Overcoming Anxiety: The Role of Attention (Episode 144)

SPEAKER_02 0:01

I knew I was getting better, desensitizing when I trusted the confidence in my attention.

SPEAKER_01 0:09

That internal experience of being afraid or triggered or uncertain or vulnerable is too much. The feeling is it's too much for me to handle. I just get glued to it. It grabs my attention and I can't get away from it, and it feels like it's going to drown me.

SPEAKER_02 0:23

Our attention locks in, just like it did for our ancestors on threats.

unknown 0:27

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 0:28

And when it locks in on us, it's like threat-induced attention. When we try to teach the amygdala or teach the amygdala this isn't a threat, the first thing, and I would argue even our only thing, is to show the brain and the amygdala with our attention, which, like you say, Drew, we always have agency in. Welcome to Disordered. This is episode 144 entitled Confidence in Your Attention. I'm Joshua Fletcher, also known as Anxiety Josh. I'm a psychotherapist and author based in Manchester in the UK. Specialize in working with anxiety and anxiety disorders after spending many years struggling with them myself.

SPEAKER_01 1:32

What are we talking about?

SPEAKER_02 1:32

Well, it's very humble of you.

SPEAKER_01 1:33

I'm trying. I'm trying.

SPEAKER_02 1:35

Yeah, we're going to talk about confidence in our attention today, but let's uh let's jump into the uh the community and see what we've got. What have we got in the in the magic box? Oh, we got this.

SPEAKER_00 1:47

Oh, hi there. I've really enjoyed your podcast and I've listened to lots of episodes. After being encouraged by others, I decided that I would do it anyway and face my fear. Um my fear is social anxiety and being in enclosed spaces with other people, particularly travel. So I was really proud of myself when I made a journey on a train. I made a small journey in preparation for a much longer journey with several changes, which was going to take me all day to see my family. But unfortunately, after I'd um done the short journey, on the news came that uh there was um a stabbing of lots of people on a train on the way to Peterborough very recently, and uh it was really terrifying, and it was on the news um and that trains were no longer safe places because you don't know who's on them, which was my exact fear. So I'm wondering how I can come conquer that again because uh it's made me even more fearful. I was so disappointed because I was ready to do the longer journey but cancelled it because I just couldn't face what was going through my mind from the news that week. Um yeah, long question, but what do you do when you faced your fear and you feel great, and then something kiboshes it if you like, which was pretty major. Thank you.

SPEAKER_01 3:31

Amanda does get applause for facing that fear.

SPEAKER_02 3:34

That was uh excellent, well done, and really good question as well. Yeah, um, remember, anxiety will always try to gather evidence in air quotes that something's dangerous, and particularly when something dangerous does happen, you know? But look at how anxiety will take a little bit of information and create a general rule for sufferers for for certain things, it'll just cherry-pick certain things. Now, don't get me wrong, it was horrible what happened on that train. I remember seeing it on the news, but does that now apply to all trains? It does it will try to skew your logic. This happened this bad thing happened on a train, I'm on a train, therefore the bad thing will happen on this train when actually there are tens of thousands of trains running every day all around the world, and those things don't happen. So anxiety will try to use anything to get you to avoid. Um, you can't deny that the bad thing happened, but we roll the dice of probability every day and do and do things. You know, I get into a car every day, you know. I'm not guaranteed that you know I'm not something bad's not gonna happen, but we go into it, you got lean into the probability. Um keep going. That's a really good start, and you shouldn't allow that to stop. So you can do that. Um, it's not a failure, stuff like that. I think it's completely okay to go back and chill out and be like, whoa, okay, that's that's intense. Yeah, everything's calmed down now. And uh yeah, encourage you to get back on the train.

SPEAKER_01 5:05

I agree. I can't add much to that. I think uh Amanda did a really great job. She planned a smaller trip to get to the bigger trip, which is really great. That's why we do graduated exposure. So well done. But I think the other the only thing I will add is that the intensity of the feeling, like everybody is upset hearing a news story like that, clearly, like that's normal. But the intensity of the feeling for a chronically or disordered anxious person will say that intensity confirms that the probability of this happening to me is very high. So, yeah, whereas other people be like, Oh, that's really horrible. And of course, nobody wants it to happen on their train, but they don't get tricked into thinking the feeling confirms that it's going to happen. They are able to stay with, like, I just don't want that to happen. That's true. But yeah, so keep that in mind. It's a trickster. We did an episode on that, it was episode 126. Well, we talked about that when the news triggers anxiety. If you want to go back and listen, yeah, we talked about a little bit of that.

SPEAKER_02 5:57

So, yeah, go check that out if needed. Okay, well done. So confidence in your attention. Um, the reason why this has come up, Drew, and I'd love to hear your thoughts. Okay. Um, is I knew I was getting better desensitizing when I trusted the confidence in my attention. One day, many years ago, I sat on the back of a bus uh because I was broke and couldn't afford a car or anything like that. So I just sat on the back of the bus. And it was a very busy bus, and we're stuck in traffic, and I remember feeling an adrenaline rush, an adrenaline dump, and I was like, oh, feeling trapped. And I and it's such a vivid memory because I remember going, ah, okay, that's an adrenaline rush, but I'm confident in my attention, in using my attention, the flexibility of my attention here that even though I'm having an adrenaline rush, which I don't like, I'm good with my attention now. I know what this is, I know the loud, intense, vivid thoughts I'm getting. I know the feelings of I need to get off, what if I'm trapped, blah, blah, blah, what if I freak out. That's no longer new to me. And I've been practicing with my attention recently, and here's a chance for me to show that off. And so I would talk to my friend, I'd look outside, I'd observe all the cars, I would observe the angry faces of people in traffic, I'd read the newspaper that you get on the uh on the bus and stuff like that. And I remember doing that, and I remember being feeling calm like five, ten minutes later.

SPEAKER_03 7:31

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 7:31

And I remember that wasn't me getting rid of anxiety, that was 100% confidence in my attention, not only when triggered, but when not, when I was always practicing with my attention.

SPEAKER_03 7:44

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 7:45

Because people with anxiety disorders, particularly with OCD, or if you're a chronic scanner or symptom checker, your attention sucks. Sorry, it does, it sucks. You hyperfixate, you lock in, it sucks. When we're practicing with our attention, doing what non-anxious us would do, shifting our attention to different things, training that attention muscle, you can apply that both when you're calm and you can apply it both when you are in that sensitized anxious state. And that's when I knew for me on the I was like, ah, it feels strong that attention muscle now. It's it the penny has dropped, so to say. And I think attention, particularly in anxiety disorders, is the one thing that you always have, you know. Um, and I just think what do you think about that so far?

SPEAKER_01 8:33

Yeah, no, I I think it's great when you when uh Josh suggested the topic. I was like, all right, I'm not sure what this is gonna be about, but it's actually really spot on. It's I think it's really accurate because when you say you always have your attention, I always have that. Like that is something that I do have agency with. And I think one of the common themes when remember, we're always addressing instances where it's not the bust, it's the feeling on the bus. And so the issue would be uh, and somebody's struggling with an anxiety disorder will say that experience, that internal experience of being afraid or triggered or uncertain or vulnerable is too much. The feeling is it's too much for me to handle, which means I just get glued to it. It grabs my attention and I can't get away from it, and it feels like it's going to drown me. But actually, no, like it's not. You you do have attentional control still available to you, and you feel that. Like I'm sure that that feeling didn't just vaporize when you started looking at angry people driving next to you. By the way, was I driving next to you, angry in traffic? Was that me? It was me, right? Uh I no, the car was going in a straight line. Oh, yeah, then it was definitely not me. But yeah, I think it's really important. Like you do have the ability to say that when you know that I can move my attention over here to something, anything, talking about no matter how I feel. Right. And I can have both of those experiences almost in parallel because I can do that. That's an ability humans have. Then suddenly the this will overwhelm me, crush me, drown me becomes a little less of a thing. Oh, wait, it's it's really uncomfortable. But floating through, accepting, surrendering, willful tolerance is probably an attention function.

SPEAKER_02 10:06

It definitely is. And the more I think about, the more I work with this, the more I reflect on my own journeys, is that when we become sensitized, when we have that initial panic, intrusive thought, whatever, our attention locks in. Just like it did for our ancestors on threats.

SPEAKER_03 10:23

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 10:24

And when it locks in on us, it's like threat-induced attention. When we try to teach the amygdala or teach the amygdala this isn't a threat, the first thing, and I would argue even our only thing is to show the brain and the amygdala with our attention, which, like you say, Drew, we always have agency in that it's isn't important. It's the difference between sitting in front of Netflix and watching the show, or sitting in front of Netflix and watching your internal show. Yeah. The person who's actually watching the show with the anxiety will calm down quicker than the person who's inside watching their thoughts, their symptoms, ruminating on Reddit, on AI, whatever. The only difference there is that as a fly on the wall, two people doing exactly the same thing, but the only variable that was different was the attention. And it's so important. I know they bang on about this in metacognitive therapy, you know, they call it cognitive attentional syndrome. Yeah. And it's a bit of a dry term that, but I like it is where your attention's at. It's not what you're doing as such. Yeah. Um, and it ties into what we spoke about last week when I was banging on about the golden rules, you know, like do what non-anxious you would do, great. But are you doing the second golden rule? And yeah, I I have gone to play golf, but I'm still making anxiety the most important thing here. How are you making it the most important thing here? With your attention. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 11:53

I mean, and I think it's always important, and we we say this all the time, but it's you can't say it enough. That is designed to get your attention. That biological function, that physiological and cognitive function is designed to say, look at me, and like turn on a big light and send off fireworks. So it's doing what it's supposed to do, it will get your attention. That nobody here is saying, like, just ignore it or pretend it wasn't that. It's going to get your attention. The win is, oh, I see what this is, and I'm going to move my attention back over here. Whatever here is, it doesn't matter. It's irrelevant.

SPEAKER_02 12:23

Without getting rid of the other.

SPEAKER_01 12:25

Exactly right. And I'm like, no, no, I know what this is. I don't have to pay close attention to it because I understand that I'm getting hooked into making this the most vital, important thing. And if I can practice that again and again and again, whether while you're anxious and while you're not, and that's why we do things like mindfulness practice or an MCT attention training. I think I see Adrian Wells looking in my window right now. He's like, You guys are gonna pay me for this or what? So uh I invented this alone. No, you didn't. You're right. It's MCT is kind of dry, but like there's something to be said for that mechanism that says pay attention to this, and then we do. And then we don't even know that we've listened to it or that it's there, and it's like, well, there's no choice. If you have ever said to Josh or I in a comment or I don't know, maybe in our community space, I hear you, but when I get triggered, it all goes out the window. You're talking about the fact that, oh, I don't understand that I can in fact work on moving my attention away. I know I have to pay attention to this.

SPEAKER_02 13:16

And we often bang on about you know 51% attention. Why? Because you've not made anxiety the most important thing in the room. Still 49%. Sure, which is really still a big part of the room, but it's not the most important. 100%. Um, and this is why techniques don't work for people, you know. If I go and splashing cold water in my face, which is the most viewed anxiety tip on TikTok, I believe it. Just some guy, like just honestly, like so the most saccharine man I've ever seen. He's like, and he's literally just pouring water on himself and displaying some kind of orgasmic joy. Um, because it's curious, he obviously doesn't have OCD or anything like that. Yeah, but he's splashing this and stuff. But for people in our in our kind of community, in our world and with people with anxiety disorders, where's your attention when you're splashing water on yourself entirely on how you feel and the mechanisms and everything? And has it worked yet? Is it not? Is this what I'm doing? Is it gone yet? Am I measuring it? Is it higher? Is it lower? And yeah, I mean, in some of my earlier books, I kind of regret it. I used to, I don't regret it because you know, I I ask people to scale their anxiety to show them that anxiety is um, you know, is transient, it can go up and down or whatever. That's right. Not just to scale it for a laugh, right? But then some people use that as a compulsion. So the attention is a hundred percent on how oh, I'm three now, I'm ten, now, I'm nine, now I'm two, now I'm five now. No, that's compulsive. You're giving it attention. Attention is always in your control, no matter what you're doing, particularly those who struggle at night. So we get a lot of questions like, I'm fine in the day, yeah. But at nighttime.

SPEAKER_01 14:55

What do you do?

SPEAKER_02 14:55

Yeah, that's when you need to practice with your attention.

SPEAKER_01 14:58

Yeah, but I think sometimes it's easier, true, or at least more practical because during the day you're out, you're at work, you're at school, whatever, there's things going on. You have other targets you can pick quickly. I'm gonna go watch this movie and do this. When it's two o'clock in the morning and you're laying in bed and you want to be sleeping, there are no readily available attention targets. So that is where the sit with it starts to come into it, metaphorically speaking. It's not not always exactly literal, but I you know, I think what happens is if you use, you know, the techniques, why do techniques not work? I I don't remember what it was last year's time or whatever on the Anxious Truth Podcast, I did I let's do 54321 or grounding techniques revisited because like you and I speak a common language, I'm like, no, we don't want to use five four three two one. But what if five four three two one was not a calming or grounding exercise? But what if it was an exercise in attention? Like, oh yeah, I think I'm gonna die right now, but what would happen if I instead try to find five things I could see? As long as you recognize that Yeah, I like that this isn't this is anything. I'm gonna go put my feet in the grass. Put your feet in grass. Okay, well, I'm gonna put my attention on the feeling it feels risky, like dangerous, reckless. No, I gotta watch what's going on inside me. If you techniqueify that as a calming thing, then you create that checking state that I referred to. I don't even know what's a thing, but I'm gonna say it anyway. It's a checking state. Is this working? Is this working? So the thing that you think gets you away from the overwhelming feeling actually glues you to it more because you have to watch that feeling to see if it's changing. Is it going away? It's better now, is this working? Is the water working? Backfire.

SPEAKER_02 16:28

So yeah. Like an example, like if you're going for a walk in the woods, because you know, even all the science tells you walking in nature is good for you. Yeah, right? Even for everyone. Now you can walk in the woods, but if you're someone who compulsively checks and attention's inwards, you can spend that whole walk getting frustrated and just checking your internal state, ruminating on catastrophes, you know, imagining your disaster, imagining helicopters coming to find you, you know, because you they can't find you because something awful happened in the woods, you panicked and whatever. It doesn't happen, but that's where attention is. Or in that state, you go for a walk in the woods, and yeah, like Drew says, it is designed to get your attention. So now and then it will get your attention. Yeah. But attention is always in your control. You always have agency to notice it and go, no, back to looking at this cat beautiful canopy or this listening to the running stream and things like that. And yeah, okay, don't get frustrated if your attention goes back inwards. Oh, I'm not doing it right. No, no, you are doing it right. And when you look at the end of that walk, well, actually, I went for a walk in the woods, and my attention's usually 95% on how I feel. There was only 40% that time. That's a good attention training stuff there. You're you're making it less and less important, but because a lot of us are very urgent, we want to get rid of it and stuff like that. It's like, well, it's still there, it was still there when I was at the woods. I'm never getting better and going back to ruminating. No, that's great. That would be a good homework. Me as a therapist, if if one of my clients said, you know what, I did go for a walk, I was checking, I was compulsive, but you know what? Not even half as much as I usually do. Yeah. I'm like, well, that's really good.

SPEAKER_01 18:16

I stayed with it and I practiced. I finished, I finished the task, yeah, and I was practicing. Okay, cool. You weren't so good at it. That's all right. Like, practice is the point. It's the whole point. I I think in attentional control, we also have to address the idea, because people will say, you know, whatever, like, oh, hey, I'm gonna pay attention to my, I'll pet my dog. Like, oh, I'm really anxious, I'll go pet Copper. Okay, but but I'm petting him, but but I'm not, I'm not feeling. I love my dog, but I can't, I can't feel, I'm not happy. Why I'm not present with him. No, no, no. You're then you're trying to techniquify attentional control by creating a replacement feeling, and that doesn't work either. So yeah, yeah. Not that like, oh yes, I started petting Copper and like, oh, I just felt so calm and serene and grateful to have him, and I love him, and and oh, he's so great. Yeah, maybe, but all if all you do is mechanically pet the dog and show your brain we it is safe to pet the dog while this is happening, that's a win. That's all you that's all you're looking to do. Now, over time you may find that those feelings do arise over time, but if you can't get it right away, it's all right.

SPEAKER_02 19:16

Absolutely, and you've got like when you're working with your attention and stuff, notice that your brain will go to all these places, and it is practice over time. You're trying to make new neuropathways, stuff like that. But the title of this episode is confidence in it, and confidence comes with repetition, yeah. Practice, you know. Someone asked me, you know, how do you get good at public speaking? I was like, because I did it loads. Yeah, you should have seen me the first couple of times. Yeah, you know, just like fountains coming out of my armpits, shaking, and stuff like that. Um, confidence comes with repetition, so the aim is I'm gonna get confident with my attention in all states when all feelings matter.

SPEAKER_01 19:57

Yeah, and I that those reps, the practice, people sometimes ask me, you know, I've been asked before, like, how can you be so uh like you were panicking and I didn't know, which has happened in my life. Like, yeah, I panicked in meetings of 15 people where I'm a guy running the meeting, like nobody knew. Well, how did that happen? Practice. I hate that, but I want to practice. But not just practice with panic attacks, practice outside of that too. Yes, there is, you know, in MCT, there's a there's formal attentional control training things that we use auditory pro. I like to use music with my clients. I'll just pick their favorite songs and listen to different parts of the song, which is really fun.

SPEAKER_02 20:33

Yeah, it's a really good one.

SPEAKER_01 20:34

Yeah, and when we're talking about and I'm gonna have to talk about mindfulness because you know it's my gig. Like mindfulness is just practicing being aware of where your attention is and and seeing what it looks like to move it around. Because if I can move my attention around, I can be more aware of the bigger context that I'm in. I'm having a really difficult sensation right now that scares me. So I have a physical sensation and I'm experiencing fear. And also, this movie is on, and my partner's sitting next to me, and the dog is chilling on this, and we're eating popcorn. All of those things are true because I could expand my attention and like be in that entire experience, not just the oh my God, am I having a stroke? Am I about to go crazy? Not just that. So we practice and practice and practice.

SPEAKER_02 21:15

Breath and uh and would you say you're more confident at doing mindfulness?

SPEAKER_01 21:19

Jeez, uh, yeah, and I still suck at it because everybody does. People wear red ropes on the top of mountains and will tell you after 50 years of practice, they're still terrible at it because your brain doesn't get paid to stay focused on one thing. So let's talk about that for a second. Gets paid. So one of the things that we do too that and that I'll do in a client session is okay, let's let's take a triggering thought or a sensation, or remember the last panic attack, and somebody will get a okay. Hang on to that. Don't let that feeling go. Keep that fear, hang on to it. That's a part of MCT also, but let it don't let it go. Don't let it don't let that feeling fade. And sure enough, after a minute or so, the person starts to struggle. To hang on to that because your brain, if we let it, will start to wander around again. So if you can move your attention somewhere else to the movie, the conversation, the meal, the trees, the dog, whatever, your brain will ultimately get the message and will begin to wander into other things naturally. We're leveraging that, right? It's when you decide my attention, and then I need to keep intentionally putting my attention back to my anxiety. That's when things spiral. Or you get that waves of panic, or like, oh no, I'm anxious all day long. Yeah, I know, because you're always going back to it purposefully. You were doing that.

SPEAKER_02 22:35

Yeah. Yeah. Um, sorry about that. If you heard some notifications, it's that was actually me. That was you for the first for the first time. I was getting the little noises. So basically, Drew and I um created the Disorder Community app, and um, that's the notification noise of people chatting away and stuff in there. So apologies, that was actually me. So don't go after um Drew, and I'll make sure that they're switched off.

SPEAKER_01 22:59

It wasn't World of War Warcraft one for this one time.

SPEAKER_02 23:03

It wasn't your well okay qpit. Yeah, uh thing. Um so no, it wasn't that. Um but whilst I'm here, I might as well read a Did It Anyway. Do you want to hear one? Yeah, let's yeah. So in the Disorder Community app, you can find it at disorder.fm. Um we've got a whole thread of Did It Anyways, people sharing it with the community. Uh and here's one. Um today I woke up with anxiety, and after a few days of heightened anxiety, after a period of feeling great, I was extra overwhelmed and bummed. I called into work and then took my dogs on a long walk. I left my Xanax at home because I figured if I wasn't going to work, I could at least do an exposure. While on the walk, I thought about the person who posted here here that he went to work and his did it anyway this morning, and I listened to an episode of Disordered. That's some good reminders. Then I made the decision to go to work. I'm writing this from my office at the end of the workday. Anxiety has been with me all day, but I showed up and worked with it here with and it's with me. Thank you for the encouragement.

SPEAKER_01 24:06

Oh, that's really awesome.

SPEAKER_02 24:10

We won't bang on about the app too much, but if you want an extra kind of community, there's nothing we don't hide anything in there. But yeah, if you want to come along and see where we're hanging out and want to share those things, come along. Uh, also keep submitting them to disorder.fm. We need some more audio did it anyways on disorder.fm. We've got lots of questions and stuff, but um, we'd like to celebrate. We'd like to do another did it anyway episode with audio. So if you want to submit an audio, you can do that over at disorder.fm too.

SPEAKER_01 24:35

They're always fun to listen to. I there was a lot of attention work in that did it anyway, I would say. Like yes, uh nope, I'm gonna take my dog for a walk. Uh oh, I noticed that I left my X at home. That's okay. I'm gonna come back to the walk. And ultimately, what happens? This person decides, no, what, you know what, I am gonna go to work after all. What a huge win. What a huge, huge win. Right, and that's yeah.

SPEAKER_02 24:55

Here's another attention. Do you want to hear another one? Yeah, this is writ this one was submitted to disorder.fm. Yep. Um hi Josh and Drew. My name is Bianca, and you can use my name. I've been agrophobic for nine years now. I've made a reasonable amount of progress up until 2020, and then it slowly unraveled over the COVID period, and then hit absolute rock bottom in 2023. I sought treatment from the mental health services again, got matched with a great therapist, and found you guys around the same time. I still feel I have a long way to go, but I decided 29 was going to be my last bad year. I turned 30 last week and threw a party, my first party since my tenth birthday. I love that. I I even did a speech and thanked everyone for not giving up on me. It was very emotional and sweet. Um, can we have you got Billy Mays?

SPEAKER_01 25:45

Oh, yeah, sure. Where is Billy Mays?

SPEAKER_02 25:46

Here he is.

SPEAKER_03 25:47

But I'm not done yet.

SPEAKER_02 25:49

But I'm not done yet. Bianca said that. Today I had to go to the dentist as I cracked a filling. When I had that filling done initially years ago, I went into full panic mode, freaked out, hyperventilated, and the dentist had to remove the composite and put a silver filling in instead. Well, today I told him, I might panic. Just leave me to it. As long as my symptoms don't affect your job, just keep going, please. And I did it. I finally don't have an ugly grey filling anymore. Thank you for encouraging me to do it anyway. I'm getting my life back.

SPEAKER_01 26:23

Oh, I love that. Wow, that's ninja level 9,000 at the dentist there. Well done, Bianca. I love that. I might panic.

SPEAKER_02 26:32

I love that walking, that compassionate, like, I might panic here today. Yeah. But crack on. Yeah. You know, and I wonder where Bianca's attention was with that. Probably on different things. The confidence was there. The confidence in their attention to be like, it's all good.

SPEAKER_01 26:46

Yeah. I got this. Well done. That feeling begins to swell while I'm in the dentist chair. I like how she said, by the way, as long as it doesn't impact your work. But the dentist has a drill. Like if it's bumping around, stop, please. Just give me a thing.

SPEAKER_02 26:57

I think that's a reasonable example.

SPEAKER_01 26:59

Very good. But I think like I'm in the dentist chair, I'm trapped. Worst nightmare for so many anxious people, right? I can't, I can't just jump up and run. And like that feeling is beginning to grow and grow and grow. I feel it flashing into that like boiling point. Okay, I can soften. I think attention also has a physical component. I can soften my body into this, and I can let it be there while I go back to, I don't know, the ceiling tiles or whatever music the dentist playing, or the sound of the dental work, or the inane conversation he's trying to make with me to calm me down. Like I can do that. I can do that. And then guess what? I can ride over that hump. I can ride over that hump.

SPEAKER_02 27:32

My dentist always has smooth FM on.

SPEAKER_01 27:34

Do you have a smooth FMO room? Every city. Well, now it's like national or satellite. There's there's smooth everything. Smooth jackets.

SPEAKER_02 27:41

Look, it's so it's so good. You know, it's listening to like Lionel Ritchie whilst having my teeth hacked out with a pickup.

SPEAKER_01 27:48

Is there a dentist listening that has like Iron Maiden playing while you're I'm guessing no, maybe after hours, but when someone's in that chair, you ain't getting slip knot, right? Is that the idea? I don't know. Let the body set the floor. Any drowning pool in the dental chair?

SPEAKER_02 28:09

So good. Um also when we're talking about attention, again, another reason to get practice with your attention and get confident with it.

SPEAKER_03 28:20

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 28:20

As well as like when you look at the neuroscience, when you look at the physiology of your um threat response, the autonomic state shift, you know, um for sure, like I say in my TED talk. Um, I can't believe I said that on stage. I didn't plan. I was like, ass for sure. And uh I was like, God's sake, my mom's in the audience, like, for God's sake, Josh, you just give it a rest.

SPEAKER_01 28:46

Just give us one proud moment. Can't you just give us one without going there?

SPEAKER_02 28:49

Yeah. Well, there's a phrase in the Ted in the in the TED talk that I say, I said, looking at ass only leads to trouble. And this applies to this episode because when you try to stare at anxiety trying to leave, you're trying to observe the autonomic state shift when we jump from a sympathetic state to a parasympathetic state. Have you noticed you can never observe the exact moment anxiety disappears? Right, you get immersed in something else with your attention, and the next thing you know, you're like, oh, I'm not really that anxious. You can never stare at anxiety and go, three, two, one. Oh, bliss. I'm amazing now. It doesn't happen. It only happens when your attention is on something else other than how you feel, when you break that threat monitoring cycle. Yep. So the next time you're hyper-focused on how you feel, willing for it, manifesting, trying to get everything doing everything for it to go away. Remind yourself, I am staring at ass, and this only leads to trouble. The autonomic state shift occurs when my attention is on other things. So I might as well start to build the confidence in my attention because that's going to speed everything along quicker. That's why all those annoying, nauseating, and infuriating techniques on TikTok and Instagram and all that stuff don't work because they're encouraging and fostering this hyper focus on trying to observe the moment anxiety disappears. I'll get off my soapbox and sit in the corner.

SPEAKER_01 30:22

I'm 100% with you. That's the, you know, what I would keep calling a checking state. Is it working? Is it working? Is it working? Am I feeling better? Is it feeling better? Like, no, not until you that's trying to operate directly. I tell my therapy clients all the time. We cannot operate directly on your anxiety. It doesn't work that way. I know you want to do that in the worst way. We cannot operate directly on it. We can only operate on the way you interact with it. And then the change in the anxious state is the thing that grows out of that. So like in my it's interesting. In my own personal experience, can I see that? Even now I can't see it. All I can do is say, okay, I know what I got to do right now, and I gotta go somewhere else, which is like I was sitting at my desk doing an email. I'm gonna keep doing that. I was editing this podcast, I'm gonna keep doing that. You know, and yeah, sure enough, I mean, I can come down a little faster than I used to, much faster than I used to, but I still can't see the moment. It's it's impossible. You can't see it. So the It's a paradox. It's incredible. The best I can do is know that it happened, but not be quite sure when. I don't know, sometime in the last two minutes, I guess, but I don't know the exact time that I began.

SPEAKER_02 31:26

I got it down to like a 10-second window once, but I couldn't tell you when.

SPEAKER_01 31:29

I still don't know when it is. I can't feel that shift. I don't know when it is. And that really just comes from like, I'll just keep editing this podcast episode while I have 10 seconds of terror that I think I'm dying. And like, sure enough, then it's over. And I'm like, I don't know when that happened, but okay, cool. Next.

SPEAKER_02 31:44

Yeah, and all the working cogs of your brain and body are just happening in there. Stop mithering with it, stop trying to get in there and fix and force everything. No, it's again why I don't like the uh the term I'm gonna go, I need to regulate, I'm dysregulated. Um no, your body can regulate itself, unless you obviously have chronic health conditions where you need to help. You know, if you're steroid dependent or diabetic, stuff like that. Yes, you do need to intervene and monitor how you feel with those symptoms, but not the threat response itself.

SPEAKER_01 32:19

That's my beef with the regulator is is the idea that, like, uh no, no, I can control it, but believe it or not, the harder you try to control it, the worse things get. First of all, it's not designed to be control. If if we could control that part of our physiology, we would have never made it this far.

SPEAKER_02 32:37

Yeah, we'd have been dead.

SPEAKER_01 32:39

No way. You should not be able to turn that off. We need that to exist. So, really, all you can do, you know, why would you call it? I always here's I'll in a nutshell. If you're gonna watch how you feel very closely, this is horrible. I got to keep an eye on it. I have to monitor this threat, I have to make it go away. This is terrible, this is terrible. You are saying I am under threat. And therefore, your threat detection and response system, well, okay, cool. Threat, here we go. Here's some adrenaline, here's some cortisol, here's some, you know, rapid breathing, here's some sweating, here's some fear. You are asking for it and then declaring that there's a dysregulation problem because you are asking for it. It's like turning up the radio in your car as loud as possible. You can't stand it, and you're like, does anybody know how to like muffle those speakers? Well, you just turned up the radio. Of course, it's gonna shake your windows. Like asking for this different is silly, they're just doing their job. So, you know what regulates it? Um, this is not an emergency, and then it gets the message, and I'm like, all right, I guess I'll turn down the volume itself. Then it knows what to do. So let it do its job, man.

SPEAKER_02 33:37

It's like like with your ancestors, they sat there and some giant bear walks into camp. Some sort of everyone's attention is gonna be locked in on that bear.

SPEAKER_01 33:46

Well, for good reason, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 33:48

They're not you're not gonna nudge your your cousin and be like, you know, I I keep staring at this bear, but I'm annoyed that my anxiety is not coming down. No, you're not gonna say that, are you?

SPEAKER_01 34:00

At no point did one caveman teach another caveman box breathing. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Not like because there was a bear about to eat them. No, they both got eaten by the bear over like a box breathing. Like, no, that's the mechanism is there for reason. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 34:12

Well, well, actually, no, that's anti Jill. She's dressed in a bear outfit. You don't need to keep looking at it, it's not dangerous anymore. Are you sure? Yeah, yeah, I'm sure. Okay. Okay, so what happens when I stop staring at that bear that is now anti-Jill dressed in a bear outfit? Okay, I'm gonna put my attention on something else. Are you sure? It's a pretty convincing bear. I'm sure it's anti-Jill. Okay, I'll look over there and I don't know, start a fire or something. And lo and behold, the autonomic state shift occurs and then the anxiety calms down. But if we sit there just fixating and locking on to the bear, yeah, don't expect anxiety to turn off. It's the same with in the sensitized state.

SPEAKER_01 34:51

I think it's so important. What you just said there, and you repeated it because I think it's important and it's accurate. Are you sure? Are you sure it's okay to look away from that bear? Are you sure that's just anti? Yes. So I we always have to come back to this, right? There is a measure of courage, bravery, whatever you want to call it, like resolve in this. Nobody in a terrified state just says, Oh, no problem. Those two guys with microphones said to pay attention to the movie. I'll just do that. And it's super easy, and then I calm down and like, oh, look at that, I'm all fixed. Pay attention to the movie will feel like the wrong thing to do. It doesn't make any sense. I need to watch this because this is where I am sure the threat is. I need to hang on tight so I don't lose my sanity. I need to make sure I'm not dying. I need to make sure I don't get up and stab the dog because that's what my intrusive thought says I'm gonna do. Like no, it's really you're being brave, and you are in many ways trusting the people who came before you, like us and everybody else in in the anxious community that says, Hey, I'm better, and shares their story. Therapist, Claire Weeks, like we have years and decades of this where we don't leave a pile of wreckage behind us. Like all of Josh's ex-dead clients that made the mistake of paying attention to something else and went up. No, there's none of those. So we don't have that. So it's it's okay. You're doing something really brave, and you will ask, Are you sure? Are you sure it's okay to do something? Are you sure?

SPEAKER_02 36:10

Yeah, yeah. And the difference between the people that have walked in your shoes and being in a good place now is ultimately there isn't a confidence in our attention.

SPEAKER_01 36:22

Yeah. Oh, I feel so smug. You could tell because you put the smug voice on. Yeah, but it's in your attention.

SPEAKER_02 36:30

When you're sensitized, or you know, people say I've relapsed, I'm this and that. Why? Because you lost the confidence in your attention to leave it alone, to willfully tolerate. No, no, attention is always in your agency, in your control. You can do that. It's okay to leave it again. It's just anti-Jill in a bear suit.

SPEAKER_01 36:49

I love anti-jail. I came up with that.

SPEAKER_02 36:51

Poor anti-jail. I don't even know. I don't even have an anti-jelly. Someone has an anti-jail.

SPEAKER_01 36:54

Yeah, jail if you're listening and you're somebody's aunt. We're sorry, we didn't mean to do that. But in the it's funny, yesterday I posted a little video in the community where we were talking about, well, this is an attentional thing. Like, do what non-anxious you would do. Well, also because as crazy as it sounds, keeping your attention on the feeling, the anxious state, because you think that's the thing that will help you feel better, keep your attention away from things that actually do help you feel better, like the things that are important to you. You non-anxious you would attach their values or interests or things that make life happy for you or find meaning or or give you a purpose. No, no, no. I can't I can't do those things. I have to stay over here and watch this anxiety. Yeah, but those are the things that a therapist is hoping that you connect to. No matter what therapist you go to, they're looking for you to have those other things. So take a chance of paying attention to meaningful things because they give you the moving forward, also. So again, paradox. It is what it is, right?

SPEAKER_02 37:50

And that's why you have to have an anxiety disorder trained therapist because sometimes they can inadvertently reinforce the fact that your attention on how you feel is important, which is true. So for all the normies out there with non-disordered anxiety or not in the sensitized state, it is encouraged to kind of focus on where your feelings are, where are you feeling that, blah, blah, blah. And yeah, of course, you know, I don't challenge that. But if you have an anxiety disorder in a sensitized state, hell no. We've had we've done enough of internal monitoring and staring and attention for a lifetime back out there and do, you know, doing what non-anxious you would do.

SPEAKER_01 38:25

That's a check in with yourself or like the wisdom of it.

SPEAKER_02 38:29

I do that every damn day.

SPEAKER_01 38:30

Yeah, what is the anxiety telling me? Nothing. It's telling me to run for the hells and that ruins my life. So I can't listen.

SPEAKER_02 38:35

Yeah, yeah. It's telling me, uh, I don't know. This morning, I uh do I love my partner? And then it's telling me, do I want to stab a family member? And then it's telling me what if I just throw myself off a bridge? And now it's telling me, what if I've poisoned an omelet? And then it's telling me, what if I accidentally run someone over on the way home and didn't realize and have to go check? It's telling me I didn't lock the door, it's telling me I left the stove on. It's telling me what if I have a panic attack in a shopping mall? What if I humiliate myself? What if it's telling me there's no meaning to this? It's just silly. And yes, underlying it are fears fear of humiliate humiliation, getting stuff wrong, being center of attention, but in the moment I need to work on desensitizing. Um, here's a did it anyway. Yeah. This is from Chelsea. Hello, my name is Chelsea, all the way from Australia. In 2023, I went through a severe episode of health anxiety and OCD. I was going to withdraw from my nursing course due to my fears. I'm now in my third year of nursing school and about to go on placement in the emergency department. I'm going to graduate at the end of the year, and I'm very glad that I didn't let my anxiety win. Thanks for your podcast.

SPEAKER_01 39:43

Oh my goodness, that is freaking awesome. Congratulations, Chelsea.

SPEAKER_02 39:48

That's amazing. Well done, Chelsea. And keep us updated and stuff. That's really lovely. I love that as well.

SPEAKER_01 39:55

That is a couple of years. I almost withdrew, and now I'm going into the emergency. 100%, right? That is an intentional shift for a couple of years of nursing school. I think that on the macro scale, I can't possibly do this. I have too much anxiety. No, no, I'm gonna keep keep plugging away at that, that thing over there, not the thing inside me. And sure enough, hopefully somebody won't need Chelsea, but if they do, they're gonna get a qualified helper that cares. Love it.

SPEAKER_02 40:18

Yeah, yeah. Amazing. Yeah, can you Chelsea in a resensitized state? Like, I need to take, I will take your blood pressure, but I need to keep monitoring my symptoms for a few good few 10 minutes before I do that.

SPEAKER_01 40:30

Yes, would you mind holding the you pump it because I have to tap my cheek while I take your blood pressure? So do you have an ice pack? Well, it's a hospital. There's probably a lot of ice packs, so that's yeah.

SPEAKER_02 40:40

No, well done, Chelsea. That's amazing.

SPEAKER_01 40:43

What else do we got on? Attention, confidence with your attention. Practice, practice, practice. I'll just repeat that. You gotta practice.

SPEAKER_02 40:50

Yeah, no, that'll that'll that'll do. Yeah, and stuff like that. If you've got questions about this episode or any other episode, like I said, the community app is available. We won't bang on about it too much. Um, but literally we upload this episode in the app, and then you can there's a comment section, and we'll always be in there and we can answer your questions about it, or you can just roast us if you want. I'll be like, who are these two? Blah blah blah. We'll we hang about on there, we're tired of meta and all that stuff. Um, or you don't have to, we're not gonna gatekeep or hide anything. We'll be here every Friday um doing the thing that we always do. Yeah. Um, but yeah, we just thank you for tuning in and do log on to disorder.fm. Send in your data anyways, send in your questions, stuff like that. We'd love reading them.

SPEAKER_01 41:34

Yeah, thanks for hanging out, guys. We'll be back next week with something else.