Disordered: Anxiety Help
Disordered: Anxiety Help
Rolling Anxiety and Panic (Episode 148)
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This episode of Disordered addresses the experience of constant, simmering anxiety that fluctuates in intensity throughout the day without fully disappearing. We refer to this as undulating panic or a loop of peaking anxiety.
- The Nature of Rolling Anxiety: Many people that they are different because they don't have anxiety that appears, then disappears. It rolls and undulates throughout the day. This is the rule, not the exception. We explain how an internal fixation on bodily sensations and thoughts creates a cycle where anxiety rises and falls continually.
- The Monitoring Trap: Using scales like Subjective Units of Distress (SUDs) can become a compulsion. When you constantly scan your body to check if you are a "four" or a "nine," you maintain the rolling, undulating sensitized state you are trying to escape.
- The Sand Timer Analogy: Physiological and mental arousal (yes, even a full panic attack) has a beginning, middle, and end. Once the "sand timer" of an adrenaline spike is flipped, it must run its course. Attempting to "shake the timer" through frantic coping mechanisms only slows down the natural process of settling.
- Recovery Through Action: We share listener stories of "doing it anyway" despite monophobia and physical pain. These examples illustrate how recovery involves moving forward while discomfort is present rather than waiting for it to stop.
Recovery is grounded in the principle of psychological flexibility. The goal is to learn to be with difficult internal experiences like fear and physical sensations rather than trying to control or prevent them. By treating these fluctuations as a background noise rather than a defining event, you teach your brain that the state is not a signal of danger.
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Want to talk about this episode, interact with us, and communicate with others that are sharing your experience? We're hanging out in the Disordered Community Space
https://disordered.fm/community
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The Disordered Guide to Health Anxiety is available now:
https://www.disordered.fm/the-disordered-guide-to-health-anxiety/
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Struggling with worry and rumination that you feel you can't stop or control? Check out Worry and Rumination Explained, a two hour pre-recorded workshop produced by Josh and Drew.
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Got questions or did it anyways to share? Send us an email or voicemail on our website.
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Disclaimer: Disordered is not therapy or a replacement for therapy. Listening to Disordered does not create a therapeutic relationship between you and the hosts or guests of the podcast. Information here is provided for psychoeducational purposes. As always, please consult your mental health and/or medical care providers. If you are having a mental health crisis, always reach out immediately for in-person help.
Hey guys, my name is Rob. You can use my name, obviously. I just wanted to share a um I did it anyway. Uh over these past two weeks, I've taken my sons to two like major events. One was to see Harry Potter with like a forkstroll, and then this past week I was able to take uh my son to uh a Detroit Pistons game, which is huge for me. A year ago, I wouldn't have been able to do either of those things, or if I did, that would have been in terror. Uh didn't mean that I didn't still have panic, but I did anyway. My question quickly is uh Drew and the anxious truth side of things in your podcast when you're recovering, um recovering the foundations of panic, you used the term undulating panic, and I hadn't heard that word, that term before, and I looked it up and it seemed to kind of describe more of what I experienced than panic attacks, um, which seemed very kind of like intense experiences, or like I feel like I'm on this constant simmer of panic, and it goes up, it goes down, but it's just always there. I was just wondering if you could expound on undulating panic. Uh, I hadn't heard you use that term before. And uh thank you for all you guys do, appreciate it. Um, it's one day at a time, and thanks to the uh the community for all the support. Um, we're getting there, guys. All right, take care.
SPEAKER_04Welcome to Disorder. This is episode 148, entitled Undulating Panic. And thank you to the questions and arena for such a good topic choice for today. My name is Joshua Fletcher, also known as Anxiety Josh, and I'm a psychotherapist based in the UK, specializes in anxiety and anxiety disorders, and having experienced lots of undulating panic myself.
SPEAKER_00And I'm joined by uh I am I'm laughing at Josh's undulating panic. Oh, we're gonna have a ton of notifications. Sorry, guys, it is what it is. Um, yeah, I am Drew Linsalata, I'm the other half of disordered. I am also a therapist that practices in the area of anxiety and anxiety disorders in New York, former sufferer, guy with microphones and cameras, author, all that stuff. Anyway, we're gonna talk about undulating panic or undulating anxiety today. Did you have that? Wait, before we do that, just a little. Can you hear the applause this time? Yeah, last time I said for Rob who sent that in because it deserves. I went and did some stuff, took the kids to see Harry Potter, Detroit Pistons game, love all that, and also great questions.
SPEAKER_04So yeah, well done, Rob. That's that's fantastic. I love it. And he said, and particularly when he said he'd go into watch the Detroit Pistons. Like, this is massive for me, and he surprised himself. So well done. Um, undulating panic. Yeah, that's how mine started. That's literally how it started. It was DPDR, what the hell's going on, heart racing, and undulating panic for about four days straight. That's how mine started.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I would say that uh I think almost anybody who's experienced this has probably experienced that undulating or rolling panic or rolling anxiety, we could even call it. And I think it's a great question because some people get confused because they feel like, oh, well, I get it. I'm good, and then I have panic and I have to ride through the panic attack, and then I'm good again. But I but but I don't have that because mine is always simmering and sometimes it it gets re-triggered again and again and again. Yeah, that's more of the common experience, I think.
SPEAKER_04I don't know what you think, but uh I think Yeah, so in my in my first ever book, I called it the loop of peaking anxiety, and then I repeated it again in my second book, uh undulating panic. I just called it the loop of peaking anxiety, where yeah, it is undulating, oscillating, you're kind of stuck between six and nine, six and nine, six and nine. I always say you're never a ten because your ten is your first ever panic attack. So you're just going around, yeah, between six and nine, six and nine. Um, yeah, and what happens in that is that the main basis of it is our focus. So when we're locked in focus-wise, because we're so scared, just like literally, that is our threat response in our brain, when we're wired in to think, oh, this is a threat, this feeling is a threat, we lock into it like it's a predator, like we're our ancestors, and it's a predator. And that very focus and attentional bias keeps us in that sensitized state, keeps us in threat mode. And when the feelings itself and the creeping up to nines become a threat, then yeah, it makes sense. You go up and down, up and down. You're never constantly a nine, you're never constantly that, but yeah, it does make sense how you can hang around there, and that's definitely what how it started for me. Looking back now, retrospectively, I was terrified, I was confused. And when I'm terrified and confused, I'm gonna give something all of my attention and resources to fix that problem, and that's what created it. It was only when like reading about it, reading about other people with DBDR, panic, and all that stuff that it gave me permission to leave it alone. Oh, it's made it's amazing when that happens.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. I I it to me it was uh I walked around looking for it all day. You know, it I can't say that you know, honestly, in in all honesty, there were times when I'm sure I didn't feel anything because I got accidentally distracted by my life. Okay, and then I was feeling pretty good. But the minute I lost that distraction, which was accidental back in those days for sure, uh, I would start to look for it again. It d how's my heart to me, I'd focus on my heartbeat, or I would be looking for any signs that I was gonna get depersonalized or derealized. The minute I felt any of that coming on, the anxiety would go up again. And then I would maybe panic. And then, yeah, it would come down, even though I wasn't really accepting, I was just sort of white knuckling through, it would exhaust and then come down because it always will, no matter what. And then I'd be watching again. Is it is it gone? Is it gonna come back? Is it coming back? How do I feel now? I'm still shaky, this isn't right. Why am I so I feel so scared and vulnerable? And then sure enough, it would begin to go back up again. So almost all day long was that undulating wave of more anxious or less anxious, but not no anxious.
SPEAKER_04I actually um remember, like when I first went to CBT and stuff like that, um, and as a train, you know, I'm training CBT and stuff now, you know it's like an anxiety disorder that kind of overlaps with OCD when you know you you take things from CBT like subjective units of distress, suds or whatever, and they ask you to like scale your anxiety. So I'd be like, okay, you know, and and we do that, and I receive that with the intention of just showing that anxiety goes up and down, it's not permanent, you're not stuck. So it's a word that we often have in this community. We're stuck in in the community in this mode. No, it's more a case of it's it's just show you that anxiety does shift up and down. But when you got OCD and you're trying to fix yourself and things like that, I then misused suds to compulsively measure how I felt.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_04Oh, I'm a four, I'm a six, I'm a five, I'm a six, I'm an eight, I'm a nine, I'm a four, I'm a nine, I'm a ten, I'm a four, I'm a one, I'm a two, I'm a one. Oh my god, I'm a one. That's amazing. How long can I stay a one? No, now I'm a five, now I'm a six, now I'm a nine again. What's wrong with me? Yeah, maybe, Josh, maybe it's because you're scanning how you feel all day, and it's acceptable to be a one, and it's not acceptable to be higher than a one. Oh, no wonder you're triggered and anxious all the time.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I'm I'm fortunate. I when I went through the bulk of my work, I did not know that. Like I had not gone through CBT, no one taught me suds. Otherwise, I would have taken it as an absolute personal challenge to monitor that suds number. And I've had people come to me, maybe in your practice too, show up with like very detailed journals where they are measuring, they're they're recording suds all day long and then trying to track the. That was like old, I don't know. Yeah, old school CBT. Yeah, or they do that, the suds tracking, and then they they're using old school CBT, which is like, oh, then I have to monitor which thought, which thought it attaches to when I had a rise from four to eight, so that I can like see that thought as a cognitive distortion and then talk myself out of it with it, and it would just turn into a mess.
SPEAKER_04So yeah, that's the old school CBT, isn't it? Like the cognitive therapy, very uh Becky and Aram Beck and stuff. And whereas we we like the third wave CBT stuff, which is like sometimes the trigger doesn't matter, you know, most of the time it doesn't matter. You're just gonna feel anxious. And for most people in this community, yeah, the trigger could be a thought, could be an intrusive thought, it could just be a feeling, it could just be constant the trigger could just be constant compulsions. Yeah, if you're constantly doing just-in-case behaviors, and you check a thousand times a day for something, the brain is like, all right, well, we'll I'll find something for you to worry about. Maybe it's a tiredness, maybe you feel off, maybe you feel a bit anxious, maybe that's symptom, maybe your heart rates are too high, maybe you're a bit dizzy, maybe you know, whatever the doubt is, you'll find one. If you check a thousand times a day for a danger, your brain will probably get one confused. And so it doesn't really matter if we start diary diarising that. Yeah, it's because it yeah, you've got to be careful. Like it's a good question. I love journaling. I often get my clients to journal, uh, but I journal from self-compassion. What did I manage to do today despite being anxious? Not I was a nine at the supermarket, I was an eight at my grandma's, I was a five out of my kids, I was and that's just compulsively writing stuff down. When you're like, you know what? High anxiety today, but look what I managed to achieve, and actually pretty good. That's a better use of kind of scheduling.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I agree 100%.
SPEAKER_04And recording.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. But underlating panic or underating, you know, rolling anxiety, even if it's not panic, and it's interesting, Rob said he doesn't he wasn't even sure that he was experiencing panic. He couldn't define it as that, but it was definitely up and down all day long and like simmering and then rising and everything. You said something that was really important. If you're going to be looking all day long for signs of things that you hate, now if you're looking outside of yourself, you might not find them because they they won't exist. If you're looking inside yourself for things you hate, like thoughts or bodily sensations, you will find them. You will 100% find them. Because you you will I always like to use the um and everybody has some of the some some things that they can recognize. I used muscle twitches. I was loaded with muscle twitches when I was an anchor. Yeah, all day long and all over my body, my face, but they're all over. I had muscle twitches everywhere. And then as I got better and became desensitized, suddenly the muscle twitches went away. And I or really I just stopped noticing them and and now they've pretty much gone away. It's very rare that I have a muscle twitch. So I think that's a really good sign. But I was looking for them all the time, all day long. I was looking for thoughts, I was looking for everything, and you will find them because you cannot stop your brain from making thoughts. Your body is dynamic, it changes all day long, it makes different feelings all day long. But if you're looking very closely at that, you're gonna see it and then get triggered by it. And that's what starts to make that rolling anxiety. Even for people with like OCD or gut or health anxiety, they're looking for the topic that they know is gonna trigger them into the spiral, if you will. And of course it's gonna come. Or there's always a time of the day when this is the time I'm more susceptible to this, and like, oh, now I'm dreading that time of day when my compulsions kick in. So yeah, it becomes a super internal fixation checking, monitoring, scanning loop that keeps us going up and down and up and down and up and down all day long. That's a it's a common though. I I think I it's really important, I think, to say that is really the common experience. Somebody who's like low-level anxiety or no anxiety, and then just has a panic attack and it goes away, and maybe they have two a day or two a week. That's not that's not the common experience. This is the rolling, the rolling anxiety is.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, yeah. It's just that just expect if you're on you're on the roller coaster, it's yeah, because we're staring at a lot of it is intentional. I know it feels reckless and irresponsible to turn your back on things, but it's okay.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_04Um would you like a written did it anyway?
SPEAKER_00I I would like one of those, yes, please.
SPEAKER_04Okay. This one's coming from Alyssia in from the Midlands in the UK. I wanted to share a Did It anyway. I struggle with monophobia and live with my parents who haven't been on holiday on their own in years due to my struggles. After reading both your books, listening to the podcast, and making a plan with my therapist, I knew I had to start exposures. I was terrified, but I asked my parents to book themselves a few days away at the start of every month this year so I could get regular exposures. This is good, isn't it? Uh, and they could begin to enjoy themselves without me tagging along for the first time in ages. The apprehensive anxiety was rough, and I considered traveling to stay with a relative several times. But with you both in my airpods telling me I was perfectly safe and feeling discomfort was not danger, I decided to do it anyway. Never had high self-confidence, and I think it's contributed to my anxiety, and without being able to borrow your confidence in me, I wouldn't have been able to commit to the exposures in the first place. But I'm glad that I did. There are ups and downs, almost undulating, across the few days, and but I expected this, as I'm the only only at the beginning of my desensitization journey. At one point, I was shaking so much that I picked up my phone to call my my my parents. But instead, I re-listened and remembered that you guys are believing in and rooting for me, so I let myself shake. I'm glad to say that now some of that confidence I borrowed from you both has morphed into a little bit of confidence in myself, which I hope will continue to grow. I realize that even though it may be severely uncomfortable, I can do the hard things I once thought impossible. Thank you both for letting me leech a bit of your belief and confidence for myself. And though I'm still anxious, I know that that's okay.
SPEAKER_00Oh, that's really great. There's so much to love about that.
SPEAKER_04That was really good, wasn't it? I enjoyed that. Yeah, self-compassion as well. Yeah. I love that. Uh, and yeah, yeah, borrow borrow away, borrow away for confidence, and then as long as you're internalizing it, I love that. Oh, actually, I'm finding I'm getting a bit more confident in myself. Brilliant. The one thing an anxiety disorder and monophobia teach you is that you're way more capable than what you think. And I hope that hopefully you're on that journey to see that in yourself. So well done, Alyssa.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I wouldn't I wouldn't call it leeching. We want you to leech on it. Like take borrow it here, hold a belief. You know, it brings up a point.
SPEAKER_04We just have an exorbitant APR interest rate.
SPEAKER_00So if you do borrow, it's usurious in nature, but we'll come knocking on your door and be like, um one day you will be you may be called upon to do your Don a service. Like, you know, we're gonna go a godfather with this.
SPEAKER_04But I think it leaves. You will be paid in Garbagul.
SPEAKER_00Back to the Garbagul uh thing. We'll have to do an episode on this at some point, but I think one of the things that Alicia, is that a person, I think, her name?
SPEAKER_04Alicia or Alicia, not sure, not sure.
SPEAKER_00But um, and thanks for sharing that, uh, illustrates is you are when someone when she says, Well, I'm borrowing your belief in me, she's essentially saying, Well, I'm trusting that what you're saying, I can handle this. I don't believe it yet, but I will trust that you say that I can, and I'll try it. So sometimes what becomes an obstacle, and I really think we should do an episode on this, maybe next week we'll do it. That is one of those variables that might stand in the way. How often do you uh put your trust in somebody else? If that is not in your vocabulary, emotionally speaking and operationally speaking, to trust that someone else knows and and you can trust those and you can put your hand your faith in their hands a little bit, if you don't know how to do that, this is a hard ask. Because why would you believe? I had to believe Claire Weeks. At some point, I had to say, Well, I trust I trust this person. Uh, I guess I'll I guess I'll do it. I'll do what she said. Only because that was in my vocabulary to do it. But if it wasn't, anyway, I'm off topic, but I think it's important.
SPEAKER_04Anyway. Yeah, no, no, absolutely you're right. You have to take that leap sometimes. Yeah, yeah, for sure. And it's difficult as well, particularly if it's hurt in the past. And if you work with anxiety therapists who to who've given you the wrong information, yeah. You know, or or not helpful information, or information that's not grounded in psychology and things like that, you know, like trust in my method, you know, people like Lyndon and people like that, you know, like, and if you're not doing it right, it's because you're not, you know, it's not my method, it's you that's doing it wrong. I can really hurt your trust. And so I would say, no, it's it's good. And we I never take it for granted when people in the community listeners to this podcast, readers of the book, people in the community app, people like that. I never take it for granted their trust that they do in that, but we will never take the credit for it. We you've got to be the one to decide that you know that it was you that took the leap and you're getting the credit for it. I agree.
SPEAKER_00Um, how about we do an audio?
SPEAKER_04Also, Alyssa did she was prepared and willing to have undulating panic. Yeah. Did you notice that?
SPEAKER_00Yeah. I knew it was gonna happen.
SPEAKER_04Parents went away.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, yeah. I I knew it was gonna happen. And I think that's part of it too. If you recognize this is probably I'm gonna be triggered today, I'm choosing to be. In that situation, she was choosing to be triggered. So I expect it, and yeah, there it is. So that gives me the impetus to sort of ride over the top of that wave. And that's the undulating panic. Imagine that it's like waves that come at you. It's like the ocean keeps coming at you. You just have to keep riding over the top of that. It does, it doesn't mean it's wrong that you are having undulating anxiety or undulating panic. Just keep riding over the top. That's the trick there. And as you learn how to do that, the next waves get smaller and smaller and smaller. But I would argue that even in an exposure, you're not accepting or willfully tolerating the entire experience once as a monolith. You're actually experiencing all of those spikes that come in that exposure experience and riding over the top of everyone. So the same thing will hold true if you stretch it out for a whole day, if that makes any sense.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, it does. What do you think about do you think undulating panic hinges on the belief that you can only tolerate anxiety up until a certain point?
SPEAKER_00Sure does. Yeah. Either I can only tolerate it, well, this much is okay, but this much, you know, six is okay. Eight, no, no, no. I gotta go back to the old way, the resistance way. Or ten minutes is okay. That's monophobia, because I had that. Uh, I can do probably 10 minutes, but after 10 minutes, I won't be able to do it. And that's not correct.
SPEAKER_03So dude, I can surf the six-foot waves, but the nine foot waves, I can't do it.
SPEAKER_00All bets are off, right? Exactly. Or sometimes you see it as, well, I could do this symptom, but not this symptom. I could do this thought, but not that one. I could do a thought about death, but I can't do a thought about my kids. Like that I can't handle. So really common.
SPEAKER_04Well, what's the most common phrase in the OCD community? It's like, I would trade my theme for someone else's any day.
SPEAKER_00It happens every day every day.
SPEAKER_04It's the most the most common thing. Yeah. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Even outside, even in other anxiety disorders, I've had people who literally say to me, like, I would pay to have to run to the toilet all day. If they have cardiophobia, they want the stomach fear. Like the people with the stomach fear were like, I don't care about my heart at all. I would pay for that. So there's something to be said for that. But in the end, the undulating panic or anxiety has to do with that. Like, no, I think that's not handleable. So I keep I'm on guard for that. So um, let's do an audio did it anyway, because it's a good one. And this is from a member of our community who sent it in last week. Okay, cool.
SPEAKER_02Hey, Drew and Josh. Uh, my name is Finn from Sunny Queensland, Australia. Um, I'm sitting in a do did it anyway today. Um, this one isn't so much to do with the panic attacks, albeit I do suffer from panic attacks from time to time, but I do face them head on with acceptance and they seem to pass. But this is more so to do with the downtime, the small moments in between. I recently got back from two weeks' travel in Japan. On sort of the first day or two, went back, I noticed that sort of disassociated, inner scanning, anxious state crept in. I instantly reached for the podcast and for the community app for some reassurance, but I stopped myself mid-reach. I asked, is this just an action to feel better? Or is this what non-anxious me would do? And in that moment, I said, Well, what would non-anxious me do? We'd probably go for a run. I laced up the shoes, put on the jet burners, and did a 5k. And uh I believe it was sort of the best thing I could have done for that moment. Of course, I used compassion along the way, and it wasn't perfect. I was still scanning, but through compassion, I put my focus onto the run. And it's safe to say I feel calm and great now. Uh so yeah, that's my desert anyway. It's not always about say sort of facing the mountain. For me, it's a lot of the small, quiet stuff. And just want to use this as ammo for anyone else who is struggling for those rooms that feel loud, the thoughts and the anxious sort of dread that fills up when you've got an afternoon of nothing. So keep pushing, guys. And I love the podcast. Thank you very much. And Drew, please do not turn off those computer notifications. I love it when they come through on the audio recording. It makes it all human and funny. Thank you, guys.
SPEAKER_00Oh, we get applause. Yeah, we got applause. You may not have heard it. I don't know what's up with the code.
SPEAKER_04Oh, well done. Well, that's amazing. I love that. Also, if you did pick up a disorder community app, all you get is go and do what non action did.
SPEAKER_00Uh that is 100% true, but uh that is so good.
SPEAKER_04What are you coming here for? Get out.
SPEAKER_00That is so good. Can we take a minute also to like first of all, yes, Ben? I will leave my notifications on. Thank you for the voter confidence. But can we take a moment to recognize the cool ass? Birds in Queensland. I mean, come on. The birds in the background were really great. I was fascinated by them.
SPEAKER_04But anyway. Oh, that's lovely. And there's I think there's like a feral pigeon outside my apartment in my That's as good as it gets.
SPEAKER_00They have like my clothes at the tropical birds, and you have a feral pigeon.
SPEAKER_04Waiting for the so good. I love the compassion, but it's like, nope. I'm gonna remind myself, I'm gonna anchor myself what I'm supposed to be doing. What would non-anxious me be doing right now? That is how I teach the brain. My amygdala, which is what? How's another way we could say that word?
SPEAKER_00Uh amygdala? We could say it like this.
SPEAKER_04Amygdala. And he's like, right, okay, now's the time to rewire it. What would non-anxious me be doing? Well, yeah, okay. I'm addicted to relief and reassurance in the past. So, oh, I'll go and listen to the podcast or open up the community app. And hold on, no, this isn't the principles of what I do. I'm gonna put my phone down. And non-anxious me actually likes running, so I'm gonna go just for a 5k run. And then at the end, you can be like, look, and you just taught the brain there, no urgency, do what non-anxious me. You've not made it the most important thing in the room. Absolutely love it. Very, very happy with that.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, one of the one of the best I've heard in a long time. And I think it speaks directly to today's topic because if I run to the app or I run to the scroll on Instagram or I go, I gotta listen to a podcast real quick because I'm really anxious, you are much more likely to create that undulating state, even if it's not panic, because every time you hit a peak and you think it's too much, you insert like an outside you intervention to try to feel better. And then that will wear off and then it will rise again. So if you are listening and you are in the business of trying to manage your anxiety by using outside of my skin interventions to calm down on demand, you are almost certainly going to create undulating anxiety. There's a reason why we don't talk about those things because they have temporary effect, if any. And so right, great. This what Finn did here is like, no, I'm not gonna do that. I'm gonna ride through the peak, let it go down. Maybe you came up later, but like you have a much more likely chance this way of learning a lesson that flattens those waves going forward. Happy secondary effect. We can't operate directly on the peak of the can I make myself like myself less anxious, but you have a much more chance, much greater chance of having lower peaks and less rocky boat undulation later.
SPEAKER_04So yeah. What are some of the um let's talk about some of the thoughts that the scary thoughts that keep uh our attention on undulating panic? So the most of the most common ones I hear are, you know, what if you've unlocked a special type of anxiety? What if this isn't anxiety and something more? What if you're panicking because there's something wrong with you? All designed to keep your attention on the threat. I used to fall for that for a long time. How do you know? And this is the OCD part of it, the doubt response. How do you know it's just panic? Oh, well, I'm gonna have to roll the penta million gun on this one. Yeah, and actually, no, in the in even when you're panicking, it feels like rolling a six-sided dice. Suddenly the odds are like, ooh. Yeah, but they're still in my favor. So I'm gonna roll it anyway and just hope it doesn't get a six. Because you know why? I never roll a six. I'm always confident, like every board game I ever play to the end of time, I will not roll a six.
SPEAKER_00Wow, that's a high degree of confidence in that.
SPEAKER_04Unless I'm playing snakes and ladders, and the only number to get me to hit a snake would be a six, then I would get if six is losing, I will roll it every time.
SPEAKER_00But in a way, that's that negative expectation bias, which we can talk about one day too, but we all have that too. I I would also add to uh, you know, the scary thoughts that fuel the undulating anxiety. What if it's not anxiety? And this gets super meta because I hear people all the time say, but it's happening all day long, so that can't possibly be anxiety. Or like, but I wasn't thinking of anything. I wasn't anxious about anything, but it just keeps coming. So that can't be just anxiety. Something is really wrong. No, that would be incorrect. Like since you're worried about how you're gonna feel and then you feel that, sometimes the scary thought is like, see, it's still here, it keeps coming back, so something must be wrong. That's not proof of anything. Like pro when you have undulating or rolling anxiety or panic, that isn't proof that there's an actual problem. It it's proof that you don't want to have that feeling, and so you're guarding against it and pushing against it all day long. So be careful about that. I think you know, another thing that fuels it, by the way, is the in the lower points is just what if it comes back? Now, undulation can happen hour by hour, it can happen day by day. A good day is usually like sabotage by yeah, but what is tomorrow going to be? And sure enough, then the week starts to undulate, right? I have a good day and a bad day.
SPEAKER_04So did you read my sand timer analogy that I posted in the uh and completely stealing it?
SPEAKER_00Not only did I read it, I'm gonna steal it flat out.
SPEAKER_04So I'll read it. Obviously, I read it, read it out. Don't gatekeep information. Yeah, so the sand timer analogy was something I posted the other day, and someone in the audience just commented on it, and this made me smile. Uh, hi everybody. The sand timer analogy helped me back off constant monitoring because people with undulating panic constantly monitor. So yeah, help me back off constant monitoring because it has a clear beginning, middle, and end. And I like seeing the end. The article article described that the middle part is when your body is processing all the gunk that got dumped in your body when you got triggered. I like that gunk. Uh, the body knows how to do this very well without you watching, and it knows how to finish without you checking. So you can set that part of the process aside and get on with non-anxious you. The body takes care of itself. If you start messing with it, you have to flip the timer over again and get on that hamster wheel. Now, I love this analogy because it it came up in a session randomly. You know, my you know me in analogies. I used to be working in school, so I always made up metaphors and analogies. Um, when you're triggered, you flipped over the sand timer, and you can't stop adrenaline and cortisol, it has to go around your body, right? You know, that that you categorically gonna feel uncomfortable. It doesn't matter what Mel Robin says, or all these people, all these magic techniques online, as a fact, physiologically, that is now in your bloodstream, and you're gonna feel those emotions. And if you're activated, you can be in threat mode, but it's a sand timer. So when you flip it over, it will end. Science is on your side, physiology is on your side. Sand has started falling through the gap, you know? It just takes time. But people with anxiety disorders and in sensitized states, they get frustrated that it's not falling through fast enough. So they pick up the sand timer and they start shaking it. Like, hurry up, get get get through that, come on, hurry up, is it finished yet? Go away, go away. But what happens if you shake a sand timer? You slow it down. All those compulsions are mauling with it. It's not mauling with it with the sand timer. You know, let it go, turn your back on it, knowing that gravity is going to sort it out. And like some of the person said in the chat, actually, I've just learning to get on with what non-anxious me would do, knowing that the sand timer will eventually end.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. And you know, you the undulation comes when you refuse to treat an anxious peak, whether it's a panic attack or just a wave of anxiety, as a discrete event, but it is. And then you tie them together. Now you may have multiple discrete events throughout the day. That's okay. When you connect them, because you are watching and refuse to let the sand timer just run out. Something might knock it over later and it runs again. Now now you're in that that roller coaster that never seems to stop. So I love the beginning. It has a beginning, a middle, and an end. That's exactly right. Let it have one. But that's hard to do. It's a big ass, but yeah, really good. Really good.
SPEAKER_04Well done. I'm all I'm also just excited that I said something helpful.
SPEAKER_00Oh, and it was really great. It was I like I said, I'm unabaturedly steal it. I might credit you, maybe.
SPEAKER_04Hey guys, look what I came up with.
SPEAKER_00Look what I came up with. You know who does that? Mel Robbins. You know what's gonna happen, by the way? When you come to the US, the minute you walk off a plane at JFK or LaGuardia, wherever you fly, I'm taking you to wherever she's speaking. I'm gonna duct tape you to the seat, and you must watch the entire Me?
SPEAKER_04That's horrible. Why would you do that? Just to see what I'm saying.
SPEAKER_00Oh, like Clockwork Orange, just like taping my hands up, making you watch the scariest shit ever. So really dope.
SPEAKER_04Must buy her protein supplements.
SPEAKER_00How about a written did it anyway?
SPEAKER_04Cool, yeah. Yeah, I've got one, you've got one. You got one from the app, I've got one from disorder.fm.
SPEAKER_00Cool. I want to read one from our community app. I will not use this person's name because she had no idea we were going to talk about it on a podcast. It's gonna get thousands of downloads. But hello, I had a big for me, did it anyway. By the way, they're all big. Don't never qualify those. I'm the person with arsteoarthritis of my shoulder, which can flare and create pain. So when this real condition flares, I typically ruminate, panic, and make it the center of my day. This morning I said, okay, Brain, we're going to teach you by action that that does not need to be the case. I went for my morning walk and then I went to look at a space where I'm having a storytelling event. I don't want to say because it would give her a name away. The big win was that I left the arm noise be there as loud as it wanted to be, didn't insist that the pain go away. And I wasn't, it wasn't the defining event of the day. Practice, practice, practice. Killer, right?
SPEAKER_04I love that. It wasn't the defining event of the day. I love that. Yeah, where historically, not making it the most important thing in the room. Love it. That's the trickiest one.
SPEAKER_00Really good. That's that, like, oh, I noticed discomfort. Let me throw out there that this is distress tolerance. That pain is a form of distress. If I can practice it with the pain in my shoulder, I could practice it with other stuff. There's like multiple levels. I didn't realize that, yeah. 100%. 100%. Well done. What do you got?
SPEAKER_04I like that. I like that a lot. I've got one. Yeah. You ready? Yep. Hi, Drew and Josh. I'm Rainey, and you can use my name. I've struggled with health anxiety a lot over the last three years since my mom passed away unexpectedly. I've dealt with GAD probably most of my life. And your podcast has been so amazing and helpful in completely changing how I approach my anxiety and put me on the path to desensitization and living how I want to live. This feels sort of dinky next to all that, but my did it anyway is I realized this morning that I can use the same approach for my extremely impractical phone call phobia, too. It's like it just suddenly hit me that what I'm doing is avoiding, procrastinating, thinking up overcomplicated, techniqueified solutions. It's the same old anxiety-brained way of thinking. So I'm writing all this and I'm going to make my work phone call and report back to you. Reporting back. Oh man, I got their voicemail. But I made the call, so I'm going to say I still did it anyway.
SPEAKER_00Oh, that is really great. I love this.
SPEAKER_04I love that.
SPEAKER_00You know what I love about that? This is that thing where, and I know you hear it in your practice too, like, wow, you know, I'm doing so much better, especially near the end of therapy when they're ready to graduate. It's like, oh, I'm I noticed that this is spreading into other parts of my life. Sure is. Who saw that coming, right? Yeah. So Yeah.
SPEAKER_04It teaches you a lot about yourself, anxiety does, doesn't it? It does. I just want it to go away so I can feel no, no, it'll still teach you something.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, yeah. It'll get better. I suspect that going through this process, I can speak for myself. It 100% made me better at life. There's I I will not, I'm gonna say that till the day they put me in a box. And I think for many people, I just see it too often in my practice now, too. Like, oh, it's made me better in other areas too. I would I that's a terrible way to have to get better at life, by the way. Don't wish that on anybody. But at the same time, you know, like, hey, you want if you really want to get good at life, that's it. That's our coaching. That's how we're gonna combat Mel Robbins. That's gonna be our coaching thing. Just get an anxiety disorder and you will level up, brother. Like, so yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_04Let's start a pyramid scheme. Oh crap, the recording. I shouldn't have said that.
SPEAKER_00I'm in. I love pyramids.
SPEAKER_04Oh where can people send in did it anyways and questions?
SPEAKER_00I would suggest you head on over to disorder.fm. You can use a little blue button to record a voicemail or just send us a written message or whatever. We try to listen and read them all, listen to and read them all. We can't put them all in the air, but we really love getting them.
SPEAKER_04So what else? Yeah, and if you want a bit more extra support or you're feeling lonely, you want to read some extra articles, if you want to watch us record these um episodes live, you can do that in the Disorder Community app. Uh, we're joined today by about 40 odd people, it's really nice. Yeah, and um yeah, you you can do it. Like I said, it's not mandatory, it's not obligatory. We're gonna no gatekeeping, but if you want a community somewhere to go to round tables and chats and just sharing did it anyways. I one of my favorite parts of the app is just the did it anyway wall. I think it's really good. Yeah, um, but yeah, then feel free. It's optional, it's all good. We're not gonna tell you you must do this or this and that. No, you're more than capable of doing it on your own. But if you want a bit of extra support, come join.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, pop on in. It's been all kinds of fun, and I appreciate everybody in the community, especially the cheering for each other. That's always so nice to see. So yeah, I do like that. Thanks for hanging out, guys. We'll be back again in two weeks with no with one week. I'm sorry, we do this every week. Like that's the other podcast. Uh, I don't know what we're gonna talk about, but we'll talk about something.
SPEAKER_04So we'll talk about something, yeah. It's all good. Uh we might we'll look through disorder.fm for some inspiration as well.
SPEAKER_00100%. All right, we'll see you next week. We're out of the way.
