Today, on episode 301 of the Anxious Truth, we're going to do a short guided exercise in acceptance, letting go, surrendering, dropping resistance, being mindful, floating, willfully tolerating, Call it whatever works for you. That's what today's episode is all about. It's a short guided exercise in acceptance, or mindfulness or letting go, designed for people who are struggling with chronic and disordered anxiety. If you're watching on YouTube today, apologies, there is no video, there's only still images. But there's a reason for that. You don't have to watch me talk today to get the most out of this exercise, so I didn't want to distract you with video. So this is the Anxious Truth, the podcast that covers all things anxiety, anxiety disorders and anxiety recovery.
Speaker 1:I am Drew Linsalata. I am the creator and host of this fine podcast or I hope it's a fine podcast. Anyway, I am a therapist practicing in the state of New York under supervision, specializing in the treatment of anxiety and anxiety disorders. I am a three-time author on this topic Anxiety, Anxiety Disorders and Anxiety Recovery. I am a former sufferer, for many years of my life, of things like panic disorder, agoraphobia, OCD, and of things like panic disorder, agoraphobia, OCD and depression. Doing much better now, Thank you. For many years I am an advocate, a psychoeducator, a social media dude and, yeah, happy to be here for episode 301 of this podcast, which has been going strong since I don't know when 2014 sometime, I think. So it's been quite a while. If you are new to the Anxious Truth, you just accidentally stumbled upon us today. I hope you find what you hear or watch useful in some way and, of course, if you're a returning listener, welcome back. I'm glad that you're here, as always. Just a quick reminder that the Anxious Truth is more than just this podcast episode, this little guided acceptance exercise, or this YouTube video. There are a ton more resources, many of which are free or very low cost. On my website, which is theanxioustruthcom, you can follow all my social media links. There's links to all of my low-cost workshops and courses. There are the links to the three books that I've written. There's just a ton of stuff over there. So when you get a chance, head on over there to theanxioustruthcom and check it out. Of course, if you're here on YouTube today watching or listening as a video and you like it, maybe take a moment to hit the thumbs up or subscribe to the video, and if you have any questions about what you hear, use the comment section below to ask me Now, before we get into our little guided acceptance exercise this morning, I want to give you a few little guidelines.
Speaker 1:The first one is very important. If you sit quietly and allow your thoughts and find that you are overwhelmed literally overwhelmed by painful memories of very difficult past events or situations, or triggered into a current crisis state where your ability to cope with how you feel is outstripped and you are buried, this exercise is probably not for you. This is not a trauma-focused exercise at all. We do not decide to just sit quietly in trauma flashbacks without a lot of prep and a lot of professional guidance. We don't float through past abuses or harmful events that trigger re-experiencing events. Now, here we are targeting the fear of thoughts, emotions and sensations that themselves are perceived as the threat. We're not addressing PTSD or the long-term impacts of crisis events that create actual memories that are in some way incapacitating in the moment In those situations if that's the situation you're in first, I'm very sorry that you are. That's very difficult, but in those situations we want to work with qualified in-person help using empirically validated methods that can help you rebuild the narratives around those past events and turn them into really bad but handleable memories and the internet, including this podcast episode and this episode. This exercise is not that so if you are dealing with PTSD, or you cannot sit quietly with your thoughts because you have re-experiencing of past experiences or you have flashbacks, so to speak, or it just becomes absolutely overwhelming and incapacitating to you, this exercise is not for you. Please keep that in mind.
Speaker 1:Second little guideline you will note that at no point in the rationale and instructions I provide today am I going to talk about calming, grounding, relaxing or even achieving any particular state at all. Now, I might use the word relax to remind you to take the tension out of your body when you notice it during the exercise, but this is not about learning how to make anxiety or discomfort vanish through some technique. This is not a calming technique at all when anxiety and fear sort of kick in your door against your will and barge into your home, sort of figuratively speaking. Here, with this exercise, we are learning to let it sit on your sofa with you, get bored with itself and move on, without waging war against it or declaring your life to be a disaster, because that has happened. Paradoxically, when we get good at this, we often do find that we become less anxious overall and we will experience anxiety surges or panic less often, but that is not the primary target here. I cannot stress that enough. If you're looking for a calming or relaxation exercise to regulate your nervous system on demand when you are too anxious, this is not it. This is not what this is for.
Speaker 1:And third, we are going to practice watching our internal experiences change when we leave them alone. Change is the key word. We're not going to practice watching our internal experiences change when we leave them alone. Change is the key word. We're not going to demand that they decrease. Now they might, and that would be awesome, but they might also intensify at times, which is also okay. We really want to see things change when we leave them alone. That's natural, and we're trying to allow that process to play out without resisting it or trying to control it in some way.
Speaker 1:Now there may be moments in this exercise where you engage in this practice and you have thoughts or sensations that are getting stronger or louder and you will be strongly compelled to stop, re-engage your resistance and fight against that. If you do stop and fight, that's okay. This is a long-standing habit for most anxious people. It's perfectly okay to recognize where things went off the rails, maybe reset and try again. Remember, we call this a practice for a reason. We're not trying to create specific outcomes every time. We're trying to learn that all the outcomes are actually okay, even the ones we don't want. But in those moments, ask yourself when you want to cut bait, run, fight, resist control, ask yourself if you can let yourself move through those peak experiences. That's really hard, 100%, let's acknowledge it, but that is a valuable ability that we're really learning to cultivate. That's what this exercise is all about. So let's get to it.
Speaker 1:I want to give you a core principle before we really start the exercise, and that core principle is that, in the absence of a real danger or external stress or input of some kind, all internal experiences, emotions, thoughts, feelings etc. Are transient, All of them. No internal state is constant or forever. In our context, even people that struggle with thought-driven OCD or GAD can notice that scary thoughts, excessive worry or rumination are simply not constant. They will rise, fall and change on their own, even when it's just because we're accidentally distracted. And while you might insist, anxious people might exist sometimes that they are in an absolute panic during every waking moment. I would urge you to stop for a minute and consider a time in the past where you accidentally got distracted and found that your anxiety or distress did fade into the background at least a little bit or did change in some way for a few minutes or maybe even a few hours. I have seen anxious people who were, you know, insisted that they could not possibly attend a family function, like a wedding, wound up, sort of getting caught up in the event, forgot about their anxiety and had a great eight hours. That happens. So we have to rely on the core principle that all of our internal experiences are transient if we let them be so letting go. We have to learn and practice how to let go so that we can allow this core principle to work for us.
Speaker 1:If we're going to fight, resist, judge, interpret, analyze and predict based on how we're feeling those internal experiences, then we are simply not allowing the experience to be transient in nature. We're choosing to keep that experience alive by fueling it with the resistance. Now, this is not accusatory. It seems like common sense to fight negative internal experiences. But when we choose to fight, we keep those experiences alive. And that's when you'll say I feel like I'm just constantly anxious. It doesn't go away, nothing works. But even then, nobody can remain fully focused on scary or disturbing things, because life is going to happen around you and it's going to distract you for a few minutes here and there. So when we practice fully letting go, like we're gonna do today, for about eight minutes or so, we are giving ourselves a chance to see our internal experiences. Even the really scary and disturbing ones that you think are off limits change naturally, because that's what they do.
Speaker 1:So what does letting go mean? And when I post about letting go on social media, people are like, yes, but how? What are you supposed to do? What does that even mean? What does that look like? How do you do it?
Speaker 1:Well, first let's talk about what it means. It means allowing. It means not resisting because it's here anyway, so resisting is pointless. It doesn't mean letting go of your thoughts or sensations so they just float away and never return. This is not like a cure and, by the way, we are going to do some mindfulness and meditation looking things here, and I'm tired of hearing that mindfulness and meditation are cures for things. They are not. These are tools.
Speaker 1:But in this situation, letting go means letting go of the resistance to the thoughts and experiences In this situation. It means learning how to not fight, analyze, judge, interpret or say, say, predict, based on what you're feeling, your internal experiences. This is about learning to just be, which I know sounds super woo, but it is true. It's about learning to just be and allow what is as it is, moment by moment Now. Does this have applications in life in general, beyond anxiety recovery? Sure does, but for now, we're going to talk about how to do this, what this looks like for people who are struggling with anxiety disorder recovery and are really struggling because they start to feel things and then they bail.
Speaker 1:So the next question would be how do we do this? Well, if we look at the popular definition of mindfulness, which comes from Jon Kabat-Zinn he's one of my favorites we can look at mindfulness as simply this it's the act of paying attention to the present moment, with the intention of paying attention, but without judgment. Again, fully experiencing what is as it is right now. That's it. That's what mindfulness is. What is happening? Not, why not? What does it mean? Not, how do I stop it? Not what's going to happen in 10 minutes. What's happening right now? Can I open myself up to what is happening in my life right now. That is mindfulness, that's how we use it and guess what? That's pretty scary If you're an anxious person dealing with things like panic disorder or OCD or health anxiety. Even gag can get pretty scary when it gets loud.
Speaker 1:This is difficult. We fight against scary and disturbing internal experiences because we think that we must resist sensations, thoughts or emotions because otherwise they will be too much, they will overwhelm us, they will break us or they might cause actual harm to us or they are harbingers of doom. So even if they were, we think we could stop the signal of doom and therefore stop the doom. That's not true. So we must always acknowledge that for someone struggling with an anxiety disorder, fully allowing these thoughts, emotions or sensations and observing them as they change seems simple. But it's going to feel wrong, risky, dangerous or even downright reckless to do that. We have to acknowledge that and that's what makes this so difficult to do.
Speaker 1:But here we're relying on the core principle that tells us that an oversensitized, hypervigilant mind stuck in protection mode without an actual threat present never creates actual harmful or risky situations for its owner Uncomfortable situations, difficult to handle situations. Disturbing and scary situations, Uncomfortable situations, difficult to handle situations, disturbing and scary situations. But your anxious mind simply cannot destroy itself or you by just creating thoughts, emotions, images or sensations. It just doesn't work that way. And this is scary work when first let go to watch things change on their own, without forcing them. But facing that fear is part of the hand we've been dealt, it is our reality in the anxiety disorder world.
Speaker 1:So let's acknowledge the challenge here, but not set up permanent residence in. This is hard air. Quotes this is hard town. We can acknowledge that this is difficult. Be patient with yourself. It's okay. If you can't really do it for more than a couple of minutes or a couple of seconds, that's okay. But we don't have to set up permanent residence and plant our flag forever. And this is hard, we know it's hard. We have to learn to do it anyway, patiently and with kindness and self-compassion. So before we actually get started, just a little bit of a caveat here.
Speaker 1:This exercise is going to include much more talking and coaching and instruction that I might do, say, with a therapy client in session. I'm assuming that this is new to you or that you've been trying it, but you're struggling to do this. So I really want to add the extra coaching and guidance to help you understand what it looks and feels like, so you can get a better sense of what accepting, surrendering and letting go is like. So let's bring it down just a little bit, because I'm not the quietest guy in the world and I tend to talk very quickly. I'm going to try and bring it down a little bit and let's get cooking with the exercise. It's going to take about eight minutes or so roughly. I haven't totally timed it, but let's get into it. So, if you are ready, I want you to take a few minutes to be sure that you're sitting comfortably or that you're laying down so that you are supported and can remain in that position for the seven or eight minutes or so of this exercise without being disturbed. Hopefully you're in a quiet place.
Speaker 1:Take a moment to start to scan your body from head to toe to see if you can find any tension. We're looking for tension. When you do, I want you to do your best to release the tension in your body. This by itself might be challenging, because bracing your body against what you fear a form of resistance might feel a little risky or a lot risky. Do your best to sort of ragdoll your body. That means let it go limp and release all the tension. That's going to be hard, but it's okay. If you have to re-release throughout the exercise. When you notice that the tension is returning, that's perfectly fine. There is nothing in this exercise that you can do wrong. Again, we call it practice for a good reason. Be nice to yourself as we work through this together.
Speaker 1:Now I want you to take a few seconds to settle into the position that you're in. Try to become as still as you can and again, this might be challenging because fidgeting is one of those defenses anxious people employ against experiences that we fear and we want to block. If you find it challenging to relax your body and sit still, then this is your practice, right Doing a few exercises a few seconds at a time and working to extend that little by little as you repeat the exercise. It's okay. If you find that you almost can't relax your body and sit still at first, that's okay. Stick with me for the full exercise so you can learn what you're shooting for. But if you have to get up and reset over and over at this point, there's nothing wrong with starting. There is literally nothing wrong with that. Please refrain from declaring failure immediately.
Speaker 1:Now, if you're settled in and you've managed to release most of the tension in your body and you're sitting mostly still, this is where you will probably find yourself start to get challenged, because you might see that your anxiety sensations and your symptoms feel stronger. You might feel that your thoughts and emotions are starting to feel bigger or louder inside of you. That's okay, that's not dangerous. We expect this to happen. We're here to practice having that exact experience. Now ask yourself if you can allow what you feel and think in this moment. Can you acknowledge what you're experiencing you don't have to try to ignore it and can you allow yourself to fully experience it as it is, without resistance? This is the part where we start to get sucked into trying to explain what we're experiencing or analyzing it or finding meaning in it or making predictions based on it. Right now, in this practice, let's see if we can refrain from doing that. We expect this to happen and we're here to try to learn to simply have this experience so we can learn something from it. To learn to simply have this experience so we can learn something from it.
Speaker 1:If you notice sensations in your body. Let's try labeling them objectively. For example, I feel my heart racing, I'm sweating. I feel tension across my chest. I notice I'm shaking a little. I notice I'm shaking a lot. I can also notice that my head feels heavy. You get the idea. Just label them objectively, You'll notice. I didn't say it feels like and I did not try to predict what any of that means or what might happen. You might even gently acknowledge that you felt these things every time you get triggered or anxious and notice we're just describing, we're not adding stories to the sensation. I'm just going to leave a few seconds of silence here so you can practice objectively labeling what you feel in your body right now.
Speaker 1:Okay, so let's move on to thoughts. If you're having scary thoughts and you want to save yourself from the disaster they seem to imply, can you label the thoughts and watch them happen as they happen, like you do with sensations? Maybe you can imagine those scary thoughts being on a conveyor belt, slowly going past you. Can you see them on the belt in front of you, moving, say, from your left to your right and then maybe falling off the end of the belt? They might come back, but can you watch them go past you on the conveyor belt and then fall off the end. Can you name those thoughts without adding stories or explaining them?
Speaker 1:For example, I notice I'm having thoughts about insanity now. For example, I notice I'm having thoughts about insanity. Now. I can also notice thoughts about being somebody I don't want to be or doing things that I truly do not want to do, and this disturbs me. Now my mind is making thoughts about being sick or needing urgent medical attention or being contaminated. See how that works. We're just naming the thoughts, we're just acknowledging them because we cannot ignore them. So just acknowledge them, name them, put them on the belt and let them go by. You might even label your thoughts as recurring stories if they're familiar with you.
Speaker 1:One thing I like to teach people is something like oh, there's that psychosis story again. You label it for what it is it's a thought. There it goes, it's coming around again, like it does all the time, and it's going past me. I'm going to leave a little bit of silence here so you can practice with that. Okay, now let's try noticing maybe other things that are also happening now. Can you hear things around you or in the next room? Are there sounds? Are there any scents or smells you can detect? Maybe take note of the temperature in the room. This isn't a grounding thing. This isn't a calming thing. Just see if you can notice what else is going on.
Speaker 1:Here's one. See if you can visualize all the people in the houses or buildings in the town around you or the city around you. They are also having experiences now, of all different varieties, some positive, some neutral, some negative, just like you are. Can you notice for a minute that the things happening inside you are not the only things happening in the universe, even though they want to be treated that way? So take a few seconds now to see if you can expand your reach to consider that there are other things happening in the universe, including other people having experiences right now. Take a little time to try it. I'll leave you a little silence, so let's move on to being kind to yourself.
Speaker 1:If you find your mind making thoughts about how you are failing because of what you're feeling right now, or being challenged by that, or if you hear your inner critical voice yelling at you that you're never going to get better, can you also allow those thoughts, Because those are also thoughts? Can you label them as negative or critical thoughts and also let them move by you without arguing with them or making stories on top of them. How about trying this one? Oh, there's that story about being weak. Again, it's moving by me, on the conveyor belt of my mind.
Speaker 1:Again, Take a moment to acknowledge something that when your mind makes thoughts and your body makes sensations, even the ones you don't like, you are literally part of an unbroken line that stretches from the very first recognizable modern human being to you, sitting or laying where you are right now. Every human that has ever lived and will ever live have or will have thoughts and experiences and sensations, some of which are unwanted, scary, disturbing or intrusive. You are not broken. You're just like all of us since the beginning of time. At the moment, you are just being tricked. You're just like all of us since the beginning of time. At the moment, you are just being tricked into treating those normal human experiences as problems to solve. So can you experiment in these few moments, in this exercise, with just having that experience rather than problem solving around it? Let's take about 10 or 15 seconds so you could practice that, just having the experience, and I'll leave you some silence.
Speaker 1:And now. I'll just remind you to try releasing the tension in your body, if you can notice any again, and if you can go back to trying to be still and notice any movement or acknowledge it. None of it is wrong. Notice it, acknowledge it and gently adjust if you need to. This is what we do throughout exercises like this. Maybe you can now notice how the sensations in your body and the thoughts in your mind are changing over the last few minutes that we've been practicing together. Maybe they're stronger or weaker, or they have moved from one spot in your body to another. Maybe sensations disappeared and others popped up. Maybe you're having different thoughts now or experiencing different emotions than you were four or five minutes ago. Or maybe they're the same ones, but they've gotten quieter or farther away, or even gotten louder and then softer and then louder again.
Speaker 1:Can you notice how your experience has changed? Naturally, when you leave it alone and stopped hanging on so tightly to try to control it. Try to notice how things have changed over the past seven or eight minutes. Take a few seconds to try that, while I leave you a little silence. Okay, now I want you to take another minute or so to just try to stay in your current experience, with the intention of staying with it and without judgment or interpretation. Drop your resistance, See if you can fully allow this experience without fighting against it, and I will leave you 60 seconds here for you to practice on your own. 30 more seconds, Okay. Good job on the practice.
Speaker 1:If you had to reset a bunch of times, that's okay. We're getting close to the end of the practice. We want to wrap it up, so what I want you to do is slowly bring yourself back into the space that you're in. Maybe wiggle your fingers or toes gently, Take a few breaths, Move around in your chair, Open your eyes if you had them closed, Just kind of get back in touch with what's around you and where you are. Take your time. If you're not ready to stop, you're enjoying this and you want to keep going. Feel free to keep going. You know, hit the stop button and then restart the video or the podcast. When you're ready, that's okay. But when you've completed the exercise and you're comfortable again, pat yourself on the back. Even if you struggle to get through it and had to keep resetting, you just did something really hard. Acknowledge that you did something good for you and that is a very big deal. That's important and I want you to consider the following questions. You don't have to answer them immediately. Maybe write them down and answer them for yourself over the next five or ten minutes.
Speaker 1:What did I observe during this experience? Don't interpret what you observe. Just ask yourself what you observed. Stick to the facts. The second question would be what did this experience teach me about anxiety, discomfort, fear or distress? The third question might be what did this experience teach me about how I can interact with those things? What did it teach me about my ability to handle those negative experiences without wrestling with them? And the last question would be what surprised me about this experience? What came up or what did I experience as I did the exercise? That I wasn't expecting.
Speaker 1:And remember, we're not looking for specific outcomes here. There's no box to check or goal to achieve when you do these things. We're just looking for what the experience was like objectively, sort of without jumping into. I felt like I was going to that. We're not going to interpret like that and we want to see what was it like objectively and what you can learn from it that you can take with you into the rest of today or your next practice session. Maybe you're going to do this again tomorrow. Now there's a million other places where you can find these type of exercises online without all of the front and back that I put on a podcast episode that's now stretching to 26 minutes.
Speaker 1:Maybe I'll record one that doesn't have all the instructions and has more silence for you. I'll try to see if I can do that in the next couple of weeks. But yeah, if you did this and you made it to the end, even if you tried and had to reset over and over, congratulations. You did a really good thing today for yourself and I really appreciate that. You tried something that maybe you thought was impossible or thought you shouldn't do or have been struggling to do. So good on you.
Speaker 1:And we'll wrap it up here. That would be episode 301 of the Anxious Truth. In the books there's no music. I don't want to ruin the silence with music today. I'm just going to remind you again that you did a really hard thing today and you should pat yourself on the back, and also that if, in fact, you can take one tiny step today away from the fear and toward the life that you more realistically value and want to live, no matter how tiny that step is like maybe practicing eight minutes of you know, mindful acceptance on a podcast episode, that counts. They all count. They add up. Sometimes it takes time, sometimes you have to be patient, but you can get there if you let experiences like this build up and become additive over time.
Speaker 1:If, in fact, you are listening to this podcast episode on Apple or Spotify and you dig the podcast, maybe leave a five-star rating and if you really really like it, maybe take a second and write a review, because it helps other people find the podcast and the more people get help. Of course. If you're watching on YouTube for the first time, maybe subscribe to the channel, hit the notification bell so that you know when I upload new videos and if you have questions or comments, leave them in the YouTube comments. I know I'm very far behind on them, but I'm finishing my master's degree in two weeks and I'll have more time to come back into the comment section on YouTube.
Speaker 1:If you're listening as a podcast episode, look at the description in your podcast app. There's a link where you can send me a question by a text. I'm never going to text you back. I don't see your number. It's just a way for you to talk to me from your podcast app, so check that out if you have any questions. Thank you so much for hanging out today. I hope you found this useful. If you do, let me know. We'll do more of them. I will try to make you a better recorded exercise without all the jabbering at you, but it might take me a while to.