Why Is Accepting Anxiety So Hard To Learn? (Recovery Monday #68)
Vložit
- čas přidán 30. 04. 2023
- BUT HOW DO I ACCEPT ANXIETY???!!!!
If you have repeatedly asked this question, you know that accepting, tolerating, surrendering, and floating when it comes to anxiety is a hard thing to learn. People often wind up asking for acceptance "tips and techniques". People like me respond with a never-ending series of metaphors, analogies, and examples that never seem to answer the question in a satisfactory way.
Why is this? Let's talk about it in the 68th edition of Recovery Monday.
-----
My books, social, and other links: theanxioustruth.com/links
Ways to support my work and keep it ad-free:
theanxioustruth.com/support
The sweetener is if you can accept anxiety fully, and for just a short time, it rapidly begins to go away. An old European fairy tale tells of a monster in the forest that gets bigger and scarier the faster you run from it but if you turn and face it and walk towards it it gradually shrinks as you get nearer and eventually becomes a timid kitten. People knew this a thousand years ago.
Truth! The concepts of acceptance and non-resistance are woven into some pretty old philosophies and even the worlds great religions. I totally didn't invent this. Really, nobody alive today invented it. :-)
Because the symptoms are so freaking scary and uncomfortable. It was hard for me to accept at first. Now it’s just there.
I'd say I'm recovered to the point of having a normal life again, but currently watching this because my high stakes upcoming exams have made my anxiety response super sensitive and listening to this topic makes it a little easier to try and practice it in the days leading up to the dreaded two weeks of exams. Funny how your brain kinda forgets these things once it finds a situation where nothing is "allowed" to go wrong.
One analogy that I like is that anxiety is an untrained guard dog. It barks at the postman ringing the doorbell out of protective instinct, but if you want to untrain that behaviour in a dog you wouldn't give it your full attention to, you'd accept it and just go to the door and get your package and you'd keep accepting it because at some point the dog will grasp that there is no danger and it's giving false alarms. The hard part is letting go of wanting the barking to end within 2mins and just letting it go on until the dog understood it in its own time. {There is obviously other stuff you might do in dog training, but in the short term this would be it.}
Obviously this stuff is still hard and sometimes you'll just HAVE TO push your way through a situation because it's a scheduled thing and your willingness isn't quite there. Thankfully the feeling post-panic for me is quite a pleasant post-workout feeling so at least if the acceptance isn't fully there I have something to look forward to lmao.
I've dealt with anxiety and chronic pain, and I have found that I have understood acceptance a lot more easily when dealing with chronic pain. It's very clear when I'm there; I go about my life and my pain comes along for the ride. And as soon as I get there, there is a lot less suffering.
True! There is quite a bit of overlap between anxiety recovery and a mindfulness based approach to chronic pain.
I think I go in and out of acceptance....I do think I've had moments of it but then I fall back into fighting, resisting...
I do go and do all sorts of things, I'm not hiding out...The sheer exhaustion and the non stop DPDR is still a struggle....Today I had a mini moment of accepting the struggle and the exhaustion....for 2 minutes....only....😅
I really try to do all the stuff I want to...and I try to sit with all the trippy symptoms, and let them be...but I still get wiggly....I fake it for everyone else, I put on a good show, but there is still a dialog in my head of moans and screaming......Aaargh.
Exactly. It's the same for me. When I think I am there, I experience debilitating symptoms and fall back into the cycle of fear and avoidance. 😢
For me its the word ‘allow’ which encapsulates acceptance and resonates with me, its so helpful I’m thinking of getting it tattooed on me!
I am here for the ink! I'm a fan of self-expression that way. I've seen quite a few people get ink designed around recovery concepts like allowance, tolerance, and surrender. :-)
This video today.. the universe knows. 😄 I had a rough day yesterday and this was my conclusion. It was rough because I didn’t accept. This is what I was drawn to after years of resistance and fighting it.
“Give up the fight” is my new mantra. I love that you go at it from the scientific perspective. I feel like, as a scientist, I need to hear this from someone like you. 😅
Welcome! I'm glad you found the video and the approach relatable and helpful in some way.
This episode resonates a lot with me. For me I feel I have periods in which I feel “recovered” and I allow and accept my feelings and pain. When it’s been a very long time and all of a sudden the fear resurfaces, I get a bit blind sighted by it. I feel it takes me a while to come to that acceptance again, as it’s almost like a “muscle” that I didn’t have to use for a while, if that makes sense. Often the fear is triggered when I get a migraine. I suffered from an aneurysm when I was 18 and I get a migraine only about once a year, but it feels very similar. So the acceptance part for me is something I need to rediscover from time to time because of that trauma.
That muscle metaphor is pretty accurate. And you're definitely not alone in this. Many say that they feel totally knocked on their rear ends if they get triggered or feel things after a long respite. And really, they are! That impact is real. The win is in being able to see what happened a bit more objectively, get up, and move back in a productive direction rather than staying down and going back into retreat mode. Great comment!
Thank you very much for the info. Is great. Hi from Spain and sorry for my english, yo do a great work and i LOVE it. Have great holidays!
You're welcome. And no apologies needed. Your English seems perfectly fine here! :-)
Thanks for this. It’s amazing reading though that he comments. How we all have the same feelings on working on exposures.
Right? The experiences are so common across such a large number of people. It's definitely helpful to see that we're not alone in this.
I love your no BS approach!
I get so sick of hearing you have to do X,Y,Z to overcome anxiety. Not to say that certain lifestyle changes are not helpful but you know what I’m talking about.👊
I hear you! I'm a huge fan of healthy habits ... for everyone! Just not as magic anxiety cures.
I find if you turn and face it and analyse it, it’s then easier to surrender and go with it, keep doing it
Turn to face it. Love it! "I am afraid now" is a great way to face it and its a simple factual "analysis" that doesn't drag you down the rabbit hole and can help you move through it rather than away from it. Great comment!
Nice Jackson in the background \m/
That thing REALLY needs some electronics work at the moment (crackle crackle crackle).
With diving, we start off with a low platform, and then slowly and gradually increase the height overtime. It’s no different than lifting weights. You don’t start off 1000 pounds, you start off with 1 pound and then 2 pounds and build overtime. So, sticking to the metaphor, what is the lowest height you can jump from in letting go of anxiety? That would be the question for people to answer.
This also speaks to the need for patience and being kind to oneself. Your metaphors are excellent! Its hard for some people to accept that they have to take tiny first steps without berating themselves or declaring failure because they weren't able to "rip the band aid off and recover" after listening to two podcast episodes or reading a book. Thanks for sharing. I appreciate it!
I’ve white knuckled my way through the last 40 years. Facing it so many times I never understood why I didn’t get over it.
It's hard to push through this fear. Its even hard to NOT push through - to fully open ourselves up to the experience and allow it as it comes. If it helps at all, almost everybody winds up here at some point. Doing the things (pushing through - white knuckling) without fully letting go.
Me pasa que estoy todo el dia tratando de resolver mis síntomas , ahora tengo mucha picazón en la piel y mi mente no para de buscar causas y soluciones , termino muy agotado, creo que debo soltar el control y dejar que todo eso suceda
I have a question. When i accept the feelings and after a few minutes try to focus on what uam doing , i automatically start to resist again. Its like i only can do one thing at a time. Either focusing or accepting
Got dragged back in? Welcome to the club! Everyone struggles with this. Its not just you. You're not doing it wrong. The win is in the practice! You're doing it "right" when you realize that you're back to making how you feel the top priority, then move your attention again. The point is the exercise, not somehow turning off the focus with a switch. It sounds like you're on the right track here.
@@TheAnxiousTruth could pornography be a reason its harder to get rid of this? Cause i feel like it makes things 10 times worse. Or is it my anxiety fucking with me? Its hard to trust yourself when you have anxiety
What if you are doing exposure therapy but still are getting symptoms? I’ll be running on treadmill and still feel a suffocation feeling while I’m running. I don’t panic I continue to run but it still there. Any advice?
In this situations we tend to look for the resistance that lingers. Look for intent. Are you trying to make the feeling stop, looking for techniques that make it go away? Are you declaring failure and looking for more answers and tips when you feel the sensation? That can get really subtle and it's hard to say in the comments section what's really going on, but try looking for ways in which you are still resisting while also insisting that you're accepting. Are you learning from your exposures because you see the lessons they can teach you, or just pushing through the sensations and wondering why they won't stop? Just things to consider.
@@TheAnxiousTruth thank you my brother. I think I have a form of medical PTSD because I actually had a heart condition/arrythmia last year but I went through heart surgery to get cured and that’s when anxiety came back to haunt me after getting the surgey. Like I feel like the electrophysiologists messed up my heart but it was a successful surgey and I’m back to normal. Just have a hard time accepting that I am cured from my previous heart condition.
CELERY JUICE!
Do NOT get me started on the celery juice! LOL
For you to truly accept, do you no longer need to be fearful of your anxiety and symptoms?
Accept means "stop resisting". And in doing that - "taking a brave risk" - we LEARN through experience that we do not have to feel as fearful any more and that we don't have to run from that fear any more. We drop the resistance (accept) to learn that those false alarms are wrong. We don't try to magically not be afraid to accept. Accept (stop resisting) comes first.
Christian idea of "offering it up."
Thank you so much! I’m at this point! I get it intellectually 🫠 but I’m definitely still not completely accepting ❤️ thank you for saying not to blame ourselves. And that it is tricky.
That is really hard, isn't it? We are usually most critical of ourselves!