May 2, 2024 • 54 mins
Oliver is joined by author, host, and Anxiety Specialist Drew Linsalata for a deep dive into the awful effects of anxiety.
From panic attacks, to antidepressants, to withdrawal symptoms, Drew talks about the lowest lows of anxiety disorder.
But REMAIN CALM, because this episode offers ways to tame your tension, manage your emotions, and push back on panic!
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hi.
Speaker 2 (00:05):
I am Kate Hudson and my name is Oliver Hudson.
We wanted to do something that highlighted our relationship and
what it's like to be siblings. We are a sibling railvalry.
Speaker 3 (00:21):
No, no, sibling. You don't do that with your mouth.
Speaker 2 (00:30):
Revelry.
Speaker 1 (00:33):
That's good.
Speaker 2 (00:39):
Oliver Rutland Hudson here back on sibling revelry. Yeah, I'm alone.
Do I feel sad? Yeah, we're a little sad. I
missed my partner in crime. But you know what it is,
what it is, and I am I'll take over, you know,
(01:01):
It's what I do. But this fear and sadness and
this anxiety is a perfect segue into my guest, Drew
lince Lata. This is someone who I found on Instagram.
(01:22):
And if you've listened to this podcast, you know that
I have suffered through anxiety and some depression, and I
have dealt with it in my own ways, feeling extremely
alone in it in my twenties. I'm never afraid to
talk about it, though as I've gotten older, realizing that
(01:45):
especially nowadays, everyone fucking suffers from some sort of anxiety.
I'm medicated and I'm on Lexapro because of it all
that stuff. If you listen to the show, you know
that anyway I found I didn't find my son found
Drew because he was going through his own anxiety, which
(02:07):
I'm going to talk about. I won't get into it now,
but he's the one Wilder is the one who said, Dad,
you should see this on Instagram. And I just thought
that he's so spot on with this stuff and it's
so incredibly relatable and it just hit home for me
and I wanted to talk to him. So I'm very
(02:28):
excited to pour my heart out and to really get
into the depths of it. And I can't wait to
hear about sort of his own journey because obviously this
guy must be fucking anxious as shit to create an
Instagram page about it. Anyway, let's bring him on, my man, Drew,
(02:50):
open up that door, please, whatd on man? What's going on?
Very happy to be talking to you. I know we've
been trying to do this for a minute now, and
I know you've got your Instagram page called The Anxious
Truth and a podcast, correct, right. You know I didn't
discover you. My son did. My son is now sixteen,
(03:11):
but this was a few years back, and you know
he was going through something, and of course I knew
what it was because I have my own history with
anxiety starting my twenties, probably starting well before that, but
it struck me hard in my twenties and then throughout
(03:32):
my life. So I knew what was happening.
Speaker 3 (03:34):
You know.
Speaker 2 (03:35):
He would say, he would tell me, you know, I
don't feel real. This doesn't feel real, which is that
sort of disassociation, you know, kind of vibe. And then
he got chest stuff. He felt like he couldn't breathe.
He would go on a bike ride and think that
he was going to sort of die in his hard
(03:56):
you know. And I was like, I know what this is,
you know. And and so I kept him home from
school for weeks because he just couldn't go to school.
And I had him right in his journal, and I
had him, you know, meditate, and I worked with him
and you know whatever made him feel good. But I
knew what. I knew what was going on. One day
he comes to me and he goes, Dad, like, look
(04:17):
at this, I think you might like it. And it
was your your feet on Instagram. So he discovered you
and I started flipping through him, like, man, this dude
is so spot on with the true feelings of anxiety,
and you use it in a way that is not
(04:38):
so serious. Yes it's serious, but you have fun with it,
you know, And I think that's smart. I'm well versed
in my feelings and I know how to get out
of him now. But so I thank my son for
finding you, because you've honestly helped me just feeling like
(04:59):
you're like, I'm not not alone, even though you know
you're not alone. Oh, you know, thanks man. And so
to start, just give me an idea of where this
came from. How fucking anxious were you that you wanted
to start a career out of it.
Speaker 3 (05:13):
I was anxious, all right. I see where this is going.
I'm good with that. So, yeah, it came from you know,
many years of my life twenty five plus years on
and off where I suffered in a big way with
multiple anxiety disorders and things like go CD and clinical depression,
and you know, it sucks. It's I was pretty anxious.
I was frozen in fear in my own bathroom, afraid
(05:34):
to leave the house, couldn't be home alone. I used
to do really lovely things like not be the first
person to open the orange juice in the house, you know,
because probably poisoned. So we'll let someone else that I
love find out for me, Like, come on, brain really
m hm. So yeah, I've done all the things. I've
been there, the depression thing where like nothing means anything
anymore and the world has no color and you just
(05:56):
want to lay in bed and you don't care anymore.
And like, I've been through all of those things, and
you know, I've been through different iterations of that over
many years. And the genesis of the whole podcast in
books and becoming a therapist thing was when I the
third time around, like, Okay, I kind of know what
to do here, because I always have been a bit
of a nerd when it comes to like behaviorism and
learning theory and cognition. So I knew what the thing
(06:19):
to do was, but it just took me really long
time to actually do it. And I met a bunch
of friends, like in the early days of YouTube, who
were going through the same thing. We would exchange a
little YouTube videos together about ten or twelve people, and
that built a little tiny community. And then when I
got better, I just felt like I should probably sort
of pay this forward. I guess I don't know, I'll
help me. Let me like pay it forward into the
(06:39):
internet or something. So I bought a four dollars app
on my crappy like first gen iPhone, talked to nobody
in a podcast that I knew nobody was listening to,
and like, here I am that it turned into this.
Speaker 2 (06:50):
And this is your life now, I mean, this is
your business.
Speaker 3 (06:52):
Yeah. So from the mid ninety I mean my undergraduate
training is an architecture, and then from the like mid
nineties all the way through until recently, I've I was
an internet guy like data centers and networks and stuff
like that. And yeah, finally was just this is ridiculous.
Why am I still caring if anybody's email works or
how fast your website? This is clearly what I should
be doing.
Speaker 2 (07:10):
Mm hmmm did you say you were a therapist?
Speaker 3 (07:13):
Yeah, well I'm right now finishing my training, so I'm
you know, working God, Yeah, I just did you know? Finally,
And it's such a strange progression too, because for so
many years I I started the podcast, and we had
like all kinds of online forms and Facebook are just
helping people out, you know, it was nothing formal, and
it got and bigger and people would say, you know,
you should write a book. Yeah, I want to write
a book. Why do I have to write a book?
(07:34):
Then I wrote a couple of books, and then everybody
would say, why are you not a f You should
be a therapist. No, I don't need to be a therapist.
Listen to people when they book, man like, people know stuff.
So yeah, I went back to school for my grad
training a couple of years ago and I'm finishing up now.
Speaker 2 (07:47):
So dude, that's an amazing it's amazing. I would say
that if I wasn't in the entertainment business, I would
want to be a therapist. I mean, I love talking
about my own feelings. I love hearing other people's issues,
and you know, I mean the human condition to me
is so I mean, it just it's incredible that we're
(08:09):
all made of the same things and can feel so
differently about the world. And so going back, you know,
when did you experience your first sort of bout with this,
and you know, give us sort of a bit of
a timeline on how this happened, how you recognized what
it was, how you got through, and how you got
(08:31):
through it, and then how you manage every day because
correct me if I'm wrong, But it doesn't just go away,
you know what I mean? I meaning like there is
always for me personally. I know how to deal with
it now. I have the tools, you know, and I'm
on medication by the way, But it feels like it
(08:55):
I don't know, it feels like it will just never
be completely gone and out of my system.
Speaker 3 (09:00):
Yeah, we could definitely talk about that. The you know,
for me, it all started. I was nineteen. I was
home for spring break from college and I was hanging
out in my house that I grew up in, like
everything couldn't have been any better, and I had the
first panic attack of my life. I had no idea
what the hell was going on. I literally the first sensation.
So when your son had said it feels not real,
(09:23):
that was my first boom. All of a sudden, it
just just hit me and everything wasn't real. I'd never
felt that before, and I legit man like, I legit
interpreted that as well. It's been in pretty good nineteen years.
I guess this is how I go out. I thought,
for sure, this is what it feels like when you died.
What the hell did I know? So that was super scary.
I had a panic attack that first, and I did
(09:44):
not know what the hell it was, and then instantaneously
became afraid to have it happen again, because it's a
nasty experience to have, right, So the next morning, I
was still so super shaking, and I was shaky, and
I was really worried that it was going to happen again.
So sure enough happened again and again and again and again.
And so I was kind of a textbook example of
somebody who has a panic attack, which most adults will
(10:07):
have at least one or two in their life in
the West. But I was one of those lucky people
for whom it turned quickly into a textbook case of
an anxiety disorder. That's where you become I'm anxious because
I'm anxious, which is not intuitive for a lot of people.
We can get into that if you want, because the
conventional mental health wisdom is often turned on its head
in the case of anxiety disorders. Yeah, and I developed that.
(10:29):
I got super afraid to go out and be alone.
It was just within a few months the wheels fell
off on me.
Speaker 2 (10:35):
What were your symptoms? Oh, is anxiety you know? Well?
Speaker 3 (10:39):
Yeah, yeah, the depersonalization derealization dissociative state. Right, so we
could have PDR. My heart would pound constantly. I would
feel it in you know, the pulse in your ear.
I didn't have really stomach issues, which most people do have,
but that I had sort of dizzy. Yeah, a lot
of people have to run right for the bathroom. I
get that's really calm, and I was lucky I didn't
have that, but the dizziness sort of off balance feeling.
(11:03):
Then I would fix it by like deep breathing, and
then I would accidentally hyperventilate, so I get pins and
needles and my hands would lock and my face would
go numb and that would freak out or it was
just a mess.
Speaker 2 (11:15):
And that was how old were you? Was this when
you were nineteen?
Speaker 3 (11:18):
That was nineteen. Yeah, I was nineteen, and I was
like bulletproof today before that day. Yeah, never got nervous.
I was one of those like really annoying, high achieving
guys that never studied and still wasn't top of the
class and blah blah blah. Never got nervous about anything.
And then the wheels, the roof just caved in. And
then the span of a few months.
Speaker 2 (11:36):
Were you a drinker at all or no, I was,
I mean meaning like after that. I'm not attributing it
to but after did you try to maybe like get
a little buzz to see all that.
Speaker 3 (11:45):
No, that's a very common experience. A lot of people
do do that. I just didn't do that for some reason.
I can't. I'm not claiming any high ground on that.
It just wasn't something that I turned to. But of
course you start running the doctors. That was the first
thing is something's clearly wrong with me. And you know,
I was told I my GP at the time, like oh,
you have like free floating anxiety. He gave me an
anti histamine, which this will call me now now if
(12:08):
I take a ben adrill. If I took it right now,
in about five minutes, his interview was over.
Speaker 2 (12:12):
Yeah, yeah, you're gone.
Speaker 3 (12:13):
Yeah. But back then he gave me an anti histamine
like take this when you feel anxious, and it was
like bullets bouncing off of Superman, like an anti history
panic attacks. It didn't work, and it was a rough,
rough experience. What helped me that first time was I
was interning at a big defense contractor here on Long Island,
and the nurse the company nurse. This is like old school.
(12:34):
They had a company nurse, like in the building. Who
does that now, right? I remember I would you know,
she saw how nervous I was. She was so nice
to me, and she would talk to me about it,
and she said, oh, I know a psychologist locally. Go
check him out. So I did, and he handed me
a book by a woman named Claire Week. Doctor Claire Weeks.
She was an Australian physician who she passed many many
(12:56):
years ago, but she was the first person to sort
of bring these things to the general look back in
the fifties and sixties and seventies. And I read her
book and twice in about fourteen hours, and I'm like,
this woman is clearly talking to me. I had a
name for it, I knew what it was, and I
kind of got better for like ten years, and then
(13:16):
the wheels fall off again. And then I medicated to
get better, and that was good because it fixed my
depression or got me out of depression. Then it caused
all kinds of problems and I had to come off
to that medication finally, like years after that, and that
was when I did the sort of exposure based cognitive
behavioral recovery to get Yeah, finally get passed it once and.
Speaker 2 (13:35):
For so from nineteen how long did it last before
you were back for your feeling good again?
Speaker 3 (13:50):
That was over the summer. I saw that psychologist I'll
never forget. I sat with him for about five or
ten minutes. I told him it was what I was experiencing.
He was like, hang on, He left the room. He
came back, He handed me the book. Read this call
me if you need another appointment. It was amazing. He
was so nice to me.
Speaker 2 (14:03):
It was that quick. It was that that.
Speaker 3 (14:05):
He said, read this book, call me if you need
to see me again. And I think I saw him
once or twice, and I remember I saw him the
second time just to say I can't believe she's writing
about me, and he explained panic attacks were and that helped.
I just needed to know what it.
Speaker 2 (14:18):
Was, so that first bout didn't last too long.
Speaker 3 (14:22):
I'm gonna say spring break is why, like April, and
I was feeling pretty good by time I went back.
So September, right, yeah, somewhere that neighborhood that was you know,
that was a tough six months, but yeah, knowing what
it was helped me. But get over it for the
first time.
Speaker 2 (14:37):
It's so funny because your experience is not dissimilar to mine,
where I was going into a club with a friend
and he was ahead of me, and everything was great.
I was in my early twenties. Everything my life was
seemingly fine.
Speaker 3 (14:51):
You know.
Speaker 2 (14:51):
I was trying to be an actor. I mean again,
when you go back into the psychology of why these
I might be happening to you, because of course it's
stemming from something you know, and trying to be an actor,
trying to live up to, you know, my own expectations.
But my parents are who they are, you know, they're
(15:11):
famous actors and can I make this? And my sister's
famous and can I do it? And am I good enough?
And you know, self esteem issues, all of these things.
Of course, in the moment, I wasn't even knowing about that,
but boom, it hit me like a fucking train, like
a heart attack. I don't know where it comes from,
out of nowhere, and I went down to a knee
and I was like, I'm going to die on the
(15:32):
sidewalk in like Hollywood, you know what I mean. And
I reached out my john. I try to call my friend,
but he couldn't. He was already gone. And I came
to I was like, okay, Jesus, and I go in.
I have like a vodka. I'm trying to like settle down.
I'm like, what the fuck was that? And then again
same thing. It's this panic of having a panic attack,
(15:55):
it's this is this gonna happen to me again? And
that just led me down the rabbit hole. Now for me,
it was a lot of stomach stuff and disassociation. But
I would throw up, like I would go outside, and
if I would go outside and try to get into
the world, I would I would puke. And so I
would try to fight through it. I'd surf and like
be throwing up and my I didn't want to stay home,
(16:18):
but I did journaling and meditation, and I eventually got
through it. Same thing. Went to the doctors, did stress test,
did my heart, did everything everything is fine, and you know,
eventually got through it through meditation and journal writing and
then I went on Selexa. But then I had another.
Then I had another bout, and then I've had three
(16:40):
real big big bouts.
Speaker 3 (16:41):
Yeah me too. I went through three of it three times.
Speaker 2 (16:44):
Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah. And the second one, how did
that play out for you.
Speaker 3 (16:49):
It was interesting because it always would come on when
things were going great. So the second time, I was
in the middle of the first dot com boom, you know,
when the Internet. I'd shifted away from design and construction,
like I'm going to be an internet guy. I like
to reinvent myself, and so I did that, and I
was partners in an internet company here on Long Island,
and things were going really great at the time for us,
and it just started creeping back in. I started to
(17:12):
notice I was getting very anxious and feeling the symptoms again,
and then I started having panic attacks. The thing is,
I didn't really learn what to do. The first time.
I just learned what it was, and that helped me
not be afraid and I got past it. The second
time it hit, I didn't really know how to deal
with it, and like just knowing what it was wasn't
enough anymore, and then snowballed right away into like agoraphobias.
(17:32):
Now here, I own this business and I'm absent from
the business because I cannot leave my house to go
to the business. It was really rough, and that's when
I got really depressed. That was dangerous depression. And I
got to the point where I was at wits end,
and I remember my wife taking me to our doctor
at the time, and he gave me the insulin speech,
which many people with this problem have heard, because I
(17:53):
was very stubborn about meds, just because I'm stubborn, not
because meds are bad or wrong. And he said, if
you were diabetic, you would take insulin right chemical imbalance,
and and I was so desperate, I'm like, fine, give
it to me. Sure enough. About ten days into it,
my depression lifted, and I thought it was the greatest
thing ever. And it was. It was a life lifesaver
(18:13):
at that moment. But I'm like, okay, cool, I'm fixed
because I stopped having panic attacks and my depression was gone,
and I was pretty good except for me. My issue
was the medication did help, but it also hurt because
I didn't have panic attacks or depression, but I had nothing.
I was super flat. I gained one hundred pounds, Like, no,
one hundred hundred pounds, dude, I cannot even if you
(18:36):
saw pictures of me, were like, is that is not
the same guy. The hundred pounds hevery than I am.
Now I wasn't having panic attacks. It really nasty effects
for me. I'm not again. If it's working for people,
I'm all for it. I support anything that work for anybody,
and everybody has the right to make their choice. For me,
it turned out to be more problematic than anything else.
My kids were born, my grandparents passed away, did not
(18:57):
shed a tear, didn't feel anything. I was like a zombi.
Ooh wow, really bad. So I knew that I that
wasn't working out so well. When the kids were small
and I came off and I went through a horrific,
like antidepressive withdrawal period. Not everybody has that.
Speaker 2 (19:12):
You and I are like, literally I connected. I crazy.
I went through the same withdrawal experience where it was
worse than my first one. I had won. And then
I had a small second one when I was doing
the show called Nashville. I was away from my kids
and it just it hit me. I had I was
playing beach football and like had a fucking crazy panic
(19:35):
attack where I had to go to I mean, it
was nuts and I started bawling crying. I was like, please,
I cannot believe this is happening again.
Speaker 3 (19:41):
Oh man, I feel that I remember King in my
bedroom literally in like ugly crying, some do something, somebody
do something. It was a horrific, horrific feeling. Yeah, it
was worse than the panic attacks for me. Like that. Yeah,
that thing where the heads go away and you don't
oh my god, your brain is adjusting again. Was worth Again,
if you're listening to this, that doesn't necessarily happen to everybody.
(20:04):
It's really important for me to say that maybe people
might have a problem like I had. That was a
rough year for me, that six get up back on
my feet and a.
Speaker 2 (20:14):
Year I well I had. I was weaning off and
I thought I was doing it correctly, and then it
just took me to a place. Dude, I mean this
is like three or four years ago, even four years ago,
maybe yeah, four years ago. It was just so debilitating.
I mean totally different. It wasn't throwing up stuff. It
was just it was totally like, oh god, it was
(20:37):
just it's hard to even explain. I mean, complete disassociation.
I was a mess and trying to be a dad,
going downhilly and mountain biking with my kids. It was
over summertime. I got to offer two jobs, you know,
and I'm like Okay, Now I got to go to
work in August. I'm like, I can't go to out
live in Albuquerque. I can't do it, Like I can
barely come out of my room. But I was like,
(20:58):
I need to support my family. I gotta do this.
So I had to go back on medication because I
just had to, yep, be even to try to support
my family.
Speaker 3 (21:09):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (21:10):
So yeah, and now I'm just on it, you know,
But it was that withdrawal was so nuts. Yes, it's
important to say that doesn't happen.
Speaker 3 (21:17):
It doesn't happen to everybody. I know a lot of
people that maybe you're afraid to take the meds because
you think that might happen to you, or if you're
on it, you want to get off, Like I'm afraid
because I'm going to have it. You might, but we
nobody knows. We really don't know who's going to have
that and who's not. And I know there's all kinds
of pedaling tests about metabolisms and what your genetics say,
which one, Yeah, we still don't really know. So, but
it doesn't happen to most people. I know plenty of
(21:39):
people who just they calld turkey them and they were fine,
which is not so Yeah, that was really really rough experience.
But that experience taught me so much about the difference
between pain and suffering. As crazy as that's I could
not stop the pain, but I had to learn to
adapt as best I could. I mean, I don't know
how you would apossibly get like, I'm even free out
(22:00):
just here and you're like move to Albuquerque. Really in
that state, Yeah, I couldn't go to the door around
the corner for me to get a gallon of milk.
Couldn't do it. Yeah, so no way, it's not going
to happen.
Speaker 2 (22:09):
Oh yeah, no, I know, I know. But that adjustment
period is interesting because you know, you do learn to
live with the suffering of what it feels like.
Speaker 3 (22:18):
I remember learning that I had to wake up and say,
I'm just gonna have to do the best I can
with this today, which wasn't very good, but that there
were lessons in that experience.
Speaker 2 (22:28):
Oh yeah, crazy yeah. And then eventually in that and
that bout you got through.
Speaker 3 (22:33):
Just I got through that finally, And you know.
Speaker 2 (22:36):
What, did you did you do any practice or anything?
Was there meditation, deep breathing, journaling or anything like that
or or interesting because by the way I started interrupt
but cognitive behavioral therapy would change my ship. Like I
have been in therapy for a while, but but then
I switched and found this person and it was CBT,
and I was like, whoa, this is real therapy. It's
a whole, the whole of an animal, and it's It
(22:58):
was incredible and totally life change.
Speaker 3 (23:00):
I would say that I tried. I mean, anybody you
know you were in that position clearly, Well, it's amazing
that we share such a similar experience, right, but you
know in that situation, you would try anything to get relief.
So I would try to meditate to feel better, and
it was just chemical. It was nothing I could do.
There was no practice, journaling, did nothing. It was just
this is the way I feel today. I can't help it.
(23:21):
My brain is doing the best again. So no, I
can't say, but I did learn. I did start to
gain some ability that helped me later to say, well,
I can't stop this, so I'm gonna have to just
do the best I can with what I have in
this moment. I didn't recognize that I was learning that
skill until I had to use it later. But I
did take that skill out of that experience if it matters,
(23:44):
and my brain just kind of got its act together
over the course of a year and I couldn't. But yeah,
so I kind of got lucky. But then I had
to deal with the actual problem that was still there
because the maths don't I mean, at least for me,
all the problem. They just masked it. And yeah, and
then I had to go through a couple of years
of doing the whole exposure, learn to face the fear,
you know, stop doing my rituals. There was a lot
(24:06):
of stuff going on.
Speaker 2 (24:07):
There's a lot, right, because you had an OCD component
to it as well.
Speaker 3 (24:10):
Yeah, a lot of people who have anxiety disorders, they
all start to mush together. So it's like all I
panic disorder, but it can also look like OCD some
social anxiety clicks and they all mush together after it.
That's hard to separate it. Did.
Speaker 2 (24:22):
You have to sort of look back into your life
and discover where it came from.
Speaker 3 (24:28):
Here's where things get weird. So for people that are listening,
especially people who are into sort of personal development and
wellness that sort of stuff, this is where people like
me who specialize in anxiety disorder sound weird. Or you'll
say like, I doesn't know what he's talking about. Clearly
they was unhealed pain or trauma or something not always.
In fact, the data overwhelmingly says that it might make
(24:50):
you vulnerable to develop an anxiety disorder. But we have
to stop automatically saying that the way to fix it
is to dig deep into some sort of pain or root.
Cause you may have that kind of work to do
because we all have shit in our lives, right, we
all get to deal with their stuff. But really, I
did it without ever looking backwards. So yeah, now one day,
(25:13):
maybe I'm going to wake up and say, oh shit,
like that's why it happened, and I'm gonna have to
deal possible. I don't know, But in an anxiety disorder,
often the insistence that we have to do healing and
trauma and deep introspection work makes things worse. That can
be a harmful course of action for somebody who has
panic disorder or goraphobia, OCD, health anxiety, those sort of things.
(25:37):
I know that sounds ridiculous to say because people will
just automatically say, well, it's your feelings. You have to
fix your feelings and your emotions and your hurt and
your pain. Sure you do, that's part of being a
healthy as best you can. But that isn't how you
treat that problem.
Speaker 2 (25:50):
So where do you start an That's interesting because you're
enlightening me. I mean, I mean, I think I kind
of knew that you don't have to have deep trauma
to have anxiety. But I would always assume that it's
connected to something. Maybe it is, maybe it isn't. And
I guess the first knee jerk reaction is, Okay, let
me get into therapy, you know what I mean, because
(26:12):
I'm feeling this way. There's a reason for it. I
don't know what it is. Let me find out.
Speaker 3 (26:16):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (26:16):
But so if you're not going that route, you know,
as someone who makes this his life, what would you
sort of suggest, how do you get started to down
to the path of sort of recovery.
Speaker 3 (26:29):
Yeah, So here's the way we do that. First, we
always acknowledge that those things might exist, of course, but
I'm not trying to say that like, oh, nobody has trauma,
nobody is pain. We all do, right, we all have
pain of some kind. But the anxiety disorder, that state
is defined by why am I anxious? Because people think well,
if I can find why I'm anxious in panicking, it'll stop. No,
not when the reason why you're panicking is because you panic.
(26:52):
So for people that develop anxiety disorders, the source of
the anxiety and the fear is internal. It may have
been all triggered by something. That's true, we could probably
argue that, like something triggered me the first time. He
knows you were able to say, well, I was under
a lot of stress. I was trying to make it
in Hollywood, blah blah blah. Okay, and it boiled over
and you start having panic attacks. So the first thing
(27:12):
we got to do is, well, why am I afraid?
I'm afraid because I'm afraid. It's fear of fear. I'm
anxious because I'm anxious. I panic because I panic.
Speaker 2 (27:20):
That's it. I mean, it boiled down once once you're
in the cycle of insanity. It is that it is
you are panicking because you might panic, right, So I like.
Speaker 3 (27:32):
To look it is, yeah, and it's not intuitive because
as human being, you might think if I could find
the reason for the panic, it will stop happening. But
the reason for the panic is the panic in the.
Speaker 2 (27:45):
Yeah, and how about the moment. How about the moment
when you wake up in the morning and there's that
small window of like, oh my god, I'm I normal?
Am I normal?
Speaker 3 (27:55):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (27:55):
I think I'm normal. I think I'm normal. Oh my god,
I'm not feeling normal. Oh no, I'm not normal.
Speaker 3 (28:00):
You know that that is one hundred percent right when
that first when you open your eyes and you're now
conscious and it's just yeah, it's like four and a
half seconds of like, yeah, you got a small.
Speaker 2 (28:09):
Window of like, am I gotta feel normal?
Speaker 3 (28:10):
And then the train rolls into the station and your
screw yas man. I get that. You really nailed that
in a big way. I think I like to use
a fire analogy, So, like, imagine that your anxiety disorder
or your chronic continuing anxiety, whether it's panic attacks or
it becomes a goraphobia, afraid to leave the house, or
maybe you have OCD. You're battling with a steady stream
of intrusive or scary thoughts that you don't want and
(28:31):
they disturb you and they trigger you. Think of that
as a fire. So now there's a fire burning. Something
lit the fire, and you might have a fire on
your right side, and you could be holding a torch
on your left hand, like, here's the problem right here,
So now I blow out. I put the torch out,
but the fire is still burning. So that a fire
(28:52):
that has to you have to tend to that fire.
You'll also want to put the torch out if you
have one. Of course, putting out the match that lit
the fire does not put the fire out. Yep, it's
not intuitive. It makes no sense. And again this is
why even in the therapy world, many therapists don't specialize
in anxiety disorders. I'm in arguments all the time with
my colleagues over this.
Speaker 2 (29:12):
Are you really?
Speaker 3 (29:13):
Oh yeah, all the time, because people who don't specialize
in these things will often say, like they call it,
they're we're weird. We're like the engineers of the therapy
where the mechanics of oh, you're the exposures. Let's put
your feelings into a computer and we'll tell you what
to do. It's not that, but they joke on it.
Let's call good natured and professional ribbing. But most therapists
will ascribe to the things that resonate with them, which
is you have to do pain work and shadow work,
(29:36):
and we have to dig and get to your feelings.
Sure we do. Your feelings are really important. But the
problem in this state is that your feelings become everything,
even though those feelings aren't necessarily connected to reality, indicative
of reality, or making any kind of rational sense at all.
So if I did have some trauma or pain in
my past, and maybe I did, but that doesn't explain
(29:58):
why I was afraid of my own heartbeat.
Speaker 2 (30:08):
So then how do you What are the first steps?
You know, if you're if you once you diagnose it
self diagnosed, or you know, normally people will go to
the doctor and get checked out and they're like, okay,
I'm medically totally fine.
Speaker 3 (30:22):
Now that first step, by the way, that has to
be you got to do that.
Speaker 2 (30:27):
It is it's medical, meaning like go just make sure everything.
Speaker 3 (30:30):
Is good, yeah, make sure. Yeah. Always if you walk
into my therapy, we're gonna say if you have you
been medically cleared? Have you been by an because we
wanted we got to treat the whole.
Speaker 2 (30:37):
Person, right, Yes, So now we're medically cleared, and now okay,
I I can't. I can't get out of my house.
I'm gonna throw up every time I leave. I've I'm
anxious about being anxious. You know, what are our first
steps to sort of, you know, getting through this thing. Well,
if it's not therapy, I'm not saying don't go to therapy.
I'm just saying, if if we're not going to go
to therapy, you know, what are the steps?
Speaker 3 (30:59):
Okay, So the first thing that we would use even
in therapy, which anybody can access. And now you talk
about things like social media. This is a lovely thing
about social media.
Speaker 2 (31:06):
Right.
Speaker 3 (31:06):
It's good because we would start what it's called psycho education. First.
If I'm your therapist, I'm going to explain what an
anxiety disorder is. I'm going to explain that you're now
afraid of being afraid. It's fear of fear panic because
you panic. And when you explain that to somebody off
and it's like a light bulb moment, like, oh my god,
you're right, that's exactly right. I'm afraid of when I
have the thought about stabbing my dog. I don't want
(31:26):
to stab my dog, but I can't stop the thought.
It triggers me. Yeah, you're afraid of the thought. You're
not afraid of anything with the thought. So first we
psycho education explain some of the stuff you and I
are talking about right now. After psycho education, then this
is where it turns left again for most people. I
am all for your meditation practice and your journaling practice.
Clearly that's an important part of wellness for you, and
(31:46):
I would think it's a great Those are tools that
a lot of people can I use them too, right,
But we have to start to turn somebody away from
I need a way to calm it down. I need
to find techniques to calm myself self down. Because if
you are afraid of your internal experience of panic or anxiety,
or thoughts or emotions, if you immediately look for ways
(32:09):
to squash them. So as soon as I start to
get triggered, I have to tap my cheek. I have
to get my lavender oil. I have to do this.
I have to meditate. Are literally teaching your limbic system. Yeah,
keep sounding the alarm. My own pain is now a danger,
So please keep alerting me to my own thoughts. Keep
it coming, keep it coming. And then you get stuck
on a treadmill of like I just try to manage
my triggers and manage my symptoms. You can do it
(32:32):
that way. Some people manage to manage it enough to
be functional. But we have to start dismantling that ability,
that knee jerk reaction and say, well, even if you
do panic, or even if you have a scary thought
about stabbing your dog, for instance, you can handle that distress.
You know, this is a big, big leap for a
lot of people, but handle it, and then you learn
that you don't have to fear the internal state. Even
(32:55):
if I panic, I'm okay. Though most people would think, well,
if you haven't attacks, you try to learn how to
not panic. No, no, you should probably try to learn
how to get better at having a panic attack. Then
if you're not afraid of it anymore, then there is
no it anymore. So you might still be anxious. I'm
a human being. I can be anxious some days. I'm
(33:15):
just not afraid of the anxious state anymore. So there
is no it for there's nothing to come back, there's
no relapse for me to matter.
Speaker 2 (33:21):
How do you how do you work on? How do
you not be afraid of it? You know, I mean
without experience. Essentially, it's like you need the reps that
thank you.
Speaker 3 (33:31):
This was worth the price of admission right there. What
Oliver just said one hundred percent only experience, because the
part of your brain that controls these functions does not
listen to words, memes, mantras, sayings, song lyrics, poetry, all
lovely things that we all enjoy and enrich our lives.
But that part of your brain does not understand I
am a warrior, this too shall pass, This too shall pass.
(33:52):
It is okay, I am strong, I am light. It
is not listening. It's like making a phone call with
somebody that doesn't own a phone. It's not even ring.
I don't even know your call it. So it only
understands experience behavior. So the only way to learn that
you don't have You can't just decide to be not
be afraid. So people are like, oh, I have to
just not fear it, Well you can. You can learn
(34:13):
that you don't have to fear it. How do you
do that? Experience, I stopped trying to save myself from myself.
I wind up. Okay, I have no other conclusion to draw.
Then I don't have to fear this. It was unique
that saved me. I just it goes away if I
leave it alone. Yeah, it's a big it's a big ask,
don't get me wrong, moody and people are like, like,
(34:33):
what is he talking about? How is that possible?
Speaker 2 (34:34):
Of course? I mean I can even go there, you know.
I mean, even when I'm on medication, I'll have my
there's certain moments, you know, where you can go down
a bit of a rabbit hole and I'm like, well,
I'm not going to die. I know I'm not going
to die. I know I'm just maybe going through a
little something right here. But then, you know, you can
you can even trick yourself to thinking, well, maybe this
is maybe this is the time that I I am dying,
(34:58):
you know what I mean. Like, even someone who is
a fucking salty veteran of anxiety, sometimes I'll be like, uh,
wait a minute, what if I actually am having a
heart attack?
Speaker 3 (35:08):
Now I feel you. Oh man, I get that so
much because I have the temerity to write books about
this shit and like change my whole life to become
a therapist. Like that's how recovered I think I am.
It takes a pretty big set right, all right, Even
my brain many years after that episode of my life
is over and I do not have an anxiety disorder,
(35:28):
nor am I afraid of my anxiety. If I'm in
a really anxious state. There is still a little part
of my brain that will just like.
Speaker 2 (35:34):
You know, there's gonna be a stroke.
Speaker 3 (35:35):
This is hip, dude, so they're gonna be there, right,
And I'm like, yeah up, man like, but I've learned
that in that moment, as a human being, you can't
help but be startled and brace against that one moment. Yep,
after that moment, I've done it enough, right, say well,
I got to roll the dice here, I'm gonna have
(35:55):
to just roll. Yes, I'm like, all right, yeah, I go.
It's the recovery from an anxiety disorder is the shorten
amount of time between oh my god, which everybody has
and oh well the exactly time is just really short
now it used to be months. That's great, But it
sounds like you're doing the same thing.
Speaker 2 (36:11):
Yeah, oh for sure, Yeah for sure. I mean without
a doubt. What about empathy? You know, I know empathy
is a good word. You know, someone who can feel it.
So empathy can go off the rails. I think too,
when someone feels too much, you know, I think I
feel like I teeter on that a little bit, like
I take in a lot of feelings, you know, like
I don't know, I care about people's feelings that you know.
(36:33):
Do you think sensitivity plays into it?
Speaker 3 (36:37):
Does that? Yeah? So personality traits that make you more
introspective or where you are, we would call it neuroticism.
That doesn't mean disease. It just means that you're inwardly
focused and you put a lot of stock on your
internal experience, like your feelings and your thoughts and your emotions.
It does make you vulnerable because in situations like the
one I'm describing or the one you and I have
(36:57):
both lived, the way out is to stop obeying every
thought and emotion you have. It will it will drag
you up and down the block like blooding, because it
just keeps telling you to do stuff to be safe.
But you're already safe, So it's it's tough. If you're
wired to honor and feel and hug those emotions, every
thought is sacred, you have an increased vulnerability of developing
(37:19):
this kind of problem because it seems ridiculous to disobey
your thoughts. What do you mean my thoughts? They're very important,
not always brains make beautiful, beautiful, beautiful stuff, and they're
super valuable for us. They can also make total shit,
and we have to learn what they are making shan.
Speaker 2 (37:33):
Yeah, well that's that's cognitive behavioral therapy, right, that's your thoughts,
and it's catastrophizing, it's just creating, you know, these kind
of scenarios, these false narratives that are just completely causing
you distress and pain, physical pain in your body, when
when that hasn't even happened yet. Yeah, you know what
(37:56):
I mean. One of the funny it has even happened yet.
Speaker 3 (37:58):
Yeah, that's true. One of the funniest things online I
ever saw with somebody posted you know, anxiety is basically
conspiracy theories about yourself, which is for one like that
killed me, I stay safe.
Speaker 2 (38:08):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (38:09):
The interesting thing about cognitive behavioral therapy is it is
the most effective the let's say there's a big umbrella.
CBT has a big umbrella now, and it is the
most effective treatment we have. Barn Up, it's not even
a question. So that's that's a fact. That's not a question.
But yeah, tea in the old school was all about, well,
we teach you that your thoughts are irrational, and then
(38:29):
you change your thoughts, and so we hear things change
your thoughts change, choose your thoughts. Wisely, like me that
are more third wave oriented, we say you can't. You
don't get to choose your thoughts. You can always choose
what to think, you can never choose what not to think.
So just knowing that your thought about the poison orange
juice is irrational doesn't change shit, because it's still a
powerful physical response. So lean we lead with behavioral change,
(38:54):
informed by that, the education that tells you that your
thoughts are irrational and you really are safe. The thought
change and the emotion change follows behind. That's in the
last twenty five or thirty years, early seasons. We change
your thoughts, we change your life. No, no, we expose
your thoughts, you change your behavior, You change your thoughts,
change your life.
Speaker 2 (39:12):
Right, and then there's the reframing sort of of those
thoughts as those really sort of irrational thoughts.
Speaker 3 (39:18):
Right, But like one of the common things would be
people that have anxiety disorders live by what if, like
you said, well what if I am actually having a
heart attack? Or well what if I go to that
birthday party and I panic and I make a scene. Well, now,
common sense approach would be, well that's an irrational fear.
What if you have a great time, whereas I might say, well,
you might have a panic attack, but even if you do,
(39:39):
you'll be okay. That's much more valuable than saying that's irrational.
You might have a great time maybe or maybe you won't,
but either way you can be okay.
Speaker 2 (39:47):
Yeah, if I go and I throw up in front
of thee with the party, like, no one's going to
really give a shit.
Speaker 3 (39:52):
And even if they do, sometimes unpleasant experiences, right, can
we do it? Yeah?
Speaker 1 (39:57):
Yeah, Well it's almost funny because it is just fear
of exposure, of looking bad, of just being that person
you know that everyone might talk about or causing that scene,
the avoidance.
Speaker 3 (40:13):
Of internal experiences. I never I don't want to feel bad.
Speaker 2 (40:17):
Oh god. I when I used to leave the house,
which by the way, I wasn't the one to sit inside,
like I would just come. I would just fight through everything, clearly,
but I would. I would as I'm walking down the street,
I would look for places to throw up that no
one would see me. I mean literally, I'd be like no,
I mean it was like the terminator sort of scanning
(40:38):
where to pew grid, like only three people over there,
you know, I mean it was crazy.
Speaker 3 (40:46):
I find that fascinating. Makers The range of responses people
have are huge, Like, that's no joke, man, that's a
lot of a lot of steel backbone in that.
Speaker 2 (41:04):
So what about your kids? Did you did you? Were
you going through this when you're when you had kids,
or you were through it?
Speaker 3 (41:10):
No, when I was in the last phase there, I
was medicated when my kids were born, so I was
not anticipating it was not good. So again my personal experience,
I'm not judging anybody else's, but that was the reason
why I stopped taking the meds. You know, I wrote
about that in my first book, which could get for free.
We'll talk about that. Yeah, but it was an incident
with my kids when they were like four and two
(41:31):
years old. My four year old said something that I
will take to my fucking grave. I'm like, okay, this
isn't okay. I have something has to change. I was.
I was at my doctors the next day. I need
stuff to oh wow. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (41:42):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (41:43):
So but then I was going through all the crazy
withdrawal when the kids were little, and when I was doing.
Speaker 2 (41:48):
And how was that just trying to be a father
and you know what I mean, like kids, we're you
just have to fight through it though, right, and the
other alternative is to sit in bed.
Speaker 3 (41:57):
But couldn't do that right, I felt like such. I
don't know if you ever experienced this, but I really
felt like the worst father ever. Like, not only was
I failing on a daily basis because I was afraid
to do like regular life shit that nobody thinks about,
but I start to feel like a failure. I became
a motivator for me, like, no, no, no, I can't,
we're not doing this.
Speaker 2 (42:18):
Mm hmm. Along those lines of people who might be listening,
who are sort of suffering with children and trying to
sort of be a you know, provide emotional, you know,
support for their children or to be parents, how do
you navigate that? I mean, first of all, you might
feel like a failure, but I guess you're not a failure.
You were going through what you're going through to try
to be to try to get better essentially.
Speaker 3 (42:40):
I mean I can go by my own personal experience.
I mean, my kids watched me get better, so they did. Yeah,
and we've talked about it openly now that they're older,
they're you know, they're young adults now, so we've talked
about it. Openly and clearly. I've written books about it.
I tell the world my experience, so I'm not hiding it.
But they watched me get better. I think it can
be tough if you feel like you can't get better.
(43:01):
And my only coping strategy is extreme avoidance, whether it's
staying in the house or ritualizing my life very tightly
to stay keep from panicing and get too anxious. That
could be tough because the kids can see that. But
it's okay kids to see you struggle like because they're
going to struggle too in life. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (43:17):
Yeah. And when when when Wilder was going through it,
you know, I told him, I said, do you it
was this summer? I think it was. It was literally
I was only a summer removed from my third bout
of this. And and I said, did you know that
that whole summer we had, I was going through my
own insane, intense anxiety And he didn't know.
Speaker 3 (43:40):
You didn't know, right, my kids?
Speaker 2 (43:41):
No, because I hit it very very well, you know.
I mean I was upbeating and I mean, oh my god,
you know, but he didn't. And I said, dude, I
was really struggling.
Speaker 3 (43:52):
You know, he probably was surprised to hear that.
Speaker 2 (43:54):
I bet, Oh yeah he was. He was, And you know,
I just think that related to be able to relate
to him that way and let him know that sort
of I was feeling these things as well. Who knows
if it helped them or not, but.
Speaker 3 (44:09):
Maybe, I mean, you know what, you know, you were
able to understand that, like you normalize the experience, Graham.
It doesn't mean I have even had My dad had
it too, Grandma, Yeah, it's good.
Speaker 2 (44:18):
To have your kids. Have your kids been through anything
like that, or have they suffered at all.
Speaker 3 (44:22):
I'll tell you a really funny story, which this is
so indicative of how parents freak out, like I'm going
to give it to my kids or I'm a fan
teaching my kids to have panic disorder. So, uh, my
youngest was in high school and the phone rings one
day and it's her. She's at school, and I'm my god,
I got to answer that she's calling me from the high school.
It's up mmm, and you know, as kids would do.
(44:43):
She's a great student and all graduating in top of
the class, but she had not done her homework or whatever.
She forgot the study, she forgot an assignment and she's
standing outside her English class and she's freaking out because
I forgot to finish the paper. Oh my god, and
the pressure of the grades and getting into college. You
know that stuff, right, Yeah, yeah, And she had a
panic attack. She said, I think I'm having PANICTCT. She's
panting a little, and in my mind, I'm thinking, Okay,
(45:03):
first I got to coach you through it. The anxiety.
Dude's going to coach you through it, and then we're
gonna sit home and teach you all about panic disorder.
She ended the panic attack. I texted about ten minutes later.
I'm like, okay, She's like, yeah, I'm good. Thanks. She
never mentioned it again. She did not need to talk
about it ever. Again, she is the typical Western adult experience.
She had a panic attack, able to understand why it
(45:26):
was externalized. So even the word anxiety, like oh, I'm
really anxious because like we're having money problems, or maybe
how to fight my partner or the kids are driving
me crazy. People know I'm anxious because they don't internalize it.
She never internalized it was a panic attack.
Speaker 2 (45:41):
I'm like, I think that's an important lesson. Honestly, It's like,
if you have a panic attack. Just let it be
a panic attack and don't worry about having another one.
I know that that's tough, easier said than done, such.
Speaker 3 (45:54):
An adverse experience for so many people.
Speaker 2 (45:55):
Yeah right.
Speaker 3 (45:56):
One of the things that's tough about that, though, is
in the culture we're in right now, especially online, wellness instantly.
Speaker 2 (46:03):
Be bombard answering my question.
Speaker 3 (46:04):
Okay, we're always being bombarded with messages that we should
be able to hack our brains, hack our bodies, happiness,
only vibrate positivity, and every negative experience could be avoided
with boundaries air quotes, fucking boundary and you know, and
somehow there's a technique to always be happy or fix
your negative experience. I believe we weren't allowed to have
(46:27):
negative experiences. It's full of them, so we better to
deal with them right out of popular stands though.
Speaker 2 (46:33):
No, no, but but an important one, you know, because
everything is fucking you know, like roses and rainbows like that,
that is not life. Yeah, yeah, exactly, And that's leading
me to sort of my like, you know, we're getting
to the end. But just anxiety today it is in
your opinion, is it just labeled like ADHD because I'm
(46:57):
sure I had it, but no one labeled it back
in the day. Now everyone has ADHD or are do
you think we are? Actually we're actually a more anxious
society because anxiety now is like almost like a buzzword.
I mean, I mean everyone is anxious, and it's like, oh, yeah,
I have anxiety. It's almost like a hot right now.
Speaker 3 (47:17):
I don't disagree with you, right, so tread lightley here,
But yeah, I don't disagree with you. Everyone is anxious
because you know what, anxiety is a normal part of
the human experience. It just is. Everybody's always experienced anxiety
from time to time for various reasons. It's a good
thing that we talk openly about those things now because
we didn't used to talk about it openly. But we
(47:39):
sometimes talk so openly about it that we start to
misapply it or twisted a little bit. So it's kind
of difficult. There's a big difference. You know, I have anxiety, Okay,
Well why do you have anxiety? Well, my exams coming.
I don't know what the hell I'm going to do
with my future, Like, I don't know what I'm gonna die.
I'm lost, I don't know who I am. Okay, You're right,
(48:00):
you got anxiety. But that's not a disorder, that's not
a pathology, that's not a it doesn't necessarily need to
be fixed. You're working through your life like people do.
The person who feels that they cannot have stop having
disturbing thoughts about having sex with a clergyman, and that
happens to people out of ocd's. That's something that you
(48:24):
do have to work on. So the way, we just
overuse the words so much that I think they start
to lose their meaning or their value sometimes, so we
have to be careful.
Speaker 2 (48:33):
Yeah, yeah, But do you think that we are becoming
a more anxious society generally because of technology, because of comparison,
because of I'm not good enough.
Speaker 3 (48:46):
Yeah, it's really hard to find some solid ground living
in a place like we're in right now. Everyone, it's
a fucking megaphone, and I'm not afraid to scream into
what we were not designed to hear that twenty four
to seven, which is not Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's just
it's just so interesting because it's it's evolutionary. I mean,
(49:07):
we are now evolving as a different kind of species
than we we would have without all of this. These
things are so informative, and I would just urge everyone
to go check you out Anxious Truth to podcast and
the feed and the books and all of it.
Speaker 2 (49:24):
And why don't you want it? Before I go? Whyt
you to tell your book? What books you got?
Speaker 3 (49:28):
Well? I wrote? I actually wrote three books. The first
one is called an Anxiety Story. So if you really
want to hear the gory teal details of what I lived,
that one to giveaway. You're going to cite the Anxious
Truth dot com. You can get that just follow the links.
You can get a PDF or an MP three is free.
Then I wrote I wrote this book which is called
The Anxious Truth. This book you can't it's just not
a video podcast, but I.
Speaker 2 (49:46):
Brought it is it is there's we we we post, so.
Speaker 3 (49:49):
You post the video, you know. So I wrote a
book called The Anxious Truth that is geared for people
who are dealing with anxiety to sort of recovery. And
then I wrote one called seven Percent Lower, which is
about using a trick of just slowing your ass down
to avoid getting into that like frantic. I have to
fix myself.
Speaker 2 (50:03):
So yeah, when you say slow yourself down, briefly, is
what is that you mean.
Speaker 3 (50:08):
Seven percent lower. Is this I know what sounds like
the Dan Harris ten percent happier thing. In fact, I'm like, hmmm,
gonna come be like, sorry, Dan, I didn't mean that.
I came up for myself. When I used to was
doing exposure work and my exposure therapy, back when I
was doing my recovery work, I would have to remind
myself slow down, slow down. I'm like, just go seven
percent slower. That's enough. I can't measure it, but it
(50:29):
would remind me when I wanted to run and rush
through anxious situations, it would remind me no, no, no, no,
slow down, slow down. It's a really powerful trick.
Speaker 2 (50:38):
So it's that that's important. I'm a mindfulness So kids
like advice that you might have when your children are
going through something like this, you know when there's a ten, twelve, thirteen, fourteen,
even fifteen sixteen, because it can be so debilitating for
the little ones. You know, they're the teenagers who don't
know what the fuck it is. And you know, again,
(51:01):
this idea of appearance and looking normal and looking good
and being cool, and it can weigh on you without anxiety,
like do you have any sort of advice on how
to deal with your children who might be going through
having a bouts of anxiety.
Speaker 3 (51:18):
Yeah, it's very similar to what I've been saying the
whole time, but it's difficult. I'm a parent, you're a parent,
you get this. So when your kid is under duress
and they're they're freaking out and they're clearly stressed and suffering,
we want them to feel better. Like, it's really hard
to not want to fix your kid, of course. Yeah.
(51:38):
The thing that could be kind of difficult, though, is
when your kid is afraid of their own thoughts and
their own body and their own feelings and sensations. The
best approach is to try to help them understand that
because I totally understand that this is legit scary, Like
it's not just all in your head. You know that
was not just on your head, nor was it in
your son's head. It was real, legit physical sensations and fear.
(52:02):
And I know that's really scary, But I also know
that you're safe, and I'm gonna hang out here with
you and while you work through this, and I know
that what we want to do is try to teach
them this is how you calm down This is how
you ground, this is how you prevent, This is how
you manage your triggers and stay away from triggers. But
that tends to perpetuate the problem because it says, yeah,
(52:24):
never let myself ever feel this. I have to prevent,
whereas the most valuable, though difficult to teach lesson is
the one that says, even that scary feeling is actually safe.
So let's try and work through the other side of it,
and it's gonna be really good for you. Then you
won't be so afraid of it. Every time you do that,
it'll get less scary. And I'm gonna I know you
(52:45):
can do it. I ain't gonna let anything bad happen
to you. That's what I would tell them.
Speaker 2 (52:48):
Yeah, Pars, great, dude, Well this has been so fun, man, amazing.
I've been looking forward to this for a minute, and
I appreciate all your insights and I think you're doing good. Shit.
I mean, I love it, And I know that you
said that, you know earlier on it was you know,
it's hard to make it's hard to feel better when
(53:08):
you're going through your shit, meaning like there's not a
lot that anyone can say to you that's going to
make you feel better, you know. But I will say,
and I'm not just blown smoke, but you know your
your Instagram feed, it does. I mean it really does,
because you can chuckle at a lot of these things
(53:29):
where you're like, oh my god, that's me, you know,
do that and and and and there's such a you know,
when you don't feel like you're alone, or if there
is a meme or something that you put up there
that touches you, you know, that makes you chuckle, it
almost makes you smile and laugh because it's so spot
(53:53):
on there you do there, you you do feel some
sort of alleviation. You are at ease a little bit more.
Speaker 3 (54:00):
So.
Speaker 2 (54:00):
Thank you, you know, I think that it does help anyway,
Thank you brother. That was great. That was a long
time coming. I've wanted to talk to Drew for a minute.
I know I've been just like pushing all of this stuff,
but it really is from someone who's been through the shit,
you know, with my own anxiety. Coming across his you know,
(54:25):
his Instagram feed was amazing and immediately I got to
talk to this guy obviously extremely insightful. I love everyone.
I love y' all for listening to me and just me, Peace,
Hi.
Speaker 2 (00:05):
I am Kate Hudson and my name is Oliver Hudson.
We wanted to do something that highlighted our relationship and
what it's like to be siblings. We are a sibling railvalry.
Speaker 3 (00:21):
No, no, sibling. You don't do that with your mouth.
Speaker 2 (00:30):
Revelry.
Speaker 1 (00:33):
That's good.
Speaker 2 (00:39):
Oliver Rutland Hudson here back on sibling revelry. Yeah, I'm alone.
Do I feel sad? Yeah, we're a little sad. I
missed my partner in crime. But you know what it is,
what it is, and I am I'll take over, you know,
(01:01):
It's what I do. But this fear and sadness and
this anxiety is a perfect segue into my guest, Drew
lince Lata. This is someone who I found on Instagram.
(01:22):
And if you've listened to this podcast, you know that
I have suffered through anxiety and some depression, and I
have dealt with it in my own ways, feeling extremely
alone in it in my twenties. I'm never afraid to
talk about it, though as I've gotten older, realizing that
(01:45):
especially nowadays, everyone fucking suffers from some sort of anxiety.
I'm medicated and I'm on Lexapro because of it all
that stuff. If you listen to the show, you know
that anyway I found I didn't find my son found
Drew because he was going through his own anxiety, which
(02:07):
I'm going to talk about. I won't get into it now,
but he's the one Wilder is the one who said, Dad,
you should see this on Instagram. And I just thought
that he's so spot on with this stuff and it's
so incredibly relatable and it just hit home for me
and I wanted to talk to him. So I'm very
(02:28):
excited to pour my heart out and to really get
into the depths of it. And I can't wait to
hear about sort of his own journey because obviously this
guy must be fucking anxious as shit to create an
Instagram page about it. Anyway, let's bring him on, my man, Drew,
(02:50):
open up that door, please, whatd on man? What's going on?
Very happy to be talking to you. I know we've
been trying to do this for a minute now, and
I know you've got your Instagram page called The Anxious
Truth and a podcast, correct, right. You know I didn't
discover you. My son did. My son is now sixteen,
(03:11):
but this was a few years back, and you know
he was going through something, and of course I knew
what it was because I have my own history with
anxiety starting my twenties, probably starting well before that, but
it struck me hard in my twenties and then throughout
(03:32):
my life. So I knew what was happening.
Speaker 3 (03:34):
You know.
Speaker 2 (03:35):
He would say, he would tell me, you know, I
don't feel real. This doesn't feel real, which is that
sort of disassociation, you know, kind of vibe. And then
he got chest stuff. He felt like he couldn't breathe.
He would go on a bike ride and think that
he was going to sort of die in his hard
(03:56):
you know. And I was like, I know what this is,
you know. And and so I kept him home from
school for weeks because he just couldn't go to school.
And I had him right in his journal, and I
had him, you know, meditate, and I worked with him
and you know whatever made him feel good. But I
knew what. I knew what was going on. One day
he comes to me and he goes, Dad, like, look
(04:17):
at this, I think you might like it. And it
was your your feet on Instagram. So he discovered you
and I started flipping through him, like, man, this dude
is so spot on with the true feelings of anxiety,
and you use it in a way that is not
(04:38):
so serious. Yes it's serious, but you have fun with it,
you know, And I think that's smart. I'm well versed
in my feelings and I know how to get out
of him now. But so I thank my son for
finding you, because you've honestly helped me just feeling like
(04:59):
you're like, I'm not not alone, even though you know
you're not alone. Oh, you know, thanks man. And so
to start, just give me an idea of where this
came from. How fucking anxious were you that you wanted
to start a career out of it.
Speaker 3 (05:13):
I was anxious, all right. I see where this is going.
I'm good with that. So, yeah, it came from you know,
many years of my life twenty five plus years on
and off where I suffered in a big way with
multiple anxiety disorders and things like go CD and clinical depression,
and you know, it sucks. It's I was pretty anxious.
I was frozen in fear in my own bathroom, afraid
(05:34):
to leave the house, couldn't be home alone. I used
to do really lovely things like not be the first
person to open the orange juice in the house, you know,
because probably poisoned. So we'll let someone else that I
love find out for me, Like, come on, brain really
m hm. So yeah, I've done all the things. I've
been there, the depression thing where like nothing means anything
anymore and the world has no color and you just
(05:56):
want to lay in bed and you don't care anymore.
And like, I've been through all of those things, and
you know, I've been through different iterations of that over
many years. And the genesis of the whole podcast in
books and becoming a therapist thing was when I the
third time around, like, Okay, I kind of know what
to do here, because I always have been a bit
of a nerd when it comes to like behaviorism and
learning theory and cognition. So I knew what the thing
(06:19):
to do was, but it just took me really long
time to actually do it. And I met a bunch
of friends, like in the early days of YouTube, who
were going through the same thing. We would exchange a
little YouTube videos together about ten or twelve people, and
that built a little tiny community. And then when I
got better, I just felt like I should probably sort
of pay this forward. I guess I don't know, I'll
help me. Let me like pay it forward into the
(06:39):
internet or something. So I bought a four dollars app
on my crappy like first gen iPhone, talked to nobody
in a podcast that I knew nobody was listening to,
and like, here I am that it turned into this.
Speaker 2 (06:50):
And this is your life now, I mean, this is
your business.
Speaker 3 (06:52):
Yeah. So from the mid ninety I mean my undergraduate
training is an architecture, and then from the like mid
nineties all the way through until recently, I've I was
an internet guy like data centers and networks and stuff
like that. And yeah, finally was just this is ridiculous.
Why am I still caring if anybody's email works or
how fast your website? This is clearly what I should
be doing.
Speaker 2 (07:10):
Mm hmmm did you say you were a therapist?
Speaker 3 (07:13):
Yeah, well I'm right now finishing my training, so I'm
you know, working God, Yeah, I just did you know? Finally,
And it's such a strange progression too, because for so
many years I I started the podcast, and we had
like all kinds of online forms and Facebook are just
helping people out, you know, it was nothing formal, and
it got and bigger and people would say, you know,
you should write a book. Yeah, I want to write
a book. Why do I have to write a book?
(07:34):
Then I wrote a couple of books, and then everybody
would say, why are you not a f You should
be a therapist. No, I don't need to be a therapist.
Listen to people when they book, man like, people know stuff.
So yeah, I went back to school for my grad
training a couple of years ago and I'm finishing up now.
Speaker 2 (07:47):
So dude, that's an amazing it's amazing. I would say
that if I wasn't in the entertainment business, I would
want to be a therapist. I mean, I love talking
about my own feelings. I love hearing other people's issues,
and you know, I mean the human condition to me
is so I mean, it just it's incredible that we're
(08:09):
all made of the same things and can feel so
differently about the world. And so going back, you know,
when did you experience your first sort of bout with this,
and you know, give us sort of a bit of
a timeline on how this happened, how you recognized what
it was, how you got through, and how you got
(08:31):
through it, and then how you manage every day because
correct me if I'm wrong, But it doesn't just go away,
you know what I mean? I meaning like there is
always for me personally. I know how to deal with
it now. I have the tools, you know, and I'm
on medication by the way, But it feels like it
(08:55):
I don't know, it feels like it will just never
be completely gone and out of my system.
Speaker 3 (09:00):
Yeah, we could definitely talk about that. The you know,
for me, it all started. I was nineteen. I was
home for spring break from college and I was hanging
out in my house that I grew up in, like
everything couldn't have been any better, and I had the
first panic attack of my life. I had no idea
what the hell was going on. I literally the first sensation.
So when your son had said it feels not real,
(09:23):
that was my first boom. All of a sudden, it
just just hit me and everything wasn't real. I'd never
felt that before, and I legit man like, I legit
interpreted that as well. It's been in pretty good nineteen years.
I guess this is how I go out. I thought,
for sure, this is what it feels like when you died.
What the hell did I know? So that was super scary.
I had a panic attack that first, and I did
(09:44):
not know what the hell it was, and then instantaneously
became afraid to have it happen again, because it's a
nasty experience to have, right, So the next morning, I
was still so super shaking, and I was shaky, and
I was really worried that it was going to happen again.
So sure enough happened again and again and again and again.
And so I was kind of a textbook example of
somebody who has a panic attack, which most adults will
(10:07):
have at least one or two in their life in
the West. But I was one of those lucky people
for whom it turned quickly into a textbook case of
an anxiety disorder. That's where you become I'm anxious because
I'm anxious, which is not intuitive for a lot of people.
We can get into that if you want, because the
conventional mental health wisdom is often turned on its head
in the case of anxiety disorders. Yeah, and I developed that.
(10:29):
I got super afraid to go out and be alone.
It was just within a few months the wheels fell
off on me.
Speaker 2 (10:35):
What were your symptoms? Oh, is anxiety you know? Well?
Speaker 3 (10:39):
Yeah, yeah, the depersonalization derealization dissociative state. Right, so we
could have PDR. My heart would pound constantly. I would
feel it in you know, the pulse in your ear.
I didn't have really stomach issues, which most people do have,
but that I had sort of dizzy. Yeah, a lot
of people have to run right for the bathroom. I
get that's really calm, and I was lucky I didn't
have that, but the dizziness sort of off balance feeling.
(11:03):
Then I would fix it by like deep breathing, and
then I would accidentally hyperventilate, so I get pins and
needles and my hands would lock and my face would
go numb and that would freak out or it was
just a mess.
Speaker 2 (11:15):
And that was how old were you? Was this when
you were nineteen?
Speaker 3 (11:18):
That was nineteen. Yeah, I was nineteen, and I was
like bulletproof today before that day. Yeah, never got nervous.
I was one of those like really annoying, high achieving
guys that never studied and still wasn't top of the
class and blah blah blah. Never got nervous about anything.
And then the wheels, the roof just caved in. And
then the span of a few months.
Speaker 2 (11:36):
Were you a drinker at all or no, I was,
I mean meaning like after that. I'm not attributing it
to but after did you try to maybe like get
a little buzz to see all that.
Speaker 3 (11:45):
No, that's a very common experience. A lot of people
do do that. I just didn't do that for some reason.
I can't. I'm not claiming any high ground on that.
It just wasn't something that I turned to. But of
course you start running the doctors. That was the first
thing is something's clearly wrong with me. And you know,
I was told I my GP at the time, like oh,
you have like free floating anxiety. He gave me an
anti histamine, which this will call me now now if
(12:08):
I take a ben adrill. If I took it right now,
in about five minutes, his interview was over.
Speaker 2 (12:12):
Yeah, yeah, you're gone.
Speaker 3 (12:13):
Yeah. But back then he gave me an anti histamine
like take this when you feel anxious, and it was
like bullets bouncing off of Superman, like an anti history
panic attacks. It didn't work, and it was a rough,
rough experience. What helped me that first time was I
was interning at a big defense contractor here on Long Island,
and the nurse the company nurse. This is like old school.
(12:34):
They had a company nurse, like in the building. Who
does that now, right? I remember I would you know,
she saw how nervous I was. She was so nice
to me, and she would talk to me about it,
and she said, oh, I know a psychologist locally. Go
check him out. So I did, and he handed me
a book by a woman named Claire Week. Doctor Claire Weeks.
She was an Australian physician who she passed many many
(12:56):
years ago, but she was the first person to sort
of bring these things to the general look back in
the fifties and sixties and seventies. And I read her
book and twice in about fourteen hours, and I'm like,
this woman is clearly talking to me. I had a
name for it, I knew what it was, and I
kind of got better for like ten years, and then
(13:16):
the wheels fall off again. And then I medicated to
get better, and that was good because it fixed my
depression or got me out of depression. Then it caused
all kinds of problems and I had to come off
to that medication finally, like years after that, and that
was when I did the sort of exposure based cognitive
behavioral recovery to get Yeah, finally get passed it once and.
Speaker 2 (13:35):
For so from nineteen how long did it last before
you were back for your feeling good again?
Speaker 3 (13:50):
That was over the summer. I saw that psychologist I'll
never forget. I sat with him for about five or
ten minutes. I told him it was what I was experiencing.
He was like, hang on, He left the room. He
came back, He handed me the book. Read this call
me if you need another appointment. It was amazing. He
was so nice to me.
Speaker 2 (14:03):
It was that quick. It was that that.
Speaker 3 (14:05):
He said, read this book, call me if you need
to see me again. And I think I saw him
once or twice, and I remember I saw him the
second time just to say I can't believe she's writing
about me, and he explained panic attacks were and that helped.
I just needed to know what it.
Speaker 2 (14:18):
Was, so that first bout didn't last too long.
Speaker 3 (14:22):
I'm gonna say spring break is why, like April, and
I was feeling pretty good by time I went back.
So September, right, yeah, somewhere that neighborhood that was you know,
that was a tough six months, but yeah, knowing what
it was helped me. But get over it for the
first time.
Speaker 2 (14:37):
It's so funny because your experience is not dissimilar to mine,
where I was going into a club with a friend
and he was ahead of me, and everything was great.
I was in my early twenties. Everything my life was
seemingly fine.
Speaker 3 (14:51):
You know.
Speaker 2 (14:51):
I was trying to be an actor. I mean again,
when you go back into the psychology of why these
I might be happening to you, because of course it's
stemming from something you know, and trying to be an actor,
trying to live up to, you know, my own expectations.
But my parents are who they are, you know, they're
(15:11):
famous actors and can I make this? And my sister's
famous and can I do it? And am I good enough?
And you know, self esteem issues, all of these things.
Of course, in the moment, I wasn't even knowing about that,
but boom, it hit me like a fucking train, like
a heart attack. I don't know where it comes from,
out of nowhere, and I went down to a knee
and I was like, I'm going to die on the
(15:32):
sidewalk in like Hollywood, you know what I mean. And
I reached out my john. I try to call my friend,
but he couldn't. He was already gone. And I came
to I was like, okay, Jesus, and I go in.
I have like a vodka. I'm trying to like settle down.
I'm like, what the fuck was that? And then again
same thing. It's this panic of having a panic attack,
(15:55):
it's this is this gonna happen to me again? And
that just led me down the rabbit hole. Now for me,
it was a lot of stomach stuff and disassociation. But
I would throw up, like I would go outside, and
if I would go outside and try to get into
the world, I would I would puke. And so I
would try to fight through it. I'd surf and like
be throwing up and my I didn't want to stay home,
(16:18):
but I did journaling and meditation, and I eventually got
through it. Same thing. Went to the doctors, did stress test,
did my heart, did everything everything is fine, and you know,
eventually got through it through meditation and journal writing and
then I went on Selexa. But then I had another.
Then I had another bout, and then I've had three
(16:40):
real big big bouts.
Speaker 3 (16:41):
Yeah me too. I went through three of it three times.
Speaker 2 (16:44):
Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah. And the second one, how did
that play out for you.
Speaker 3 (16:49):
It was interesting because it always would come on when
things were going great. So the second time, I was
in the middle of the first dot com boom, you know,
when the Internet. I'd shifted away from design and construction,
like I'm going to be an internet guy. I like
to reinvent myself, and so I did that, and I
was partners in an internet company here on Long Island,
and things were going really great at the time for us,
and it just started creeping back in. I started to
(17:12):
notice I was getting very anxious and feeling the symptoms again,
and then I started having panic attacks. The thing is,
I didn't really learn what to do. The first time.
I just learned what it was, and that helped me
not be afraid and I got past it. The second
time it hit, I didn't really know how to deal
with it, and like just knowing what it was wasn't
enough anymore, and then snowballed right away into like agoraphobias.
(17:32):
Now here, I own this business and I'm absent from
the business because I cannot leave my house to go
to the business. It was really rough, and that's when
I got really depressed. That was dangerous depression. And I
got to the point where I was at wits end,
and I remember my wife taking me to our doctor
at the time, and he gave me the insulin speech,
which many people with this problem have heard, because I
(17:53):
was very stubborn about meds, just because I'm stubborn, not
because meds are bad or wrong. And he said, if
you were diabetic, you would take insulin right chemical imbalance,
and and I was so desperate, I'm like, fine, give
it to me. Sure enough. About ten days into it,
my depression lifted, and I thought it was the greatest
thing ever. And it was. It was a life lifesaver
(18:13):
at that moment. But I'm like, okay, cool, I'm fixed
because I stopped having panic attacks and my depression was gone,
and I was pretty good except for me. My issue
was the medication did help, but it also hurt because
I didn't have panic attacks or depression, but I had nothing.
I was super flat. I gained one hundred pounds, Like, no,
one hundred hundred pounds, dude, I cannot even if you
(18:36):
saw pictures of me, were like, is that is not
the same guy. The hundred pounds hevery than I am.
Now I wasn't having panic attacks. It really nasty effects
for me. I'm not again. If it's working for people,
I'm all for it. I support anything that work for anybody,
and everybody has the right to make their choice. For me,
it turned out to be more problematic than anything else.
My kids were born, my grandparents passed away, did not
(18:57):
shed a tear, didn't feel anything. I was like a zombi.
Ooh wow, really bad. So I knew that I that
wasn't working out so well. When the kids were small
and I came off and I went through a horrific,
like antidepressive withdrawal period. Not everybody has that.
Speaker 2 (19:12):
You and I are like, literally I connected. I crazy.
I went through the same withdrawal experience where it was
worse than my first one. I had won. And then
I had a small second one when I was doing
the show called Nashville. I was away from my kids
and it just it hit me. I had I was
playing beach football and like had a fucking crazy panic
(19:35):
attack where I had to go to I mean, it
was nuts and I started bawling crying. I was like, please,
I cannot believe this is happening again.
Speaker 3 (19:41):
Oh man, I feel that I remember King in my
bedroom literally in like ugly crying, some do something, somebody
do something. It was a horrific, horrific feeling. Yeah, it
was worse than the panic attacks for me. Like that. Yeah,
that thing where the heads go away and you don't
oh my god, your brain is adjusting again. Was worth Again,
if you're listening to this, that doesn't necessarily happen to everybody.
(20:04):
It's really important for me to say that maybe people
might have a problem like I had. That was a
rough year for me, that six get up back on
my feet and a.
Speaker 2 (20:14):
Year I well I had. I was weaning off and
I thought I was doing it correctly, and then it
just took me to a place. Dude, I mean this
is like three or four years ago, even four years ago,
maybe yeah, four years ago. It was just so debilitating.
I mean totally different. It wasn't throwing up stuff. It
was just it was totally like, oh god, it was
(20:37):
just it's hard to even explain. I mean, complete disassociation.
I was a mess and trying to be a dad,
going downhilly and mountain biking with my kids. It was
over summertime. I got to offer two jobs, you know,
and I'm like Okay, Now I got to go to
work in August. I'm like, I can't go to out
live in Albuquerque. I can't do it, Like I can
barely come out of my room. But I was like,
(20:58):
I need to support my family. I gotta do this.
So I had to go back on medication because I
just had to, yep, be even to try to support
my family.
Speaker 3 (21:09):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (21:10):
So yeah, and now I'm just on it, you know,
But it was that withdrawal was so nuts. Yes, it's
important to say that doesn't happen.
Speaker 3 (21:17):
It doesn't happen to everybody. I know a lot of
people that maybe you're afraid to take the meds because
you think that might happen to you, or if you're
on it, you want to get off, Like I'm afraid
because I'm going to have it. You might, but we
nobody knows. We really don't know who's going to have
that and who's not. And I know there's all kinds
of pedaling tests about metabolisms and what your genetics say,
which one, Yeah, we still don't really know. So, but
it doesn't happen to most people. I know plenty of
(21:39):
people who just they calld turkey them and they were fine,
which is not so Yeah, that was really really rough experience.
But that experience taught me so much about the difference
between pain and suffering. As crazy as that's I could
not stop the pain, but I had to learn to
adapt as best I could. I mean, I don't know
how you would apossibly get like, I'm even free out
(22:00):
just here and you're like move to Albuquerque. Really in
that state, Yeah, I couldn't go to the door around
the corner for me to get a gallon of milk.
Couldn't do it. Yeah, so no way, it's not going
to happen.
Speaker 2 (22:09):
Oh yeah, no, I know, I know. But that adjustment
period is interesting because you know, you do learn to
live with the suffering of what it feels like.
Speaker 3 (22:18):
I remember learning that I had to wake up and say,
I'm just gonna have to do the best I can
with this today, which wasn't very good, but that there
were lessons in that experience.
Speaker 2 (22:28):
Oh yeah, crazy yeah. And then eventually in that and
that bout you got through.
Speaker 3 (22:33):
Just I got through that finally, And you know.
Speaker 2 (22:36):
What, did you did you do any practice or anything?
Was there meditation, deep breathing, journaling or anything like that
or or interesting because by the way I started interrupt
but cognitive behavioral therapy would change my ship. Like I
have been in therapy for a while, but but then
I switched and found this person and it was CBT,
and I was like, whoa, this is real therapy. It's
a whole, the whole of an animal, and it's It
(22:58):
was incredible and totally life change.
Speaker 3 (23:00):
I would say that I tried. I mean, anybody you
know you were in that position clearly, Well, it's amazing
that we share such a similar experience, right, but you
know in that situation, you would try anything to get relief.
So I would try to meditate to feel better, and
it was just chemical. It was nothing I could do.
There was no practice, journaling, did nothing. It was just
this is the way I feel today. I can't help it.
(23:21):
My brain is doing the best again. So no, I
can't say, but I did learn. I did start to
gain some ability that helped me later to say, well,
I can't stop this, so I'm gonna have to just
do the best I can with what I have in
this moment. I didn't recognize that I was learning that
skill until I had to use it later. But I
did take that skill out of that experience if it matters,
(23:44):
and my brain just kind of got its act together
over the course of a year and I couldn't. But yeah,
so I kind of got lucky. But then I had
to deal with the actual problem that was still there
because the maths don't I mean, at least for me,
all the problem. They just masked it. And yeah, and
then I had to go through a couple of years
of doing the whole exposure, learn to face the fear,
you know, stop doing my rituals. There was a lot
(24:06):
of stuff going on.
Speaker 2 (24:07):
There's a lot, right, because you had an OCD component
to it as well.
Speaker 3 (24:10):
Yeah, a lot of people who have anxiety disorders, they
all start to mush together. So it's like all I
panic disorder, but it can also look like OCD some
social anxiety clicks and they all mush together after it.
That's hard to separate it. Did.
Speaker 2 (24:22):
You have to sort of look back into your life
and discover where it came from.
Speaker 3 (24:28):
Here's where things get weird. So for people that are listening,
especially people who are into sort of personal development and
wellness that sort of stuff, this is where people like
me who specialize in anxiety disorder sound weird. Or you'll
say like, I doesn't know what he's talking about. Clearly
they was unhealed pain or trauma or something not always.
In fact, the data overwhelmingly says that it might make
(24:50):
you vulnerable to develop an anxiety disorder. But we have
to stop automatically saying that the way to fix it
is to dig deep into some sort of pain or root.
Cause you may have that kind of work to do
because we all have shit in our lives, right, we
all get to deal with their stuff. But really, I
did it without ever looking backwards. So yeah, now one day,
(25:13):
maybe I'm going to wake up and say, oh shit,
like that's why it happened, and I'm gonna have to
deal possible. I don't know, But in an anxiety disorder,
often the insistence that we have to do healing and
trauma and deep introspection work makes things worse. That can
be a harmful course of action for somebody who has
panic disorder or goraphobia, OCD, health anxiety, those sort of things.
(25:37):
I know that sounds ridiculous to say because people will
just automatically say, well, it's your feelings. You have to
fix your feelings and your emotions and your hurt and
your pain. Sure you do, that's part of being a
healthy as best you can. But that isn't how you
treat that problem.
Speaker 2 (25:50):
So where do you start an That's interesting because you're
enlightening me. I mean, I mean, I think I kind
of knew that you don't have to have deep trauma
to have anxiety. But I would always assume that it's
connected to something. Maybe it is, maybe it isn't. And
I guess the first knee jerk reaction is, Okay, let
me get into therapy, you know what I mean, because
(26:12):
I'm feeling this way. There's a reason for it. I
don't know what it is. Let me find out.
Speaker 3 (26:16):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (26:16):
But so if you're not going that route, you know,
as someone who makes this his life, what would you
sort of suggest, how do you get started to down
to the path of sort of recovery.
Speaker 3 (26:29):
Yeah, So here's the way we do that. First, we
always acknowledge that those things might exist, of course, but
I'm not trying to say that like, oh, nobody has trauma,
nobody is pain. We all do, right, we all have
pain of some kind. But the anxiety disorder, that state
is defined by why am I anxious? Because people think well,
if I can find why I'm anxious in panicking, it'll stop. No,
not when the reason why you're panicking is because you panic.
(26:52):
So for people that develop anxiety disorders, the source of
the anxiety and the fear is internal. It may have
been all triggered by something. That's true, we could probably
argue that, like something triggered me the first time. He
knows you were able to say, well, I was under
a lot of stress. I was trying to make it
in Hollywood, blah blah blah. Okay, and it boiled over
and you start having panic attacks. So the first thing
(27:12):
we got to do is, well, why am I afraid?
I'm afraid because I'm afraid. It's fear of fear. I'm
anxious because I'm anxious. I panic because I panic.
Speaker 2 (27:20):
That's it. I mean, it boiled down once once you're
in the cycle of insanity. It is that it is
you are panicking because you might panic, right, So I like.
Speaker 3 (27:32):
To look it is, yeah, and it's not intuitive because
as human being, you might think if I could find
the reason for the panic, it will stop happening. But
the reason for the panic is the panic in the.
Speaker 2 (27:45):
Yeah, and how about the moment. How about the moment
when you wake up in the morning and there's that
small window of like, oh my god, I'm I normal?
Am I normal?
Speaker 3 (27:55):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (27:55):
I think I'm normal. I think I'm normal. Oh my god,
I'm not feeling normal. Oh no, I'm not normal.
Speaker 3 (28:00):
You know that that is one hundred percent right when
that first when you open your eyes and you're now
conscious and it's just yeah, it's like four and a
half seconds of like, yeah, you got a small.
Speaker 2 (28:09):
Window of like, am I gotta feel normal?
Speaker 3 (28:10):
And then the train rolls into the station and your
screw yas man. I get that. You really nailed that
in a big way. I think I like to use
a fire analogy, So, like, imagine that your anxiety disorder
or your chronic continuing anxiety, whether it's panic attacks or
it becomes a goraphobia, afraid to leave the house, or
maybe you have OCD. You're battling with a steady stream
of intrusive or scary thoughts that you don't want and
(28:31):
they disturb you and they trigger you. Think of that
as a fire. So now there's a fire burning. Something
lit the fire, and you might have a fire on
your right side, and you could be holding a torch
on your left hand, like, here's the problem right here,
So now I blow out. I put the torch out,
but the fire is still burning. So that a fire
(28:52):
that has to you have to tend to that fire.
You'll also want to put the torch out if you
have one. Of course, putting out the match that lit
the fire does not put the fire out. Yep, it's
not intuitive. It makes no sense. And again this is
why even in the therapy world, many therapists don't specialize
in anxiety disorders. I'm in arguments all the time with
my colleagues over this.
Speaker 2 (29:12):
Are you really?
Speaker 3 (29:13):
Oh yeah, all the time, because people who don't specialize
in these things will often say, like they call it,
they're we're weird. We're like the engineers of the therapy
where the mechanics of oh, you're the exposures. Let's put
your feelings into a computer and we'll tell you what
to do. It's not that, but they joke on it.
Let's call good natured and professional ribbing. But most therapists
will ascribe to the things that resonate with them, which
is you have to do pain work and shadow work,
(29:36):
and we have to dig and get to your feelings.
Sure we do. Your feelings are really important. But the
problem in this state is that your feelings become everything,
even though those feelings aren't necessarily connected to reality, indicative
of reality, or making any kind of rational sense at all.
So if I did have some trauma or pain in
my past, and maybe I did, but that doesn't explain
(29:58):
why I was afraid of my own heartbeat.
Speaker 2 (30:08):
So then how do you What are the first steps?
You know, if you're if you once you diagnose it
self diagnosed, or you know, normally people will go to
the doctor and get checked out and they're like, okay,
I'm medically totally fine.
Speaker 3 (30:22):
Now that first step, by the way, that has to
be you got to do that.
Speaker 2 (30:27):
It is it's medical, meaning like go just make sure everything.
Speaker 3 (30:30):
Is good, yeah, make sure. Yeah. Always if you walk
into my therapy, we're gonna say if you have you
been medically cleared? Have you been by an because we
wanted we got to treat the whole.
Speaker 2 (30:37):
Person, right, Yes, So now we're medically cleared, and now okay,
I I can't. I can't get out of my house.
I'm gonna throw up every time I leave. I've I'm
anxious about being anxious. You know, what are our first
steps to sort of, you know, getting through this thing. Well,
if it's not therapy, I'm not saying don't go to therapy.
I'm just saying, if if we're not going to go
to therapy, you know, what are the steps?
Speaker 3 (30:59):
Okay, So the first thing that we would use even
in therapy, which anybody can access. And now you talk
about things like social media. This is a lovely thing
about social media.
Speaker 2 (31:06):
Right.
Speaker 3 (31:06):
It's good because we would start what it's called psycho education. First.
If I'm your therapist, I'm going to explain what an
anxiety disorder is. I'm going to explain that you're now
afraid of being afraid. It's fear of fear panic because
you panic. And when you explain that to somebody off
and it's like a light bulb moment, like, oh my god,
you're right, that's exactly right. I'm afraid of when I
have the thought about stabbing my dog. I don't want
(31:26):
to stab my dog, but I can't stop the thought.
It triggers me. Yeah, you're afraid of the thought. You're
not afraid of anything with the thought. So first we
psycho education explain some of the stuff you and I
are talking about right now. After psycho education, then this
is where it turns left again for most people. I
am all for your meditation practice and your journaling practice.
Clearly that's an important part of wellness for you, and
(31:46):
I would think it's a great Those are tools that
a lot of people can I use them too, right,
But we have to start to turn somebody away from
I need a way to calm it down. I need
to find techniques to calm myself self down. Because if
you are afraid of your internal experience of panic or anxiety,
or thoughts or emotions, if you immediately look for ways
(32:09):
to squash them. So as soon as I start to
get triggered, I have to tap my cheek. I have
to get my lavender oil. I have to do this.
I have to meditate. Are literally teaching your limbic system. Yeah,
keep sounding the alarm. My own pain is now a danger,
So please keep alerting me to my own thoughts. Keep
it coming, keep it coming. And then you get stuck
on a treadmill of like I just try to manage
my triggers and manage my symptoms. You can do it
(32:32):
that way. Some people manage to manage it enough to
be functional. But we have to start dismantling that ability,
that knee jerk reaction and say, well, even if you
do panic, or even if you have a scary thought
about stabbing your dog, for instance, you can handle that distress.
You know, this is a big, big leap for a
lot of people, but handle it, and then you learn
that you don't have to fear the internal state. Even
(32:55):
if I panic, I'm okay. Though most people would think, well,
if you haven't attacks, you try to learn how to
not panic. No, no, you should probably try to learn
how to get better at having a panic attack. Then
if you're not afraid of it anymore, then there is
no it anymore. So you might still be anxious. I'm
a human being. I can be anxious some days. I'm
(33:15):
just not afraid of the anxious state anymore. So there
is no it for there's nothing to come back, there's
no relapse for me to matter.
Speaker 2 (33:21):
How do you how do you work on? How do
you not be afraid of it? You know, I mean
without experience. Essentially, it's like you need the reps that
thank you.
Speaker 3 (33:31):
This was worth the price of admission right there. What
Oliver just said one hundred percent only experience, because the
part of your brain that controls these functions does not
listen to words, memes, mantras, sayings, song lyrics, poetry, all
lovely things that we all enjoy and enrich our lives.
But that part of your brain does not understand I
am a warrior, this too shall pass, This too shall pass.
(33:52):
It is okay, I am strong, I am light. It
is not listening. It's like making a phone call with
somebody that doesn't own a phone. It's not even ring.
I don't even know your call it. So it only
understands experience behavior. So the only way to learn that
you don't have You can't just decide to be not
be afraid. So people are like, oh, I have to
just not fear it, Well you can. You can learn
(34:13):
that you don't have to fear it. How do you
do that? Experience, I stopped trying to save myself from myself.
I wind up. Okay, I have no other conclusion to draw.
Then I don't have to fear this. It was unique
that saved me. I just it goes away if I
leave it alone. Yeah, it's a big it's a big ask,
don't get me wrong, moody and people are like, like,
(34:33):
what is he talking about? How is that possible?
Speaker 2 (34:34):
Of course? I mean I can even go there, you know.
I mean, even when I'm on medication, I'll have my
there's certain moments, you know, where you can go down
a bit of a rabbit hole and I'm like, well,
I'm not going to die. I know I'm not going
to die. I know I'm just maybe going through a
little something right here. But then, you know, you can
you can even trick yourself to thinking, well, maybe this
is maybe this is the time that I I am dying,
(34:58):
you know what I mean. Like, even someone who is
a fucking salty veteran of anxiety, sometimes I'll be like, uh,
wait a minute, what if I actually am having a
heart attack?
Speaker 3 (35:08):
Now I feel you. Oh man, I get that so
much because I have the temerity to write books about
this shit and like change my whole life to become
a therapist. Like that's how recovered I think I am.
It takes a pretty big set right, all right, Even
my brain many years after that episode of my life
is over and I do not have an anxiety disorder,
(35:28):
nor am I afraid of my anxiety. If I'm in
a really anxious state. There is still a little part
of my brain that will just like.
Speaker 2 (35:34):
You know, there's gonna be a stroke.
Speaker 3 (35:35):
This is hip, dude, so they're gonna be there, right,
And I'm like, yeah up, man like, but I've learned
that in that moment, as a human being, you can't
help but be startled and brace against that one moment. Yep,
after that moment, I've done it enough, right, say well,
I got to roll the dice here, I'm gonna have
(35:55):
to just roll. Yes, I'm like, all right, yeah, I go.
It's the recovery from an anxiety disorder is the shorten
amount of time between oh my god, which everybody has
and oh well the exactly time is just really short
now it used to be months. That's great, But it
sounds like you're doing the same thing.
Speaker 2 (36:11):
Yeah, oh for sure, Yeah for sure. I mean without
a doubt. What about empathy? You know, I know empathy
is a good word. You know, someone who can feel it.
So empathy can go off the rails. I think too,
when someone feels too much, you know, I think I
feel like I teeter on that a little bit, like
I take in a lot of feelings, you know, like
I don't know, I care about people's feelings that you know.
(36:33):
Do you think sensitivity plays into it?
Speaker 3 (36:37):
Does that? Yeah? So personality traits that make you more
introspective or where you are, we would call it neuroticism.
That doesn't mean disease. It just means that you're inwardly
focused and you put a lot of stock on your
internal experience, like your feelings and your thoughts and your emotions.
It does make you vulnerable because in situations like the
one I'm describing or the one you and I have
(36:57):
both lived, the way out is to stop obeying every
thought and emotion you have. It will it will drag
you up and down the block like blooding, because it
just keeps telling you to do stuff to be safe.
But you're already safe, So it's it's tough. If you're
wired to honor and feel and hug those emotions, every
thought is sacred, you have an increased vulnerability of developing
(37:19):
this kind of problem because it seems ridiculous to disobey
your thoughts. What do you mean my thoughts? They're very important,
not always brains make beautiful, beautiful, beautiful stuff, and they're
super valuable for us. They can also make total shit,
and we have to learn what they are making shan.
Speaker 2 (37:33):
Yeah, well that's that's cognitive behavioral therapy, right, that's your thoughts,
and it's catastrophizing, it's just creating, you know, these kind
of scenarios, these false narratives that are just completely causing
you distress and pain, physical pain in your body, when
when that hasn't even happened yet. Yeah, you know what
(37:56):
I mean. One of the funny it has even happened yet.
Speaker 3 (37:58):
Yeah, that's true. One of the funniest things online I
ever saw with somebody posted you know, anxiety is basically
conspiracy theories about yourself, which is for one like that
killed me, I stay safe.
Speaker 2 (38:08):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (38:09):
The interesting thing about cognitive behavioral therapy is it is
the most effective the let's say there's a big umbrella.
CBT has a big umbrella now, and it is the
most effective treatment we have. Barn Up, it's not even
a question. So that's that's a fact. That's not a question.
But yeah, tea in the old school was all about, well,
we teach you that your thoughts are irrational, and then
(38:29):
you change your thoughts, and so we hear things change
your thoughts change, choose your thoughts. Wisely, like me that
are more third wave oriented, we say you can't. You
don't get to choose your thoughts. You can always choose
what to think, you can never choose what not to think.
So just knowing that your thought about the poison orange
juice is irrational doesn't change shit, because it's still a
powerful physical response. So lean we lead with behavioral change,
(38:54):
informed by that, the education that tells you that your
thoughts are irrational and you really are safe. The thought
change and the emotion change follows behind. That's in the
last twenty five or thirty years, early seasons. We change
your thoughts, we change your life. No, no, we expose
your thoughts, you change your behavior, You change your thoughts,
change your life.
Speaker 2 (39:12):
Right, and then there's the reframing sort of of those
thoughts as those really sort of irrational thoughts.
Speaker 3 (39:18):
Right, But like one of the common things would be
people that have anxiety disorders live by what if, like
you said, well what if I am actually having a
heart attack? Or well what if I go to that
birthday party and I panic and I make a scene. Well, now,
common sense approach would be, well that's an irrational fear.
What if you have a great time, whereas I might say, well,
you might have a panic attack, but even if you do,
(39:39):
you'll be okay. That's much more valuable than saying that's irrational.
You might have a great time maybe or maybe you won't,
but either way you can be okay.
Speaker 2 (39:47):
Yeah, if I go and I throw up in front
of thee with the party, like, no one's going to
really give a shit.
Speaker 3 (39:52):
And even if they do, sometimes unpleasant experiences, right, can
we do it? Yeah?
Speaker 1 (39:57):
Yeah, Well it's almost funny because it is just fear
of exposure, of looking bad, of just being that person
you know that everyone might talk about or causing that scene,
the avoidance.
Speaker 3 (40:13):
Of internal experiences. I never I don't want to feel bad.
Speaker 2 (40:17):
Oh god. I when I used to leave the house,
which by the way, I wasn't the one to sit inside,
like I would just come. I would just fight through everything, clearly,
but I would. I would as I'm walking down the street,
I would look for places to throw up that no
one would see me. I mean literally, I'd be like no,
I mean it was like the terminator sort of scanning
(40:38):
where to pew grid, like only three people over there,
you know, I mean it was crazy.
Speaker 3 (40:46):
I find that fascinating. Makers The range of responses people
have are huge, Like, that's no joke, man, that's a
lot of a lot of steel backbone in that.
Speaker 2 (41:04):
So what about your kids? Did you did you? Were
you going through this when you're when you had kids,
or you were through it?
Speaker 3 (41:10):
No, when I was in the last phase there, I
was medicated when my kids were born, so I was
not anticipating it was not good. So again my personal experience,
I'm not judging anybody else's, but that was the reason
why I stopped taking the meds. You know, I wrote
about that in my first book, which could get for free.
We'll talk about that. Yeah, but it was an incident
with my kids when they were like four and two
(41:31):
years old. My four year old said something that I
will take to my fucking grave. I'm like, okay, this
isn't okay. I have something has to change. I was.
I was at my doctors the next day. I need
stuff to oh wow. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (41:42):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (41:43):
So but then I was going through all the crazy
withdrawal when the kids were little, and when I was doing.
Speaker 2 (41:48):
And how was that just trying to be a father
and you know what I mean, like kids, we're you
just have to fight through it though, right, and the
other alternative is to sit in bed.
Speaker 3 (41:57):
But couldn't do that right, I felt like such. I
don't know if you ever experienced this, but I really
felt like the worst father ever. Like, not only was
I failing on a daily basis because I was afraid
to do like regular life shit that nobody thinks about,
but I start to feel like a failure. I became
a motivator for me, like, no, no, no, I can't,
we're not doing this.
Speaker 2 (42:18):
Mm hmm. Along those lines of people who might be listening,
who are sort of suffering with children and trying to
sort of be a you know, provide emotional, you know,
support for their children or to be parents, how do
you navigate that? I mean, first of all, you might
feel like a failure, but I guess you're not a failure.
You were going through what you're going through to try
to be to try to get better essentially.
Speaker 3 (42:40):
I mean I can go by my own personal experience.
I mean, my kids watched me get better, so they did. Yeah,
and we've talked about it openly now that they're older,
they're you know, they're young adults now, so we've talked
about it. Openly and clearly. I've written books about it.
I tell the world my experience, so I'm not hiding it.
But they watched me get better. I think it can
be tough if you feel like you can't get better.
(43:01):
And my only coping strategy is extreme avoidance, whether it's
staying in the house or ritualizing my life very tightly
to stay keep from panicing and get too anxious. That
could be tough because the kids can see that. But
it's okay kids to see you struggle like because they're
going to struggle too in life. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (43:17):
Yeah. And when when when Wilder was going through it,
you know, I told him, I said, do you it
was this summer? I think it was. It was literally
I was only a summer removed from my third bout
of this. And and I said, did you know that
that whole summer we had, I was going through my
own insane, intense anxiety And he didn't know.
Speaker 3 (43:40):
You didn't know, right, my kids?
Speaker 2 (43:41):
No, because I hit it very very well, you know.
I mean I was upbeating and I mean, oh my god,
you know, but he didn't. And I said, dude, I
was really struggling.
Speaker 3 (43:52):
You know, he probably was surprised to hear that.
Speaker 2 (43:54):
I bet, Oh yeah he was. He was, And you know,
I just think that related to be able to relate
to him that way and let him know that sort
of I was feeling these things as well. Who knows
if it helped them or not, but.
Speaker 3 (44:09):
Maybe, I mean, you know what, you know, you were
able to understand that, like you normalize the experience, Graham.
It doesn't mean I have even had My dad had
it too, Grandma, Yeah, it's good.
Speaker 2 (44:18):
To have your kids. Have your kids been through anything
like that, or have they suffered at all.
Speaker 3 (44:22):
I'll tell you a really funny story, which this is
so indicative of how parents freak out, like I'm going
to give it to my kids or I'm a fan
teaching my kids to have panic disorder. So, uh, my
youngest was in high school and the phone rings one
day and it's her. She's at school, and I'm my god,
I got to answer that she's calling me from the high school.
It's up mmm, and you know, as kids would do.
(44:43):
She's a great student and all graduating in top of
the class, but she had not done her homework or whatever.
She forgot the study, she forgot an assignment and she's
standing outside her English class and she's freaking out because
I forgot to finish the paper. Oh my god, and
the pressure of the grades and getting into college. You
know that stuff, right, Yeah, yeah, And she had a
panic attack. She said, I think I'm having PANICTCT. She's
panting a little, and in my mind, I'm thinking, Okay,
(45:03):
first I got to coach you through it. The anxiety.
Dude's going to coach you through it, and then we're
gonna sit home and teach you all about panic disorder.
She ended the panic attack. I texted about ten minutes later.
I'm like, okay, She's like, yeah, I'm good. Thanks. She
never mentioned it again. She did not need to talk
about it ever. Again, she is the typical Western adult experience.
She had a panic attack, able to understand why it
(45:26):
was externalized. So even the word anxiety, like oh, I'm
really anxious because like we're having money problems, or maybe
how to fight my partner or the kids are driving
me crazy. People know I'm anxious because they don't internalize it.
She never internalized it was a panic attack.
Speaker 2 (45:41):
I'm like, I think that's an important lesson. Honestly, It's like,
if you have a panic attack. Just let it be
a panic attack and don't worry about having another one.
I know that that's tough, easier said than done, such.
Speaker 3 (45:54):
An adverse experience for so many people.
Speaker 2 (45:55):
Yeah right.
Speaker 3 (45:56):
One of the things that's tough about that, though, is
in the culture we're in right now, especially online, wellness instantly.
Speaker 2 (46:03):
Be bombard answering my question.
Speaker 3 (46:04):
Okay, we're always being bombarded with messages that we should
be able to hack our brains, hack our bodies, happiness,
only vibrate positivity, and every negative experience could be avoided
with boundaries air quotes, fucking boundary and you know, and
somehow there's a technique to always be happy or fix
your negative experience. I believe we weren't allowed to have
(46:27):
negative experiences. It's full of them, so we better to
deal with them right out of popular stands though.
Speaker 2 (46:33):
No, no, but but an important one, you know, because
everything is fucking you know, like roses and rainbows like that,
that is not life. Yeah, yeah, exactly, And that's leading
me to sort of my like, you know, we're getting
to the end. But just anxiety today it is in
your opinion, is it just labeled like ADHD because I'm
(46:57):
sure I had it, but no one labeled it back
in the day. Now everyone has ADHD or are do
you think we are? Actually we're actually a more anxious
society because anxiety now is like almost like a buzzword.
I mean, I mean everyone is anxious, and it's like, oh, yeah,
I have anxiety. It's almost like a hot right now.
Speaker 3 (47:17):
I don't disagree with you, right, so tread lightley here,
But yeah, I don't disagree with you. Everyone is anxious
because you know what, anxiety is a normal part of
the human experience. It just is. Everybody's always experienced anxiety
from time to time for various reasons. It's a good
thing that we talk openly about those things now because
we didn't used to talk about it openly. But we
(47:39):
sometimes talk so openly about it that we start to
misapply it or twisted a little bit. So it's kind
of difficult. There's a big difference. You know, I have anxiety, Okay,
Well why do you have anxiety? Well, my exams coming.
I don't know what the hell I'm going to do
with my future, Like, I don't know what I'm gonna die.
I'm lost, I don't know who I am. Okay, You're right,
(48:00):
you got anxiety. But that's not a disorder, that's not
a pathology, that's not a it doesn't necessarily need to
be fixed. You're working through your life like people do.
The person who feels that they cannot have stop having
disturbing thoughts about having sex with a clergyman, and that
happens to people out of ocd's. That's something that you
(48:24):
do have to work on. So the way, we just
overuse the words so much that I think they start
to lose their meaning or their value sometimes, so we
have to be careful.
Speaker 2 (48:33):
Yeah, yeah, But do you think that we are becoming
a more anxious society generally because of technology, because of comparison,
because of I'm not good enough.
Speaker 3 (48:46):
Yeah, it's really hard to find some solid ground living
in a place like we're in right now. Everyone, it's
a fucking megaphone, and I'm not afraid to scream into
what we were not designed to hear that twenty four
to seven, which is not Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's just
it's just so interesting because it's it's evolutionary. I mean,
(49:07):
we are now evolving as a different kind of species
than we we would have without all of this. These
things are so informative, and I would just urge everyone
to go check you out Anxious Truth to podcast and
the feed and the books and all of it.
Speaker 2 (49:24):
And why don't you want it? Before I go? Whyt
you to tell your book? What books you got?
Speaker 3 (49:28):
Well? I wrote? I actually wrote three books. The first
one is called an Anxiety Story. So if you really
want to hear the gory teal details of what I lived,
that one to giveaway. You're going to cite the Anxious
Truth dot com. You can get that just follow the links.
You can get a PDF or an MP three is free.
Then I wrote I wrote this book which is called
The Anxious Truth. This book you can't it's just not
a video podcast, but I.
Speaker 2 (49:46):
Brought it is it is there's we we we post, so.
Speaker 3 (49:49):
You post the video, you know. So I wrote a
book called The Anxious Truth that is geared for people
who are dealing with anxiety to sort of recovery. And
then I wrote one called seven Percent Lower, which is
about using a trick of just slowing your ass down
to avoid getting into that like frantic. I have to
fix myself.
Speaker 2 (50:03):
So yeah, when you say slow yourself down, briefly, is
what is that you mean.
Speaker 3 (50:08):
Seven percent lower. Is this I know what sounds like
the Dan Harris ten percent happier thing. In fact, I'm like, hmmm,
gonna come be like, sorry, Dan, I didn't mean that.
I came up for myself. When I used to was
doing exposure work and my exposure therapy, back when I
was doing my recovery work, I would have to remind
myself slow down, slow down. I'm like, just go seven
percent slower. That's enough. I can't measure it, but it
(50:29):
would remind me when I wanted to run and rush
through anxious situations, it would remind me no, no, no, no,
slow down, slow down. It's a really powerful trick.
Speaker 2 (50:38):
So it's that that's important. I'm a mindfulness So kids
like advice that you might have when your children are
going through something like this, you know when there's a ten, twelve, thirteen, fourteen,
even fifteen sixteen, because it can be so debilitating for
the little ones. You know, they're the teenagers who don't
know what the fuck it is. And you know, again,
(51:01):
this idea of appearance and looking normal and looking good
and being cool, and it can weigh on you without anxiety,
like do you have any sort of advice on how
to deal with your children who might be going through
having a bouts of anxiety.
Speaker 3 (51:18):
Yeah, it's very similar to what I've been saying the
whole time, but it's difficult. I'm a parent, you're a parent,
you get this. So when your kid is under duress
and they're they're freaking out and they're clearly stressed and suffering,
we want them to feel better. Like, it's really hard
to not want to fix your kid, of course. Yeah.
(51:38):
The thing that could be kind of difficult, though, is
when your kid is afraid of their own thoughts and
their own body and their own feelings and sensations. The
best approach is to try to help them understand that
because I totally understand that this is legit scary, Like
it's not just all in your head. You know that
was not just on your head, nor was it in
your son's head. It was real, legit physical sensations and fear.
(52:02):
And I know that's really scary, But I also know
that you're safe, and I'm gonna hang out here with
you and while you work through this, and I know
that what we want to do is try to teach
them this is how you calm down This is how
you ground, this is how you prevent, This is how
you manage your triggers and stay away from triggers. But
that tends to perpetuate the problem because it says, yeah,
(52:24):
never let myself ever feel this. I have to prevent,
whereas the most valuable, though difficult to teach lesson is
the one that says, even that scary feeling is actually safe.
So let's try and work through the other side of it,
and it's gonna be really good for you. Then you
won't be so afraid of it. Every time you do that,
it'll get less scary. And I'm gonna I know you
(52:45):
can do it. I ain't gonna let anything bad happen
to you. That's what I would tell them.
Speaker 2 (52:48):
Yeah, Pars, great, dude, Well this has been so fun, man, amazing.
I've been looking forward to this for a minute, and
I appreciate all your insights and I think you're doing good. Shit.
I mean, I love it, And I know that you
said that, you know earlier on it was you know,
it's hard to make it's hard to feel better when
(53:08):
you're going through your shit, meaning like there's not a
lot that anyone can say to you that's going to
make you feel better, you know. But I will say,
and I'm not just blown smoke, but you know your
your Instagram feed, it does. I mean it really does,
because you can chuckle at a lot of these things
(53:29):
where you're like, oh my god, that's me, you know,
do that and and and and there's such a you know,
when you don't feel like you're alone, or if there
is a meme or something that you put up there
that touches you, you know, that makes you chuckle, it
almost makes you smile and laugh because it's so spot
(53:53):
on there you do there, you you do feel some
sort of alleviation. You are at ease a little bit more.
Speaker 3 (54:00):
So.
Speaker 2 (54:00):
Thank you, you know, I think that it does help anyway,
Thank you brother. That was great. That was a long
time coming. I've wanted to talk to Drew for a minute.
I know I've been just like pushing all of this stuff,
but it really is from someone who's been through the shit,
you know, with my own anxiety. Coming across his you know,
(54:25):
his Instagram feed was amazing and immediately I got to
talk to this guy obviously extremely insightful. I love everyone.
I love y' all for listening to me and just me, Peace,
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