Recovery Monday episode number 61. Today we're going to talk about anxiety symptoms, panic and exercise. I posted about this over the weekend on TikTok and Instagram and man, did it get a lot of traction. So people clearly want to talk about this. So we will talk about it today. We'll go over some of the basic principles that I want to lay out for you guys, especially if you are in a situation where you keep hearing that exercise is really good for your anxiety, but then when you try to exercise, you end up feeling more anxious or you even panic. We're going to talk about that all today. So let's get the chat overlay up so you guys can see what's going on. So I can see what's going on. I do not need headphones today because it's just me. So thank you be appreciate the thumbs up. See, it's like code. I already know what Bethany is telling me. She can hear me. So that's always good news. Anyway, has everybody doing well? We'll wait for everybody to sort of file in. Oh, we got our second Twitch person. Hello there. I don't know how to say your name. I, I exodia. I don't know. Um, hope I'm getting that right. Listen to 50% of the comments of the screen right now are from Twitch. This is a milestone. This is an absolute milestone for the anxious truth. Anyway, we'll wait for everybody to show up. I know this is a pretty popular topic. A lot of people were talking about, hey, you know, I have this problem. I really want to exercise or I feel like something's wrong with me because when I exercise, I feel worse or it triggers my panic. So I'm going to talk about all that. Hey, Billy. Hey, Julie went up. I had a momentary paper over. He's in. It's a Twitch breakthrough. It is completely a Twitch breakthrough. So, uh, yeah, this is no joke. Like we're getting huge on Twitch. We have two viewers now. Whoops. Um, I have a ton of stuff on my screen right now, so I'm trying to organize that. Um, as we're waiting for everybody to file in, everybody just let me know how you're doing. I hope everybody's okay. Let me know where you're coming from. Uh, if in fact you are coming from the Facebook group, I won't see your name.  But, uh, yeah, that's what's going on. And before we get started, just a quick reminder, people have been asking me, um, and yes, people actually have been asking me. That's like such an influencer thing. I've got so many questions about, and they've gotten zero questions about that. I will never do that. Like I'm literally being hasty about that. So I'm going to put this up on the screen. Um, this coming Saturday, which is February 11th, I am running my panic attacks explained, there it is this way. I'm running this workshop, which people seem to be interested in, uh, essentially, especially if you are new to this whole thing and the stuff that I talk about seems completely ridiculous. Like, what does this guy talk to you about? I have to intentionally panic. It this workshop kind of display, uh, talks about all of that stuff. It's 90 minutes via zoom. You're completely anonymous. You're not on camera. No, we'll see your name. So I have a whole slide deck. You get that like there'll be about 30 minutes worth of Q and a in the comments section over there and everything. So it's going to be great. And then the replay will be available afterwards. So that's this coming Saturday, uh, February 11th, that noon Eastern time, just hit the, the link below here. Uh, if you want to check that out. So anyway, that's my little, uh, advertisement for that. Got to pay the bills and all that. So anyway, holy moly three, we have three trip, three Twitch people. Is this what's going on right now? I'm, I'm a little bit disoriented by that. Twitch is taking over, man. Um, anyway, so let's get into this. Um, that's me. Exactly how you do exercise and walking gives me panic attacks. I swear I'm going crazy. Okay. So let's get into this. I mean, it seemed like a pretty popular topic. I don't know. Maybe it's not, we'll see. But, uh, one of the things that you hear all the time, like, you know, common anxiety or mental health or just wellness advice is like exercise is great. And let me be perfectly clear. I am a fan. Like I'm a gym rat, or at least I have been for many years. Maybe I'm slack and lately, but I have big, big into strength training. Always try to keep myself in shape. I'm a big fan of the gym and exercising in various different ways. Just getting outside and moving around. So I am a fan of exercises, no doubt. And in my own recovery, when I was in the thick of it and I decided to go back to the gym, because I didn't, I had lost a lot of strength and I wanted to go back to the gym and start lifting. That was really challenging for me. Cause I went through a lot of what we're going to talk about today, but it turned out to be a huge benefit. And I'm not talking about it decreased my anxiety. I'm going to talk about it a different way, but exercise as in a, as a recovery tool for me turned out to be huge, a huge deal. Uh, it was a big, big bonus for me, not maybe in the way that you think, so we're going to talk about that. But every, so everybody hears about how exercise is so good for you. It's good for your, it's good for anxiety, but then many, many people wind up super discouraged or they think that they're broken or there's something especially wrong with them because when they try to exercise, they initially feel worse or they feel more anxiety or they get really scared or they panic during, during exercise. So I want to talk about today. It's really, really, really common. Like this is not a, an uncommon thing at all. So what I want to address first is the idea that just because the whole world is telling you that anxiety, that exercise is really good. Air quotes, good for your anxiety. If you're struggling to exercise because you're sort of afraid of the sensations in your body, that doesn't mean that there's something wrong with you or that you're especially broken or that you'll never get better. I promise it doesn't mean that at all, which is the main point that I want to make today. People wind up getting super discouraged. They get down. They feel like, oh man, like everybody says this is supposed to help me and it's actually making it worse. Something must be wrong with me. That's really, really common. I promise nothing is wrong with you. Like when you exercise, if you are in a situation where you're dealing with panic attacks, where you are really worried about the sensations in your body, you're terrified of your heart. You're terrified of heavy breathing. You're terrified of the pounding sensation. You don't like sweating or getting hot or cold. Like you're trying to keep your body calm all the time because you're so afraid of it. When you start to exercise, you're not keeping your body calm. It's the opposite of it.  So exercise becomes an exposure for you. That's all that is. So instead of seeing exercise as like an anxiety fix or a shield or a calming thing, which that sort of conventional wisdom seems to indicate it might be that like, oh, if you have anxiety, you should exercise every day. It's really good for anxiety. If you hear that, you would think, oh, I'll start exercising because it will make me feel better.  I hear that all the time.  We'll talk about that. That's actually not the way that works. But and so they look at the idea that anxiety is helped by exercise as like, oh, if I exercise, I will be calm. I will it will lower my anxiety level. And then they discover that it has the opposite effect initially and they freak out needlessly. So I want you to really think about, I just want you to think about the idea that exercise is an exposure.  Like I'm terrified for my heart to be too fast or I can't. I don't want to breathe too heavy. If your problems lie there, that exercise is actually an exposure. So think of it that way. It's a challenge and expect it to be a challenge. So you have to temper those those expectations. So when people say like any exercise is so good for anxiety, dropped out of the floor and just hear exercise is good for anxiety because it's an exposure. It's an exposure that I can do. And it might help me in the long run, but it might be challenging for me today and that's expected. That's normal. It doesn't mean that there's something wrong with you or that you're hopeless. Again, I know I keep repeating that, but it's heartbreaking for me to see that because people will always say, this is universal. Like it's universal good advice, exercise. And then they struggle and they think like nothing works for me. So don't fall on that trap. My heart goes out to you if you feel like you're broken because you've been reluctant to exercise, put it to you that way. So let's sort of break it down and I have if you go to my website, the anxious truth dot com and use the search tool, just put in the word exercise and you will see two two podcast episodes from years ago and the videos are old. You'll see I look very different, but called why does exercise make my anxiety worse? Part one and two. And then you will find one that I did with Jenna Overbaugh only about two months ago or so. We talked about the physical sensations of anxiety and exposure, right? So check that out. You want me to listen to those three podcasts, very popular. So here is the deal with the physical sensations of exercise. We actually can use exercise. And this is how I used it. So when I tell you that exercise was a huge boom in my recovery at a big bonus to me, it's because I used it as interoceptive exposure. So what is interoceptive exposure? And if you go listen to the podcast episode I did with Jenna, not too long ago about exercise and anxiety symptoms, we talk a lot about interoceptives.  Intentionally, we do it intentionally so that you can begin to change your reaction to those sensations. And instead of going into panic mode and freak out mode, which you will, but instead of then running, trying to stop it, quickly popping your zanax, bring your heart right down, you learn to not do that and let it resolve. And you begin to understand that like, oh, OK, my body does things and they're not dangerous, even though I find them disturbing right now. So you would intentionally do that kind of work. Interoceptive just means it's it's you do this intentionally. They are you're intentionally triggering the internal sensations that you feel and you're trying to use those experiences as exposures.  Well, interoceptive is just another form of exposure where you intentionally do a thing to bring up a thing that triggers your fear and your panic and then you work on rolling through that. So at some point I will I'll see if I post it like in my Instagram stories. I think I already posted in the Facebook group. If you just search for interoceptive exposure on YouTube, you will find some videos. They're not terribly exciting. You'll find some very poorly produced, very dry, boring videos, which is the type of videos that good therapists always seem to produce. And that's why the people with the best information have the smallest YouTube channels. But you'll see that there are some therapists who have done that. Either they're teaching other therapists or they're showing what interoceptives look like, or they've gotten permission from a client to film a session. And you'll see how it works. Like in one, there's a series of videos where the therapist has a woman jog in place and, of course, it raises her heart rate. He does it with her. And when she stops, she's you could see she is visibly, visibly afraid. She is reacting the way she normally would because it feels like a panic attack. She's afraid of her heart and he just sort of coaches her through like, OK, let's just let it come down and let it come down. And she works on that, right? So that's what interoceptive exposure is. So exercise in many ways is an interoceptive exposure.  Anything that raises your heart rate gets you breathing a little heavy and makes you uncomfortable counts. So if you have been terrified to exercise and you have done no exercise for two years because you're treating your body like it's made of glass and may shatter at any moment, then you don't have to start by going to the gym and trying to bench press 400 pounds. That's or run, you know, a seven minute mile. You don't have to do that. It's perfectly OK to start by just doing anything that raises your heart rate or makes you breathe a little heavy or maybe makes you get warm. Any of those things count any activity that intentionally brings about those those sensations counts and will help you move back toward that time where you can exercise, right? So but here's the important part about that. You have to use the exercise again to bring it back around not as a cure for your anxiety problem and not as a shield or a way to calm down. At first, you're going to say, oh, today I'm going to take 15 minutes of my day and intentionally make my heartbeat really fast, which I'm terrified to do. It's going to be super challenging, but like I'm going to do it anyway, and I'm going to practice.   The most important part about that is to let let it ride. We can't fall back on like, oh, my God, I better go ask somebody. Is my heart OK? I better start checking my pulse. I better check my Apple watch. I better you have to refrain from all the things that you generally do when you feel the sensations that you deem are dangerous. So that's probably the most important part of this. If you decide to try to push yourself into some exercise and then the minute you get uncomfortable, you immediately stop. You run out. You get off the treadmill.  You take your pills. You whatever you do, you're then that wasn't a really that wasn't a great experience for you. Except if you do do that, which can happen now and then we never get it perfectly, we will stumble as we do it. You have to circle back around and say, well, OK, what did I do there? I ran from the thing that I asked my body to do like I literally asked my body to respond that way. And it did because it's an amazing machine that has this capability. And then when it did what I asked it to do, I ran and tried to get away from it. So even if you try some exercise or some physical activity and you so-called fail because you run away from it or you try to escape from it, look back when it's all over and say, OK, what did I do here? How can I learn from this and how can I modify that experience a little bit so that next time I can hang in with it a little bit longer for another couple of minutes, five minutes, maybe. Maybe it means I got to drop the intensity a little bit. OK, that's fine. It might take you a little while to find that sweet spot. So it's perfectly, perfectly, perfectly OK to experiment a little bit and just find the part where you put yourself right into like that freak out zone and then stay in it. I'm going to stay in it for a minute today. I'm going to stay in it for two minutes today. I'm going to stay in it for five minutes today. I'm going to let it ride and then I'm going to stop and then I'm going to let my body go back to its normal state. Just remember that you have asked your body to elevate its operation. So you will breathe more. You will sweat. You will feel hot. You will feel different things in your muscles. You're changing your blood pressure when you do that. You're changing your galvanic skin response. You're changing all the things in your body and you are keenly in tune with that. So you'll feel all of it. Remember that not only are you getting the natural elevation of those functions because of the activity, the exercise or whatever you decide to do, but you're also triggering your fear. So when you stop, let's say you get off the treadmill, you're walking on the treadmill, you get off the treadmill.  And you find that your heart rate is not instantly coming down. Remember, I asked my heart to beat faster. It did. Now I'm afraid so it's going to beat even faster than that. So you cannot expect that you can immediately escape the sensations. You will have no choice but to ride through it. Let your body come back down to its normal resting state for a person that does not have an anxiety problem when they stop exercising. It takes a while for their heart rate to come back down.  And like in 30 seconds, it doesn't happen that way. It takes a while to come back down. So expect that it will take a while to come down and expect that it will take a little longer than maybe your neighbor or your sister, your brother, your partner that isn't anxious because you're so afraid of feeling that and you all you want it to do is to calm down really quickly. All right. So that's sort of the skinny on exercise. People will say, well, how to get, how do I get started? Slowly, as slowly as you need to, it doesn't matter. It counts. It counts. Remember that for people like us, initially, when you begin to exercise again, you're almost not even doing it for the benefits of the exercise. So my first month in the gym, I cannot say that, like, oh, man, I started building muscle and getting stronger. The first month in the gym was almost a pure exercise in the intercept of exposures. I had panic attacks in the gym. I was uncomfortable in the gym. I did walk out of the gym. I never ran home, but I did walk out a few times, go back to my car and take a minute to compose myself. I did do that. And that's OK. You could do that. So if you want to take a break and then go back into it, you can totally. That's OK. You can do that. Just always stay in touch with why you're doing what you're doing, what you expect to happen. Don't be surprised by it and understand that. Like, oh, I'm doing something really difficult now and I'm going to be brave. I'm going to try and get through this so I can learn from it. The biggest lesson you will learn, lessons that you can learn from this. Again, how you use exercise, not as a cure or as a shield or as a fix. But what are the lessons that exercise can teach somebody with an anxiety disorder? It taught me that I had to stop treating my body as if it was like a sliver away from death because it never ever was on my most anxious days when I was convinced that my heart was going to stop or go into some sort of, you know, life incompatible arrhythmia. I would think of phrases like that or I felt like I could not breathe enough and I was going to suffocate or I was going to pass out or whatever was going to happen. I was always, always wrong because I can't be that way on Tuesday convinced that I'm this close to just shattering into a million pieces. And then on the very next day, going to a gym, getting the squat rack intentionally drive my heart rate up to 160 beats per minute, lift all this weight, sweat like crazy, feel shaky like a baby giraffe and still wind up OK. I could not reconcile those two things. So the logical conclusion for me was I am treating myself like I am fragile for no reason. It taught me that all of those things that I feared in my body, I did not have to fear. It was a huge jump forward. So keep that in mind. That is the lesson that you can learn from this. That is the lesson that you can learn from from going back into exercise or physical activity, take that lesson, shoot for that target, know that you can go slow, know that you're going to stumble now and then it's OK and go from there. Right. So remember that you cannot tell yourself anything about this when you commit to having the experience. It's the experience that matters more than anything else. So I am going to commit to have an experience. I'm not going to try to tell myself that I'm OK, I'm OK, I'm OK. You might do that to frame the start like, OK, I'm going to do something really hard. I'm terrified that this is going to hurt me, but I know I'm OK logically. So I'm going to go do that. Once you're in the middle of it, you have to refrain from it's OK. It's OK. I'm OK. You got this. You got this. Just let it play out and act as if as best you can. There is no danger. So you can you could totally use this. OK. So I've talked for long enough on exercise. What makes us think we're so fragile? That's a good question, Jen. I as a very good question, but anxious people tend to treat themselves as if they are psychologically and physically incredibly fragile. And it is absolutely a distortion that recovery shatters in the end. You're not teaching yourself that you are perfect in any way, shape or form, but you are teaching yourself that you are far less fragile and far more capable in the case of exercise physically than you think that you are. OK, so let's go to the comments and see what we got here. Let's see if we have that big crowd from Twitch still. I'm all pumped up about Twitch skincare recommendations coming soon, says Bethany. Yes, I will be doing my skincare line shortly. If you ever see me launch a skincare line, that means I've been abducted by aliens and you guys need to do something to rescue me quickly. So that's just a running joke and now there will be no skincare line. Um, anyway, let's see here. It's two days before GBG's birthday. Well, happy birthday, Jason. Early. Let's see here. Let's pop this up. Yeah, we're going to do a get ready with me. That's going to be exciting. That's me like literally cursing that it's early in the morning and just like trying to get my beard to not look like a crazy person. Exactly how do you spell exercise and walking gives me panic attacks.  I don't laugh, but exercise is one of those silly words that I will struggle to spell sometimes exercise. Restaurant, we all have words that like for some reason we I'm a pretty bright guy, but I can't spell exercise. I always went to typing it three times. So I get that. But yes, the fear that it makes you feel like you're going crazy because everybody else is telling you like, oh my God, if I didn't exercise, if I wasn't in the gym every day, I don't know what I would do.  Exercise can be that for you. Like down the road, as you get past this, then you can wind up in a situation where, oh, yes, it's stress management. It feels great, blah, blah, blah, it's all good. You know, so down the road, it can be that initially it's not going to necessarily be that it's more of an exposure exercise and it's to teach you that you can exercise. That's kind of it. Now, this is not to say that you might not feel better after exercising. You might. It's very possible. And that was a good sign for me when I felt like, oh, man, I'm really glad I went to the gym. That's how I knew I was kind of got past that initial hurdle. And it was actually starting to have those wider benefits that people talk about all the time. So let's see. Did I battle anxiety? Yes. If you go to my website and look at the books that I've written, you can get a book called An Anxiety Story that tells the story of how I did that for 25 plus years. Panic disorder, agoraphobia, probably diagnosable OCD, clinical depression, been there, done that. You can actually get that book for free. Just follow the links or download the MP3 for free and you'll hear the whole story. So yes, I 100 percent have. I have to be kind here and point something out. I cannot address everybody's individual questions. And today's topic is on exercise and anxiety. So I cannot just I can't just answer the questions that you desperately want me to answer right now. You cannot get better in a YouTube live stream and I cannot fix you on YouTube. It's just not a thing. So everybody's always welcome here, but remember the limitations of the platform that we have because they see some frantic comments in there. I'm not going to single anybody out, but you can't don't come into an event like this hoping that me or anybody else is doing it is going to give you some sort of stage wisdom and help to fix you in a in a YouTube live stream where there are 70 other people watching. You can't do that. Let's see here. OK, what does Julie have to say? Hello, Julie. Good to see you. This is what's keeping me from the gym. My two have been a used gym person now. I hate myself. OK, so this is where things get dicey.  So what I mentioned that a couple of days ago, I was chastised a little bit like, oh, let's hope that people don't hate themselves. But as we can see, people will fall into that trap. You're just afraid. You're just afraid. You're allowed to be afraid. So the part where, hey, I am really afraid because I've learned to be afraid of these these sensations. OK, I'm allowed to be afraid, right? I'm allowed to be afraid. The part where it's like, well, now I'm a giant failure because I'm afraid and I don't exercise anymore. That's not required. And that is a pattern that for some people, Julie repeats again and again and again and again. You got to really look at that. It's really important. So let's see here. Let's see here. Norway is beautiful. I'm not going to argue with that. OK, this is common. This is really common. So Christine says, once was a gym rep, now afraid I will drop dead there. So when I posted on Instagram and TikTok, I got more of those comments than anything else.  But this is that that thing where, like, unfortunately, the experience of the gym where you think you're going to die is to show you that you don't, that that's OK. Your body is certainly capable of that. So it's certainly scary, though. I get that. This is good. Seven percent slower doesn't apply to the treadmill. True. True. But you could start. You could start slow. You could totally start slow in the treadmill. When I first got my treadmill, which is in my basement and owes me nothing, it's so old now. But I was walking at a very slow pace. I had not exercised for a very long time. So I was totally out of shape. I was much heavier than I am now. Like it was not a good situation. And I would walk super slow. So but it counted and I would panic anyway. I would panic walking two miles an hour on the treadmill because it just was like, oh, this is too much. So it's OK to start slow. Let's see here. Feeling broke in Norway is a good Norway is a good country. I'm not complaining. OK, this is cool. Resistance exercise could be middle ground. Always listen to my spirits and keep it to your tone. Hey, look, any exercise is good, right? So we don't want to poo poo any exercise or say anyone is better than any other. Resistance training, which is kind of my jam, I force myself to do cardio because I just I just want to be fit. But I would prefer to train for strength than for cardio vascular fitness. I just have to make sure I do cardio. But be careful about trying to find a common like a be careful about trying to find a safe way to exercise. It's OK to start small. If you are not a strength training athlete or you're not into lifting weights or you're not into resistance training, you don't have to decide, well, I'll try resistance training because it might be gentler. Like, yes, that's possible, but also resistance training is anaerobic in nature. So you're going to drive your heart rate up anyway. Just not it's going to go up and down and up and down and up and down. So there's almost no way to do any sort of exercise that is not going to make you freak out. But if you want to lift, lift. If you want to run, run, but just modify those things and start small if you have to. That's totally OK, but good comment for sure. Well, this is good. I use exercises deliberate, but I dare to the anxiety with lots of profanity mixed in. Fair enough, I have done that. In fact, you guys have heard me talk about like the silly Rocky movies. I'm a fan of the Rocky movies. I have used some of those soundtracks back in that back in the day to sort of motivate me when I was really struggling with that stuff. I would sometimes use some of those Rocky soundtracks to help me get through, like, you know, push through that. Like, no, no, no, you are not taking me down and I would keep going. So I like that pretty cool. Looking at the comments. Everybody's wishing Jason happy birthday. This is cool. OK, here you go. I was nauseated the first few times I tried to go back to exercise and earnest. I needed to hear this. Yeah, like all of the things, like all of the things will happen. If your anxiety manifests as nausea, as needing to go to the bathroom, if if you get depersonalized, if you have impending doom, thoughts of impending doom, if you feel like you're going to go crazy, it will trigger all of the things. So this is not just triggering physical sensations any way that you experience anxiety. This will trigger will trigger that.  But let's see what else we have here. OK, here this is really common. I become afraid of causing permanent damage to my body. Like, in a way, this is where an anxious person takes something that's supposed to be different. Now, listen, if you have an injury or some sort of problem that you have to accommodate, then, of course, accommodate that, of course. And it goes without saying, I should have said in the beginning, the assumption here is that you are physically healthy and can exercise. For most of the people in this room, I would almost guarantee that everybody in this room has been told multiple, multiple times or most of you by multiple doctors that you are fine.  Right, so if you do have a medical condition that that says you either can exercise or have to modify that, please, make sure that you stick with that plan, like work with your doctors on that. But assuming you have been given a clean bill of health and you do not have any restrictions, then look how an anxious person will take a perfectly healthy body that's been confirmed again and again and again, have a thought about, I'm going to permanently damage myself if I exercise too hard and latch on to that thought and treat it like it's real. So I understand that you are afraid of that, but this is where we challenge those things. We have to. Let's keep going here. Let's start telling myself, building my strength from the... Oh, okay, this is cool. Valerie, hello, Val. I've spent a month or two telling myself I'm here at the gym building my strength, even when the heart would pound like crazy, now it's fine. And what was a great turning point for me too, which I can, you know, I'll relay some of my own experiences, when I started getting really like jazzed, pumped up, excited like whatever, throw the toxic masculinity at me out of care. But when I would get all pumped up, like after a really heavy set or I hit a personal record in the gym, I would be super excited about that. My heart would be pounding. I would be like literally like gasping for air, but I would be really excited that that was happening. So amazing how the same things that kept me glued to my sofa most of the time or laying in my bed like became a source of excitement and achievement for me. So that's the way things could change. Good job, Val. It's like getting through it for two months, right? That wasn't easy. Good job. I know that was hard. Let's keep going here. My wife told me I could do yoga or I can eat. Oh God, I'm gonna put this up on the screen. I could do yoga or I could have a soup, but I can't do both together anymore. Alrighty. We'll just let that say. Suede dogs love the name. I put on four stone. How much is a stone? My UK friends, a stone is 11 pounds, 14 pounds. I can't, I never remember. But on a four stone by being too afraid of the gym, I've gone a few times. I always just walk on the machine slow because the vertigo is always there. I cannot go with any speed. Okay, 14 pounds. There you go. I remembered. Thank you, Becky.  But in the end, I think you have to really look at the definition of vertigo. And now you hit like one of Drew's hot buttons because I actually experienced literal room spinning vertigo. I can tell you that you would not be able to be on a treadmill if you were experiencing vertigo.  But be careful about saying I have vertigo because other people will hear that as the room is literally spinning. I'm nauseous. I might be vomiting. I cannot physically stay upright. My eyes are shaking and can't focus and the world is literally upside down. That's vertigo. So you gotta be really accurate sometimes in the way you do that. I'm feeling like I'm dizzy, but I'm on a treadmill and not falling over. So be careful about that. But start super slow, man. It's totally fine. Not a failure. Oh, let's see. Twitch is representing. Love it. Let's see here. I'm gonna keep scrolling. Yes. Thank you. Who anybody should get checked. I get checked out by a doctor, of course. Like I said, thank you. Good comment for sure. So here, I'll throw this up here. Is exercising good for muscle tension? So maybe you came in late. It's certainly possible. We do not decide to exercise because it's good for fixing things. So is it good for muscle tension? Most people who are not dealing with an anxiety disorder would say, well, yeah, it's a real stress management tool for me. Like it makes me feel better. I know my mood is better when I exercise every day. I feel more relaxed. So yes, but if you are tense because you're afraid of your own body, we are gonna trigger some of the fear of your own body when you start to exercise. So do not go into this as a, this will fix my symptoms. Down the road, it can have those sort of benefits, but don't expect it to right away. Is it good for muscle tension? I don't know. That's a good question. I would probably be individual. It depends on the type of exercise you're doing. For me, am I more relaxed in general when I'm working out on a regular basis? Yeah, sure. But sometimes I'm also much more sore because I do that type of exercise where I'm gonna be sore. So an exercise can help you maybe if you're stretching, if you're doing yoga and things of that nature. I don't know. It might be good for muscle tension, but don't go into it hoping that it is a cure for that particular anxiety sensation or symptom. Oh, good. Christine, love this. I'll do it when I feel better. This is always the past excuse. You will never do it then, which sounds so harsh, but an every anxious person will say, I'm gonna wait till I'm ready and you're never ready. I'm gonna wait till I feel better to do it and then you never feel better. Or you think like, hey, I'm feeling pretty good right now. You get on the treadmill or whatever. You lift some weights, you get on your bike, five minutes into it, your heart is racing, you bail out. Oh, see, that wasn't right. I did the wrong day. That wasn't a good day. So you have to challenge that. It's important. Okay, let's see here. Oh, good job, Yolanda. I love this. I get wrap, I have to go and sit down. I was walking in the woods once with my daughter, started panicking, froze for 20 minutes. I didn't. I walked a lot further. There is a lesson there. So when I said initially that one of the important things about going back into exercise or physical activity is you have to be aware of that response and you have to do your best to inhibit that response. So for me, at first I would sit down. So when I was getting that like, like my heart would be pounding and, you know, I would start to feel like, oh, am I getting lightheaded now? Which depending on the type of exercise you're doing, you might intentionally get lightheaded.  That's just the way it works. I would immediately have to go and sit down on a bench.  Just stand up for a minute. And that, that changed a lot. So good job. Really good. Let's see here. Tiff for morning anxiety. Anxiety in the morning is the same as anxiety any other time of the day, except it's the morning. So when you are anxious in the morning, be anxious and do your best to move through that. The same rules will always apply. It does the time of day doesn't really matter. That's not really the topic today. So, but I want to suggest it anyway. Oh, yes, this is a good one. This was me at topic beats. So that's that skipped heartbeat. And it's so weird that we use so many different terms for this. The common term that people will use as palpitation, but people often say, I'm having palpitations to describe a rapid heartbeat. Okay, you can feel your heartbeat when it's rapid. So technically that would be palpitations, palpable feel, but this is the whole like irregular heartbeat thing. So I have that like every once in a while, my heart will naturally throw PVCs benign PVCs, premature ventricular contractions. I've been checked a million times. If you are having those things, make sure you get checked out. Every human heart does them. If you're cardiologist, your GP, I've checked you out and said, yeah, yeah, it's normal. Your heart's cool. It's not dangerous. That was a difficult thing for me too. So I used to walk around waiting for a topic beats, waiting for PVCs. And if I experienced the PVC at two o'clock in the afternoon on a Monday, I would be done until like Wednesday, no joke. Like it would throw me into a absolute scanning loops, loops of scanning, loops of scanning, sit down, check, check, check, and I would treat myself even more. Like I was this close to my heart stopping and I was super fragile. And I got to the point in the end where once I had to make a leap of faith and say, if this happens, it happens. Like I'm gonna have to move through it. I got to the point where if I would push myself too much, I've talked about this like super sleep deprived, overworked like crazy and still at the gym at five o'clock in the morning and like pulling really heavy barbells out the floor. I could go through a set of deadlifts for instance, holding the barbell in my hand and have PVCs and just keep going. And they wouldn't last very long. I'd get one, two here or there and then they didn't become an extended event. They just, they happened and then they were done. So hopefully that helps. Ectopic beats, as long as you have been examined and you have been told your heart is fine, they are not dangerous, then they don't change that. In fact, my cardiologist at one point said, by the way, you should exercise more. That was the advice I got. That was my own personal experience, I'm not giving you medical advice, but my cardiologist is like, yeah, I should make sure your heart's healthy, go do it. Okay, cool. This is a different animal. Exercise induced asthma. I am not telling you to go to the gym if you have exercise induced asthma. That is between you and your pulmonologist, you and your general practitioner. I cannot even begin to stress this enough. This video is 100% not medical advice that tells anybody with asthma or some sort of medical condition to go to the gym. You will have to ask, I know I'm being really harsh about this, but you must ask your doctor is that question. You cannot ask a guy in a YouTube video what to do with your exercise induced asthma that you just can't. And anybody that wants to answer you in a YouTube video that isn't your doctor, don't listen to that person. So take that up with your medical providers. Let's see here. Well, this is good. I like it.  Well, it's easier said than done, true, but I direct my anger and frustration at it. Robbie, I dig this. I really like this. So you guys in the Facebook group have seen me say sometimes like, I know sometimes I'm really direct and harsh, but I am direct and harsh at your anxiety and your irrational fear, never at you. So don't be harsh about you, don't beat yourself up, but see that those irrational fears are not you. You don't wanna be that way. If you wanted to be that way, you wouldn't be watching this video. So what Robbie's saying is really good. Like I can direct my anger and my frustration at the anxiety, not me, because they're not, that's not me. Like I don't wanna be that way. I dig that. Great comment, man. Appreciate it. Let's see. Oh, no, no, no, no. Keep going here. Okay, this is, I'll throw this up because this is a pretty good one. Heart already pounds with panic before starting. I used to have the same thing. I panicked several times going into the gym because I knew what I was gonna do. It was no fun. That was no fun at all. I feel for you, I get it. But that would be also common. If you begin to have anticipatory anxiety as you're getting ready to exercise, that's to be expected. And I had to learn to just move through that. So I started many a workout already with my heart probably up at 110 beats per minute, probably, but I also never measured. It was very rare for me to measure my heartbeat. First of all, I didn't have a way to do it. I didn't have a device on my arm at the time, but it was very rare that I would actually check my pulse rate in the gym ever. But I'm sure it was pretty high before I even started some of those early workouts. Okay, Jen says, I tell myself, if I dropped out, I dropped out, at least I have an AED device there. So I knew where the AED devices were in my gym. There were three of them. The gym that I went to was closed. It was a big, enormous facility, right? It's not there anymore. But there were three of them, and I knew where they were. And I will admit that in the early stages, remember when I said I would have to go and sit at a bench, I would intentionally wander a little closer to one of those because my anxious brain would say every second counts. That was my anxious brain, so I get it. But that is a way to frame it. So what Jen is talking about here is a, not a, I need to, I will do this to guarantee that I'm okay, I will use this to frame my actions. Hey, listen, I'll have the best shot because there are some people trained to help me here. If it happens, it happens, I'm gonna go forward. I'm gonna do a thing. And this is a statement I can use to propel myself into doing the thing. Good job, Jen, like it. This is good. So yoga or Pilates, like, oh, these are gentle exercises, right, I could do that. Even the gentle exercises for people who are afraid of their own body will be triggering. So Bethany, this is a great, great comment. Don't be harsh with yourself. If even Tai Chi, which the Tai Chi qualifies as exercise, I'm being an exercise knob, but even gentle like Tai Chi or anything like that yoga could be triggering, it's okay. If you get triggered, it's okay. No easy way out from the Rocky Sound Tracks. That's a good one, that's a good one. Let's see here. I read, you read, I write. So consider that. I read that you should avoid doing extensive exercise for recovery. So I'm not sure why anybody would say that. I know why people would say that. Here's where I have heard that before. Where I have heard that is in the case of people who are going through medication withdrawal. The medication withdrawal community has a list of guidelines longer than I am tall about the things that you're not supposed to do. Eat, sniff, read, listen to, like don't wear certain clothing, don't turn on certain lights. They probably hate the LED light because it triggers you because of the flicker rate. Sorry, those fluorescent lights. So I've heard that in the withdrawal community like anti-depressant withdrawal or benzo withdrawal. And I've also heard it in the we must regulate our nervous system community. And so there are people who advocate treating anxiety problems like the ones we're talking about here by retreating from anything that's stimulating at all. I don't agree with that. Like that's not my theoretical orientation here. So I don't agree with that. We should just retreat and always try to keep our bodies like this. Now, am I saying that things like emotional dysregulation are not real? No, I am not saying that. But I do not believe that we should be retreating to fix this problem. You can mask the problem or live with it that way, but if you wanna actually solve the problem, retreat is a bad idea. This is good, Jess, let's see here. I exercise regularly, but it feels impossible to carry on when I'm struggling with my OCD. I just noticed that my watch band is the same color as my shirt. Maybe I am a fashion influencer and I just don't know it. I exercise regularly, but it feels impossible to carry on when I'm struggling with my OCD. I get so depressed and anxious that it feels like I'm gonna have a heart attack. Okay, so there's the answer to the question right there. I recognize your name, Jess, I know you've been around for a while. It feels like, feels like is the enemy. Like especially if you're gonna go back into the gym or start getting into physical activity, again, you really have to take the words, the phrase feels like and it's forbidden material for a little while. I'm not gonna make my decisions based on what it feels like. It's very important. Not minimizing the OCD thing, by the way. Just be careful about saying, well, I'm having a lot of stress over these thoughts or my OCD is flared up. So then it feels like I'll have a heart attack. You're gonna have to act even though it feels that way. This is good. Exercise is not the enemy. Really nothing in this is the enemy. In fact, Wednesday's podcast episode is called, Do You See Anxiety as a Monster? Is anxiety a monster? Is it your enemy? Is it like an invading army? So it really and truly I think nothing is the enemy here. Like we turn our own bodies and minds into the enemy. Let me modify that. We perceive our own bodies and minds as the enemy because somebody with like OCD doesn't decide to turn their mind against them. But we begin to perceive our own bodies and minds as an enemy and really there's no enemy here. Sometimes we personify anxiety and we talk about it as like an enemy that we wanna beat. I get that because there's some motivation in that. I'm cool with that. But we can't treat it like it's an enemy. Because it's not. Let's see here. I'm not sure that I understand this totally and we're almost at the end of the comments and I'm gonna wrap it up because we're 45 minutes in. Is it my anxiety getting worse or just me being hyper focused and symptom focused? Ah, love this, love this. So this is the same question that gets asked when people start to do exposures in general. So anybody who has spent a lot of time running and retreating from these problems and then decides I don't wanna do it anymore. I read Claire Weeks, I read Drew's books, whatever. I dig Josh Fletcher or Jenna Overbaugh, whoever. I'm gonna do it their way. Cool. When they first started doing it this way, they will say, oh my God, it's made me worse. But really what winds up happening is when you stop hiding from a thing, you feel it all the way. So let's use an example.  If I immediately stop and take a Xanax for instance, for example, then in 15 or 20 minutes, it will drive my heart rate back down artificially. And so if I don't take it 20 minutes later, my heart rate will still probably be elevated both from the exercise, depending on my cardiovascular fitness and from my fear of my heart rate. So what I say that I'm worse, no, I would say that I took away the safety shield, like the shield against the feeling. And now I feel it more. So that's a really good question. It's very nuanced, but it is normal to feel it more. If that makes sense. Good comment, man. Really good. You guys are great. Let's keep going here. Okay, fair enough. I'll take this one real quick. I'm sorry when I make you guys read. I truly believe my worry could make my heart go so fast that it will give out a car as a heart attack. Okay, like I totally get that. You don't have to convince us that you believe that because everybody in the room has had thoughts. I've had thoughts like that that I was 100% convinced were legit. That is real. That is a real fear. You absolutely fear that that will happen. You do not allow anybody take that away from you. I'm not gonna take that away from you. However, the way to break that is to go ahead and test it. So one of the things that makes this stuff so difficult for so many people to do, all the stuff I'm talking about, not just anxiety is you are literally in your mind, you are risking something really big because when you believe like, no, no, no, I truly believe my brain is 100% convinced that if my heart goes too fast, it will give out, that amorphous, what do you think will happen? It'll explode like, you know, what will you think will happen?   Let's go do that. Let's go make that happen. How risky does that feel? Incredibly risky, but it's the only way to have the experience that teaches your brain, you are wrong, man. Like you can keep saying that as much as you want. I keep arguing with you with words. You're not listening to me. You keep telling me that the fear is real. So now I'm going to make you prove it. I'm going to go and raise my heart rate. Oh, look, I didn't die again. What do you got to say about that brain?  What do you got to say about that brain? That's the only way to do this. So it's, I get that you think it's real. I do. Let's see. Nope, I'm going to give you a big no on this one. Not you personally, Val. You're doing a good job. Some intense exercising can increase cortisol. I would urge everybody in the room to forget the words adrenaline and cortisol. Like I know people hate when I say that, but forget cortisol. Like you are. So you're intentionally modifying your activity to try to control your endocrine system that is just doing what it's being asked to do. So I'm going to back off on some exercises. I don't want too much cortisol because I can't handle how I feel if there's cortisol in my bloodstream. That's a barrier that I would if I was finished with my license and you lived in New York and you were my client, which you were not and I am not finished nor licensed, I would make you tear that barrier down. So I'm never a fan of when people want to bring adrenaline and cortisol to, as if they want to manage them into the conversation.   So we're about at the end here. I'm going to run out of time. So sorry, I can't get all of them. Let's scroll down and see if there's anything. I'm never going to get to the end of this. Sorry guys, a lot, a lot of stuff here. A person, I'll end with this one because this is a common one too. And then I get a bookie. A person with anxiety, should they wear Apple fight? No, I think that they should not. To me, I would not have an anxious person, especially one who's fixated on their physical sensations and things like heartbeat. I would not wear an Apple watch at all. So like when people say, oh man, like I was doing so great last night, I was watching a movie with my husband and then suddenly I had a thought or I got triggered and my heart rate was 122. The first thing I would say is, how do you know your heart rate was 122 and why did you need to know that? So I would not do that. I would not wear that. I mean, you could turn off the heart rate monitor I think on an Apple watch, I'm pretty sure. So if you wanna wear like a smart watch, see if you could turn off, see if you could turn off the heart rate monitor because it will do you no good. Down the road, a heart rate monitor can be a really useful thing, right? So I mean, I'm still wearing the whoopka for my workout, but like I, I've been wearing an Apple watch lately again and it is useful for me, but I'm not afraid of my heartbeat anymore. So that would be my answer there. Okay guys, I think we are done. Sorry, I can't answer every one of the comments today. I tried the best that I could, but hopefully this has been helpful. It is going to stay up in my YouTube channel. Hey, I'll put the caption up again, so everybody knows what it is. This will stay up on the YouTube channel. If you're not subscribed on YouTube, you should totally do that because it's the easiest way to find these videos. What else can I tell you? If you wanna go check out the Panic Attack workshop that's happening on Saturday, just go to my website, theanxistruth.com, it's right on the homepage. And I don't know, we'll be back next week. Don't know what we're gonna talk about. I never know where we're gonna talk about next week. Never, but we'll be back. We'll do another hour next Monday. Hopefully it's been helpful. Thank you everybody. And thanks for being so supportive of each other in the comments. Always makes me happy.


felly'r gwrdd, mae'n meddwl, y ffordd y ffordd yn rhaid i'r ystod yn gweithio'r gwlad yn ei ddalod i'r gweithio'r ffordd. Mae'n meddwl sy'n meddwl y mae'r cyffredin iawn yn fyw rhaid i'r gwell. Felly yn y rhaid i'r gweithio, mae'n meddwl yn meddwl. O, wedi'n meddwl, dyma, dechrau, dyma. Eric Byrnyd yn yr ysgrifftan transaswniol. Mae'n meddwl ysgrifftan transaswniol yn 1961. And if you talk to him I'm sure about endings, he would say it's the, it happens when the person has absolved their contract, in other words they'd have achieved what they came in for and then they otherido a recontract till they end and I hope they end from an adult place with celebration. We demystify what goes on behind the therapy room door. Join us on this voyage of discovery and co-creative conversations. This is the therapy show behind closed doors podcast with Bob Cook and Jackie Jones. Welcome to the next episode of The Therapy Show behind closed doors with myself and the wonderful Bob Cook. And we're on episode 59 and what we're going to be looking at tonight is endings in the therapy process, which pretty much covers lots of things really. Many, many things. I'm in a good mood today. Manchester City are doing very well in the football. Oh, football. So are we more than happy to talk about endings? Don't talk about football. I don't like football. I prefer rugby. Especially Manchester City. Yeah, just any football. So endings in the therapy process. We could be talking about the client's ending or the therapist ending or endings discussed within the therapy process, lots of things. Yeah. Now, I have been running courses, seeing clients for getting on for 39 years, maybe 40 when I started. 84, 28 years. And for those 38 years, I've been saying hello and goodbye to many, many clients on courses as well, but clients particularly. I've lived in the world of endings and goodbyes. How are you personally with endings? Does that have a bearing on it in the therapy room? Oh, yeah. You see, I think our own processes, what's happening internally for the therapist is always having an impact on the therapy room. And endings is simply part of the internal process for everybody. If you took, I think, eight out of ten people in the street, talked about how are you with endings, they're all going to have their own process around endings. Some of them might say, oh, I'm not very good with endings. When I go to parties, for example, I don't really like to say goodbye. I just go out of the back door and I like to just go out and leave the party if I feel ready to go. Other one might say, oh, I have to make sure I shake hands with everybody before I go. So we all have different processes around endings and it's no different in the psychotherapy room. And it's the same for the therapist and for the client. The therapist per se will have history about endings and beginnings. And I think that impacts the whole process, actually. So I think it's very important for the therapist to know about how they are with regards to endings themselves because that will impact the process. Yeah. Totally agree with that. I'm not sure I'm very good with endings. No, I think people have their different processes. I mean, I certainly have. I mean, I think of my own history, there's a whole history about saying hello, saying goodbye in the therapy room, but also if you go back younger in my life, I have had lots of losses, for example. And when we talk about endings, we always talk about loss and we're talking about change. And that often is, you know, the counter-transferential position that therapists might find themselves in. So, for example, instead of going to deal with the endings per se that may include feelings, they may end from an intellectual place rather than a feeling place, for example. Yeah, that makes sense. So endings is a big subject. Of course, our clients do end of relationships with us and move on, but that usually mirrors all the difficulties or not their own internal history. Yeah, because when you think about it, endings in the therapy room can be quite positive. It means that the client has reached a point where they feel OK to go out and spread their wings on their own without your support. So in one respect, it's quite a positive thing. Oh, if you can get an end, yes, absolutely. I mean, Eric Byrne, the originator of transaction analysis, he wrote the first book on transaction analysis in 1961. And if you talk to him, I'm sure about endings, he would say it happens when the person has resolved their contract. In other words, they've achieved what they came in for, and then they are the re-contract or they end. And hopefully they end from an adult place with celebration. Yeah. Have you ever ended a contract with a client because you feel like they've reached that point? Oh, well, now you're talking about a really big subject which comes up a lot in psychotherapy. And that is a really big subject, you know, when the client may or may not get depended on you. Yeah. So the therapist can see the changes, for example, and they can see a resolution of the contract. Yeah. And the client still wants to say in therapy. Now, that may because they need to have other contracts to other things, but also they often need the therapist sometimes to say, you know, it's interesting we've achieved this, this, this, and the publicist may be time for us to move on. So the therapist themselves initiates the ending. Yeah. Now, I was thinking of my own daughter, you know, or in general, when teenagers or children leave home, teenagers, I mean, young adults leave home, that they may stay for a very long time. And sometimes they need the psychological permission of the parent to leave. Yeah. I think I've been in that sort of situation where I felt parental and had to nudge clients sometimes. Yeah. And nudge them with permission. Yes, definitely. Yeah. And let them know that I'm not going anywhere. Yeah. It's okay for you to experiment outside. And it's okay for you to come back if you need to. Yeah. You take my words with you and, you know, give them permission, the psychological permission to leave home. Yeah. Which is quite a nice way of putting it. Psychological permission to leave home. Yeah. Yeah. And you are really important what you said with the knowledge that you are going anywhere. And you can come back if you need to. Yeah. For me, that's just the safety net. That, you know, it's not like I'm disappearing or ending completely or anything like that.  And experiment that. So say the contract was to have a more robust sense of self, for example. Yeah. And we have the parameters for that within the contract. Then it's important maybe we make another contract or the therapy is terminated. I mean, by both pine, both sides from an adult position. And if they're still in the child state, they may need work to do around endings or they may need psychological permission to leave. Yeah. See, I think that's one of the things that I found quite easy when I was working from the Manchester Institute. You know, as a when I just done my competencies and I was still doing my training because we saw low cost clients for a set period of weeks. And we both went into it knowing that, you know, there was a time scale to it. So we knew when the ending was coming. So it kind of took some of the weight and that off both me and the client to a certain extent. Yes, that's true. And of course, in the NHS. Yeah. So that's what we do. We don't generally contract for a fixed length of time. There is no fixed term to it unless it's contracted at the beginning. No, no, that's that's to his private cycle therapy. And again, Eric Byrne talks about this and says, well, there is no fixed term to it. Unless it's contracted at the beginning. No, no. That's to his private cycle therapy. And again, Eric Byrne talks about this and says, well, there is no fixed term to it. And he says, well, you know, a contract is a bilateral contact working towards a specific outcome. Yeah. The outcome is reached by both parties. Then therapy may end. So for him, transactionalised has contractual theory at its centre. Yeah. And it was the completion of the contract. It should be a signal for the work ending. Yeah. And I suppose that's when both parties agree that that contract has been completed. That's right. That's two. And I think it's a very good point to talk about where, where it's time limited. It takes that. You said pressure that responsibility or that structure. You know, it's set up. Yeah. Middle and end, which is different from the therapy, which in the private sector and many of the. Therapeutic processes could go on for quite a long time. Yeah. Of course. You know, the endings may.  Or so much significant. That healthy endings never happened. Yeah.  And endings in itself. Yeah. And I can 100% see that happening that once an ending is spoke about, it might evoke some sort of a reaction or a response from, from the client around that. That's right. I mean, I think it brought up a very good point earlier on, which I'd like to get back to a moment. And that's the, well, two parts to it be brought up. Once the therapist countertransference about endings, let's deal with that. Let's take a scenario where psychotherapists had problems in their own histories about loss and endings. So they unconsciously. I mean unconsciously play a part in the client staying far too long in therapy because the feelings of the rupture and the attachment of the client. May be hard for the therapist to cope with. I don't think with intent, but unconsciously, you know, may encourage again unconsciously for the client to stay because they don't want to feel the ruptures of the endings themselves. It's not the ending with the clients. The ending way back in history, the therapist is defending against or might be defending against. Yeah, because we're not immune to all this stuff. We're human just like everybody else. And like you say, if we've got, you know, things in our past that we haven't processed or dealt with, then that is going to be in the therapy room with us as well. Yeah. I mean, we're talking about when we talk about endings, lost change, which talk about deep back substantial issues. Are with us for birth in many ways, and the more sort of losses we have, and especially if they haven't been grieved for in a healthy way, then endings may evoke particularly difficult feelings. Yeah. That client or therapist strive to keep away from. Yeah. I think I think that one. No, I was just going to say, I think for me it is something that I started working on when I was doing my training because I was very well aware that I wasn't very good with endings. I've usually say training, for example. I've usually part way through one training and I've already got the next training lined up so one just takes over from the other so I don't actually end one thing without having the next thing already started if that makes sense. It was at that point where I started thinking, what's that about? Why and not celebrating endings either is something that I tended to do in the past. I would just get a qualification or a certificate and put it in the drawer and not really pay much attention to it and just crack on with the next thing. You hear it a lot. People come into the clinical room and you know TA might be called to be strong driver where they just go up one part of the mountain, then they go to the next part of the mountain, then they go to the next part of the mountain, then they get to the top. But what they've left out is enjoying the actual process of getting up the mountain in the first place so they're not stopped to look around at the plateau and the green grass to celebrate the old journey. 100%. And I don't know if you remember the year that I graduated, I came with my full cap and gown because I'd never graduated anything in my life before. I made a big who heart about it because I wanted to stop that process and actually enjoy the process and congratulate myself for seeing it through and graduating and I didn't sign up for anything else for quite a while after. There we are. What you said earlier on again is a very good point to the positive side. You didn't say this but I'm going to refrain. When you end in a positive way you can then say hello in a really healthy way. I like that, that's a really good point. Of course Eric Burnham wrote a book in 1969 called What do you say after you say hello? I think I've got that one up there as well. You probably can get it for me for about five or something but it was a very nice little book. What I liked about it was that it was accessible to the reader but mostly it was around script. It was about how we actually may sort of just carry out our script after we say hello or after we say goodbye and I think that's very true around endings. To get to a healthy place where you can say a healthy hello, it may take some time between the therapist and the client when you end. According to what the therapist you talk about, they may say oh yes, in any endings with my client I take at least a month. So we can sort out if there's any sabotage processes which might stop the client saying a healthy hello. I do think that's a lovely way of saying it because endings aren't always, we're not talking about a death or a fracture or a breakdown of a relationship or anything. Like you say sometimes endings are just connected with changes, making a change and saying goodbye in a healthy way to the old us and welcoming in the newer version of us. There's lots of interpretations as to what endings and beginnings are. There's a lot written about it and rightly so because endings, loss, change, hello are existential issues at the very core of our being. 100%. The other thing I wanted to touch on, because obviously we're psychotherapists and maybe talking with psychotherapists that are listening is about a living will as a therapist, whether that's something that people have thought about. Oh yes, I mean a lot in the UK CP, which is the major regulating body for psychotherapists as United Council of psychotherapy. They stipulate that psychotherapists should make what is called a living will. So, for example, if a therapist suddenly dies or whatever, that their clients, who takes over their clients and who's going to be responsible for the practice and who's going to take over the contracts which the clients have been working towards or working for or working in general. That's what you mean by living well, don't you? Well, yeah, yeah, and even on a, you know, that is the definition of a living will, but even on a scaled down version, if you're in private practice and you are suddenly taken ill, then who notifies your clients on what happens and how does that work, rather than, you know, if we're talking about working with clients that are going through quite, you know, deep stuff and suddenly we don't turn up one week. The impact that that potentially could have on that client. So it is about having a planning place really for certain eventualities as a psychotherapist. Yeah, and the United Kingdom Council of Psychotherapy stipulates that. Yeah. So if we're going to certify people to work at a clinical level, the UK CP talks about living wills exactly the way you do and says all practitioners need to have sorted that out. Yeah. She's one of the things, you know, when you're setting up a suppose, or maybe people that are in practice, it's not something that you think about. No, but insurance companies to. Yeah. I think of benedyn, and so I built in, and also the Scottish Psychological Society, I know, various, oh, towergate, perhaps. It'd be interesting, I haven't gone down this line to check, but it might be part of the insurance, this process. Yeah. The therapist gets living, the therapist get living wills. And we fail and I don't think it was ever brought up on my insurance when I took it out. Okay. I can't remember it being. Supervisors. Yeah. Need to bring it up. Yeah, definitely. So yeah, it was just another thought that I had when I was writing some things down. It's very, very, very, very important because I think to be an ethical psychotherapist, then it's important to have this in place. And it is to the integrity, you know, ethical processes and a duty of care towards our clients. Yeah. Yeah. And I think for me that was the main one is, you know, a duty of care to clients that, you know, somebody knows how to get in touch with them if anything happened to me. Yeah, all that. So it's a very important point. I don't know if many people talk about it, but I think the supervisors need to check up on it. Yeah. If you work within an organization, it's completely different to if you're a one man band and you're working on your own.  But if you're working in private practice and there's just you, then there isn't anybody else that's going to pick that up for you potentially. No, very good point.  Yeah. So if you haven't got one, explore the opportunity and, you know, do something about it now. No, no, that's true. I have somebody in the other day, and this is very common, what I'm going to say now, who came in because they were so burdened down. The many losses that had in their own life. That they wanted. We're talking about bereavement counselling, really. Yeah. Somebody who could help them work with the losses and endings so that could say hello to life in a different way. Yeah. I really do like the way that you put that. Yeah. But if we're burdened down with endings and, you know, grief and the past and all that's entailed in that, we're not truly living life. Are we? No, no. So, you know, I passed that on somebody who could work in that way. And I get many clients who come in specifically for these processes. Not all therapists are good at this, working with bereavement grief endings. And it's largely because of their own countertransfers. Yeah. I think that it's really important to have supervision when you're dealing specifically with people who need to do multiple grief cycles if you want to put it that way. Yeah.  Yeah, which again would be long term stuff to, you know, to reconnect with those shut down places, because it's all out of our awareness, isn't it? It's discounting and not really knowing that we've done that in the first place. Yeah. So that's another sort of form of ending and helping the person move towards a more vibrant sense of self and saying hello to themselves again. Yeah. We are talking about very, very big issues here. Now, Urban Yellum, who's one of the most famous existential psychotherapists, he's American, he's written many, many books. His books is called Staring into the Sun. And it's about death anxiety. I mean, that one. Yeah, in that book, his central premises is that from birth, we would always have a sense of or low grade sense of death anxiety. And as, and as life involves itself, and maybe we have traumas, and maybe we don't, but as life goes on, we may get in touch with that death anxiety even more. And then certain losses, traumas, may mean that death anxiety becomes more prevalent, so the person starts thinking about death. They start fantasising it's about death. They start to be paranoid about losses and changes. And in this particular book, which I really like, by the way, there's a 10 point plan on how to deal with death anxiety. Sounds like my kind of book I like a plan. For somebody who has suffered from death anxiety because I had a had a heart surgery two and a half years ago and, you know, it really affected me at these existential levels. And after it, I had a lot of anxiety about death. And I found the book very useful. My dad was the same. He had a heart attack and he had quite a few problems after that. Yeah, with, you know, anxiety panic attacks, those sorts of things, feeling like it was happening again and whatnot. So yeah, I'll definitely look into that book. Yllaf. Yllaf. Yllaf. Yllaf. Yllaf. Yllaf. Yllaf? Yllaf. Yllaf. Yllaf. Yllaf. Yllaf. Yllaf. Yllaf. Betoeth, betoeth. Rhyw gael. cemetery most days which is huge cemetery and I often think about death bus because I walk past the cemetery and walk and when I come back I walk past it. You know just thinking about it while you're talking. I never did, interesting I either came by a car or bicycle while I was with the clients and then I had the heart surgeon stop working with the clients so I haven't walked past the cemetery and then gone to see clients but I wonder if I had have done you know if I had a walk past the cemetery started to think about you know certain aspects of death or loss or change or whichever and then I go and see a client. I never did that but there's the counter transfer straight away. Yeah it's often what we bring into the room may have a really really big bearing on the content or even the lack of content which is shared between the therapist and the client.  I was doing some work with clients and a group around the ages and stages by Pam Levin and the cycles of power and I quite like that way of looking at things that everything is in a cycle you know we think of life as being very linear and there's a beginning a middle and an end to it whereas you know there is a wonderful way of looking at things that everything is in a cycle and it's the way it's meant to be. I couldn't argue with that which I quite like. Cool cycles of power. It is it is I love that book yeah. Pam Levin she's a TA therapist or was I think she's still alive and it's a great book. Yeah and the fact that we're constantly recycling you know so every ending and every beginning is just another cycle that we go through in life and I kind of do agree with that. Well yes of course I mean if we look at yes on a much bigger scale we see cycles in everything really yeah I certainly agree with you on that. So it's an important subject it's the one that I don't think's talked about enough and certainly you know I think therapists need to especially if that a lot of lost themselves and they feel they haven't dealt with it um you know may come from a counter-transferential position and they need to I think reflect on that. Yeah and as always like you said supervision take things to supervision if you've got any any issues yourself to work through. So what a wonderful place to end that one Bob and we'll be back for the next episode where we're going to be talking a little bit about self-esteem issues. Oh wow upwards and onwards. Upwards and onwards I'll see you in the next episode. Certainly will. Bye. Bye bye. You've been listening to The Therapy Show behind closed doors podcast. We hope you enjoyed the show don't forget to subscribe and leave us a review. We'll be back next week with another episode.


So, when a yogi uses basm or vibhuti, vibhuti means… the word vibhuti means one who is attained a certain capability is a vibhuti. So, ash is being referred to as that which is attained, a certain capability. Ash is made in different ways. A yogi always uses ash from a cremation ground. So, all the stories that you hear about how are the yogi always resided in the cremation ground is because… You're looking terrified, ma? You? Not you? You okay? Cremation ground is okay. All of us will make you do the service someday. Okay? You may not go to a restaurant, you may not go to a disco, you may not go to your golf course, but we will all go make use of that one service, isn't it? Yes? Other things by choice. This we will make use, isn't it? So, there's nothing to be terrified about. It's a place we have to go. You better go gracefully. Something… So always these stories about how he hung around cremation grounds, it's not that always he lived there. It is just after morning shower, they went to the cremation ground looking for the ashes for the day. For householders, people who are holding on to their houses. For householders, we made other kind of ash. We made it from the next best thing that we did was cow dung. We burnt it and made ash. This is also good. It does certain things. It opens up your receptivity in a certain way. So we said, don't apply it all over your body, just in certain points. If that is also difficult, then we did rice brawn. Otherwise, we did sesame seed ash. Like this we produce more and more benign things. But when Adi Yogi used, he used cremation ground ashes. Even today many Yogis use only that. But you should not do that unless you properly initiate it into the process and you know what to do with it. And if certain things happen, you know what to do with it. For you the simple ash, either made out of cow dung or rice brawn, when you apply, if you go into a space which is energetically charged in some way, if you apply it between your eyebrows, there is a spot. You must know this exact spot. There is a spot behind your ears. If you apply on those two sides and the pit of your throat and where the rib cage meets just beneath that, the idea is you want the higher aspects of who you are to become receptive. See right now, to put the example very basic, I want you to understand this, don't react to these things.  It is not just the eyes, the whole body responds, okay? It depends who it is, what it is. Now if you look at her in a certain way, you may think she's your mother. If you look at it in another way, you may be drawn to her sexually. If you look at it in another way, you may be repelled because it reminds you of something. Reminder need not be necessarily in the mind, it's all over the body. So now you're walking on the street, you don't want to get entangled in all these things. If you see anything, you want to receive this in the highest possible way. So you apply vibhuti to make those spots more sensitive so that your receptivity is in the higher dimension of life, not on the lower dimension of life. When I say lower, I am not talking in terms of hierarchy, high and low. I am talking geographically lower in your body, okay? It is not a question of morality, it is not a question of right and wrong, it is a question of entanglement. If you receive from higher dimensions within you, there is no entanglement. If you receive the same thing from lower dimensions, the same thing will become entangling in process. So because you want to be in a place where you're moving towards your liberation, not towards your entanglement, you make the higher aspects of your body more receptive.  If some other part of the body receives, it responds in a different way. If it receives here, it responds in a different way. They must be using this red thing made out of turmeric, but now they are putting a plastic patch and making sure it is sealed. Really? You're supposed to apply? Kunkum is made of your turmeric, do you know this? But now, either they're applying either chemical powder or many of them are sealing it with a plastic patch. It's a band-aid, colored band-aid you can fix on your forehead. The idea is that receptivity happens in the highest center for you because how you receive something determines the nature of your life. What you receive is important too, but how you receive it is vital important. See, you could get poisoned with life in so many ways. You went somewhere, the way you responded to somebody or something could make or break your life, isn't it? Yes or no? Many times, the way you respond to a certain human being or a certain situation could either make your life or break your life. Some people make it, some people break it, isn't it? So a little control over that just by making the higher aspects more receptive so that your… the lower aspects of your body are reactionary, they react. This is a response. It'll give you a chance to respond to it sensibly rather than simply reacting. When you simply react, you get enslaved and entangled to many things. When you respond, you are living your life by choice.