuck in the cycle. And when we can see the shame in, we can address the shame, then we can get unstuck. And seeing and addressing the shame – so shame is the idea that "I'm bad," or "I'm incompetent," or something. We can't just say, "Oh, no, I'm not bad, I'm good," because that's intellectual. That's in the higher cortical process. It just doesn't work to try to convince ourselves of something that is so anchored emotionally. So we need to do something really different to address the shame. We need to actually warm up the conversation. This is what Paul Gilbert figured out back in the year 2000 with compassion-focused therapy, is that you can't necessarily exchange a critical thought with a positive thought just because you want to, because your attitude has to change, the tone, the way you talk to yourself has to change. you have to warm up the conversation as he says. I think it was just a really profound insight, which is the centerpiece of compassion-focused therapy. But the bottom line is that when we-- say, if we're obsessing, and shame is at the root of this, first of all, we need to recognize that it's the root of it, but then how do we change that loop? We do it by actually learning to be kind to ourselves because we're obsessing, not as an effort to drive out the obsession or to fix ourselves or to stop this or stop that. We need to just put down our defenses and just say, "Honey, this hurts." You are suffering and learn to love ourselves as a kind of a wounded or broken person. I can tell you, in my own personal life, that's precisely how I got into self-compassion because I had public speaking anxiety, and I was technically an expert in anxiety disorders after I wrote a dissertation on it and so forth. For 20 years, I couldn't deal with my public speaking anxiety, although I knew everything that one should do about this. To put it simply, until I learned to love myself as a wounded healer, as a broken person, as somebody who could do nothing about his public speaking anxiety, just to love myself because I had public speaking anxiety, not as a way of driving out the public speaking anxiety. And when that happened, miraculously, I lost my public speaking anxiety. That was like in 2016, after 20 years. I'm sorry, 2006. I, more or less, haven't had much public speaking anxiety for the last 15 years because self-compassion addressed the shame by warming up my inner experience and embracing myself as a person suffering with anxiety, not trying to do some sort of slick strategy of fixing or overcoming or tricking anxiety out of my system. That didn't work. Kimberley: Right. Can you share with us? Because I think that's such a real-time experience. Can you share with us what that looks like for you? Of course, we can always, in our heads, picture the person who's presenting and has a lot of anxiety. I think we all know that feeling. What was the shift for you when you were on the stage and then it moved into that? Or did you have to practice it on stage? Can you share a little bit about your experience? Christopher: Yeah. So I guess, one thing is I've been practicing meditation for decades, but I never practice self-compassion meditation. Four months before I had a really important talk, which is that Harvard Medical School, the conference that I had, helped to organize on meditation and psychotherapy. Four months before that, I started to very deliberately practice loving-kindness meditation for myself for the first time in my life. So that meant just saying really nice things to myself over and over again, like, "May you be safe, may you be healthy, may you live with ease," and things like that. Just over and over, like a mantra. And that became a new voice in my head. It sure was a new voice. And then when I got on stage at this conference, when I got up the usual terror arose with me, but there was a new voice. So, in these months running up to the conference, I would sit in meditation and I would then think about this conference and I would be horrified, and I would start to panic on my cushion in meditation. But then I would just say really kind things to myself. And as I said, not to drive the fear out, but just because I needed some love because I was such a mess, because I just couldn't psych out my panic, right? So, I was just feeling anxiety, loving myself, feeling panicked, loving myself, feeling fear, loving myself. And then when I got on stage, I felt the fear and the love came through. It was like a new voice that said, "Oh, may you be safe. May you be peaceful. May you be happy." And with that warmth, the anxiety disappears because, I'm sure you've heard "Love is the opposite of fear." It really is because when we can hold ourselves in a loving embrace in the midst of our suffering, it really does downregulate the arousal, the sympathetic stress response. It downregulates the stress res…
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