SUMMARY:
Overcoming Health Anxiety is possible! Today, we interview Ken Goodman and his client Maria on overcoming hpyochondria using Cognitive Behavioral Therapy. In this episode of Your Anxiety Toolkit Podcast, you will learn key concepts of health anxiety and how to overcome their health anxiety.

In This Episode:

• What it is like to have health anxiety
• The key concepts of treating Hypochondria
• Tips for managing fears of death and cancer.
• A step-by-step approach to overcoming health anxiety.

Links To Things I Talk About:

https://www.kengoodmantherapy.com/
Quiet Mind Solutions
ERP School: https://www.cbtschool.com/erp-school-lp

Episode Sponsor:

This episode of Your Anxiety Toolkit is brought to you by CBTschool.com. CBTschool.com is a psychoeducation platform that provides courses and other online resources for people with anxiety, OCD, and Body-Focused Repetitive Behaviors. Go to cbtschool.com to learn more.

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EPISODE TRANSCRIPTION

This is Your Anxiety Toolkit - Episode 226.

Welcome back, everybody. If you have health anxiety, hypochondria, health anxiety disorder, or you know of somebody who has health anxiety, you are going to love this episode. I mean, love, love, love this episode.

Today, we have Ken Goodman, who’s on the show. He’s a clinician who’s here with his patient and they’re sharing a success story, a recovery story of health anxiety, and it is so good. I am so honored to have both of them on. It was so fun to actually interview other people and the way they’re doing it, and look at the steps that were taken in order to overcome health anxiety. And this is the overcoming health anxiety story of all stories. It is so, so good. I’m not going to waste your time going and telling you how good it is. I’m just going to let you listen to it because I know you’re here to get the good stuff.

Before we do that, I wanted to do the “I did a hard thing” and this one is from Dave. It says:

“I’ve been trying to get back into meditating regularly. I was sitting at a desk this morning, reviewing my work emails. And I told myself, before I get even further in my day, I need to meditate. I did a guided meditation, even though I felt a strong pull inside to go back to work. I kept getting caught up in my thoughts, but I just kept telling myself it doesn’t need to be a perfect meditation. I said the goal today is just to be able to sit without being busy for three minutes. Nothing more. It was hard, but I did it.”

Dave, thank you so much for the submission of the “I did a hard thing” segment, because I think that meditation is so important. In fact, I keep promising myself I’m going to implement it more into this podcast. And Dave has really looked at some of the struggles people have with meditation. And look at him, go, it’s so amazing. Totally did it. So amazing. Dave, thank you so, so, so much. I love it. If you want to submit, you may submit your “I did a hard thing” by going to KimberleyQuinlan-lmft.com. If you go to the podcast page, there is a submission page right on the website. And from there, let’s just go straight to the show. I hope you enjoy it.

Kimberley: Welcome. I am so excited for this episode. Welcome, Ken and welcome, Maria.

Ken: Thank you for having me.

Maria: Hi, Kimberley.

Kimberley: So, as you guys, we’ve already chatted, but I really want to hear. This is really quite unique and we get to see the perspective of a client and the therapist. If I could do one of these every single week, I would. I think it’s so cool. So, thank you so much for coming on and sharing. We’re going to talk about health anxiety. And so, Maria, we’re going to go back and forth here, but do you want to share a little bit about your experience with health anxiety?

Maria: Yes. I think I’ve had health anxiety probably for like 15, 20 years and not known about it. Looking back now, everything comes clear when you see the multiple pictures that you’ve taken of certain lumps and whatever five years ago. I’m like, “Oh my gosh, I have so many pictures that I’ve taken and so many different things.” But yeah, I’ve been struggling for a while I think, and had multiple doctor’s appointments. Until I realized that I had health anxiety, it was an everyday struggle, I think.

Ken: Well, you came to me and you were mostly worried at the time about ticks and Lyme disease and skin cancer, but you told me that for the previous 15 years or so, you were worried about other things. What are those things?

Maria: Well, I was mostly completely obsessed with moles on my skin and them being cancerous. And I was scared of ticks. I would not be able to walk through any grass or go hiking. I was scared that I would have to check my whole body to make sure that there were no ticks on me. I was completely scared of Lyme disease, and it just completely consumed my life really. And they were the main things. But looking back before that, I think that I always had a doctor’s appointment on the go. I would book one, and as soon as they said, “You can book online,” That was it for me. I would have one booked, and then I’d go, “Oh, what if there’s something else next week? You know what, I’m just going to book one for next week, just in case something comes up.” I am a terrible person when it comes to that because I’m taking up multiple doctor’s appointments. And I knew that. But it was trying to reassure myself, trying to control the situation, trying to control next week already before it even happened. So, yeah.

MARIA’S SYMPTOMS OF HEALTH ANXIETY

Kimberley: Right. What did it look like for you? What did a day look like for you pre-treatment and pre-recovery?

Maria: Some days it could be fine. I remember days where nothing was bothering me. It was such a nice feeling. And then I was scared because I never knew what was going to trigger me and it could be anything at any time. And I think that was the not knowing. And then as soon as I would latch onto something, I would come to the phone, I’d start Googling over and over again, hours of Googling and then checking. And then it was just ongoing. And then my whole day, I was in my head my whole day, just what if, what if, asking questions, going back to Google, trying to find that reassurance that of course never happened.

Ken: Yeah. You tell me that you would take pictures of your moles and then compare them with the cancerous moles online and do those things.

Maria: Yeah. And I would book-- and interestingly enough, looking back now, I went through a phase of always having a doctor’s appointment. And then I also went through a phase of completely avoiding the doctor as well, not wanting to go because I didn’t want them to say something that I knew was going to trigger a whole host of anxiety. So, I’ve gone through multiple doctors. And then once you start the doctor’s appointments, then you’re on a roller coaster. Because you walk away from that appointment, never feeling, or for me, never feeling reassured. Or feeling reassured for maybe a few minutes, and then you leave, and then the anxiety kicks in. “Oh, I never asked them this,” or “Oh my gosh, well, what did that mean?” And then the what-ifs start again and you’re back to square one. So then, you go, “Oh, no, I didn’t try just what they said. I’m going to book another appointment and this doctor is going to be the doctor that reassures me.”

MANAGING DOCTOR VISITS WITH HYPOCHONDRIA

Kimberley: Right. Or sometimes a lot of clients will say to me like, “The doctor made a face. What did that face mean? They made a look and it was just for a second, but were they questioning their own diagnosis and so forth?” And I think that is really common as well.

Ken: Well, the doctor will say anything and it could be something very simple like, “Okay, you’re all good. I’ll see you in six months.” And the person will leave thinking, “Why would he want me to come back in six months if nothing was wrong?”

Maria: Well, that’s interesting that you would say that because I think probably at my lowest point, I was keeping notes about my thought process and what I was feeling when I was actually going to the doctors or waiting for the results. And actually, I thought it might-- if I have a few minutes to read what I actually was going through in real-time, I know it’s probably very relatable.

Kimberley: I would love that.

Maria: I had gone to basically a doctor’s appointment, an annual one where I knew I was going to have to have blood tests. And they’re the worst for me because the anticipation of getting the results is just almost worse than getting the results, even though--

Ken: Did you write this before we met?

Maria: No. While I was seeing you, Ken.

Ken: In the beginning?

Maria: Yeah. When you’d asked me to write down everything and write down what I was feeling, what I was thinking, and then read it back to myself. And this is what I had written down, actually, when I was going through the doctor’s appointment and waiting or had just gotten the results.

Kimberley: If you would share, that’d be so grateful.

Maria: So, my blood results came back today. I felt very nervous about opening them. The doctor wrote a note at the top. “Your blood results are mostly normal. Your cholesterol is slightly high, but no need for medication. Carry on with exercise and healthy eating.” “Mostly,” what does that mean? “Mostly”? I need to look at all the numbers and make sure that everything is in the normal range. “Okay, they’re all in the normal range except for my cholesterol. But why does she write mostly? Is there something else that she’s not telling me? I need reassurance. I’m driving down to the doctor’s right now. I can’t wait the whole weekend.” I go into the doctor’s office and ask them, “Is there a doctor who’s able to explain to me my results?” The receptionist said, “No, you have to make another appointment.” I explained to her, “You don’t understand. I just need somebody to tell me that everything is normal.”

Finally, this nice lady saw the anxiety on my face. She calls the doctor over to look at the labs. The receptionist shows the doctor the one lab panel, and he says, “Everything is completely normal. Nothing was flagged. Everything is completely fine.” I thank him so much for looking and walk away. As soon as I get outside, I realize I didn’t ask him to look at all the lab panels. What if she meant mostly normal on the other lab panels that I didn’t show him? When I get home, I look over each one multiple times and make sure that each one is in the exact number range. After looking over them four or five times and seeing that each one is in the number range except for my cholesterol, I still feel like I need to have her explain to me why she wrote the word “mostly.” The crazy thing is I’m not concerned about the high cholesterol. I can control that. I don’t know what she meant by the word “mostly.” I’m going to send her a message. And I’m going to ask her to clarify. I have to believe that she would tell me if something was wrong. I wish there was an off button in my head to stop me worrying about this.

Ken: I remember this now. I remember. And this was in the middle. Maria was really avoiding going to the doctor and she had overdue with some physical exams. And so, we really worked hard for her to stop avoiding that. She got to the point where she felt good enough about going to the doctor. And she really, I think I remember her not having any anticipatory anxiety, handling the doctor very well, host the doctor very well, until she got the email and focused on the word “mostly.” And that sent her spiraling out of control. But the interesting thing about that whole experience was that we processed it afterwards, and that whole experience motivated her to try even harder. And then she took even bigger strides forward. And within a couple of months, she was really doing so much better. And I think it’s been over a year now since that and continues to do really well.

Kimberley: Yeah. Thank you so much for sharing that. I actually was tearing up. Tears were starting to come because I was thinking, I totally get that experience. I’m so grateful you shared it because I think so many people do, right?

Maria: Yeah. And there’s always and/or. You go into the doctor’s appointment, they tell you everything. And because your adrenaline is absolutely pumping, you forget everything. And then you come out and you go, “Oh my gosh, I can’t remember anything.” Then the anxiety kicks in and tells you what the anxiety is like, “Oh no, that must have been bad. That must have been--” yeah.

Ken: And that boost in adrenaline that just takes over is so powerful. You can forget any common sense or any therapeutic strategies or tools that you might have learned because now you just get preoccupied with one word, the uncertainty of that word.

Maria: Yeah. I would have to have a family member come in, my husband to come in and sit in the-- it got to that point where he would have to come in and sit in the appointment, so then after the appointment, I could have him retell me what was said, because I knew as soon as the adrenaline kicked in, I would not be able to remember anything.

ROADBLOCKS TO HEALTH ANXIETY TREATMENT

Kimberley: Right. Ken, this brings me straight to the next question, which would be like, what roadblocks do you commonly see patients hit specifically if they have health anxiety during recovery or treatment?

Ken: Well, unlike other fears and phobias, the triggers for health anxiety are very unpredictable. So, if you have a fear of elevators, flying or public speaking, you know when your flight is going to be, you know when you have to speak or you know when you have to drive if you have a fear of driving. For health anxiety, you never know when you’re going to be triggered. And those triggers can be internal, like a physical sensation, because the body is very noisy. And everyone experiences physical sensations periodically and you never know when that’s going to happen. And then you never know external triggers. You never know when the doctor is going to say something that might trigger you, or you see a social media post about a GoFundMe account about someone that you know who knows someone who’s been diagnosed with ALS. So, you never know when these things are going to happen. And so, you might be doing well for a couple of weeks or even a month, and suddenly there’s a trigger and you’re right back to where you started from. And so, in that way, it feels very frustrating because you can do well and then you can start becoming extremely anxious again.

Another roadblock I think might be if you need medicine, there’s a fear of trying medicine because of potential for side effects and becomes overblown and what are the long-term side effects, and even if I take it, I’m going to become very anxious. And so, people then are not taking the very thing, the medicine that could actually help them reduce their anxiety. So, that’s another roadblock.

Kimberley: Yeah. I love those. And I think that they’re by far the most hurdles. And Maria, you could maybe even chime in, what did you feel your biggest roadblock to recovery was?

Maria: Being okay with the unknown. Trying to be in control all the time is exhausting and trying to constantly have that reassurance and coming to terms with, “It’s okay if I can’t control everything. It’s okay if I don’t get the 100% reassurance that I need. It’s good enough,” that was hard for me. And also, not picking up the phone and Googling was the biggest. I think once I stopped that and I was okay with not looking constantly, that was a huge step forward.

Ken: You really learn to live with uncertainty. And I think you start to understand that if you had to demand 100% certainty, you had to keep your anxiety disorder. In order to be 100% certain, that meant keep staying anxious.

Kimberley: Yeah. Being stuck in that cycle forever.

Ken: You didn’t want that anymore. You wanted to focus on living your life rather than being preoccupied with preventing death.

SKILLS AND TOOLS TO OVERCOME HEALTH ANXIETY

Kimberley: Right. So, Maria, I mean, that’s probably, from my experience as a clinician, one of the most important skills, the ability to tolerate and be uncertain. Were there other specific tools that you felt were really important for your recovery at the beginning and middle and end, and as you continue to live your life?

Maria: Yes. I think the biggest one was me separating my anxiety from myself, if that makes sense. Seeing it as a separate-- I don’t even know, like a separate entity, not feeling like it was me. I had to look at it as something that was trying to control me, but I was fine. I needed to fight the anxiety. And separating it was hard in the beginning. But then I think once I really can help me to understand how to do that, at that point, I think I started to move forward a bit more.

Kimberley: So, you externalized it. For me, I give it a name like Linda. “Hi, Linda,” or whatever name you want to give your anxiety. A lot of kids do that as well like Mr. Candyman or whatever.

Maria: Yeah. It sat on my shoulder and try to get in my head. In the beginning, I would be brushing off my shoulder constantly. Literally, I must have looked crazy because I was brushing this anxiety off my shoulder every 10 minutes with another what-if. What if this? What if that? And I think I had to retrain my brain. I had to just start not believing and being distracted constantly by the “What if you do this” or “What if that?” and I’d say, “No, no.”

Ken: Yeah. I’d treat a lot of health anxiety. I have a lot of health anxiety groups. And I do notice that the patients that can externalize their anxiety and personify it do way better than the people who have trouble with it. And so, whether it’s a child or a teenager or an adult, I am having them externalize their anxiety. And I go into that, not only in my groups, but in the audio program I created called the Anxiety Solution Series. It is all about how to do that. And it makes things so much easier. If now you’re not fighting with yourself, there’s no internal struggle anymore because now you’re just competing against an opponent who’s outside of you. It makes things easier.

Kimberley: Right. Yeah. And sometimes when that voice is there and you believe it to be you, it can make you feel a little crazy. But when you can externalize it, it separates you from that feeling of going crazy as well.

Maria: I felt so much better as soon as I did that because I felt, “Okay, I think I can fight this. This isn’t me. I’m not going crazy. This is something that I--” and I started to not believe. And it was long, but it was retraining my brain. And I would question the what-ifs and it didn’t make sense to me anymore. Or I would write it down and then I would read it back to me, myself, and I’d be like, “That’s ridiculous, what I just thought.” And the other tool which was hugely helpful was breathing, learning how to breathe properly and calm myself down. I mean--

Ken: Yeah. There’s lots of different types of breathing out there. And so, I teach a specific type of breathing, which is, I call it Three by Three Relaxation Breathing, which is also in the Anxiety Solution Series. And it really goes over into detail, a very simple way to breathe that you can do it anywhere. You can do it in a waiting room full of people, because it’s very subtle. It’s not something where you’re taking a big breath and people are looking at you. It’s very, very subtle. You can do it anywhere.

MEDITATION FOR HEALTH ANXIETY

Kimberley: Ken, just so that I understand, and also Maria, how does that help someone? For someone who has struggled with breathing or is afraid of meditation hor health anxiety and they’ve had a bad experience, how does the breathing specifically help, even, like you were saying, in a doctor’s appointment office?

Maria: I’ve done it actually in multiple doctor’s appointments where I’ve had that feeling of, “I’ve got to get out of here now.” It’s that feeling of, “Uh, no. Right now, I need to leave.” Before, before I started, I would leave. And now I realized, no, I’m not. I’m going to sit and I’m going to breathe. And no one notices. No one can see it. You can breathe and it really does calm me down, especially in the past, I’ve had panic attacks and feeling like I can’t breathe myself. When you start to realized that you can control it and it does relax you, it really helps me a lot. I do it all the time.

Kimberley: It’s like a distress tolerance tool then, would you say?

Maria: It’s something that I can carry around with me all the time, because everyone needs to breathe.

Kimberley: Yeah. I always say that your breath is free. It’s a free tool. You could take it anywhere. It’s perfect.

Maria: Yeah. So, it’s something that I can do for myself. I can rely on my breathing. And now knowing after Ken teaching me really how to do it properly, it’s just invaluable. It really is, and empowering in a way. Now, when I feel like I can’t be somewhere, and in fact just not so long ago, I was in a doctor’s appointment, not for myself, but I sat there and it was really high up and there was lots of windows around. Of course, I don’t like being [00:22:34 inaudible]. And I felt I have to get out. “Nope, I’m not going to do it. I’m not going to do it.” I sat there, I did my breathing. I actually put my earphones in and started listening to Ken’s anxiety solutions and listened and took my mind off of it, and I was fine. I didn’t leave. And actually, I walked away feeling empowered afterwards. So, it’s huge. It’s really helpful.

Ken: Yeah. You just said a couple of very important things. You made a decision not to flee, so you decided right there, “I’m not going anywhere. So, I’m going to stay here. I’m going to tolerate that discomfort, but I’m going to focus on something else. I’m going to focus on my breathing. I’m going to listen to the Anxiety Solution Series.” And then by doing that, I’m assuming your anxiety either was contained, it stayed the same, or maybe it was reduced. Yeah?

Maria: Yeah, it was reduced. It stayed the same. And then it started to reduce. And naturally, by the end, I was like, “I’m fine. Nothing is going to happen.” So, it was great. And the other-- I want to say actually one more thing that really, really helped me. And it was actually a turning point, was that I was in another appointment. The doctor came in and told me I was fine. And it was actually like an appointment where they had called me back medically. So, it was a different scenario. It wasn’t me creating something in my head. But anyway, there was a lot of anticipation beforehand and he came in and he said, “You are fine. Go live your life.” And I walked away and I went home. And within maybe about 40 minutes, I said, “Maybe he was lying to me. Maybe he was just trying to make me feel good because he saw how anxious I was.” And at that point I realized, this is never going to stop, never. Unless I fight back, I will never-- I felt robbed of the relief that I should have felt. When he told me that, I wasn’t getting that relief and I was never going to have that relief unless I used-- and at that point, I actually got angry. And I remember telling Ken, I was like, “I’m so angry because I felt robbed of the relief.” And at that point, I think I then kicked up my practicing of everything tenfold. And that was a turning point for me.

Ken: Yeah. That anger really helped you. And anxiety is a very, very powerful emotion, but if you can access or manufacture a different emotion, a competing emotion, and anger is just one of them, you can often mitigate the anxiety. You can push through it. And for you, it was an invaluable resource, because it was natural. You actually felt angry. For other people, they have to manufacture it and get really tough with their anxiety. But for you, you at that moment naturally felt it.

And you’re right. You said it is never going to stop. And physical sensations, the body is noisy. People will have the rest of their life. You’re going to have a noisy body. So, that will never stop. It’s your reaction and your response to those physical sensations that is key. And you learn how to respond in a much more healthy way to whenever you got any sort of trigger external or internal.

TREATMENT FOR HEALTH ANXIETY/HYPOCHONDRIA

Kimberley: It’s really accepting that you don’t have control over anxiety. So, taking control where you have it, which is over your reactions. And I agree, I’ve had many clients who needed to hit rock bottom for a certain amount of time and see it play out and see that the compulsions didn’t work to be like, “All right, I have to do something different. This is never going to end.” And I think that that insight too can be a real motivator for treatment of like, “I can’t get the relief. It doesn’t end up lasting and I deserve that like everybody else.” So, Ken, how do you see as a clinician the differences in recovery and health anxiety treatment for different people? Do you feel like it’s the same for everybody, or do you see that there are some differences depending on the person?

Ken: Well, when I treat people with health anxiety, although the content of their specific fears might be different – some might worry more about their heart, some might worry more about shaking that they experience and worry about ALS – the treatment is basically the same, which is why I can treat them in classes or groups because it’s basically the same. There are some variations. Some people are more worried about things, where other people feel more physical sensations. And I may have to tailor that a bit. So, some people have to-- their problems are more the physical sensations that they feel and they can’t tolerate those physical sensations. And other people it’s more mental. They’re just constantly worried about things. But in general, they can be treated very similarly. It’s learning how to tolerate both the uncertainty and the discomfort and the stress that they feel.

Kimberley: Right. And I’ll add, I think the only thing that I notice as a difference is some people have a lot of insight about their disorder and some don’t. Some are really able to identify like, “Ah, this is totally Linda, my anxiety,” or whatever you want to name your anxiety. “This is my anxiety doing this.” Whereas some people I’ve experienced as a clinician, every single time it is cancer in their mind and they have a really hard time believing anything else. Like you said, they feel it to be true. Do you agree with that?

Ken: Completely. Yeah. Some people will come to me and they know it’s probably anxiety, but they’re not sure. And some people, they are thoroughly convinced that they have that disease or that disorder. And even after months and months and months of-- and oftentimes the content changes. So, I have patients who, when I first start seeing them, they might be afraid of cancer. And then two months later, it’s their heart. And then a couple of months later after that, it’s something else. There’s always something that can come up and they’re always believing it’s something medical. And of course, they go back to, “Well, what if this time it is? What if this time it is cancer?” And that’s where they get caught in the trap. So, for them, it’s answering that question. For Maria, it’s the word “mostly” that she became fixated on to get lured in and take the bait. It’s like, what happens to a fish that takes the bait? Now they’re struggling. So, now once you take the bait, you’re struggling.

Kimberley: Right. And I would say, I mean, I’ll personally explain. A lot of my listeners know this, but I’ll share it with you guys. I have a lesion on the back of my brain that I know is there. And I have an MRI every six months. And I have a lot of clients who have a medical illness and they have health anxiety, and it’s really managing, following the doctor’s protocol, but not doing anything above and beyond that because it’s so easy to be like, “Well, maybe I’ll just schedule it a little earlier because it is there and I really should be keeping an eye on it.” And that has been an interesting process for me with the medical illness to tweak the treatment there as well.

Ken: Yes, absolutely. I have a patient right now and she has a legitimate heart issue that is not dangerous. They’ve had many, many tests, but all of a sudden, her heart will just start racing really fast, just out of the blue. And it happens randomly and seems like stress exacerbates the frequency of it. But it’s not just irritating for her, it was scary because every time she would experience it, she thought, “Maybe this is it. I’m having a heart attack.” But she really had to learn to tolerate that discomfort, that it was going to happen sometimes and that was okay. It happens and you just have to learn to live with it.

Kimberley: Right. So, Maria, this is the question I’m most excited about asking you. Tell me now what a doctor’s appointment looks like for you.

Maria: It looks a lot better. You can actually pick up the phone and book an appointment now without avoiding it. I practice everything that I’ve learned. I’m not going to lie. The anticipation, maybe a couple of days before, is still there. However, it’s really not as bad as it was before. I mean, before, I would be a complete mess before I even walked into the doctor’s office. Now, I can walk in and I’m doing my breathing and I’m not asking multiple questions. I’m now okay with trusting what the doctor has to say. Whereas before, if I didn’t like what he had to say or he didn’t say exactly the way I wanted to hear it, I’d go to another doctor. But now, I’m okay with it. And it’s still something I don’t necessarily want to do. But leaps and bounds better. Leaps and bounds really. I can go in by myself, have a doctor’s appointment, ask the regular questions and say, “Give me the answers,” and leave and be okay with it.

GETTING TEST RESULTS WITH HEALTH ANXIETY

Kimberley: How do you tolerate the times between the test and the test results? How do you work through that? Because sometimes it can take a week. You know what I mean? Sometimes it’s a long time.

Maria: Yeah. I mean, I haven’t-- so, obviously, it’s yearly. So, I’m at that point next year where I will have to go and have all my tests again and get the results and anticipate. But I think for me, the biggest thing is distraction and trying not to focus too much beforehand and staying calm and relaxed. And that’s really it. I mean, there’s always going to be anxiety there for me, I think, going to the doctors. It’s not ever going to go away. I’m okay with that. But it’s learning how to keep it at a point where I can understand what they’re telling me and not make it into something completely different.

Ken: I think you said the keywords – where you’re putting your focus. So, before, your focus was on answering those what-if questions and the catastrophic possible results. And now I think your focus is on just living your life, just going about living your life and not worrying or thinking about what the catastrophic possibilities could be. Is that accurate? Would you say it’s accurate?

Maria: Yeah. Because if you start going down that road of what-if, you’re already entering that zone, which it is just, you’re never going to get the answer that you want. And it’s hard because sometimes I would sit and say to myself, “I’m going to logically think this out.” And I would pretend. I mean, I even mentioned to Ken, “No, no, I’m logically thinking this out. This is what anyone would do. I’m sat there and I’m working out in my head.” And he said, “You’ve already engaged. You’ve already engaged with the anxiety.” “Have I?” And he said, “Yeah. By working it out in your head, you’re engaging with the anxiety.” And that was a breakthrough as well because I thought to myself after, “I am.” I’m already wrapped up in my head logically thinking that I’m not engaging, but I’m completely engaging. So, that was an interesting turning point as well, I think.

Kimberley: Amazing. You’ve come a long, long, long way. I’m so happy to hear that. Ken, before we wrap up, is there anything that you feel people need to know or some major points that you want to give or one key thing that they should know if they have health anxiety?

Ken: Oh my gosh, there are so many. There is a tendency for people with all types of anxiety to really focus their attention on the catastrophic possibilities instead of the odds of those catastrophic possibilities happening. The odds are incredibly low. And so, if you’re focusing on the fact that it’s probably not likely that this is going to happen, then you’ll probably go through your life and be okay if you can focus your attention on living your life. But if you focus on those catastrophic possibilities that are possible, they are, then you’re going to go through life feeling very, very anxious. And if you focus on trying to prevent death, prevent suffering, then you’re not really living your life.

Kimberley: That’s it right there. That’s the phrase of the episode, I think, because I think that’s the most important key part. I cannot thank you both enough for coming on.

Ken: This is fun. This is great.

Maria: It was fun.

Kimberley: Maria, your story is so inspiring and you’re so eloquent in how you shared it. I teared up twice during this episode just because I know that feeling and I just love that you’ve done that work. So, thank you so much for sharing.

Ken: Yeah. She’s really proof that someone who’s suffered for 15, 20, some odd years with anxiety can get better. They just have to be really determined and really apply the strategies and be consistent. She did a great job.

Kimberley: Yeah. Massive respect for you, Maria.

Maria: Oh, thank you.

Kimberley: Amazing. Ken, before we finish up, do you have any-- you want to share with us where people can hear from you or get access to your good stuff?

Ken: Yeah. So, quietmindsolutions.com, I have a whole bunch of information on health anxiety. I have two webinars in health anxiety on that website, as well as other webinars in other specialties I have. Also, I have the Anxiety Solution Series, which is a 12-hour audio program, which focuses on all types of anxiety, including health anxiety, as well as others. And you can listen to a few chapters for free just to see if you would like it, if you could relate to it. And there’s other programs, other articles, and videos that I produced. I have a coloring self-help book, which is basically a self-help for people with anxiety, but every chapter has a coloring illustration where you color. And the coloring illustration actually-- what’s the word I’m looking for? It’s basically a representation of what you learn in that chapter. It strengthens what you learn in that chapter.

Kimberley: Cool.

Ken: Yeah. And then a book called The Emetophobia Manual, which is a book for people who have fear of vomiting.

Kimberley: Amazing. And we’ll have all those links in the show notes for people as well. So, go to the show notes if you’re interested in getting those links.

Ken: Ken Goodman Therapy is the other website. It has similar information.

Maria: I wanted to mention as well that I actually watched one of Ken’s webinars quite by accident in the beginning before I realized I had health anxiety. And after watching it, I thought, “Oh my gosh, I’ve got that.” And so, it was hugely, hugely helpful because I think that having this for so many years and not realizing, there’s a lot of people that still don’t realize that they suffer from health anxiety. For me, as soon as I could label it as something, it was a relief because now I could find the tools and the help to work on it and get that relief.

Kimberley: Amazing. Okay. Well, my heart is so full. Thank you both for coming on and sharing your overcoming health anxiety story. It’s really a pleasure to hear this story. So inspiring. So, thank you.

Ken: Yeah. Thank you for doing this, Kimberley.

Maria: Thank you.

Ken: And thanks, Maria.

-----

Thank you so much for listening. Before we finish up, we’re going to do the review of the week. This is from kdeemo, and they said:

“This podcast is a gift. I just found this podcast and I’m binging on the episodes. I learn something through each episode, and love her practical advice and tools. I feel like part of a community-what a gift!”

Oh, I’m so, so grateful to have you kdeemo in our community. This is a beautiful, beautiful space. My hope is that it’s different to every other podcast you listen to in that we give you a little bit of tools, a little bit of tips, but a huge degree of love and support and compassion and encouragement. So, thank you so much for your review. I love getting your reviews. It helps me to really double down in my mission here to give as many practical free tools as I can. It is true, it is a gift to be able to do that. So, if you could please leave a review, I would be so, so grateful. You can click wherever you’re listening and leave a review there. Have a wonderful day.

SUMMARY: 

Many people ask me, “Why do I have anxiety?” and the truth is, there is no clear-cut answer. However, in this week's episode, I give you nine possible causes of anxiety and what you can do to manage anxiety in your daily life. Some causes are in your control, and some are not.  Either way, it is important that you are super gentle with yourself as you explore some of the reasons for anxiety in your life. 

In This Episode:

• NINE possible causes of anxiety for you in your life
• What you can do to manage your anxiety
• How to overcome anxiety by changing small behaviors
• Reasons you experience anxiety may include
  1. Genetics
  2. Caffeine
  3. Distorted Thoughts
  4. Behaviors
  5. Trauma
  6. Environment
  7. Stress Management
  8. Lack of Tools
  9. Isolation (lack of community)

Links To Things I Talk About:

Time Management for Optimum Mental Health https://www.cbtschool.com/timemanagement
ERP School: https://www.cbtschool.com/erp-school-lp

Episode Sponsor:

This episode of Your Anxiety Toolkit is brought to you by CBTschool.com.  CBTschool.com is a psychoeducation platform that provides courses and other online resources for people with anxiety, OCD, and Body-Focused Repetitive Behaviors.  Go to cbtschool.com to learn more.
Spread the love! Everyone needs tools for anxiety...

If you like Your Anxiety Toolkit Podcast, visit YOUR ANXIETY TOOLKIT PODCAST to subscribe free and you'll never miss an episode. And if you really like Your Anxiety Toolkit, I'd appreciate you telling a friend (maybe even two).

EPISODE TRANSCRIPTION

This is Your Anxiety Toolkit - Episode 225.

Welcome back, everybody. Today, we are talking about the causes of anxiety, why you are anxious and what you can do about it. This is a topic I feel like keeps coming up with my clients like, “But why? Why is this happening?” And I totally get it. Now, a lot of the times, I encourage my patients the end goal, jump straight to the end goal is we don’t want to spend too much time trying to solve why we’re anxious. That in and of itself can become a compulsive problematic behavior. But I wanted to just address it because I don’t think I have addressed it yet in the podcast. I thought now is a good time to really just look at some of the reasons we humans are anxious. I’m an anxious person, my guess that the fact that you’re listening to Your Anxiety Toolkit means you or someone you love is an anxious person. So, let’s talk about why we’re anxious. What are the causes of anxiety and what are some of the reasons we are anxious.

Now before we do that, we want to, of course, do our “I did our hard thing” segment, and this one is for Bradley. Bradley wrote:

“I was at a family event and had to see a family member I haven’t seen in four years. I said a firm, no contact boundary with her since she was so toxic. And as much as I tried, I knew I could not control whether she came or not. Seeing her was very hard, but I gave myself loads of self-compassion and allowed that moment to be very difficult.” Oh, Bradley, this is so good. “I was pleasant to her, but I did not engage beyond what was necessary. I took multiple moments throughout the event to check in with myself and see what my body needed.”

This is so good and this is such great modeling of how we can regulate and monitor ourselves, giving ourselves kindness as we do hard things. I love this. Thank you so much for sharing it. This is really super inspiring. I think we all need to practice this one a little better, myself included. I hope that that brings you some inspiration before we move on into the episode. Thank you again, Bradley, for submitting that. I love hearing the “I did a hard thing.”

Let’s talk about why you and I, and we might be anxious.

1. Genetics

Reason number one is genetics. I think that if I’m with a client and they ask me, this is usually the spiel I would give them, which is, genetically, a lot of us are set up to have anxiety. What that means is somewhere in our lineage, our parent, our grandparent, someone had anxiety and it is quite a genetic trait to have. As we go through these, I’m really wanting you, just as a side note, to think about these things, but we don’t want to use these as an opportunity to blame other people. We don’t want to blame, of course, our parents or our grandparents. It wasn’t their fault. Obviously, they probably had it passed down from somebody else as well. But as we move through some of these, I also don’t want you to displace blame onto yourself, and we can talk about that as we go. But genetics is a reason that some of us are anxious.

I’ll give you a little bit of a piece of my personal experience here, is I often-- I mean, I know every anxiety tool in the book and there’s been many times where I’ve visited doctors or psychiatrists and they ask me about anxiety and I’ll say, “Yes, I have anxiety.” They’ll say, “Well have you had therapy? Have you tried medicine?” “Yeah, I’ve tried all of those things and I’m highly functioning and I have a wonderful life.” But I also have to accept that some degrees of anxiety are just genetic. I’m not going to get rid of them all. In fact, I don’t want to get rid of all anxiety.

I want to use this as an opportunity to remind you that this is not meaning that it’s a list of things you now have to go and fix. Not at all. This is about just being aware of what’s going on. Hopefully, at the end, we’ll talk more about this, is you can then acknowledge what might be bringing the anxiety on, but then go straight to your toolkit. The tools are the most important part here –acceptance, not judgment, willingness, compassion, being mindful. Go straight back to your tools once you’ve listened to this podcast because that’s going to be the most important piece.

2. Caffeine

The second reason you might have anxiety is because of caffeine. A lot of people report that if they have too much caffeine, they get jittery and it sets off a nervous response in the body where the brain then sends out a whole bunch of anxiety hormones and chemicals in the body. Caffeine mimics anxiety, which then means that now you have more anxiety, because when you have anxiety and you experience something like it, usually, if you go, “Oh my gosh, yeah, something must be wrong,” your body proceeds to send out more and more and more and more anxiety.

Caffeine can be one, but I will also tag on additional one here, which is alcohol. A lot of my patients have reported that if they’re drinking too much alcohol, they do feel that same jitteriness the next day, which then causes their brain to think something is wrong. Therefore, again, send out more anxiety, chemicals and hormones, something to think about.

3. Distorted Thoughts

Now, the third is really important. I’ve done podcast episodes on this before, and it’s distorted thoughts, catching your distorted thoughts. If you are at the supermarket and the man or woman next to you drops the cereal box all over the floor or they drop a can or a glass bottle, and it shatters everywhere, you are naturally going to have anxiety. Normal. Anyone would have anxiety. It’s a big shock to the system. But if you then have distorted thoughts about that, like that means it’s bad luck, I did something wrong, I’ve humiliated myself, they’re going to be judging me – there are so many different distorted thoughts. I’m just using this as an example. Or another example would be you are interacting with someone at the bank and you have then following the distorted thought of like, “They are judging me. They think I’m stupid. I I didn’t handle that well.” Maybe you have the thought bad things are going to happen and you’re catastrophizing. Those thoughts will create anxiety.

Now again, if you go back and listen to those episodes back a few weeks ago, you will remember me saying, we cannot control our intrusive thoughts. I want to make that really clear. There are a lot of thoughts you are having right now that you have no control over. What I’m talking about at distorted thoughts are the thoughts on how you appraise a situation. Let’s say you have a thought, let’s say you have harm obsessions, and you have a thought like, “What if I wanted to hurt somebody or so forth?” That you can’t control. But if then you appraise it going, “I’m a terrible person for having that thought,” that’s the distorted thought that you can actually work on. Those distorted thoughts can cause anxiety as well.

4. Behaviors

Sometimes our behaviors can create anxiety. Avoidance is one of them. You would think that avoiding your fear makes anxiety go away. Makes sense, right? But actually, it’s not true. The more you avoid things, the more you actually increase your anxiety about that thing.

If you’ve avoided something for a very long time, let’s say you avoided flying. Now, even the thought of flying is going to give you anxiety. So, behaviors can cause anxiety as well. Now, this also includes compulsive behaviors. It includes reassurance-seeking behaviors. It includes rumination in your mind, mental compulsions. Behaviors can increase the degree in how your brain responds.

People pleasing, this is a big one for me. If I’m people pleasing, trying to make everybody happy, no one upset, you would think, oh, that’s a good thing. You’re being a kind human being. Well, yeah, except it then creates a lot of anxiety at the idea that someone doesn’t like something you did or that they’re upset with you about something that you did. Now, you haven’t built up a tolerance to just the fact that we can’t please everybody. These are ideas on how behaviors can actually cause anxiety.

5. Trauma

In the mental health field today, everybody is saying everything is trauma. It’s like, “You’ve traumatized me. I was traumatized by this.” It’s important that we-- and this is for another conversation, but I’m going to slide it in here. When we talk about trauma, where I’m actually talking about life-threatening trauma. Not to say that we call it little “t” trauma. There’s big “T” trauma, which are life-threatening events, war, assault, witnessing a death, and so forth. There’s some examples. It doesn’t include all of them, but that’s what we call capital “T” trauma. There are little “t” traumas. We all have little “T” traumas and they can cause anxiety.

I’ll give you an example. When I was a kid, we went through, in 1992 I think it was, this devastating drought. I grew up on a farm. We really needed water and the whole environment was just desperate for water and we didn’t have enough water. We had to pay to have a truck bring water just so that we could have baths. It was really scary as a very young child to be afraid of not having enough water to drink. It was scary. We could call that a little “t” trauma. Still to this day, when my kids, my son just spends forever in the shower, I start to notice I get anxious when he’s in there for a long time because my brain is telling me we’re going to run out of water. That’s an example of why you may notice some anxiety show up.

Now I can correct that and remind myself that I live in times where there’s no drought or that we have excess water and so forth. And that’s where I check those cognitive thoughts and errors of my thinking. But the trauma itself can cause the anxiety. Again, I want us to be really careful around the word “trauma” because I don’t want us to be using “trauma” about all the things, because that actually isn’t good for our brains either to keep telling ourselves we were traumatized. That actually can create anxiety in and of itself.

6. Environment

You all have experienced this. Even though I don’t know you and your beautiful face, this you would have experienced in the last few years – the environment of COVID creates anxiety. Seeing people with the mask at the beginning of COVID, I’m guessing you would’ve had a bout of anxiety. Being around loud noises can create anxiety. Being in countries or regions where there are discord, conflict, war, they can create anxiety. Being in an abusive household, the environment of abusive household can create, of course, anxiety. Having someone around you who yells a lot and screams and throws things can create anxiety. There we’re going into the line again of trauma, but we want to consider environment.

7. Stress Management

A big one for right now as well. If you have an incredible amount of stress on your plate, you will naturally have anxiety. If this is you, I’m going to encourage you to consider taking some of the stress off your plate, if possible. I know it’s hard. Some of you have double jobs and family and chronic illnesses and medical, mental illnesses. It’s hard. But anywhere you can, ask yourself, is there a way I can make this easier or simpler so that I can reduce my stress?

8. Lack of Tools

Now this is a big one for me because I get really grumpy and cross. That’s an Australian term for everyone who is an Australian. When you say you’re cross, it means you’re angry or very grumpy about something. I get really cross when people who claim to be anxiety specialists give these strategies that actually make anxiety worse. Sometimes people do have generalized anxiety, but the tools they’ve been given can actually make it worse.

Telling people just to use oils – oils are fine. I have nothing wrong with oils. I actually, PS, love oil. But if that’s your only skill and only tool that you have and your only agenda for recovery, that’s not going to help. It’s actually going to create more anxiety because you’re going to keep getting frustrated on why it’s not working. If your only tool is to, again, another gripe I have that makes me very cross – ah, so funny that I get so upset about it – is people who talk about thought-stopping, like just think about a big red stop sign. That is not a helpful tool. Sometimes it works for some people. But if you have a repetitive intrusive thought, that is not going to work. It’s actually going to make your anxiety worse.

Lack of tools is an important one. I’m even going to say be critical, even of me when I’m giving tools. Really stop and ask yourself, does this work for me? Because I don’t know each and every one of you and all the intricacies of what’s going on for you psychologically. Always stop and ask yourself, is this helpful? I like to give you as many science-based tools as I can. I try not to just decide of a strategy that I use and just use it. But I want you to be really critical of everybody. Be very wise in your selection of who you choose to get advice from. That’s just a little piece to think about. Like I said, I always say this, take what you need and leave the rest if it’s not helpful.

9. Isolation

The last one is important. It’s not last for any specific reason, but it’s isolation. If you are in isolation for too long, meaning that you’re alone, you don’t have community, you don’t have connection, your brain will naturally get anxious. Sometimes people love isolation. I myself love isolation and quiet and to be by myself. Oh, it’s so good. I just love it. I just can sit and be still.

It’s good for some people, but too much isolation, prolonged periods of isolation often can cause anxiety, because we are community humans. Humans are built on community and tribe and needing each other. That goes back thousands, millions of years. For those who are struggling, they’re like, “Everything’s fine. I don’t know why, I’m in my safe house.” It’s like, “Well, when’s the last time you saw somebody?” “Oh, it was months ago.” “Okay, well, that makes sense. You haven’t had any of that.” There is some science to showing that your parasympathetic nervous system slows down when you’re in connection and even physical touch with somebody. That’s just something to think about as well.

There you have it. Those are the nine reasons, 10 if we include alcohol. They’re the reasons that you might feel anxiety in your life or in your lifetime. I hope that this brings you some insight and you had a few aha moments about maybe why your anxiety is showing up again. I promised I would say at the end, this is not to say that now you have to go and fix all of those nine things. Actually, quite the opposite. We don’t fix anxiety. In fact, the more ideal option would be to practice befriending and allowing and not judging anxiety. But if this is helpful for you to maybe make some tweaks in your life, change your distorted thoughts, reduce your caffeine, manage your stress, change your environment, get some connection, get some helpful tools, that would make me so, so happy.

Before we finish up, we are going to do the review of the week. This one is from Tennessee Lana. She said:

“Game changer. I found this podcast four years ago and it has been monumental in my anxiety and OCD recovery. Many podcasts led to new content that I could follow and learn. I could write about this and never stop but instead I’ll leave a few adjectives that I think adequately describe this podcast. Kind, insightful, intelligent, easy, interesting, practical, helpful, uplifting, and LOVING.”

Oh my goodness, Tennessee Lana, do you know the word I love the most? Practical. If I can be practical in helping you, I feel like I am winning in my career. All of those adjectives make me so overjoyed, but I love these. Actually, Tennessee Lana, I’m going to steal them from you. Copy and paste them. Maybe put them on my desktop just to remind me of the goals of the podcast. Love it.

I hope you found this helpful. Have a wonderful day. Please go to leave a review if you can. Those reviews allow me to reach more people from people who trust the show, which is key. If someone can see that other people are enjoying it, that means they can trust us quickly, which is the goal. And then from there, I hope that this episode was helpful and gave you some insights.

All right. I will see you next week. Have a wonderful day.

SUMMARY:

We all know that self-compassion is am important tool for anxiety recovery.  In this weeks episode of Your Anxiety Toolkit podcast, I address a common concern; “What if I dont deserve self-compassion?”  This is such a common reason people do not provide themselves with compassion.  In this episode, review the reasons YOU DO DESERVE SELF-COMPASSION and some key concepts and self-compassion mediations to help you practice self-compassion.

In This Episode, we cover:

• Self-Compassion Definition
• Reasons people feel they do not deserve self-compassion
• Ways to manage feeling unworthy of self-compassion
• How to practice Mindful Self-Compassion

Links To Things I Talk About:

Self-compassion Mediation: Here is a link to several self-compassion meditations from previous episodes.
https://kimberleyquinlan-lmft.com/episode-2-lovingkindness-meditation/
https://kimberleyquinlan-lmft.com/ep-134-giving-and-receiving-meditation/
https://kimberleyquinlan-lmft.com/ep-110-this-compassion-practice-tonglen-meditation-for-anxiety-will-change-your-life/

Episode Sponsor:

This episode of Your Anxiety Toolkit is brought to you by CBTschool.com.  CBTschool.com is a psychoeducation platform that provides courses and other online resources for people with anxiety, OCD, and Body-Focused Repetitive Behaviors.  Go to cbtschool.com to learn more.

Spread the love! Everyone needs tools for anxiety...

If you like Your Anxiety Toolkit Podcast, visit YOUR ANXIETY TOOLKIT PODCAST to subscribe free and you'll never miss an episode. And if you really like Your Anxiety Toolkit, I'd appreciate you telling a friend (maybe even two).

EPISODE TRANSCRIPTION

This is Your Anxiety Toolkit - Episode 223.

Welcome back, everybody. It is a joy to be with you again. Thank you so much for being here with me. Thank you so much for putting aside your valuable time to spend it with me. I feel so honored.

Today, we are talking about a question. And in effort for us to respond to this question, we’re actually going to ask ourselves some questions and I’m going to have some questions for you, and you’re going to think about them, hopefully, and then make some changes if you think that is what you need.

The big question of the week is: What if I do not deserve self-compassion? Now, one of the most common questions I get is this question, particularly when I’m with patients and we’re discussing the idea of practicing self-compassion or kindness towards themselves. Often, that is a question they ask, what if I don’t deserve it, or they may even make a statement like, “I don’t deserve self-compassion.”

Now, this is particularly true for those who are very self-critical and blame themselves for certain things that have happened either to them or that they have done. Like I’m saying, it’s like things that were accidental, things that they didn’t have control over, or maybe some things and mistakes that they did make. This is a really important question for us to explore. I’m going to hopefully get to explore it with you.

Before we do that, I would like to do the “I did a hard thing” for the week. This one is from Sophia. Thank you, Sophia, for writing in and telling us your hard thing. Sophia said:

“I suffered from OCD starting when I was 19. My hard thing I did was I reported my stepfather in for sexual abuse that occurred when I was nine when I found out I wasn’t the last victim. It took me 28 years to get to this place. And let me tell you, OCD really played into my intrusive thoughts. It made the process so much harder. But I did it and I feel like I’m out of the web of manipulation from my stepdad. This podcast helps so much and the book for self-compassion and fear workbook my OCD therapist recommended to me. I saw your podcast listed in the first few pages. Thank you for being a part of my support system without even knowing.”

Wow, that was an amazing “I did a hard thing.” Thank you so much, Sophia, for sharing that amazing hard thing. You are showing up and facing fear and pulling your shoulders back and living your life according to your values. That is impressive. I’m so honored to have you share that with us and really do wish you the best. You are doing amazing things.

Okay. So, let’s move into the bulk of the podcast in terms of let’s talk about what if I don’t deserve self-compassion. This is so important. I’m going to first pose to you the first question I have for you, which is, who actually deserves self-compassion?

If someone says to me, “Well, I don’t deserve it.” I’ll say, “Well, who does? What do you have to do to be warranted of compassion? Who does deserve it?” I really pose this question. I really hope you answer it. I would like actually you to sit down and ask yourself, “Well, then who does?” And you will begin to see very quickly, I’m guessing, the rules in which you have for yourself that keep you stuck.

Oh, the people who don’t have these thoughts, the people who don’t make mistakes, the people who are perfect, the people who look like they’re happy and are doing well. Or often people will say, “Everybody else is off the hook. It’s just, I’m not off the hook. Everyone else can be imperfect, mistake makers, but not me.” You’ll quickly learn the rules of your life.

I want to ask you, do you want to live by those rules anymore? Because this is not playing games. This is your life. Do you want to keep holding yourself to those rules that you just listed off? How does it benefit you to continue to hold yourself to that high, high standard? Often, we say, “I shouldn’t have these feelings. I don’t deserve it because I’m weak. I don’t deserve self-compassion because I’m not valuable. I don’t deserve self-compassion because of the content of my thoughts. The content of my thoughts is too heinous.” Okay. So, there you might want to look at, again, what are the rules and do you want to live by those rules? Because the truth is, you can’t control your thoughts and you can’t control your feelings and you can’t control life a lot of the time, almost all of the time. And so, again, do you want to live by those rules?

Next question: Are you beating yourself up for something that’s not your fault? Meaning can you control your thoughts? Because my thoughts aren’t my fault. I know my feelings aren’t my fault. I know how I interpret things aren’t my fault. That’s usually coming from years and years of being trained to think that way. I know my beliefs aren’t even my fault. I actually think we’re just creatures of habit and we were raised to believe certain things and we are going to make mistakes. I’m going to say this again: What would you have to do to warrant deserving self-compassion?

Often when we actually explore this, I really, really hope you start and actually write your answers down to these questions because when we stop and we look at like, okay, so if you don’t deserve self-compassion, we really know the benefit of you practicing self-compassion so much so that I am in the process of creating a course that will teach you. I’ve already written a book for people with OCD, but I’m creating a minicourse on how to practice self-compassion. It’s that important. I want everybody to have access to it, not just those who have OCD. That is a big part of my mission, is to get everybody to be practicing self-compassion.

Let’s say we really understand the benefits of it. We know it’s important. We know it can increase motivation, make you more successful, decrease procrastination, make you feel like a better sense of self. It can help you achieve your goals. So many benefits. It actually reduces inflammation. It gives you better wellness and health. It increases life satisfaction. So many benefits. Let’s say we want you to do it because it’s healthy, just like you would exercise because it’s healthy, or you would go get it to the dentist because it’s healthy. What would you have to do then to be warranted and deserving? And often then, again, you’re going to be very clear in terms of this list of things.

I’m going to ask you, are the list of things even realistic? Really, if you said, “Okay, I’d need to no longer have these thoughts and I would have to have changed the past and done something different. I’d have to regulate my emotions all the time. Never snap at my children and never say something silly at a party.” Is that even possible for any human? Really for any human, is that realistic? Do you actually think you can actually achieve that really honestly? This is a question. This is not rhetorical. This is an actual question.

The chances are, when you really answer it, the truth is, you’re not giving yourself self-compassion because you don’t feel like you deserve it. But the truth is, you will never be able to meet these rules that you’ve created for yourself. I don’t want to say that as if I’m blaming you. We’ve all done this. But I want you to be really honest with yourself in regards to, you’re never going to get to the place where you practice self-compassion if you keep those high level of rules, those perfectionistic rules. And then you miss out on this wonderful opportunity for your mental health and for your physical health, and for your wellbeing.

Here is another question: What would you have to feel in order to offer yourself self-compassion? Meaning how would you need to feel about yourself? What emotion would you need to feel in order to feel like you deserve it? What would you have to experience about yourself? Not the rules, but like would you have to. Some people say, “I don’t feel like I deserve it.” It’s a feeling.

The reason I ask this question is because often people will say, “It’s just a feeling I get. Sometimes I feel like I do and sometimes I feel like I don’t, usually depending on whether I’ve checked off all of these boxes.” But it’s still a feeling that you’re going off because it’s different. It’s not like you get your notepad out and you check the boxes. It’s a feeling.

I might pose to them, could you actually offer yourself self-compassion without the feeling and just do it anyway? It’s a very, very radical thought. What a radical idea that you might offer it to yourself even though you don’t feel like you deserve it. Could you offer it because of what you’ve been through or because of the checkboxes that you haven’t checked? Meaning I believe, and I’ve said this on the podcast before, and I’m going to say it very, very clearly here for you, I believe the more that you suffer, the more you are deserving of self-compassion. It’s not the more mistakes you’ve made and the more you’ve suffered, the less you deserve it. It’s actually the more you deserve it. “Oh, I’ve made a lot of mistakes today.” Oh, you’re even more deserving of self-compassion. We want to offer more to you. Oh, you are having a really hard day with some really hard emotions and some strong emotions. Oh, even more of a reason to offer compassion.

Now, usually when we talk about this, clients will say, “No, that’s just letting yourself off. That’s just getting out of jail free card.” I’m going to offer to you, like let’s trick this belief and check made it a little bit if we were talking chess, is self-compassion is not a get-out-of-jail-free card. It doesn’t mean you stop holding yourself accountable. It’s actually what helps you towards change. You are saying, “I don’t deserve self-compassion. I need to suffer and be criticized and punished because of something that happened.” Does that actually move you towards perfection? No, it doesn’t. It doesn’t create any change. In fact, it keeps you now doing behaviors, like I said, self-criticism, self-punishment, which keeps you stuck in a cycle of feeling bad and negative thoughts and feeling depressed and feeling hate towards yourself. Very little good comes from that. That is not getting you out of any problem. It doesn’t lead you towards being the best version of yourself. In fact, it leads you towards more and more suffering.

Mindful Self-Compassion

Offering mindful self-compassion doesn’t absolve you from what happened in the past. Ideally one day you will forgive yourself, but that’s a different topic. Forgiveness is not self-compassion. You can do both. You could forgive yourself as a form of self-compassion and you could be self-compassionate, which could lead you towards forgiveness. But here, what I don’t want you to think of is that people who are self-compassionate are just like, “Oh no big deal. I just totally did a terrible thing, and it’s not a big deal. I don’t have to beat myself up because that would be unkind.” No, that’s not what we’re talking about. And no one does that. If that’s the case, you’re not practicing self-compassion at all.

Self-compassion is just simply offering kindness towards suffering. That’s it. It’s not ranking you higher or lower and the good or bad person. It doesn’t mean that you don’t matter. It doesn’t mean that your pain doesn’t matter. It doesn’t mean that you can’t hold yourself accountable and take responsibility. It just means the absence of beating yourself up and meeting your pain with kindness and compassion instead of criticism and punishment.

The thing you’ve got to run mind yourself, and this is a huge thing I’m doing this year, is really trying to identify what’s working and what’s not. I do a lot of therapy. I think a lot. It’s one of my best skills and one of my biggest flaws, is I think a lot, I feel a lot. And it’s not a bad thing, but I’m really trying to be more efficient and effective. Meaning, okay, what’s the right amount of being responsible and taking responsibility? Because you could do a little bit, which is really responsible and very helpful. But then if you do too much of that, that doesn’t make you a super responsible person. It means now you’re moving into self-punishment. So, too much of one thing can be good and too much of one thing can also be bad. It gets you into trouble.

So, how can you be effective with the behaviors that you engage in, is the amount of criticism or self-punishment or deprivation of compassion, which is what we’re doing here and talking about, does that bring you benefits to your life? It’s an important concept for you to think about. Whether you think you deserve it or not, or whether you feel you deserve it or not, is it effective? We’ll come right back to one of the first concepts, which is, just because you think it, still doesn’t make it true. So, just because you think you don’t deserve it doesn’t mean you don’t deserve it. It just means you’re having thoughts that you don’t deserve it and thoughts aren’t always right.

We recently did a whole episode on guilt, quite a few months ago, but the whole concept was just because you feel guilty doesn’t mean you’ve done something wrong. Our brains make mistakes all the time. So, just because you think you don’t deserve it doesn’t mean you don’t deserve it. We think messed up, scary, wrong things all the time, and the truth is, anxiety lies. Depression lies. OCD lies. Panic lies. Chances are, a lot of these beliefs you have around self-compassion are also just lies. We want to move you towards recognizing that everyone deserves compassion. So, that’s the final where we land here, which is everyone deserves it. Everyone.

Really to be honest, even when I say the more you suffer, the more you deserve it, that’s actually not completely correct too, because that would still be buying into this idea that certain people deserve it more than others. Everyone deserves it equally every day, 24 hours. It’s just a done deal. You don’t have to give yourself self-compassion. But what are the negative impacts of your life, if you don’t, and what are the positive impacts in your life if you do? Think about how much good you can do in the world if you did. That’s the point I want to make.

Keep an eye out. We have a whole course on self-compassion coming. It will be for everyone. It will be $27. I’m in the process of making it. It will probably be available when this comes out, but just in case it’s not, keep an eye out in future podcasts. I will have a link on CBT School. You can go there and check it out. I cannot wait to share that with you. It’ll be a lot of these concepts, but actually more applicable skills for you to practice. Head on over to CBTSchool/self-compassion. I’m sure it’ll be there by the time we get to this episode and I am so excited to share it with you.

Before we finish up, let’s do the review of the week. This one is from Kanji96 and it says:

“This podcast is very helpful for me, especially when I’m going through hard times. Right now happens to be one of those hard times and here I am back listening to Kimberley. Thank you.”

Thank you so much, Kanji. Your reviews mean the world to me. Please, please, please go and leave a review. I mean it. If you get any benefit from the podcast, this is one way that if you feel at all so inspired to leave a review, it really helps me. It helps me to reach more people. It helps people to feel like they can trust the information here. I would love your honest review. So, go over to podcast app or wherever you listen and leave a review there. I am so grateful.

Have a wonderful day, everybody, and I will see you next week.

SUMMARY:

This week’s episode is incredibly inspiring, with Lora Dudek talking all about getting real about OCD recovery.  Lora shares her experience of having harm obsessions and harm OCD and how she managed being a mom during ERP. Lora also shared some wonderful ERP activities she did to help her keep track of her exposures.

In This Episode:

• What OCD Recovery looks like for Lora
• Her experience with Harm OCD
• What kind of Exposure and Response Prevention (ERP) Lora used for harm OCD
• How she used ERP and recovery to decide what her values were (starting a career in ERP)

Links To Things I Talk About:

• ​​Lora Dudek OCD Contact info: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/therapists/lora-dudek-lockport-il/935049
• https://www.graceandgratitudecounseling.com/ourtherapists
• ERP School: https://www.cbtschool.com/erp-school-lp

Episode Sponsor:

This episode of Your Anxiety Toolkit is brought to you by CBTschool.com.  CBTschool.com is a psychoeducation platform that provides courses and other online resources for people with anxiety, OCD, and Body-Focused Repetitive Behaviors.  Go to cbtschool.com to learn more.

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EPISODE TRANSCRIPTION

This is Your Anxiety Toolkit - Episode 222. 

Welcome back, everybody. I am so happy to be with you today. Oh my goodness, I’m going to tell you a story, totally off-topic. But today’s episode is number 222, and coincidentally, it’s coming out just by coincidence the week of February 22, 2022. The reason that that is special for me isn’t because I have any kind of affiliation with numbers, it’s that I have this amazing memory of when I was very young. It was the 9th of the 9th, 1999. My mom, who is the most amazing human being in the whole world, had a 9/9/99 party, and everyone had to bring nine of something, nine flowers, nine chocolates. You could bring whatever you wanted. Nine of... We had nine of everything – nine shrimp on the plate, nine prawns. In Australia, we call them prawns. It was such an amazing memory. 

I told my children that we were going to do something similar because I just feel like that was such a beautiful memory. And so, I feel like I’m beginning that whole celebration with you because coincidentally, it’s episode 222 on the week of 2/22/2022. Oh my goodness. I’m sorry. I know that has nothing to do with the episode, but it is a story that is so near and dear to my heart and I just wanted to share it. It isn’t actually an off-talk topic because I really do want to bring some more joy to this episode and I really do want to slow down and enjoy with you all. It is a huge part of my goal for this year. So, thank you for sitting in that joyful story with me.

If you would like, I hope you do something with twos, if you can, on that day, something fun. Buy yourself 22 flowers, say 22 nice things to yourself, whatever it may be, because these are very much once in a lifetime experiences and memories. 

Today, we have Lora Dudek with us on the podcast. Now, to say that I am a Lora Dudek fan is an understatement. I love this human being. She is such a shining light, especially for people who have OCD and want to feel like there is hope. She has such a beautiful story, such a hard, but beautiful story, and a real authentic, genuine story to share. I am honored to have her on the show like I am to have so many people come on who have a recovery story to tell. I particularly love when I can be a part of it and I was a part of their story, or CBT School was a part of their story or ERP School was a part of their story. And so, it is just such an honor to have Lora on here. She’s talking about what recovery looks like for her. The reason I love this idea is, recovery is different for everybody. I really wanted you to get an experience of what it looks like for someone who has really done the work. Like I said, so many of our podcast guests have done the work and Lora is no exception. So, I’m going to head over and let you guys listen to that. 

Before we do that, I first want to do the “I did a hard thing.” This week’s “I did a hard thing” is from Fabian, and they said:

“Hi, Kimberley. First of all, thanks for creating the room to write about my anxiety. I am recovering from OCD, and today I was at the dentist for a tooth filling. I don’t like it because my mouth is blocked and I’m scared of getting enough air. And moreover, I do not like to get injections.” Oh my goodness, Fabian, I feel you on this one. “I was able to face both and stay very present with the body sensations like cold hands, many, many thoughts, high heartbeats. It was a hard thing to finish the week and I’m happy that I did it. I will have to face it again in February 🙂. All the best to you and your team.”

Amazing, Fabian. I feel you on so many levels. The dentist is so hard for me. No matter how many tools I use, it’s always going to be hard, but you did the hard thing. And that is what I love. So, thank you so much for contributing your “I did a hard thing.” I am honored and major props to you. 

Okay. Let’s get over to the show.

Kimberley: Welcome, everybody. I am so excited about this episode today. We have Lora Dudek. She is now a Licensed Professional Counselor, but when I first met her, she was going through her own journey, and I wanted her to share her journey with you today. Welcome, Lora.

Lora: Thank you so much. I’m so excited to be here. 

Kimberley: Oh my gosh. Okay. So, we’ve already pretty much cried before we even got on today together, which is beautiful. And so, I can’t wait to get into this whole conversation together. You and I met online many years ago, and now you’re a therapist, which just blows my mind, helping people. Can’t believe that. So, that’s amazing. Do you want to share with us your full-circle story?

Lora: Yeah, absolutely. So, one of the things that we were just talking about was that I started listening to Kimberley’s podcast back in 2017, somewhere around then, when I had been newly diagnosed with OCD. This is a total full-circle moment for me because she was such a-- I just called her a ‘lighthouse’ back in the day. 

My own story really started when I was just a kid. I mean, I was a little girl and was having intrusive thoughts. My intrusive thoughts have always been harm-related. As a kid, I didn’t obviously really didn’t know what that meant. I had a big obsession with death. I was very, very scared to die and other people around me dying or me somehow hurting them. But when I was little, it always just manifested as telling someone I was scared that they were going to die, and then them reassuring me that they weren’t going to die, which is such an interesting thing to look back on. No one ever knew that. But that’s where the reassurance started. 

I was looking back. I can see these areas of my life that were impacted from the get-go really. And then when I had my daughter in 2014, the anxiety just became absolutely overwhelming. From the moment that I knew that I was pregnant, there were just basically constant thoughts about something bad happening. I felt the entire time that I was pregnant like, I don’t know how to describe it really. Maybe nine months of almost getting ready to attend a funeral truly is how I felt, because it just seemed so heavy, already knowing I was going to be really responsible for this life. 

While I was pregnant, I even got one of those sonogram machines or the fetal heartbeat machines. I would be sitting at the office and have an intrusive thought that something had happened to her, and I would rush home and I’d make sure that her heart was still beating. My doctor knew me very well because I was basically calling every other week with something that might be wrong, that never was. And then once she was born, it really manifested as just constantly checking on her. These intrusive thoughts that something really bad was going to happen to her, that I wasn’t going to be able to take care of her, and constantly asking my husband at the time that I’m an okay mom. I can do this. I’m able to do this. 

Those went on really. These thoughts and that heightened anxiety went on for-- she was 16 months old at her first Christmas or her second Christmas, sorry. We traveled with family to go see family, and I was putting her down for her nap and ended up laying down beside her. She fell asleep and I fell asleep next to her. It was in a bed. When I woke up, my first thought was, oh my God, is she breathing? I thought I had smothered her. And so, I put my hand on her chest and I could feel that she was breathing and I went to get up and walk away. I had the thought, what if she’s not? I was like, “Okay, let me check one more time.”

That is where I say the walls came down, because from that moment on, it was like, there wasn’t any-- the checking just got out of control and it flipped. It got into this area where I was scared that something bad was going to happen to her, but now, I was going to do something bad to her. It just changed flavors really quickly. 

We got home from that trip and I told my husband. He had to go on a business trip for two days. I basically didn’t sleep for two days. “I thought I’m going to hurt her. Something awful is going to happen to her. I can’t take care of her.” Just going out of my mind. I used to get up and check on her, probably 10 times a night, to make sure she was still breathing. At this point, I became so scared of myself that I would block my bedroom door at night with my dresser to make sure that I wasn’t going to get up and do something to her. I was like, “Whoa, something’s really wrong here.”

So, I looked up an Anxiety Specialist and went and saw her. It took me about a couple of months seeing her and building rapport with her to actually let her in on some of the thoughts that I was having. I remember very vividly. It was an early morning appointment. It was a 7:00 AM appointment. The night before I barely slept, because I really did think like, this is it. I’m going to get hauled away tomorrow. I’m going to tell her these thoughts I’m having, and this is going to be the end of me. And so, that morning, I kissed my daughter, I kissed my husband. I walked out the door and got in my car and I was like, “All right, that’s the last time I see him for a while.” 

But I got into my therapist’s office and I broke down. I’m like, “I have these thoughts that I’m going to hurt my daughter. It’s the worst thing in the world.” She was like, “Do you want to?” I was like, “Oh my God, how could you even ask me that? She’s the most important thing in my life.” She asked me a couple of other questions. But then she said, “Do you know anything about OCD?” Through my tears, I was like, “Yeah, I do. I know OCD. I’m not clean. In fact, I’m really messy. I don’t even know why you’re asking that.” I was frustrated. 

And then she told me about intrusive thoughts and compulsions, and it was the biggest light bulb moment of my life. Everything just started making sense really from some of my earliest thoughts. I do have to say it was a bit of a relief at the beginning. So, that’s the story. That’s how I got diagnosed, and it started a whole new part of my journey.

Kimberley: Yeah. So you had relief. 

Lora: Yeah. 

Kimberley: And then what was your emotion?

Lora: Yeah, I mean, the relief was like, I’m not crazy, that it was so like something has got to be really wrong with me. And then it was just like, whoa, I checked the box for everything she just talked about with this disorder. And then the emotion, after a little bit, the emotion became like, this is going to take a lot of work. This is going to be a level of acceptance that was like, I started getting acclimated to what exposure therapy was. She didn’t practice exposure therapy, but she was amazing in the sense that she was like, “I have the person for you.” She knew enough, which is so important--

Kimberley: Yeah. Thanks for that.

Lora: Yes. To send me to an OCD Specialist. That therapist was amazing. She laid out for me how this was going to work, what we are going to do. It was a relief at first. And then there was a lot of grief. There was a lot of heartache, realizing how much this disorder had taken from my life. Ignorance can be bliss sometimes. I think that I dismantled that notion through doing ERP and exposures, and it became a very interesting part of the journey.

Kimberley: I know, I was thinking about you. You were saying you got in your car, you said goodbye. And then you had to walk back to your car and drive back to your house, right? How is that?

Lora: It’s like, I mean, I have some health anxiety too, so I always liken it too. I walk into a doctor’s office thinking this is going to be cancer. And then I walk back like, “Okay, now I just go back to life.” 

Kimberley: Right. I can just have this image of you, walking back to your car, going, “I guess I’m going home now.”

Lora: Yes. And I got back. My husband was like, “Hey, you doing okay?” I was like, “I got to tell you what just happened. This is what they said. Did you know that obsessive-compulsive disorder is like this?” And he is like, “No, but I mean, makes a lot of sense.”

Kimberley: Yeah. How crazy. It’s so amazing that you had that opportunity. Again, we know that that’s not a lot of people’s stories, so I’m so happy that you had that experience.

Lora: The thing, Kimberley, is that I do want to point out that I had been seeing someone for anxiety almost my entire adult, different therapists. This is the first time. Like, I said, I would have these harm thoughts, but I was just like, push them away, get rid of them. This was the first time I’d ever come head to head with being actually like, “I’m responsible for a little life. This is all on me.” It felt like I wasn’t going to be able to live the life I truly wanted to live. Other times, it was just like, okay, I can walk away from it. I can find some way to not be around it. Now I’m talking about my daughter who means more to me than anything in the world. Something has got to give.

Kimberley: Yeah. That’s really helpful to know that you have been in therapy. 

Lora: Yeah.

Kimberley: When I had previously done a presentation with you through the International OCD Foundation, and you shared about your exposure board, this whole idea blew my mind. The reason I really want the listeners to understand, when I teach ERP, I’m literally just teaching my way of doing it and I love hearing other people’s way of doing it. It’s the same, but it’s different. And so, I’d love for you to share about that as an idea for people. 

Lora: Yeah. Well, what started as one of the biggest, I felt like, almost hindrances of my pregnancy was that at the time I was pregnant, there were seven other women at my work that were also pregnant. I remember seeing them all being so happy. And then they had their babies and they were so happy, and they were-- obviously, it wasn’t like, we’re not going to blow this up like some kind of blissful totally time. They were new moms too, but they were going out and doing stuff. And that’s all I wanted. That’s what I wanted so badly, was to have those experiences with my daughter. 

So, my therapist and I started with imaginals and started with some really small things. I mean, I laugh about it now, small. Back then, it was like, no way. I did one where I was going crazy, where this wasn’t really OCD, the timeless tale of it’s not OCD. Such a classic. So, we started with imaginals and then even imaginals into sleepwalking at night, hurting my daughter, things like that. So, we worked our way up then to one day I was sitting in her office and she said, “What do you want to do?” I was like, “I just want to do normal stuff. I want to go to the zoo.” And she’s like, “All right, we’re going to the zoo.” And I was like, “What?”

Kimberley: You’re like, “Take it back.”

Lora: “I don’t say zoo.”

Kimberley: “I meant Zoom.”

Lora: “I want to have a video conference in the safety of my own home.” So, we started putting together this hierarchy based off things that I wanted to do with my daughter. And then she said, “I think a really good idea would be to take some pictures while you’re doing these and we’ll see what happens.” And I was like, “I’m absolutely not doing that.” There’s no way I’m taking pictures, because as I’m sitting there and having this conversation with this OCD on my shoulder, telling me, “You’re going to bring pictures back in here of you dumping your daughter into a tiger cage. Great. Let’s do that.” But we talked about it and I was like, “Okay, I’m going to do it.” So, that was the first real exposure I did when I went out on my own.

We start actually-- I should back up, we did start with driving, because I had this thing with my daughter not actually being in the car. I had left her somewhere. So, we drive and I wouldn’t look in the rear view. That was a whole exposure. When we got past that, then we went to the zoo. We went to the mall to have lunch. We went to the swimming pool, which was just like the death pool as far as I was concerned. Let’s see, I have the whole exposure board still on the side of my wall. I mean, we went and got pedicures and manicures. We did things that I wanted to do with my daughter. We got flu shots. That I wanted to do with my daughter that OCD told me was absolutely not possible, without having someone to tell me the whole time what I was doing. 

My reassurance came in the form of calling my husband, texting my sister pictures because then everything’s okay. They can see what I’m doing. And so, doing these exposures without engaging in calling anybody the entire time, without texting anybody the entire time. Just me and OCD and my daughter and here with the three Amigos. Here we go.

Kimberley: Mom and daughter and the third wheel, right?

Lora: Yeah. So, that’s how they looked. It was like, I really, really hit it hard over a summer, the summer of 2018. I called it my summer of ERP. Once I got going, I just wanted to keep going. It was terrible at the beginning, terrible because I would complete an exposure and I’d get home and then the rumination would want to start. It was difficult not to engage in that. It was difficult to just watch it. But through the exposures, I said at one point that the butterflies were my yellow brick road. Whenever I’d think about something and I got that feeling like, oh, it was OCD being like, “Really, are we?” And then I was like, “Ah, okay, here we go. Follow, follow, follow, follow.”

Kimberley: Isn’t it that in and of itself is beautiful? I always say with my staff, is you follow the smell. Meaning wherever it’s smelly and you don’t want to go, you go there. And that’s what you were doing, is just wherever you felt butterflies, if I’m right, you would go and do that thing. 

Lora: Yeah, absolutely. Because it became that-- my therapist phrased it in a way where she was like, “We’re going to play scientist.” That’s what she’d tell me. “We’re going to go try this out. Let’s just bring back what we find.” It was such a compassionate way to do that. It wasn’t like, “Here’s your exposure, do it. Go. Boom,” which sometimes I think can be a little helpful. But for me, it worked to be like, “Let’s go see about this.”

Kimberley: Yeah. “Let’s be curious.” I love it. Now I’ve seen this exposure board and it is so beautiful. You would have no idea you’re doing exposures. You look delighted most of the time. I wonder if you could even send me a photo and maybe we could show that in the show note, that would be wonderful.

Lora: I would love to. 

Kimberley: Yeah. I’d love to be able for people to click and actually see what it looks like. Maybe we could even say-- I try to give homework during the podcast. We could even say, “If you have anxiety, you could create your own.”

Lora: Yes. That would be awesome, because I’m telling you, whoever’s listening to this right now, you’re going to see that I look back on this board and it’s us smiling. There is one picture where my daughter is screaming, but that was the flu shot picture, and we did a hard thing. It was a beautiful day to do a hard thing, and I put it on that board, man.

Kimberley: Good for you. She deserved to cry. I think that you’re making a good point here, and I’ve had this conversation with some of my clients, is exposure is even if you don’t smile for the photos, still put it up because you did it, right?

Lora: Right. You did it. And that’s a thing. Along the way, those victories, I really don’t believe that there’s such thing as small victories. I know we say it a lot. A victory is a victory is a victory. Take it, hold onto it, and know that’s the fuel that you’re putting in this device right now that is getting you through this.

Kimberley: Yeah. I love it. Are there any other exposures that you did that you want to share that people may find different or creative? I love the creative ones.

Lora: Well, I just think that the exposures started to become organic. When I was first diagnosed with OCD, I did not know OCD’s voice at all. I was like, “No, no, no, that’s the voice that’s kept me safe my whole life.” And so, along the way, the more I started to do some of the work, I started to realize that that what-if voice, that’s when I’m like, “Ah, if I’m going along and doing something, what-if pops up.” That’s my voice of OCD. I’ve learned that. And so, for me, a lot of my exposures, even to this day, have to do with when the what-if pops up. How can I look the what-if in the eye? I left out obviously in a place where my daughter couldn’t get them, but I’ve left out kitchen utensils before. Just last night, I mean, I mentioned how I’m doing some OCD work again right now because it continues. The what-if popped up and my daughter hadn’t drained the bathtub. I was going to drain it right away. Now it’s not even like what-if. It’s OCD being like, “Whew, way to think of that one.” That was it really. And then I stopped myself from draining the bathtub and it’s like, “No, no, no.” And so then, I left the bathroom and I’m like, “We’re just going to leave that tonight.” 

Kimberley: That’s so cool. 

Lora: Really anywhere that I can poke the bear, I guess me and my daughter doing things out in public, then that just confronting that fear of me that I’m going to lose control, not be able to help her if she needs it. All those things, wherever the what-if pops up, that’s where I knew my work was. And it still is to this day.

Kimberley: Yeah. I love that you share that too. So, it sounds like some people, when we’re hearing this amazing story, they think it’s just, you’re done. Your exposure is done. Is that the case for you?

Lora: Yeah. I was one of those people, I’m going to get through this summer of ERP, which is why I still call it summer of ERP. It was the one summer. I had these high hopes that then once I get into grad school and once I really start working with people with OCD and helping people that the OCD just fizzles. I have recently just come into this space of understanding and ultimately, some acceptance of like, this is kind of a way that I live right now. I don’t know what five or 10 years down the road looks like. And I’m really, as far as OCD is concerned, not too focused on it. I’m focused right now on, how’s it showing up and are the things that I’m doing helpful? Are they getting me to where I want to be or am I staying in the same spot? That’s my litmus test, is am I living the life according to my values that I want to live?

So, recovery for me right now looks like I do exposures still, and I have even after the 20 months of COVID. I thought, man, I bet it could be really helpful to speak with an OCD Specialist again to get a little bit of guidance, get some creativity because that can help sometimes. So, I’m doing that right now even, and it’s been amazing. I think it’s just a process of building the muscle, of keeping the muscle and I think I’m gaining more acceptance by the year. 

Kimberley: Yeah. I mean, that’s a piece of it. You had said before, as we talked like mindfulness and self-compassion and act was such an important piece of your work and acceptance is such a core part of all of that, because there is so much grief. We don’t talk about it enough, right?

Lora: Yeah. There is though.

Kimberley: What was it like for you-- let me rephrase that. Was mindfulness and self-compassion a part of this process for you? 

Lora: Yeah, absolutely. So, my amazing therapist knew about Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction and she had mentioned it to me. There was a program that was going on. I lived in Dallas at the time, at the Dallas Yoga Center. It was an eight-week MBSR program and I signed up for it. We did a body scan, a 40-minute body scan, the first class, and everybody woke up and they were like, “That was so relaxing. That was so awesome.” I raised my hand, I literally raised my hand and I was like, “I don’t think I did that right. I just had a 40-minute panic attack.” It was awful. 

But I should say too, that shortly after I got diagnosed with OCD, I realized I had become incredibly dependent on alcohol, especially being a new mom. So, I had completely quit drinking. I was like, “All right, if I’m going to do this, I’m going to do this. Let’s go.” I quit drinking. I didn’t want to have that crutch. I was in the MBSR program. I talked to the teacher. She convinced me to come back the next week. And then the next week, we did another meditation. Towards the end of it, she read a Mary Oliver poem that ends with “Tell me what you plan to do with your one wild and precious life.” It felt like a dam burst open in me at that moment. I was like, it is so precious and it is so amazing, and like, “Lora, you can do this. Let’s give this everything we’ve got, the exposures.” Learning to sit with myself through mindfulness was huge because OCD and anxiety do not like that. We need to be moving. 

So, mindfulness was so huge for me to be able to just breathe and be in a moment and watch my thoughts instead of engage with them. Mindfulness then I say was the gateway to self-compassion because I’m not sure-- maybe I would’ve gotten there, but it wouldn’t be as soon to be able to be with myself and to hold myself and that loving-kindness. When you don’t even want to sit with yourself, it’s really hard to be able to look at yourself and be like, “I’m here.” You want to be like, “Let’s go.” So, yeah, self-compassion then was huge, because that voice of OCD is so nasty. I worked on a self-compassion journal for about six months straight, every day, really journaling.

Kimberley: What would you write? What would that look like? 

Lora: Yeah. So, I read and worked through with my therapist the Kristin Neff’s first book. And so, each day I would pick something that had happened, that was a little difficult and I would break it down into the three components of self-compassion. I would be mindful about what happened. Didn’t need any of my judgment in there. Let’s just lay it out there, what happened. Then the common humanity of it. Who else do you think in the world might have experienced this, or that feeling of not being alone. Man, probably a lot of people ran into something like this today. And then self-kindness. A lot of times, my self-kindness sounded like, “I’m really proud of you. That was really hard.” I don’t know how many entries I had over those months of being in a grocery store. Like a toddler going nuts in a grocery store and then just the flare-up of like, “Ah!” At the end of the day, that’s what I choose. 

I remember a couple of months, maybe three or four months in, where I was sitting down to write and I couldn’t think of something really hard that had happened that day. And I was like, “What?” It was such a weird feeling. After months and months and months of really intense therapy and some difficult things I was working with, I was like, “Today, I’m just going to be compassionate then about how much work I’ve been doing.”

Kimberley: Wow. I love that you’re sharing that because I’ve found even since-- I mean, I wrote a book on self-compassion, but since I wrote the book, I’m even pushing my clients to do it even more. The journaling and the writing to themselves seem to be the most powerful part of the work, the writing to themselves.

Lora: Yes. And I think that the writing to myself and the speaking to myself was the most powerful part of it. In the beginning, it was absolutely the hardest, especially with the voice of OCD. When I would look in the mirror and I would say, “You’re doing the best you can, Lora. You’re really doing this,” OCD would be right there to be like, “Are you?” It’s so egotistical. It just wants all the attention. “Maybe you’re not.” I sat down with my therapist a couple months into really keeping that journaling and I was just exhausted, just so tired from some of the work. I don’t know if you can see it. Can you see on my back wall “As long as it takes”?

Kimberley: Yeah.

Lora: I sat down and I just started crying one day and telling her this has just been so hard that sometimes I feel like I haven’t made any progress. I feel like I take two steps forward and five steps back, and was just really down about stuff. She sat there, just really holding some amazing space for me, but I said, “How long is this going to take?” She just looked at me and she just put her head to the side. Really, she’s such a sweet person, and she said, “As long as it takes.” She said it just like that, “As long as it takes.” And I was like, “Okay. As long as it takes. Throw out the timeline then. Let’s just keep going.”

Kimberley: Yeah. I love that I got goosebumps hearing you say it. All the hairs in my arms are standing up. And I love that you have it on the wall, because I read it as we were starting. I was like, “You know what? We’re good.” It shakes off all the rules and stories we tell ourselves.

Lora: Yes. My mom actually, she made that for me, for my graduation from grad school. She made that and framed it for me. 

Kimberley: I love it. Yeah. You are so inspiring really.

Lora: Thank you so much.

Kimberley: Yeah. Number one, I’m so grateful that you’re here and you’re sharing this, and number two, I’m so excited that you’re going to change lives for people, being a therapist and so forth. I’m just so grateful that I got to see some of it.

Lora: Yes. Because before we even started recording, we were talking about how on the Mondays-- what were they? Magic Mondays?

Kimberley: Magic Mondays.

Lora: Magic Monday. I’d be like, “All right, it’s magic Monday.” I’d log on and I’d ask questions and I was really inquisitive and you were so sweet. You answered all the questions and you were just so-- it was like this feeling of it’s going to be alright. It is. I think when we can cultivate that and know the sky sometimes can feel like it’s falling, we do really have the power to look around and say like, “Here I am.” Here I am, put our hand on our heart and say, “This is what I can do in this moment. I can at least show up for me at the very least.” And that’s not the least thing at all.

Kimberley: No, no. Like I said, you’re so inspiring. I’ve written so many notes, which is so fun. I don’t usually get that many notes down. So, I’m just so grateful for you for coming on and sharing your story. I loved presenting with you. That’s where I felt like I got to know you, so I’m so grateful. Where can people find you?

Lora: I am on Instagram and the account that I share a lot of my OCD journey with and things that I have learned along the way is Judgment-Free Anxiety, but it’s judgment_free_anxiety.

Kimberley: I love that. What’s for you in the future? Tell us about what’s popping out for you.

Lora: Oh man. Well, right now, I hope to be employed somewhat soon. It’s a new life now after grad school and after becoming licensed, and just hopefully a lot more adventures with my daughter, going to do that. And man, that’s it. I did actually recently become certified to teach mindfulness, so I’m also looking at doing something with that as well, but I’m not sure exactly what.

Kimberley: Yeah. Such good skills to have in your toolbelt.

Lora: Yes, absolutely.

Kimberley: Well, thank you so much. You filled my heart up today. Thank you. 

Lora: Thank you so much, Kim. Thank you.

-----

Thank you so much for coming and listening to our podcast. Before we finish up, let’s do the review of the week. This is from nmduncan827, and they said:

“Compassion, comfort, and wisdom. I’ve been following Kimberley Quinlan for years now and I can’t say enough wonderful things about her and her work. As someone who has had OCD their entire life, I feel like finally at the age of 33 I’m beginning to find helpful resources to really push me along in my road to recovery. Between Kim’s Instagram page and her podcast and her new book— there’s little nuggets of compassion, comfort, and wisdom. I found this no matter where I am on my journey. I couldn’t recommend this more for my fellow OCD and anxiety-disorder community! So grateful for Kim.”

Thank you, nmduncan827. Thank you so, so, so much. I am so honored. And of course, you can find me at Your Anxiety Toolkit on Instagram. You can get my book anywhere where you buy books, specifically on Amazon and barnesandnoble.com called The Self-Compassion Workbook for OCD. And of course, the podcast is here. Any time you like, go back, listen to old episodes. Sometimes they’re the best ones. I will see you guys next week.

SUMMARY:

Today, we are going to talk with you about the 7 common struggle you have with time management.  Do you find yourself constantly looking at the clock? Or, wishing time would go faster?  Do you feel like your to-do list is so long that you will never get them done? Or, do you feel like you never have time to prioritize yourself?  In today's, podcast, we talk all about your relationship with time and why it is a HUGE part of managing anxiety, depression, and stress.

In This Episode, we address the 7 common struggles you have with time management.

• “I don't have enough time”
• “I have so much to do”
• “I have so much I want to do”
• “I struggle to start and stop activities”
• “I don't a good understanding of how long things take”
• “I don't like structure”
• “I hate being told what to do with my time”

Links To Things I Talk About:

ONLINE COURSE Time Management for Optimum Mental Health
https://www.cbtschool.com/timemanagement

Episode Sponsor:

This episode of Your Anxiety Toolkit is brought to you by CBTschool.com.  CBTschool.com is a psychoeducation platform that provides courses and other online resources for people with anxiety, OCD, and Body-Focused Repetitive Behaviors.  Go to cbtschool.com to learn more.
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EPISODE TRANSCRIPTION

This is Your Anxiety Toolkit - Episode 221.

Welcome back, everybody. I am so thrilled to have you here with me today for Episode 221. Oh my, how is that possible?

We are getting so much feedback, such amazing feedback from last week’s episode. I wanted to additionally offer you one more bonus piece of content from our new course, which is called Time Management for Optimum Mental Health. You can check it out at CBTSchool.com/TimeManagement. It is a course. We have it for $27. It’s a mini-course, so it shouldn’t take up a ton of your time, and it’s me showing you exactly how I manage time.

Now, the reason I created that course was because so many people were reporting to me – clients, followers, listeners – that COVID has destroyed the rhythm and the routines that they had, and that they really want to find a way to implement during their day time to do their therapy homework, do get exercise, maybe have more pleasure in your life, maybe reduce overwhelm, a lot of overwhelm because the to-do list is always so long. Am I right? The to-do lists are always so long. There seems to be a never-ending list of things to do. So, I added all that in, showed you exactly how I did that. Again, you can go and check that, or you can click the link below in the show notes.

But as a bonus to that course, I did a Q and A where people submitted their questions. I have addressed that in that bonus, and I’m today giving it to you free in today’s podcast episode. If you want to get a feel for what we’re covering, you will have some reference to the course throughout, but you don’t need to purchase the course to get benefit out of this episode today. However, together they would be really beneficial, I’m sure.

Today, we’re going to cover a couple of main topics. Here I’m going to give you some overview. Some of the questions people or the concerns or roadblocks they had around time management were things like, “I don’t have enough time. I have so much to do on my to-do list.” Another question we will cover in today’s episode is, “I have so much I want to do. I just can’t, again, find time.”

Someone brought up-- multiple people, forgive me, brought up that they struggle to start and stop activities. They struggle to get the motivation to get going. And then once they’re going, they have a hard time transitioning into other activities. We address that as well.

Someone posted in that they struggle with having a good understanding of how long things take. This is one of the reasons I have myself had to use a lot of time management, is I was underestimating how long things were taking and I was leading to a lot of anxiety and overwhelm.

We also address people who don’t like a lot of structure in their life and we also address people who don’t like scheduling and don’t like time management because they don’t like being told what to do with their time. We’re going to address all of that today, but we also go much deeper into that in the time management course. You can run over there if you want to take a look at that.

Before we get into the show, let’s do today’s review of the week. This one is from Sheffie, and they said:

“Wonderful resource! You can’t help but love Kimberley.” Oh, that’s so kind. Thank you, Sheffie. “She has such warmth and sincerity, is positive and funny, and spreads so much good into the world. On top of all that, she’s a gifted clinician who does a great job sharing her knowledge with others. And she does all this with a lovely Australian accent.” Oh my goodness, this is so kind. “All of her content is fantastic, but I especially love the podcast because each episode is packed with so many nuggets of wisdom that are applicable to so many situations. They’re thought provoking and I find myself pondering them for a long while after. They’re also a good length - great content without going on for hours, very digestible.”

Thank you so much, Sheffie. That is so kind. Actually, one thing, as I’m really listening and reading that off, sometimes I know I’ve mentioned this before, but creating a podcast can feel really lonely because I’m talking into a microphone. Sometimes I don’t know if things land for everybody. I’m talking about what resonates for me and what I know has resonated from my clients, but it’s never really sure, like how is anyone feeling about this? So, just getting your reviews actually is very heartwarming to me. So, thank you. It actually helps me to feel like I’m on the right track and I’m helping and I’m bringing value to your life. Thank you so much, Sheffie. Please do go and leave a review. It does help me so much in my heart, but so helps me just to get more followers and listeners.

All right, let’s get over to it. Let’s talk today about your relationship with time. Let’s address some of these common roadblocks to time management, and I hope you find it incredibly helpful. Have a wonderful day, everybody.

Welcome, everybody. I am so excited to be here with you to talk about your relationship with time. Now, this is an interesting topic, I think, and one that very much relates to our mental health. I personally find a lot of my thoughts are around time and about my belief that I don’t have enough of it. This has probably been a very big part of my own experience of suffering because I keep telling myself, “I don’t have enough of it.” I really want to see whether this is true for you.

Now, I did a poll on Instagram and asked my friends there to give me their biggest struggles with time management. As you may know, I have a full course on time management specifically related to managing mental health, how you can make time for your recovery, how you can make time for things that really benefit your mental health. A lot of the times we end up getting our to-do list done instead of scheduling in pleasure and downtime and rest, and we don’t rest and have pleasure until we’ve got our list of to-dos done. But the problem is, the to-do list is always longer than the day. Am I right?

We cut all of these submissions of things that people struggle with, a lot of the topics we discuss directly in the course, but a lot of them I wanted to discuss today specifically related to these struggles and the relationship people have with time. The first one here is, “I don’t have enough time.” Now I have two answers to this concern. number one, chances are, you are right. You don’t have enough time to do the things that you are pressuring yourself to do.

Now, I understand that many of you have jobs and you’re going to school and you have children or you have loved ones and you have your own chronic illnesses or mental illness. So I agree. The list of things to do is very, very long. But I’ve wanted to first just ask you, is all the things on your to-do list being demanded of you, or are you demanding them of you? It could be one or the other. I just wanted to ask you, because I know for me, there are lots of things that I get demanded to do. I have to work. I have to make money. I have to be a mom. These are things that I really value and I want to take care of. But in addition to that, there’s a lot of things on my to-do list that I actually don’t have to do. I place those stresses on myself right.

Now we’re not here to blame. I never want this to be about blaming ourselves, but it’s helpful to inquire. What things on your list do you have that actually create more stress? Is it helpful to add those things on your list? Is there a way you could maybe give yourself a break from the long things of all the things you have to do? Assess for yourself what’s important. Is it important to me to get this done?

But here is the thing. As we talk about in time management, the online course, is I have so many things that I value. I have so many things I want to do. I have so many ways I want to show up for people and friends and family. At the end of the day, it’s unrealistic. Even though I want to do it, I don’t have the time. To reflect, I don’t have the time. Yeah, that’s true. Sometimes the most compassionate thing I can do is to acknowledge that and be more realistic with the projects I put on my to-do list.

Often I’ll speak with clients about, are you taking too many courses? And they’ll say, “No, I have to. Everybody is taking this many.” And I’ll go, “But is it working for you?” If you’re really honest with yourself, does taking that many courses benefit you and give you time to recover from your mental illness? Does saying yes to volunteer, while volunteering is an incredibly valuable and helpful thing, are you in a place in your life right now or a season in your life where you can do that in a healthy way that still prioritizes your mental health? Just questions to think about. You may have some strong reactions to these, and I would inquire if you do. I’m not suggesting anything here, except I want you to inquire what is best for you.

Now on the flip side of this, I can also say, even on the days when I’ve managed my time and my to-do list, I still just have the thought. “I don’t have enough time. I don’t have enough time. I don’t have enough time.” And that’s my relationship with time. It’s not great. My personal relationship with time, I have a long way to go. My relationship with time, as if it’s a thing, is when I look at it, I say to it, “There’s not enough of you.” But I only have 24 hours. You only have 24 hours and we have to negotiate with what we want to cram into that 24 hours. It can be whatever you like really. You can sleep for as long as you think you need to sleep. You can work, you can go to school, you can take up whatever hobbies. Your job is to decide what’s best for you based on your values and your family and your needs.

The next one is, “I have so much to do.” Again, we have a relationship with time. When it’s not about time, it’s about our to-do list. I really want this time management course that I’ve created. You can go to https://www.cbtschool.com/timemanagement. If you haven’t already, if you’re listening to the course right now, I want you to really, really think about the to-do list and reassess the to-do list. If it doesn’t need to be done, I would encourage you to consider taking it off.

Now, I understand, a lot of things on the list have to be done and I want them to be done, which is why you should, if you need, take a look at the procrastination episode and module, and you can maybe look at that as well. But like I said always, a lot of the thoughts we have about time are either facts or the mindsets that we have. So, we may need to think about how much pressure we’re putting on ourselves.

Another very small shift to that thought is, “There’s so much I want to do.” Now, here is another, this is very important. I personally, as a human being, there is so much I want to do. I have such passion to do this project and write that book and to create that podcast. I have all these things and hobbies I want to do. It’s a wonderful thing. Some of you may not have that experience right now and that’s okay. Sometimes depression and anxiety can take the passion out of things. But a lot of you, I hear because you want to get things done and you can’t find a way to put it into your schedule. I really want to encourage you to start to do these things you want to do, but you have to be realistic about time.

A part of the reason I made this course and not other courses is that this course could be a very quick make. Meaning it didn’t take me six months to make some of my courses. The Time Management course is-- what is it? Almost 100 minutes or 120 minutes. It’s easier for me to do this than to create a six-month-long course. I did it in small 20-minute increments. I want to encourage you that if your relationship with time is saying, “I have so much I want to do, I don’t have enough time,” find in your schedule 10 minutes to start, because 10 minutes today and 10 minutes next week and 10 minutes the week after that, before you know it, you will start to have some momentum, even if it’s 10 minutes a week. A lot of times we don’t do things because we tell ourselves that there’s not enough time and there’s too much to do. Instead of just giving yourself permission to just do little baby steps, create what you can in small amounts of time.

Somebody had written, “I struggle to start and stop activities.” This is very, very important. A lot of people struggle with time because getting going needs a lot of created momentum. The thing to remember is that motivation, and I will create a full mini-course on this very soon as well, is motivation is not something you just get. It’s not inherent. You don’t wake up with it. Motivation is something that you have to really create of your own. You have to cultivate motivation. You have to harvest motivation. It’s something that you generate on your own.

So to start an activity, usually, you will need to look at first what’s getting in the way. We talked about procrastination in last week’s episode and in other modules of this course. That’s a big one. Starting usually means you have to generate motivation based on willingness to be uncomfortable, cleaning up any negative thoughts you have or critical thoughts you have about doing the activity. Setting time and reminders to remind you, because sometimes really honestly, you’re busy. You’re a busy person or you’re an overwhelmed person. So, you will need timers and reminders and calendars, but it’s really generating that activity.

One of the best things to do is to keep in mind or to draw on a piece of paper or write it down, how you will feel when it’s done, what it will look like when it’s done, like a vision board almost, but it’s okay. Put some time into it, like what emotions will I feel when I’ve completed this email? Or what will be the result if I create this course 20 minutes at a time? Little baby steps.

When it comes to stopping, it’s probably going to be much of the same tools. Schedule your time to do things, set an alarm or a reminder if you’re someone who gets stuck in it. So set a time or a reminder, put up sticky notes, and then also be willing to be uncomfortable. When I let my kids have tech time, we schedule tech time every day. When I say, “Turn it off,” they don’t like it. They’re in this mode of playing their game. They’re watching the thing they want to watch. Moving out of that can feel very jarring and uncomfortable.

And so, we have planned ahead for that. We know that when tech time is over, my husband and I, we may want to implement some family time or snack time, something that can help move us onto the next activity. Something motivating and pleasurable is often very helpful when moving from some kind of either uncomfortable experience to a different experience or you’re in a pleasurable experience. You’ve got to move into something uncomfortable. There are some tips that may help that you may want to experiment with.

The next one is, “I don’t have a good understanding of how long things take.” Now, this is huge. Again, if you’re listening to this on the podcast, this is another reason where I stress the importance of you. If you want to take the course, I stress how helpful it can be.

I write down how long things take often. Probably once a month, I do an inventory of my day. How long does it take to get my emails done? How long does it take to get the kids to school? How long? While this may seem like a lot of work, it pays off because I will then realize I only scheduled 30 minutes for emails, but to be honest, emails are taking me 45 minutes. Helpful data. Important data to help me then renegotiate my schedule so that it is kind, or to really work at not spending as much time on emails, or to be less perfectionistic about emails, or to delegate emails or whatever project it is that you’re doing to somebody else.

It may be that there are multiple solutions to this problem of not understanding how long things take. But I think the first thing is, you’ve got to have data. You can’t assume a solution if you don’t know what the problem is. Please, I encourage you. It doesn’t take long. Just have a little notepad, scratchpad, how long things take, particularly the things you’re having trouble in the day. It doesn’t have to be the whole day.

The next one is, this was very cool, “I don’t like structure.” Now, if this is you, I am so with you. I was and have been in my life someone who doesn’t like structure. It stresses me out, makes me anxious. The pressure is overwhelming. I don’t like structure. However, as someone who was forced to practice these skills, because life was so chaotic and unmanageable, I have found now I have a much better life with structure. I have found I’m more creative and spontaneous now that I have structure in my life because I know the things I need to get done are done. So then I feel free to go and do spontaneous things, take a drive, go on a vacation, and so forth, because I know. Or in this case, during COVID, because everything is so uncertain, I know how long things take, the structure of days. If there were, let’s say someone in my family gets COVID – my children, myself, my husband – I know how to renegotiate the day really quickly because I have a really good understanding of the structure. It helps me to recalibrate if there is a major change in the day, because I’m used to that structure. I know how long things take. I know the practice of things. It’s been overwhelmingly beneficial in my life.

If you don’t like too much structure, it doesn’t matter. You can actually just block schedule. I like to really be specific, but I know a lot of my colleagues and clients that I’ve taught this to, they just like blocks, like bigger blocks, like four-hour blocks. From 10:00 to 2:00 is work, from 2:00 to 5:00 is this. And those blocks can actually just create a little bit of structure for them. And then they can slice in new projects if they have them. Homework for therapy, if they need it.

A lot of my patients, I see they’re professional successful people who are now I’m giving them additional 45 to 90 minutes of homework a day, and they say, “How am I ever going to fit this in? I’m already overwhelmed.” We go through this process and we look at where they could slide in, 10 minutes here and 15 minutes here. Can you do some of your homework on your way to work and so forth? That can be really beneficial. That way, even though they don’t like structure, they’ve found a way to prioritize what they need to get done so that they can get the benefits that they wanted.

Last one, this is a big one, “I hate being told what to do with my time.” This is actually, I think, sponsored by my husband, but this was actually given to me from many social media people who have submitted their questions about time management. But I agree. I think my husband would very much agree with this – I hate being told what to do with my time.

There is, when it comes to time management, a-- I wouldn’t say it’s a humbling, but it’s a letting go, a letting go of control, because when you don’t want to be told what to do with your time, it feels like you’re being controlled. Again, I don’t think you have to do any of this if you don’t want to. I wouldn’t encourage you to make any of these changes if you really, really disagree with them. However, I would encourage you to consider at least giving it 30 days, because what you will find is, when you schedule things, it might feel like you’re being told to do something with your time. You’re doing it.

I don’t want you to have anybody else telling you what to do, but if you’re putting down on your schedule what you want to do, I want you to remind yourself why. Why are you doing this? Often it’s because the chaotic and unplanned day only creates more suffering. Chances are, you already have a lot of suffering. I’m guessing because you know about me, you have some kind of anxiety or depression or medical or mental struggle. So, even though this scheduling and this time management practices can feel like you’re using your freedom, I personally think it’s gaining freedom. It’s taking back control over the chaos in your mind – the running list, the mental rumination, the anxiety of all the things, and having it to be where it’s all there and it’s done.

Now, it doesn’t have to be for you. I want you to find specifically, and you will see, remember we talk about in the course, we have a whole module on considering your specific set of circumstances. I want you to consider what’s good for you and make plans and adjustments, but keep my voice in your mind. Sometimes the more you plan it, the more freedom and free space you have in your mind to do the things you want, because you’re not constantly carrying around the to-do list. It’s there anyway, you might as well handle it efficiently.

So, that’s my real encouragement. Again, I’m really for it. You may not be for it. I’m not going to harass you and make you agree with my view on it. But I know the science here and I have seen it benefit so many people, and I really hope that you can give it a go and let your guard down and let go of your need to have that control and honor what’s important to you and follow through with what’s important to you so that you get the things that you want and you get the mastery of the things in your life that are important to you.

I hope that’s helpful. I’m so grateful to have you here with me today to talk about your relationship with time. There may be many other things I haven’t addressed. If I haven’t addressed your specific struggle with relationship with time, I encourage you to journal down and explore how you might manage that because we do only have 24 hours and I want you to really find some peace in some of those parts of your day instead of carrying around the to-do list.

Have a wonderful day and I will talk to you very, very soon.

SUMMARY: In this episode, we review how important it is to address procrastination, as it impacts so many people in so many ways.   We also will review how procrastination is the same thing as avoidance and how people can work towards implementing time management skills to help them build a routine that helps them get the things they want to get done.

In This Episode:

• We outline procrastination definition and procrastination pros and cons.
• How procrastination is simply an avoidance safety behavior.
• How to manage procrastination in , Anxiety, OCD and OCD recovery
• Our new course called Time Management for Optimum Mental Health

Links To Things I Talk About:

• ONLINE COURSE Time Management for Optimum Mental Health

https://www.cbtschool.com/timemanagement

Episode Sponsor:

This episode of Your Anxiety Toolkit is brought to you by CBTschool.com.  CBTschool.com is a psychoeducation platform that provides courses and other online resources for people with anxiety, OCD, and Body-Focused Repetitive Behaviors.  Go to cbtschool.com to learn more.

Spread the love! Everyone needs tools for anxiety...

If you like Your Anxiety Toolkit Podcast, visit YOUR ANXIETY TOOLKIT PODCAST to subscribe free and you'll never miss an episode. And if you really like Your Anxiety Toolkit, I'd appreciate you telling a friend (maybe even two).

EPISODE TRANSCRIPTION

This is Your Anxiety Toolkit - Episode 220.

Welcome back, everybody. How are you? Really, really, how are you? How is your heart? How is your mind? What’s showing up for you? How are you? I really want you to check in, in case you haven’t checked in for a while. How are you doing? It’s important. Let’s make sure we check in.

Today, we’re talking about procrastination. It’s one of the most common questions I get when I’m doing live calls on Instagram and Facebook, like how do I manage procrastination? A lot of you are also managing perfectionism and it’s getting in the way of you doing the things you want to do or doing the things you have to do.

Because I get asked this so much, I actually wanted to show people how I do it. So what I did is I created a whole mini-course, it’s called Time Management For Optimum Mental Health. You can get it if you go to CBTSchool.com/TimeManagement, or you can click the link in the show notes below. It’s a full course of showing you how I manage time and why I manage my time to help manage my mental health and my medical health. A lot of you know I have struggled with a chronic illness. Time management has been huge in me staying functioning and managing mental overwhelm and a lot of procrastination. In the course, it’s only $27, it’s a mini-course and it shows you exactly-- I have recorded the screen as I’m showing you exactly how I do it. If you’re interested, go over and check it out. I’d love to have you take the course and put it into practice.

Now, one of the things about this episode is this is actually me giving you a sneak peek into the course because it’s one of the bonuses of the course to talk about procrastination. So I wanted to share it with you here on the podcast as well. You will hear me refer to the other parts of the course as you listen. That doesn’t matter. You’ll still get everything you need to know about procrastination and how to manage it today. But yes, if you’ve already taken the course, you probably have already listened to this bonus. But for today, let’s talk about procrastination.

Before we head over into the episode, I wanted to do the review of the week. This is a review from Sadbing, and they’ve said:

“Desperately needed. I am an LICSW that has searched high & low for a podcast that delivers quality content. I felt relieved to finally find one! This podcast provides an honest depiction of how anxiety shows up in people’s lives & gives you effective feedback on how to live with it. Thank you!”

Thank you, Sadbing. Thank you so much for that amazing review. I do ask that anyone who’s listening, please, the one thing you can do, this is what I offer freely to you all. If you get a second, just click below, in whatever app you’re listening to, and leave a review. It helps me so much reach all the people. The more reviews we have, the more people will trust the podcast and continue listening to this free resource. So, yay.

All right. Let’s get over to this episode about managing procrastination. I hope you find it helpful. If you want to learn more about time management, head on over to CBTSchool.com/TimeManagement, and you can get a mini-course for 27 bucks. It’s amazing value for a short period of time and a short amount of money. So, yeah. All right. So happy to have you here with me today. Thank you for giving your time to me and trusting me with your precious time. I will see you after the show.

Welcome. You wouldn’t have a time management course without really addressing procrastination. Procrastination is, number one, the biggest question I get, which is another reason why I wanted to make this course, is because it’s so common. It’s such an easy trap to fall into. It’s such a human trap to fall into to procrastinate. But I wanted to take a deep dive into procrastination today and talk about some skills that you can practice to manage procrastination.

Let me really just dive into, first, what is procrastination? Now simply put, procrastination is an avoidant safety behavior. What does that mean? When human beings assume or see or assign things as a threat, our mind does that. So our mind will assign something as threatening, whether it be, “I have to write this email.” It could be as simple as writing an email. It could be, “I have to present something. I have to get a project done. I have to go and exercise.” Our brain will present that as some kind of danger or challenge or threat.

Now you might be thinking to yourself, there’s nothing dangerous about exercise or writing an email, but there may be for you because doing that means you have to have some uncomfortable feelings. Maybe shame, maybe anxiety, maybe irritability. Anger might show up. Guilt might show up. Because those emotions are uncomfortable and maybe if we haven’t developed skills on mastering those emotions, events like writing an email or exercising or doing a project may be experienced as dangerous or a threat.

When our brain interprets things as a threat, naturally, it is going to set off the alarm and try to either get you to run away from it, to fight it, or to freeze. That’s how fight, flight, and freeze response. And the most common as humans is avoidance. We avoid the thing that will create discomfort for us, and simply put, that is what procrastination is.

Now, why do we call it a safety behavior? We could call it a compulsion. But we call it a safety behavior because not everybody does it compulsively, but they may do it to create a false sense of security, a false sense of safety. As human beings, we want safety. It feels good to feel safe. It feels good to feel like, “Oh, I don’t have to face that hard thing.” So, yes, we consider it a safety behavior.

Now, does that mean that you’re bad and lazy or not good? Absolutely not. Everybody engages in safety behaviors. It’s a human part of life. But what we want to look at here is, is it creating trends in your life? Is it creating impact or consequences to your life that create more discomfort and more distress later? Most of the time people say, “Yeah, I avoid,” and it’s getting to be a problem. If that’s for you and that’s happening to you, you’re definitely not alone.

Now, how do we manage procrastination? The first thing is identify what it is you are avoiding specifically. Don’t just say, “I’m avoiding the email.” Don’t just say, “I’m avoiding exercise,” or “I procrastinate.” Don’t say those things. I mean, you can, but ideally, you will stop and go, “Okay, what is it about the email that I don’t want to tolerate? Ah, writing an email brings up social anxiety for me,” or “Ah, writing the email reminds me that I’m really behind on that project. Writing that email brings up shame because last time I spoke to them, I said something silly or something like that,” or “I don’t want to exercise because, ah, every time I exercise, it creates discomfort in my chest and it makes me feel like I’m panicking.”

So you’ll identify the specific thing that is causing you to avoid specific. You might even get a specific like I did. It’s the physical sensations I don’t want to feel. Or it’s the thought that this was my fault that I don’t want to think. You may get to the bottom of that. Now, of course, if you guys know anything about me, I’m always going to say, it’s a beautiful day to do hard things.

The only way we can overcome these strong emotions, particularly fear and guilt and shame, is to stare them in the face. Our job, and this is what I’m going to encourage you to think about, is to really look at, yes, avoiding. What is the pros of avoiding this? And then on the right-hand side, you could write this on a piece of paper, what are the cons? What are the consequences of me continuing to avoid this thing?

Now often when you write that down, that in and of itself is a motivator because you’re going, “Oh my goodness, writing the email is uncomfortable for the duration that I write the email, not writing it is uncomfortable, even when I’m not working on it, because I’m constantly nagged by the fact that I have to write it, or it’s constantly sitting on my list or I constantly see it in the schedule.” A lot of you in, and we’re in the Time Management course – a lot of you have avoided managing time because putting this in the calendar makes you face the fact that you’ve got something scary to do.

Now, you will see me, I’m holding my hand on my chest right now and I’m sending you much compassion because these are really difficult things. These may seem easy for other people, but they’re hard for you and me. And so we must be compassionate with the fact that they’re hard. Here is what I’m going to say: Being compassionate can actually take some of that pain away. It won’t take it all. You still have to do it. You have to ride the wave of discomfort. It will rise in full as you go. But you can also be gentle with yourself and reduce your suffering instead of criticizing yourself or how hard it is for you. Don’t compare how it is for you compared to your friend or your seatmate or your neighbor.

This is what you do. You practice compassion before you do the activity first. I’m sorry. You commit to doing the activity. You put it in your schedule. You write down when you’re going to do it and how long you think it’s going to take. And then you practice compassion. “Wow, I’m going to be really gentle with myself as I ride out the emotions and the experience of doing that thing.” You may want to get a partner, an accountability partner, who can help remind you and support you as you do the thing. A lot of my patients have an accountability partner. They’re like, “It’s three o’clock.” They’re texting, “It’s three o’clock. I know you’re about to do a scary thing. Good job. Keep going. Don’t stop. Don’t back out. I’ll be right here. You text me as soon as you’re done.” See if you can do that. If you don’t have someone to do that, be that for yourself. So it’s in your calendar. You’re going, you’re gentle. You’re going to do the thing.

What I personally like to do is keep a notepad down next to me as I’m writing an email or recording a podcast or doing something that creates anxiety for me. I jot down the thoughts and feelings I’m having. Not a lot, bullet points. Like, “Oh, I’m having the thought that this is not helpful. I’m having the thought that this is not good enough. I’m having the thought that this should be better. I’m having the thought that I made a mistake. I’m having the thought that this should be going fast or better.”

Like I said, and you may start to notice – and this is true, I’ve seen a lot of patients say – as you write it down, it’s the same five thoughts over and over and over. When you’re not aware of that, it feels like 55 thoughts or 55,000 thoughts. But once you have it on paper, you will see, often our brain is just repeating the same thing. When you can see that, you can go, “Oh, brain, I’m sorry that you’re sending those messages. Thank you for showing up. Thank you for trying to alert me to the possible dangers, but I have avoided this for so long, and it avoiding it and it procrastinating only delays and continues my suffering.” And you feel your emotions. You ride them out. You tender with yourself as you do the thing. And that’s how you get through it. Once you’re done, you must celebrate and say kind things and congratulate yourself. Don’t forget that stage because that’s so, so important.

But the main point to remember here is that avoidance keeps you stuck. Avoiding the thing you’re afraid of is actually what then creates some depressive thinking, some hopeless thinking, or helpless thinking. “I’ll never be able to... I won’t be able to... I can’t...” We really want to be careful of that type of thinking, because that is the thinking where depression lives. Again, the more you face the things that are uncomfortable, you will build a sense of mastery of that.

It won’t go well the first time, I promise you. Most of life is trial and error. I have found the only way to move forward is to practice failing. Here is what I’m going to ask of you. As you practice this activity or practice of not procrastinating, of facing the thing you’re afraid of, of doing the thing you’ve been avoiding, I want you to practice or remind yourself that you are really not growing if you’re not failing. I’m going to say that again. You’re really not growing if you’re not failing, because if you’re only doing things that go well, chances are, you’re avoiding a lot of things. If you’re only doing things that are going well, the chances are, you’re not building mastery with the hard things in life, and life is 50/50. We know this, that life comes with 50% good and 50% hard. We have to practice failing so we can learn how to be better.

This whole course is about that. You’re going to practice not procrastinating. You may or may not succeed. That’s not really the important part. The important part is that you look at the data, the data being, how did it go, like that reassess stage, which we have as one of the steps in the course. Look at the data, what worked, what didn’t and what do I need to change? This is not a perfect practice. It’s going to be changing as you change. And so having the ability to adapt and having the humility to say, “All right, it’s not working. What do I need to do?”

This has been probably my biggest struggle in my entire life, is I avoid looking at the data of what’s not going well. If someone tells me what’s not going well, I get offended instead of going, “Okay, this is not personal. It’s just data. How can I use this data to help me not make the same mistake over and over again?”  Often what I’m doing, I’m churning out a lot of content and I’m not looking at the data when the data could help me to say, what is the most effective? What is the most helpful to other people? How can this be as jam-packed helpful as possible? I have to look at the data, and in order to do that, I have to be willing to fail. It’s okay to fail. This is a practice. It’s not perfection.

But when it comes to procrastination, you have to be willing to be uncomfortable. You have to be willing to do hard things. This is why we keep saying, it’s a beautiful day to do hard things. Now, of course, go back, follow the steps of the whole course. You’ve gotta get it in the schedule before you can really do that. But then I want you to even get very microscopic and look at when you’re scheduling. Let’s say there’s something you’re avoiding and procrastinating on. Schedule small activities so that you don’t procrastinate.

One of the best lessons I’ve learned when it came to me, recovering from my medical struggles, is I have to get a lot of exercise. Not running exercise, a lot of personal training, physical therapy type of exercises, and I hate them. They’re the most boring, annoying, monotonous things on the planet. However, I have found that if I schedule, “Kimberley, at this time, you’re going to put your shoes on. Kimberley, at this time, you’re going to fill up your drink bottle,” I am more likely to do it. I get very microscopic in my planning.

Now, again, you won’t want to do this with all the things in your life. Pick one thing if that’s what you want to work on, and work at creating a system that gets you to do the thing that you continue to procrastinate on. I would not probably do my physical therapy and my training, these annoying, repetitive activities, if I hadn’t created a system that makes it doable. I have a Bluetooth speaker, I put very loud music on. It’s usually reggae or something very hippy, so I feel like at least I’m chilling out as I do it. I marry the thing that’s uncomfortable with something that’s tolerable.

Now, you won’t always be able to do this, and that is fine. Sometimes you just got to ride the wave and face your fear. That’s okay. But that is an idea if it’s for things like daily activities and routines in your life. If it’s facing fears and exposure work, well, no, we don’t want to marry it with these things because that can work as a neutralizing compulsion. If you’re someone who is in treatment for an anxiety disorder and you’ve been given an exposure, well, no, you’re just going to have to practice riding the wave of discomfort, but do not forget that self-compassion piece. It is crucial. Do not forget using your mindfulness skills where you allow your discomfort. You’re non-judgmental about your discomfort. You’re willing to allow it to be there. These are all crucial practices.

I would even consider writing down all the things where you struggle with procrastination and work through them, practice them, just like you would be lifting a weight, just like you would practice if you were learning French or piano. Pick up the basic things and practice the basics first and go through all of them. Try to get yourself through as many as you can so that you build a sense of mastery like, “I can do that. Even if I don’t want to, I can. I could if I had to,” which I think is a really great way of thinking about things that are uncomfortable in your life. “I don’t want to do them, but I could if I had to.” It’s better than “I can’t” and “I don’t want to.”

All right. That is procrastination. I hope that has been helpful. I really want to stress to you that procrastination is a thing that everybody does. Again, it’s not personal, but I really, really encourage you to master doing the things that you avoid. Avoidance keeps anxiety strong. Avoidance keeps you in the cycle of anxiety, and we want to break that cycle.

I hope that is helpful. I am really excited to see you go out and do those things. If you want to, you can share them with me on social media or things that you’re doing. It’s a beautiful day to do hard things. I love when people tag me with that.

Have a wonderful day, everybody, and I will see you in the next module.

SUMMARY:
Today we have Amanda White, an amazing therapist who treats anxiety, eating disorders and substance use. Amanda is coming onto the podcast today to talk about her book, Not Drinking Tonight and how we can all have a healthy relationship with alcohol. Amanda White talks about ways you can address your relationship with alcohol, in addition to drugs, social media and other vices. Amanda White also shares her own experience with alcohol use and abuse and her lived-experience with sobriety.

In This Episode:

• Do you have a healthy relationship with alcohol
• Why we use alcohol and substances to manage anxiety and other strong emotions
• How to build a healthy relationship with alcohol.
• How to manage substance abuse, anxiety and substance use in recovery.
• Tools and tips to manage alcohol use and abuse

Links To Things I Talk About:

Easiest place to get Amanda’s book with all links amandaewhite.com/book
Instagram @therapyforwomen
My therapy practice therapyforwomencenter.com
ERP School: https://www.cbtschool.com/erp-school-lp

Episode Sponsor:

This episode of Your Anxiety Toolkit is brought to you by CBTschool.com. CBTschool.com is a psychoeducation platform that provides courses and other online resources for people with anxiety, OCD, and Body-Focused Repetitive Behaviors. Go to cbtschool.com to learn more.

Spread the love! Everyone needs tools for anxiety...
If you like Your Anxiety Toolkit Podcast, visit YOUR ANXIETY TOOLKIT PODCAST to subscribe free and you'll never miss an episode. And if you really like Your Anxiety Toolkit, I'd appreciate you telling a friend (maybe even two).

Episode Transcription

This is Your Anxiety Toolkit - Episode 219.
Welcome back, everybody. I am thrilled to have you here with me today. You may notice that the podcast looks a little different. That is on purpose. We have decided to update the cover of the podcast. It now has my face on it. There were a lot of people who had reached out and said that the old podcast cover art looked like a gardening podcast. And I thought it was probably time I updated it. So, that was something that I had created years and years and years ago. And I’m so thrilled to have now a very beautiful new cover art.

Okay. This episode is so, so important. I cannot stress to you how overjoyed I was to have the amazing Amanda White on the podcast. She’s a psychotherapist. She’s on Instagram, under the handle Therapy For Women. She’s so empowering. And she talks a lot about your relationship with substance use, particularly alcohol. But in this episode, we talk about many substances. And this is a conversation I feel we need to have more of because there are a lot of people who are trying to manage their anxiety and they end up using alcohol to cope.

Now, this is a complete shame-free episode. In fact, one of the things I love about Amanda is she really does not subscribe to having to do a 100% sobriety method. She really talks about how you can create a relationship with alcohol based on whatever you think is right. And she has a new book out, which I am so excited that she’s going to share with you all about.

Before we get into the episode, I’d first like to do the review of the week. Here we go.

We have this one from Epic 5000 Cloud 9, and they said:

“This podcast has absolutely changed my life and made my recovery journey feel possible. After completing ERP, I felt lost and confused as to why I did not feel ‘better’. Kimberley has given me so many tools to build my self-compassion, grow my mindfulness skills, manage OCD, and do all the hard things.”

So amazing. I’m so grateful to have you in our community. Epic 5000 Cloud 9. So happy to have you be a part of our little wonderful group of badass human beings. I love it.

Let’s go right over to the show and so you can learn all about Amanda and this beautiful, beautiful conversation. Have a wonderful day, everybody.

Kimberley: Okay. Well, thank you, Amanda, for being here. I’m actually so grateful for you because you’ve actually brought to my attention a topic I’ve never talked about. And so, I’m so happy to have you here. Welcome.

Amanda: Thank you so much for having me, Kimberley. I’m excited to chat with you.

Kimberley: Okay. So, tell me a little bit about you first. Like, who are you? What do you do? What’s your mission?

Amanda: Yeah. So, my name is Amanda White. I am a licensed therapist. You might know me on Instagram from Therapy For Women as my handle. I’m also sober and I’m really on a mission to destigmatize sobriety and destigmatize the idea that you can question your relationship with alcohol. And it’s really why my Instagram page and everything I do isn’t sober only focused because I want it to be something where people who maybe aren’t necessarily sober or haven’t thought about it can, in a safe unstigmatized, unpressured way, also explore their relationship with alcohol. And that is what led me to write a book. And my book is called Not Drink Tonight.

Kimberley: So good. So, I already have so many questions. Why wouldn’t one question their relationship with alcohol? Because what I will bring here is a little culture. I’m Australian.

Amanda: Yeah. I was going to say.

Kimberley: I live in America. The culture around drinking is much different. I have some great friends in England, the culture there is much different. So, do you want to share a little bit about why one wouldn’t maybe question their relationship with drinking?

Amanda: Absolutely. I think I can only speak for America specifically, but I know enough people in England and Australia, too, that there is a culture of drinking is good, drinking is normal. We watch our parents or adults drink when we’re young. We think that’s what makes us an adult. If you look at the media, you look at movies, TV shows, it’s what everyone does when they’re stressed. Women pour themselves a glass of wine. Men pour themselves a bourbon. So, I think that we’re just raised in the society that doesn’t ever question their drinking, because alcohol use is so black and white, where you either are normal and you should drink alcohol and it’s what’s expected, or you’re an alcoholic and you should never drink alcohol. And there isn’t a lot of space in between. So, if someone questions their alcohol use, people assume that they’re an alcoholic.

Kimberley: And so, now let me ask, why would we question our relationship? What was that process like for you? Why would we want to do that? Some people haven’t, I think, even considered it. So, can you share a little bit about why we might want to?

Amanda: Absolutely. I think it isn’t talked about enough of how much alcohol really negatively impacts your mental health. For a while, I know doctors used to talk about there are some heart-healthy benefits of alcohol, which new studies say is not true. There really aren’t any benefits to drinking alcohol in terms of our health. But really, I think especially anxiety and alcohol are so intertwined and people don’t talk about it and don’t think about it. And what I want people to know is when you drink alcohol, it’s a depressant and your brain produces chemicals because your brain always wants to be in homeostasis. So, your brain produces anxiety chemicals, like cortisol and stuff like that, to try to rebalance into homeostasis. And after alcohol leaves your body, those anxiety hormones are still in there and it creates the phenomenon where you end up being more anxious after you drink. There’s other mental health effects too. But I feel like, especially on this podcast, it’s so important that people realize how intertwined alcohol and anxiety is.

Kimberley: Right. You know what’s interesting is I do a pretty good amount of assessment with my patients. But really often, I will have seen them for many months before-- and even though I thought I’ve assessed them for substance use and not even abuse, they will then say and realize like, “I think I’m actually using alcohol more than I thought to manage my anxiety.” And I’m always really shocked because I’m like, “I swore I assessed you for this.” But I think it takes some people time during recovery to start to say like, “Wow, I think there is an unhealthy relationship going here.” Is that the case from what you see or is that more my population?

Amanda: No. Absolutely. Because I think it’s easy to lie to yourself. Maybe not even lie, just like not look at it because again, it’s so normalized because we have an idea in our head of what someone with a problem with alcohol looks like. We don’t consider ourselves to have that problem. But just because we aren’t drinking every day or we’re not blacking out or something like that doesn’t mean that we might not be using it to numb, to cope with anxiety, to deal with stress.

Kimberley: Right. You know what’s funny is I-- this could be my personal or maybe it is a cultural thing because I always want to catch whether it’s an Australian thing or a Kimberley thing, is I remember-- I think hearing, but maybe I misinterpreted as a young child that you’re only an alcoholic if you get aggressive when you drink, and that if you’re a happy drunk, you’re not a drunk. You know what I mean? And that it’s not a bad thing. If it makes you happy and it takes the stress away, that’s actually a good coping. So, I remember learning as a teen of like, oh, you get to question what is an alcoholic and what’s substance abuse and what’s not. So, how would you define substance use versus substance abuse? Or do you even use that language?

Amanda: I mean, yes and no. I use it in terms of it exists, and it is part of the DSM. So, it is in terms of, I do diagnose when needed and things like that. A lot of times though, I think the current narrative and I think people spend so much time trying to figure out if it’s use or misuse, that they miss out on the most important question, which to me is, is alcohol making my life better.

Kimberley: Yeah.

Amanda: And if it’s not, if it’s right-- I have exercises in my book and I talk a lot about like, what are the costs of your drinking, and what are the payoffs? And if it’s costing you a lot or it’s costing you more than it’s bringing to your life, I think that is where you should question it. And I think your life can change. You can go through different things in your life and maybe that’s when you can ebb and flow with your questioning of it, especially people get so obsessed with the idea of whether they’re an alcoholic or not. And the term ‘alcoholic’ is completely outdated. It’s not even a diagnosis anymore. It’s now a spectrum. So, to me, that word is just so outdated and unhelpful to think about really.

Kimberley: Right. And even the word ‘abuse’ has a stigma to it too, doesn’t it?

Amanda: Right. In the DSM, it’s alcohol use disorder and it’s mild, moderate and severe. But it’s wild thinking back. I mean, I was in grad school. Oh my gosh, I’m going to date. I don’t even know how long ago, 10 years ago.

Kimberley: Don’t tell them.

Amanda: A certain amount of time ago, I just remember being in ‘addictions class’ as it was called and we were talking about what is the difference between use and abuse and what makes someone an alcoholic. And I think people also get very attached to being dependent. It means it’s abuse. And it takes a lot to become dependent on alcohol physically. So, we’re just missing out on so many people. I say often, we can question so many things in our life. I’m sure you do too with your clients. I question how their sleep habits interact with their mental health. We talk about how getting outside impacts their mental health, all these different factors. But for some reason with alcohol, which is a drug, we don’t question it or we are not allowed to.

Kimberley: Right. Yes. I will address this for the listeners, is I think with my clients, one of the most profound road, like if we come to the edge of the road and we have to decide which direction, the thing that really gets in the way is if I put a name to it, then I have to stop. And that can be, a lot of times, they won’t even want to bring it up – be in fear of saying, well, like you were saying before, is that meaning now-- as soon as I admit to having a problem, does that mean I’m in AA? Is it black and white? I think that there’s so much fear around what it means once we really define whether it’s helpful or problematic. That can be a scary step. What are your thoughts?

Amanda: Yeah, I completely agree. And that’s why I really believe in looking at it as a spectrum, especially I think about disordered eating, right? It’s like, we know that based on studies, if someone engages in disordered eating, they’re more likely to develop an eating disorder. So, in my book, I coined this term ‘disorder drinking’ and how I really think we need that term where people can-- it makes the barrier to question your relationship with alcohol much lower, where I find in my practice because I work with a lot of people with eating disorders. People are very open about saying, “Yeah, I’m maybe engaging in some unhealthy, disordered eating. I don’t know.”

But there’s a whole step there before maybe you recognize that you have an eating disorder, where I really think that that is what we need with alcohol. We need to be able to talk about how, like, yeah, most of us in college engage in disordered drinking. It’s not super healthy, the way that we drink. Or we may go through a period of time in our life because we’re super stressed or something’s going on, where we engage in that. And that doesn’t mean that you have, for sure, a substance use disorder or you’re addicted or you have to never drink again. But I think it’s important to recognize when we start to fall into that so we can change that pattern.

Kimberley: Right. Particularly with COVID. I mean, alcohol consumption is, I think, doubled or something like that in some country. And I think too, I mean, when we’re struggling with COVID that we have less access to good tools and less access to social. So, people are relying on substances and so forth. Yeah. So, what is this solution? There you go. Tell me all your answers. What is their options? How might somebody move into this conversation with themselves or with their partner or with their therapist? What are the steps from here, do you think?

Amanda: Yeah. So, I think that the first step is to try to take a break. I think 30 days is a good starting point. A lot of times, if people just start off by cutting back, they don’t really get any of the positive feel-good benefits of taking a break, which is why I recommend starting with taking a break first. Obviously, I believe in harm reduction. And if you are in a place where you can’t take a break, moderation is definitely a good tool and better than nothing.

Kimberley: Can you tell what harm reduction, for those who don’t know what that means?

Amanda: Yeah. So, harm reduction is the idea that rather than focusing on completely eliminating a behavior or especially completely eliminating a substance is we think about cutting back on that. And I think about specifically, if someone is in an abusive situation, if someone has a lot of trauma going on and alcohol is the one thing that’s keeping them afloat, that to me is like, of course, I’m not going to say you must quit cold turkey or something like that. And even if you’re talking about, alcohol is very dangerous to physically detox from if you are drinking every day, which a lot of people don’t know. In those cases, yeah, it’s really important to get support and detox in a safe environment.

Kimberley: Right. Okay. So, sorry I cut you off. Take a break--

Amanda: No, it’s okay. Yeah. So, that’s what harm reduction is. But yeah, in general, I recommend starting with taking a 30-day break, seeing how that goes, see how your health improves, see how your anxiety might be reduced and improved. And really to me, the goal is to learn how to live your life without being dependent on alcohol. Because if we can’t process our emotions, set boundaries, socialize, go on dates, whatever, without the help of alcohol, we never really have freedom of choice over drinking or not drinking because we need it on some level. So, my whole goal is for people to learn how to do some of those skills so that they don’t have to rely on alcohol, and then they can use alcohol in a healthier way for celebrating or in a way that positively impacts their life and they don’t use it as a crutch.

Kimberley: So, that’s so helpful. I’m pretty well-versed in this, but I wouldn’t say I’m a specialist. So, I’m really curious. So, if somebody is using alcohol or any other substance to manage their anxiety, would you teach them skills before they take the break so that they have the skills for the break or would you just start to take the break and then pick up what gets lost there? What might be some steps and what skills may you teach them?

Amanda: I think it’s a bit of both. I think if you only teach skills before, someone might never take the break, which is fine. But I think if you are only teaching the skills, a lot of times, the skills, I think that’s really good to start before you take the breaks. You can learn how to start dealing with your emotions maybe without drinking, for example. But some of the other stuff like going to a party, without drinking is something where if you don’t actually take that step, it’s probably unlikely that you’re ever going to do it until you’ve pushed yourself to take that break. But in general, yeah. I mean, I think one of the most important ones is learning how to cope with your emotions. People use alcohol all the time, especially alcohol becomes a way to deal with loneliness, to deal with stress, to deal with sadness. And I think--

Kimberley: Social anxiety is a big one.

Amanda: Social anxiety. Absolutely. And I think a lot of us literally don’t know how to process an emotion, say no, set that boundary, take care of themselves on a basic level without drinking. So, those are some of the skills I think are really important to learn.

Kimberley: I mean, yeah. And for a lot of the folks that I see because their anxiety is so high, would you say they’re using it to top off that anxiety to try and reduce it? In the case where if you’re not drinking, you’re having high states of anxiety. Is there any shifts that you would have them go through besides general anxiety management?

Amanda: I think the example I’m thinking of is maybe social anxiety. If there’s a specific instance, right? I know you talk about this a lot on Instagram, like exposures can really, really help with reducing anxiety. And I think there are steps that you can take that are small if you have a lot of social anxiety about going to a party and not drinking, for example, and you’re relying on alcohol to deal with going to a party. I mean, some of the things off the top of my head I can think about are like driving to the place where the party is before it happens, talking to someone who is going to be at the party – taking these small steps to desensitize yourself to it so you can build up your tolerance before you go. Or maybe you go, if this is the first year and you only stay for a short period of time, rather than going from nothing to expecting yourself to go and have fun and stay at the whole party the whole time.

Kimberley: Right. What was your experience, if you don’t mind sharing? What were those 30 days like, or can you share it, put us in your shoes for a little bit?

Amanda: Yeah, absolutely. So, I struggled a lot with an eating disorder and I kept relapsing in my eating disorder when I would drink. And I had said to my therapist at the time, “I think that I might have a problem with alcohol. I don’t know.” And she recommended me do those 30 days. And it was really hard for me. I didn’t actually make it to the first 30 days when I originally tried because I was so afraid of the pushback of friends, of people asking me why, of not being able to be fun. A huge part of my identity at that time was all wrapped up in what people thought of me and going out and being the fun, crazy one.

Kimberley: Yeah. And it’s interesting how the different experience, because I too had an eating disorder. But my eating disorder wouldn’t let me drink.

Amanda: Yeah.

Kimberley: That would be letting go of control, and what if I binge, and what if I ingest too many calories? So, it’s funny how different disorders play out in different ways. It was actually an exposure for me to drink. What we quote, I think I’d heard so many times “empty calories” or something. So, that was a different exposure for me of that. But I can totally see how other people, of course again, it does-- I mean, I think that this is interesting in your book, you talk about the pros and the cons. It does make it easier to be in public. It does “work” in some settings until it doesn’t.

Amanda: Exactly. And I think that’s so important to normalize and it’s part of why I wrote my book because there aren’t many books that are, you’ll get this as a therapist. I can think of many different situations where, like you said, I wouldn’t tell a client, “You should absolutely stop drinking,” because everything is unique. So, I really wanted to write a book that took into account different things and really led the reader through their own journey where they get to discover it for themselves because while there’s amazing books out that I love, there aren’t a ton that talk about this gray area, drinking, this middle lane, this truth that a lot of times you can feel lonely when you don’t drink because you’re left out of certain things. And that can cause more anxiety. So, we have to navigate all of that.

Kimberley: Yeah. It’s interesting too, and I don’t know if I’m getting this research correct. And maybe I’m not, but I’ll just talk from an experiential point. It’s similar with cigarettes, I think. There is something calming about holding the wine glass. Even if it’s got lemonade in it, for me, there’s something celebratory about that. And so, the reason I bring that up is, is that a part of the options for people? Is to explore the areas? It’s funny, I remember my husband many years ago that we talk about cigarettes, because he works in the film industry, and he would say, “The people who smoke cigarettes are the ones who actually get a break because they have to leave set and they get to go outside and sit on something and breathe and have a moment to themselves. If you don’t smoke, you’re lazy if you take a break.” And so, is that a part of it for you in terms of identifying the benefits and bringing that into your life? Like, I still now drink sparkling cider or something, an alcoholic in old champagne glass. My kids are always joking about it. Is that a part of the process?

Amanda: Absolutely. And that’s something that I completely agree with you. I think sometimes we don’t even want an alcoholic beverage. We want a moment. We want a break. We want a feeling different or celebratory, which is why we take out the wine glass that isn’t a regular glass, something like that. And that is why I really believe, I mean, it depends on the person. And sometimes if someone has more severe drinking a non-alcoholic beverage initially could be something that’s triggering for them. But I am a big believer too. And yeah, put it in a fancy glass. If you enjoy a mocktail, drink something different than water, you can explore different options. And I think some people are really surprised at how much it’s not actually about the drink sometimes, it’s the ritual of making a drink or the ritual of using that special glass, or the ritual of drinking something that isn’t water.

Kimberley: Right. Yes. Or even just the ritual of the day ending. I always remember, my parents would be five o’clock, right? And at five o’clock they would have the-- this is a big family tradition, is at five o’clock, you’d bring out the cheese and the crackers and the grapes and the wine. And it was the end of the day. And so, I could imagine, if someone said, “We’re going to take that away,” you’d be like, “No, that’s how I know the day is over. That’s how I move from one thing to the other.” And sometimes we do think black and white. It means you have to take the whole cheese platter away as well, right?

Amanda: Absolutely. We can get almost in our heads of maybe we think we’re more dependent on that cheese platter or the wine or whatever, without realizing that what we really like about it is the ritual.

Kimberley: Yeah. So, you can share it or not, how does your life look now? And for your clients, give me maybe some context of what do people arrive at once they’ve been through this process and how might it be different for different people.

Amanda: Totally. So, I’m completely sober. I don’t drink alcohol. I’ve been sober for seven years. And in terms of how the process looks for me, I drink mocktails. I drink out of wine glasses sometimes. I love going to a bar and seeing sometimes if there’s an alcohol-free option on a menu, I think that’s really fun. And for me initially, when I was thinking about this and working on it, like I said, it was very tied to my eating disorder.

But the biggest thing for me is I used to think, well, I can’t totally stop drinking because that’s black and white, and that’s not freedom. Freedom is being able to decide. And I think what is different and unique compared to an eating disorder, for example, is that alcohol is addictive, right? Unlike food, it is an addictive substance that we can live without. And for me, I used to, or for me, I don’t have to think about it if I don’t drink. When I was trying to moderate, it was a lot of decision fatigue. It’s like, “What am I going to drink? How much am I going to drink? When will I stop? Am I going to drink too much?” It was all of these decisions. And freedom for me now actually is just not drinking and not thinking about if I’m going to drink or not.

So what my life looks like now is I’m sober, I’ve been sober for seven years. I enjoy going out to restaurants and getting alcohol-free drinks and things like that. And I used to be really worried that that was too reductive, that I was too black and white if I just said I wanted to be sober. But the truth is unlike food, alcohol is an addictive substance. When you have one alcoholic beverage, it does create a thirst for itself for most of us.

So, for me, the freedom is actually not worrying about whether I’m going to drink or not. It’s so exhausting for some people, myself included, to be constantly thinking about how much you’re going to drink, if you’re going to drink, when you’re going to drink, what you’re going to drink. And now, the real freedom for me is I don’t drink. I don’t think about it. And that’s the freedom because-- sorry, I just got caught up in what I was saying.

Kimberley: No, I think that that is so beautiful. As you were saying it, I was thinking about me in a Fitbit. I will never be able to wear a Fitbit. Because as soon as I know, I could wear it for day-ish. And day two, I’m all obsessive and compulsive. I just know that about myself. And some people can wear it and be fine, and I can never wear a Fitbit. I just can’t. My brain goes very, like you said, on how many? More or less, what’s happening? And so, I love that you’re saying that, is really knowing your limits and whether it’s-- the Fitbit, it’s not actually the problem, but the Fitbit is what starts a lot of problematic behaviors that I know is just not helpful for me.

Amanda: Yes. And I think it’s important to recognize there are factors that make us more likely to be able to moderate successfully or not, right? The amount of alcohol you’ve drank throughout your life, your past drinking habits, whether you have a history of addiction in your family or substance use, whether you have trauma, whether you have anxiety, all of these things might make it more difficult for you to moderate compared to someone else.

Kimberley: Right. I don’t know if this is helpful for our listeners, but I went sober. My husband and I did for the first year of COVID. What was interesting is then I got put on a medicine where I wasn’t allowed to drink and I felt offended by this medicine because I was like, “But you’re taking my choices away.” And so, I had to go back. Even though I’d made the choice already, I’d had to go back and really address this conversation of like, “Okay, why does that feel threatening to you” and to look at it because a part of me wanted to be like, “No, I’m going to start drinking now just because they told me I’m not allowed.” So, it’s so funny how our brain gets caught up on things around drinking and the rules and so forth. So, I didn’t think of it that way until you’d mentioned it.

Amanda: Yeah, absolutely. And I think that that can be why people rebel against “I’m not an alcoholic” mindset instead of it being a choice, instead of it being “My life is better without drinking.” I often say, my drinking was like Russian roulette. A lot of times it was fine when I drank, but the times where it wasn’t fine, I was not willing to put up with it anymore. And I don’t know whether I could drink successfully or not, but it’s not a risk that I’m willing to take. And it’s not worth it compared to all the benefits that I have from sobriety. And because of that, it really feels like an empowering choice.

Kimberley: Yeah. My last question to you before we hear more about you is, what would you say to the people who are listening, who aren’t ready to have the conversation with themselves about whether it’s helpful or not? I think I learn in a master’s grade the stages of change. You’re in a pre-contemplation stage where you’re like, “I’m not even ready to contemplate this yet.” Do you have any thoughts for people who are so scared to even look at this?

Amanda: Yeah. For people who maybe are in that pre-contemplation, not sure if they want to do the deeper work to question their relationship with alcohol, what I would recommend to them is start by just trying to reduce some of their alcohol intake. They don’t have to stop drinking. They don’t have to even think about whether it’s serving them or not, but there are so many amazing alcohol-free beverages that exist now. I mean there’s alcohol-free beers and wines and all kinds of things. And you could just try swapping one of your alcoholic beverages with that when you go out or at home and just see how that makes you feel.

Kimberley: Yeah. It’s a great response in terms of like, it is. It could be. Would you say that’s more of the harm reduction model?

Amanda: Yeah, absolutely. Or someone who’s not ready or really interested in the big conversation. That’s one of the reasons I really support and like the alcohol-free beverages and stuff like that because it gives people, I think, an easier way to step into it. And sometimes even realizing too, like alcohol-free beverages can taste really good compared to the beverage that has alcohol in it. So, you’re not drinking this for the taste.

Kimberley: Exactly. Sometimes when I have drunk alcohol, I’m like, why am I even drinking this? It’s not delicious.

Amanda: It’s true.

Kimberley: It’s not delicious. I love that you say that about-- I think one of the wins of the world is they are creating more, even just the bottles and the look of them are much nicer than the general or dual looking kind of bottles, which I think is really cool. I love this conversation, and thank you so much for bringing it to me because I do really believe, particularly in the anxiety field, we are not talking about it enough. So, I’m so grateful for you.

Amanda: Absolutely. I’m so glad that I got to chat about it because, yeah, the anxiety connection is huge.

Kimberley: Yeah. Tell me about your book and all about you. Where can people find you?

Amanda: Yeah. So, my book comes out on January 4th. It’s called Not Drinking Tonight. And 2022, because this is out.

Kimberley: Yeah.

Amanda: Sorry if I messed up.

Kimberley: No, no it’s good. So, for people who are listening on replay, it will be out as of 2022.

Amanda: Yeah. It’s called Not Drinking Tonight: A Guide to Creating a Sober Life You Love. It is broken up into three different sections so that you can learn in the first section why you drink, and I go into evolutionary psychology and trauma and shame. In the second part, it’s about reparenting yourself or the tools that you need to stay stopped. So, I talk about boundaries and self-care and all of the things, emotional health, how we take care of our emotions. And then in the last section, I talk about moderation, relapsing, the overlap of alcohol use and other substances or ways we numb. So, really though my book is structured around alcohol. I talk a lot about eating disorders, perfectionism, workaholism, other drugs, because I think a lot of it is the same in that sense.

Kimberley: 100%.

Amanda: So yeah. And you can find me on Instagram at Therapy For Women, or my website is amandaewhite.com.

Kimberley: Amazing. Thank you so much. It’s so great to actually have a conversation with you face to face. Well, as face to face as we can be. So, thank you so much.

Amanda: Thank you. This was so great.

-----

Okay. And before we get going, I’m sure you got so much out of that episode. Before we get going onto your week, I wanted to share the “I did a hard thing.” This one is for on Paula, and she said:

“I started ERP School earlier this year. While looking into my OC cycle, I was surprised to find out that I had some overt compulsions. I thought they were mostly mental. And that’s when I figured out I had a BFRB. My loved ones had commented on my hair pulling in the past, but I didn’t realize how compulsive it could be. I watched Kimberley’s webinar on BFRBs, and I got inspiration to be creative. I tried to use hand lotion, so it would make my hands sticky and demotivate hair pulling. I also got a fidget toy to keep my hands occupied whenever I felt like pulling. But what worked best was you using a transparent elastic band to tie up the two strands I used to pull. It’s perfect because it creates a physical barrier to pulling, but also a sensory reminder. If my fingers feel the band, I can say to myself, “Oh, the band, that feels different.” And because I’m trying to make a change, way to go me. Thank you, Kimberley, for all the amazing work you do.”

So guys, this is amazing. If you didn’t know, if you go to CBT School, we have a free training for people with BFRBs. If you have OCD, we have a free training for people with OCD. So, head on over to CBT School, and you can get all of the cool resources there.

Have a wonderful day, everybody. And thank you so much for the “I did a hard thing.” That was so cool. I was not expecting that, Paula. Congratulations! You are doing definite hard things.

Have a wonderful day, everybody.

In today’s episode, Kimberley Quinlan talks about the importance of identifying catastrophic thinking. The reason this is so important is that this type of cognitive distortion or cognitive error can increase one’s experience of anxiety and panic, making it harder to manage it at the moment. Kimberley talks about the importance of mindfulness and self-compassion when responding to catastrophization also. 

In This Episode:

• What is Catastrophization?
• Why is it important that we catch how we catastrophize?
• How to manage Catastrophization?
• How correcting our thoughts can help, sometimes..but not always.

Links To Things I Talk About:

ERP School: https://www.cbtschool.com/erp-school-lp

Episode Sponsor:

This episode of Your Anxiety Toolkit is brought to you by CBTschool.com.  CBTschool.com is a psychoeducation platform that provides courses and other online resources for people with anxiety, OCD, and Body-Focused Repetitive Behaviors.  Go to cbtschool.com to learn more.

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EPISODE TRANSCRIPTION

This is Your Anxiety Toolkit - Episode 218.

Welcome back, everybody. How are you doing? How are you really? Just wanted to check in with you first, see how you’re doing. We’re friends, so it’s my job to check in on you and see how you are. Thank you for being here with me again. I do know how important your time is, and I am so grateful that you spend it with me. Thank you. That is such a joy and it’s such a wonderful experience to know that I am spending time with you each week.

This week, we are talking about the danger of catastrophization. Now, I’ll talk with you a little bit more about what that means here in a second, but basically what I want to do in this episode is really to take off from the very first episode of this year, which was the things I’d learned in 2021. One of the points that I made there was to really take responsibility for your thought errors, right? And I wanted to pick one of the thought errors that I see the most in my clients. In fact, in the last couple of weeks, it’s been an ongoing piece of the work we do. It’s not all of the work, but it’s a piece of the work, is for me just to be, I’m still doing teletherapy. So, we’re sitting across from the screen and just reflecting and modeling back to them some of the ways in which they speak to themselves and really looking at how helpful that is and how that impacts them.

So, before we get into that episode, I want to offer to you guys to submit your “I did a hard thing.” Today, as I went to prepare for this episode, I checked the link and we’d actually used up all of the ones that were submitted probably in August of 2021. And so I’m going to encourage you guys to submit your “I did a hard thing” so I can feature you on the podcast. When we first submitted, we had like 70 submissions, and I’ve used all of them up. And I would love to get new ones to share with you and have you be featured on the show. So, if you want to go over, you can click on the show notes for the link, or if you want, you can go to kimberleyquinlan-lmft.com. So, that’s Kimberley Quinlan - L for License, M for Marriage, F for Family, T for Therapy.com. Click on the podcast link, which is where we hold all of our podcasts, and you could submit your “I did a hard thing.” And I’d love to have you on the show. It actually is probably my favorite part. I could easily just have a whole show called “I did a hard thing” and it could be just that.

All right. So, let’s get into the episode. Today, I want to talk with you about the danger of catastrophization, and let me share with you how this shows up. So, I want to be clear that you cannot control your thoughts, your intrusive thoughts that repetitively show up, and you can’t show your fear up. You cannot change your feelings. So, you can’t tell yourself not to be sad if you’re sad and you can’t tell yourself not to be anxious if you’re anxious and you can’t not panic if you’re panicking. But you can change how you react and how you behave. That is a common CBT rule.

Now often, when you have an intrusive thought, a lot of my patients or clients will report having anxiety or having a thought or having a feeling or having an urge or having an image that shows up in your head – because that’s what I do, right? People come to me with a problem. The problem is usually a thought, feeling, sensation, urge, or image. That’s what I do. And what I try to do is change the way they respond. That is my job, right?

Now, what often happens is, there is a thought or a feeling or a sensation or urge, impulse, whatever it may be that shows up, and they often will respond to that by framing it in a way that is catastrophic. I’ll give you some examples.

So, when they have the presence of anxiety in their body, they may frame it as: “I’m freaking out.” That’s a catastrophic thought. When they had a lot of anxiety or maybe they had a panic attack, they frame it or they assess it by saying, “Kimberley, I almost died. I had the biggest panic attack of my life. I almost died.” Or “It nearly killed me. The anxiety nearly killed me,” or “The pain nearly killed me.” They may have tried to do an exposure or they may have tried to reach a goal that they had set, and they’ll say, “I failed miserably. It was a total disaster.” They are trying to recover from a mental illness or a medical illness, and they’ll say, “I’ll never amount to anything. I’ll never get better.” Or they’re suffering.

We have different seasons in our lives. We have seasons where things go really, really well and we’re like winning at life. And then we have seasons where things are hard and we just have hurdle after hurdle, after hurdle, and they’ll say, “There’s no point, my life is not worth living,” or “I’m never going to be able to solve this.”

Now, first of all, if you’ve thought any of these things, I am sending you so much love. Your thinking is not your fault. I’m not here to place blame on you like, “Oh, you’re bad at this,” because our brains naturally catastrophize, because our brain wants to make sense of things and put them in little categories because that is the easiest, quickest way to understand our world. So naturally, we do this to make sense of the world. If I said to my daughter, “How are you doing with math?” She’d go, “Oh, it totally sucks,” because it’s easier to say, “It totally sucks,” than to say, “There are some things that I’m doing well with and some things that I am not. I am struggling with this thing, but I’m finding this part really enjoyable.” That takes a lot of energy to say that, and it takes a lot of energy to hold opposing truths. We’ve talked about this in the past. It’s not the fastest, efficient way to live when you’re living in those types of ways.

So, what we often will do, particularly if we are having a lot of strong emotions, is we catastrophize. Now often a client will say some of these or many others. There’s many ways we can catastrophize, which is to make a catastrophe out of something. When they say it, I don’t say, “That’s wrong. You’re bad for thinking that.” I’ll just say, “I’m wondering what percent of that is correct. Like I almost died. Okay, I’m interested to know a little bit about that. Did you almost die?” And they’ll be like, “No.” I’m like, “Okay.” And I’m not there to, “I really want to model to you.”

I’m never across the screen or across the office with my patient, trying to tell them how wrong they are. Never. That’s never my goal. But I want them to start to acknowledge that the way in which they think and they frame an experience can create more problems. Now if they said to me, “Kimberley, I want to think this way. I like it. It makes me happy. It brings me joy. I’m fulfilled this way,” I have nothing to fix.

But often, once we reflect, and I often will then ask my patients, “So when you say ‘I totally freaked out.’ You had anxiety and you said, ‘I totally freaked out,’ how does that feel?” And often they’ll say, “Not good.” They’ll say, “It actually makes me feel more anxious.” Or if they had an intrusive thought, let’s say they had OCD and they had an intrusive thought and we can’t control intrusive thoughts, and then their response was, “I’m a horrible human being who doesn’t deserve to be a mom for having that thought,” I’ll say, “How does it feel to respond to your intrusive thought that way? How does that have you act?” And they’re like, “Well, it makes me feel terrible and not worthy. And then I don’t want to do anything, or then I just want to hide, or then I have so many emotions. I start freaking out even more. And now it’s a big snowball effect.”

So then we start to gently and curiosity-- sorry guys. Then we begin to gently and curiously take a look at what are the facts or what actually lands to be true and helpful. I want to be clear. We do not replace catastrophization with positive thinking. I would never encourage a client to replace “I am freaking out” with “I am feeling wonderful” because that’s not true. They’re actually experiencing discomfort. They are experiencing panic. They had an intrusive thought. They’re having an urge to pick or pull. They’re having an urge to binge. They’re having depression. They’re having self-harm thoughts.

So I’m not here to, again, change those particularly. But I really encourage them to look at how you frame that experience, how you respond to that experience. What would bring you closer to the goal that you have for yourself? Because usually, when people come to me, they’ll say, “I want to feel less anxious,” or “I want to do less compulsions,” or “I want to pick my skin less,” or “I want to binge less,” or “I want to love my life. I want to feel some self-esteem and worth. I want to take my depression away.”

So, we want to really look at catastrophization and look at the danger of continuing to use that pattern. Now, let me get you in on a little trick here. I titled this podcast “The Danger of Catastrophization” because the title in and of itself is a catastrophization. Did you pick that up? That’s a lot of what happens in social media, is they use catastrophic words to peak your interest. It sells a lot of things. In fact, some businesses sell on the principle of catastrophization. They tell you what catastrophe will happen if you don’t buy their product. They might say, “You’ll have wrinkles. Terrible, old wrinkles if you don’t buy our product.” And that may feel like a catastrophe because they’re trying to sell you their product. They may say, “If you don’t buy this special extra filter for your car, it could explode on the highway.” That’s a catastrophe. “Okay, I’ll buy it.”

So, even my naming of it, I want you to be aware of how it piques your interest, the catastrophes, and how it draws you in because nobody wants a catastrophe. But for some reason, we think in this way. So I made a little trick there. I tricked you into listening. I try not to use it as a tool, but I thought today it would be really relevant to bring it up and see whether you caught that catastrophization that I did to get you onto this episode. I’m a naughty girl, I know.

There it is. I want you to catch how you frame things and how you tell stories about things that you’ve been through or about the future and catch the catastrophization that you do. If you have a supportive partner or friend or somebody in your life, a loved one, and you trust them, you may even ask them to just give you a little wink every time they catch you using a catastrophization. Sometimes you don’t catch it until someone brings it to your attention. Because again, our brain works on habit. Our brain works on what it knows, and it doesn’t really like to change because that means you have to use more energy. But I promise you. I promise, promise, promise you, this is the energy you want to use. This little extra piece of energy is totally worth it, because think about it. If I said to you, “I had a panic attack, it was really uncomfortable. I rode it out. There were some moments where I felt really confident and some moments where I was struggling, but it did go away eventually,” ask yourself how that feels. And then I’m going to tell you a different version: “I was totally freaking out. I totally thought I was going to die. It was so bad. I really think it was the most painful thing I’ve ever been through in my whole entire life.” How does that feel? It feels terrible.

A lot of panic comes from people catastrophizing, using language that feels really dangerous. The danger of catastrophization – remember, it feels dangerous when we use catastrophization. So, just be aware of it. Catch it if you can. Okay?

All right. Before we finish up, I want to do the review of the week. This is by Dr. Peggy DeLong and she said, “Wonderful practices!” She gave it a five-star review and said, “I appreciate that you highlight these skills as practices. Coping with anxiety is not a one-and-done deal. Practicing these skills, even on good days, especially on good days, helps to promote long-term well-being. Thanks for providing this service!”

Thank you so much, Dr. Peggy DeLong. I am so grateful for your reviews. Please, go and leave a review if you have some time. I would be so grateful. It really helps me reach people who, let’s say, look at the podcast and think to themselves, would this be helpful to me? And if there’s lots of reviews, it helps build trust for them that they would then click, and then hopefully I can help them. Okay?

All right. Sending you all my love.

One quick thing to remember is if you go over to cbtschool.com, we actually have a full training on this, on correcting the way that you think. Again, the goal is not to change your intrusive thoughts, but the goal is to work on how you reframe things. So you can go there for that training.

All right. All my love to you guys. Have a wonderful day. It is a beautiful day to do hard things.

SUMMARY: 

Today we have Windsor Flynn talking about how she realized the benefits of meditation for anxiety and OCD in her recovery. Winsdor brought her lived experience and training to the conversation and addressed how meditation has helped her in many ways, not just with her OCD and mental health.

In This Episode:

The benefits of meditation for general anxiety
The benefits of meditation for OCD
The roadblocks to practicing meditation
How Mindfulness and mediation help with daily stress (especially through COVID-19)

Links To Things I Talk About:

Instagram: @windsormeditates
Instagram: @Windsor.Flynn
Website: www.windsorflynn.com (Windsor is certified to teach the 1 Giant Mind 3 Day Learn Meditation course).
ERP School: https://www.cbtschool.com/erp-school-lp

Episode Sponsor:

This episode of Your Anxiety Toolkit is brought to you by CBTschool.com.  CBTschool.com is a psychoeducation platform that provides courses and other online resources for people with anxiety, OCD, and Body-Focused Repetitive Behaviors.  Go to cbtschool.com to learn more.
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EPISODE TRANSCRIPTION

This is Your Anxiety Toolkit - Episode 217.

You guys, 217. That’s a lot of episodes. I’m very excited about that.

Today, we have with us the amazing Windsor Flynn. I cannot tell you how incredibly by inspired I am with Windsor. She is very cool and has so much wisdom and so much kindness to share.

Today, we have her on to talk about having anxiety and learning the importance of meditation. Now, Windsor speaks specifically about having OCD and how much it has helped her to take up a meditation practice. She goes over the couple of main key points, which is number one, anyone can meditate. And that meditation can be user-friendly for people, even with OCD. And she said, “Especially for people with OCD.” And she actually gives us the amazing gift of a guided meditation at the end, that just helps you bring your attention to the present and learn to drop down into your compassion and your body. And then the third point she makes is that meditation can be integrated into your life, even if you feel like you don’t have time, or even if it’s really uncomfortable. And she shares some amazing experiences and examples of where she really struggled and how she got through those difficulties. So, I’m going to quickly first do the “I did a hard thing” and then I’m going to let you guys get right into the amazing conversation with Windsor Flynn.

So, today’s “I did a hard thing” is from Anonymous, and they said:

“I wear a dress that has been sitting in my closet for months. I was always scared to show my skin since breaking out in hives over my social anxiety. I felt proud for the first time in a long time.”

This is so cool. You guys, I love this so much. They’re really talking about showing up imperfect and all, or letting people judge them and going and doing what you want to do anyway. And that is what this podcast is about. It’s about living the life that you want, not the life that anxiety wants you to have. And often, anxiety will keep your life very small if you only listen to it and only follow its rules. And so, anonymous is doing this work, walking the walk, not just talking the talk. So, yes, I’m so, so in love with this.

Now you guys, you can go over to my private practice website, which is where the podcast lives. It’s Kimberley Quinlan - L for License, M for Marriage, F for Family, and T for Therapist – I had to think there – .com. So, KimberleyQuinlan-lmft.com. And then you can click on the podcast and right there is a link for you to submit your “I did a hard thing” and you can be featured on the show. So, go do that, but not right away. First, I want you to listen to this amazing, amazing episode.

Kimberley: Welcome. I am so excited for this episode. I have a reason for being so excited, which I’ll share with you in a second, but first, I want to introduce to you Windsor Flynn. She is incredible. I have watched you grow over the last what? A year or two years since I’ve known you. It is so wonderful to have you on, so thank you for coming.

Windsor: Yeah. Thank you for inviting me. This is so cool because I’ve spent a lot of time listening to your podcast and, I don’t know, just hoping to be on Monday, but I didn’t know for what. So, this is really cool for me.

Kimberley: Yeah, this is so cool. So, you’re coming on to talk about meditation. And the reason that this is so exciting for me is that is actually what this podcast was originally for – was to bring mindfulness and meditation practice to people who have anxiety. And I did a lot of meditations at the beginning and then I lost my way. So, I feel like you coming here is full circle. We’re going back to the roots of the show to talk about mindfulness and meditation. Do you want to share a little bit about your story with mental health and why you landed on this as being your passion project?

Windsor: Yeah, sure. So, I started-- I guess my mental health story goes way back, but I’ll just start at the beginning when I first came to my OCD diagnosis. I had been experiencing anxiety. Looking back, I will say it was pretty debilitating, but I was sort of just powering through it. I was a new mom. I didn’t have a lot of mom friends, the first in my group to have kids. My parents are across the ocean in Hawaii. I’m in California, in San Francisco with my boyfriend who is shocked at being a dad.

So, I’m very anxious, but I’m doing all the things. And I had started experiencing intrusive thoughts, which I didn’t know were intrusive thoughts. I was just really worried that I was going to become a headline for like moms that murder. I hate moms that kill because I had heard of this story. I’m sure so many people who grew up at the same time as me were really familiar with the Andrea Yates story. I don’t need to go full into detail, but she had some mental health issues and she ended up killing her kids. It’s a very, very sad story, but I had attached to that because I was just so, so scared that that would happen to me. And I don’t know why I was nervous that this would happen to me. But ever since I was little, I just always thought that anything drastic, it would happen to me. I would be there for the end of the world. I would be there to witness a mass murder, or I would be a victim of a serial killer. All these things, I just thought it had to be me. I don’t know why.

So, of course when I have a baby, I’m thinking, “Oh no, this horrible thing, it’s bound to happen to me. I need to pay attention.” So, that’s when the hypervigilance started, all of these things that I now have language for, but I wasn’t quite sure how to explain, and I also didn’t want to explain it to anyone because it sounds unhinged. So, I was doing this alone. I was trying to keep myself very busy. I was doing all the classic compulsory activities that happen when you’re trying to avoid intrusive thoughts and avoid this massive discomfort in fear. And eventually, we moved out of the city. So, not only was I mothering by myself-- not really by myself. I had a partner, but he was working a lot just with his schedule. So, he was sleeping most of the day and gone all night.

So then we moved across the bay to Alameda and then I just didn’t even have friends anymore. So, I was all alone. So, I was thinking, “Wow, if there’s ever going to be a time that I’m going to just completely go off, it’ll be now.” And then it just snowballed. It spiraled into this thing where I couldn’t not be scared and I didn’t know what was going to happen. I was convinced that I was going to kill my son for no other reason. Then I just had a feeling that something bad was going to happen.

So, I looked up postpartum mood disorders because somehow, I knew those existed. And I was hoping that this had something to do with it. I still had hope that there was an explanation. And I found something that said Postpartum OCD, and anxiety. And of course, I hit every single track mark. It wasn’t mild symptoms. I was just, yup. Check, check, check, check, check. And so, I felt a little okay. Not really, right?

And I finally saw someone who ended up being-- she said she was a postpartum specialist, which was great. I signed up with her. We talked. She told me I had OCD. It was cool. But she didn’t give me any tools. She was doing the root cause stuff, which is probably really helpful in other circumstances, not necessarily for OCD. But she reassured me enough that I was cool with my OCD. I was like, “Well, I’m not going to kill anyone. That’s fine. I can go home. I can continue being a mom as long as you’re telling me I’m not a murderer.” Just like, “No, you’re not a murderer.” I was like, “Great, well, we’re done here, I guess.” And I got pregnant again. And of course, I was so scared. I was like, “That’s going to happen again. I’m going to have postpartum OCD.”

So, I couldn’t pause my whole pregnancy, but it was in the name of preparedness. So, I didn’t know that I was making my symptoms worse and worse and worse until I had the baby. This time I’m not scared I’m going to kill anyone. I’m just scared that now I think she’s the devil, which I did not know how to recognize it.

So, finally, I’m experiencing a whole different subset of OCD symptoms. I didn’t know, but I just thought, well, it was OCD the first time. I’m just going to check. And luckily, I landed on my therapist. I still see-- even though this was four years ago, I still see her every two weeks. I love her. She’s the best. She’s given me all the tools I needed to manage my mental health, got me to a place where not only was I totally understanding the disorder, but I felt really comfortable sharing and sharing in a way that I thought would be helpful to other people.

So, that’s when I started advocating for maternal mental health and OCD, and that’s how we know each other, through the internet, social media space. And I guess that was a mouthful, but that was how I landed onto the advocacy part. And eventually, I switched to meditation because I felt like this was a tangible way that I could offer a service that I know to be helpful for the management of mental health. And I know how much resistance there is towards starting this meditation practice because I too went through a number of years where I absolutely said no to this idea of meditation. But once I started, I realized, wow, I don’t know why I didn’t do this sooner. There’s really something to it. And it’s very teachable. And I know from firsthand experience how beneficial it is.

Kimberley: I love that. I actually don’t think I’ve heard your entire story. So, thank you for sharing that with me and everybody. I didn’t realize there were two waves of OCD for you and two different subtypes, which I think is common, for a lot of people.

Windsor: Yeah.

Kimberley: I love that. So, I think what you’re saying, and can you correct me if I’m wrong? So, the first wave was reassurance, what you used to get you through. And then the second you used ERP?

Windsor: Yes.

Kimberley: Okay, great. And then from there, the third layer of recovery or however you want to say it, was it meditation, or were there other things you did to get to the meditation place?

Windsor: Well, I was doing ERP and that really helped with my OCD management. I was able to recognize whenever I had a new obsession, and I feel like I could recognize anyone’s new obsession. At this point, I was like, ‘Oh, that’s this, that’s this. It’s tied into this.” So, I had a really great understanding, and that was cool. But I still have two kids, we’re still in a pandemic, I still have communication issues with my partner – all these normal things that ERP doesn’t necessarily help with. So, it was really just about finding that balance between working on myself and stress management and really getting to be that calm, chill person that I’ve always wanted to be. Even when I was doing the best with my OCD, I was still not so relaxed because I had a lot of attachments to how I wanted people to perceive me, how my children were behaving, not necessarily in a controlling way, but just really feeling a lot of responsibility over everything.

And so, the meditation was just this next step that I was hoping would get me there, because I was feeling a lot of stress, not even related to my OCD, just in general. And I wanted to be able to find something that would help me get through that stress so that I could start really figuring out what it is I wanted to do, just even for fun again, instead of just only feeling this overwhelmed.

Kimberley: Yeah. No, I really resonate with that. All I can say for me is, while I had a different story, I had an eating disorder, I was trying to do meditation during that, but the thoughts and everything was just too big for it. And it was hard for me to access actual meditation without it just being an opportunity to ruminate, sitting there, just cycling. So, the main thing I really want to ask you, if you’re willing to share, is let’s say specifically someone with OCD, what were some of the struggles that you had with meditation? Because I know so many people with OCD are really resistant to it because the thoughts get louder when you sit still and so forth. So, what were some of the things that you had to work through to be able to sit on a cushion?

Windsor: Yeah. That’s such a great question because I feel like, had I not figured out that I had OCD and then done all this work with ERP to really learn how to acclimate myself to the presence of intrusive thoughts, I don’t know that I would’ve been successful in meditation. Actually, I know that I wasn’t because I had tried it before, and it was too hard. So, I really-- even with ERP, once I started the meditation journey, the first few weeks were pretty challenging for me because as someone with OCD, every time I close my eyes and I’m not occupied, or my brain is not occupied, it’s like prime time. This is OCD’s favorite. It’s like the time to shine. It’s like, “Okay, here I am. What can we throw out to you today?”

And so, knowing that this was a possibility, even when I signed up to learn meditation, I was like, “Okay, I’m going to do this. I’m going to try, I’m going to give college a try.” Then my OCD was like, “No.” You close your eyes, something could happen, like you could have a breakdown or you could make all these realizations that you are a psycho killer. And then you’ll just definitely kill everyone. Thank God you tried meditation. Now your true self can come out. And I was like, “Okay, I’m going to just do it anyways. I’m just going to meditate because I have to see, not even in a compulsory way, I have to see if this is true. But I can’t-- knowing now what OCD does, I couldn’t-- it was almost I took it as a personal challenge.

Kimberley: Like an exposure, right? It was like an exposure, like, “Okay, fine. I’m going to-- let’s see.”

Windsor: I signed up to learn meditation as a true exposure because now I had this fear that if I come to all these realizations, it won’t be cool. It will be devastating for everyone around me. So, I was like, “Well, I’m going to try. I’m going to try to meditate.” And do you know what? I cried and panicked the first time. I had to turn off my camera because I did not want the teacher to see.

Kimberley: So you did it live.

Windsor: I did it live. It was so hard. It was like a total exposure because this was in front of-- I think there were 25 people in the course and everyone was closing their eyes, I’m assuming. But 20 minutes is a long time to meditate. So, I know people were going to be opening their eyes. So, I was live having this fear that I was going to turn into a psycho killer on the camera. So, I was crying because it was hard. But you know what? I’m so glad I did because also ERP showed me that crying is fine. We can cry when we do hard things. I was doing the hard thing and I was proud of myself. I even shared afterwards. We were like, “Who wants to share?” And I was like, “Me.” I cried and I had a panic attack.

Kimberley: See. That is so badass in my mind. That is so cool that you did that. You rode that wave.

Windsor: Yeah. And it was great because if I didn’t do that or purposely put myself into the situation to cry and do this hard thing, I wouldn’t have been able to get to the good part of meditation, which I love. I like to talk about the good part of meditation. But having OCD makes starting the hardest part.

Kimberley: Yeah. What is the good part of meditation for you? Because I think that no one wants to do hard things unless they know there’s some kind of reward at the end. Everyone’s going to be different, but for you, what is the why? Why would you do such a thing?

Windsor: Well, because I learned this thing, right? That was so valuable. Someone told me, we don’t gauge the benefits of meditation for how we feel when our eyes are closed. We’re more interested in what happens while our eyes are open. How is it impacting? And I noticed almost right away that when tensions were high, when I usually would be the first to participate-- because I’m really affected by the way other people’s moods are. I feel responsible or I have to change it. I became dysregulated really easily. I noticed almost right away that when other people were feeling their feelings around me, I was able to observe them instead of participate in that, which was really cool. And it was just so much nicer to be able to be supportive instead of become one of those people who also needed support in that moment.

And I also noticed right away that I had a higher tolerance for loud noises and just disruptions, because I’m pretty sensitive to lots of different noises at once. It gets me pretty anxious and agitated. So, having kids at home all day isn’t ideal for that. And so, the meditation really helped me a lot with that. I was able to recover more quickly from periods of dysregulation. Maybe I would become dysregulated, but I could calm down quicker. And so, I really loved that.

And I noticed that as before where I would be like, I need wine at 4:30 or whatever time it was. Once I started meditating for a few weeks, then wine just became something that tasted good that I liked in the afternoons. I didn’t need it. Sometimes I would be like, “Wow, we’re having dinner. Oh my God, kids, I didn’t even have wine.” And they were like, “Wow, you’re right.” And so, I would pour myself a glass just because I like it.

Kimberley: Right. Not because you needed it to get through the afternoon.

Windsor: Yeah. And so, I really liked all those changes. And it just is really restful, which I wasn’t expecting. The practice itself, the one that I practice, it’s twice a day. And I find that doing those two meditations really gives me more energy because I’m not a coffee person. So, yeah, I just feel like what started as a thing that I wanted to feel more rested and less stress, it has actually become a tool that I can use to help maintain a busier lifestyle, which as much as I don’t love for everyone, I can’t avoid it. Anyway.

Kimberley: That is so cool. I mean, how amazing that this practice came to you. So, you are talking about this specific meditation practice that you use and the benefits. Do you want to share a little about what specifically you use? I’m sure some people here have heard from me of self-compassion meditations and mindfulness meditations, but do you want to share specifically what practices you are interested in practicing?

Windsor: Yeah. So, the practice that I find the most success and enjoyment out of is a silent meditation, which actually was the most intimidating for me, but I love it. It’s the one giant mind being technique. It’s called a being technique because, I guess the focus of the meditation is to connect with your being, which I guess if you say it without sounding too woo-hoo or anything like that, we’re just connecting to your true self apart from all the thoughts and the ideas and all the conditioning we have. Just getting back to you, which is something that I really wanted, especially after having two kids and being confused in the state of life that’s not really developed yet. So, I love that part. And since I didn’t have to focus on anything like someone else’s voice, or trying to follow a guided meditation, sometimes I feel that takes more energy because I still have to pay attention to something. A silent meditation allowed me to really find that rest and allowed my brain to just slow down.

Kimberley: Yeah. I too. I mean, I love guided meditations for people who are starting off and need some instructions. But I find the silent meditation once I got the hang of it, I could practice it in a minute between clients. I could just sit for-- I could quickly go into that and then come out. Or if I’m presenting and I’m listening to someone, I could just drop down into that. So, I really love the idea of this as well because it’s something you can practice in small pieces.  Not so formally, but drop into just connecting down out of your head into your body kind of thing. Okay, so the biggest question I’m guessing people have is, are you “successful” with your meditations daily? What does it look like day-to-day? Are there ups and downs? How is it for you?

Windsor: Yeah. This is something that comes up a lot when people ask, because we know that, yes, all meditation is helpful. But we also know that to get the most benefit out of meditation, it’s best to have a regular practice. And this could mean meditating once a day, or with this particular technique, meditating twice a day. And it sounds a lot. And I would love to say I meditate twice a day every day, no matter what. But I have OCD, so I allow myself to be a little bit more flexible. I don’t really love rigidity when it comes to things like that because I have a tendency to really grab onto them. So, I do allow myself to skip it sometimes, either for reasons like I forget, or the day just gets ahead of me. As important as meditation is, there’s a lot of things that trumpet, like do my kids need something? Do I have to pick someone up? Is everyone being fed? There’s all these things that are also really important. So, I do try to meditate twice a day. Most days I do. Sometimes I don’t. But that’s okay because I did what I had to do to keep everything going.

Kimberley: What about during your meditation?

Windsor: What, excuse me?

Kimberley: What about during your meditation? Is that an up and a down process? Do you have “good days” and “bad days” with it or is it pretty consistent for you now?

Windsor: Well, I don’t like to talk about the meditations as being good or bad. Some are really gratifying and some are less gratifying, because even the less gratifying meditations are really good for you. You’re still going to benefit from them, even though it wasn’t necessarily easy or didn’t feel good. But that’s just like a lot of things. Meditation can be categorized as something like that, like maybe brushing your teeth or exercising. Maybe you don’t love it all the time, but you do it because it’s good for your body and it helps you reach certain goals. And sometimes it’s really hard for me to get to a good juicy place, and that’s okay. I’ve just started to not expect a certain experience when I go into the meditation. And that makes everything a lot easier because then I’m not letting myself down or I’m not feeling disappointed or I’m not crushing a goal. I don’t go into the meditation feeling like I’m going to feel so relaxed and cool. I just say, “Oh, I’m going to close my eyes and we’ll just see what happens during this session.”

Kimberley: And that’s why I love what you’re saying because it’s so in line with recovery, like dropping the expectations, dropping just the good feelings, dropping goals, having these big goals all the time. I think that’s-- sometimes I have found, what happens in your meditation is like a metaphor for life, right? Like, okay, today is a busy brain day. There’s going to be days like that. And I think that it’s a great way to just practice the tools in a small setting that you would be practicing in the day anyway.

Windsor: Exactly. That’s why I love it for people with OCD too because let’s say you commit to doing it 20 minutes a day or 20 minutes twice a day. During that 20 minutes, you know that any thoughts can come up, any feelings can come up, and you’re just going to let them be there. And this is excellent practice for when you’re going about your daily life and you have no control ever over what comes into your mind or what happens. But since you’ve been practicing this in your meditations, those responses to accept and let go become more automatic. So, not only are you having great meditation experiences or anything, but in your life, you can use those same tools. It’s not just adding another thing. It all works together. The meditation is so helpful in every aspect.

Kimberley: Right. It’s like we go to the gym to strengthen our muscles and we meditate to strengthen our brain muscles, right?

Windsor: Yeah.

Kimberley: Yeah. I love that. So, one thing I didn’t ask you ahead of time, but I’m wondering, would you be interested in leading us through a couple of minute meditation to get us experiencing that?

Windsor: Yeah. And you know what? I was thinking of like, maybe I should think of something to say in case she asks it, but I don’t think she will. So, yeah, we can just do a short-- what I do sometimes when I don’t do the whole 20 minutes is I just do a short mini one, like a minute or two.

Kimberley: Would you lead us?

Windsor: Yeah. Okay. So, for everyone listening and for Kimberley, I just want to show you a little bit about what it looks like to connect to your being and to practice a silent meditation, just for a short little grounding experience in the middle of a busy day or before a meeting, anytime you need to.

So, what I like to do before I meditate is to just get into a comfortable spot. You don’t necessarily have to be on a fancy cushion. You just have to have your lower back supported. And go ahead and close your eyes. And what I like to do before I start any meditation is take a few deep belly breaths. So, we’ll just breathe into our noses right now. Feel your belly. Feel your chest... And release through the mouth.

One more deep breath into the nose... into your belly... and release.

And one more deep breath into the nose. Feel your belly... and release.

So, now you just want to let your breath settle into its own natural rhythm. This isn’t a breathing meditation. We’re not going to focus on our breath. And you can scan your body for any tension that you might be holding. A commonplace is in your neck and your shoulders. Make sure you drop your shoulders, can wiggle your jaw a little bit, and just let all of that tension go.

So, when we’re meditating, we don’t want to put a focus on any thoughts that might come into our mind. But when they do come in, we just want to acknowledge them and recognize that this is a normal part of meditation. We never want to resist any thoughts or feelings that we might have. These are all important.

And just continue following your natural breath. And has any thoughts come into your mind, just remember that we don’t have to engage with them. It’s okay to just witness them and let them pass through you.

Maybe you might notice a sound outside or a body sensation. That’s okay. Just be a witness to that too.

Now you can take another deep breath into the nose... Into your belly... and breathe out.

And you can start to bring your awareness back to your body and see how it feels to be where you are.

You can start to bring your awareness back into the space. And slowly, when you’re ready, you can open your eyes.

Kimberley: Oh, what a treat.

Windsor: And that’s a little meditation, but I was really feeling it for a second.

Kimberley: Yeah. I just kept smiling because it was such a treat. What a treat that I get to have my own little meditation instructor in the middle of a podcast. It’s my favorite. What a gift. Thank you so much.

Windsor: You’re welcome.

Kimberley: Yeah. Thank you. I think I love-- I just want to highlight a couple of things you said, which is, for those who have anxiety, meditation is not the absence of thoughts and feelings, right? You highlighted that and that was so helpful, just to acknowledge that thoughts and feelings will happen, sensations will happen, but we just become an observer to them, which I think again, not only helps us with meditation, but it helps us with response prevention, during our exposures. It helps us during panic. Such a great tool. So, I’m so grateful for you sharing that.

Windsor: Cool. Well, thanks for letting me. I love to talk about it when I have the chance.

Kimberley: Yeah. Okay. So, I want to ask one final question, which is, what do you really want people to know? If there’s something we’ve missed today or if you want to drive home the main point, what is your main message that you’re wanting people to take away from today’s podcast?

Windsor: I guess what I really want people to know about meditation is that you don’t have to be a certain type of person to do this. You don’t need to be a specific personality type or have certain interests to make meditation work for you. You can just be yourself and come as you are and treat this practice as a gift that you’re giving yourself, that you deserve to take part in because it offers such deep rest and relaxation. That meditation can be a part of a modern, busy lifestyle. You don’t have to be common Zen all the time to do it. I think that meditation is for everybody.

Kimberley: I love that. I always remember, I think I could be killing this here, but the Dalai Lama says, and this always gets me laughing because he always says, if you don’t have time for meditation, you are the one who needs to meditate the most.

Windsor: Yeah. I love that one.

Kimberley: I killed the way that he said it, but for me, so often I’m like, “Oh, I don’t have time. Oh, I didn’t get time today.” And he really keeps nagging me in my mind in terms of knowing the more busy you are, the more you may want to prioritize this. Of course, like you said, that happens and priorities happen. But for me, that was the main message I had to keep reminding myself when it came to meditation. So, I loved that.

Windsor: Yeah.

Kimberley: Well, thank you so much. This is just delightful. Really it is. It has brought such joy to me today because like I said, it feels full circle to be coming back and talking more about meditation and doing more of that here. Where can people get a hold of you and hear about your work?

Windsor: So, I have my Instagram, @windsor.flynn, and that’s my OCD one. I talk a little bit about meditation on there, but I know that not everyone is necessarily ready for that. So, I do have my other Instagram, @windsormeditates. And that’s when I focus a little bit more on the meditation. And if you’re interested in taking any of my group courses or private meditation sessions, you can just go to my website, windsorflynn.com. All very easy, just search my name on the internet, and then you’ll find some links for those.

Kimberley: And we’ll have all the links in the show notes as well. So, if people are listening on, they should be able to connect to that. So, amazing. I’m so-- pardon?

Windsor: I was just going to say thank you so much for having me. I’m a big fan of yours and I love the work that you’re doing and I feel so honored that I get to be on your podcast.

Kimberley: No, I feel likewise. I love what you’re doing. There’s so many things I wish I could focus on. And I love when somebody like you will come along and they focus on that one thing. It just makes me really happy because I just love when people are finding little areas, particularly in the OCD and mental health space where it’s like, we need these sources. So, I’m so happy that you’re doing that work. Thank you.

Windsor: Cool. Thank you so much.

Kimberley: My pleasure. And like I said, go follow Windsor. She’s amazing, and I’m just honored to have you here.

Windsor: Thank you.

-----

Okay. So, before we finish up, thank you so much for being here and staying till the end. Before we finish, I want to share a review of the week. This one is from Cynthia Saffel and she said:

“I’m so excited to share these podcasts with my clients.” She gave it a five-star review and said, “I first was introduced to Kimberley’s clear and compassionate teaching style when I took the ERP school course for therapists.” For those of you who don’t know, we have a CEU approved course called ERP School, where you can learn how to treat OCD using ERP. And she went on to say, “In the past 3 weeks since taking the course I recommended both the course and podcasts to my clients.”

Thank you so much, Cynthia, for your review. And for everyone who leaves a review, it is the best gift you can give me in return for these free resources. So, if you have the time, please do go over and leave a review and have a wonderful day. It is a beautiful day to do hard things. Have a wonderful day, everybody.

SUMMARY: 

Today, I wanted to dedicate an entire episode to the five things that I learned in 2021. I have found 2021 to be one of the harder years, but probably the most transformational for me, and that is one of the things I’ll talk about here very, very soon.

The 5 Things I learned this Year:

• Recovery goes smoother when you slow down and act intentionally
• Life is not supposed to be easy
• It is my responsibility to manage my mind
• Catch your thought errors
• I am not for everyone

Links To Things I Talk About:

Changed our name on Instagram
Lots of exciting information on cbtschool.com
ERP School: https://www.cbtschool.com/erp-school-lp

Episode Sponsor:

This episode of Your Anxiety Toolkit is brought to you by CBTschool.com.  CBTschool.com is a psychoeducation platform that provides courses and other online resources for people with anxiety, OCD, and Body-Focused Repetitive Behaviors.  Go to cbtschool.com to learn more.

Spread the love! Everyone needs tools for anxiety...

If you like Your Anxiety Toolkit Podcast, visit YOUR ANXIETY TOOLKIT PODCAST to subscribe free and you'll never miss an episode. And if you really like Your Anxiety Toolkit, I'd appreciate you telling a friend (maybe even two).

EPISODE TRANSCRIPTION

This is Your Anxiety Toolkit - Episode 216.

Hello, my friends. Happy 2022! Oh my goodness, it is crazy to say that. I’m excited for 2022, to be honest. I’ve had enough with 2021, I’m not going to lie. And I’m guessing that you are in the same boat. I’m grateful for 2021. Absolutely, I’m not going to lie, but I’m really happy to be here in 2022.

Today, I wanted to dedicate an entire episode to the things that I learned in 2021. I have found 2021 to be one of the harder years, but probably the most transformational for me, and that is one of the things I’ll talk about here very, very soon.

Before we do that, you may notice that the show looks a little different. We have new podcast cover art. If you follow me on Instagram, there’s a ton of different visual and aesthetic changes there as well, as well as that we have changed the name to Your Anxiety Toolkit instead of being Kimberley Quinlan. I will explain a little bit about why I’ve made these changes here in a very little moment.

Before we get into the good stuff of the show, the bulk of the show, I want to give you the very best stuff, which is the “I did a hard thing” segment. So here we go. For those of you who are new, every week, people submit their “I did a hard thing” and we talk about it, and we share it and we celebrate the big and the small and the medium wins.

This one is from Kboil, and it says:

“I went to work for the first time in five weeks after a horrendous meltdown where I wanted to take my own life. I am still struggling daily with my anxiety and panic attacks, but I am doing it. XO.”

This is the work, you guys, that may be triggering for some people. But the truth is we have to talk about how impactful our mental illnesses can be and how important mental health is, because if we don’t take out care of our mental health, it can get to the place where people are feeling suicidal. Let me also reframe that. Sometimes we get to those really difficult places and dark places. Not because you’re not taking care of yourself, but for multiple reasons, daily stresses, genetics, medical struggles, grief, trauma, high levels of anxiety.

Kboil is really bringing the most important piece of mental health discussions, which is, when we’re really, really struggling, number one, it’s important to celebrate your wins, and number two, nothing is off-limits. We must be willing to talk about these really difficult topics. Thank you, Kboil. I am just so honored that you shared this and so excited that you’re taking baby steps, and I really wish you well. I know it says you’re still struggling, so I’m sending you every single ounce of my compassion and love to you.

Ugh, it’s so good. My heart just swells for you all when you write in those “I did a hard thing’s.”

Okay. Let’s go over to the five things I learned in 2021. The first one is probably the most important, and it does explain why I’ve made certain changes in the way that I run my business, the way that I show up on social media and here on the podcast, and why I really want to make some changes in 2022.

1. Be very intentional.

First of all, this is proof that people can change their mind. It’s okay to change your mind. Actually, that’s probably the sixth thing I learned. Number one is, it’s okay to change your mind. But really the number one was, it’s important to act intentional.

I did a whole episode on whacking things together, how it’s okay to whack things together. I did that because I found myself becoming very perfectionistic. I am still a massive fan of the whack-it-together model, which is ultimately to practice not being perfect and just getting things done. But what I think I did is I went a little too far in the whack-it-together model and I wasn’t being as intentional. I was doing too much and not doing a great job of the things I was doing. I mean, it was still great and I was still helping people and I was still showing up and I’m so proud of what I did in 2021. But what I really learned is sometimes when you get into moving too fast and pushing too fast and too hard that you lose the intentionality. And when you lose the intentionality, you often lose the real lesson and the growth.

If you’re in recovery for anxiety or an OCD-related disorder or an eating disorder, or a body- focused repetitive behavior, if you’re rushing through and pushing through and wrestling with things instead of slowing down and being really intentional in your practices, chances are, you’re going to miss a lot of opportunity for real growth and real recovery. So slow down and be very intentional.

Some question you may ask is: What is it that I’m trying to achieve here? For me, often I’m like, because I’m trying to reach a certain goal or so forth, it’s like, well, is this rushing? Is this behavior actually moving the needle forward? If it comes to recovery, particularly if you’re having anxiety, I’m going to encourage you to ask: What am I trying to achieve here? Am I trying to get away from anxiety? Or am I trying to be with my anxiety? Because if you’re intentional and you’re trying to be with your anxiety, your recovery will benefit.

Now, how does this apply to me and you guys and us together is, I really don’t want to be as much on social media anymore. One of the things I really learned this year is that it’s not good for my mental health when I push it like I was, and I found that I was showing up on social media. Even here on the podcast, I’m not afraid to admit, I would sometimes sit down and just throw myself into it instead of actually stopping and doing what I originally did, which is I used to, and I used to do this all the time, but I think I fell out of the practice, which was to stop, and before I did anything, get really clear on like, who am I speaking to? What do they need to hear? How can I show up and serve them in a way that also serves me? Am I just showing up here to say that I showed up and recorded an episode so I can say that I did a weekly episode?

That’s not how I want to be anymore. I really want to move towards being intentional and engaging in behaviors that actually push the needle forward and that are healthy for me. I’ve moved Instagram from Kimberley Quinlan to Your Anxiety Toolkit because for some reason, every time I got onto Instagram, I felt like it was about me, even though I know it’s not. And I don’t want it to be about me. I want it to be about mental health and anxiety and tools to help you.

So, that’s how it’s going to shift. We’ve got a ton of amazing guests happening, which I’ve already pre-recorded. And then after that, I think I may even take a little break from having guests and just practice sitting down with you and really talking about the important stuff I want you to know. Like this stuff that sits on my heart, that I really want you guys to know.

So, that’s number one, is become a little more intentional if you can. Don’t become perfectionistic, but move towards being intentional.

2. Life is not supposed to be easy.

This is a huge one that I learned early in 2021. I was learning from a public speaker, and she constantly says, “Life is 50/50.” And that used to bug me so bad. It used to really make me angry because I’d be like, “No, life is not 50/50. It’s like 80/20. It’s like 80% good and 20% bad.” Until I was like, “Wait, if I’m really honest with myself, it is 50/50.” I think a lot of the suffering that I was experiencing, and I’m guessing a lot of the suffering that you were experiencing is trying to get it to be 80/20 or 90/10, because life is not supposed to be easy. Life happens. Life is hard. Bad things happen to good people, and that was a big lesson to me.

A friend of mine was going through a really hard time. I kept thinking, this is crazy. Why is this bad stuff happening to good people? Until I was like, that’s an era in my thinking. When did I learn that bad things shouldn’t happen to good people? Because bad things do happen to good people, and it’s not their fault.

Sometimes when we can give ourselves permission to drop the expectation of the 80/20 or the 100% or the 90/10 and just let everything be 50/50, it’s so much easier. Even as I parent my children, I think I was parenting them with this expectation that I’m supposed to be really, really good at it. But when I accepted that things will be 50/50, they’re not going to like when I ask them to pick up their room. They’re not going to like when I serve them vegetables that they don’t like to eat, and I can’t be disappointed when they’re disappointed about the vegetables I’ve served them because life is 50/50.

One of the best lessons I can give them is for them not to expect too much either. I’m not saying drop your standards and accept terribleness at all. What I’m saying is, do the best you can. Go for your dreams. Love your life. But still come back to the fact that you still have to brush your teeth and we break things and we spill things and we have to pay taxes and we are exhausted at the end of the day after having a great day at work. You might have some negative parts of it too. There’s pros and cons to everything.

So, that was really powerful for me, is life is not supposed to be easy. I’ve talked about this before. I think it was in the summer of 2019, where I would catch myself throwing mental tantrums in my head like, “It’s not fair. It shouldn’t be this hard.” And I’m like, “That is exactly the problem. Those mental tantrums that I have in my brain.”

The other one, let me add, is I actually had a whole therapy session about this, which was about this entitlement that I caught in myself of like, “This isn’t fair. Things should be easier. Things should be going easier or they shouldn’t be so hard.” And this real entitlement that came with that, and even though we use the word “entitlement,” I’m not using that as a criticism towards myself. It’s just naming it what it was. I felt this entitlement inside me of like, “No, things should be good. I should succeed at everything I try.” And that’s totally not true.

3. It is my responsibility to manage my mind.

This one really hit me in September. I actually think I read something online that really hit me with this. I’m writing this down as I talk to you just so I make sure I get it in for you in the show notes.

Often, I talk to my patients and clients that you can’t control your thoughts and you can’t control your feelings, but you can control your reaction to those thoughts and feelings. And when you do that, you may find that your thoughts and feelings start to change. It’s a very basic concept of cognitive-behavioral therapy. Cognitive-behavioral therapy is a helpful modality of therapy for many, many, many different mental illnesses.

But when I talk about managing my mind is being, again, very intentional about the way I respond to problems and stresses in my mind. I’m not saying that you can control your intrusive thoughts, but I’m going to say it is my job to manage when anxiety shows up. It is my job to manage when thoughts and strong emotions hit me and make me want to lash out or project.

A lot of my patients have reported this. They’ll come to session and they’ll say, “You will not believe my husband. He just won’t do A, B, and C, and he knows it makes me crazy. He knows it makes me anxious. So why is he doing it? If he loved me, he wouldn’t do this.” And I have to keep gently reminding them, “It’s your responsibility to manage your emotions. It’s not their job.” We talked about this in one of the last episodes of the year in 2021, which is setting boundaries, you are responsible. You’re in your lane to manage your mind and your emotions. It’s not anybody else’s.

I think what was really hard about this is when I heard this, I used to take offense and I’d be like, “Oh my God, that’s just so mean. What about the people who are really, really, really suffering?” or “Wow, that’s so abrupt and dismissive.” Until I really sat with it. I actually journaled a lot on this of like, what shows up for me when someone talks about the word “responsibility”? I wrote about this a lot in the self-compassion workbook for OCD – compassionate responsibility. And I think the word “responsibility” really triggers us into thinking that if we’re taking responsibility for ourselves, we don’t deserve other people’s support. And that’s not true.

But when I really sat on “It’s my job to manage my mind,” everything changed. I think that’s why I came to the place where I was like, “Okay, I’m going to be way more intentional because it is my job. It’s my job to really slowly and in baby steps, work at changing how I react and having really hard conversations with myself on like, ‘Wow, you fully reacted in a little bit of a crazy way there.’” What was going on for you? What do you need to change? How do you need to show up for yourself different? How can you be intentional around this? Because it’s your job. I’m saying that to myself, “Kimberley, it’s your job. It’s your responsibility.” It’s the most compassionate act you can do, is to practice managing your mind.

4. Catch your thought errors.

Again, these all tie beautifully in together because once I took responsibility for really managing my mind and really owning what was showing up for me, it was then my job to catch the thought errors. Again, I want to be really clear here. I’m not saying that you can control your intrusive thoughts. Absolutely not. But what I’m speaking about more, and I’m actually going to do a whole episode on this in just a couple of weeks, is catching thoughts like, “I’m going to screw this up. That was the worst. I am a failure. I am freaking out.” These are all often not accurate statements, So I’m talking about the way in which we frame and perceive things, not your intrusive thoughts. I want to be really, really certain. We’re not in the business of correcting intrusive thoughts of anxiety.

When it comes to depressive thoughts or very negative thoughts or catastrophic thoughts, or very black and white thoughts, we can be very intentional and be like, “Wait a second, I catch myself on this all the time. I’ll be like, my husband often comes home in the end of the day and says, ‘How was your day?’ And I’ll often make these sweeping statements like, ‘Oh, it was a really hard day.’ Even if that’s true, how does it benefit me? Was it 100% true? Because what’s probably 100% true is, oh, there are a couple of really, really difficult times that took me some time to come down from. But there were also some really beautiful moments.” That’s the truth. It takes more effort to say that and you have to be more intentional to say that. But if we say, “It was a really hard day,” our brain is going to pick up on that and it’s going to start to feel overwhelmed and heavy.

5. I am not for everybody (and that’s okay).

I’m going to leave you with this one because this one was the best. That is the lesson I took away – I’m not for everybody. I guess what we could say in parentheses is, “and that’s okay.”

I actually was on a podcast this week with Bryan Piatt, an amazing OCD advocate. He had asked me this question and I was reflecting on it the other day, which is, I think that in my many years of being on the planet earth and being in my human body, I thought that if I was just kind, there’s really no reason anyone could not like me. If I was just kind to everybody and I did my best and I kept out of drama, everybody should like me. There can’t be much to hate. I think I banked on this as a way of avoiding conflict and as a way of getting people to approve of me.

I learned last year that even when I’m kind, even when I show up in the best version of myself and I do nothing, but show up with loving kindness in my heart, I’m still not going to be for everybody. Do you want to know how crazy that made me when I realized that? In 2021, a lot of you may know, but I was very seriously online bullied and shamed and trolled. There is this one particular person who really trolls a lot of mental health accounts, and I seem to be one that they loved to really bully and shame. I kept crying and going home to my husband and saying, “But why am I so kind?” I had to realize it’s that same kind of concept of like, good things should happen to good people and bad things should happen to bad people, until I was like, “Oh, that’s not true.” Life is 50/50, and you’re never going to be for everybody.

So, I’m going to offer to you the same thing. I’m not for everyone. You’re not for everyone. Try to get a good 10 people in your life on your side and the other billion gazillion people, you don’t need to please them. Just be a little intentional there. And I’m too, I’m doubling down now in really just being intentional on who matters and whose opinion does matter and everyone else can take me or leave me.

I hope that those five things were helpful to you. Maybe they sparked some curiosity for you and you may or may not agree with some of those. The good thing to remember here is, these are the things I learned, but they might not be exactly what you needed to hear today. And that’s totally okay. Sometimes we need to hear things at a certain time. At other times, they’re not for you at that particular time in your life. And that is okay.

So, there are the things I learned this year, in 2021. I’m so excited about this year because I have those amazing lessons that I learned. I’m going to be much more intentional about the podcast and I’m going to try to use the podcast to be a little more personal, where people in my podcast are more my insider group compared to social media because again, I want to be really intentional and healthy around social media.

Before we finish, I want to do the review of the week. Please, please, please, please. If you can do me one gift, it would be to leave a review for the podcast. This one is from Kanji96 and they said:

“Thank you, Kimberley. This podcast is very helpful for me, especially when I’m going through hard times. Right now happens to be one of those hard times. Here I am back listening to Kimberley. Thank you.”

I’m so grateful, Kanji, for that you support me. Thank you so, so much. I’m going to leave you all with a quote that Kanji almost used and that I always use, which is, it is a beautiful day to do hard things.

Let’s do 2022 together. I’m so incredibly thrilled to be walking on this path with you. I know that your time is valuable. I appreciate you coming and spending your time with me, and I’ll see you next week.

In This Episode:

• How to identify what your role is in a relationship
• How to manage a mental illness and set boundaries
• How boundaries are needed when you are in recovery
• How to set boundaries with a loved one during the holiday season.

Links To Things I Talk About:

ERP School: https://www.cbtschool.com/erp-school-lp

Episode Sponsor:

This episode of Your Anxiety Toolkit is brought to you by CBTschool.com.  CBTschool.com is a psychoeducation platform that provides courses and other online resources for people with anxiety, OCD, and Body-Focused Repetitive Behaviors.  Go to cbtschool.com to learn more.

Spread the love! Everyone needs tools for anxiety...

If you like Your Anxiety Toolkit Podcast, visit YOUR ANXIETY TOOLKIT PODCAST to subscribe free and you'll never miss an episode. And if you really like Your Anxiety Toolkit, I'd appreciate you telling a friend (maybe even two).

EPISODE TRANSCRIPTION

This is Your Anxiety Toolkit - Episode 215.

Welcome back, everybody. It is the final episode of Your Anxiety Toolkit for the year 2021. I will not be putting out a podcast next week because it falls right on the holidays, and I really wanted to make sure I give you all time to be with your family instead of listening to my voice. If you are in the holiday season and you want to listen to my voice, there are so many, in fact, there are 214 episodes. You can go back and listen to. I just want to be with my family, and I want you to be with the people you love.

Speaking of people you love, today we’re talking about setting boundaries with loved ones or managing our relationship during the holidays. However, I did a whole episode about this last week. You can go back. It’s episode 214, where we talk about holiday anxiety. We did discuss some of this there as well. So, you can go back and listen there. But for right now, I want us to talk about managing relationships, specifically during the holidays, but this episode can be applied to any old day of the week.

Now, before we get started, we always do the “I did a hard thing.” This one is from Rachel. We do an “I did a hard thing” to motivate you, to remind you that there are more people out there going through what you’re going through. You’re not alone. Rachel shared with us today:

“I have somatic OCD.” For those of you who don’t know what that means, it means that you have OCD about specific sensations that show up in your body. You sometimes feel like you can’t stop noticing them or you’re afraid you will never stop noticing them. Sometimes you’re afraid that the feeling will never go away and it can feel really disorienting.

So, Rachel says: “I have somatic OCD, and I always need to distract myself not to notice them. I’ve been able to drive without the radio or calling anyone and it feels so good.”

Rachel, this is so good. You’re doing what we talk about in ERP School. ERP School is our online course that teaches how to expose ourselves to fears, specifically obsessions for people with OCD, health anxiety, and these types of OCD, like somatic OCD, on how to practice facing our fear. In this case, it was her driving, that without using safety behavior or compulsions. So, in this case, the compulsion would be to have the radio on or calling someone to distract her on her somatic obsession or her sensation. So, Rachel, amazing job, you’re doing the work. You’re doing the exposure and the response prevention.

One thing I want to mention to everybody, if you have OCD or an anxiety disorder, is we must do both. We must face our fears and not do the safety behaviors to reduce or remove that discomfort that we feel when we face our fear. So, you’ve explained this perfectly. Congratulations. I am so proud of you. Love getting the “I did a hard thing’s” from you guys. And so, just so thrilled to get that message from you.

All right, let’s go over to the episode.

It’s the holidays. You’re anticipating the gifts and the food and the time and the travel and all the things, but what’s worse than that is anticipation of the interactions that you’re going to have with certain family members. Now, if you’re listening to this and it’s not the holidays, it’s the same. You’re anticipating going to work, but you’re dreading the interactions. You’re dreading how messy things get. You’re going to school, and you’re dreading how messy things get with the people you have in your life – your students, your classmates, your teacher, your friends, whoever it may be.

I want you to think about your responsibilities. And I talk a lot with my patients and clients about responsibility because it’s a really important part of recovery. When we think about the holidays, we think about a certain event that’s coming up. I’ll often explain to my patients that really all you need to do is you need to focus on your lane. So, I’ve talked about this before on the podcast, but I want you to imagine you’re driving on the highway, you’re in your car, and the only thing you’re responsible for is to not run into other people in their lane and to stay in your lane and to go at a pace that’s right for you and a speed that’s right for you and in a car that’s right for you.

Now, that metaphor is exactly how you’re going to get through the holidays or get through this event that you’ve got coming up. Your job is to take responsibility for you and your lane. Now, sometimes people in the lane next to us come on over into our lane and they want to tell us how to act, and they want to tell us what to do, and they want to impose on you their beliefs. Now, our job is to remind them and set boundaries that that’s not your lane, that’s their lane. And their job is to stay in their lane. And our job is to stay in our lane.

Now, in addition, we have to be careful that we are not popping on over into their lane and telling them how they should be, and telling them how they should act, and trying to take responsibility for their feelings, and trying to prevent them from judging you because that’s their lane. We talked about this in the last episode. Go back and listen to that. But that’s not your job either. It’s not your job to get their approval because that’s their responsibility. How they feel is their responsibility. We can’t control that.

And so, first, before we even talk about setting boundaries, we have to be really clear on what’s in your lane. So, an example for me is, as I go into the holidays, I am going to be really aware of what is my responsibility, how do I want to show up? And then it’s my responsibility to show up in my lane doing so. But it’s also important to catch when I’m-- often we do this. It’s like, “Well, I’m going to do X, Y, and Z because I really want A, B and C to like me.” But that’s your lane. It’s not your responsibility. It’s not your job to get them to approve of you because we don’t have any control of that. And as we talked about last week, their judgment of us is their responsibility. It’s a reflection of them. It’s not a reflection of us.

So, we have to be really careful of really getting clear on how we want to show up and only trying to control us, because we can’t control our family members. They’re going to do what they do. They’re going to act out. They’re going to be up in your lane.

From there, we can set a boundary to protect ourselves from them coming into your lane. So, when we set boundaries, we usually set boundaries when somebody is imposing their stuff onto us. Imagine if someone came into your house and walked in with their shoes on and put dirt all over the carpet, you might say, “Excuse me, please would you take your shoes off?” There’s like a boundary violation. If they come into my house and they start smoking cigarettes, no disrespect or judgment on people who do smoke cigarettes, but I’m going to say, “I’m really sorry, we actually don’t smoke in this house. Can you please put your cigarette out and go out to the back?” And so, that would be me setting a boundary.

Now, a lot of you brought in and you asked questions about this. Last week we addressed a lot of the questions. So, an example, somebody said, “How can I communicate with my family about my OCD and keep my boundaries?” So, what you might do is first ask yourself. If I was going to communicate about my OCD or my anxiety or my depression or my eating disorder or whatever you may have, panic, is ask yourself, are you communicating with it so that they change the way they act because that’s their lane? The only reason we would need to communicate about our stuff is so that we can set a boundary.

Let’s say a really big one that I have had to practice is when family members comment about weight. I had a couple of family members in my childhood who every Christmas would, “Have Merry Christmas, Kimberley, your weight is blank. You’re up a bit. You’re down a bit. You’re bigger, you’re smaller, whatever.” And it was so incredibly painful and so incredibly unhealthy for me. And so, the boundary here would be to say, “I would really prefer that you don’t comment on my way. And if you do, I’m going to remove myself from this interaction.” So, that’s a boundary and it’s respectful and it’s compassionate, and I’m not doing it to harm them or discipline them or pay them back. I’m doing it because it’s a boundary violation, and it’s in my lane. When I’m in my lane, I want to have a really positive idea about my food and my body.

If a family member is telling you how you should act, you might say to them, “Thank you so much for your thoughts. I am going to choose to do it this way. And I would really appreciate if you didn’t comment.  if you’re unable to hold that boundary, I’m going to have to leave,” or you can say whatever you want. You can just set the limit. Sometimes you don’t even need to tell them your boundary. You might just keep it to yourself. Like, “Oh, if they’re going--” if a family member says, “I’m so OCD about stuffing,” or whatever they say, “I’m so OCD about my cooking,” you might just not even need to express the boundary with them. You might gently just get yourself up and walk away. That’s a boundary. Sometimes we don’t have to verbally express boundaries because we can just remove ourselves from the situation and stay in our lane.

Somebody said, “How to say no to things?” So, you’ve decided you don’t want to do something. We talked about this last week in Episode 214. You’ve decided you don’t want to do something. And so, you say to them, “I’m going to bring baked goods. I’m not going to bake them myself. I will buy them at the bakery. No, I’m not going to hand bake them.” Or you might say, “No, I’m not going to go to that Christmas party,” or “No, I am not going to buy gifts this year.” Okay?

Now, that’s you holding your own boundary. Then your job, and again, this is why I shared about the lanes, is your job is to let them have their feelings about it. They’re allowed to have their feelings. They’re even allowed to act out. If they act out and they say something unkind, you may set a boundary with them. But we can’t hold everybody to our standards. Some people are going to act out. They may not have the skills you have. They may be triggered. They may have expectations of you. And that’s okay. They’re allowed to have expectations, but it doesn’t mean you have to do it. You may choose to follow their expectations. We talked about that again last week. But that’s your decision. You have to be responsible for you and saying yes to what matters to you and saying no to what doesn’t matter to you.

Any time you notice resent, show up, that’s usually because you violated your own boundary. You did something you didn’t want to do and you should have said no to. It’s okay. I’m going to keep saying this to you guys. It’s okay to disappoint people. We will disappoint them. It’s either they get disappointed, or you do the thing they want you to do, and then you’re disappointed. And you have to choose. It’s your responsibility to choose. And we do this responsibility work compassionately.

I speak a lot in my book, The Self-Compassion Workbook for OCD, about compassionate responsibility. That’s saying: “I am responsible for me,” but not in a disciplinarian, like you’re responsible for yourself, you’re alone, you’re on your own kind of way. It’s a compassionate act of, “Yes, I get to take responsibility for myself. I get to take care of myself. I get to say no, I get to say yes. I get to make those choices and I’ll do them kindly.”

Somebody asked a question about managing irritability. This is a great one, because our family members and our friends and our loved ones and the people at our Christmas party or our Hanukkah party, our Kwanzaa, they may irritate us. Yeah, it’s okay to feel irritated by our family members. My husband and I always-- we learned this maybe five years ago. We get caught up in it. I’ll be like, “Why are you acting that way?” And he’ll say gently to me, “Kimberley, I’m allowed to feel this way.” And I’m like, “Oh crap, you’re right. I keep forgetting that you’re allowed to feel what you want to feel.” Or he’ll be upset and he’ll be like, “What’s wrong? Why are you being this way?” And I’ll be like, “I’m allowed to feel this way.” And he’s like, “Oh crap, you’re right.”

You’re allowed to be irritable. You’re not allowed to be unkind. I mean, you are, but you have responsibility, There’s consequences. But ideally, let yourself be irritable. Be compassionate with your irritability. Like say, “Yeah, it makes complete sense that I’m irritable. This is hard. It makes complete sense that I’m annoyed. They’ve said something that annoyed me.” Again, they’re allowed to say annoying things. We get to remove ourselves if it doesn’t feel right or we get to express ourselves.” That really hurt my feelings. That made me upset.” This is why you’re allowed to share.

Let’s see. Someone said dealing with a toxic parent. Well, it depends. My answer to that is it depends on whether you’re a minor or an adult. If you’re a minor, it’s hard to remove yourself from a toxic parent. They are your guardian. You’re legally under their care. But you can remove yourself from them physically in terms of going to another room. You can try and share with them. “That was really painful for me to hear that. If you do that again, I’m going to leave the room.” Or you get to make your own boundaries. They may be physical boundaries where you leave. They may be emotional boundaries where you don’t go to them and you don’t share with them if they can’t hold space for you compassionately and respectfully.

If you’re an adult, you can choose to set as many boundaries as hard or as strong, as light as you need. Some people set boundaries with their family members. Like, “You can’t come here without announcing yourself. You must let us know first. You can’t say those things about me or I’m going to leave.” Or you may, again, you don’t even have to say them out loud. If they’re really toxic, you may say to them, “I’m not going to see you anymore if you keep acting like this towards me and my family. I can no longer put myself through that.” You get permission. We don’t get to choose our family, but you don’t have to see them either if they’re really unhealthy for you. You may want to get some therapy around it and have the help of a clinician to help you navigate what’s a right boundary for you. Everybody’s different.

Someone said, “I get really bad depression during the holidays and people have expectations for me to be happy.” Well, that’s their lane. You don’t have to act or be any way. Be kind, be compassionate, but do the best you can. It’s your lane. You got to just do the best you can with what you have.

So, again, I think that’s a really big part of this, is really take care of you because that’s your job. One thing actually, before we finish up, let me mention, it’s no one else’s job to make us feel better either. I know a lot of this today is going to feel like a lot of hard truths, but I promise you, there is so much liberation that comes from this. It’s a hard pill to swallow, but it’s still a really, really good pill. It’s a good pill. It’s a helpful pill. And so, it’s not other people’s job to make us joyful on Christmas either. That’s our job.

I’ll tell you a story, when I was really a young adult, I think it was quite shocking to me that when you’re a kid, everyone throws you a big party. And when you’re an adult, it’s not as big of a deal. And I used to get really offended that people didn’t throw me a massive party until I was like, “Wait, it’s really not their job.” And so, I started doing it for myself, and I have no shame about it. If I know I want to feel special on my birthday, I always organize something really special for myself. For the last three years, except for the year of COVID, I always rent-- you guys, probably know this. I rent an RV and I invite my three best girlfriends and I have a party for myself, and I’m not ashamed about it. I’m happy to celebrate myself. A

If you are feeling like other people’s job is to bring you joy on Christmas, I would say, no, bring yourself joy. Buy yourself a gift. Make your special meal you want to have. Treat yourself and shower yourself with the joy that you want to feel. That’s a huge liberation, a huge freedom. Such a gift.

Okay. So, that’s it. That’s how you set boundaries. You get to set them. It’s your lane. You get to decide. But other people are allowed to have their feelings about it. And that’s okay. That doesn’t mean you’re bad. They can even tell you you’re bad, and that doesn’t mean you’re bad. They can say, “I don’t like you,” and you don’t think you’re doing the right thing and they get to have their opinion, it doesn’t make it a fact.

This is hard work. I am not going to lie, I am still working on this. I’m still learning from this. I still have to practice it every single day. So, be gentle and remind yourself, this is a journey. This is not a destination that you’re like, “Yay, I’m great with boundaries.” It will be something you’ll have to keep practicing. But the holidays are the perfect time to practice them. It’s so important.

My loves, you probably have lots of questions about this. Do go over to social media. I’ll leave links in the bio. If you want to send me questions, I do a live Q and A every second and fourth Monday of the month at 12 o’clock Pacific Standard Time. So, I’m happy to answer your questions there.

Have a beautiful day. Happy 2021. I will be seeing you in 2022, holy macaroni, but I can’t wait. I’m actually really pumped about Your Anxiety Toolkit next year. I’m going to put a ton more effort into it. That’s where I want my attention to be next year.

So, sending you love. Have a wonderful day, and I’ll talk to you soon.

Oh no, wait. Before we finish up, what was I thinking? It is time for the review of the week. This is from IsaacRThorne, and they said:

“Love this show and I look forward to it every Friday.” Sorry, Isaac, I nearly missed you here. “No matter what you struggle with, there’s more than one episode where your mouth will drop open, your eyes will grow wide, and you’ll shout: “That’s totally me!”

Isaac, this is the best review ever. It just brings me so much joy. “Your mouth will drop open, your eyes will grow wide, and you’ll shout, “That’s totally me!” So, I hope this episode was that for you. Thank you so much for your wonderful review.

Please, if you don’t want to give me any gift of the world, it would be to leave me a review on the iTunes app. Thank you so much for your reviews. They bring me joy, but they also help us reach more people. So, thank you, thank you, thank you so much. We are going to give a free pair of Beats headphones to one lucky reviewer when we hit a thousand reviews. We’re on our way. Please go and leave a review. It would be the best, best, best gift you could give me.

Have a wonderful day, everybody. And now I officially say, have a wonderful day and I will see you in the New Year.

SUMMARY:

I had so many people asking questions about how to manage holiday anxiety and stress that I decided to do an entire podcast on this.  This is part 1 of a 2-part podcast Q&A.

In This Episode:

Q&A from this episode include

• How do I enjoy the holidays?
• How do I let go of the last Christmas?
• How do I survive the Holiday blues?
• How do I survive the holidays?
• How do I manage social anxiety over the holidays?
• How do I manage holiday travel anxiety?
• How to manage the financial stress of the holidays?
• Mental Health Holiday gift guide?
• How do I let go of my holiday expectations?

Links To Things I Talk About:

ERP School: https://www.cbtschool.com/erp-school-lp

Episode Sponsor:

This episode of Your Anxiety Toolkit is brought to you by CBTschool.com.  CBTschool.com is a psychoeducation platform that provides courses and other online resources for people with anxiety, OCD, and Body-Focused Repetitive Behaviors.  Go to cbtschool.com to learn more.
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EPISODE TRANSCRIPTION

This is Your Anxiety Toolkit - Episode 214.

Welcome back, everybody. We are approaching the holiday season. In fact, some of you may already be in the holiday season. And if that is so, I wish you nothing but joy and peace and fulfillment. I really do. I hope you have moments of elated joy.

Now, while that is my wish and my intention for you, I also know that the holidays can be pretty dang hard. It is anxiety-provoking for the best of people, let alone if you’re already struggling with a mental illness or an anxiety disorder, or you’re struggling with anything really. It can be so incredibly difficult. So, what I wanted to do is answer some of your questions.

So, what I did is I went on to Instagram and I asked my community: What are your questions? What do you need help with over the holidays? And they’ve given me a bunch of things to talk about, and I’m going to go through each and every one of them.

Now, this is actually a two-part podcast. This week I’m answering general questions about managing anxiety throughout the holiday season, or just general stresses. And next week, we’re talking about setting boundaries during the holidays with family and loved ones. Setting boundaries. However, the truth is we don’t even need to make this specific to the holidays. This is for everybody at any time. So, if you’re listening to this and it’s not the holidays, it’d be probably helpful to listen to it at any point in time.

Before we do that, I wanted to share with you the “I did a hard thing.” The “I did a hard thing” segment is where people write in and they share what hard things that they have been doing. This is a really important part of the podcast. If you’re new, or if you’re being with us for a while, I really want to stress the purpose of this podcast is to inspire you, is to help you feel like you’re on the right track, that you’re not alarmed, that people are doing the hard thing and I want you to know how they’re doing the hard thing. So, I’m going to share, this one is from Marilee and she says:

“I’m facing the fear right now. We moved two weeks ago. Today when I was getting dressed and picked up my socks that were laying on the floor in the living room, a silverfish crawled out from where it was laying. I hate them. It’s probably a phobia. I compulsively checked and cleaned in the previous place to get rid of them. I feel them all over my body.” As you’re listening folks, you’re probably feeling a little itchy and scratchy, I’m sure.

“I imagine them everywhere and anywhere. My hard thing is to feel these feelings. I’m going to give myself permission to feel anxious and freak out about it, to do the reasonable thing and buy lavender scented sachets and place around the house, to not compulsively clean and check to find them. I’m doing it right now. It is hard, but I’m not going to let this fear dictate how I live in my home.”

Marilee, you’re literally walking the walk. This is so good. I love what you said. “I’m going to allow myself to feel the feelings. I’m going to give myself permission to feel anxious.” You’re doing the hard work, and that is the hard work. Even when I’m meeting with face-to-face clients, they often will say like, “But what do I do?” And this is exactly what you do. Somebody who’s doing it in real-time. So, yay. Congratulations, Marilee. You are doing the hard thing.

Let’s get over to the questions. We’ve got a ton of them. So, let’s go through one by one. I’m going to do my best to address each and every one, but I’m guessing each of these could probably have an episode of their own. So, I’ll do my best to manage time here.

1. How do I enjoy the moment?

Some of my thoughts may get somewhat repetitive, but that’s on purpose. So, here is what I’m going to encourage you to do: Going into the holidays, we want to enjoy it. Even the Christmas paper and the stockings, depending on what holiday you celebrate, and we want to be inclusive and uncover all of them, all of them are centered around community and joy and celebration.

I want to give you permission to not have that expectation, to not try to make this holiday Instagramable. I know that’s not a word, but you know what I mean. So, when you drop the expectation that you’re going to enjoy it, then you can start to be curious about what’s actually happening and be present about what’s actually happening. And I want you to notice little things.

This isn’t a real example. Every year, I make the same mistake and I’m promising myself I’m not going to do this this time – I know that putting up all the Christmas stuff is so fun. We turn the music on, the kids get all of the decorations out. In my mind, it’s such a special moment, but I’m rushing the whole time.

I remember last year at the end of the holiday, I actually caught myself rushing and reminded myself, just get in touch with your senses. Of all the decorations, which one do you enjoy the most? Simple. Which texture do you enjoy the most? Which color? Which shape? Do any of them bring back memories? And just get really basic and simple. Don’t worry about the overwhelming joy and the satisfaction of it ending perfectly, but just get in touch with the small things. For me, it’s like, I hate wrapping presents, but I love giving presents, and I’m going to try to slow down and just really focus on the giving. And if I happen to receive a present, I’m going to really focus on the receiving. The receiving of the present. Just get in touch with the simpler things and put aside this massive goal to make this overly joyous. So, that’s that.

2. How do I let go of last Christmas?

Last Christmas I had COVID, and that’s when my anxiety started. So, I’m going to generalize that often when we go into the holidays, we may actually have memories of events that weren’t so great in the past. Maybe you had a huge family fight last year, or in this case, you had COVID last year, or you were lonely and alone last year. A lot of us are probably grieving with what’s going on, and I’m going to give you permission to just grieve.

Your question said, how do I let go of it? And I’m going to basically say, I think it’s important to check in on what letting go will look like. Letting go isn’t going to mean you have any less grief. We’re not going to get rid of the uncomfortable feelings. But what you might do is you might make space for that grief, and then you might put your attention on how you want this moment to be. Only this moment. Don’t even worry about the future and the holiday, but just focus on right now. Where am I? How am I? Am I okay? What’s going on? Again, go back to the sense and the smells and the shapes. And allow grief, validate your grief, pushing it away. It’s only gonna make it worse. So, validate it. Yeah, last year was hard. Last year was really difficult. I’m going to be super gentle with myself about that.

Now, if you find you’re ruminating about it, you might want to catch yourself on that and bring yourself again, back to the present moment. That’s all we can do.

3. Surviving.

Well, it’s funny because I actually like the word “surviving.” What that means is getting through one minute at a time. Just that’s sort of, you’re going back to the bare bones. This is going to be hard. We know it’s going to be hard. It’s a beautiful day to do hard things. You know I was going to say that. And I don’t mind the idea of surviving. But here is where you can make some choices. And this is important for the whole holiday, is we actually do have some choices on how we perceive the holidays. So, if we’re saying, “Okay, let’s just get through it minute by minute. But as I do it, I’m going to walk in with a real positive bias.” So, the thing to remember here is this positive bias and negative bias. Negative bias is, I’m going to look at the negative. Positive bias is, I’m going to look at the positive. You could also have a neutral bias.

And so, what I want you to do is, as you go minute to minute, it’s important that you acknowledge that you have a choice on whether you say, “This sucks. This sucks. I hate it. It’s not good. I wish it was better. Why isn’t it better? This sucks. I wish it was better. It sucks. I don’t wish it was this way.” That’s really negative bias, and that is a choice. Unfortunately, I’m giggling. That is a choice we make.

Now, another choice would be to go, “This is wonderful. It’s excellent. I love it.” But that might not even land either. That’s not super effective either. But what you can do is take the judgment out of it and just be aware of what is happening. Again, be aware and drop the expectations. Be gentle, and find joy in the little things.

Last year, we didn’t get to see my husband’s family. We didn’t get to see my family. It was just us at home, and I thought it was going to be really terrible. But what I loved was making a big deal out of the simplest things. Like, hot chocolate, get your favorite mug, get the chocolate that you like, put the toppings on it that you like, and really savor it and watch the heat come off of it, and find joy in teeny tiny little pots of the holidays. Again, it doesn’t have to be Instagramable. It doesn’t have to be Pinterestable. And yeah, go minute to minute.

4. Winter blues.

Now, this is a big one because some people do have a clinical diagnosis of seasonal depression. Now, if that’s the case, I encourage you to go and see your doctor. There are tests they can do. There are supplements you can take. There are UV lights that you can use that have some science-backed behind it that can help with the winter blues medication you can take. So, I don’t want to gloss over that as like, “Oh, you just feel sad.” No, that’s actually a clinical diagnosis and you deserve to get treatment for it. And so, definitely go and see your doctor and talk to your doctor about that.

5. Social anxiety.

“I panic due to social anxiety. So, how will I manage that?”

Social anxiety is, again, its own diagnosis, and it’s usually the fear of being judged. I will talk about this a little in next week’s episode, but here is the thing to remember: The truth is, people are going to judge you. They are. But that is not a reflection of you. It is a reflection of them, and it’s out of your control.

If I wear fabulous purple boots to Christmas, which I am not going to, but I wish I was now that I think about it. If I wore purple boots to Christmas and a family member judged me, that’s not evidence that my purple boots are ugly. It’s evidence that they don’t like purple, and they don’t particularly like these purple boots. And that is a reflection of their views. It doesn’t make them right, it doesn’t make them valid and it doesn’t make you wrong. The best thing we can do for ourselves is give ourselves permission to allow people to judge us. And then our job is just to feel our feelings about that and be super gentle. Ouch, it hurts when people judge us. Yeah. But that’s very human. It’s a part of the human condition to not be the same as everybody else. Thank goodness. We’d all be wearing purple boots to Christmas. That wouldn’t be so fun after all.

Now, when it comes to panic, we have tons of episodes on panic. I encourage you to go and listen to them and really double down on your practices there because the more you resist panic, the more panic will come. Your job is to allow it, to be kind, to send to yourself, to breathe through it. Don’t catastrophize and wait for it to pass on its own, which it will.

6. “I do not want these holidays.”

It wasn’t really a question. It was a statement. It says: “Everyone is happy and serene, except me.”

This is my favorite one, to be honest, this is the one that actually I think we get caught up in. Number one, there’s a lot of black and white thinking here.

“Everyone is happy.” Well, that’s not true because I have a whole bunch of questions here from people who are telling me that they are not happy.

“Everyone is serene.” Well, that’s not true. Most people find their mental health goes down over the holidays. That’s just the facts.

So you’re not alone. Sometimes I find it really helpful to share with your friends that I find the holidays really, really hard, and they’re going to say, “Me too. This is what I find hard. What do you find hard?” And it might be different. They might find it difficult to get the shopping. You might find it difficult to manage the finances of gift-giving. They might find it difficult because they have food restrictions or an eating disorder. You might find it hard because you have anxiety and you might have anxiety about meeting people or OCD about contamination or whatever it may be, harm obsessions. It could be anything.

And so, everybody’s diagnosis and everybody’s brain come with us through the holidays, which means not everybody is happy and serene. So, I want to just give you permission to not isolate yourself in your thinking and acknowledge that, no, not everybody is happy. And even if on Instagram, they have big, old happy faces. They may have just had a massive fight with their father-in-law or their sibling or somebody. You just don’t know.

7. “I have travel anxiety. How can I manage that?”

Well, again, travel anxiety is no different to social anxiety or any other anxiety. I think it’s about your willingness to be uncomfortable, your ability to be compassionate and coach yourself through it. I would encourage everyone to start to do exposures to their fears ahead of time. That’s really important. We use exposure and response prevention a lot with specific fears like travel and any other fear. I have a whole course called ERP School that teaches people how to expose themselves to their fear. And so, that’s super important. That’s super, super important.

So, yeah, that’s what I would encourage you to do. And give yourself tons of grace because not only are you traveling, but you’re traveling during a difficult time. The holidays are hard to travel in, not including it’s still COVID, not including we’ve had a lot of time where we haven’t seen a lot of people. So, seeing for the first time is really, really hard. Really, really hard. You haven’t had practice. You haven’t been naturally exposing yourself to it, so the anxiety is going to be higher.

8. How to get through the holidays without my therapist?

Here is what I’m going to encourage you all to do. I have a patient who always jokes with her family, and her family always jokes with her. When she’s struggling, they sit down and they say, “WWKD.” WWKD is “What would Kimberley do?” or “What would Kimberley say” is sometimes the acronym, WWKS.

And so, what I’m going to encourage you to do if you have a therapist and you’re unable to see that therapist is to ask yourself, what would my therapist say about this situation? What advice would they give me? What would they tell me to do? If you don’t have a therapist, you might say, “What would Kimberley have me do?” Even though I’m not your therapist, which I want to be really clear that this is a podcast, it is not therapy, but you know what I’m going to encourage people to do. I’m using mostly science-based treatment goals and tools. So, you could say, “What would the science have me do?” or “What would the general treatment look like in this setting?” And try to do that and get through it as best as you can. Again, go back to just getting through moment to moment.

9. “How to manage the financial aspect of the holidays? I don’t want to let people down.”

Well, here is the thing: Whether you have $10 to spend on a family member or $100 or $1,000, it’s important to remember not to spend more than you have. The thing is, the people who love you don’t want you to go broke because of the holidays. Most people don’t want you to suffer and they definitely don’t want you to be under distress financially or emotionally. And I think it’s important that you acknowledge that. And it’s okay to let people down. If you let people down, that’s their business. It’s not your business to try and control how people feel about you and what you give.

The gift of giving is exactly that – it’s about giving what you can, what’s meaningful. If all you can afford is to write a letter to them, and if they’re let down by that, again, go back to the social anxiety conversation. That is a reflection of them, it’s not a reflection of you. And if you want, you can explain to them, “Money has been hard, difficult and it’s tight time, and I really just want you to know that I put everything I have into this,” if that helps you. But again, we are not responsible for other people’s feelings. We’re not responsible for their actions. That’s their responsibility. All you can do is honor yourself and be true to what’s right for you. We’ll talk a lot about that in the next episode.

10. “I’m always so anxious that I’m not showing enough gratitude when I get a gift. I don’t want to seem like a brat.”

Again, be yourself. If other people perceive you as a brat, that is a reflection of them. It’s not a reflection of you. People’s judgment of us is a reflection of them. It is not a reflection of us. If they think you’re a brat, that’s because they had expectations that you were going to act a certain way. That’s their stuff. You’ve got to stay in your lane.

Now, I think the thing to remember here is you’re probably putting so much attention and energy and pressure on yourself that it’s probably feeling really inauthentic. I want you to receive the gift. I want you to thank them for the gift and then allow yourself to have anxiety about whether or not it was too much or not. Again, that’s their stuff. Try to be as true to you as you can. Ask yourself, what would I do if fear wasn’t here and try to do that?

Now, if receiving gifts is so anxiety-provoking and you totally freeze, you may want to practice saying whatever feels right to you. For me, I might say, “Wow, that is so thoughtful. Thank you so much.” That’s really all you need to say. You don’t need to jump up and down and get all freaked out. Just be yourself. You may even be totally calm, and then write them a beautiful Thank You card a week later and share with them what you like about it.

I try to teach my children when they write Thank You cards to just say, “Thank you so much for the t-shirt. I loved the color.” “Thank you so much for my drink bottle. It will fit perfectly in my lunch box.” “Thank you so much for this toy. I have loved playing with it.” This is just basic stuff. That’s all you need. It doesn’t have to be a full-on production. We’re getting closer here. We’re getting close.

11. “The holidays make me feel alone and lonely.”

I am sure you know, I recently wrote a book called The Self-Compassion Workbook for OCD. The reason I bring that up is I’m going to emphasize, so much of the time when we’re suffering, all we need is compassion. So, you don’t need to read the workbook for this, but I’m emphasizing the reason I wrote that book is because when we are suffering, we need self-compassion. It has to be a part of the work. So, as loneliness and aloneness show up for you, really be tender to yourself. validate yourself. Acknowledge this is true for me. I feel lonely. Don’t tell yourself a story about it, though. Don’t go off into the narrative of, “This means I’m a loser and no one’s ever going to love me.” Don’t do that because that’s not a fact. There’s no evidence of that. So, I don’t want you to focus on that, but do give yourself permission to feel what you feel.

How are we going? Are we doing good? We’re almost there. A couple more to go.

12. Another year of suffering, expectations not met.

So, back in the past, we did a podcast on this. It’s called “It’s time for a parade.” It’s really early. It’s like number 14 or 15 or something like that. Go back and check on that, because so often we need to really lean into the present, really lean into dropping out expectations. And again, we want to be compassionate.

Yes, it is another year of suffering. I cannot agree with you more. I have multiple times broken down over the last week into tears because yet again, I’m missing my family. Literally, every single member of my family I won’t get to see. And I know a lot of you have been doing this and are going through even much harder things. This has been a really rough couple of years. So, please validate yourself, acknowledge your suffering, allow yourself to grieve. Really go back to some of the tools we’ve talked about. Being present, getting really clear on the few rituals you want to do, the hot chocolate, the songs. Maybe it’s taking a walk, maybe it’s journaling, whatever it may be.

I just want to take a breath and just really honor you all right now because the holidays are so hard. They’re so, so hard.

13. How to show up for myself during the craziness of the holidays?

Here I’m going to give it to you. I ask you a question and I want you to answer it honestly to yourself.

All of the things that you’ve planned, how many do you actually want to do? And of the things you don’t want to do, how many of the things you actually have to do? And then whatever’s left over, don’t do them.

So often we add all this extra crap and we actually don’t need to do it. You’re allowed to keep it simple. You’re allowed to just make it really easy. You might say to your friends, “You know what, guys, I’m not doing presents this year. I’m only doing gift cards. Buy them online, be done.” Or you might say, “I’m not cooking/baking this year. I’m going to order them from the bakery.” Done. Make it easy. You deserve and it’s okay to drop the craziness. We don’t need the craziness.

Say no to people. We’ll talk about this in next week’s episode. Say no to people. Don’t do what you don’t want to do if you don’t want to do it and it’s not highly valuable to you.

Here’s the thing, and I’ll share a story. This Thanksgiving, while I’m recording just before Thanksgiving right now, there is a couple of things I don’t want to do around Thanksgiving. Now, even though I don’t want to do them, I’m choosing to do them because I think they’re really important for my children, particularly given the fact that they haven’t had a lot of social interaction over the last year and a half. So, I’m choosing to do it. Now, what I’m going to say to myself as I do it is I’m not going to go, “Oh, I don’t want to do this. Oh, I don’t want to do this.” I’m going to say, “I’m choosing to do this because...” and I’m going to answer, “because my children deserve this holiday.” And when you say, “I choose to do this, because...” it brings you into a place where you’re owning what you want to do and why you’re doing it, even if you don’t want to do it. But if it makes you crazy, don’t do it. There’s no need.

14. Gift guide for people with mental illness.

If you go to cbtschool.com, we have a mental health gift guide. Go over and check it out.

https://www.cbtschool.com/mental-health-gift-guide

15. Changes in the schedule.

Now, this is where we use the tool of flexibility, and you have to be flexible during the holidays. Flexibility is dropping your expectations, dropping all of the goals and going with the flow. When things change, stop and ask yourself, what about this change is creating anxiety for me? Can I lean into it? Can I allow it? And go with it. Practice. Use it as an opportunity to practice the skill of flexibility. I’m not sure if I’ve done a podcast on flexibility. So, come to think of it, I will do one in the New Year.

All right. You guys are so cool. I hope you have a wonderful holiday period. Before we finish the show, I want to do the review of the week. If you want to leave a review on iTunes, I would be so grateful. It would be the best Christmas gift you can give me. It’ll cost you nothing. And my wish is that if you do it, not for me, I don’t need the ego stroke, but the more reviews we get, the more people will click on it and the more people I can help with this free resource. So, here it is.

The review of the week is from WalkerMom77, and they said:

“Kimberley is a warm hug. While the content of this podcast is excellent and has inspired me to do further research, read books, etc., it’s Kimberley’s compassion that keeps me coming back. She is so authentic and genuine and her voice just relaxes me.”

Thank you so much, WalkerMom 77. I love, love knowing that I inspire you and keep you moving forward and bring you some compassion.

Well, that’s it for now. I’m going to see you next week and we can talk about boundaries with family members. I hope you have a wonderful day. Sending you so much love. Please be kind to yourself. It is a beautiful day to do hard things.

SUMMARY:

Today we have Natasha Daniels, an OCD specialist, talking all about how to help children and teens with OCD and phobias.  In this conversation, we talk all about how to motivate our children and teens to manage their OCD, phobias, and anxiety using Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT), Exposure and Response Prevention (ERP), and other treatments such as self-compassion, mindfulness, and ACT. We also address what OCD treatment for children entails and what changes need to be made in OCD treatment for teens. In this episode, Natasha and Kimberley share their experiences of parenting children with phobias and OCD.

In This Episode:

• The difference between the treatment of OCD and phobias for children
• What OCD therapy for kids looks like compared to OCD therapy for adults
• How to practice exposure and response prevention for kids and teens
• How to motivate teens and kids to face their fears (using Cognitive Behavioral Therapy
• Special tricks and tools to help parents support their children with OCD and phobias.

Links To Things I Talk About:

• Natasha’s Parenting Survival Online Program www.ATparentingsurvivalschool.com
• Natasha’s instagram @atparentingsurvival
• ERP School: https://www.cbtschool.com/erp-school-lp

Episode Sponsor:

This episode of Your Anxiety Toolkit is brought to you by CBTschool.com.  CBTschool.com is a psychoeducation platform that provides courses and other online resources for people with anxiety, OCD, and Body-Focused Repetitive Behaviors.  Go to cbtschool.com to learn more.

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EPISODE TRANSCRIPTION

This is Your Anxiety Toolkit - Episode 213.

Welcome back everybody. Oh, so happy to be here. How are you? How are you doing? I’ve been thinking about you all so much lately, reflecting a lot after Thanksgiving, being so grateful for you and this community and for your support. So, thank you, thank you, thank you.

I am super thrilled to have the amazing Natasha Daniels on. Natasha is an OCD specialist. She is an amazing therapist who is skilled at treating children with OCD and phobias. She does an incredible, incredible job. So please do check the show notes to learn more about Natasha. But today, she came on to talk about managing anxiety in the kiddos. We don’t talk enough about managing anxiety with the kiddos. And the cool thing for me was, it was so synchronistic because the day that she recorded and came on, we were prepping in my family from my daughter to do a really, really, really hard thing. So, I needed to hear what she had to say. Even though I knew a lot and I’d been trained a lot on it, I just needed to hear it as a parent. And if you are a parent of someone who has anxiety, you will just love, love, love this episode. So many amazing tips and tools and skills and concepts. I just cannot tell you how grateful I am to have Natasha come on and talk about these things with us today.

Before we go over to that episode, I first want to do the “I did a hard thing segment.” The first one is from Becks, and Becks is saying:

“I have been so anxious that I’ve been carrying COVID without knowing who I’m infecting.” Now I think this is true for a lot of us, myself included. So I think we can all resonate with this story.

Becks went on to say, “Recently, I have been doing five to ten lateral flow COVID tests every day to check before leaving the house. I had run out of tests and had planned to eat with a friend with her three-month-old baby. I was so anxious before leaving the house and considered canceling to avoid the doubt of passing COVID unknowingly. But I gave my fear of talking to.” I just love that you did that. “I didn’t want to get fear to win this time. I wanted to see my friend and her beautiful new baby. I shared my fear with my friend, and without asking for reassurance, I spent the loveliest day with them. I have been ruminating a little since, but I keep reminding myself to return to my values and not let fear win.”

Becks, amazing work. It sounds like you’re waiting through some difficult fear and you totally let values win. So, that makes me so, so happy. Great job. I am so in love with you guys when you share your hard thing with us.

*****

Okay, let’s go over to the episode.

Well, thank you again, Natasha, for being on. Before we finish this episode, I wanted to also make sure we highlighted the review of the week. I so appreciate your reviews. This one is from Paulie Bill and they said:

“So helpful. I can’t describe in words how much this podcast has helped me. Kimberley is so open and accepting even via headphones.” I love that. “She has sent me on the path to recovery in my anxieties. I look forward to do the work.”

Thank you so much. I do love your reviews. We are on a mission to get a thousand reviews. If you would go over and leave a review on iTunes, that would be so wonderful, the biggest gift you could give me. It allows us to reach more people. When people open up the app and they see that it’s highly reviewed, it means they’re more likely to click on and listen. And that means I get to help more people for free with this free resource. So, thank you so much, Paulie Bill, for leaving a review. I love you all. Have a wonderful week and I’ll see you here next week.

Kimberley: There we go. Well, I am so excited to share the amazing Natasha Daniels. Natasha, I can’t wait for you to tell us about you. I’m going to let you explain about your work. You’re doing such amazing work. I’m actually so excited for this episode because we’re talking about managing OCD and phobias in children. We talk a lot about this stuff, but not specifically around children. So, I’m so happy to have you here. Welcome.

Natasha: Yeah. I appreciate you having me. It’s always nice to talk to you.

Kimberley: Yes. First, tell us about you and the work you’re doing.

Natasha: Well, I am a child and anxiety child therapist, and I have three kids with anxiety and OCD. So, I get it on both hats. And I provide online resources for parents who are raising kids with anxiety and OCD because we need a lot of support.

Kimberley: Right. Your platform is so great. In fact, I’ve taken one of your training, the SPACE training, and it’s so wonderful. So, I can’t wait at the end for you to share about that for people and parents who are struggling, but also for clinicians. Really, really helpful.

Natasha: Oh, thanks.

Kimberley: Yeah. So, I want to talk with you about ERP but also just anxiety management for the kids who are struggling with OCD and phobias. In your experience, is there a difference between how treatment looks for folks who are adults and the children who have OCD and phobias?

Natasha: I think on a fundamental level, it’s very similar. The whole structure is identical, but then we have to take into consideration a couple of different things. One, I think you have to work on the motivation and incentivizing more than you do with someone who’s coming willingly. So, a lot of times we might notice an issue going on with our child, but they’re another person. And so, that approach will look different. And also, developmentally, how they can understand ERP. So, how you explain it, how you gamify it. That looks different. I think as well, we want to engage them. If you don’t have an engaged child, you don’t have ERP. So, that’s another aspect. And then I’d say the third one, the last one is developmental aspects of it. So, we’re very careful with ERP to not do a lot of education because we worry, maybe if I’m educating them, I’m actually assuring them. But with kids, I find at least with myself and my practice and with my own kids, I have to do a little bit of psychoeducation because they may not even know what’s normal versus what’s not normal. And so, I think that piece might be a little bit different than when you’re working with adults.

Kimberley: Right. Yeah. I think that’s so true, particularly even, I remember when my son was really young and had a really severe dog phobia. He was around a lot of dogs, and when a dog ran at him, he actually thought they were going to kill him because they’re the same size. So, it was really important that we educated him on, “This is a dog, but it’s not a lion” kind of thing. So, it was really important for him.

Natasha: Yeah, definitely.

Kimberley: You mentioned gamifying, and I wanted to just-- can you explain what that means?

Natasha: Well, I think we want to offer incentives. And so, because they don’t have their-- most kids don’t have that intrinsic motivation to realize the bigger picture of, “I don’t want OCD. This is going to have huge ramifications in my life.” They just see now. And so, asking them to go, metaphorically, swim with a bunch of sharks, it’s just not going to happen, but if we can gamify it and make it fun-- and I use bravery points or the earning stuff, and they can buy things at my bravery store. I use apps, I take-- I actually like the Privilege app. They should pay me because I promote them so much. Because it’s a chore app, but it’s just really easy for kids to convert it. And then they can have it on their iPad. So, I’m giving my kids points and they can hear the little change going on their iPad, like they just got something. That aspect of it really helps motivate kids to work on and do hard things because they may not philosophically get the benefits. They will long term, and even short term. Once they start doing ERP, they say, “Oh my gosh, it feels so much better.” But that’s not enough. And so, gamifying, it actually makes a lot of kids come and ask me, “Can I do another exposure?” My kids always ask, “Can I do another exposure?” if they want something. “What exposures can I do for this?” And that creates a household where we’re doing ERP for fun.

Kimberley: I love that. You talk about that. I mean, we do live in such an electronic world, and it is an incentive, I know for me, my kids will do anything if there is some kind of electronic reward at the end there, and it’s a huge piece. I have a daughter, I mentioned to you before the recording, who is doing her own set of exposures right now, and she doesn’t want to do them. Then why would she? So, it’s really helpful to gamify it as much as you can. I love that you mentioned that.

Natasha: Yeah, it definitely helps. And I think even people who are raw screen fans and they follow the CPS model. I hear that a lot in the parenting world. He’s not pro-incentive. And I interviewed him and even he was like, for anxiety and OCD, it can be a very important component, as long as you’re constantly, I think, upping the game so you’re doing an exposure that’s harder and harder. So, they’re not just getting A plus B equals C all the time. And then you’re pulling back those incentives over time, spreading them out, using intermittently. So, there are ways to pull it back.

Kimberley: So good. So, let’s say a child at different ages, it could be-- you may even want to distinguish different age groups if that’s appropriate, but let’s say they have a fear of phobia or an obsession about something. Can you share what it would look to do ERP with a child?

Natasha: I think the first part is really getting them to understand what it is, because I think sometimes I have parents that they are ready to go and they forget they have to really educate the child and get the child to meet them where they’re at. So, understanding how OCD works, that the more you avoid, the bigger it grows, and then partnering with them, ideally, if your child is in that space. So, sometimes we have to actually work on communication and trust for a long period of time. And that might be your only step for a long time. And parents miss that. They think, “If my child’s not willing to do ERP, then all bets are off.” And I say, “No, you’re at the beginning of the journey.” So, to educate them and motivate them, work on communication.

But then as we progress – I’ll just use my kids as an example because it’s easy – if they have a phobia or if they have an intrusive thought, we’ll say, “Okay, what are some things--” they get the concept of, “I have to walk towards my fear or towards my discomfort.” So, we want to partner with our kids and say, “What things can we do to upset your OCD, to sit in discomfort?” And so, we might just make a list, might brainstorm.

My daughter had a two-day period where she had this extreme intrusive thought about blood and it wasn’t one of her themes, but it was just-- I’m going to use this as an example. And so, it just went from zero to 60. She had one science experiment. They were online. They had to look at a body with the pathways of the veins and the arteries or whatever, and she couldn’t touch anyone because she didn’t want to stop their blood.

And so, just whatever that is for your child, just sitting at them and saying, “What are some things that we can do?” And she was very resistant. “I don’t want to do anything.” And so, I was like, “Could you look at an emoji of a little thing of blood?” So, we started off making a list. And I would say, “You don’t have to do all this, but let’s just brainstorm some of the things that would upset your OCD right now.” And then some people pick a menu like, “Just pick one today and let’s just start with that.” And that’s how you begin. It’s just baby steps towards learning how to sit in the discomfort.

Kimberley: I love that. Now, during the exposure, what does that look like for a child? I’ll give you a personal example. We were doing a video exposure with my daughter yesterday, and she was all tense up, leaning back, head in the pillow, grasping, gripping, resisting, all the things, and I educated her. So, what would it look like for a parent? How would they maybe, or in a clinician, how would they coach them through the actual exposure?

Natasha: In a perfect really, we want them to take the lead, and it’s so hard when they have that response. And I had done needle exposures too with my kids. And so, sometimes when I see that reaction, I’ll stop, and I’ll just say-- well, actually, my son had to take a COVID test. This is another example. And he wouldn’t stick it up his nose. And so then, of course, I got frustrated. So, I was chasing him and I was like, “Give me your nose.” It was not a fine mom moment. And then finally, I stopped and I was like, “How do you want to handle this? What do you want to do? We cannot do it.” And then he’s like, “I’ll do it.” And so, I just had to walk away. But I think sometimes with exposures, it’s just taking that pause and saying, “Where do you want me to poke you?” if we’re talking about a poking exposure or “Where’s your level of comfort?”

Ideally over time, we want them to start doing these things for themselves. And so, we want them to be on automatic pilot that they’re doing an exposure and we’re sitting back. So, all we’re doing at some point is saying, “This is less for a phobia that’s situational and obviously more for an ongoing thing.” But with my daughter, with emetophobia, the fear of throwing up, I might say, “What exposure do you want to do? Let me know when you do it, and then I’ll give you a brave point.” And then I might hover in the kitchen and just watch her do it, but try to be less involved.

Kimberley: Right. I love that. On our end, I had to keep explaining to her that the more you tense and the more you cringe, the more you’re reinforcing the fear to try and sit still. She’s trying to practice. Again, she doesn’t have to act perfect. I always say, “You don’t have to take the fear away, but you can’t be cringing and hiding behind the pillows and so forth.” That’s a big piece of the work.

Natasha: Yeah. And I think it’s such an important piece that I think a lot of parents miss, is not surviving the exposure. For my son with this anxiety, I’d be like, “Go upstairs to do an exposure. Go get your shoes or whatever.” And this was more anxiety-based, not OCD. And he’d run upstairs like he’s avoiding a killer and then he’d run back downstairs. And I’m like, “All you did was teach your brain that you survived. It’s going to work.”

Kimberley: Yeah. I love that. Okay. So, I love that you’ve already shared like you didn’t have a perfect parent moment, right? Because I think parent is already-- it’s hard to be a parent. We have so many expectations on ourselves. Can you give us some ideas of what to say and what not to say or how parents may support their child better in these examples?

Natasha: It is really tricky. And I think start, and you’re so good at this, the self-compassion piece. And I think parentally, we have to start with self-compassion and say, “You’re not going to knock it out of the park all the time.” You’re going to say things that you’re like, “Oh my gosh, that was the worst thing to say ever.” You might trigger your child inadvertently. So, I think having that compassion first is really important. And that’s why I always often share my mistakes because I’m human, we’re all human. But I think in a perfect world, the ultimate goal is we’re just trying to get our child to be able to sit in discomfort. So, we’re not discounting their fears. And I think sometimes parents here, “I’m not supposed to accommodate,” which they, in turn, view as “I’m not supposed to support them.” And that concerns me because I think a little bit of information can be harmful. So, it’s not that you can’t support them, but you just want to sit and validate. I know this is hard for you.

I’ll take an example, just so I’m all concrete. Let’s go back to emetophobia, the fear of throw up. Sometimes parents will say, “When I say you can’t say--” I don’t normally talk like that, like you can’t say, but it’s not helpful to say, “You’re not going to throw up,” because you really want them to accept that they may or may not throw up and that they’re going to be okay either way. I’m sure they can handle the discomfort. And so, sometimes that confuses parents because then the child’s stomach is hurting and they’re saying, “I’m worried I’m going to throw up.” And then they can’t say anything. So, they’re like, “Got to go to school, get your shoes on.” It’s like turning into robots, but it’s just validating the feelings. “I know this is hard for you. I know that this is really rough and I’m so--” this is how I talk to my kids, “I’m so sorry that OCD is really bothering you right now. And I know that you can handle it, no matter what happens.” And so, giving them that support and validation without the accommodation of “Nothing bad is going to happen to you.”

Kimberley: Yeah. It’s hard. I mean, it’s funny because it’s hard to see your child in pain, right? It’s hard to watch them struggle. You want to take their pain away. You want to come in. And in some cases, I will even disclose, there’s times where-- or maybe I’m not feeling I’m being a good parent in general and I want to rescue them so my kid likes me again. You know what I mean? There’s so many components that can suck us into “Let me just rescue this one time.” Where I really am curious to hear, what I really have struggled with my patients, the thing that they’re working through is when a compulsion or avoidance is done because they want their kid to go to school. Like, “Well, if I don’t do this compulsion for them, they won’t go to school, and I need them to go to school,” or “I need them to get their homework done. So, I’m actually going to do this compulsion for them and accommodate them because school is the most important thing at that point.” So, what, what is your advice to parents who get stuck in that accommodation cycle because they’re trying to keep the kid functioning in other areas?

Natasha: It’s definitely a balancing act because we cannot accommodate everything at once. And so, if the ultimate goal is get them to school, and there might be some things that we have to do to get them to school, but then we have to pull back. And it can snowball. It snowballed with me. I’ll just throw myself under the bus the entire interview. Why not? I mean, Natasha, it looked really good. But when my daughter was, I think, first grade, she had emetophobia, her throw up in sensorimotor OCD where she thought she was going to pee all the time. So, both of those together was a nightmare. And we just needed to get her to school. She didn’t want to go to school. And so, initially, it was just, “I can’t go into the cafeteria.” And so, there were accommodations made, “Oh, if it’s just lunch, then we’ll have you go eat in another classroom.”

But OCD is never satisfied. And so, you have to have that awareness. And that was me as a parent. Intellectually, I knew, okay, you have to be careful with this because we’re accommodating it. But then it was recess. Then it was PE. And then she was spending half the day in the nurse because we were over accommodating, and then we had to start to scale back and then get her back into the cafeteria. So, I think you just have to be aware that it is a balancing act that, yes, there are some things that you might have to accommodate, but then it’s not a permanent thing. You have to start. You have to constantly reassess and pull back those accommodations.

Kimberley: Right. And I love that you share it. It’s funny because sometimes I shock myself as a clinician. I know exactly what to do and I completely forget to do it with my kids. It’s so hard. And I say, I completely forget. I’m not in denial. I actually forget like, “No, no, she’s my child. It’s my job. I have to protect her or protect him.” So, I think it’s important that we talk about that because parents can be really, really hard on themselves and beat themselves up. I know we’ve talked about that in the past. So, thank you so much for sharing that.

Okay. So, what about in the school setting? How do you encourage parents to communicate this with teachers, personnel, or principals, and so forth? How much do you encourage people to disclose?

Natasha: I think it’s really important to help the school understand your child. And I know that a lot of times parents are worried about stigma or their permanent record. And so, they avoid that. But really, we’re setting our kids up for failure and we’re setting the teacher up for failure. So, if they’re young, especially when they’re young, I think it is good to write a little summary of like, these are their issues. But be specific. These are the ways that it will show up in school and these are the ways that you can help. And giving that to the teacher, I always gave that to the teacher. Whenever you’d get that thing in the mail that said, or in their backpack, “Let me get to know your child,” I’d be like, I would staple this whole clinical summary in the back or email them, or I would ask them, “Can I meet with you alone after the parent-teacher conference?”

But I wanted them to-- so, sometimes parents will say, “Well, I want them to get to know my child first before they see them as having a disorder.” And I have found over and over again that it only benefited my child when they knew they had anxiety and OCD, that they weren’t being a problem child. They weren’t trying to go to the bathroom to avoid. They had certain issues that were going to show up. So, I do think it’s important.

Now, my son and my daughter, my older daughter, both also have anxiety/OCD issues. My daughter’s 18. Once she hit an age, I’d ask her, do you want me to notify your teachers? She hit a bump in high school and I offered, “I can go in and talk to the counselor.” And I actually did this past year because we had another issue going on, but there was a respect issue. At that point, that was her life. And my son, who’s 12, now I also ask. But when it became an issue, I said, “I need to tell your teachers. Yeah.” And so, you have to decide.

Kimberley: Yeah. And now there’s no rule, right? And every kid is probably different too. I know for my kids, they’re such different little human beings, so my approach is way different with them. Absolutely. Okay. A couple of questions. I know I’m just coming up because I wanted to ask. So, as a parent managing, it’s hard to see your kids suffer and it’s also hard to see them avoid. I know it’s interesting. My first reaction surprisingly was anger, right? It made me angry that this was happening. What might parents do for themselves to manage their own emotional experience when they watch their child suffering?

Natasha: It could be very triggering and it could impact your relationship with your partner because you’re approaching it differently. It can tap you out because you’re spending so much time helping your kids, that you are forgetting to focus on yourself. And so, that cliche statement of putting the oxygen mask on yourself first actually has a lot of validity because, how you view your child, how you take care of yourself, your health, your emotional and physical health, and also how you catastrophize your child’s issues will impact your child’s ability to have long term success. And so, sometimes I try to get parents to connect their child’s success with their own issues because that’s the only thing I’ll motivate them to focus inward because they’re selfless and they want to focus on their child. “Don’t worry about me. That’s not a front-burner issue. Let me focus on my child.” And I try to get parents to see you’re a pivotal point, because when you’re catastrophizing and you’re seeing a college student in front of you not functioning and they’re in kindergarten, that’s doing something to how you approach that child. That’s creating a lot of anxiety with that. So, self-work is really important.

Kimberley: Yeah. It’s so important. It is so important. I did some reflecting this week in terms of, we have a dentist appointment that is going to be hard. It’s funny, we’re talking this week because this is the week that we have a huge procedure happening. And I’m doing my own work and sitting in like, it is what it is. I can support, I can encourage, I can do the exposures. But when I start getting grasping, I’m like, “No, it has to happen. She has to get it. It has to be done. And it has to be done that day.” And that’s when I don’t show up as the parent I want to be. And it shows up in many areas. It’s not just when I’m with them. It’s like, I’m angry when I’m typing and I’m frustrated when I’m taking a walk. So, it shows up in so many areas. So, I feel such deep compassion for the parent who is anticipating these upcoming events like vaccinations and Halloween being a big one for some kids. Some parents are dreading these events.

Natasha: Yeah, and knowing what your own triggers are. I know what my triggers are. I know I can’t handle choking. I know I can’t handle-- my husband used to take my kids to get blood work because I have a thing with shots and blood work. And so, if you can tap out and have someone else do it, if it’s a trigger for you, that could be helpful. Or knowing how to center yourself, I had to really fake it this past year because there was no help. And they were just sitting on my lap and they can feel my energy. They can. So, I had to authentically do my own work, not fake it because they can feel it. They can feel in your body and just say, they don’t get it done. like you said, if they don’t get it done, they don’t get it done. If they pass out or throw up – because I think that’s my phobia, it’s like, I don’t want them to pass out in front of me because they always do – then it’s going to be okay, no matter what.

Kimberley: Did you, as a parent, if you don’t mind me asking, have to do your own exposures to their exposures?

Natasha: Taking them has been an exposure. It’s actually not an exposure because it’s just happening to me. But I didn’t. I actually didn’t. I just do my own internal work. I find just telling myself that it doesn’t matter if they pass out and they do. And they still do. And it’s all still okay.

Kimberley: You’re amazing. It’s really inspiring actually to know you’re walking the walk, not just talking the talk. It’s really quite impressive.

Natasha: Oh, thanks.

Kimberley: Yeah. So, what do you do if your child adamantly does not want to engage in treatment?

Natasha: It’s really important that we get them to enter treatment approaches on their own, because I really feel like we can break their ability to embrace approaches lifelong if we strong-arm them and we force them and we do things. I’ve had parents say like, “I just take their hand and I make them touch stuff.” And I think that child’s never going to do that on their own then because we’re always going to dig our heels back. So, I think it’s meeting your child where your child is at. And there’s always an entry point. It may not be the entry point you want, and I totally get that because my son, he did not want to do anything initially. And that’s frustrating when your child’s starving to death, but it’s not going-- you can’t force it. You can’t grab the steering wheel and drive for them. And so, what do they need for me to get them to that point? Do they need-- do I just have to work on communication with them? Do I just have to work on them trusting? They say something and I just listen. Can I just get them to watch a bunch of YouTube videos or read a couple of books and give them bravery points for doing that? That’s treatment. That’s education. So, I think it’s just finding out where does your child want to start.

Kimberley: Right. I know I took one of your courses, the SPACE training, which was amazing. And I found that really helpful too, is to just catch-- if they don’t want to do treatment to catch where the accommodation is happening on the parents end. Did you want to share a little about that?

Natasha: Yeah. I think that SPACE Program, Eli Lebowitz’s SPACE Program, is huge because it finally empowers parents to do something, even if their children don’t want anything to do with it. So, you can work on your trust and communication, but then there are-- OCD is a family affair, we often say, and there’s a lot that we can do that OCD wants us to do. And so, working on how we approach it, what kind of family environment do we create in our home? What things do we pull back, our accommodation? There’s a lot of work that a parent can do on their own. And that’s what the SPACE program does. And I have a study guide because I think some people just want a video of like, “Just break it down for me, Natasha.”

Kimberley: That was me. I want the bullet point version.

Natasha: Yeah.

Kimberley: That’s what that does. And it was amazing. Okay. So, thank you so much. This has been so incredibly helpful. I’m wondering if you could give us some major points, things that you really feel that we need to know either as clinicians or parents or loved ones of a child who’s struggling with OCD and anxiety. What are some main points or things that you want us to know of before we sign off for the day?

Natasha: Well, I think you cover a lot in your podcast with such good information. So, I would just add to that and say, don’t forget to make it fun, right? I mean, all this doom and gloom, the kids can feel that. And we can make OCD fun and we can gamify it. So, that’s really important. And I think the other part is not forgetting to highlight the superpowers that kids with anxiety and OCD have, letting them know that there are amazing qualities that come with a person who has anxiety or OCD. And my kids get proud of that. They start to feel like, “I’m intuitive,” or “I’m kind-hearted,” or they’ll even actually say, “My superpower is...” So, don’t forget that part. That piece is important.

Kimberley: So important, particularly because with OCD and anxiety comes so many qualities, right? They can have qualities. They’re so brave. They’re so courageous. They’re so resilient. These are things that will serve them for why.

Natasha: Totally.

Kimberley: Yeah. Well, I thank you so much. Number one, as a human being, thank you, because I needed this this week without even realizing it.

Natasha: I’m glad you need it timely.

Kimberley: It was such great timing, but also thank you for all the amazing work that you do. I think this is an incredible resource. So, can you tell us where people go to hear more about you?

Natasha: Yeah. And thank you for your work. I think that you’re just putting such good stuff out there. People can find, if they want to look at my online courses, they can go to atparentingsurvivalschool.com. And I provide online resources for parents and courses to teach you how to help your kids crush anxiety and OCD. They can also listen to my podcast.

Kimberley: Great. And I’ll have links in the show notes for anyone who wants to access that. I am so grateful to you. Thank you so much for doing such great work.

Natasha: Thanks for having me.

SUMMARY:

In today’s podcast, we take a deep dive into a common question I get from followers and CBTschool.com members. HOW MUCH ERP SHOULD I BE DOING DAILY?  Because ERP is such an important part of OCD treatment and OCD therapy, I wanted to outline how you might set up an ERP plan for yourself and how that can help you with your OCD treatment.

In This Episode:

• What is ERP (exposure and response prevention)?
• What an Exposure and Response Prevention plan looks like.
• How to determine how much ERP you should do each day
• Why it is important to practice ERP for OCD, health anxiety, and other anxiety disorders.
• How to taper off doing ERP once your obsessions and compulsions have reduced.
• How to practice self-compassion during ERP

Links To Things I Talk About:

• ERP School: https://www.cbtschool.com/erp-school-lp
• Kimberley’s ERP Book: The Self-Compassion Workbook for OCD
• CBTschool.com

Episode Sponsor

This episode of Your Anxiety Toolkit is brought to you by CBTschool.com.  CBTschool.com is a psychoeducation platform that provides courses and other online resources for people with anxiety, OCD, and Body-Focused Repetitive Behaviors.  Go to cbtschool.com to learn more.

Spread the love! Everyone needs tools for anxiety...

If you like Your Anxiety Toolkit Podcast, visit YOUR ANXIETY TOOLKIT PODCAST to subscribe free and you'll never miss an episode. And if you really like Your Anxiety Toolkit, I'd appreciate you telling a friend (maybe even two).

EPISODE TRANSCRIPTION

This is Your Anxiety Toolkit – Episode 212.

Welcome. I am so thrilled today to talk to you about a question I get asked all the time, which is, how long should I be doing exposure and response prevention per day? So we are going to go all the way through that here in just a sec. But before we do that, we always start the show with our “I did a hard thing.” Now, each week people submit their “I did a hard thing” and we share it because we want to spread the word on all of the hard things that people are doing to inspire you, to help you realize you’re not alone and to help give you that little bit of motivation to face your fears as well.

Now, what we usually do after that is we do the review of the week as well, which is where people leave a review on iTunes for this podcast, Your Anxiety Toolkit. But today, somebody left a review that was also the “I did a hard thing.” So I thought, no better opportunity than to do both at once. This is from Jayjenpeezy, and they said:

“Right on time! I cannot even begin to say how helpful this podcast is and I have incorporated into parts of my daily meditations and/or listen to it on my walks. A few weeks ago I was admitted to the ER and kept overnight for an observation and what the doctors originally thought was tachycardia turned out to be a panic attack which I had never experienced to that degree before. I spent the next few weeks even more anxious at the thought that it would happen again and thought I’d lost my mind and began taking antidepressants as a quick solve which now I know is not the solution I truly needed. (Mind you, I am speaking only for myself and understand that not everyone is able to be off their prescription meds.)” I love that you included that.

“After doing some research I learned about this podcast and ERP and am starting to feel much better about a lot of things. I’ve also changed my diet to be more alkaline, incorporated daily meditation, gratitude journaling and have been able to finally leave my house to take daily walks. The journey is different for everyone but as she continuously reminds me that “it’s a beautiful day to do hard things” and that panic attacks are not actually attacking you it’s your adrenaline rushing through you and in time comes to pass when you are able to meet it eye to eye. I also learned to look at it as willful tolerance,” we have a whole episode on that “and it is not so scary anymore. I am taking it one day at a time and am mindful of being present as possible. Ending up in the emergency room while my children were left at home at night was enough for me to take any and all necessary steps to not allow my anxiety control me. Sending love to all and may the force be with you.”

I love that. Let’s just say that is the perfect marry between “I did a hard thing” and a review. So thank you so much to our reviewer, Jayjenpeezy. I am in such admiration of you.

So let’s get over to the show. Today, we are talking specifically about how long or how frequent your ERP should be. Now, when I say “should,” I’m going to disclose here, it’s different for everybody, but I’m going to tell you just briefly what I would tell any of my clients. And then from there, you get to go and decide what is right for you. Okay? So, let’s go over to that topic.

When someone asks me how long or how frequent and what duration I should do for an exposure, I almost always tell them the same thing. In ERP School, the online course for OCD, and in my new book, The Self-Compassion Workbook For OCD, I say exactly the same thing in both, which is ideally, you should practice exposures for around 45 to 90 minutes per day. Now, I know that doesn’t work for everybody. So you have to go and do and find a balance of what’s right for you. But let me show you how you might incorporate that 45 minutes to 90 minutes per day.

While it’s totally fine if you do this, in fact, I applaud you if you do this, but I don’t suggest that you do it just in one lump sum time. It’s hard to schedule 45 to 90 minutes if you have a job, a family, or you go to school or you have another mental illness that you’re working through. What I encourage people to do is to displace that time throughout the day. Again, you can follow my rule. I did a whole episode about scheduling and how it’s important for your recovery. You can schedule it into your day in blocks, like for 15 minutes after breakfast, you do an imaginal, or for 15 minutes before lunch, you’d go and face something that you’re afraid of. For 10 minutes before you go and make coffee, you may do some of your homework. You can schedule it in blocks. I like that. That’s my preference if it were me.

But a lot of people, what I encourage them to do is pair it with activities you’re already doing, or you would already be doing had you not had OCD or this fear. So an example might be, as you’re driving to work, you could be listening to your scripting in ERP School, our online for OCD, and in The Self-Compassion Workbook For OCD. We explain extensively how to do scripting and imaginals. You can do that while you drive to work. You can do that while you make your breakfast. You can do that while you wash the dishes. You can do that while you walk around the block. You can do it while you stretch. You can do it while you’re in the shower. These are activities where you don’t actually have to stop what you’re doing to do exposures. You can do many exposures in your normal daily life.

In addition, let’s say you have the fear of contamination or doing some activity and fear of what thoughts you may have. I would encourage you to try to go about your day, having the thought on purpose. So you don’t have to, again, stop your day and stop your schedule and your normal functioning. You could start to implement these things that you’re afraid of throughout the day. Or if again, something you’re avoiding, you may then want to practice implementing that back into your day, particularly if it brings you fulfillment and wellness and more functionality into your day. Instead of, let’s say, you have a compulsion where you ask somebody to accommodate you, you might actually choose to do it yourself. You get points for that. That is an exposure. That should go towards your 45 to 90 minutes per day.

Now that being said, that’s just exposures. The response prevention is something that you do throughout the entire day. For those of you who don’t really understand the difference, an exposure is where you face yourself to your fear or your obsession. You face that fear of obsession. Response prevention is then not engaging in a compulsive behavior to reduce, remove, or eliminate the discomfort, uncertainty, or feeling that you’re experiencing. Some form of discomfort it usually is.

The response prevention is something you will practice for the whole 24 hours as best as you can. Now, does that mean you need to do your exposure? Let’s say your exposure is to touch a certain object or face a certain object or have a thought. Does that mean you need to go completely cold turkey from your compulsion? No. In a perfect world, yes, that would be the case, but we don’t live in a perfect world. You don’t have super powers. I wouldn’t expect my clients, myself, or you to go from 0 to 100.

What we can do there is we can practice it in small baby steps. You face your fear and you say, “Okay, I’m going to try and do response prevention for the next five minutes.” Then you move it up to 10 minutes. Then you move it up to 15 minutes. Then you might move it up to an hour or whatever feels right to you.

What we’re talking about here is, do as much response prevention as you can, work your way up. As we say in ERP School, ERP is really like a ladder building hierarchy. You start small and you work your way up slowly. Preferably you have a plan. You know what the plan is, you know what the first step is, you know what the second step is. Life isn’t perfect, like I said, so I don’t expect it to be perfect. But I think with that model, where you first practice accumulating 40 to 90 minutes of exposures, and then you practice response prevention as much as you can, as you build up and build up and build up steps, you have a great ERP plan right there, an amazing ERP plan.

One thing to consider. When my husband came on the podcast, it’s episode 99. He talked about his panic attacks that he had an agoraphobia he had on airplanes. He brought up the concern of, it’s not like he could get on a plane for 10 minutes and then get on a plane for 15 minutes and then get off. There are certain situations where you have to go from 0 to 100. So you have to get on the plane and stay on the plane. In his case, it was 17 hours to Australia.

So there will be situations where you have to take that huge leap. That is okay. You can still tolerate that. I still want to reinforce and empower you to believe you can still tolerate those big, big exposure jumps from 0 to 100 or from maybe four or five to 100. You can still tolerate those. I don’t want you to feel like it’s not possible. Anyone can face their fear. It just depends on how willing they are to be uncomfortable.

But what he did as he led up to that is find creative ways to practice the scenario and simulate the scenario as best as he could. He took the train. He took little buses. He took the trolley. There’s a small trolley back and forth from the mall, so he practiced on that and practiced tolerating his panic. So you can find ways. Even if it’s not the specific fear, you can find other ways to simulate that fear or that thought or that sensation so that you can practice building up to those bigger, longer exposures where you don’t get to choose how long you do the exposure for.

So there are some ideas on how you can practice ERP, what frequency, what duration. Now the other question I commonly get is, do I have to do it every day? No, you don’t have to do it every day, but I always encourage my patients to do it as much as you can. This is like building a muscle. So the more mental push-ups you do, the better and stronger you get.

Now we also know that you can do too many pushups and burn out. And so it’s important to keep an eye on that. I always try to talk about balance. So try to find a plan or a system or a routine in your calendar that is sustainable, that you can continue to do over time. Some people have written in and said, “I went full gung-ho, went hard, burnt out. The idea of ERP was so overwhelming after that. So I stopped.” So I really discourage you from going that kind of way.

You don’t have to be perfect. Please don’t do this perfectionistically. Find little baby ways to implement it throughout your day so you don’t burn out. That is how you do this work for a long period of time. That is how you get better. That’s how you do it in a healthy, compassionate way.

So that is how we do it. You don’t have to do it every day. In fact, some of my patients schedule different obsessions on different days. Other patients take a six-day exposure and take Sunday off or one day off a week. You could do whatever feels right to you. Just be really honest with yourself. When you schedule your ERP, are you scheduling it because of your values and your self-compassion or are you scheduling it because you’re secretly afraid? Even if it’s that, even if it’s the letter and your scheduling because you’re secretly afraid, no problem. We are doing the best we can with what we have. Just be really honest with yourself, and look and work on that if that’s the main issue.

Thank you so much for being here today. I am honored to spend this time chatting with you. Hopefully, you got a ton from this episode. I love when I get questions from you guys. If you are, go over to Instagram and you can chat with me there. I’ll leave the link in the show notes. You can always ask me questions there. I often do Q and A’s and I’d be more than happy to answer your questions.

All right, you guys know what I’m going to say. It’s a beautiful day to do hard things. Go and do the hard thing. You will not be sorry. You will be so empowered. You will feel so much better. It is hard work, so be gentle with yourself. But I believe in you. Have a good day.

In this week’s podcast episode, we have the amazing Shala Nicely, author of Is Fred in the refrigerator? and Everyday Mindfulness for OCD.  In this episode, we talked about people-pleasing and how people-pleasing comes from a place of shame, anxiety, and fear of judgment from others.  Kimberley and Shala share their own experiences with people-pleasing and how it created more shame, more anxiety, and more distress.

In This Episode:

• • The definition of people-pleasing
  • How it is common for people who have OCD and Anxiety disorders.
  • How people-pleasing impacts people’s self-esteem and their wellbeing.
  • How people-pleasing anxiety keeps us stuck.
  • How to manage people-pleasing in daily life.
  • How self-compassion can help to manage people-pleasing.

Links To Things I Talk About:

• Shala’s Website shalanicely.com
• Shala’s Book “Is Fred In the Refrigerator?”
• ERP School: https://www.cbtschool.com/erp-school-lp

Episode Sponsor:

This episode of Your Anxiety Toolkit is brought to you by CBTschool.com.  CBTschool.com is a psychoeducation platform that provides courses and other online resources for people with anxiety, OCD, and Body-Focused Repetitive Behaviors. Go to cbtschool.com to learn more.

Spread the love! Everyone needs tools for anxiety...

If you like Your Anxiety Toolkit Podcast, visit YOUR ANXIETY TOOLKIT PODCAST to subscribe free and you'll never miss an episode. And if you really like Your Anxiety Toolkit, I'd appreciate you telling a friend (maybe even two).

Episode Transcription

This is Your Anxiety Toolkit - Episode 211.

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 an episode I am so excited to share with you. Maybe actually “excited” isn’t the word. I feel that this is such an important conversation. Today we have my amazing friend and someone I look up to and I consider a mentor, the amazing Shala Nicely. She’s been on the podcast before. Everybody loves her, as do I. And interestingly that I say that because today we are talking about people-pleasing—the act of getting people to like you. Shala is very easy to love, but we are talking about how invasive people-pleasing can become, how problematic it can become, our own personal experience with people-pleasing, and what we have done and are continuing to do to manage people-pleasing behaviors. It is such a wonderful, deep, comprehensive conversation, so I cannot wait to share that with you in just a few minutes.

Before we do that, I would like to first, of course, share with you the “I did a hard thing” for the week. This is from Jack, and I’m so excited because Jack said:

“I haven’t been able to drive on the highway since I had a severe panic attack a couple of months ago. I have felt trapped and it has put a strain on my life. I recently drove on the highway for an hour by myself. I felt anxious during it, but I was able to calm myself down. It was a huge step for me.”

Amazing work, Jack. This is such a hard thing and you totally did it. This is so inspiring. You got through it. You actually stand your fear right in the face. So cool. Just proof that it is always a beautiful day to do hard things. 

Let’s move over to the review of the week. This is from YFWWFH, and this review said:

“Life-changing in a meaningful way. I found Kimberley’s podcast through another psychology podcast I’ve been listening to where she was a guest. I started listening to hers and was so happy. I found it. The insight this podcast offers and the expertise she shares are incredible and truly make a difference in the way you think about things and feel when struggling with some of the topics talked about. I truly love this podcast and the effect that it has.”

Yay, that brings me such joy. Thank you so much for sharing that review. You can leave your reviews on iTunes. Please go over to iTunes to leave a review. The more reviews you leave, the more people we can reach, which means the more people I can help with this free resource. 

That being said, let’s move over to the show, such an important interview. I am so excited and I’m so curious to see what comes up for you as you listen. I hope it’s helpful. I hope it gives you food for thought. I hope it gives you direction. And I just can’t wait to share it with you. So let’s go straight to the episode. I will see you guys next week. Have a wonderful day. It is a beautiful day to do hard things.

Kimberley: Okay. So, you guys know that I love Shala Nicely, and today I have the one and only Shala Nicely talking with us about people-pleasing. And this whole conversation came organically out of conversations we’ve had recently. So, welcome, Shala.

Shala: Thank you, Kimberley. And as you know, the love is mutual. So thank you for [04:42 inaudible] me again.

Kimberley: Okay. I have so many questions and this is probably the most relevant topic to me in my stage of my recovery. You can share as much as you want to share, but I’m so grateful that we’re talking about people-pleasing, because I feel like it runs rampant for those who have anxiety. Would you agree?

Shala: Absolutely.

Kimberley: How would you define people-pleasing? 

Shala: People-pleasing to me is putting your own needs in the backseat so that you can do things that you think will make others happy or like you. You’re not quite sure about that. You’re mind-reading, you are estimating what other people might want or what society might want. I think people-pleasing is not just, “I’m pleasing the individual person.” It could be, “I’m pleasing a culture, a society, a family.” But I think it’s all about putting your own needs in the backseat and doing what you think other people want in order to make them happy, but really it’s in order to reduce your own anxiety.

Kimberley: Right. So, there’s so much there you said that I want to pull apart. So, you emphasized “You think,” and I think there is a major concept there I want you to share. We want to please people. Of course, we want to please people. We like seeing smiley, happy faces. I don’t like seeing sad faces and angry faces. But so much of people-pleasing is based on what in our minds we think they want. Can you share your thoughts on that?

Shala: If you look at people-pleasing behavior–I’ll take me as an example–obviously, it starts with an intrusive thought, “What if they don’t like me? I’ve not done well enough. They’re going to think less of me, drop me,” et cetera, et etcetera. So, I think it starts with some sort of intrusive thought like that. And from there, it goes into how to answer that what-if. And the what-if is made up. We don’t actually know it’s a real problem. It’s an intrusive thought that has come in. It may or may not be a problem. And so, if we engage in this, we’re trying to figure out, “Well, how can I make sure that what-if doesn’t happen?” And so, you’re dealing with a really made up situation. And so, there’s really no data there for you to know what to do. And so you’re guessing. “Gosh, what if this person isn’t getting back to me because I did something wrong and they don’t like me? And I need to do something to show them how much I like them so that they’ll change their mind about me.” The whole thing is based on the premise that what if this person doesn’t like me, which is probably 99% of the time not even a premise. So, we’re guessing all over the place in both guessing there’s a problem we have to solve. And then guessing how to solve that because we don’t really know if there are problems. So we have to whack it together, you might say.

Kimberley: Right. I remember early in my marriage, me getting my knickers in a knot over something, and my husband saying, “What’s happening?” And I’m like, “Well, you want me to do such and such this way?” And he was like, “I’ve never said that. I’ve never even thought that. What made you think that I would want you to be that way?” And I had created this whole story in my head. For me, that’s a lot of how people-pleasing plays out, is I come up with a story about what they must want me to be, and then I assume I have to follow that. How does it play out for you?

Shala: I think “story” is the right word to use there. You create this whole story in a scenario. It’s got main characters and a plot and the ending is always horrible, and it becomes very believable in your mind. The thing is it’s in your mind. We’ve made it all up. But those stories convey very powerful emotions and then we’re acting to somehow get rid of those emotions, which were created by the story that we made up in the first place.

Kimberley: Right. And that was the second thing that you said that I think is so compelling, is for me in my life goal of reducing people-pleasing behaviors, I will be on this journey for the rest of my life. I’m pretty confident of it. It’s a matter that I have to learn how to sit with the feeling instead of just going into people-pleasing to remove that feeling. Is that how you would explain it for yourself as well?

Shala: Yes. And I will echo your sentiments. I will be right alongside you on this journey of trying not to people-please the rest of my life. And I think it’s sitting with some uncomfortable emotions and it’s really sitting with the uncertainty of “we don’t know” what other people think. And it’s easy, especially if you have anxiety to assume the negative because that feels like some sort of certainty. “Oh, they must not like me.” That’s actually sometimes a more comfortable thought than “I don’t know,” fit with “I just don’t know.”

Kimberley: Right. Because when we tell ourselves “They mustn’t like us,” at least then we don’t have a place to work from. We can gain control back. Whereas if we are not certain, that’s a really uncomfortable place. I know as we were talking, do you think this shows up the same for folks with OCD as it does for folks who don’t have OCD? Do you think there’s a difference or do you feel like it’s the same?

Shala: That’s a good question. I might only be able to offer a biased answer because I have OCD and I work with people with OCD. So, that’s going to be the frame of reference that I’m coming from most often. I think that with OCD, it could come from a foundational place of really thinking that you’re not worth very much. I think that comes a lot because OCD spends its days if you’re untreated, yelling at you and telling you are horrible and nitpicking every little thing that you do wrong. And it’s like living with an abusive person when you have untreated OCD, especially when it goes on for years and years, which happens to so many of us with OCD. And if you hear that for however long–months, years, whatever–you start to believe it. And then you don’t think you are worth pleasing, and you almost feel like, “Gosh, maybe if I made people around me happy, maybe if I got this positive feedback from other people that they think I’m worthwhile, then somehow maybe all this in my head will stop.” 

I think people-pleasing for people with OCD can come from that place where they just have internalized years of abuse by their own mind that they feel like they can’t escape until they find exposure and response prevention and work through all that. But even after that, they can still have this foundational belief that “I’m just not worth anything.” And that can drive a lot of people-pleasing behaviors that can linger even after somebody’s gone through what would be considered a successful course in ERP.

Kimberley: Yeah. That’s really interesting. As you were talking, I was comparing and contrasting my eating disorder recovery. I was thinking about this this morning. My eating disorder didn’t actually start with the wish to be thin. It started with pleasing other people. So, my body was changing and I was getting compliments for that. And then the compliments felt so good. It became like something I just wanted to keep getting, almost compulsively keep getting. And so then, it became, “How can I get more?” People-pleasing, people-pleasing. “Oh, they liked this body. Well, I’ll try and get that body. Oh, they complimented me on how healthy my food was. Okay, I’ll do that more in front of them.” So, it’s interesting to compare and contrast. People-pleasing was the center point of my eating disorder and the starting point of my eating disorder. So, that’s really interesting. You talked about people-pleasing behaviors. What do you think that is for you? What would that look like?

Shala: People-pleasing behaviors can be big or small. It could be something like a friend calls you to go out to dinner. You don’t really want to go out to dinner. You really want to sit in and watch your latest Netflix binge show, but you feel like you can’t say no. So you go out to dinner. That could be something on the smaller end, I think. Then there’s on the really large scale, which I’ve done, and I talk about in more detail in my memoirs, Is Fred in the Refrigerator? about my journey with OCD, which is not breaking up with somebody because you’re afraid to hurt their feelings. And you can take that all the way down the aisle, which I did. 

And so, I think that people-pleasing behaviors really can run the gamut from small seemingly innocuous things. “Oh, it’s just an evening,” to life-changing decisions about your partner, about how you live your life, about where you live, about your work, about how you approach, all of that. And that I think makes people-pleasing sometimes hard to identify because it doesn’t fit neatly in a little box.

Kimberley: Yeah. That’s interesting. And I love the way that you share that. What’s interesting for me is that most of my people-pleasing in the past have been saying yes to things that I don’t want to do or things I want to do, but I literally don’t have time for. So I’m saying yes to everything without really consulting with my schedule and being like, “Can I actually fit that in on that day?” Just saying yes to everything, which I think for me is interesting. A lot of the listeners will remember, is I got so the burnt out and sick, because I’d said yes to everything six months ago. Because six months ago I agreed to all these things, now I’m on the floor, migraines or having nothing because I just said yes to everything. And so, for me, a lot of that, the turnaround has been practicing saying no to plan for the future, looking forward, going, “Will I have time for that? Do I want that? Does that work for me? Is that for my recovery?” How have you as either a clinician or a human started to practice turning the wheel on this problem?

Shala: It’s hard for me to think how to the answer to that because there are so many ways to approach it and it’s a complex problem. And so, I have approached it in a number of ways. The first thing that comes to mind is really boundaries because a lot of this is about setting boundaries to protect your own time and to protect what you want to do. So, that’s one of the things that I have really worked on, is becoming clear on what I think is acceptable for me to be doing and what is not acceptable for me to be doing in terms of my own physical and mental health. It’s so easy to say yes to things, especially if it’s months down the road, “Oh, that’ll be fine, I’ll have time to do that.” And then you get to, you’re like, “Okay, I don’t have time to do that.” And then you’re wearing yourself out and all of that. And I think that happens a lot with people-pleasing because again, you’re putting your own needs, especially for rest and recovery on the back burner in order to do things that you think will make somebody else happy.

 And so, I think really working on boundary setting. So I’m coming from a perspective of having OCD and treating OCD. Boundary setting is an exposure. So, it is about creating an uncomfortable situation because it involves saying no. And if you say no, sometimes you’re going to disappoint people. And if you’re just getting into the process of saying no, and people are expecting that you’re going to say yes because you say yes to everything, you can often get some pretty negative feedback. “What do you mean no? You’ve always said yes.”

Kimberley: You’re the “yes” girl.

Shala: And so then, that feels even more jarring, like, “Oh, see, it’s coming true. People don’t like me.” And so, that becomes even more anxiety provoking and thus an even better exposure, but even harder. And I think that thinking of it as setting boundaries to protect your own times so that when you do say yes to something, you are there as fully as you can be because you’re well-rested in terms of your body and your mind and your health and all of that. When you don’t have good boundaries, you end up feeling very resentful because you haven’t been able to take care of yourself. And so, in fact, by not setting good boundaries, you can’t actually be there for people when they need you because you’re too run down. And that is, I think, the big lie about these people-- one of the many big lies about this people-pleasing thing is that, “Well, I got to do all this to make people happy.” Well, in essence, you’re not putting your own oxygen mask on first. And so, you can’t. Even if there was something you really could do that would really help somebody else, you don’t have enough energy to do it. 

So, I think really realizing that boundaries are the way to not have that resentment, to allow you to be fully there with the things you do want to do with all your heart and energy. And so then, you are actually really achieving your goal because you can really help people, as opposed to saying yes to everything and you’re spread so thin, you’re not enjoying it, they’re not enjoying it, and it’s not achieving the goals that you had in mind.

Kimberley: Yes. It’s so exactly the point. So, boundaries is 100%, I agree. I’ll tell you a story. You know this story, but the listeners might not. Once I did a podcast that got some negative feedback and I called you, understandably concerned about getting negative feedback, because I don’t like-- I’m one of those humans that don’t really love negative feedback.

Shala: I’m one of those humans too.

Kimberley: I had said to you, this is literally my worst fear. One of my worst fears is being called out and being told where you’ve made a mistake. What was really interesting for me is going through that and saying, “Okay, but I did, it is what it is. I wouldn’t change anything. And here’s what I believe.” I came out of that instead of going and apologizing and changing everything. I came out of that actually feeling quite steady in my stand because I had acknowledged like, “Oh, even when things don’t go well, I can get through it. I can stand on my two feet. I can get through those,” which is something I hadn’t ever really had to practice, is really standing through that. And I thought that that was a really interesting thing for me, is a lot of the reason I think I was people-pleasing was because the story I was telling myself was that I wouldn’t be able to handle it if something went wrong, that I wouldn’t be able to handle people knowing that I had made a mistake or so forth. But that wasn’t true. In fact, all of a sudden it felt actually a bit of freedom for me of like, “Oh, okay. The jig is up. I can chill now.” Have you found that to be true of some people or am I rainbow and unicorn?

Shala: I love that because I think it’s like what we do with people with social anxiety. They are afraid of going out in public in certain situations and having somebody evaluate them negatively. And one of the things that we do with those exposures is actually, let’s go out and create some of these situations that your social anxiety is afraid of. Let’s go into a shopping mall in the food court and spill a Coke on the floor while everybody’s looking at you. And then process through, what was that like? Well, I just stood there and they came and cleaned it up and everybody went back to their meal and we went on. Huh, okay. That wasn’t as bad as I thought it was. 

And I think that’s very akin to what you’re saying, is we build this up in our head that if we’re rejected, if somebody doesn’t like us, if we disappoint somebody, that’s going to be catastrophic. And inevitably, it is going to happen unless you isolate yourself in your house, that somebody is not going to like you, somebody is going to give you a bad review, and being able to say, “Yup, that is okay. I don’t have any control over that. And I can handle that. That doesn’t devalue me as a person because they gave me a bad review or bad feedback or whatever.” Because if we think about what we each do, like I’ve bought products before that I’ve written bad reviews for because I didn’t like it or it didn’t work for me. I think everybody has. And even if you didn’t write a review, you thought it in your head. So, all of us have things we like and don’t like, and that’s okay. 

What you’re talking about is you have those experiences and then you realize, “Wait, that is okay.” And then you feel free, like, “Okay, look at me. I can make mistakes.” You’re less compelled. Continue doing this because you’re like, “Wait, there’s freedom on the other side of this where I don’t have to try to be pleasing people all the time.”

Kimberley: Right. Or in addition to that was-- and this is true in this example of, I think it was a podcast that I had put out, was people cannot like what I did but still like me in other areas. That blew me away. I think that in my mind it was so black and white. It’s like, if they don’t like one thing, they’re going to knock you out, where it’s like no. People can hold space for things they like and things they do like.

Shala: That is such important.

Kimberley: Right. You also just said something and I want you to speak to it, is some people people-please by going above and beyond, but you also just brought up the idea of some people just don’t leave their house. What would that look like, because they’re people-pleasers?

Shala: Well, I think that is the extreme case of any kind of anxiety-driven disorder, where you’re trying to avoid having to be in a situation where others have expectations of you that you feel that you can’t meet, and so you narrow your world down to avoid those situations to avoid the anxiety. And I don’t think that’s just with people-pleasing. That’s obviously what agoraphobia is about—people not leaving their homes because they’re trying to avoid situations that are going to trigger panic attacks. But I think people with anxiety disorders in general can start making choices to avoid anxiety that end up not allowing them to lead the lives they want to lead or to take care of themselves.

Kimberley: Yeah. I mean, I think that’s the question for everybody, even for those who are listening, I would say. If you’re thinking, “Oh, this doesn’t apply to me,” it’s always good to look like, “What am I avoiding because of the fear that I’ll be disproved?” or someone will give you a bad review and so forth, because I think it shows up there quite often.

Shala: Yes. And in fact, there is a really good article—maybe we can put a link in the show notes—that Adam Grant from Wharton Business School wrote in the New York Times about what straight A students get wrong. And I think it goes right to the heart of what we’re talking about because he referenced people who are looking for straight A’s, which is an institutionalized form of approval, will potentially take easier classes that they can get an A in versus something they really are interested that they might not do as well in. And so, they are not pursuing what’s important to them because they’re pursuing the A, and therefore head in a direction that maybe isn’t the direction that would be best for them to have.

Kimberley: Right. And you just hit the nail on the head because so much of recovery from people-pleasing is actually stopping and going, “Do I want this? Does this actually line up with my values? Am I doing it for other people?” I’ve heard many clients say, “I do what other people tell me to do and what they want because I actually have no idea of what I want.” That’s scary in and of itself.

Shala: And that is a really tough problem for people with anxiety disorders because when you have an anxiety disorder, you’re used to doing what the disorder says and the disorder can really run your life. When you get better from the anxiety disorder, it’s easy to keep doing the things that you were doing that didn’t necessarily seem compulsive but may have been because they’re just part of your life, without ever stopping to step back and say, “Well, do I need to be doing this?”

I’ll give you a personal example. I live in Atlanta and there’s lots to do in Atlanta. I’ve lived here for a long time. I think I felt a need that I “should” be out and doing things because I live in a big city and there’s so much to do and I need to be doing it. And so I’d have this story in my head that I need to be out and visiting attractions, the aquarium, the restaurants. We have this really cool food court called Ponce City Market. While those things are fun and I do enjoy going to them sometimes, it almost felt like I should do this because this is what people do. They’re out and about and doing things, almost like I’m pleasing a societal norm, like this is what you do if you live in a big city. 

Well, COVID actually has really helped me recognize, “You know what, I actually don’t need to get up on Saturday morning and pack my schedule full of all sorts of things that I think I should be doing. I can actually just sit in my house and do things that I might want to do.” And so as you know, I’ve been doing all sorts of things lately just to try stuff out. I’m taking an oil painting class, which still scares me to death. And I’m taking French lessons because I want to learn how to speak French. And I’ve bought these art magazines because I really like art and I just want to look at it. And I’m just letting myself explore these various things to find out what I do like.

And then once I’ve been through this process and find what really floats my boat, then maybe hey, one weekend I can go to the aquarium because I want to, because it meets some value or need I have and do some painting instead of trying to meet this idea of what I should be doing that’s trying to please society and what my role in society should be, which I think is very easy for people with anxiety disorders and OCD to do, is let other people make the rules, the disorder, your family, your spouse, the society in general, as opposed to just sitting back and saying, “What do I really want?” And the answer to that might be, “I don’t know.” And instead of rushing out to do something because it feels better to just be doing something than to sit with the uncertainty of “I don’t know,” letting yourself sit in that and go, “Well, what can I maybe try to see if I like it?”

Kimberley: Right. And I will add to that because you and I have talked quite a bit and I’ve learnt so many inspiring things from you as I’ve watched you do this. What was interesting for me is, a part of that for me was choosing things that people don’t actually like. Some of the choices I’ve made–things I want to do with my time or that I’ve said no to–do disappoint people. They do disappoint people and they might tell you you’ve disappointed them. And so, for me, it’s holding space for that feeling, the shame or the guilt or the sadness or whatever the emotion is, but still choosing to do the thing you wanted to do. It’s not one or the other. You don’t do things just because you haven’t disappointed someone. You can also choose to do something in the face of disappointing other people, right?

Shala: Yes. And I think it’s inevitable. You’re going to disappoint them.

Kimberley: It sucks so bad.

Shala: Because you’re not going to have the same wants and needs as everybody else. And so, it’s inevitable that if you start figuring out what you want to do and trying some things out, you can’t do all the other things everybody else wants you to do.

Kimberley: Yeah. I know. And it’s so frustrating to recognize that. But as you’ve said before, tens of thousands of people could love a product and tens of thousands of people could hate a product. Lots of people will like me and lots of people won’t like me or the things that we do or the places we want to go and so forth. I think that’s a hard truth to swallow, that we won’t please all the people.

Shala: Yeah. And I’ll tell you a story that I think illustrates that, is I read this book for a small book club that I’m in, and one of the members had suggested it. I just went and grabbed it, bought it. I didn’t really read what kind of book it was. And I was loving it. It was really good. It was like this mystery novel. And then we get to the last, I don’t know, 20 pages. And it turns into this psychological thriller that honestly scares the pants off me, but it was wrapped up so well. I was just sitting in shock on the floor, reading this thing, like, “Oh my gosh.” It was so good, yet so terrifying. So I got online on Amazon just to look at the book because it had just gone right over my head that this was a thriller, and I don’t normally read thrillers. I just wanted to go on and see. And I was expecting, because I loved this thing, to see five-star reviews across Amazon for this book because I thought it was so amazing. And I got on, and the reviews for it were maybe three point something stars. I started reading and some people went, “I hated this. It was horrible.” They hated it as much as I loved it. And that to me was just a singular example of you cannot please everyone. I love this book, other people hate this book. There were lots of people that were in between. And that doesn’t say anything about the writer. The writer is a whole complete awesome person, regardless of what any of us think about what she wrote.

Kimberley: Right. And she gets to write what she wants to write, and we get to have our opinions. And that’s the way the world turns.

Shala: And I think recognizing she doesn’t have any control over what I think, I might even write a five-star review just for whatever reason and really hate the book. So, even if you get a positive review, you don’t actually know that it’s true. I think this is all about understanding that it’s not about not caring about what people think because that’s really hard. It just numbs you out and cuts you off. I think it’s about going into the middle. It’s not about people-pleasing. It’s not about not caring. It’s about recognizing you don’t have control over any of that and living in that uncertainty. I don’t know what people think. I don’t have control over what people think. And even if they tell me one thing, that could actually not be what they think at all. And that’s okay.

Kimberley: Right. Such an amazing point. I’m so glad you brought that up because I actually remember many years ago saying to my husband, “I’ve decided I don’t care what people think.” Well, that lasted about 12 and a half seconds because I deeply care what people think. But it doesn’t mean that what they think makes my decisions. And I think that’s where the differentiation is. A lot of the people who are listening, there’s absolutely no way on this world they could find a way to not care and not want to please people. It’s innate in our biology to want to please people. However, it gets to the point where, is it working for you? Are you feeling fulfilled? Are you resentful? These are questions I would ask. Are you fulfilled? Are you resentful? Are you exhausted? What other questions would you maybe ask people to help them differentiate here or to find a way out?

Shala: Am I really enjoying this? Do I really want to do this? Why am I doing this?

Kimberley: Yeah. What emotion am I trying to avoid? What would I have to feel if I made my own choice? Yeah. There’s some questions I would have people to consider. Okay. So, one more question. You make a choice based on what you want. You do or you don’t please people. Let’s say for the hell of it you dissatisfy somebody. What do you do with that experience?

Shala: First, I think you recognize. You go into this, recognizing that is almost certainly going to happen. There are very few certainties in life. That’s probably one of [35:11 inaudible].

Kimberley: You will disappoint people.

Shala: Yeah. You’re going to disappoint people. And then I think really going to a place of self-compassion. And I’m going to turn it back over to you because you just published an amazing, amazing book that I cannot recommend enough about self-compassion in the treatment of OCD with exposure and response prevention. And I’d love to hear what you think about how you could incorporate self-compassion into this, especially when you do disappoint somebody because I think that’s so important. 

Kimberley: Yeah, no, I love that you swing at my way. I think the first thing is to recognize that one of the core components of self-compassion is common humanity, which is recognizing that we’re all in this together, that I’m just a human being. And human beings aren’t ever going to be perfect. Only in our minds that we create the story that we were going to be. So, a lot of self-compassion is that common humanity of, I am a human, humans make mistakes, humans get to do what they need to do and want to do and that we’re not here to please people, and that our worth is not dependent on people enjoying and agreeing with us. And I think that’s a huge reason that my people, like you’ve said, people-please is they’re constantly trying to prove to themselves their worth. So, I would recognize first the common humanity. 

And then the other piece is it hurts when you disappoint someone. And so, I think it’s being tender with whatever emotion that shows up—sadness, loss, anger, frustration, fear. A lot of it is fear of abandonment. So I would really tend to those emotions gently and talk to them gently like, “Okay, I notice sadness is here. It makes complete sense that I’m feeling sad. How can I tend to you without pushing you away?” Again, I think sometimes-- I’ve seen this a lot in my daughter’s school. I’ve seen this sometimes, the school has said, “When you’re feeling bad about yourself, just tell yourself how good you are.” And I’m like, that’s really positive, but it actually doesn’t tend to their pain at all. It skips over it and makes it positive. 

So I think a big piece of this is to just hold tender your discomfort and find support in like-minded people who want what you want and who are willing to show up. You and I have said before the Brené Brown quote like, “Only take advice from people who are in the ring with you.” And that has been huge for me, is finding support from people who are doing scary things alongside me. Do you have any thoughts? 

Shala: Yeah. I think the more that you do this, the more that you’re willing to take care of yourself, because I really do think working on people-pleasing is learning how to take care of you. And that’s so important. And the more that you will do that and go through these very hard exercises of saying no and disappointing people, and then compassionately holding yourself and saying, “It’s okay,” like using the common humanity, recognizing we’re all in this together. Everybody feels like this sometimes. I think the more you do it, then you start to disconnect your worth from other people’s views. And that is where a whole new level of freedom is available to us. 

I think that sometimes people-pleasing, because it can be so subtle, isn’t necessarily addressed directly in therapy for anxiety disorder. Sometimes it is when it’s really over. But a lot of times it’s not, and that’s not the fault of the therapist or the client or anything. It’s just, it’s so subtle. We don’t even realize we’re doing it. And so, we finish therapy for anxiety disorders, we feel a lot better, but there’s still a lot of this “should” and “have to,” societal expectations or expectations of other people, which we feel we’re driving our life and we don’t have any control over. And really working on this allows you to recognize that you are a whole good, wonderful person on your own, whether or not other people are pleased with you or not. But that takes a lot of consistent work, big and small, before you can start to see that your worth and other people’s thoughts about you are two separate things that aren’t connected.

Kimberley: Right. Oh, I’m going to leave it there, because that’s the mic drop right there. I love it. Shala, thank you for coming on and talking about this. I really wanted your input on this instead of it just being a podcast of mine. So, thank you. I love your thoughts on this. Where can people hear more about you, your book? Tell us all the things.

Shala: Sure. So, my website is shalanicely.com. So, anyone can go there, and I have three different blogs that I write, all sorts of information about how to manage uncertainty and OCD because that’s my specialty. My memoir, Is Fred in the Refrigerator?: Taming OCD and Reclaiming My Life, in that I talk a lot about how I dealt with people-pleasing. And in fact, the chapter called Shoulders Back, which is one of the techniques—I said there were many that I used for people-pleasing, that’s one of the techniques that I use—that chapter talks about my journey in learning about how to work through some of this by really putting your shoulders back and acting like all that stuff you hear in your head is relevant. So, that could be a resource for people as well. Everyday Mindfulness for OCD, which I co-wrote with Jon Hershfield, that also has some information on self-compassion as well if people want to learn about writing self-compassion statements. But again, I would also send people to your amazing brand new workbook, which is the only workbook that I know of, the only book that I know of, that talks about doing ERP in a self-compassionate way. So, it’s completely integrated together. And I think that is so important for building a foundation for a good OCD recovery. So, I would definitely send people your way.

Kimberley: Thank you, friend.

Shala: You’re welcome. 

Kimberley: Well, there are so many parts of the people-pleasing and the tools in your book as well. I know we’ve talked about that and it’s one of my favorite books of all time. So, definitely for listeners, go and check that out. I am so grateful that you came on. 

Shala: Well, thank you. I’m just so honored to be here. It’s always so much fun to talk with you about these topics. So, thank you.

Kimberley: So important. Thank you so much, and I just am so grateful for you.

-----

Please note that this podcast or any other resources from cbtschool.com should not replace professional mental health care. If you feel you would benefit, please reach out to a provider in your area. 

Have a wonderful day and thank you for supporting cbtschool.com.

SUMMARY:

Quite often, my clients forget to recognize avoidance as a compulsion.  While you might be spending a lot of time in your recovery reducing compulsions such as reassurance-seeking compulsions, behavioral compulsions, and mental compulsions, it is important to recognize that avoidance is also a compulsion.  In this episode, we address why it is important to address the things you are avoiding and find a way to incorporate this into your OCD treatment.

In This Episode:

• Why Avoiding your fear keeps you stuck in the obsessive-compulsive cycle
• What is an avoidant compulsions?
• How to manage avoidant compulsions?

Links To Things I Talk About:

• ERP SCHOOL
• Other podcast episodes about avoidance

Episode Sponsor:

This episode of Your Anxiety Toolkit is brought to you by CBTschool.com.  CBTschool.com is a psychoeducation platform that provides courses and other online resources for people with anxiety, OCD, and Body-Focused Repetitive Behaviors.  Go to cbtschool.com to learn more.

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EPISODE TRANSCRIPTION
This is Your Anxiety Toolkit - Episode 210.

Welcome back, everybody. I am so thrilled to have you here. How are you doing? How is your anxiety? How is your depression? How is your heart? How is your grief? How is your anger? How is your joy? How are you? How is your family? All things that I hope are okay and tender, and there’s a safe place for all of those things to be.

Today’s episode is in inspiration of a session I recently had with a client—a client I’ve seen for some time. We are constantly talking about safety behaviors, ways that we respond to fear. I had mentioned to him that of course, one of the safety behaviors we do are from fear, and in response to fear is avoidance. We avoid things. And he had said, “Oh, I completely forgot about avoidance. I completely forgot that was one of my safety behaviors.” Sometimes we put so much attention on the physical behaviors and the mental compulsions that we forget to check in on what are you avoiding and how avoiding things and fear keep us stuck. So, that’s what we’re talking about today.

Before we do that, let’s first do the review of the week. This is from Ks Steven, and they said:

“Short and sweet. This podcast is one of my highlights of the week. It is short, sweet and so helpful. I look forward to each new episode. Episode 99 on self-compassion has transformed my relationship with myself. As I start each day to face my obsessions, I remind myself it is a beautiful day to do hard things.”

I love that review. Thank you so much. I love that. It basically is exactly what I want this podcast to be. I want it to be short, I want it to be sweet, I want it to be helpful, and I want it to remind you that it is always a beautiful day to do hard things.

Before we get into the episode, we have one more part of the episode that we want to do, which is the “I did a hard thing,” and this is from Anonymous. They said:

“My husband and I have been going through infertility treatments for years. This year, we did IVF and it was triggering, maybe because it felt more “real.” I was panicking that I didn’t feel perfect enough since I struggled with some mental health issues earlier this year. I had the false narrative in my mind and major intrusive thoughts about not being a good mom, ruining my children, fearing postpartum mental health issues. I wanted to cancel our embryo transfer because of all of these intrusive thoughts and fears. But on Monday, I did it afraid and we transferred our embryo. We’ll find out next week if I’m pregnant and I’m so glad I did it.”

Oh my goodness, I cannot tell you how impressed I am. I wish nothing but joy for you. You did that hard thing, and I hope that however that turned out that you are standing by yourself and you are gentle and kind and reminding yourself that you never have to be perfect. Never, never, never. We are not meant to be perfect.

Okay, here we go. Let’s talk about avoidance. I mean, listen, that “I did a hard thing” is exactly what we’re talking about, so we’ll even use that as a reference today.

Fear is scary. Nobody wants to feel it. It’s not fun at all, and instinctually, we go into fight or flight, and flight is a normal human response to fear that has us avoid danger. Now, this instinctual response is what keeps us safe. If a bus is coming for you, you run off the street. That’s what we do. It’s the right thing to do. However, if you are using avoidance on repeat, and if you’re using avoidance to avoid the sensation of fear, not an actual current, real imminent danger, well then chances are you’re going to get stuck.

So I want to be really clear, if you are actually in physical danger, avoidance is not a compulsion. It’s not a safety behavior. But if you’re avoiding thoughts about things or you’re avoiding things because there is a small or a medium probability of something happening, or even maybe even a large probability in some situations, chances are in this case, you’re going to walk away quite unempowered. Because the truth is, life is scary. Life doesn’t always go well. Bad things do happen. It sucks to say, but it’s true. Bad things do happen. And so, it makes sense that we naturally want to avoid lots of things to avoid bad things from happening. But what happens when we do that is life starts to get really, really small. We have to be willing to take some calculated risk, and ideally, the calculating part doesn’t take too much of your time either because we can spend a lot of time ruminating about potential risks, probabilities, uncertainties, and so forth.

So what we want to do and what I want you to do when you’re listening to this and after listening to this is reflect on, what am I avoiding? Is the avoidance helpful and effective? Or is the avoidance impacting my ability to live my life? Is the avoidance impacting my ability to grow and thrive? Is the avoidance impacting my family and their ability to grow and thrive? That’s a big one, because sometimes our fears impact the people we love by no fault of our own. It’s not our fault, but we always want to check in on this stuff.

When you avoid, ask yourself, what specifically am I avoiding? Am I avoiding actual danger? Or am I avoiding fear or other sensations? Because if you’re doing the avoidant behavior to avoid sensations or an emotion or some thoughts, the problem with that is what you suppress often comes more, what you resist often persists. So even your attempt of avoiding it so that you’re not having to endure the discomfort often only increases the frequency and duration of the discomfort or the thought or the feeling or the sensation or the urge. And so, therefore, it’s not effective.

Some people avoid because they don’t want to feel humiliated or embarrassed. But the problem with that is, once we start avoiding, what often happens is people start noticing that you’re avoiding and then you end up feeling humiliated and embarrassed anyway.

So what I’m trying to show you here is, while avoidance does give you some pretty immediate relief, it often has long-term outcomes that aren’t that great that keep you stuck. As the “I did a hard thing” segment that we feature each week and as we see even in the reviews often or almost every time, people who face their fear, even though it’s so painful and so uncomfortable, they leave that experience feeling empowered. They leave the experience saying to themselves, “That wasn’t fun, but at least I know I can do it. Now I have proof that I can. Now I have proof that I survived it.” And with that comes powerful cognitive learning.

One of the best outcomes of ERP (Exposure and Response Prevention) is learning that you can survive really hard things. When we avoid that most of the time, the main thing we learn is when I can avoid bad things for you, but I can’t handle hard things. That’s what we really walk away learning. And our brain knows this. It’s keeping an eye on this. Our brains are very, very smart. They’re keeping track of this. And the more that we avoid, the more disempowered we feel and the more alert and hypervigilant the brain feels. “Oh, I avoided that. What else can I avoid? What else can I avoid?” So that next time you’re put in a situation where you can’t avoid, the chances are that you probably will panic even more.

Panic is a huge one for people where avoidance shows up. It’s a huge time where naturally of course—this is where I want you to practice compassion—you don’t want to have a panic attack. Of course, you don’t want to be uncomfortable. Of course, you want to avoid the discomfort because it’s not fun. No one wants to go through that. I don’t blame you. I do it myself. So we’re never going to be perfect at this. I wouldn’t expect you to be perfect at this. But there is this beautiful inquiry that we can deal with in ourselves or with a therapist or a loved one to go, “This isn’t working for me anymore. I deserve to live a life where fear isn’t running the show. So I’m going to choose to face this fear.” It is a fierce, compassionate action. It is a badass, shoulders back. “I’m going to show up for myself behavior and action.” It takes courage. It takes bravery. It takes a small amount of grit, I’m not going to lie.

But I really want today to be about reminding you that you can do the hard thing. You can ride that wave of discomfort. It will be temporary. It will be hard, but it will rise and fall on its own. And with repetition, if you can gift yourself with the repetition of facing your fears, not avoiding them, you will feel so strong. You will learn that you can tolerate discomfort, that you are able to get through hard things. And so, next time, when you have to do a hard thing, you’ll feel a little less afraid, or in many cases, you’ll feel a significant degree less afraid.

So, I’m going to leave you with that. Compassionately do an inventory on where avoidance shows up in your life. And then do your best to work through each and every one. This is what we do in ERP School. One of the first few modules is identifying what you avoid and then takes you through the steps of one by one by one. We’re going to face each and every one of those fears. You don’t have to have a therapist to do this. It’s ideal, but you don’t have to. We had an episode last week about people who do it on their own. It’s so cool.

So I want to really empower you to, number one, face your fears, but just always remind yourself, avoidance is a safety behavior or a compulsion as well.

All right, I love you. It is a beautiful day to do hard things. I believe in you. I really believe you. I really want you to understand that you have everything you need. It doesn’t have to be perfect. You don’t have to show up perfect. You can face your fears imperfectly and you don’t have to have it all figured out first, just give it a try. Throw yourself in there a little. Be kind. And I hope that this inspires you a little and reminds you that it is a beautiful day to do hard things.

I love you. I believe in you. I hope you have a wonderful day. I hope you’re being tender with your heart. I’m sending you all the love I have from my heart to yours. I’ll see you guys next week.

SUMMARY: 

There is nothing I love more than sharing the success stories of people who are using ERP to manage their OCD and intrusive thoughts.  In this week’s podcast, I interview Taylor Stadtlander about her OCD recovery and how she used ERP School to help her manage her intrusive thoughts, compulsive behaviors.  Taylor is incredibly inspiring and I am so thrilled to hear her amazing ERP Success story.

In This Episode:

• Taylor shares how she learned she had OCD 

• Taylor shares how she created her own ERP recovery plan and the challenges and successes of her plan 

• Taylor shares how she used ERP School to help her put her ERP recovery plan together and how she now uses her skills in her own private practice.

Links To Things I Talk About:

Kimberley: Welcome. I am so excited to have here with me Taylor Stadtlander.

Taylor: Yes. Thanks. I’m so excited to be here.

Kimberley: Oh, thank you for being here. I am so excited about this interview. You’re someone I have watched on social media, and it’s really cool because out of there, I realized you were someone who had been through CBT School and I just love hearing the story of how you things get to me. I love that story. So, thank you for being on the show.

Taylor: Of course. Thank you so much for having me.

Kimberley: Tell me a little bit about you and your mental health and mental wellness journey, as much as you want to share. Tell us about that.

Taylor: I’ll start with, I am an OCD therapist right now. And I start by saying that because, honestly, if you were to tell me when I was in high school, that I would have become an OCD therapist, I would have laughed at you because I, at that time, was really when my OCD started in high school. Of course, now, knowing what OCD is, I can look back and I can see definitely symptoms back as young as eight or nine years old. But when I was in high school, it was really when I had my sophomore year, pretty intense onset of compulsions. And then, of course, the intrusive thoughts, and it really was all-consuming. But the interesting part, and I’m sure a lot of people can relate to this, is it was something I kept very hidden, or I at least tried to. So, a lot of the earliest compulsions I had were checking compulsions. So, it was these intense, long rituals before I would go to bed, checking that the door is locked, the stove was off, all safety things. I felt this immense amount of responsibility. And I remember thinking like, where did this come from? One day I was just so concerned with safety and all these different things. But no one would have known other than, of course, my family, who I lived with, and my sister, who I shared a room with, who of course saw me getting up multiple times at night to recheck things. But from the outside, it looked like I had everything together. I was the A student, honors classes, volleyball captain, lacrosse captain, and just kept that façade of that picture-perfect high schooler.

I did end up going to a therapist and she wasn’t an OCD specialist, but I have to say I got very lucky because I actually have some of the worksheets that she used with me back when I was 15. And it is in a sense ERP. So, I was very lucky in that sense that even though I wasn’t seeing a specialist, because I don’t think any of us knew what was going on, to even see an OCD specialist, I did get to-- and it helped. And that’s where I was like, “Okay, you know what, I’m going to go to college and become at least major in Social Work.”

So, I went to college, majored in Social Work, got my Master’s in Social Work, and my OCD pretty much went away and I thought I was cured or whatever that means. And I thought that, “Okay, that was a chapter of my life. And now for whatever reason, I had to go through that. Now I’ll become a therapist and help other people.” I say that because I had no idea what was coming. My first year out of grad school, I began working and I had the most intense relapse of OCD ever. It came back stronger than ever this time. We call it “pure O.” So like mainly intrusive thoughts. And I had no idea what ERP was. It’s sad because I went through grad school for Social Work and we never talked about that.

I remember this one day, and this is circling back to even how I found you, I had stayed home from work because I was just for like a mental health day, and I didn’t want to be on my phone because going on social media was triggering, watching TV was triggering, all these different things. But I was like, you know what, I’m sitting at home. I might as well turn on the TV. So, I turn on the TV, and an episode of Keeping Up With the Kardashians is on. I am a fan of that show, so shout out to them. And I remember watching and I was listening half not. I think I was trying to take a nap. And one of the family members had this OCD specialist on the show. And I remember pausing the TV because they had the name of the OCD specialist on the TV. And I wrote it down and it was Sheba from The Center of Anxiety and OCD. So I was like, “Okay, let me Google that.” That was the first time I’ve ever even heard of an OCD specialist. So, I stopped watching the show, went on my phone, Googled her name and her Instagram came up and I just started scrolling. It was like my world, my eyes were just open and I was like, “Oh my gosh, other people have OCD, and there’s a treatment, ERP.” Then I just kept scrolling. And then funny enough, I came across your page, Kimberley. And through that, that’s where I discovered CBT School.

Anyway, long story short, at that time, I wasn’t able to afford an OCD specialist. So, I was seeing a therapist, a different therapist from high school because now by this time I was married, on my own insurance, trying to navigate that. In the back of my head, I knew that I needed to see an OCD specialist. I just, again, couldn’t afford it. So, I had a conversation with my husband. I’m like, “Look, I’m going to pay for this, the CBTS course.” And I said, “I know it seems like a lot of money, but it’s really not. If I was going to see an OCD specialist, this is probably what one session would cost.” And that’s how I learned about ERP. That’s your course. It’s how I learned about ERP. So, it honestly traces back to Keeping Up With the Kardashians. I love telling that story because it’s so weird. And honestly, that changed my life because learning ERP, it finally clicked that, okay. Because I was just applying CBT techniques. Like, think of a red stop sign when you have an intrusive thought, thoughts popping, and things like that. And as we know, that was making it so much worse. So, I just dove into your course and taught myself through your course what ERP is, which then led me to seeing that at work, and then wanting to specialize in ERP, and now working with clients who have OCD. So it’s really been an amazing journey, to say the least.

Kimberley: I’m nearly in tears hearing this story. Oh my goodness, how funny, your story has gone from reality TV to here, and that’s so cool. That just blows me away.

Taylor: Well, and it really goes to show. I know that there can be negative sides, like technology and Instagram, but for me, most of, if not all of my education, initially about OCD and ERP was from Instagram accounts, like yours or Sheba’s. And it was like, again, I knew that, okay, this can’t replace therapy, but it was such a good in-between for me, especially being in the place where I was, where I was trying to navigate. Because it can feel like you’re stuck when you either can’t find an OCD specialist or you can’t afford it. And I know what that feels like. So, to have that in between, not as a replacement, but just as a bridging point was so helpful for me.

Kimberley: Wow. And for the listeners, I have not heard that story. This is new to me. So this is so cool. So, actually really, I’m so curious. So, when you took ERP PA school, were you like, “She’s crazy, I’m not doing that”? Or what was your first take on that?

Taylor: I think I was at the point where I was so determined to find relief, I was willing to do anything. And I had researched about ERP before I took your course. I wasn’t like, “Oh, I’m just going to trust this randomly.”

Kimberley: Random lady.

Taylor: Right. So, I did do my own research obviously. And again, I’m in the field and I have a degree in Social Work. It’s just so interesting to me that that was not discussed, and I think that’s lacking in a lot of programs. So, once I researched it myself, I was like, “Okay, this is the evidence-based treatment. This is the gold standard. It looks like I got to do this.” I just remember I would come home. I was working at the time at a partial hospital program and I would come home from work. And that would be my routine. I would get my little notebook out, I’d pull my laptop out, and I treated it as if I was-- again, I know it doesn’t replace therapy, but I treat it as if I was in an intensive program. I would spend an hour or so going through your videos and then printing out the worksheets. And that’s just what I did. And I just started to do it.

I had had before that a brief, very minimal understanding of exposures. And I think I was trying to do them on my own. But through your course, I was able to understand the response prevention piece. I was just exposing myself to all these things and then leading myself in a tailspin. But yeah, I see this again, even in my own clients now that there’s just I think a certain point that you reach, that yes, it’s scary to take this step, to start ERP, but because we’re so determined to not feel the way we’re feeling, it makes it so worth it.

Kimberley: Wow. Oh my goodness, I’m seriously close to tears listening to your story. So, thank you for sharing that with me. I mean, wow, what an honor that I get to be a part of your journey, but how cool that you were the journey. You deal with these works. So, what was that like? Okay, so you said you would come home from work and you would sit down and you would go through it. Tell us a little bit about how you set your own.

Taylor: I think I mentioned this, I was still seeing a therapist. What was funny is, I would come to my sessions and be teaching her about ERP, because in a way I was becoming this mini expert. And as I think a lot of our clients do, because it is such a unique treatment, you do have to become an expert. So, yeah. I mean, I remember using that worksheet where, okay, identify the what-if fear then list out the compulsions. I remember at the time I was like, “All right, I need to print out 10 of these because I have so many themes right now.” I remember doing that. And then, yeah, I would just pick away-- I would write them and then go through the whole process really as if I was going through ERP treatment. That’s what I was doing. Like the same process I do now with my clients is just what I did. And I’m so lucky and blessed to have a background in mental health to have that. And even the resources that I could have had self-taught myself ERP because I know that that’s not everyone’s situation.

And then what was really helpful, and I think this is really important to mention, is my husband. And I think a lot of people can relate to this. We all have our one person who we seek reassurance from. So, when I was still living at home, that person was my mom. Once I got married, it became my husband. And so, he had to learn a lot about OCD treatment and ERP and not providing reassurance. So, the poor thing, I would have him sit down and watch your video, and he would. And he is amazing and just the best support system. But that was really helpful because again, even if you are in therapy and doing this as a supplement to therapy, to be able to have those resources to watch again and again, once you buy the course, you have it. And I still reference it to this day if I am for myself or even if I’m working with something with a client. So, that piece was huge because then I could say, “Hey, look this is the science behind what I’m doing. This is why you can’t give me reassurance and things like that.”

Kimberley: Right. This is so cool, and it’s so cool that he was able to watch it and wasn’t intimidated by the whole process. I mean, he probably was, but he still went through with that, which was so cool.

Taylor: 100%. Yes. This was about two years ago almost to the date actually. And because now I can look back on it, I think I do lose the anxiety that I had with starting it. And I’m sure him wondering, “What the heck are you doing?” But I think that’s so important to have your partner or just your support system understand ERP because it can be very confusing to the outside. If you’re doing exposures. What was very upsetting and hard for me that I really had to come to accept is, a lot of my harm obsessions were unfortunately targeted around him. So, I’d be writing these scripts and I would feel this guilt, this horrible amount of guilt and shame, similar to what I felt back in high school when I was trying to hide my compulsions. Here I have this amazing supportive husband and I’m writing these scripts. So, I would want to try and explain that. And him understanding it, I think made the whole process so much easier, for sure.

Kimberley: Yeah. And those scripts can be hard, right? I even remember--

Taylor: I think that’s the hardest part for me.

Kimberley: Yeah. I even remember recording that and looking into the camera and saying, “You need to write a story about this.” And I do these with my patients all the time, but thinking like, “Why would anyone trust me?” That’s a hard thing to do when you haven’t-- so that’s really amazing that you did that. The good news, and I’ll tell you this, you’re the first person to know this, is we just renewed the whole imaginable script module. They’re three times as long now.

Taylor: Oh, amazing.

Kimberley: Yeah. So, you’re the first to know. By the time they start, everyone will know, but yeah, we tripled the length of it because people had so many questions about that process.

Taylor: In fact, I had a session yesterday with one of my amazing clients and she’s fairly new in the treatment and we were introducing the idea of scripts. And you’re absolutely right. When you’re describing it, you’re like, “What am I saying? This sounds horrible.” I was like, “All right, we are going to pretty much write out your worst fear coming true in as much detail as possible.” And she was like, “What the heck is going on?” And sometimes I have to take myself back to that starting point, especially with working with clients, because now I’m like, “I have an intrusive thought come up. All right, I know I have to go write a script when I get home.” So for me, it’s become second nature. But I think remembering how painful it was the first several times to actually write down those thoughts and then not only write down them but say them out loud and look into them, that-- I was reminded yesterday, I can’t lose sight of how painful that is initially, but then how rewarding it is once you realize it works.

Kimberley: Yeah. You get so much bang for your buck, don’t you, when you use those. This is so cool. You’re obviously a rockstar. So exciting. I can’t tell you how much this brings me such joy to hear. What would you say to somebody who’s starting this process? What was important to you? What got you through? Tell us all your wisdom.

Taylor: I think the biggest thing would be to know that you’re not alone because I remember that was the biggest thing for me. Before I knew what OCD and ERP were, I thought that I was the only person on the planet experiencing these intrusive thoughts, these horrible, violent images or sexual intrusive thoughts or whatever it was. So, first and foremost, knowing that you’re not alone, that there are so many of us who have experienced this, not only experienced the pain of it, but have gone through and are now in recovery. And that you don’t have to let fear dictate the choices that you make because that’s how I lived my life. I avoided things because of my OCD. So, I wouldn’t be triggered. I let fear make the decisions for a lot of my life. And when you do go through ERP treatment, you get to be in control again and you get to live again according to your values.

For example, I’ve always wanted to be a mom and I’ve always dreamed of having kids. And I remember so many times OCD in so many different ways that I can’t even get into, say, “Oh, you could never do that.” Actually, I’m in my first trimester right now, which is so exciting and has been such an incredible journey. That’s a completely different topic for another day. I’m handling my OCD attached to that. But I was thinking and reflecting about it the other day of just like, wow, I now get to live life according to my values and not let fear and OCD make the decisions.

Even though the treatment seems so scary and weird at first, it is so worth it because it works. And that’s why I wanted to become really a specialist in this specific field because I fell in love with the treatment. I fell in love with the fact that it gives people their lives back. And that’s so cool to witness.

So, you’re not alone. You’re also not a bad person because of the thoughts that you’re having. And I’ll briefly share, I’m a Christian and I know that a lot of the thoughts that I’ve had for a long time, I just thought, okay, I’m a horrible person, or I’m a sinner. And whatever your faith is, whatever spirituality or anything, whatever morals you have, just know that you’re not your intrusive thoughts. You are just a person with thoughts and that’s it.

Kimberley: Yeah. That’s so powerful. So, number one, congratulations. I just love when people say, “I have OCD about it, but I did it anyway.”

Taylor: I know. Talk about facing your fears, it’s like--

Kimberley: Right. And then the second piece where you’re really, again, speaking from a place of values, even your religion, I’m sure got attacked during that process. And it’s really hard to keep the faith when you’re being harassed by these thoughts. So, I just love that. What motivated you to keep going? Besides you said just the deep wish to be better and well, how did you keep getting up? Was there lots of getting up and falling down or did you just get up every day?

Taylor: Oh my gosh. In fact, there’s times where I still feel like I am picking myself up because-- I’m so happy you brought that up because that was something that I wasn’t prepared for, the feelings of relapsing I call it, where you feel like, oh my goodness, my symptoms have gone away, whatever. And then it hits you like a ton of bricks. And I always find that it comes back so strong. And it can be really discouraging at first. And I’ve even experienced that with the first couple of weeks of this pregnancy of just like, “Wow, I thought we were over this.” Even themes coming back from when I was 15 or 16 and like, “Okay, looks we have to deal with this again.” I’m able to laugh about it now, but in the moment, it’s really hard.

And so, I think the biggest thing for me that I try to keep myself reminded of in those moments where I do feel like I’m-- because it feels like you’re taking a step backwards in a sense sometimes. And I always try to remind myself that so much can change in a matter of a day and that this is temporary. And even the worst moments of my ruminating or obsessing or the nights where I would literally spend hours completing compulsions, they always passed, if that makes sense. It sounds so cliché, but the sun always rose again. I always got another chance. And I would say that I am a naturally driven and motivated person. So I think that definitely did help me. But that’s not to say that there weren’t times where it’s a hopeless feeling when you are living in your own personal hell of intrusive thoughts. The way I remember describing it to the first therapist I went to is that I was, and I don’t play tennis by the way, but I was like, I pictured myself in a tennis court with a tennis racket and someone just throwing balls at me. And those are the entries of thoughts. And I walk one away and another one comes back. It was exhausting. But being reminded that--

And also now too, and I wrote this down, I definitely wanted to talk about this, was you have to find the community support and that has been so vital for me. And again, thank you, Instagram, I’ve been able to connect with so many people who have OCD or a related disorder who I text or DM and are now some of my closest friends. And we hold each other accountable on days where it’s like-- because OCD can be really weird sometimes. And it’s really nice to have people who understand and have been there. So, that’s really helpful for me too on days where it’s like, man, it just feels like I can’t pick myself up.

Kimberley: Yeah. It’s so important. In fact, I’ll tell you a story. A client of mine, who I’ve been seeing for a while, could do the therapy without me. And she knows it as well as I do. And we hit a roadblock and it kept coming up. I just feel so alone. And not having support and other people with similar issues, it was a game-changer for her. And I think we’re lucky in that there are Facebook groups and Instagram and support groups out there that are so helpful.

Taylor: Yes, totally. And that’s one of the reasons I actually decided about a year ago to create a mental health Instagram because I knew how much Instagram and using that platform helped me. I literally remember saying, “Even if it helps one person.” And at first, it was really scary sharing some of the things, talking about the more taboo themes and different things like that, and thinking like, oh man, what are my coworkers thinking of me or my family members when I post this. But what’s been so rewarding is countless people have reached out to me who either I know and I’ve either grown up with my whole life or people across the globe really of just saying, “Hey, thank you for letting me know I’m not alone.” And to me, that makes it totally all worth it. So, it’s so important to find that connection.

Kimberley: Yeah. And is there anything else that you felt was key for you? Something that you want people to know?

Taylor: I think that it’s so important to-- a huge piece of it too was incorporating act, like acceptance and commitment therapy, which I also believe I learned from one of your podcasts. So, thank you. And that was a huge piece for me too, because again, I think that-- to be very honest, I didn’t even say the words “OCD” until two years ago. I knew in my head that I met the criteria in the DSM, but I never-- that label for me was so scary. I don’t really know why, looking back, but maybe because it was just so unknown. So a lot of the work that I’ve had to do personally that’s been really helpful is just acceptance of any emotion really, especially learning that acceptance doesn’t mean that you have to love something, and it ties into tolerating uncertainty. Tolerating, I was talking about this with a client yesterday. Tolerating is not an endearing word. If someone says, “Oh, I tolerate that person,” that’s not a compliment. We were not being asked to love uncertainty or love the fact that we have OCD or whatever we’re struggling with, but just learning to sit with it and tolerate it has been an absolute game-changer for me. As much as the exposures and response prevention was so new to me, that whole piece too was a game-changer.

Kimberley: Yeah, I agree. I think it’s such an important piece, because there’s so much grief that comes with having OCD too, and the stigma associated. I’ve heard so many people say the same thing. They had to work through the diagnosis before they could even consider--

Taylor: And I also had a lot of anger in two ways towards the fact that I had to deal with this. I always thought, and of course, I think a lot of us think this about anything else, I was like, “If only I just “had” anxiety and not OCD, or just had depression, that would be so much easier to deal with,” which I know is ridiculous. But in the moment, it’s like, I think whatever we’re going through seems so impossible. And then the other piece of the anger was just the misuse of people saying, “Oh, I’m so OCD,” or seeing it displayed on TV or on social media in the wrong way. And I’m like, “Oh my gosh, if only you knew what OCD was, you would never say that.” So now, it’s been cool because I can turn that frustration more into advocacy and education, but that was a huge hurdle to jump to.

Kimberley: Yeah. Well, especially because you’re over here tolerating OCD. And then other people are celebrating and it just feels like taking the face.

Taylor: Oh my gosh, yes.

Kimberley: Yeah. I love all of that. Thank you so much for sharing that story. Number one, it brings me to tears that we get to meet and chat. I think that that is just so beautiful and I’m so impressed with the work that you’re doing. So, thank you. Tell me where people can hear more about you or follow you and so forth.
Taylor: Sure. So, my Instagram is acupofmindfultea, and there you can also find-- I definitely share my personal story, but just also ERP tips. I’m also very big on holistic findings. So, obviously, medication has been a huge part of my story as well and helpful, but I also love finding natural ways and different ways that have helped my anxiety and just building my toolkit. So, I share a lot about that on there as well. So, yeah, I would love to connect with you guys on social media, for sure.

Kimberley: Yeah. I would have to admit, when I saw your pregnancy announcement, I was with my kids and I was like, “Woo-hoo!” And they were like, “What?” And I’m like, “Oh, it’s just somebody I’ve never met, but I’m so excited for her.”

Taylor: Isn’t that so great? I know, I love it. I feel the same way for other people.

Kimberley: Yeah. Well, thank you so much. Number one, thank you for coming on the show. I love how that creates itself organically. And number two, thank you for sharing this because I think this will hopefully give some people some hope. We were overwhelmingly encouraged to have people with stories of their recovery. So, I think this is a really wonderful start of that.

Taylor: Awesome. Well, thank you so much. I’ve been listening to your podcast for two years now, and it’s been such an encouragement for me and such a huge form of education and help. So, this was truly special. So, thank you.

Kimberley: Thank you.

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 physical disorder, it’s changing your expectations to more realistic expectations and accepting where you are, dropping the shoulds, dropping the I should and I could and all the things and start to take care of you. Start to ask for help.

I love you. That being said, you know what I’m going to say. It’s a beautiful day to do hard things, folks, and managing your exhaustion is a hard thing. Saying no is a hard thing. Saying yes is a hard thing. Please take care of yourself. Please honor what your body needs.

Sending you all love. I’m here for you. I’m loving on you. I am shouting you on. Thank you for joining me for 30 days. Do not give up. This is a 31-day challenge, but I ask that you take it for the next 31 years or 61 years or 91 years, or multiply, multiply, multiply. Do not give up on this practice. This is life. We have to do this work.

All right. Love you guys. Bye.

This 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 limit with fear. You were talking in the book about the inner critic and the inner voice or it could be the inner fear. I often will have patients say, “No, fear, you can come with me to the dog park or you could come with me to this, but you are not winning,” and getting really strong with an angry back at fear, which I think is another approach.

Kristin: Yes, that’s right. Again, you can say, “Thank you for trying to help me.” In my son’s script, “Thank you for trying to keep me safe, but you aren’t helping.” It’s both. It’s the appreciation. Because we don’t want to feel that any parts of ourselves are unacceptable. If we make our inner critic or if we make our anxiety or OCD, or any of those parts of ourselves feel unacceptable, then we’re harming ourselves.

Kimberley: That’s the key point.

Kristin: We can accept it with love, with tenderness. Just because my OCD is not helping me doesn’t mean it’s not acceptable, and act as a way in which it’s a beautiful part of me trying to keep myself safe. So, it’s differentiating between us as people and particular behavior. Behaviors can be helpful or harmful, but we’re always okay exactly as we are.

Kimberley: Right. And that’s the point. You just dropped the mic on that one. That’s so important. This is actually a question more than a statement—as we’re navigating, standing up to fear or depression is that we’re not disregarding it or criticizing the fear that’s inside us either.

Kristin: Yeah. Because it serves a purpose. All these emotions serve-- and usually, it comes down to safety or the sense of belonging or some sort of deep survival mechanism because these are all evolutionarily-- they came from our brains and our brains designed to survive. So, they have a negativity bias, say they tend to get really anxious. They tend to use the fight, flight, or freeze response. Fight is the self-criticism, flight is the fear response or shame response, freeze is when you get absolutely stuck over and over again, like rumination. Interesting, which may be related more to OCD. I’ve never thought about that. But it might be that that loopy might be the freeze response where you’re just stuck. All of these evolved as safety mechanisms as a way to avoid, like the lion chasing you, and they still remain in our brains, even though nowadays, most of us, at least in the first world, don’t have those types of threats to our physical being as often.

Kimberley: Oh, I love it. Okay. You already touched on this slightly and I just want to go over it quickly is, how might people use fierce compassion as a motivator and as something that encourages them? Because I think the way I conceptualize it is, you conceptualize the basketball coach who’s like, “Get up in there and just go harder.” It’s motivating, but it’s almost also very critical. Can you share a little on that?

Kristin: Yeah. Self-criticism or harshness does work as a motivator. There are coaches like that who do get some results out of their players, but there’s a lot of unintended consequences. Anxiety actually, believe it or not, is one of the poor byproducts of criticism because fear of failure, fear of not performing up to your ability, fear of making mistakes, that actually gets generated. When you know that you’re going to beat yourself if you don’t reach your goals, then that actually adds to your anxiety, and that makes it harder to reach your goals. Fear of failure, procrastination is a classic example. Self-handicapping, some people do that because they don’t want to risk failure because they’re too afraid of failing, because they know they’re going to be so harsh on themselves if they do fail.

But some people make the mistake of thinking that self-compassion is just about acceptance. Like, “Well, it’s okay if you don’t succeed. Well, everyone is imperfect.” Although it’s true, it is okay if you don’t succeed, it is true that everyone’s imperfect, that doesn’t mean that you don’t want to succeed. But the reason you want to succeed is very different. Some people want to succeed because if they don’t succeed their failure, they’re going to hate themselves, they’re going to shame themselves. Other people want to succeed because they want to be happy. They care about themselves. They don’t want to suffer. It’s a much healthier form of motivation. It comes from the desire for care and well-being as opposed to fear of failure or inadequacy.

And then because of that, when the bottom line is, “Hey, I’m going to try my best. I’m going to do everything I can to succeed. But if I fail, that’s okay too,” what that means is anxiety levels go down. There’s less fear of failure. There’s less procrastination. There’s less performance anxiety. This is the key. When you do fail, you’re able to learn from it. I mean, it’s a truism that failure is our best teacher. If we shame ourselves when we fail, when we’re full of shame, we can’t actually learn. We’re just hanging our heads. We can’t really see clearly. We can’t process. But when it’s like, “Okay, wow, that hurts. Ouch. Well, everyone fails. What can I learn from this? It doesn’t mean that I’m a failure just because I failed.” That ability to learn actually helps your motivation and helps sustain your motivation. It’s just much more effective.

We know this with our kids and a lot of coaches know it. Not all coaches know, but a lot of coaches know their players. They may be tough like mama bear tough. But the thing about mama bear is you also know mama bear loves you. She’s doing it because she cares. When she’s just snarling at you, you don’t get that sense of being cared for. You get that sense of being inadequate. We know the difference, including with her own internal dialogues. We know the difference. Does this come from a place of care or a place of shame?

Kimberley: You know what’s interesting, and you probably know this, probably experienced this, but as I was writing my book, I was saying nice things, but I caught myself saying them in a tone that wasn’t nice. I was going, “No, I haven’t said anything.” I was saying like, “You could do it, keep going,” but the tone was so mean like, “Keep going!” Do you want to share a little bit about that?

Kristin: Yeah. Well, tone is so huge. One of the main ways, the idea that the feeling of compassion is communicated, especially the infants before they get language, is through touch and through tone of voice. Universally, we know the certain types of touch that feel caring and supportive and others that feel either indifferent or threatening in some way. Also tone, there’s a certain quality to the voice when it’s caring versus when it’s harsh. Most of that is communicated to infants before they know how to speak. It’s not just what you say, it’s how you say it, and it’s also how you hold your body. There’s physical touch. But even just like, is your body slammed or is upright, physical signals of care are really important. We teach both right.

Kimberley: I’m asking this actually for myself because it didn’t occur to me right now is how might I be fierce with the tone? How does the fierce tone sound?

Kristin: Yeah. It’s firm, but it’s not harsh. It’s like, “No, that’s not okay,” instead of, “No, that’s not okay!” It’s not vicious. It’s not, “No, that’s not okay, you stupid idiot!” It’s like, “No, that’s not okay.”

Kimberley: Yeah. That’s the nuance that I think I have to work on.

Kristin: “It’s not really okay. Is it okay?” It’s like waffling and wish-washy. By the way, I’m saying this, it’s not easy to get it right, and I get it wrong all the time. Fierceness and tenderness have to be balanced. My problem is, even though I was raised as a woman and for most women, they aren’t allowed to be fierce, I’m actually probably more yang than yin just by nature, just by my genes. My problem is I am too fierce without being tender enough. I’m always apologizing and saying, “I’m so sorry, please forgive me,” because I get out of balance the other way. Sometimes I just say it so bluntly and I forget to cushion it with some sort of niceness or reminder that I care. And that’s not healthy either.

It’s a process. It’s not like a destination, you get there and you’re done. It’s like, “Okay, I got it wrong this way, got it wrong that way.” You always have to be trying to recorrect. But as long as you allow yourself not to have to be perfect, then you can keep going. You keep trying. It is a process. It’s a process of compassion. The goal isn’t to get it right, it’s just to open your heart. So, as long as we do all of this with an open heart, out of goodwill, the desire to help ourselves and others, then it’s okay. But it is tricky, and I would be lying if I said that it wasn’t. It is.

Kimberley: Yeah. Here I am thinking that I’m really good at this stuff, and I was hearing my tone and going, “Wow, that’s not cool. You’re saying kind things, but not with a great tone.” I have two more questions or things I want to touch on really quickly. Will you talk about these two topics of fulfillment and equanimity? I know you touched on them in the book, but I loved what you are to say.

Kristin: Yeah. Fulfillment is also an aspect of self-compassion. So, if we want to help ourselves and be well, we really need to value what’s important to us. First of all, we need to know our values. Is it just what society says? You have to earn a certain amount of money. You’ve got to look a certain way. You’ve got to be popular. What’s really important to us? Sometimes it’s personal, like music or art or nature. Sometimes it’s honesty or sometimes it’s helping others. But we know our inner values. Part of compassion is asking ourselves what’s really important to us and valuing ourselves enough to actually fulfill our own needs.

Again, there’s a gender difference. Men have raised feeling entitled to get their needs met. It’s not really the question. Of course, I’m going to get my needs met. Isn’t it to everyone? Well, actually, not necessarily. Class, and a lot of things go into this, but gender certainly does.

Women are valued for being self-sacrificing. Women are valued, especially toward their kids, for denying their own needs and helping others. That’s how people like us. That’s how we get our sense of worth.

So that sets us up in a situation that in order to feel worthy, we have to give up what’s important to us, which actually undermines our own sense of self. Sometimes the term we use is “Give to others without losing yourself.” Part of that is knowing what you need to be happy and fulfilled and giving yourself permission to take the time, energy, effort to meet those needs. It’s not instead of other people, it’s in addition to. It’s including yourself in the equation.

My research shows that self-compassionate people, they don’t subordinate their needs, but it’s not like my way or the high way. They actually are more likely to compromise and say, “Well, how can we come to a solution that meets everyone’s needs?” And that’s really what we need to do to be balanced.

Kimberley: Yeah. I loved that. I really did. Oh my goodness, this is so good. Before we finish up, would you tell us where people can hear about you and your book or your books? Tell us where we can get to you.

Kristin: Yeah. Probably the easiest place to start is just my website, which is self-compassion.org. If you Google it, you’ll find me. I got in early, so all the algorithms come to my website. Just type self-compassion, you’ll find me. On that side, I’ve got, for instance, if you want to test your own self-compassion level, you can take the scale that I created to measure self-Compassion. I have guided meditations, I have practices, I have exercises. I have a new page on Fierce Self-Compassion that especially has fierce self-compassion exercises. I have research. If you’re a research nerd, there’s hundreds and hundreds of PDFs of research articles on there. There’s also a link to the Center for Mindful Self-Compassion, which is really the nonprofit I started with Chris Germer that does self-compassion training. That’s also a really good place. You could take courses online. You can get training really easily now.

Kimberley: I’ve taken the training three times and in three different ways. One was a weekend. One was the eight-week course. One was a two-day. I think that can meet everybody. Online, I did one of them that was finished online because of COVID. Really, really great. So, thank you. Is there anything you feel like we’ve missed that you want to make sure we cover before we finish up?

Kristin: I just like to encourage people just to try it out. I mean, the research is overwhelming in terms of the well-being and strength and resilient self-compassion can give you. Life is tough and it’s getting tougher every day with this pandemic and global warming. I mean, everything is really, really tough. So, we have this resource available, this resource of friendliness, of kindness, of support, just available at any moment. You don’t have to sit down and meditate. You don’t have to even go to a class. You just have to think, what do I need to care for myself in this moment? You can actually do it. It’s like a superpower that people don’t even know they have. It’s just like to tell people, “Hey, you’ve got this ability. It’s right in your back pocket. You just need to remember to take it out.”

Kimberley: I love that. Thank you. Thank you so much for your time. I’m so grateful.

Kristin: You’re welcome. Thanks for having me.

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Please note that this podcast or any other resources from cbtschool.com should not replace professional mental health care. If you feel you would benefit, please reach out to a provider in your area.

Have a wonderful day and thank you for supporting cbtschool.com.

Links: 

Kristen Neff’s Website 
https://self-compassion.org/

Fierce Self-Compassion 
https://www.amazon.com/dp/006299106X/ref=cm_sw_em_r_mt_dp_BT4GGYF8XFE1TJ7DPGBT?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1

This 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.