Latest / Bye Bye Panic / Anxiety Recovery Masterclass: Overcome Physical Symptoms, Panic Attacks, and Intrusive Thoughts
Transcript
- 0:00[SPEAKER_00]: If you're dealing with intense, mysterious, physical symptoms that the doctors can't explain or dismiss, and you feel like these symptoms aren't going away.
- 0:09[SPEAKER_00]: If you're getting intense panic attacks that are coming out of nowhere, you might even be dealing with these intrusive thoughts that this is going to be your life forever or what if the doctors are missing something?
- 0:19[SPEAKER_00]: You might even start feeling dissociated, where you're starting to feel like nothing is real, where you're starting to question reality.
- 0:26[SPEAKER_00]: Well, in this video, I'm going to share with you how to overcome these symptoms and sensations for good.
- 0:32[SPEAKER_00]: Without relying on coping strategies like breathing techniques or meditation or supplements or all of these other things you might have tried that haven't worked and go back to living fully and freely.
- 0:42[SPEAKER_00]: The purpose of this masterclass is simple to give you the tools and strategies for you to begin this recovery journey.
- 0:49[SPEAKER_00]: I'm not going to be gatekeeping anything, I'm not going to be hiding anything.
- 0:53[SPEAKER_00]: But this also means that this video is going to be a long video because there's a lot to talk about.
- 0:57[SPEAKER_00]: There's a lot to help you understand what's going on and to show you what to do to begin reversing the cycle.
- 1:03[SPEAKER_00]: So for those of you who don't know who I am, my name is Sean, we help people around the world overcome this and go back to living.
- 1:08[SPEAKER_00]: I'm finding in today's day-nage, there are more anxiety healers than there've ever been before.
- 1:14[SPEAKER_00]: Yet, there's the most amount of distrust out there.
- 1:18[SPEAKER_00]: How do you know who to work with?
- 1:20[SPEAKER_00]: How do you understand what's right information and wrong information?
- 1:23[SPEAKER_00]: The truth is, is that when I was dealing with anxiety, I had tried anything and everything.
- 1:27[SPEAKER_00]: I went to therapists.
- 1:28[SPEAKER_00]: I went to doctors.
- 1:30[SPEAKER_00]: I went to different types of doctors.
- 1:32[SPEAKER_00]: I went to neurologists, gastroenterologists, psychiatrists, immunologists.
- 1:36[SPEAKER_00]: All these different people, I even started going to alternative practitioners, functional doctors, chiropractors, acupuncturists, and the more I went to them, the more money I lost, and I never got better.
- 1:48[SPEAKER_00]: And if I could have just had somebody that would have explained to me what was going on, that would have saved me so much time, so much headache, and so much money.
- 1:57[SPEAKER_00]: So my goal in this video is to give you as much value up front.
- 2:00[SPEAKER_00]: It's a win-win for you.
- 2:02[SPEAKER_00]: You can get all this information that you need and recover on your own.
- 2:05[SPEAKER_00]: That's great.
- 2:06[SPEAKER_00]: If you decide that as you're doing this, you need some help along the way.
- 2:09[SPEAKER_00]: You won't be starting from zero.
- 2:11[SPEAKER_00]: You've actually made some progress.
- 2:12[SPEAKER_00]: You'll be a great student.
- 2:14[SPEAKER_00]: So either way for you, it's a win-win.
- 2:16[SPEAKER_00]: And lastly, I'm doing this actually for a little bit of selfish reasons too.
- 2:19[SPEAKER_00]: As I'm filming this video where about ninety-seven thousand subscribers, and I never expected this channel to grow that big.
- 2:27[SPEAKER_00]: If I'm being fully honest with you, this channel was never about having as many subscribers as possible.
- 2:31[SPEAKER_00]: It was about creating as much value as I possibly could.
- 2:35[SPEAKER_00]: But one of the consequences of that is that the channel has grown so much.
- 2:38[SPEAKER_00]: So I decided why not create a free training, a free master class going in depth in the healing journey, because in many ways YouTube has changed my life.
- 2:47[SPEAKER_00]: And so giving this master class is a way of saying thank you.
- 2:51[SPEAKER_00]: So here's what I'm recommend.
- 2:52[SPEAKER_00]: Do whatever you can to make sure you have this video saved so that when you're watching this, you can understand the principles of the healing journey.
- 3:00[SPEAKER_00]: You're going to be getting information in this video that's going to help you based on where you're at right now.
- 3:05[SPEAKER_00]: But as you make progress, you'll rewatch this video.
- 3:08[SPEAKER_00]: You'll learn something new that you might have missed the first time because it wasn't relevant to you at that time in your healing journey.
- 3:15[SPEAKER_00]: I want to help you understand what the heck is even going on.
- 3:19[SPEAKER_00]: Why are you experiencing these symptoms?
- 3:21[SPEAKER_00]: Why is it so difficult to get this treated?
- 3:24[SPEAKER_00]: Is this something you're always going to be dealing with forever?
- 3:27[SPEAKER_00]: How do you begin reversing the cycle?
- 3:30[SPEAKER_00]: How do you deal with setbacks and relapses?
- 3:32[SPEAKER_00]: And how do you make sure that you never fall back into the cycle again?
- 3:37[SPEAKER_00]: What I'm about to teach you took me years to figure out.
- 3:40[SPEAKER_00]: Not only that, we have refined this process with thousands of people around the world.
- 3:46[SPEAKER_00]: Here is what we found.
- 3:47[SPEAKER_00]: It doesn't matter how long you've been struggling.
- 3:50[SPEAKER_00]: It doesn't matter what made you fall into the cycle.
- 3:52[SPEAKER_00]: It doesn't matter what symptoms you're experiencing.
- 3:55[SPEAKER_00]: It doesn't matter your ethnicity, your background, your age, your gender.
- 3:59[SPEAKER_00]: None of that matters.
- 4:00[SPEAKER_00]: The key focus on recovery is focusing on the principles of healing.
- 4:05[SPEAKER_00]: Now the principles are universal.
- 4:07[SPEAKER_00]: The principles are absolute and the principles are complete.
- 4:11[SPEAKER_00]: Doesn't matter if you struggle for two months, if you struggled for fifty years, it doesn't matter your age, your background, your gender, your identity, none of that matters.
- 4:20[SPEAKER_00]: The key focus is that the principles are universal.
- 4:23[SPEAKER_00]: We've basically boiled recovery into a science.
- 4:26[SPEAKER_00]: So let's set some expectations.
- 4:28[SPEAKER_00]: Number one.
- 4:29[SPEAKER_00]: You're going to recover from this.
- 4:31[SPEAKER_00]: I know it feels like going through this.
- 4:32[SPEAKER_00]: It feels like it's taking everything away from you.
- 4:35[SPEAKER_00]: If you're asking yourself honestly, do you ever feel yourself coming out of this?
- 4:38[SPEAKER_00]: The answer might feel like no, but the truth is that you can't follow your feelings here.
- 4:43[SPEAKER_00]: As you go through the healing journey, you will see for yourself that you can overcome this.
- 4:47[SPEAKER_00]: We've helped so many people around the world, even my own personal recovery journey.
- 4:51[SPEAKER_00]: In fact, if you ask anybody going through this, they will all tell you the same thing.
- 4:55[SPEAKER_00]: Everybody else could recover, but not me.
- 4:57[SPEAKER_00]: My symptoms are too bad.
- 4:59[SPEAKER_00]: My sensations are too uncomfortable.
- 5:01[SPEAKER_00]: I've been dealing with this for too long.
- 5:02[SPEAKER_00]: Or you'll find different ways to be unique.
- 5:05[SPEAKER_00]: But the truth is, is that overcoming this is possible.
- 5:08[SPEAKER_00]: It just requires some understanding.
- 5:10[SPEAKER_00]: Number two, you're going to need to have patience in this video.
- 5:14[SPEAKER_00]: You have no idea how many times I've made videos explaining how to overcome certain symptoms.
- 5:19[SPEAKER_00]: And then in the comments of that video, people will ask me the very question that that video addresses.
- 5:24[SPEAKER_00]: The truth is is that they're just not receptive to info because they're so focused on overcoming their symptoms that if you told them the answer right there, right there and then they wouldn't comprehend it.
- 5:35[SPEAKER_00]: So here's what I want you to do.
- 5:36[SPEAKER_00]: I know you want these symptoms, these sensations to go away, push it aside for now.
- 5:41[SPEAKER_00]: Just be here.
- 5:42[SPEAKER_00]: Just be present and just listen.
- 5:44[SPEAKER_00]: Just be curious about what's going on.
- 5:47[SPEAKER_00]: Try to understand the principles.
- 5:49[SPEAKER_00]: Not to make these symptoms go away, but just to understand.
- 5:53[SPEAKER_00]: In this video, I'm going to be focusing on a concept of long term freedom.
- 5:58[SPEAKER_00]: You are very focused on short term fixes.
- 6:00[SPEAKER_00]: You're trying to do anything and everything to find relief in the moment.
- 6:03[SPEAKER_00]: Something important to understand is that in order overcome this, you need to focus on long-term freedom, not short-term comfort.
- 6:11[SPEAKER_00]: That means, if you're focusing on long-term freedom, you might feel a little bit uncomfortable right now, but that's okay.
- 6:17[SPEAKER_00]: So, always ask yourself, if you're doing something as you're learning things from this video, why am I putting this into practice?
- 6:24[SPEAKER_00]: Am I doing this to feel better in the moment?
- 6:27[SPEAKER_00]: Or am I more focused on my future?
- 6:29[SPEAKER_00]: Am I focused on overcoming this for good?
- 6:31[SPEAKER_00]: This is going to be a different frame of mind that you're going to be utilizing.
- 6:34[SPEAKER_00]: And then the last thing is this.
- 6:36[SPEAKER_00]: Recovery is actually more simple than you think.
- 6:39[SPEAKER_00]: In fact, because it's so simple, it makes it more difficult.
- 6:43[SPEAKER_00]: Now, being simple doesn't make it easy, right?
- 6:46[SPEAKER_00]: So you might have times where you feel like, yes, it's easier said than done.
- 6:51[SPEAKER_00]: But just because it's not easy, doesn't mean it shouldn't be done.
- 6:53[SPEAKER_00]: Recovery is simple.
- 6:55[SPEAKER_00]: Keep it to the basics.
- 6:57[SPEAKER_00]: Understand the basic framework.
- 6:59[SPEAKER_00]: If you're starting to over-analyze, you're over-complicating it.
- 7:02[SPEAKER_00]: Recovery is straightforward as simple.
- 7:04[SPEAKER_00]: It's one of the reasons why we've been able to have such great success with healing.
- 7:09[SPEAKER_00]: It's not because we made things complicated.
- 7:11[SPEAKER_00]: It's quite the opposite.
- 7:12[SPEAKER_00]: Simplifying healing is what counts.
- 7:14[SPEAKER_00]: And by the way, one more thing.
- 7:16[SPEAKER_00]: Don't use these videos as a substitute for medical advice.
- 7:20[SPEAKER_00]: Make sure you've gotten everything ruled out by your doctors.
- 7:24[SPEAKER_00]: Look, doctors have an important function in your healing journey.
- 7:27[SPEAKER_00]: You need to make sure that what you're experiencing isn't a consequence of an organ issue or any sort of diagnostic issue that needs to be resolved.
- 7:37[SPEAKER_00]: You need to be able to go to your doctors and get everything ruled out, okay?
- 7:41[SPEAKER_00]: Make sure that the doctors have said this is anxiety or, you know, they're not really concerned about what's going on.
- 7:48[SPEAKER_00]: I'll explain more what that means.
- 7:50[SPEAKER_00]: But the key is that don't use these videos as a substitute.
- 7:53[SPEAKER_00]: Now, there are a subset of people that avoid going to the doctors because they're afraid what the doctors are going to say.
- 8:00[SPEAKER_00]: Look, if you want to overcome this, the fastest way is to go to your doctors and get everything rolled out.
- 8:05[SPEAKER_00]: Now, once you've done that and you're still dealing with symptoms, then watch these videos.
- 8:10[SPEAKER_00]: But if you're avoiding going to the doctor, well, you might have some really strong avoidance behaviors and those avoidance behaviors is what's preventing you from getting that peace of mind.
- 8:20[SPEAKER_00]: So go to your doctors, get this rolled out, and if you have gotten everything rolled out and you can't figure this out, then this video is for you.
- 8:28[SPEAKER_00]: Now before we move forward, take a moment and ask yourself a very honest question.
- 8:34[SPEAKER_00]: Why are you experiencing this?
- 8:36[SPEAKER_00]: What's happening?
- 8:37[SPEAKER_00]: Do you feel like the doctors are missing something?
- 8:39[SPEAKER_00]: Do you feel like it's something but by the time the doctors find out it's too late?
- 8:45[SPEAKER_00]: Do you feel like you have a chemical imbalance?
- 8:47[SPEAKER_00]: Do you feel like there's a genetic component here?
- 8:50[SPEAKER_00]: Do you feel like something happened to you that prevented you from healing?
- 8:54[SPEAKER_00]: And this is always something you're going to be dealing with?
- 8:57[SPEAKER_00]: Do you feel like you know what's happening but you just don't want to put in the work?
- 9:01[SPEAKER_00]: Do you feel like you have something that's holding you back from this?
- 9:04[SPEAKER_00]: Some inner childhood trauma.
- 9:07[SPEAKER_00]: What's going on?
- 9:07[SPEAKER_00]: Because what often happens is that people have narratives and stories about what's happening when that's not really what's going on.
- 9:16[SPEAKER_00]: And that narrative is what's keeping them back.
- 9:19[SPEAKER_00]: What's holding them back from recovering.
- 9:21[SPEAKER_00]: So you might notice that a lot of people talk about what you are experiencing as anxiety.
- 9:26[SPEAKER_00]: Right?
- 9:26[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, when you go to your doctors and they don't find anything, they say, oh, it's just anxiety.
- 9:31[SPEAKER_00]: When you go to your therapist trying to understand why it's creating such physical symptoms, oh, that's anxiety.
- 9:36[SPEAKER_00]: Well, if it is, well, how do you define anxiety?
- 9:40[SPEAKER_00]: Many people will define anxiety as stress, as being fearful, as just being anxious, like an emotion.
- 9:46[SPEAKER_00]: But how could this be anxiety when people told me it was anxiety?
- 9:50[SPEAKER_00]: It almost felt like they were neglecting me.
- 9:53[SPEAKER_00]: Just saying, oh, no, you're not feeling anything.
- 9:55[SPEAKER_00]: That's just in your head.
- 9:56[SPEAKER_00]: You just have some anxiety.
- 9:58[SPEAKER_00]: And my response was, anxiety about what?
- 10:00[SPEAKER_00]: I'm anxious because of how I feel.
- 10:03[SPEAKER_00]: I'm not feeling because I'm anxious as the other way around.
- 10:06[SPEAKER_00]: Why was this happening to me?
- 10:08[SPEAKER_00]: I didn't understand.
- 10:09[SPEAKER_00]: Well, let's break this down.
- 10:11[SPEAKER_00]: When people tell you it's anxiety, we need to define what anxiety means.
- 10:15[SPEAKER_00]: Because anxiety is one of those terms that can mean anything.
- 10:18[SPEAKER_00]: Like I mentioned, it could be expressing something in the moment like an emotion.
- 10:22[SPEAKER_00]: People can talk about anxiety as stress, stress from work.
- 10:25[SPEAKER_00]: People can talk about anxiety in terms of fear, like right before you're about to jump from a plane when you're skydiving.
- 10:30[SPEAKER_00]: But there's another type of anxiety too.
- 10:33[SPEAKER_00]: So there's the anxiety that's like an emotion, right?
- 10:36[SPEAKER_00]: Feelings of happiness, feelings of sadness, feelings of anxiety.
- 10:39[SPEAKER_00]: It's just an emotion.
- 10:41[SPEAKER_00]: But then there's another type of anxiety.
- 10:44[SPEAKER_00]: This type of anxiety is based on survival.
- 10:47[SPEAKER_00]: See, you being a human being, one of the best qualities about you is your ability to survive.
- 10:54[SPEAKER_00]: As human beings, we've been able to survive in very harsh climates.
- 10:57[SPEAKER_00]: We've had predators that are much bigger than us.
- 10:59[SPEAKER_00]: We've dealt with tribal warfare.
- 11:01[SPEAKER_00]: We've dealt with all these different things, all these different things coming out to get us, and yet we've been able to survive.
- 11:07[SPEAKER_00]: Why?
- 11:08[SPEAKER_00]: Well, we have a survival instinct that's built into us.
- 11:11[SPEAKER_00]: It's designed to protect us.
- 11:13[SPEAKER_00]: Often times this label, you'll hear which is fight or flight system.
- 11:17[SPEAKER_00]: The fighter flight system is a response that's been developed over thousands of years from evolution to protect you from things that happened a thousand, five thousand years ago.
- 11:28[SPEAKER_00]: Times to survive back when we were a caveman.
- 11:30[SPEAKER_00]: Whenever you felt like you were in danger or something was coming to get you, well, this fighter flight response would kick in.
- 11:36[SPEAKER_00]: And this fighter flight response isn't just an emotion that you felt.
- 11:40[SPEAKER_00]: It was your nervous system shifting.
- 11:43[SPEAKER_00]: So let's take this for an example, okay?
- 11:46[SPEAKER_00]: You were living back in caveman times and you were just walking down a field and all of a sudden a tiger came out to get you.
- 11:54[SPEAKER_00]: Now your nervous system right there in that moment would turn on the fire flight response.
- 11:59[SPEAKER_00]: Your nervous system would change blood flow, blood flow would be going in muscle groups to fight the tiger.
- 12:05[SPEAKER_00]: You would notice your heart would start beating.
- 12:07[SPEAKER_00]: You would notice you'd be getting more shallow breaths so that you can get more oxygen.
- 12:11[SPEAKER_00]: You will also notice that your mind starts racing because you're trying to figure out how to run away or fight this tiger.
- 12:16[SPEAKER_00]: You're doing cost benefit analysis twenty four seven.
- 12:19[SPEAKER_00]: That type of survival instinct every mammal has, but humans are really good at it.
- 12:24[SPEAKER_00]: Imagine that the tiger ended up catching you.
- 12:27[SPEAKER_00]: It was too late.
- 12:28[SPEAKER_00]: It was game over.
- 12:29[SPEAKER_00]: The tiger got you.
- 12:30[SPEAKER_00]: Okay.
- 12:31[SPEAKER_00]: Now a different response turns out.
- 12:32[SPEAKER_00]: This is called the freeze response.
- 12:34[SPEAKER_00]: This freeze response basically is like a mental airbag that goes off.
- 12:39[SPEAKER_00]: And it's designed to protect you from the trauma that's happening.
- 12:43[SPEAKER_00]: Now, imagine you did manage to escape and run away from the tiger.
- 12:48[SPEAKER_00]: Well, once you run away from the tiger and you feel like you're safe, your notice your body comes back to baseline.
- 12:54[SPEAKER_00]: But you'll notice something's off.
- 12:56[SPEAKER_00]: You'll notice your little bit jumpy.
- 12:57[SPEAKER_00]: You'll notice that anytime a bush shakes, you might think, wait, what if the tiger is behind there?
- 13:03[SPEAKER_00]: Right?
- 13:03[SPEAKER_00]: Because you just experienced it.
- 13:05[SPEAKER_00]: Well, what happens in that moment is that your nervous system changed its state.
- 13:10[SPEAKER_00]: It said that Sean saw a tiger, what happens if Sean sees a tiger again?
- 13:17[SPEAKER_00]: So what happens is that even though you're not in danger, what happens is that the nervous system state is on.
- 13:23[SPEAKER_00]: Now you're in a state, a prolonged state where your nervous system is in this fight or flight mode.
- 13:29[SPEAKER_00]: This is what throws anxiety suffers off so much because they feel like nothing is wrong in their life.
- 13:34[SPEAKER_00]: They feel like everything is fine.
- 13:35[SPEAKER_00]: I have a good job.
- 13:35[SPEAKER_00]: I have a great family.
- 13:36[SPEAKER_00]: I love my kids.
- 13:37[SPEAKER_00]: You know, I'm about to go on vacation.
- 13:39[SPEAKER_00]: Why am I feeling these intense sensations?
- 13:42[SPEAKER_00]: Well, what you're really dealing with is a state.
- 13:44[SPEAKER_00]: And what you're really dealing with is a nervous system issue.
- 13:48[SPEAKER_00]: See, this is why the medical establishment has a hard time with dealing with anxiety.
- 13:53[SPEAKER_00]: Because anxiety that you're dealing with, these sensations, these panic attacks, the intrusive thoughts, the uncomfortable feelings, the de-personalization, de-realization.
- 14:03[SPEAKER_00]: It doesn't fall clearly within the physical realm and it doesn't fall in within the mental health realm.
- 14:10[SPEAKER_00]: So if you go to a doctor, doctors will be like, okay, cool, yeah, let me do some tests, yeah, you're fine.
- 14:16[SPEAKER_00]: Because these tests are incredibly accurate and they're able to detect really small things very quickly.
- 14:21[SPEAKER_00]: Then you might notice that your doctors over time
- 14:25[SPEAKER_00]: They might prescribe you meds, you might take it, you might not, but they'll recommend going to a therapist.
- 14:29[SPEAKER_00]: And then you speak with a therapist and they're completely focused on the mind, your thoughts, you know, how do you interpret certain things?
- 14:36[SPEAKER_00]: But what you're dealing with falls in the cracks of both those things, what you're dealing with is a nervous system issue.
- 14:43[SPEAKER_00]: Your nervous system is stuck on this fighter flight mode.
- 14:45[SPEAKER_00]: So what's happening is that it's manifesting itself in physical symptoms, but it's also manifesting itself in thoughts and feelings.
- 14:52[SPEAKER_00]: And so even though the doctors and therapists can deal with those symptoms and sensations, they don't go into the root of what's going on, which is nervous system dysregulation.
- 15:03[SPEAKER_00]: Our medical industry is naturally fragmented.
- 15:05[SPEAKER_00]: Now, as the fragmentation is there, there are some benefits.
- 15:08[SPEAKER_00]: You can be very hyper-focused on certain things.
- 15:10[SPEAKER_00]: But what you're dealing with is more of a holistic issue.
- 15:13[SPEAKER_00]: It's mind and body.
- 15:14[SPEAKER_00]: This is survival.
- 15:15[SPEAKER_00]: The purpose of me telling you this is that this is why you might have felt neglected by your doctor's or your therapist.
- 15:21[SPEAKER_00]: It's not like they're doing anything wrong.
- 15:23[SPEAKER_00]: They're doing exactly what they should be doing.
- 15:26[SPEAKER_00]: But the question is, is this their role, is their role to help you with understanding what's going on?
- 15:32[SPEAKER_00]: Doctors have their own timelines, they have their own focus, they have people in life or death situations that they need to run to and help support.
- 15:40[SPEAKER_00]: When you're dealing with a nervous system issue where there's not anything technically, physically wrong, well, how do you help somebody overcome that?
- 15:48[SPEAKER_00]: And in the same way, with therapists, therapists look at what you're dealing with as more of a mental issue in terms of anxiety.
- 15:56[SPEAKER_00]: They follow something called the DSM, the diagnostic and statistical manual.
- 16:00[SPEAKER_00]: The DSM views what you're dealing with as a chronic issue.
- 16:04[SPEAKER_00]: Now, I'll explain why.
- 16:05[SPEAKER_00]: So it views what you're dealing with this quote unquote anxiety as a chronic issue.
- 16:09[SPEAKER_00]: So what therapists are trained to do is because it's a chronic issue, well, they'll give you lifestyle adjustments.
- 16:15[SPEAKER_00]: They'll give you coping strategies.
- 16:17[SPEAKER_00]: Try this breathing exercise.
- 16:19[SPEAKER_00]: Try this grounding techniques.
- 16:21[SPEAKER_00]: Take a journal.
- 16:22[SPEAKER_00]: Take a cool shower.
- 16:24[SPEAKER_00]: Go ahead and do a warm bath.
- 16:26[SPEAKER_00]: All these things because they view anxiety as a chronic issue.
- 16:32[SPEAKER_00]: Now, why do therapists view this as a chronic issue?
- 16:35[SPEAKER_00]: Well, it goes back to defining what anxiety is.
- 16:38[SPEAKER_00]: What are you talking about anxiety as an emotion?
- 16:40[SPEAKER_00]: Are you talking anxiety as a state?
- 16:42[SPEAKER_00]: A lot of the therapists are viewing anxiety as an emotion.
- 16:45[SPEAKER_00]: The idea of eliminating anxiety as an emotion is unrealistic.
- 16:49[SPEAKER_00]: You feeling emotions is part of being human.
- 16:52[SPEAKER_00]: You will feel sad.
- 16:53[SPEAKER_00]: You will feel happy.
- 16:54[SPEAKER_00]: You will feel grief.
- 16:55[SPEAKER_00]: You will feel joy.
- 16:56[SPEAKER_00]: This idea where it could be like, Sean, can you show me how to never be sad again?
- 17:00[SPEAKER_00]: It's unrealistic, right?
- 17:02[SPEAKER_00]: And so, it's the same thing with anxiety, because they view anxiety as an emotion.
- 17:07[SPEAKER_00]: Well, you can't get rid of an emotion that emotions have their functions, right?
- 17:10[SPEAKER_00]: Emotions are just energy and emotion.
- 17:13[SPEAKER_00]: They're going to be moving.
- 17:14[SPEAKER_00]: You're going to have energy coming and going.
- 17:16[SPEAKER_00]: You have to let it pass.
- 17:18[SPEAKER_00]: So they're viewing anxiety as an emotion.
- 17:21[SPEAKER_00]: And so if you're feeling an emotion, well, how can you overcome an emotion?
- 17:25[SPEAKER_00]: You have to feel the emotion.
- 17:25[SPEAKER_00]: There's nothing you can do.
- 17:26[SPEAKER_00]: You can't eliminate emotions.
- 17:28[SPEAKER_00]: You can't be numb to everything.
- 17:30[SPEAKER_00]: So that's why they give breathing techniques.
- 17:32[SPEAKER_00]: That's why they give all these coping strategies.
- 17:35[SPEAKER_00]: But you already know more than most people out there.
- 17:37[SPEAKER_00]: You understand that there's two types of anxiety.
- 17:40[SPEAKER_00]: There's anxiety as an emotion, right?
- 17:42[SPEAKER_00]: But what you're dealing with is anxiety as a state.
- 17:45[SPEAKER_00]: It's showing up in a few ways.
- 17:47[SPEAKER_00]: What are the different ways that what you're dealing with shows up?
- 17:50[SPEAKER_00]: Well, one of the ways is to panic attacks.
- 17:53[SPEAKER_00]: where you feel an intense amount of adrenaline.
- 17:55[SPEAKER_00]: You might even feel like you're gonna die.
- 17:57[SPEAKER_00]: You're not sure what's going on.
- 17:58[SPEAKER_00]: You feel like you need to run away.
- 18:00[SPEAKER_00]: You need to escape from something.
- 18:01[SPEAKER_00]: You might notice your heart pounds.
- 18:04[SPEAKER_00]: You might feel dizzy.
- 18:05[SPEAKER_00]: You might feel shallow breath.
- 18:07[SPEAKER_00]: You might be feeling so many sensations that come from a panic attack.
- 18:11[SPEAKER_00]: Now, when you have a panic attack, it feels very intense.
- 18:14[SPEAKER_00]: And it oftentimes, when you don't know it's a panic attacks, it can be almost a little bit traumatic.
- 18:19[SPEAKER_00]: When it happens, you wanna never feel that again.
- 18:23[SPEAKER_00]: So anxiety shows up as panic attacks, anxiety also shows up as bizarre, mysterious physical symptoms.
- 18:31[SPEAKER_00]: These physical symptoms can be unlimited.
- 18:34[SPEAKER_00]: You can have vision changes.
- 18:35[SPEAKER_00]: You can have tenitis.
- 18:37[SPEAKER_00]: You can have breathlessness.
- 18:38[SPEAKER_00]: You can have dizziness.
- 18:39[SPEAKER_00]: You can have digestive issues.
- 18:41[SPEAKER_00]: You can have the numbness, the tingling.
- 18:43[SPEAKER_00]: You can experience so many physical sensations because of this.
- 18:46[SPEAKER_00]: And what happens is that because these symptoms are so bizarre, they can sometimes mimic real life illnesses.
- 18:53[SPEAKER_00]: This is why I mentioned constantly to go to your doctor and make sure everything's ruled out.
- 18:58[SPEAKER_00]: Because these symptoms, if they are anxiety, they can feel like they're intense issues.
- 19:03[SPEAKER_00]: And so you want to just make sure you have everything ruled out, but also recognize that anxiety can create intense symptoms.
- 19:10[SPEAKER_00]: If I had to come up with the list of physical sensations, anxiety creates, it would be unlimited and it would be indefinite.
- 19:17[SPEAKER_00]: This is where, because your body is different from everyone else, it manifests differently.
- 19:22[SPEAKER_00]: But know that the second way anxiety shows up is through physical symptoms.
- 19:27[SPEAKER_00]: So the first is panic attacks, the second is physical symptoms.
- 19:30[SPEAKER_00]: Now the third, which is often neglected, is the thoughts.
- 19:34[SPEAKER_00]: So anxiety will show up in thoughts, meaning it will look at all the bad case scenarios, grab the scariest one and magnify it.
- 19:41[SPEAKER_00]: See, your anxiety have access to your memories, to your biggest fears.
- 19:46[SPEAKER_00]: So what it's going to do is that it's going to magnify that fear.
- 19:49[SPEAKER_00]: It's going to magnify whatever you're dealing with or your darkest secret and try to magnify that so that you keep reacting.
- 19:56[SPEAKER_00]: You'll know and I'll share this more that the more you react to keep the anxiety alive, but just know for now that anxiety also shows up in thoughts.
- 20:04[SPEAKER_00]: Next, anxiety shows up in sensations and feelings.
- 20:08[SPEAKER_00]: It's not just feeling anxious all the time.
- 20:10[SPEAKER_00]: You might get feelings of feeling doom.
- 20:11[SPEAKER_00]: You might be feeling numb.
- 20:13[SPEAKER_00]: It might feel sad.
- 20:14[SPEAKER_00]: So anxiety shows up in feelings.
- 20:17[SPEAKER_00]: And lastly, anxiety can show up in dissociation.
- 20:20[SPEAKER_00]: What we call de-personalization de-realization.
- 20:23[SPEAKER_00]: Now, de-personalization de-realization is a little bit of a different mechanism, but like I mentioned, the purpose of anxiety recovery is to keep simple.
- 20:32[SPEAKER_00]: So for now, look at de-personalization de-realization as part of anxiety.
- 20:37[SPEAKER_00]: I'll explain a little bit more, but for the purposes of this exercise in this video, just classify it as the same thing.
- 20:43[SPEAKER_00]: Now, deep personalization feels like you're disconnected from your body.
- 20:47[SPEAKER_00]: You'll often notice when people mention having a car crash, they will feel a little bit disconnected from their body.
- 20:53[SPEAKER_00]: De-realization also is where you feel like nothing is real.
- 20:56[SPEAKER_00]: Where you feel like, you know, your hands are real, you start questioning, you just feel off.
- 21:00[SPEAKER_00]: You feel like for me it was like a glass panel between me and the outside world.
- 21:04[SPEAKER_00]: And so a lot of people can experience this.
- 21:06[SPEAKER_00]: Now, de-personalization, de-realization is really interesting because it's one of those feelings and sensations that can convince you really going crazy.
- 21:13[SPEAKER_00]: But it's not true at all.
- 21:15[SPEAKER_00]: What's really happening is actually an amazing survival response.
- 21:18[SPEAKER_00]: So, just know that anxiety can manifest itself in these different ways.
- 21:22[SPEAKER_00]: Panic attacks, physical symptoms, intrusive thoughts, feelings, and de-personalization, de-realization.
- 21:29[SPEAKER_00]: What you're dealing with isn't a real threat.
- 21:32[SPEAKER_00]: Real threat, meaning there isn't actually anything physiologically wrong.
- 21:36[SPEAKER_00]: Because there's nothing medically wrong, what you're dealing with is a perceived threat.
- 21:40[SPEAKER_00]: You're thinking these hard palpitations as the onset of a heart attack.
- 21:43[SPEAKER_00]: You think this does in this means, you know, your blood pressure is low and you're about to pass out.
- 21:47[SPEAKER_00]: Your digestive issues are highlighting that, you know, there might be something wrong with your gut.
- 21:52[SPEAKER_00]: Even though you're experiencing these intense symptoms, that doesn't mean the root cause of what's going on is physical.
- 21:58[SPEAKER_00]: So you might be naturally asking, okay, Sean, but how do I know what symptom is anxiety and which one is not?
- 22:04[SPEAKER_00]: Well, this is one of the easiest parts of the healing journey, which is getting everything rolled up by your doctors.
- 22:11[SPEAKER_00]: If your doctors are looking at all your symptoms and running all the tests and saying there's nothing really anything wrong, you can be rest assured that all these symptoms are just part of anxiety.
- 22:21[SPEAKER_00]: This is where anxiety suffers tend to struggle because the issue isn't that they're going to their doctors trying to figure this out.
- 22:28[SPEAKER_00]: The issue is that they can't accept the fact that this one symptom, whatever symptom it is for you, maybe it's the deep personalization, maybe it's the de-realization, maybe it's the brain fog, maybe it's the scary thoughts.
- 22:40[SPEAKER_00]: That's the hardest symptom to accept.
- 22:42[SPEAKER_00]: What I was dealing with in
- 22:43[SPEAKER_00]: anxiety.
- 22:44[SPEAKER_00]: I didn't have any issues with all my other symptoms.
- 22:46[SPEAKER_00]: Yes, they were uncomfortable.
- 22:47[SPEAKER_00]: Yes, I didn't like it.
- 22:48[SPEAKER_00]: But for me, the digestive symptoms were just too unbelievable to just be anxiety.
- 22:54[SPEAKER_00]: I would go on internet and I would find things like IBS, CBO, Candidas.
- 22:59[SPEAKER_00]: I'd find all these crazy things that I would just go into the rabbit hole of just reading, trying to understand what was going on.
- 23:05[SPEAKER_00]: And then if someone just told me it was anxiety, I was like, there's no way this is anxiety.
- 23:09[SPEAKER_00]: At a certain point I had to accept that even this symptom, the most intense one, is anxiety.
- 23:14[SPEAKER_00]: Now, sometimes you might have a medical condition going on maybe you have something else that's also happening along anxiety.
- 23:22[SPEAKER_00]: So how do you navigate that?
- 23:24[SPEAKER_00]: Well, that is also very simple.
- 23:26[SPEAKER_00]: If there is something that's medical, let your doctor address it and you just focus on the anxiety.
- 23:32[SPEAKER_00]: If anything is surfacing up where you're a little bit concerned, obviously go to your doctor speak with them, but if your doctors don't seem that concerned, you can try to throw it under the anxiety umbrella.
- 23:42[SPEAKER_00]: I will be sharing more of what this anxiety umbrella is and just a bit.
- 23:46[SPEAKER_00]: Now, the way to look at this, the way to look at what you're dealing with, isn't necessarily anxiety, right?
- 23:51[SPEAKER_00]: Because when we say the word anxiety, it's, it's, can mean a lot of things.
- 23:55[SPEAKER_00]: Like I mentioned, it could mean it's an emotion.
- 23:57[SPEAKER_00]: It could also mean it's about survival.
- 24:00[SPEAKER_00]: What you're really dealing with is a nervous system issue.
- 24:03[SPEAKER_00]: Now, what's going on with your nervous system exactly?
- 24:06[SPEAKER_00]: Well, let's describe the function of your nervous system.
- 24:09[SPEAKER_00]: Your nervous system has several functions.
- 24:12[SPEAKER_00]: But for the purpose of this masterclass, your nervous system is designed to respond to the outside world.
- 24:19[SPEAKER_00]: And so what happens is that it's looking for threats, scanning for whatever it can,
- 24:23[SPEAKER_00]: In case of life or death situations, it's basically saying, I want to keep Sean alive and if there's something there, I want to react quickly.
- 24:31[SPEAKER_00]: Your nervous system is very quick to respond.
- 24:34[SPEAKER_00]: Unlike your hormones that take time, your nervous system is quick.
- 24:37[SPEAKER_00]: It can turn on in an instant.
- 24:39[SPEAKER_00]: It's already on, but when we're talking about the fight or flight response, it can happen any moment.
- 24:43[SPEAKER_00]: Now, what happens is that when people are dealing with prolonged stress over time, what happens is that the nervous system is recognizing that the stress is building up.
- 24:54[SPEAKER_00]: So, let's say, for example, you're dealing with a lot of work stressors, and you're also noticing that you're having some relationship issues, and there's other things going on in your life where nothing seems to be working out at this moment, and you're noticing your stress is starting to build up over time.
- 25:09[SPEAKER_00]: Well, your nervous system is designed to handle that stress and your nervous system can handle a lot.
- 25:15[SPEAKER_00]: But your nervous system has what we call a threshold.
- 25:19[SPEAKER_00]: Basically, once your stress hits that certain threshold, your nervous system begins to change.
- 25:25[SPEAKER_00]: So let's go back to the example of the tiger analogy that I gave.
- 25:29[SPEAKER_00]: You were living back in prehistoric times, you saw a tiger, your nervous system went on fire flight mode and designed to protect you.
- 25:38[SPEAKER_00]: You basically hit that stress threshold where your nervous system said, this is a life or death situation.
- 25:44[SPEAKER_00]: When your nervous system hits the stress threshold, something interesting happens.
- 25:49[SPEAKER_00]: Your nervous system becomes more sensitive to stress.
- 25:53[SPEAKER_00]: Why would your nervous system be more sensitive to stress?
- 25:58[SPEAKER_00]: Think about working out.
- 25:59[SPEAKER_00]: When you work out and you're moving heavy weights, your muscles actually get stronger.
- 26:05[SPEAKER_00]: They don't get weaker.
- 26:06[SPEAKER_00]: Your threshold actually increases for how heavy you can lift.
- 26:09[SPEAKER_00]: But when it comes to your nervous system, when it handles stress, what happens is that it becomes more sensitive.
- 26:14[SPEAKER_00]: What is the advantage there?
- 26:16[SPEAKER_00]: When we're referring to that tiger analogy, where you saw a tiger, your nervous system hit its stress threshold, your nervous system went on full on flight or flight mode, well you managed to escape.
- 26:28[SPEAKER_00]: You didn't see the tiger.
- 26:30[SPEAKER_00]: But just because you don't see the tiger doesn't mean the tiger might not show up.
- 26:34[SPEAKER_00]: And so one of the ways we've survived is that even after the stress period, your nervous system stays sensitized for a bit longer.
- 26:42[SPEAKER_00]: This is in case a stressor pops up again.
- 26:45[SPEAKER_00]: Look, if you were in a life or death situation, chances are you might be in another life or death situation really close to it.
- 26:52[SPEAKER_00]: So it's just better to stay on.
- 26:53[SPEAKER_00]: It's just better to be on the lookout.
- 26:56[SPEAKER_00]: It's just better to have that fighter flight response kick in just in case.
- 27:00[SPEAKER_00]: So let's just stay on just a little bit longer.
- 27:02[SPEAKER_00]: Your nervous system's primary function is to keep you alive.
- 27:06[SPEAKER_00]: And so it doesn't wanna assume, okay, there's no tiger while we can relax and then a tiger pops up, right?
- 27:11[SPEAKER_00]: It's game over.
- 27:12[SPEAKER_00]: That's it.
- 27:13[SPEAKER_00]: People that survived were people that had their nervous system, fighter flight response on for a little bit longer.
- 27:19[SPEAKER_00]: Their nervous system was sensitized.
- 27:21[SPEAKER_00]: So what that means is that if they went to a similar field where they saw a previous tiger, they were naturally more alert because they saw a tiger last time.
- 27:28[SPEAKER_00]: They would notice that if a bush shaked because of the wind, well, there might be a tiger behind it.
- 27:33[SPEAKER_00]: So let's just be careful.
- 27:34[SPEAKER_00]: Do you notice how even after there was no tiger and nervous system is still on?
- 27:39[SPEAKER_00]: This is so important because this doesn't just apply to the tiger and I was
- 27:43[SPEAKER_00]: This can happen from prolonged stress.
- 27:45[SPEAKER_00]: Let's say family member passes away or there's some big live stress or a relationship stuff or a bunch of small stressors that pick up.
- 27:53[SPEAKER_00]: What happens is that when you hit that stress threshold your nervous system becomes more sensitive to stress.
- 27:58[SPEAKER_00]: This is why things that were so easy for you to do in the past now seem so difficult.
- 28:03[SPEAKER_00]: Go into the grocery store seems like climbing Mount Everest, leaving your house can be quite frightening.
- 28:09[SPEAKER_00]: For some people, even waking up in the morning can be difficult.
- 28:12[SPEAKER_00]: That little cortisol spike in the morning that helps you get out of bed, that can create full-blown anxiety symptoms.
- 28:18[SPEAKER_00]: When I would go to my doctors and I would explain these symptoms, they would say it's just anxiety.
- 28:23[SPEAKER_00]: But I would tell them, look, I'm not anxious.
- 28:25[SPEAKER_00]: In fact, these symptoms are making me anxious, but I'm not inherently anxious.
- 28:28[SPEAKER_00]: This is not who I am.
- 28:30[SPEAKER_00]: What I did it realized was this phenomenon that was happening in the background, which was sensitization.
- 28:35[SPEAKER_00]: The symptoms in many ways became the tiger.
- 28:38[SPEAKER_00]: This symptoms was what I was trying to avoid when I was trying to run away from.
- 28:43[SPEAKER_00]: You might already start noticing the loop that started in a form.
- 28:46[SPEAKER_00]: Now, we talk a lot about all these symptoms.
- 28:49[SPEAKER_00]: We talk about the physical symptoms, the panic attacks, the intrusive thoughts, the depersonalization, de-realization, all being part of one problem, which is anxiety.
- 28:58[SPEAKER_00]: But what happens if human diagnosed with multiple things?
- 29:01[SPEAKER_00]: I was personally diagnosed with a panic disorder, health anxiety, I had a ghorophobia, which I'll explain what that is, OCD and a little bit of depression.
- 29:10[SPEAKER_00]: I was diagnosed with five things, okay fine.
- 29:12[SPEAKER_00]: Generalizing anxiety disorder, fine.
- 29:14[SPEAKER_00]: Yes, that was part of it, but what about the rest of it?
- 29:17[SPEAKER_00]: Well, the way to look at this is that all these diagnoses is still fundamentally the same issue that's going on, which is that your nervous system is sensitized.
- 29:26[SPEAKER_00]: In fact, we could even go a little bit more beyond that.
- 29:30[SPEAKER_00]: There's people that are dealing with these sensations that are diagnosed with other things, like pots, postural, orthostatic, tachycardia syndrome, fibromyalgia, chronic fatigue syndrome, chronic dizziness, chronic pain, dysautonomia.
- 29:46[SPEAKER_00]: People are diagnosed with all these different things and they think they have ten or twenty different problems.
- 29:51[SPEAKER_00]: But all this is explaining is just a very sensitized nervous system.
- 29:56[SPEAKER_00]: This is where people are different, where the symptoms, the manifestations of the symptoms, the sensations, the feelings can be different person to person, but the fundamental underlying issue is exactly the same.
- 30:09[SPEAKER_00]: Now, one of the phenomenons that I want to bring up is something that people deal with called agorophobia.
- 30:14[SPEAKER_00]: Basically agorophobia means fear of public spaces or public gatherings.
- 30:19[SPEAKER_00]: And so a lot of people think that when someone is dealing with agorophobia, if they've been diagnosed with agorophobia, that they have fear of going outside, going places, going to crowds, almost like an introvert kind of issue.
- 30:30[SPEAKER_00]: But it's not about going out to these places.
- 30:33[SPEAKER_00]: They're scared of how they feel if they go to the grocery store, if they go to a party, if they go on vacation.
- 30:40[SPEAKER_00]: It's not that the vacation's the issue, it's not that the grocery store is the issue, it's how they feel.
- 30:44[SPEAKER_00]: Many of these individuals stop driving as well because they might have had their first panic attack while driving or they've had panic attacks while driving and driving just increases their panic sensations so they stop driving altogether.
- 30:57[SPEAKER_00]: It's not driving per se that's the issue.
- 31:00[SPEAKER_00]: It's what will happen to them while they're driving.
- 31:03[SPEAKER_00]: That's what they're fearing.
- 31:04[SPEAKER_00]: So what happens with anxiety sufferers that they can over time develop a gorephobia, where they basically build their life around this.
- 31:11[SPEAKER_00]: They stop going places.
- 31:13[SPEAKER_00]: Their life becomes smaller because of these sensations, because of these symptoms.
- 31:17[SPEAKER_00]: They're doing everything to avoid it.
- 31:19[SPEAKER_00]: They're afraid what happens if I go certain place and I can't escape.
- 31:23[SPEAKER_00]: What happens if I go here and I start feeling dizzy and I fall.
- 31:27[SPEAKER_00]: What happens if I have a medical emergency?
- 31:29[SPEAKER_00]: And so basically what's happening is that they just end up resisting going to these places and what happens over time is that their life becomes smaller and smaller.
- 31:38[SPEAKER_00]: They basically build their life around anxiety.
- 31:42[SPEAKER_00]: Now something I want to highlight to you because as we've been helping people around the world, there's something important to understand.
- 31:49[SPEAKER_00]: Building your life around anxiety, building your life around the symptoms or sensations or avoiding this, that's not normal.
- 31:57[SPEAKER_00]: The reason why I say this is because a lot of people that are dealing with anxiety, they begin to rationalize themselves that, yeah, I don't go to these places.
- 32:04[SPEAKER_00]: I don't go to the grocery store.
- 32:06[SPEAKER_00]: I just, you know, deliver groceries to my house.
- 32:09[SPEAKER_00]: I stop going here because, you know, I just don't like feeling anxiety.
- 32:13[SPEAKER_00]: So I just don't go.
- 32:14[SPEAKER_00]: And it's important to realize that not only does this make things worse, but building your life around anxiety is not something that's healthier normal.
- 32:24[SPEAKER_00]: Anxiety is there to protect you.
- 32:26[SPEAKER_00]: It has an advantage, but when it begins consuming you, when it begins, when you start beginning creating your life around anxiety, that's where anxiety is really going far, and it's really reducing your quality of life.
- 32:40[SPEAKER_00]: Now I want to talk about what are some of the common ways people fall into the cycle.
- 32:44[SPEAKER_00]: When people are in the twenties, when I've noticed a lot of people that reach out to us that are in their twenties, they were smoking some weed, or they might have been taking some illicit drug, and they gave themselves a panic attack.
- 32:57[SPEAKER_00]: Now, a lot of people think that it was the drug that caused the panic attack.
- 33:01[SPEAKER_00]: A lot of times people will take marijuana or something, and they'll end up getting a panic attack, and they'll start thinking, that, oh my God, I messed up my brain chemicals, or this was laced or something like that.
- 33:13[SPEAKER_00]: But really what's happening is that when you're taking these drugs, it's basically like you're going on a trip, right?
- 33:19[SPEAKER_00]: You're going on a school bus and you're going on a trip.
- 33:21[SPEAKER_00]: What happens is that these individuals can start feeling a little bit different.
- 33:25[SPEAKER_00]: Maybe they have some pent up energy and these drugs are trying to relax them because they start feeling weird.
- 33:31[SPEAKER_00]: It's almost like they try to get off the bus.
- 33:32[SPEAKER_00]: They're like, I don't want to feel this anymore.
- 33:34[SPEAKER_00]: I don't want to feel this anymore.
- 33:35[SPEAKER_00]: Because you've taken the drug, you have to let it run its course, right?
- 33:39[SPEAKER_00]: And so what happens is that they give themselves a panic attack.
- 33:42[SPEAKER_00]: They basically panic.
- 33:44[SPEAKER_00]: They are afraid something's happening.
- 33:46[SPEAKER_00]: And what happens is that this causes the cycle.
- 33:48[SPEAKER_00]: A lot of people that fall into the cycle from smoking weed.
- 33:52[SPEAKER_00]: You know, we're taking some of those drugs.
- 33:54[SPEAKER_00]: They often, I find struggle the most with de-personalization de-realization because the feeling is so overwhelmed that basically their mental airbag goes off.
- 34:03[SPEAKER_00]: And so they start feeling disconnected.
- 34:05[SPEAKER_00]: They start feeling weird.
- 34:06[SPEAKER_00]: They initially think that it might be from the drug and so they wait for the drug to get out of their system, but they still feel like they're disconnected.
- 34:14[SPEAKER_00]: This is where a lot of the fears of the fact that, oh, okay, maybe, you know, I messed up my brain chemicals or something like that.
- 34:20[SPEAKER_00]: It's happened.
- 34:21[SPEAKER_00]: But really what's going on is that the nervous system has become sensitized and what they're experiencing is deep personalization, deep realization.
- 34:28[SPEAKER_00]: Another way people fall into the cycle is compounding life stressors.
- 34:32[SPEAKER_00]: A lot of times it's not just one big life stress, right?
- 34:34[SPEAKER_00]: If there was one big thing that I was happening in your life, maybe you would realize it.
- 34:39[SPEAKER_00]: But sometimes it can just be some small stressors that build up over time.
- 34:43[SPEAKER_00]: Maybe it could be family issues, relationship issues, maybe there is something going on where your friends moved away and you felt kind of lonely in your city.
- 34:51[SPEAKER_00]: All these different things can add up over time.
- 34:54[SPEAKER_00]: And what happens is that people fall into the cycle.
- 34:57[SPEAKER_00]: In fact, the wildest thing about all this is sometimes it can be good stressors.
- 35:01[SPEAKER_00]: Many people end up falling into the cycle after childbirth.
- 35:04[SPEAKER_00]: A mom can get it after giving birth to a child, but I've also seen several dads who became first-time dads who just bought a new home.
- 35:13[SPEAKER_00]: Basically good stressors and exciting stressors can make them fall into the cycle because there's such a sense of overwhelm.
- 35:20[SPEAKER_00]: A lot of people can fall in from maybe a medical scare and sometimes, like me, you could fall in and you don't even know why.
- 35:29[SPEAKER_00]: When I first fell into the cycle, I had no idea, and that was the most difficult part.
- 35:34[SPEAKER_00]: So many people can know what makes them fall into the cycle.
- 35:37[SPEAKER_00]: But for me personally, I had no clue what was going on.
- 35:41[SPEAKER_00]: I don't know what made me fall in the cycle.
- 35:43[SPEAKER_00]: That's why it was so convincing for me to think that this was something besides anxiety, that this was something beyond my nervous system, that there was something physically wrong.
- 35:51[SPEAKER_00]: My life was quote-unquote going great, and for a long time I was trying to figure out.
- 35:56[SPEAKER_00]: What is causing this?
- 35:58[SPEAKER_00]: How did this start?
- 35:58[SPEAKER_00]: I would always go back to the beginning.
- 36:00[SPEAKER_00]: How this all started?
- 36:01[SPEAKER_00]: The moment I had my very first panic attack.
- 36:04[SPEAKER_00]: Turned out it didn't matter what it was, right?
- 36:07[SPEAKER_00]: It wasn't until years later that I realized what it was.
- 36:10[SPEAKER_00]: But the purpose of me telling you this is that whatever reason that made you fall in, it doesn't matter.
- 36:16[SPEAKER_00]: I know sometimes people want to resolve that issue first.
- 36:19[SPEAKER_00]: If you feel like there is something that's really bringing stress into your life that is outside of what you're dealing with with your de-sensations and symptoms, then by all means, like go address that.
- 36:29[SPEAKER_00]: But most of the time what happens is there's a situation that makes people fall in the cycle and now this new cycle becomes their new problem.
- 36:36[SPEAKER_00]: This is the thing that's holding them back.
- 36:38[SPEAKER_00]: I've seen so many different variations of people falling into the cycle.
- 36:42[SPEAKER_00]: It doesn't change the response.
- 36:44[SPEAKER_00]: It doesn't change how to come out of it.
- 36:46[SPEAKER_00]: If you really ask yourself, okay, if I fell in because of this, as opposed to that, does it change the way I come out of this?
- 36:52[SPEAKER_00]: You will learn in this masterclass and it doesn't matter what made you fall in.
- 36:55[SPEAKER_00]: What matters is what do you do now?
- 36:57[SPEAKER_00]: What do you do moving forward?
- 36:59[SPEAKER_00]: This is often why even when people go to therapists is very difficult because therapists will try to go into child trauma or go into the past.
- 37:06[SPEAKER_00]: This was one of the things that threw me off the most.
- 37:08[SPEAKER_00]: What does my past have to do with what I'm feeling right now?
- 37:10[SPEAKER_00]: I'm feeling intense symptoms right now.
- 37:12[SPEAKER_00]: Maybe there were some things in my childhood that I'm probably bringing along with it, but I'm experiencing intense symptoms right now.
- 37:18[SPEAKER_00]: I need advice to get me out of this right now, right in this moment.
- 37:23[SPEAKER_00]: And so, you know, if there's things that you want to dive into in the past, you can do that, that's totally fine.
- 37:28[SPEAKER_00]: Again, everyone can choose their own adventure.
- 37:31[SPEAKER_00]: But what I have found helping people is that you just need to focus on now, coming out of this now, if you want to visit those things in the future, you can.
- 37:38[SPEAKER_00]: Once when your nervous system has de-sensitized and you're more stable in terms of your nervous system being more resilient, then you can go into these things.
- 37:47[SPEAKER_00]: So, what you want to do is whether you're experiencing physical symptoms, panic attacks, and truce of thoughts, de-personalization, de-realization, even a little bit of depression, whatever it is, or even if you were diagnosed with things like fibromyalgia or other things, well, but the focus is really on throwing all of that under the hypersensitive nervous system umbrella.
- 38:06[SPEAKER_00]: Or you could even call it the anxiety umbrella.
- 38:08[SPEAKER_00]: A lot of times people feel like calling it anxiety umbrella.
- 38:10[SPEAKER_00]: They're still thinking that anxiety is an emotion.
- 38:13[SPEAKER_00]: They feel like it makes them a lesser person if it's anxiety or something like that.
- 38:17[SPEAKER_00]: Look, at the end of the day, you can call it whatever you want.
- 38:20[SPEAKER_00]: You can call it a nervous system umbrella.
- 38:22[SPEAKER_00]: You can call it anxiety umbrella.
- 38:24[SPEAKER_00]: You could name all of this and create your own name and call it Steve.
- 38:28[SPEAKER_00]: Basically the focus is on throwing it all under one umbrella.
- 38:31[SPEAKER_00]: Throwing everything under one umbrella stops you from trying to make this into twenty thirty problems.
- 38:38[SPEAKER_00]: You might be dealing with more than just one symptom.
- 38:40[SPEAKER_00]: In fact, you might be dealing with several symptoms.
- 38:43[SPEAKER_00]: Each symptom can feel like it's own problem.
- 38:45[SPEAKER_00]: So you have twenty thirty fifty different problems to address.
- 38:49[SPEAKER_00]: I can feel very overwhelming.
- 38:51[SPEAKER_00]: How you want to look at this is that everything is really just one issue, which is the nervous system.
- 38:56[SPEAKER_00]: So just looking at this from one issue, one problem makes it a lot more manageable and lot less overwhelming.
- 39:04[SPEAKER_00]: The second thing this does is that it stops you from trying to piecemeal or fix each symptom.
- 39:10[SPEAKER_00]: Right?
- 39:10[SPEAKER_00]: How many times have you tried peppermint tea for this?
- 39:13[SPEAKER_00]: Bring the exercise for that.
- 39:14[SPEAKER_00]: You can end up doing twenty, thirty, fifty different things.
- 39:17[SPEAKER_00]: Try to fix each specific symptom and that doesn't do anything.
- 39:20[SPEAKER_00]: All that does is teach your nervous system to stay on a fighter flight mode on a high stress mode because you're dealing with so many things at once.
- 39:28[SPEAKER_00]: So instead of trying to fix each specific issue, you understand it's all part of one issue.
- 39:34[SPEAKER_00]: Think about this like the flu.
- 39:35[SPEAKER_00]: If you've ever gotten the flu, or if you've just gotten a general cold, you're not dealing with ten different things, even though it might feel like that, right?
- 39:43[SPEAKER_00]: It's not like you're dealing with night chills, or you're dealing with a thermoregulation issue, and then you're also dealing with a lung issue, all these different things, you're just dealing with a common cold, or you're dealing with the flu, right?
- 39:57[SPEAKER_00]: All these things are manifestations of one specific problem.
- 40:00[SPEAKER_00]: The same way is with this nervous system thing, which is, do you want to look at everything at just one issue?
- 40:06[SPEAKER_00]: Not looking at it as, okay, I have vision issues, I have tonight as, I have brain fog, I have deep personalization to realization, okay, I have all these different things.
- 40:13[SPEAKER_00]: Throwing it all under the, you know, your nervous system being hypersensitive.
- 40:17[SPEAKER_00]: When you can do that, you'll notice things become a lot easier.
- 40:20[SPEAKER_00]: Now, something to highlight here, a common mistake that a lot of people make is that they will throw all their symptoms under one umbrella, but then they will have that one symptom, the one that really bothers them, and think that's outside of them umbrella.
- 40:33[SPEAKER_00]: And so when people do that, this doesn't tend to work.
- 40:36[SPEAKER_00]: If there is something that needs to be addressed by your doctor that your doctor addressed it, but what happens is people mentally make their own box.
- 40:44[SPEAKER_00]: They'll say, okay, well, all these symptoms are here, but this one symptom that really bugs me, this uncomfortable feeling, this sensation, this thing is something else.
- 40:53[SPEAKER_00]: So I'm going to make this a different problem, and I'm going to throw all of these issues under the anxiety umbrella, but I'm going to try to actively fix this.
- 41:01[SPEAKER_00]: This doesn't work.
- 41:02[SPEAKER_00]: The whole purpose of throwing all of this under the anxiety umbrella, why not we'll explain this later, is so that you stop trying to constantly fix each symptom.
- 41:10[SPEAKER_00]: But even if you're trying to fix that one specific symptom, it's going to keep all of this alive.
- 41:14[SPEAKER_00]: So it's important to throw everything under the umbrella.
- 41:18[SPEAKER_00]: That's the key here.
- 41:19[SPEAKER_00]: As you can do that, you will see the recovery journey will be a lot easier.
- 41:23[SPEAKER_00]: You'll also notice and I will explain this a little bit later in the video that your symptoms will often change.
- 41:28[SPEAKER_00]: We call this somatic shifting, soma which is body and then shifting which is that your symptoms change or sensation change.
- 41:35[SPEAKER_00]: And so if you're trying to take this shotgun approach of trying to fix each specific symptom
- 41:41[SPEAKER_00]: When it changes, which is oftentimes a good thing.
- 41:44[SPEAKER_00]: Sometimes the symptoms changing is actually a good sign we found as we help people.
- 41:48[SPEAKER_00]: As the symptoms change, what happens is that people start now trying to fix this one symptom.
- 41:54[SPEAKER_00]: And that what that does is that that just keeps some in this hamster wheel.
- 41:58[SPEAKER_00]: So throwing everything under the anxiety umbrella really helps.
- 42:01[SPEAKER_00]: Now you've noticed that all your problems have become one problem.
- 42:05[SPEAKER_00]: So now what do you do?
- 42:06[SPEAKER_00]: Now that you know this is one problem that this is an issue with your nervous system being hyper-stimulated or sensitized.
- 42:13[SPEAKER_00]: And what you need to do now is learn how to de-sensitize your nervous system.
- 42:18[SPEAKER_00]: It's not about the brain fog, it's not about the DPDR, it's not about the heart palpitations.
- 42:22[SPEAKER_00]: All these symptoms you might feel like are the main issue, but you'll notice as you're trying to fix it, it doesn't work.
- 42:28[SPEAKER_00]: Because what's really going on behind the scenes is that your nervous system
- 42:32[SPEAKER_00]: is sensitized.
- 42:34[SPEAKER_00]: So I'm going to be showing you how to desensitize your nervous system.
- 42:37[SPEAKER_00]: Now, there's something important that you need to understand.
- 42:40[SPEAKER_00]: What you're dealing with, what you're calling an anxiety disorder, is a doing disorder.
- 42:46[SPEAKER_00]: What this means is that you're doing something to keep this alive.
- 42:51[SPEAKER_00]: Now, me saying that to you can be very confronting.
- 42:54[SPEAKER_00]: You might be thinking, wait, what am I doing?
- 42:55[SPEAKER_00]: That's causing this to stay alive.
- 42:58[SPEAKER_00]: Everyone makes it seem like I'm doing this to myself.
- 43:00[SPEAKER_00]: Sean, I'm not doing this to myself.
- 43:01[SPEAKER_00]: I'm feeling the symptoms and I'm explaining it.
- 43:03[SPEAKER_00]: I'm trying to get it fixed.
- 43:04[SPEAKER_00]: How am I doing anything if anything?
- 43:07[SPEAKER_00]: I am reacting to it.
- 43:08[SPEAKER_00]: I'm just at the effect of these symptoms.
- 43:11[SPEAKER_00]: I'm the victim here.
- 43:12[SPEAKER_00]: These symptoms are happening to me.
- 43:13[SPEAKER_00]: My body, my mind is against me.
- 43:16[SPEAKER_00]: How am I doing anything?
- 43:18[SPEAKER_00]: You doing something to keep it alive.
- 43:20[SPEAKER_00]: Now, what are you doing to keep this alive?
- 43:23[SPEAKER_00]: Well, before I explain to you the answer to how to overcome this, let's talk about what you're doing to keep this alive to keep this fuel going when it comes to anxiety, when it comes to these symptoms.
- 43:33[SPEAKER_00]: We call this the five F's.
- 43:36[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, so the five F's go like this and I'll break it down.
- 43:39[SPEAKER_00]: You're fearing your symptoms.
- 43:41[SPEAKER_00]: You're trying to fix your symptoms.
- 43:43[SPEAKER_00]: You're frustrated by your symptoms.
- 43:45[SPEAKER_00]: You're focusing on your symptoms and you're fighting your symptoms.
- 43:49[SPEAKER_00]: You were unconsciously doing one or more of these things.
- 43:52[SPEAKER_00]: You might even consciously be doing it.
- 43:54[SPEAKER_00]: Now I want to highlight that these five of us that you're doing, it doesn't matter if you're sitting at home doing nothing and you're working twenty four seven.
- 44:01[SPEAKER_00]: It doesn't really matter.
- 44:03[SPEAKER_00]: These things are happening internally.
- 44:04[SPEAKER_00]: This is why when we can work with people that are so high functioning, there are athletes that are movie stars that are doctors that are therapists, they're going to work and they're working and they feel like I'm going to go back living my life not trying to fix these symptoms and sensations but the anxiety still there.
- 44:20[SPEAKER_00]: What happens is that there's an internal dialogue that's going on.
- 44:23[SPEAKER_00]: They're still doing one of these five F's.
- 44:25[SPEAKER_00]: So let's break it down.
- 44:27[SPEAKER_00]: The first F is fearing.
- 44:28[SPEAKER_00]: You're constantly fearing your symptoms.
- 44:31[SPEAKER_00]: Is the depersonalization there?
- 44:33[SPEAKER_00]: Is the derelization there?
- 44:34[SPEAKER_00]: Is the brain fog there?
- 44:34[SPEAKER_00]: Is the heart palpitations there?
- 44:36[SPEAKER_00]: Is the digestive issues there?
- 44:37[SPEAKER_00]: Is the breathlessness there?
- 44:39[SPEAKER_00]: You know, is the feelings of impending doom there?
- 44:40[SPEAKER_00]: All these things, is it there?
- 44:41[SPEAKER_00]: And if it's there, you're fearing it.
- 44:43[SPEAKER_00]: You don't want to feel it.
- 44:44[SPEAKER_00]: You're resisting it.
- 44:45[SPEAKER_00]: So, the first thing you do is not fear the symptoms.
- 44:49[SPEAKER_00]: Now, you might be thinking, Sean, that's so much easier said than done.
- 44:52[SPEAKER_00]: How do I not fear them?
- 44:54[SPEAKER_00]: Well, we've actually already gone through that.
- 44:56[SPEAKER_00]: Number one, make sure you've got everything rolled out by your doctors.
- 44:59[SPEAKER_00]: And the number two, understand the mechanics of anxiety.
- 45:03[SPEAKER_00]: Understand how this nervous system is fighter flight response is
- 45:07[SPEAKER_00]: causing these symptoms and sensations.
- 45:09[SPEAKER_00]: We've gone through it briefly in this video.
- 45:12[SPEAKER_00]: You can basically uncover every single symptom and explain it through the fighter flight response.
- 45:17[SPEAKER_00]: Here's an example.
- 45:19[SPEAKER_00]: Because your heart is palpitating, it's palpitating because your body is creating more adrenaline.
- 45:23[SPEAKER_00]: When you're in this fighter flight response, your body goes on full-on survival mode.
- 45:28[SPEAKER_00]: Do you think your stress response increases or decreases when you're in the fighter flight response?
- 45:33[SPEAKER_00]: It increases.
- 45:34[SPEAKER_00]: So what happens is your body produces adrenaline, it produces cortisol, it produces all these stress hormones and blood flow starts to change.
- 45:42[SPEAKER_00]: And so what happens when epinephrine, and when you see in those movies, if you ever see somebody who's hard stops, they get injected with epinephrine, what happens?
- 45:51[SPEAKER_00]: Their heart starts beating and in fact it starts beating very hard.
- 45:54[SPEAKER_00]: So your body's naturally producing that adrenaline.
- 45:57[SPEAKER_00]: It's produced internally.
- 45:59[SPEAKER_00]: And so what's happening is that your heart is beating as a consequence.
- 46:02[SPEAKER_00]: of your fight or flight response being turned on because your stress response is turned on.
- 46:07[SPEAKER_00]: Do you see how there's actually nothing wrong with your heart?
- 46:09[SPEAKER_00]: You're hard to find because you've gone to your doctors.
- 46:12[SPEAKER_00]: Everything is there.
- 46:13[SPEAKER_00]: The side effect of this sensitized nervous system is your heart palpitating.
- 46:18[SPEAKER_00]: Now you can do this with everything.
- 46:19[SPEAKER_00]: You can do this with brain fall.
- 46:20[SPEAKER_00]: You can explain depersonalization.
- 46:22[SPEAKER_00]: Do realization with this.
- 46:23[SPEAKER_00]: You can explain digestive issues.
- 46:25[SPEAKER_00]: You're going to explain vision changes tonight as you can explain the the numbness, the tingling, all these different things.
- 46:32[SPEAKER_00]: And so the key is is to really understand why you're experiencing these symptoms.
- 46:36[SPEAKER_00]: When you can understand this and you realize it's not dangerous, it's not uncomfortable.
- 46:40[SPEAKER_00]: Well, you will naturally stop fearing it.
- 46:42[SPEAKER_00]: So the first thing is
- 46:44[SPEAKER_00]: eliminating the first F, which is fearing the symptoms.
- 46:47[SPEAKER_00]: Number two, a habit that people develop over time, which is fighting the symptoms.
- 46:52[SPEAKER_00]: Anytime a symptom shows up, a sensation of feeling shows up, they begin to fight it.
- 46:56[SPEAKER_00]: They try to resist it.
- 46:58[SPEAKER_00]: They try to do anything but feel it.
- 47:01[SPEAKER_00]: This is especially true, not just with symptoms, but also with feelings.
- 47:05[SPEAKER_00]: Recognize that fighting it is resisting it.
- 47:08[SPEAKER_00]: Resisting it is leading to more sensitization.
- 47:11[SPEAKER_00]: So the key to overcoming sensitization is by not resisting, by letting it pass through you.
- 47:17[SPEAKER_00]: So many people have these feelings and emotions that surface up with anxiety and they try to resist them.
- 47:22[SPEAKER_00]: They aren't clear on how to feel emotions correctly.
- 47:25[SPEAKER_00]: They've never been taught this as kids.
- 47:28[SPEAKER_00]: All you need to do is feel the emotion.
- 47:30[SPEAKER_00]: Let it come.
- 47:31[SPEAKER_00]: Emotion is simply energy in motion.
- 47:33[SPEAKER_00]: It's just a wave of energy.
- 47:35[SPEAKER_00]: Let it pass through you.
- 47:37[SPEAKER_00]: Whenever you resist it, it gets stuck.
- 47:39[SPEAKER_00]: It gets stuck in the body.
- 47:40[SPEAKER_00]: This is how anxious energy, this is how emotions get stuck in the body, it becomes repressed.
- 47:46[SPEAKER_00]: And what happens clearly is that people don't want to feel it so they resist it their whole life.
- 47:51[SPEAKER_00]: If you can just let the feelings pass, if you can allow yourself to feel every emotion without any judgment, without analyzing, just letting it be, just being the awareness.
- 48:01[SPEAKER_00]: observing it, not trying to find it, not trying to fix it.
- 48:04[SPEAKER_00]: The emotion passes on its own.
- 48:06[SPEAKER_00]: It's not just the emotion, it's the panic attacks, it's the physical symptoms, it's the intrusive thoughts.
- 48:12[SPEAKER_00]: It's a recognize that fighting this also keeps this alive.
- 48:16[SPEAKER_00]: Now the third F is constantly fixing it.
- 48:18[SPEAKER_00]: Doing anything and everything you can to make this go away.
- 48:21[SPEAKER_00]: If you feel like you're having digestive issues because of anxiety, you start to take camel milk tea.
- 48:26[SPEAKER_00]: If you feel like you're head is spinning, you take peppermint tea.
- 48:28[SPEAKER_00]: Whatever it is, you have all these different things to try to fix this.
- 48:33[SPEAKER_00]: Anxiety suffers feel like they need to actively do something to fix this.
- 48:36[SPEAKER_00]: That if they're not doing something, right?
- 48:39[SPEAKER_00]: How I mentioned anxiety is a doing disorder.
- 48:42[SPEAKER_00]: If they're not doing something, well, then the symptoms always going to be there.
- 48:45[SPEAKER_00]: A lot of times people are feeling dizzy, so they feel like they have to hold onto something.
- 48:50[SPEAKER_00]: They think holding onto something is what's preventing them from falling, but they were never going to fall in the first place.
- 48:55[SPEAKER_00]: But they always feel like they have to do this.
- 48:57[SPEAKER_00]: Now doing this for so long for weeks, for months, for years, this is tiring.
- 49:02[SPEAKER_00]: This only causes your nervous system to be more and more fatigued.
- 49:06[SPEAKER_00]: So, recognizing that you don't need to do anything to fix it.
- 49:09[SPEAKER_00]: If you want to do these breathing exercises, if you want to use these supplements, if you want to use meditation for lifestyle reasons, for other reasons beyond resisting your feelings by all means, do it.
- 49:20[SPEAKER_00]: They have some advantages there, but it's not a shield from you feeling the anxiety.
- 49:26[SPEAKER_00]: When you start using this as a shield to feel anything, this is what keeps it alive.
- 49:31[SPEAKER_00]: You're constantly trying to fix it.
- 49:33[SPEAKER_00]: This is how compulsions also develop.
- 49:35[SPEAKER_00]: They have a thought.
- 49:36[SPEAKER_00]: They're trying to rationalize it.
- 49:37[SPEAKER_00]: They're trying to think it through.
- 49:39[SPEAKER_00]: They're trying to analyze it.
- 49:40[SPEAKER_00]: They're trying to fight it.
- 49:40[SPEAKER_00]: They're trying to do all these things.
- 49:42[SPEAKER_00]: You don't need to do anything.
- 49:43[SPEAKER_00]: Right?
- 49:43[SPEAKER_00]: All you need to do is just let the thought be there.
- 49:46[SPEAKER_00]: You get sixty thousand thoughts a day.
- 49:48[SPEAKER_00]: You don't analyze every single one.
- 49:50[SPEAKER_00]: And so recognizing that thoughts will go on their own.
- 49:52[SPEAKER_00]: You can have sixty thousand thoughts.
- 49:54[SPEAKER_00]: You didn't do anything to make them go away.
- 49:56[SPEAKER_00]: They went away on their own.
- 49:57[SPEAKER_00]: They go away because you stop engaging with them.
- 50:00[SPEAKER_00]: And in the same way, all you need to do is not fight this.
- 50:03[SPEAKER_00]: You don't need to do anything to make these symptoms go away.
- 50:06[SPEAKER_00]: The next step is constantly focusing on your symptom.
- 50:10[SPEAKER_00]: Wondering, is this symptom there?
- 50:11[SPEAKER_00]: Is it not there?
- 50:12[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, it's changed a little bit.
- 50:14[SPEAKER_00]: Ah, the sensation's a little bit different now.
- 50:16[SPEAKER_00]: Actually, you know, that's sometimes decreasing, but there's other symptom that's naturally increasing.
- 50:21[SPEAKER_00]: What's going on?
- 50:22[SPEAKER_00]: Now, I want you to know that this is totally normal.
- 50:24[SPEAKER_00]: When you don't know what's happening, when you don't have an answer, fear is a logical response.
- 50:30[SPEAKER_00]: Not only fear, but hyperfocusing on it is a logical thing.
- 50:34[SPEAKER_00]: See, when you had issues in the past, when you had problems in the past,
- 50:38[SPEAKER_00]: If you can analyze that issue, if you could deduct and try to figure out what's going on, maybe you can manipulate it.
- 50:45[SPEAKER_00]: The intellect works that way.
- 50:46[SPEAKER_00]: It works very well when it comes to life things, when it comes to external things.
- 50:50[SPEAKER_00]: But what happens is that when you use that same logic with your anxiety, when you're hyper aware, when you're hyper focused on your symptoms, well, that reinforces it.
- 51:00[SPEAKER_00]: A great principle to learn in life is that you don't experience life the way it is, you experience the life you focus on.
- 51:07[SPEAKER_00]: And so when you stop doing things and all you do is focus on your symptoms, what do you think is gonna happen to your anxiety?
- 51:13[SPEAKER_00]: Your anxiety is gonna grow.
- 51:14[SPEAKER_00]: So many people have nothing but anxiety in their life because that's all they focus on.
- 51:18[SPEAKER_00]: They can't stop focusing on it.
- 51:20[SPEAKER_00]: because they've developed a habit.
- 51:22[SPEAKER_00]: And so the key is to recognize that the focus that you've developed is a habit that's been learned.
- 51:28[SPEAKER_00]: And so what you need to do is unlearn that habit.
- 51:31[SPEAKER_00]: Now that takes time.
- 51:32[SPEAKER_00]: And so I'll show you how to do that.
- 51:33[SPEAKER_00]: But focusing is one of those things that people naturally develop as a second order consequence of having anxiety.
- 51:42[SPEAKER_00]: And that focus also keeps the anxiety symptoms alive.
- 51:45[SPEAKER_00]: And the last one is frustration.
- 51:47[SPEAKER_00]: If you're anxiety symptom show up, it ruins your day.
- 51:50[SPEAKER_00]: You hate it.
- 51:51[SPEAKER_00]: You're wondering why does this happen?
- 51:52[SPEAKER_00]: Why does this always happen to me?
- 51:54[SPEAKER_00]: What did I do to deserve this?
- 51:55[SPEAKER_00]: Symptoms aren't there?
- 51:56[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, cool.
- 51:57[SPEAKER_00]: I found some relief.
- 51:58[SPEAKER_00]: But what if it comes back tomorrow?
- 51:59[SPEAKER_00]: Your internal state determines your frustration.
- 52:02[SPEAKER_00]: So if the symptoms that discomfort is there, it's ruined your day.
- 52:05[SPEAKER_00]: you just don't want to be around anybody you don't want to do anything or maybe you don't want to go home whatever your avoidance pattern is you're doing everything and anything to not do anything to not feel this and if you do feel it it ruins your day and so being aware of being frustrated by your symptoms is incredibly important so many people think I'm experiencing the symptoms so that means something bad is happening I'm not experiencing symptoms so something's good is happening
- 52:30[SPEAKER_00]: When you're focusing on long-term freedom, that is not your metric.
- 52:33[SPEAKER_00]: The focus is, okay, if your symptoms are there, how are you responding?
- 52:37[SPEAKER_00]: That determines success.
- 52:39[SPEAKER_00]: But what happens is when people are stuck in the cycle, it's flipped.
- 52:42[SPEAKER_00]: They put the cart in front of the horse.
- 52:44[SPEAKER_00]: They say, oh, I'm feeling symptoms, so now it's ruined.
- 52:47[SPEAKER_00]: I'm never going to get out of this.
- 52:48[SPEAKER_00]: But you can't control these sensations.
- 52:50[SPEAKER_00]: You can't fix these symptoms.
- 52:52[SPEAKER_00]: This is there because your nervous system is sensitized.
- 52:55[SPEAKER_00]: That's something you have no control over.
- 52:57[SPEAKER_00]: All you can do is teach it how to desensitize your nervous system.
- 53:01[SPEAKER_00]: And that's through your response.
- 53:03[SPEAKER_00]: So notice how you're doing one of these five F's.
- 53:05[SPEAKER_00]: You're probably doing multiple one of these five F's.
- 53:08[SPEAKER_00]: And so it's very important that you're honest with yourself in the healing journey.
- 53:13[SPEAKER_00]: You can lie to everyone around you, but if you are not honest with yourself,
- 53:18[SPEAKER_00]: Am I doing this?
- 53:18[SPEAKER_00]: Am I not doing this?
- 53:19[SPEAKER_00]: Do I not know if I'm doing this?
- 53:21[SPEAKER_00]: It's okay to say I don't know too.
- 53:23[SPEAKER_00]: That's completely a logical answer if you're just unclear.
- 53:26[SPEAKER_00]: These are things you might have not been aware of.
- 53:28[SPEAKER_00]: So it's going to take time for you to identify this and become aware of these forces.
- 53:33[SPEAKER_00]: But it's very important that you're honest with yourself here.
- 53:36[SPEAKER_00]: You are in a journey of transformation and growth.
- 53:39[SPEAKER_00]: you can't lie to yourself.
- 53:40[SPEAKER_00]: And so recognize which one of these are you doing?
- 53:43[SPEAKER_00]: What are you doing to keep this alive?
- 53:45[SPEAKER_00]: Now, when people try to ask, okay, how do I recover from this?
- 53:48[SPEAKER_00]: Sean, give me the two second approach of how to recover from this.
- 53:51[SPEAKER_00]: Do you prefer CBT?
- 53:53[SPEAKER_00]: Is it ACT?
- 53:54[SPEAKER_00]: Is it ERP?
- 53:55[SPEAKER_00]: Which is a form of CBT?
- 53:57[SPEAKER_00]: What do you think about EMDR?
- 53:58[SPEAKER_00]: Do you feel like it's supplements?
- 54:00[SPEAKER_00]: Do you feel like it's medication?
- 54:01[SPEAKER_00]: Like, how do I recover from this?
- 54:03[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, I want you to push away all these techniques and all these ideas from your head.
- 54:08[SPEAKER_00]: Remember in the beginning of the video that I mentioned that the key to this is understanding the principles, right?
- 54:14[SPEAKER_00]: ERP, CBT, ACT, they're helpful but in my opinion they're incomplete because they only focus on the mind and anxiety that you're experiencing is not dealing with just the mind.
- 54:24[SPEAKER_00]: It's the nervous system so it's much deeper than that.
- 54:27[SPEAKER_00]: And so what you need to do is let go of these techniques that have been developed.
- 54:32[SPEAKER_00]: You're not trying to fit healing into a specific technique, okay?
- 54:36[SPEAKER_00]: Which technique works?
- 54:37[SPEAKER_00]: Which technique works for me?
- 54:39[SPEAKER_00]: If you understand the principles, you don't need techniques.
- 54:42[SPEAKER_00]: People that need techniques don't understand the underlying forces that are play.
- 54:47[SPEAKER_00]: But you're going to know the underlying forces.
- 54:48[SPEAKER_00]: You're going to know exactly what's happening.
- 54:50[SPEAKER_00]: When you do that, you become a master.
- 54:53[SPEAKER_00]: And when you're a master, you don't need techniques.
- 54:55[SPEAKER_00]: In order to make this easy for you to understand what it is to reverse the cycle, by by panic, me and my team have created an acronym called the alarm method.
- 55:05[SPEAKER_00]: Now, we have called this the alarm method because really what's going on is a false alarm.
- 55:10[SPEAKER_00]: Your nervous system is constantly ringing the alarm even when there's no danger.
- 55:14[SPEAKER_00]: So you have a part in the brain called the amygdala.
- 55:17[SPEAKER_00]: And the amygdala responds to threats.
- 55:19[SPEAKER_00]: There's a lot of functions to the amygdala, but the purpose for you in this masterclass would recognize that it's almost like a alarm system.
- 55:27[SPEAKER_00]: If you're in a fight or flight response or if you're in a life or death situation, the alarm goes off.
- 55:32[SPEAKER_00]: Now what's happened with your amygdala is that your amygdala's kinda gotten a little bit out of whack.
- 55:37[SPEAKER_00]: And the reason why it's gotten out of whack is because it's not sure anymore what's a threat or what's not.
- 55:42[SPEAKER_00]: It just says Sean is reacting in fear so there must be a threat so we're going to turn this on.
- 55:47[SPEAKER_00]: So it doesn't know a good example of looking at this is like imagine a car that has a alarm system.
- 55:53[SPEAKER_00]: Now, the car alarm system is designed to protect the car from burglaries, from robberies, from getting damaged.
- 56:00[SPEAKER_00]: So if anyone gets near it, well, it's designed to go off if someone's trying to break in.
- 56:04[SPEAKER_00]: But what happens when just a gust of wind causing alarm system to go off?
- 56:10[SPEAKER_00]: When your car alarm system goes off every second, just from some wind, or just the leaf touching it, it can get really annoying.
- 56:17[SPEAKER_00]: And the whole alarm system, the purpose of it has been defeated, because the purpose of it is for situations that are extreme, like robberies.
- 56:25[SPEAKER_00]: But when wind just comes when there is no threat, well, your nervous system needs to be recalibrated.
- 56:30[SPEAKER_00]: Your alarm system needs to be recalibrated.
- 56:33[SPEAKER_00]: And so, desensitizing your nervous system is about recalibrating the alarm system.
- 56:38[SPEAKER_00]: Look, there's nothing inherently wrong with your alarm system.
- 56:41[SPEAKER_00]: Your alarm system is designed to protect you from life or death situations.
- 56:45[SPEAKER_00]: But we are so good at evolving that those threats can change.
- 56:49[SPEAKER_00]: So it's no longer a saver to the tiger.
- 56:51[SPEAKER_00]: It can be a bus coming at us.
- 56:53[SPEAKER_00]: So your nervous system has to be able to adapt.
- 56:56[SPEAKER_00]: Right?
- 56:56[SPEAKER_00]: And so your nervous system is very dynamic.
- 56:58[SPEAKER_00]: Your alarm system is very dynamic.
- 57:00[SPEAKER_00]: Something that might have not been a threat when you were younger, all of a sudden you're starting to realize, okay, no, that's actually really dangerous.
- 57:05[SPEAKER_00]: I shouldn't be doing that.
- 57:06[SPEAKER_00]: So your nervous system, your amygdala, is responding to that.
- 57:10[SPEAKER_00]: What's happening right now is your alarm system is going off every second, every minute to everything.
- 57:15[SPEAKER_00]: Mostly, it's with how you feel.
- 57:17[SPEAKER_00]: So the sensations, the discomfort you feel, even those things are now becoming the tiger.
- 57:22[SPEAKER_00]: The association, your brain fog, your digestive issues, your vision issues, all these things are now the tiger.
- 57:28[SPEAKER_00]: And so it's saying alarm alarm alarm.
- 57:31[SPEAKER_00]: And so to reverse this, we call it the alarm method and it's very simple.
- 57:35[SPEAKER_00]: In fact, it's so simple that it can be frustrating.
- 57:38[SPEAKER_00]: Whenever we explain the alarm method, people always feel like this is just too easy, too simple.
- 57:43[SPEAKER_00]: There's no way it can be this simple.
- 57:46[SPEAKER_00]: And the reason why they feel this way is because they've done so many things to make this go away, that the fact that this answer is so simple, people don't want to believe it.
- 57:55[SPEAKER_00]: It almost devalues what they're going through.
- 57:58[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, so alarm is an acronym.
- 58:00[SPEAKER_00]: the A stands for acknowledge, meaning acknowledge the symptom, acknowledge the feeling, acknowledge the thought, acknowledge the dissociation, whatever it is for you, you acknowledge it, okay?
- 58:11[SPEAKER_00]: You don't distract yourself and you don't avoid it, you acknowledge that it's here, it's the elephant in the room, okay?
- 58:17[SPEAKER_00]: I've acknowledged it, it's here, that's okay.
- 58:20[SPEAKER_00]: Then the L is to label it.
- 58:23[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, label it as an label it as anxiety.
- 58:26[SPEAKER_00]: Throw it under the anxiety umbrella.
- 58:28[SPEAKER_00]: Throw it under the nervous system umbrella.
- 58:31[SPEAKER_00]: Recognize that this is just an offset of anxiety.
- 58:35[SPEAKER_00]: So L is label.
- 58:36[SPEAKER_00]: The next A is accepted.
- 58:39[SPEAKER_00]: Accept it by just letting it be here.
- 58:41[SPEAKER_00]: And if you can't accept it, tolerate it.
- 58:43[SPEAKER_00]: Let it be there.
- 58:44[SPEAKER_00]: And if you are unclear if you're accepting or not, ask yourself, am I doing one of the five F's?
- 58:50[SPEAKER_00]: The R is refocus.
- 58:52[SPEAKER_00]: So if you feel the symptom, if you feel the sensation, you acknowledge it, you label it, you let it be there, you don't resist, ask myself am I doing any of the five F's?
- 59:02[SPEAKER_00]: And now you refocus.
- 59:03[SPEAKER_00]: So if I'm filming this video, I'm going to continue filming this video.
- 59:06[SPEAKER_00]: If I'm doing dishes, I'm gonna do dishes.
- 59:07[SPEAKER_00]: If I'm driving, I'm driving.
- 59:09[SPEAKER_00]: If I'm sleeping in bed and doing nothing, I'm just gonna lay in bed.
- 59:12[SPEAKER_00]: Whatever it is, I just refocus.
- 59:14[SPEAKER_00]: And then the M is move on.
- 59:16[SPEAKER_00]: Forget about this.
- 59:17[SPEAKER_00]: The best you can, continue living your life.
- 59:20[SPEAKER_00]: Now, you'll notice that even though you do this once, it's not like the Simpsons gonna go away.
- 59:25[SPEAKER_00]: And in fact, you're gonna notice that the Simpsons is top of mind.
- 59:28[SPEAKER_00]: You're still gonna go back to thinking of it.
- 59:30[SPEAKER_00]: This is because you've developed a habit for so long.
- 59:32[SPEAKER_00]: And so, recognize you're going to need to alarm.
- 59:35[SPEAKER_00]: Even if you feel like you need to alarm fifty times, hundred times, it feels like that in the beginning.
- 59:40[SPEAKER_00]: Alarm as many times as you can to go back to living.
- 59:43[SPEAKER_00]: Now, it's important to understand.
- 59:45[SPEAKER_00]: A lot of people use alarm as also another shield.
- 59:48[SPEAKER_00]: They're saying, okay, well, breathing exercise doesn't work, so it's this alarm method.
- 59:52[SPEAKER_00]: I'm going to do the alarm method, okay, as the anxiety there.
- 59:54[SPEAKER_00]: is not there, is it there, is it not there?
- 59:56[SPEAKER_00]: This is one of the most important pieces you need to learn in the master class.
- 1:00:00[SPEAKER_00]: The purpose of the alarm method isn't to make the symptom go away.
- 1:00:04[SPEAKER_00]: It's to make life more important than how you feel.
- 1:00:07[SPEAKER_00]: Alarm just helps you respond to the sensation and feeling and make you go back to living.
- 1:00:12[SPEAKER_00]: And it helps you go back to living with the symptoms, with the sensations being there.
- 1:00:17[SPEAKER_00]: It's not a shield to make this go away, okay?
- 1:00:20[SPEAKER_00]: The symptoms going away is not the first thing that happens.
- 1:00:22[SPEAKER_00]: In fact, it's the last thing.
- 1:00:24[SPEAKER_00]: It's there to prevent you from going into this five F's spiral.
- 1:00:28[SPEAKER_00]: Constantly trying to fix it, fight it, resist it, all these different things.
- 1:00:33[SPEAKER_00]: This is what's keeping your symptoms alive.
- 1:00:35[SPEAKER_00]: And so the alarm method prevents you from doing that.
- 1:00:38[SPEAKER_00]: It acknowledges, you label, you accept, you refocus, you move on.
- 1:00:43[SPEAKER_00]: So you know, the symptoms so bothering you, acknowledge it, hey, you're just anxiety.
- 1:00:47[SPEAKER_00]: Cool, come on with me, let's go.
- 1:00:48[SPEAKER_00]: Anyways, and just you just continue on.
- 1:00:51[SPEAKER_00]: That's all it is.
- 1:00:52[SPEAKER_00]: Now, you might be thinking, okay, Sean, but like, I've gone through stressful situations in my life before and like, I've thought it in my head.
- 1:01:00[SPEAKER_00]: It didn't cause symptoms.
- 1:01:02[SPEAKER_00]: So why is this causing symptoms?
- 1:01:03[SPEAKER_00]: Why is it that I can't fight it?
- 1:01:05[SPEAKER_00]: Like, why is it that like, I have to be careful of my thoughts and my feelings here.
- 1:01:09[SPEAKER_00]: I never had to do that in the past.
- 1:01:11[SPEAKER_00]: Well, it's important to understand that when you were in the past, your nervous system was resilient enough for you to do with that.
- 1:01:17[SPEAKER_00]: So if you were constantly fighting or fixing or analyzing, your nervous system was strong enough to handle that.
- 1:01:23[SPEAKER_00]: So it was able to offset that.
- 1:01:25[SPEAKER_00]: But now your nervous system is very sensitized.
- 1:01:27[SPEAKER_00]: And so because it sensitized any amount of pressure from you, even if it's a little bit, can cause your nervous system to stay stuck in that mode.
- 1:01:35[SPEAKER_00]: This is the difference.
- 1:01:36[SPEAKER_00]: This is why so much in healing, you recognize that there's behaviors and unproductive thinking habits that are also fueling this.
- 1:01:43[SPEAKER_00]: You need to adjust that as well.
- 1:01:45[SPEAKER_00]: There's body, there's behaviors and there's presence.
- 1:01:48[SPEAKER_00]: The presence is the alarm method.
- 1:01:50[SPEAKER_00]: This is what I'm showing you right now.
- 1:01:52[SPEAKER_00]: But what you're naturally going to learn is that there's unproductive thinking habits as well.
- 1:01:56[SPEAKER_00]: Now, before we go into behaviors, a lot of people ask themselves, okay, but how do I know if I'm doing this right?
- 1:02:02[SPEAKER_00]: Like, how do I know if I'm doing this right or wrong?
- 1:02:04[SPEAKER_00]: Well, one of the best ways is by having someone help you in the healing journey, someone who knows what's going on to be able to be aware of your blind spots to be able to help you recognize
- 1:02:15[SPEAKER_00]: whether you are still fighting it or whether you're allowing this symptoms to be there and you might not just be giving it enough time.
- 1:02:21[SPEAKER_00]: But I want to give you a tool that can help on this healing journey that you can use as almost like a lit missed test to determine am I doing this right or wrong?
- 1:02:30[SPEAKER_00]: Now the first thing I want you to recognize that this isn't about right or wrong, right?
- 1:02:33[SPEAKER_00]: It's about how effectively are you doing this and recognizing that alarming your symptoms is a practice, okay?
- 1:02:41[SPEAKER_00]: It's not right or wrong.
- 1:02:42[SPEAKER_00]: It's just recognizing how good you're gonna get at it and you will get good at it.
- 1:02:46[SPEAKER_00]: It just takes time.
- 1:02:48[SPEAKER_00]: Look, think about it.
- 1:02:49[SPEAKER_00]: The five F's that you're doing, you're really good at that.
- 1:02:52[SPEAKER_00]: But you never attempted to be good at that.
- 1:02:55[SPEAKER_00]: All you did was the symptom was here and you began resisting it.
- 1:02:58[SPEAKER_00]: Natural, right?
- 1:02:59[SPEAKER_00]: You didn't try to develop a habit.
- 1:03:02[SPEAKER_00]: The habit came as a consequence.
- 1:03:05[SPEAKER_00]: The same way the recovery journey will be a consequence of how you respond right now, not react.
- 1:03:11[SPEAKER_00]: Now I'm gonna cover more about setbacks and how to deal with the ups and downs in a later part in this video.
- 1:03:18[SPEAKER_00]: But the most important thing to learn right now is that look, recovery is not linear.
- 1:03:22[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, you're gonna have good days, you're gonna have bad days.
- 1:03:25[SPEAKER_00]: Just like any regular person has good days in bad days.
- 1:03:28[SPEAKER_00]: You will experiencing high anxiety days and you'll experience days that aren't as anxious.
- 1:03:33[SPEAKER_00]: You'll notice with you the variations a lot higher.
- 1:03:36[SPEAKER_00]: It's a lot different.
- 1:03:37[SPEAKER_00]: The differentials wider.
- 1:03:38[SPEAKER_00]: Relatively okay days, but like really bad
- 1:03:42[SPEAKER_00]: right and so for a person that's not dealing with this they have some bad days they have some good days but it's not that variable right the waves aren't that wide but for you you'll notice it feels like this roller coaster so recognize though that still everyone has good and bad days so I want you to ask yourself how do you determine
- 1:04:01[SPEAKER_00]: Whether you're doing this correctly, like what is the metric here?
- 1:04:04[SPEAKER_00]: A lot of people will try to figure this out by recognizing if they're doing things well or not, by based on whether the symptoms are there or not.
- 1:04:13[SPEAKER_00]: But remember, if you're focused on whether the symptoms are there or not into determining your progress,
- 1:04:18[SPEAKER_00]: You're still coping or managing.
- 1:04:19[SPEAKER_00]: You're still determining all this based on whether this symptom is here or not.
- 1:04:23[SPEAKER_00]: That's no different than what you were doing before you watched this video.
- 1:04:26[SPEAKER_00]: Symptoms were high, bad.
- 1:04:28[SPEAKER_00]: Symptoms are low, good.
- 1:04:29[SPEAKER_00]: But you recognize that goes nowhere.
- 1:04:31[SPEAKER_00]: You just end up going into like this vicious cycle where you're trying to avoid and you're trying to chase a feeling while avoiding another feeling it doesn't work.
- 1:04:41[SPEAKER_00]: So recognizing your metric is not based on how you feel.
- 1:04:44[SPEAKER_00]: So then if it's not based on how you feel, how do you know if you're doing things correctly?
- 1:04:49[SPEAKER_00]: Well, let's think about this way.
- 1:04:50[SPEAKER_00]: Look, if your symptoms are low, if you're not feeling the anxiety symptoms and sensations feelings, you don't need me to tell you how to alarm it.
- 1:04:58[SPEAKER_00]: You don't need me to tell you how to respond to it.
- 1:05:00[SPEAKER_00]: But what happens when your symptoms are high?
- 1:05:02[SPEAKER_00]: Let's say your symptoms are really high.
- 1:05:04[SPEAKER_00]: The panic is there.
- 1:05:05[SPEAKER_00]: You haven't experienced the panic attack a long time.
- 1:05:08[SPEAKER_00]: You feel deep in the R because of it.
- 1:05:09[SPEAKER_00]: You feel the brain fog.
- 1:05:11[SPEAKER_00]: You get the digestive issues.
- 1:05:13[SPEAKER_00]: Your vision changes came back and you thought you were over it.
- 1:05:16[SPEAKER_00]: Now what do you do?
- 1:05:17[SPEAKER_00]: Right?
- 1:05:18[SPEAKER_00]: Many people will look at that moment and say, oh God, that's bad.
- 1:05:20[SPEAKER_00]: I'm doing something wrong.
- 1:05:22[SPEAKER_00]: No.
- 1:05:22[SPEAKER_00]: If you're thinking like that, if you're thinking the symptoms are back, I must be doing something wrong.
- 1:05:27[SPEAKER_00]: That's not the ideal way of approaching this.
- 1:05:30[SPEAKER_00]: You're still measuring your progress based on how you feel.
- 1:05:32[SPEAKER_00]: That's the way to look at it if you want to stay stuck in the cycle.
- 1:05:36[SPEAKER_00]: If you want to overcome this, it's like, okay, asking yourself, okay, the symptoms are high.
- 1:05:41[SPEAKER_00]: how am I responding?
- 1:05:42[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, I'm responding well.
- 1:05:43[SPEAKER_00]: Like I'm using the alarm, I'm making sure I'm not using the five steps and I'm going back to living.
- 1:05:47[SPEAKER_00]: And I'm not trying to do these things to make the symptoms go away.
- 1:05:51[SPEAKER_00]: If that's the case, that is the most ideal situation.
- 1:05:55[SPEAKER_00]: Look, I help people around the world overcome their symptoms.
- 1:05:58[SPEAKER_00]: My team is amazing out of it.
- 1:05:59[SPEAKER_00]: They basically made it into a science that's replicable, doesn't matter what you're dealing with.
- 1:06:05[SPEAKER_00]: They really don't care with our clients, with our members if they're having good days.
- 1:06:10[SPEAKER_00]: If our members are having good days, great.
- 1:06:12[SPEAKER_00]: That's awesome.
- 1:06:13[SPEAKER_00]: We know that's a consequence of the work that they've been putting in over the last months or weeks.
- 1:06:18[SPEAKER_00]: What they're really interested in is, okay, when your symptoms come back, now what do you do?
- 1:06:23[SPEAKER_00]: It becomes very interesting for us.
- 1:06:25[SPEAKER_00]: We start looking at you and we're like, okay, how are you reacting?
- 1:06:27[SPEAKER_00]: Is it bothering you?
- 1:06:28[SPEAKER_00]: Is the symptoms really affecting you?
- 1:06:30[SPEAKER_00]: What's going through your mind?
- 1:06:31[SPEAKER_00]: What's surfacing up?
- 1:06:32[SPEAKER_00]: I want to see what's happening there.
- 1:06:34[SPEAKER_00]: Because the person that's still stuck in the cycle is asking themselves, oh, why is this happening to me?
- 1:06:40[SPEAKER_00]: My symptoms are back.
- 1:06:41[SPEAKER_00]: I thought I was over this.
- 1:06:43[SPEAKER_00]: You know, my anxiety came back.
- 1:06:45[SPEAKER_00]: You know, what's going on?
- 1:06:46[SPEAKER_00]: I know that person is still monitoring their progress based on how they feel.
- 1:06:50[SPEAKER_00]: Well, somebody else who says, you know what, Sean?
- 1:06:54[SPEAKER_00]: My symptoms didn't come back.
- 1:06:55[SPEAKER_00]: They're not comfortable, but I know what to do, right?
- 1:06:58[SPEAKER_00]: Just let it be and just continue on and just alarm it.
- 1:07:01[SPEAKER_00]: And I did everything I was supposed to do.
- 1:07:03[SPEAKER_00]: Everything I had on my list, my two-do list, I did it.
- 1:07:07[SPEAKER_00]: And there were times I didn't want to do it, but I did it anyway, and I'm really proud of myself for doing that.
- 1:07:11[SPEAKER_00]: That person, I know, is well on their way in their healing journey.
- 1:07:13[SPEAKER_00]: Why?
- 1:07:14[SPEAKER_00]: Because it's not about how they feel, it's how they respond.
- 1:07:17[SPEAKER_00]: See, when your feelings are low, when you don't have symptoms, responding is easy.
- 1:07:22[SPEAKER_00]: Anybody can do that.
- 1:07:23[SPEAKER_00]: What happens when the symptoms are high?
- 1:07:25[SPEAKER_00]: This is a great opportunity to practice.
- 1:07:27[SPEAKER_00]: This is where I define who is making progress and who's stuck.
- 1:07:31[SPEAKER_00]: So if you're able to ask yourself, okay, the symptoms are here, the feelings are here, now what?
- 1:07:36[SPEAKER_00]: That's going to determine if you're using the alarm method correctly or if you're using it as a way to shield yourself or you're still viewing the healing journey as this way of avoiding your sensations and feelings.
- 1:07:48[SPEAKER_00]: Now I also want to dive into the principle of intrusive thoughts because in my opinion it's actually the intrusive thoughts that are the most sinister in all of this.
- 1:07:57[SPEAKER_00]: It's not necessarily the symptom, the physical symptom.
- 1:08:00[SPEAKER_00]: You might be experiencing that, it's incredibly uncomfortable, but it's often the meaning that you have for that symptom.
- 1:08:06[SPEAKER_00]: So if you have a certain symptom, you might be thinking, okay, well, what if it's this, what if it's that?
- 1:08:09[SPEAKER_00]: It's the thought that determines whether that symptom is dangerous.
- 1:08:13[SPEAKER_00]: If you recognize it's an offset of anxiety, yeah, maybe the symptom would be uncomfortable, but you'd be able to tolerate a lot more.
- 1:08:20[SPEAKER_00]: And you wouldn't spiral and panic more because of it, because you know it's just a side effect.
- 1:08:24[SPEAKER_00]: But when you don't know the symptoms there, you're trying to monitor your progress, or you're doing things to keep this alive, and you're not aware of what's going on, the intrusive thoughts is actually what fuels it.
- 1:08:35[SPEAKER_00]: So how do you deal with intrusive thoughts?
- 1:08:37[SPEAKER_00]: Well, it's very simple.
- 1:08:38[SPEAKER_00]: It's recognizing that you are not your thoughts.
- 1:08:40[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, you were just aren't.
- 1:08:41[SPEAKER_00]: Like I mentioned, you have sixty thousand thoughts a day.
- 1:08:44[SPEAKER_00]: You don't engage with every single one.
- 1:08:45[SPEAKER_00]: The thoughts that come come to you because of past memory, you're upbringing, the way you view the world, the way you feel like the world views you, all these different factors.
- 1:08:56[SPEAKER_00]: But thoughts, they're just things that are coming up from the mind.
- 1:09:00[SPEAKER_00]: They don't necessarily always have a rhyme or reason.
- 1:09:03[SPEAKER_00]: And in many ways, you can't control the thought, right?
- 1:09:05[SPEAKER_00]: If I was to tell you, don't think of a pink elephant.
- 1:09:07[SPEAKER_00]: What are you going to do?
- 1:09:08[SPEAKER_00]: Think of a pink elephant.
- 1:09:09[SPEAKER_00]: This idea of stopping a thought or resisting a thought doesn't work.
- 1:09:13[SPEAKER_00]: Right?
- 1:09:13[SPEAKER_00]: In fact, it brings up the thought.
- 1:09:16[SPEAKER_00]: The mind works that way.
- 1:09:17[SPEAKER_00]: Don't do this?
- 1:09:18[SPEAKER_00]: Okay.
- 1:09:18[SPEAKER_00]: It's going to do that.
- 1:09:20[SPEAKER_00]: Don't have this thought.
- 1:09:20[SPEAKER_00]: It's going to think that thought.
- 1:09:22[SPEAKER_00]: Thoughts come and go.
- 1:09:23[SPEAKER_00]: You have no choice over that.
- 1:09:25[SPEAKER_00]: But how you respond to the thought determines whether the thought comes back again.
- 1:09:31[SPEAKER_00]: We call this thoughts first thinking.
- 1:09:33[SPEAKER_00]: Right?
- 1:09:33[SPEAKER_00]: So thoughts come and go.
- 1:09:34[SPEAKER_00]: You have no choice.
- 1:09:35[SPEAKER_00]: Thinking is you actively engaging with the thought.
- 1:09:38[SPEAKER_00]: Now you're having sixty thousand thoughts.
- 1:09:40[SPEAKER_00]: You're picking and choosing which thought to engage with.
- 1:09:43[SPEAKER_00]: Usually, the thoughts that are most concerning, the most scary, the ones that are anxiety-provoking, you'll react to.
- 1:09:48[SPEAKER_00]: And so, recognizing that you engaging with the thought is your choice.
- 1:09:52[SPEAKER_00]: So, a lot of people get thrown off here because they've tried to control thoughts, which they don't have any control over, and they try to absorb responsibility and their thinking habits.
- 1:10:03[SPEAKER_00]: They're saying, oh well, I'm thinking this, not recognizing that they need to take responsibility for that, that that is an action.
- 1:10:09[SPEAKER_00]: Actively engaging with the thought is you're doing.
- 1:10:12[SPEAKER_00]: Nobody can do that for you.
- 1:10:14[SPEAKER_00]: Nobody can stop you from it.
- 1:10:15[SPEAKER_00]: Nobody can tell you to do it.
- 1:10:17[SPEAKER_00]: You are choosing to do this.
- 1:10:19[SPEAKER_00]: You're choosing to engage with the thought.
- 1:10:21[SPEAKER_00]: Now the consequence of engaging with the thought is telling your nervous system that this thought is important.
- 1:10:26[SPEAKER_00]: If a thought comes and saying this might happen and I start thinking about it and I start ruminating and I start thinking about it quite often, well it's telling my nervous system that shons engaging with that thought, you know what that thought must be really important.
- 1:10:40[SPEAKER_00]: We're going to keep bringing it up.
- 1:10:42[SPEAKER_00]: And we're going to keep bringing you up.
- 1:10:43[SPEAKER_00]: Do you see how this habit of obsessive-compulsive disorder also develops too, right?
- 1:10:49[SPEAKER_00]: It's not the thought that's the issue.
- 1:10:50[SPEAKER_00]: It's the compulsion from trying to resist the thought when trying to stop the thought, that's what keeps it alive.
- 1:10:56[SPEAKER_00]: Just like with OCD, it's a doing disorder.
- 1:10:59[SPEAKER_00]: anxiety, same thing, doing disorder.
- 1:11:02[SPEAKER_00]: This is why I'm saying don't try to look at it as separate things.
- 1:11:04[SPEAKER_00]: The underlying mechanisms behind all of this is still the same.
- 1:11:08[SPEAKER_00]: And so what happens when you have a thought?
- 1:11:09[SPEAKER_00]: Well, recognize you don't need to do anything.
- 1:11:12[SPEAKER_00]: You can just let the thought be there.
- 1:11:13[SPEAKER_00]: But Sean, the thought really disturbs me.
- 1:11:15[SPEAKER_00]: It really bugs me.
- 1:11:16[SPEAKER_00]: Well, you're going into the five F's, right?
- 1:11:18[SPEAKER_00]: You're getting frustrated by the thought.
- 1:11:20[SPEAKER_00]: You just need to let the thought be there.
- 1:11:21[SPEAKER_00]: And if anything, you just need to tolerate and continue on.
- 1:11:24[SPEAKER_00]: And recognize that so much of the healing journey is learning to sit with the discomfort, right?
- 1:11:28[SPEAKER_00]: So many people try to find ways to circumvent discomfort.
- 1:11:31[SPEAKER_00]: They come up with some bizarre things.
- 1:11:32[SPEAKER_00]: You see things on TikTok, putting ice here, pulling on your ear, all this nonsense.
- 1:11:38[SPEAKER_00]: All this ridiculousness, the circus, like act just does not feel something, just to avoid.
- 1:11:45[SPEAKER_00]: Just to find some temporary comfort because people are not used to feeling discomfort.
- 1:11:50[SPEAKER_00]: At the end of the day, all you need to do is just sit with a discomfort and not do anything.
- 1:11:54[SPEAKER_00]: Build your window of tolerance to the discomfort.
- 1:11:58[SPEAKER_00]: And then the other thing to understand is to identify the fact that you are not your thoughts.
- 1:12:03[SPEAKER_00]: You're just not.
- 1:12:04[SPEAKER_00]: You are the awareness behind it.
- 1:12:06[SPEAKER_00]: You are the indestructible awareness behind it.
- 1:12:09[SPEAKER_00]: Right?
- 1:12:09[SPEAKER_00]: You are not the clouds in the sky.
- 1:12:11[SPEAKER_00]: You are the sky.
- 1:12:13[SPEAKER_00]: Right?
- 1:12:13[SPEAKER_00]: And so recognizing these thoughts coming go, just like these clouds, they come and they go.
- 1:12:18[SPEAKER_00]: You don't need to chase at the cloud.
- 1:12:20[SPEAKER_00]: You don't need to run away from the cloud.
- 1:12:22[SPEAKER_00]: It will pass on its own.
- 1:12:24[SPEAKER_00]: There's a great example of cows and buffaloes, right?
- 1:12:27[SPEAKER_00]: So when a storm comes, cows and buffaloes react very differently.
- 1:12:31[SPEAKER_00]: cows tend to run away from a storm.
- 1:12:34[SPEAKER_00]: So when a storm is coming, they run the opposite direction.
- 1:12:36[SPEAKER_00]: Buffaloes on the other hand do something interesting.
- 1:12:38[SPEAKER_00]: They run to worth the storm.
- 1:12:40[SPEAKER_00]: And so because they run towards the storm, what happens is that the storm comes, they don't resist it, and what happens is that the storm passes quicker, because they run towards it.
- 1:12:51[SPEAKER_00]: But you will notice with cows, they're not trying to feel it, but what happens is that they're in the storm longer, because they're running with the storm as well.
- 1:12:58[SPEAKER_00]: And so what happens is that they're in the storm longer, and all those resistance, all those running away, just cause more unnecessary suffering.
- 1:13:06[SPEAKER_00]: And so, in the same way, you could have these thoughts.
- 1:13:08[SPEAKER_00]: You don't need to resist.
- 1:13:09[SPEAKER_00]: You don't need to fight.
- 1:13:10[SPEAKER_00]: You don't need to run away.
- 1:13:11[SPEAKER_00]: You can let the thought be there.
- 1:13:13[SPEAKER_00]: You can learn to sit with the discomfort and not do anything about it.
- 1:13:16[SPEAKER_00]: This is a great exercise, not just with anxiety recovery, but with life.
- 1:13:20[SPEAKER_00]: So many people that come out of this are able to achieve so much in their life, because we're helping them too, and so much of it is because of the principles they learn in the healing journey.
- 1:13:29[SPEAKER_00]: The principles in the healing journey don't just apply with anxiety.
- 1:13:32[SPEAKER_00]: They apply to every aspect of your life, and you can go even deeper.
- 1:13:35[SPEAKER_00]: Remember, with anxiety recovery, we talk about the three pillars, right?
- 1:13:39[SPEAKER_00]: Bye, bye, panic, BBP.
- 1:13:41[SPEAKER_00]: body, behaviors, presence.
- 1:13:44[SPEAKER_00]: And so I want to talk about some of the behaviors that keep this alive, that fuel this cycle, behaviors that you may not be aware that you're doing, but that's actually holding you back.
- 1:13:54[SPEAKER_00]: Now, I want to be clear that a lot of these behaviors that you are doing isn't related to anxiety.
- 1:13:59[SPEAKER_00]: We call these unproductive behaviors that is just holding you back from achieving your goals, which is holding you back from overcoming your symptoms.
- 1:14:07[SPEAKER_00]: So I want to break down some of these minds that some of these unproductive thinking habits because the key is while you're going through the healing journey, it's going to force you to become a better version of yourself.
- 1:14:19[SPEAKER_00]: So many people say, I want to get back to where I was before.
- 1:14:22[SPEAKER_00]: I say, there's no way you can go back to the way you were before.
- 1:14:24[SPEAKER_00]: The only way you can do it is by becoming a better version of yourself.
- 1:14:29[SPEAKER_00]: And so there is in a situation where you can alarm this, where you can understand the mechanics, but you're not willing to do an internal audit and say, where am I holding myself back?
- 1:14:39[SPEAKER_00]: What are some unproductive habits that are holding me back?
- 1:14:42[SPEAKER_00]: So I want to give you some of these right now.
- 1:14:44[SPEAKER_00]: The first one that we see a lot in the recovery program when we're guiding people is perfectionist thinking.
- 1:14:50[SPEAKER_00]: They're trying to think that, okay, I'm just trying to alarm it as perfectly as I can.
- 1:14:54[SPEAKER_00]: I have to do it a hundred percent every time.
- 1:14:56[SPEAKER_00]: And they put all this pressure on themselves.
- 1:14:58[SPEAKER_00]: They focus on trying to respond the best way.
- 1:15:03[SPEAKER_00]: It's almost like responding becomes a compulsion in itself.
- 1:15:06[SPEAKER_00]: That the response has to be ideal otherwise they're not going to get to recovery and I need to get to recovery.
- 1:15:13[SPEAKER_00]: Do you see how this perfectionist attitude of responding is actually holding them back because it's adding more pressure to their nerves?
- 1:15:20[SPEAKER_00]: They are responding as another form of compulsion.
- 1:15:24[SPEAKER_00]: Deep down, they're not responding to their symptoms because they're trying to desensitize their nervous system and focus on long-term freedom.
- 1:15:32[SPEAKER_00]: They are responding because they're trying to find relief.
- 1:15:35[SPEAKER_00]: So what they often do is they say, I'm responding with the alarm method, okay, is it gone?
- 1:15:40[SPEAKER_00]: I'm responding now, is it gone?
- 1:15:42[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, this doesn't work.
- 1:15:44[SPEAKER_00]: But what they're just doing is they're doing the same thing that they did with the coping crutches, like breathing techniques, supplements, diet, all these other things.
- 1:15:51[SPEAKER_00]: They were trying to do it thinking, okay, if I just do this and if the symptoms go away, that's what I want.
- 1:15:57[SPEAKER_00]: But they're just using it as another sophisticated form of avoidance.
- 1:16:02[SPEAKER_00]: And so much of this comes from this perfectionist attitude that I have to do everything perfectly.
- 1:16:07[SPEAKER_00]: When it comes to this healing journey, it's not about being perfect.
- 1:16:09[SPEAKER_00]: It's about just doing it good enough, right?
- 1:16:12[SPEAKER_00]: It's not about chasing perfection.
- 1:16:14[SPEAKER_00]: It's about doing the best you can in that moment.
- 1:16:17[SPEAKER_00]: That's all that matters.
- 1:16:19[SPEAKER_00]: Sometimes you'll notice that responding to symptoms is going to be easier.
- 1:16:23[SPEAKER_00]: Sometimes it's going to be more difficult.
- 1:16:25[SPEAKER_00]: This isn't a flaw in you.
- 1:16:28[SPEAKER_00]: This is just how it is.
- 1:16:29[SPEAKER_00]: Are you doing the best you can?
- 1:16:31[SPEAKER_00]: And that's when matters.
- 1:16:33[SPEAKER_00]: How well are you doing it?
- 1:16:34[SPEAKER_00]: Just based on everything you're trying.
- 1:16:36[SPEAKER_00]: If you're being honest with yourself and saying, listen, I am alarming this.
- 1:16:41[SPEAKER_00]: I'm doing the best I can, but it's difficult.
- 1:16:44[SPEAKER_00]: It's not easy, but I really do feel shown that this is the best I can do in this moment.
- 1:16:49[SPEAKER_00]: Good enough.
- 1:16:50[SPEAKER_00]: That's all you need.
- 1:16:51[SPEAKER_00]: You just need to be good enough.
- 1:16:53[SPEAKER_00]: And a lot of this also you might notice requires self reflection.
- 1:16:57[SPEAKER_00]: So many people in the healing journey just don't self reflect.
- 1:16:59[SPEAKER_00]: They don't think they don't ponder about what are they exactly doing?
- 1:17:03[SPEAKER_00]: What are they trying to achieve?
- 1:17:05[SPEAKER_00]: a big part of recovery is being honest with yourself.
- 1:17:09[SPEAKER_00]: You can work with the greatest coaches, the greatest mentors, the greatest therapists, whoever it is, greatest leaders.
- 1:17:15[SPEAKER_00]: But if you're lying to yourself, nobody can help you.
- 1:17:19[SPEAKER_00]: We can only show you as much as you're willing to see yourself.
- 1:17:21[SPEAKER_00]: And so a big part of this is letting go of this perfectionist attitude, but also learning to be honest with yourself.
- 1:17:27[SPEAKER_00]: Now, similar to this, another mindset issue we focus on is that many people are focused on the outcome.
- 1:17:33[SPEAKER_00]: They're focused on the goal.
- 1:17:34[SPEAKER_00]: Everything they're doing is to make the symptoms go away.
- 1:17:37[SPEAKER_00]: Now, if you notice that this logic still makes anxiety a priority in your life.
- 1:17:43[SPEAKER_00]: Do you notice that you're alarming and you're going back to living and you're doing all these things?
- 1:17:48[SPEAKER_00]: But you're doing this because you want the symptoms go away.
- 1:17:51[SPEAKER_00]: Still makes your anxiety the biggest thing in your life.
- 1:17:54[SPEAKER_00]: If you've been following this video and if you really understand the concepts, you're going to start recognizing that the purpose of anxiety recovery is not to make anxiety front and center in your in your life.
- 1:18:05[SPEAKER_00]: It's about
- 1:18:06[SPEAKER_00]: looking past anxiety and saying, okay, no, I'm gonna make life more important than anxiety.
- 1:18:12[SPEAKER_00]: But if you're doing all these things as a way to make the anxiety go away, well, then the goal is still to make the anxiety to go away.
- 1:18:21[SPEAKER_00]: And that's the biggest part of your life.
- 1:18:23[SPEAKER_00]: Many people on the healing journey, when they decide to work with us, they have this question.
- 1:18:27[SPEAKER_00]: They ask them, so, okay, but if I have joined this program, wouldn't I be making anxiety front and center?
- 1:18:34[SPEAKER_00]: And the answer is no, because the purpose of the program is to teach you how to respond, make sure you're doing it right, and then making life more important.
- 1:18:42[SPEAKER_00]: But what most people do is that they are not really responding well, they still make anxiety the biggest priority.
- 1:18:48[SPEAKER_00]: And what they end up doing is just creating different forms of avoidance, ignoring distraction techniques,
- 1:18:56[SPEAKER_00]: Thinking that they're making their life more important, but really what's going on is that they're just shielding themselves from the anxiety.
- 1:19:03[SPEAKER_00]: They're still fighting these avoidance tactics, from preventing them, from allowing the symptoms to be there, responding, and then making more things important in their life than their anxiety.
- 1:19:13[SPEAKER_00]: So a big way to look at this is focusing on the process.
- 1:19:17[SPEAKER_00]: We talk about enjoying the process of healing, not making recovery this amazing, glorious thing that happens at the end.
- 1:19:25[SPEAKER_00]: Look, once you're at a place where you feel like you're at recovery, there's no prize.
- 1:19:30[SPEAKER_00]: The prize is life.
- 1:19:32[SPEAKER_00]: The prize is now you get to be able to live life more presently.
- 1:19:36[SPEAKER_00]: But there's no victory at the end of this.
- 1:19:38[SPEAKER_00]: When you enjoy the process, who cares when the finish line is?
- 1:19:42[SPEAKER_00]: The people that are most desperate of the finish line are just miserable right now, and they think the finish line will be their salvation.
- 1:19:49[SPEAKER_00]: They feel like overcoming their symptoms is their salvation.
- 1:19:52[SPEAKER_00]: It won't be.
- 1:19:53[SPEAKER_00]: Even when you get better, you're going to have other problems in life.
- 1:19:56[SPEAKER_00]: Recovery is two things.
- 1:19:57[SPEAKER_00]: You can't be running away from fear, from the symptoms, from the panic attacks, but you also can't be chasing a feeling.
- 1:20:03[SPEAKER_00]: It's about being present in the moment.
- 1:20:05[SPEAKER_00]: Now, one of the behaviors that throws people off the most is that people just aren't compassionate with themselves.
- 1:20:11[SPEAKER_00]: They're so judgmental.
- 1:20:13[SPEAKER_00]: They're so hard on themselves.
- 1:20:14[SPEAKER_00]: They beat themselves up over everything.
- 1:20:17[SPEAKER_00]: Look, I am very results oriented.
- 1:20:20[SPEAKER_00]: But I have to be honest, if beating yourself up, if talking to yourself, berating yourself, speaking badly about yourself in order to achieve the goal, if it helped to achieve the goal, then by all means do it.
- 1:20:34[SPEAKER_00]: But the reality is, is that the way you talk to yourself,
- 1:20:37[SPEAKER_00]: If you are coming from a judgmental standpoint, if you're judging yourself as right, wrong, good, bad, worthy, not worthy, it just ends up holding you back.
- 1:20:46[SPEAKER_00]: And so so much of recovery is learning to be compassionate with yourself, to be forgiving with yourself.
- 1:20:53[SPEAKER_00]: You see this a lot in society, you see a lot of people in society that will
- 1:20:57[SPEAKER_00]: judge other people that you know if a celebrity does something they'll you know try to cancel them or shame them and all these things and for that celebrity or for whoever it is they have to carry that for the rest of their lives it's almost like the population the public doesn't forgive them all the public is showing is that they're not able to forgive themselves
- 1:21:18[SPEAKER_00]: Right?
- 1:21:18[SPEAKER_00]: And so a big part of healing is learning to forgive yourself too.
- 1:21:22[SPEAKER_00]: If beating yourself up worked, it would.
- 1:21:25[SPEAKER_00]: But the reality is, is that it doesn't.
- 1:21:27[SPEAKER_00]: We've helped people around the world and the people that struggle the most are with the ones that beat themselves up unnecessarily.
- 1:21:33[SPEAKER_00]: And what's even more interesting is that this has nothing to do with anxiety.
- 1:21:36[SPEAKER_00]: right so many people say oh well my anxiety is different my anxiety is unique this isn't even an anxiety problem this is just you're not being able to have compassion and you're not able to you know look at yourself with you know for giving nature and you know with non-judgment that's all this is and this isn't even an anxiety issue this is a unproductive thinking habit issue so much of healing is also learning to figure yourself
- 1:22:01[SPEAKER_00]: to give yourself that grace, and to give yourself that compassion.
- 1:22:05[SPEAKER_00]: Now, one of the most confronting things that anxiety suffers are going to acknowledge is that their recovery is their responsibility.
- 1:22:15[SPEAKER_00]: Recovery is in your hands.
- 1:22:17[SPEAKER_00]: It's not, you know, XYZ.
- 1:22:18[SPEAKER_00]: It's not this person.
- 1:22:19[SPEAKER_00]: It's not that supplement.
- 1:22:21[SPEAKER_00]: One of the biggest questions I get asked is, Sean, can you guarantee recovery?
- 1:22:25[SPEAKER_00]: And I tell them, your recovery is not my responsibility.
- 1:22:28[SPEAKER_00]: I can give you the tools.
- 1:22:30[SPEAKER_00]: Recovery is your responsibility, right?
- 1:22:33[SPEAKER_00]: And so what happens is people don't take accountability over their recovery.
- 1:22:36[SPEAKER_00]: They're still in this victim mindset that something needs to come save me.
- 1:22:40[SPEAKER_00]: And this is because they think they're broken.
- 1:22:42[SPEAKER_00]: They feel like their bodies against them.
- 1:22:44[SPEAKER_00]: Their minds against them that they're inherently broken.
- 1:22:46[SPEAKER_00]: So they need something external to fix them.
- 1:22:48[SPEAKER_00]: Not realizing that they're not broken.
- 1:22:51[SPEAKER_00]: They're just sensitized.
- 1:22:53[SPEAKER_00]: And when you start realizing that you're sensitized, you have to confront the fact is that the thing that made you sensitized was you.
- 1:23:00[SPEAKER_00]: Because you might have not known what happened.
- 1:23:03[SPEAKER_00]: Because you might not know what anxiety was.
- 1:23:05[SPEAKER_00]: You know, it wasn't something someone taught you.
- 1:23:07[SPEAKER_00]: You may have not known.
- 1:23:08[SPEAKER_00]: And that's okay.
- 1:23:10[SPEAKER_00]: What made you spiral in the cycle was still you.
- 1:23:13[SPEAKER_00]: It was still your reactions.
- 1:23:15[SPEAKER_00]: It was still the way you perceive things.
- 1:23:16[SPEAKER_00]: It's the way you responded in that moment.
- 1:23:19[SPEAKER_00]: And so a lot of people feel confronted by this because then they have to accept the fact that, oh my God, I'm in this position.
- 1:23:26[SPEAKER_00]: because in many ways I'm doing this to myself.
- 1:23:30[SPEAKER_00]: Now I didn't know I was doing it to myself.
- 1:23:32[SPEAKER_00]: And so what happens is there's two different responses.
- 1:23:34[SPEAKER_00]: The people that recognize that do it to themselves, they say themselves, okay, I'm not going to do that anymore.
- 1:23:40[SPEAKER_00]: Now that I know that this was happening, I'm going to stop that.
- 1:23:43[SPEAKER_00]: But then there's another subset of people that feel like it hits their ego and they're not willing to confront that and
- 1:23:50[SPEAKER_00]: In many ways, they prefer to stay the victim.
- 1:23:53[SPEAKER_00]: They just want to stay the victim because the harsh truth about human nature is that feeling like a victim feels good.
- 1:24:01[SPEAKER_00]: Feeling like something happening to you had nothing to do with you and had something to do with someone else because they were bad because, you know, they were there to hurt you.
- 1:24:12[SPEAKER_00]: It's a weirdly nice feeling.
- 1:24:13[SPEAKER_00]: Although it's a very disempowering feeling.
- 1:24:16[SPEAKER_00]: And so sometimes people will avoid taking responsibility and then blame everything else.
- 1:24:22[SPEAKER_00]: They'll say the doctors aren't treating them the way they should.
- 1:24:24[SPEAKER_00]: The therapists aren't helping them.
- 1:24:26[SPEAKER_00]: And so the key is to recognize that healing is in your hands.
- 1:24:30[SPEAKER_00]: No one is here to save you.
- 1:24:32[SPEAKER_00]: You can only save yourself.
- 1:24:35[SPEAKER_00]: These things, myself, everybody's here to help you on the journey.
- 1:24:39[SPEAKER_00]: But no one can take your recovery more seriously than you can.
- 1:24:43[SPEAKER_00]: Sometimes they want to work with us, but then they talk themselves out of it because they just don't want to take that responsibility.
- 1:24:48[SPEAKER_00]: They're scared.
- 1:24:50[SPEAKER_00]: And they're feel like if I'm taking responsibility and wrong, what's going to happen?
- 1:24:54[SPEAKER_00]: They're still making decisions based on fear.
- 1:24:57[SPEAKER_00]: And so the very, very last thing I want to talk about is learning to respond with courage, developing courage.
- 1:25:04[SPEAKER_00]: So many people are trying to avoid the anxiety.
- 1:25:06[SPEAKER_00]: They're trying not to feel the fear.
- 1:25:08[SPEAKER_00]: Instead of trying to eliminate the fear, how about developing your courage capacity?
- 1:25:15[SPEAKER_00]: Responding to these things with courage, recognizing you have more courage than you might think.
- 1:25:20[SPEAKER_00]: That even though you can feel fear, you can still respond and courage.
- 1:25:25[SPEAKER_00]: And so a big part that you want to cultivate and you want to produce in these moments is, yeah, things might seem uncertain.
- 1:25:31[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, you might seem scared, but you can still choose to respond and courage.
- 1:25:36[SPEAKER_00]: And regardless of how you feel, that's the way to respond.
- 1:25:40[SPEAKER_00]: Everybody out there that you admire, everyone you look up to did things when they were scared.
- 1:25:47[SPEAKER_00]: Did things when they didn't know if things were going to work out, but they didn't anyway because what they wanted to achieve was more important than what they felt in the moment.
- 1:25:56[SPEAKER_00]: And so if you're on the healing journey, this is something that I highly recommend.
- 1:25:59[SPEAKER_00]: Actually, I feel it's almost impossible to neglect.
- 1:26:03[SPEAKER_00]: Is this idea of developing courage?
- 1:26:06[SPEAKER_00]: Now, let's talk about what we've done so far.
- 1:26:08[SPEAKER_00]: A big part of recovery is understanding how people fall in in the cycle, how the medical model doesn't really support healing and is more focused on care that's more acute, right?
- 1:26:20[SPEAKER_00]: And so, because anxiety is a nervous system issue, therapy that's focused more on mind and, you know, the medical model that's focused more on body, it tends to have a gap.
- 1:26:32[SPEAKER_00]: And this is why you're struggling with these symptoms and feeling like you can't get much help.
- 1:26:36[SPEAKER_00]: So, a big part of healing is understanding the mechanics of anxiety, right?
- 1:26:39[SPEAKER_00]: Learning why you're experiencing these symptoms, the panic attacks, the intrusive thoughts, the depersonalization de-realization, the physical symptoms, all these different things.
- 1:26:48[SPEAKER_00]: Then it's about once you understand that these symptoms aren't dangerous, that there aren't out to get you, yes they're uncomfortable,
- 1:26:55[SPEAKER_00]: What that does is that that helps you develop will be called a window of tolerance.
- 1:26:59[SPEAKER_00]: You're able to allow the symptoms to be there, naturally on your own, because you know they're not dangerous.
- 1:27:04[SPEAKER_00]: Now they might be uncomfortable, but then it's learning to focus and develop that mindset of focusing on long-term freedom.
- 1:27:10[SPEAKER_00]: not sure term comfort.
- 1:27:12[SPEAKER_00]: I've even give you practical tools on how to respond.
- 1:27:15[SPEAKER_00]: We call that the alarm method.
- 1:27:16[SPEAKER_00]: And how do you know if you're not doing it right, which is the five F's.
- 1:27:20[SPEAKER_00]: Now, just when you know all of this, you might be thinking, okay, that's what I need to get out of the healing journey.
- 1:27:25[SPEAKER_00]: But this is actually just the first half of the recovery journey.
- 1:27:28[SPEAKER_00]: The first half of the recovery journey is just understanding what's happening and having the tools to recover.
- 1:27:34[SPEAKER_00]: The second half of the journey is learning the roadmap, knowing what to expect on the healing journey.
- 1:27:39[SPEAKER_00]: Now that you are officially on the healing journey, what to expect, you're embarking on a journey.
- 1:27:45[SPEAKER_00]: And in this journey, there's going to be different things thrown at you.
- 1:27:49[SPEAKER_00]: Just because you know the principles doesn't mean you know what's going to approach you whenever you're, you know, moving along this journey.
- 1:27:55[SPEAKER_00]: It's like learning that fitness and nutrition is good to get in shape.
- 1:28:02[SPEAKER_00]: But you'll notice that as you're going through the journey, different things might pop up.
- 1:28:07[SPEAKER_00]: You might be in a plateau.
- 1:28:09[SPEAKER_00]: You might need to lower your calories.
- 1:28:11[SPEAKER_00]: Maybe you decrease your calories too much.
- 1:28:13[SPEAKER_00]: Maybe you increase your calories.
- 1:28:14[SPEAKER_00]: Maybe your body is adjusted to working out.
- 1:28:17[SPEAKER_00]: So you need to change your workout routine.
- 1:28:19[SPEAKER_00]: All these things can happen.
- 1:28:21[SPEAKER_00]: And so learning how to navigate these periods is one of the most important things.
- 1:28:26[SPEAKER_00]: And it's one of the reasons why I always talk about having a guide on your healing journey.
- 1:28:30[SPEAKER_00]: Because just because you know the principles, just because you understand it doesn't mean that the journey will be, you know,
- 1:28:37[SPEAKER_00]: easy per se.
- 1:28:38[SPEAKER_00]: You might have the tools, you might have the compass to a degree, but you'll still be dealing with challenges that will show up and you'll need to learn how to navigate this.
- 1:28:49[SPEAKER_00]: So now that we're focused on long-term freedom and we're focused on the principles of healing, there's something I need to share with you.
- 1:28:55[SPEAKER_00]: This recovery journey is going to be longer than you think.
- 1:28:58[SPEAKER_00]: Now a lot of people when they hear that they panic, because all they've experienced in this journey is misery.
- 1:29:04[SPEAKER_00]: They feel like every time they experience these symptoms, these symptoms don't provide any relief, I just want to get out of the cycle as quickly as possible.
- 1:29:12[SPEAKER_00]: And the reality is, is that this journey is going to be longer than you think, however.
- 1:29:16[SPEAKER_00]: This journey is going to have more beautiful moments.
- 1:29:20[SPEAKER_00]: While you're on this journey, you might have felt like you've had no beautiful moments.
- 1:29:23[SPEAKER_00]: What you're going to find is that the misery is going to decrease and you're going to have more and more moments that are beautiful, where there's going to be breakthroughs that are going to be happening, where you feel like you're going to be developing.
- 1:29:33[SPEAKER_00]: It's going to feel like a spiritual journey in many ways.
- 1:29:36[SPEAKER_00]: And so what happens is that both things can be true.
- 1:29:38[SPEAKER_00]: The journey can be longer than you think, but you'll have better and better moments.
- 1:29:43[SPEAKER_00]: And so what happens is that as people are going through the healing journey and they're learning the recovery roadmap, there's something that surfaces up, which is when they start making progress, they might notice that their symptoms are subsiding, things are starting to make a lot more sense.
- 1:29:57[SPEAKER_00]: But something interesting happens.
- 1:29:58[SPEAKER_00]: They will experience what we call a setback.
- 1:30:01[SPEAKER_00]: A setback is almost where they're making progress and all of a sudden, all their symptoms come back all at once, just as intense, maybe even more intense.
- 1:30:14[SPEAKER_00]: And so when I was on the healing journey, once I was fully walking the recovery journey without what I was in the second phase of my healing journey, I felt like setbacks would hold me back.
- 1:30:23[SPEAKER_00]: I would make some progress and then I would almost hit this glass ceiling where all these symptoms would come back and then I would go in a spiral mode.
- 1:30:31[SPEAKER_00]: I would try to figure out why is this happening to me?
- 1:30:33[SPEAKER_00]: What did I do wrong?
- 1:30:34[SPEAKER_00]: Did I eat something?
- 1:30:35[SPEAKER_00]: Was it something that happened last week?
- 1:30:37[SPEAKER_00]: Am I just not doing this right?
- 1:30:39[SPEAKER_00]: Maybe the principles that I'm utilizing only takes me so far, but I need to add something else in my healing journey.
- 1:30:46[SPEAKER_00]: And every time I went this direction, I would just spiral more and more.
- 1:30:50[SPEAKER_00]: And it was because I didn't understand the concept of setbacks, the mechanics of setbacks, and more importantly, what to do when a setback happens.
- 1:30:59[SPEAKER_00]: Now, I want to be clear about something.
- 1:31:01[SPEAKER_00]: many people quote unquote make a bad day a setback so in the recovery journey you'll have good days you have bad days just like anybody else living life you love good days you have bad days but what happens is sometimes anxiety suffers understand
- 1:31:17[SPEAKER_00]: or learn this concept of setbacks and now every bad day is a setback.
- 1:31:22[SPEAKER_00]: And so sometimes we'll see this in the program where people will say, oh, I'm going to setback, I'm going to setback, I'm going to setback, but really they're just dealing with the bad day, right?
- 1:31:30[SPEAKER_00]: And what it does is that that water is down the setback over time the setback doesn't even mean anything.
- 1:31:35[SPEAKER_00]: And when that tends to happen, what that tells me personally when I'm working with somebody is that they haven't gone far enough in the recovery journey.
- 1:31:43[SPEAKER_00]: They're still relatively new.
- 1:31:44[SPEAKER_00]: Because when you hit a setback, it is very different than just experiencing a bad day.
- 1:31:50[SPEAKER_00]: You have actually made progress.
- 1:31:52[SPEAKER_00]: You've made a tremendous amount of progress.
- 1:31:55[SPEAKER_00]: And then a setback comes full force.
- 1:31:57[SPEAKER_00]: It comes out of nowhere.
- 1:31:58[SPEAKER_00]: And it is very different from just having a bad day.
- 1:32:02[SPEAKER_00]: And so a lot of people look at setbacks within the word, which is, oh, I'm set back.
- 1:32:08[SPEAKER_00]: I've fallen backwards.
- 1:32:10[SPEAKER_00]: If I'm being fully honest with you, I do not like using the word setback.
- 1:32:13[SPEAKER_00]: I used to talk about setbacks early in my videos, and it's one of the things that I wish I would have never used.
- 1:32:19[SPEAKER_00]: I wish it was one of the verbidger, you know, language I didn't use, because while it might feel like a setback, it might feel like your two steps behind it's not.
- 1:32:27[SPEAKER_00]: It's really not.
- 1:32:29[SPEAKER_00]: Setbacks are simply opportunities.
- 1:32:32[SPEAKER_00]: They are required to heal.
- 1:32:34[SPEAKER_00]: See, many people ask me, Sean, how do you know how does the team know that they will never fall back into the cycle again?
- 1:32:40[SPEAKER_00]: Well, because they went through the recovery journey and setbacks teach you how to respond.
- 1:32:46[SPEAKER_00]: They force you to recognize that you know what you're doing.
- 1:32:50[SPEAKER_00]: You go through so many setbacks on the healing journey that you will understand the principles of recovery.
- 1:32:56[SPEAKER_00]: If there's any doubt, if there's any part of you or there's any lessons that you might have missed, trust me, recovery will teach you.
- 1:33:05[SPEAKER_00]: You often find people that have made a ton of progress and will say things like, oh, I was out of the cycle.
- 1:33:10[SPEAKER_00]: I have made it out.
- 1:33:11[SPEAKER_00]: But then this thing happened in my life and now I'm back into the cycle.
- 1:33:14[SPEAKER_00]: While they did make some progress, they weren't ever fully out.
- 1:33:18[SPEAKER_00]: All that happened was that there's still some lessons to be learned.
- 1:33:22[SPEAKER_00]: There's some things that they're still missing.
- 1:33:23[SPEAKER_00]: There's some foundational crack that they have that we tend to help them with.
- 1:33:28[SPEAKER_00]: And so sometimes when people hear about
- 1:33:31[SPEAKER_00]: You know, oh, this person was recovered, but then they fell back in the cycle.
- 1:33:34[SPEAKER_00]: They get very triggered.
- 1:33:35[SPEAKER_00]: But when I see that, I just say, okay, well, I don't think they were truly ever recovered.
- 1:33:39[SPEAKER_00]: Because my definition of recovery is you know exactly what makes you fall back in.
- 1:33:44[SPEAKER_00]: That's very different from not experiencing symptoms.
- 1:33:46[SPEAKER_00]: Most people use recovery by saying, oh, I'll never experience anxiety again.
- 1:33:51[SPEAKER_00]: That's wrong.
- 1:33:51[SPEAKER_00]: You will experience anxiety.
- 1:33:53[SPEAKER_00]: The symptoms you might be feeling right now is different because that's part of sensitization.
- 1:33:57[SPEAKER_00]: Once you desensitize these symptoms, go away.
- 1:33:59[SPEAKER_00]: And so, instead of looking at setbacks as something that steps you back, I look at them as opportunities, it's something you need to go through.
- 1:34:06[SPEAKER_00]: The reality is, is that even if the symptoms go away, your next fear would be what if they come back.
- 1:34:12[SPEAKER_00]: Setbacks are an opportunity to teach you what to do when they do come back.
- 1:34:15[SPEAKER_00]: And it's also important to understand that setbacks happen because look, your nervous system is in flux.
- 1:34:21[SPEAKER_00]: It's dynamic.
- 1:34:22[SPEAKER_00]: It's re adjusting itself.
- 1:34:24[SPEAKER_00]: It's not static.
- 1:34:25[SPEAKER_00]: Sometimes your nervous system will overshoot, sometimes it will undershoot.
- 1:34:28[SPEAKER_00]: It's part of it.
- 1:34:29[SPEAKER_00]: While it's trying to find its equilibrium, it'll go up and down.
- 1:34:32[SPEAKER_00]: So sometimes it'll overshoot and you'll be in a setback.
- 1:34:34[SPEAKER_00]: Sometimes what happens is that your body has all this adrenaline pent up and finally as you begin to respond, your body's able to go and find these pockets of adrenaline burn itself out.
- 1:34:46[SPEAKER_00]: But what happens is when people don't know how to respond, when the body is trying to release all this anxious energy, they start spiraling.
- 1:34:52[SPEAKER_00]: They start freaking out.
- 1:34:53[SPEAKER_00]: They start wondering why that's happening.
- 1:34:54[SPEAKER_00]: They're trying to find meaning behind all this.
- 1:34:57[SPEAKER_00]: And then what they do is that they just cause more and more adrenaline pockets and their body.
- 1:35:03[SPEAKER_00]: And so it's important to look at setbacks, not as something that holds you back.
- 1:35:08[SPEAKER_00]: And if you really look down deeper into it, you'll also notice that if you are viewing setbacks in something bad, then you're still missing the fundamental principle that you don't measure your progress based on your feelings.
- 1:35:20[SPEAKER_00]: You measure your progress based on your response.
- 1:35:22[SPEAKER_00]: So what happens when a setback happens
- 1:35:24[SPEAKER_00]: They go back into old ways and they go back into spiral.
- 1:35:27[SPEAKER_00]: What they end up doing is that they're just telling themselves, oh, I'm feeling bad.
- 1:35:30[SPEAKER_00]: Something's wrong.
- 1:35:32[SPEAKER_00]: I'm still back into coping and managing.
- 1:35:33[SPEAKER_00]: I'm still looking for short-term fixes.
- 1:35:36[SPEAKER_00]: Right?
- 1:35:36[SPEAKER_00]: So I hope this is starting to make sense and I hope you start to see the nuances of healing.
- 1:35:43[SPEAKER_00]: It is much deeper than most people think.
- 1:35:45[SPEAKER_00]: It's not a matter of setbacks.
- 1:35:46[SPEAKER_00]: These are just opportunities or another way if you really want to look at it is that they're speed bumps.
- 1:35:51[SPEAKER_00]: Right?
- 1:35:52[SPEAKER_00]: Just because all your symptoms, quote unquote, come back or they feel like they've come back that doesn't mean you're back at square one.
- 1:35:58[SPEAKER_00]: It doesn't mean that just because you feel like you're at square one that you are at square one.
- 1:36:02[SPEAKER_00]: You have learned all the lessons in the healing journey.
- 1:36:04[SPEAKER_00]: But it's important to understand that in a set, back, this is where things matter the most.
- 1:36:09[SPEAKER_00]: So what do you do?
- 1:36:10[SPEAKER_00]: Well, the key is to be consistent.
- 1:36:12[SPEAKER_00]: That's it.
- 1:36:13[SPEAKER_00]: When setbacks happen, people feel like they need to do something more.
- 1:36:16[SPEAKER_00]: They need to do something extra.
- 1:36:17[SPEAKER_00]: They're missing something.
- 1:36:19[SPEAKER_00]: But the key is actually the opposite.
- 1:36:21[SPEAKER_00]: It's to keep doing what you're doing.
- 1:36:23[SPEAKER_00]: Setback happens.
- 1:36:24[SPEAKER_00]: Cool.
- 1:36:25[SPEAKER_00]: I'm not feeling anxiety.
- 1:36:27[SPEAKER_00]: Cool.
- 1:36:28[SPEAKER_00]: I'm having a bad day.
- 1:36:29[SPEAKER_00]: Cool.
- 1:36:30[SPEAKER_00]: I'm having a good day.
- 1:36:31[SPEAKER_00]: Cool.
- 1:36:32[SPEAKER_00]: Why?
- 1:36:33[SPEAKER_00]: Because it doesn't matter how I feel.
- 1:36:35[SPEAKER_00]: I'm not making my life so focused on the feeling, right?
- 1:36:38[SPEAKER_00]: Whatever you focus on grows, we learn this from the five apps.
- 1:36:41[SPEAKER_00]: And so if you're always focused on how you're feeling and using that as a metric for a living life, well, then you're still following your feelings here.
- 1:36:50[SPEAKER_00]: And so the key is is that even when you're in a setback continuing to live.
- 1:36:54[SPEAKER_00]: Not as if anything is wrong per se, you can be honest with yourself, hey, I'm in a setback.
- 1:36:58[SPEAKER_00]: It's a little bit harder right now.
- 1:36:59[SPEAKER_00]: That's okay.
- 1:36:59[SPEAKER_00]: Not you're not lying to yourself.
- 1:37:01[SPEAKER_00]: You're not ignoring the elephant in the room.
- 1:37:04[SPEAKER_00]: But what you are doing.
- 1:37:06[SPEAKER_00]: is acknowledging it, interesting how that works, labeling it, setback, speed bump, opportunity, you're accepting it and you're refocusing and moving on.
- 1:37:17[SPEAKER_00]: Do you notice how the alarm response also focuses on setbacks is the exact same principle?
- 1:37:22[SPEAKER_00]: It's no different than you responding to a panic attack that lasts ten minutes or a setback that might feel like hours, days, weeks, whatever it is, who cares?
- 1:37:31[SPEAKER_00]: Right?
- 1:37:32[SPEAKER_00]: It's all alerting opportunity and it's all an opportunity for your body to burn off the adrenaline.
- 1:37:36[SPEAKER_00]: And so you'll notice that when you're going through the healing journey, you'll have setbacks.
- 1:37:40[SPEAKER_00]: You'll have these moments, but again, these are opportunities on your healing journey.
- 1:37:44[SPEAKER_00]: You might be thinking, how many setbacks do I need to go through Sean?
- 1:37:48[SPEAKER_00]: Again, you're looking at recovery as a finish line.
- 1:37:51[SPEAKER_00]: Who cares how many you have to go through?
- 1:37:53[SPEAKER_00]: If it's one, if it's ten, if it's twenty, who cares?
- 1:37:56[SPEAKER_00]: The focus is on just getting a little bit better.
- 1:37:58[SPEAKER_00]: One of the biggest principles we teach people in the recovery program is just focus on the next step.
- 1:38:02[SPEAKER_00]: Don't try to focus two, four, five, six steps.
- 1:38:05[SPEAKER_00]: Don't try to focus on the phases of recovery.
- 1:38:07[SPEAKER_00]: You don't need to.
- 1:38:08[SPEAKER_00]: What's the point of that?
- 1:38:10[SPEAKER_00]: All that you have to do is focus on what's in front of you right now.
- 1:38:12[SPEAKER_00]: And that is just keep going.
- 1:38:14[SPEAKER_00]: Now you want to ask yourself, okay, what has anxiety taken away from me?
- 1:38:19[SPEAKER_00]: With so many people, anxiety's taken away so much.
- 1:38:22[SPEAKER_00]: Maybe they stop flying, they stop driving, they stop working.
- 1:38:25[SPEAKER_00]: They stop being present for their kids.
- 1:38:29[SPEAKER_00]: If you were like me, you know, all those things, plus you lost the ton of weight, plus you kept going on with the doctors.
- 1:38:35[SPEAKER_00]: The anxiety's taken away so much.
- 1:38:38[SPEAKER_00]: And so when you're on the healing journey, right?
- 1:38:40[SPEAKER_00]: When you're on this recovery road map, well, you start learning how to deal with setbacks.
- 1:38:45[SPEAKER_00]: Now what happens is that now the focus is about expanding your life.
- 1:38:51[SPEAKER_00]: Now it's about regaining your life.
- 1:38:53[SPEAKER_00]: It's about building a capacity.
- 1:38:55[SPEAKER_00]: Recovery is about rebuilding capacity.
- 1:38:58[SPEAKER_00]: Most people think overcoming anxiety is just learning to cope or manage with things.
- 1:39:02[SPEAKER_00]: That's fine for a surface level.
- 1:39:04[SPEAKER_00]: If there's outside stress that you can't control, that's one thing.
- 1:39:07[SPEAKER_00]: But when you're talking about overcoming anxiety,
- 1:39:10[SPEAKER_00]: It's about expanding your capacity.
- 1:39:12[SPEAKER_00]: It's not about avoiding stress.
- 1:39:13[SPEAKER_00]: It's not about avoiding fear.
- 1:39:15[SPEAKER_00]: It's not about avoiding these symptoms.
- 1:39:16[SPEAKER_00]: But it's about learning how to tolerate it better.
- 1:39:19[SPEAKER_00]: And what happens is as you tolerate it better, your expansion grows.
- 1:39:22[SPEAKER_00]: This is how your capacity grows.
- 1:39:25[SPEAKER_00]: This is why someone can be a housebound that can't even leave their house.
- 1:39:28[SPEAKER_00]: But then all of a sudden, is jumping out of a plane and skydiving.
- 1:39:32[SPEAKER_00]: All that happened wasn't that there's symptoms necessarily one away.
- 1:39:35[SPEAKER_00]: Yes, that's true to a degree.
- 1:39:36[SPEAKER_00]: But what also happened is they also learned how to build their capacity.
- 1:39:40[SPEAKER_00]: And as you build your capacity, your nervous system gets stronger.
- 1:39:43[SPEAKER_00]: People think recovery is a lot like avoiding stressors, but I like to look at recovery as like getting stronger at the gym.
- 1:39:52[SPEAKER_00]: It's not about avoiding weights.
- 1:39:54[SPEAKER_00]: It's about actually utilizing the weights with the proper form, with the proper guidance, with the proper response.
- 1:39:59[SPEAKER_00]: and getting stronger at it.
- 1:40:02[SPEAKER_00]: And a big part of this is also learning to regain your confidence.
- 1:40:06[SPEAKER_00]: Imagine all your symptoms went away right now.
- 1:40:08[SPEAKER_00]: If I could just give you a magical pill, you took it, all your symptoms are gone.
- 1:40:12[SPEAKER_00]: But you'll always have in the back of your mind, Sean, how do I know this doesn't come back?
- 1:40:15[SPEAKER_00]: What if it does come back?
- 1:40:16[SPEAKER_00]: What if something in my life that's completely out of my control hits me and I spiral back?
- 1:40:22[SPEAKER_00]: Setbacks are that opportunity to practice.
- 1:40:25[SPEAKER_00]: Now, as you're going through setback,
- 1:40:27[SPEAKER_00]: The purpose is regaining your confidence.
- 1:40:29[SPEAKER_00]: Something we call in the program core confidence.
- 1:40:33[SPEAKER_00]: We call it core confidence because confidence can come and go depending on situations.
- 1:40:37[SPEAKER_00]: I can go to a party that I'm hosting myself and know everybody.
- 1:40:40[SPEAKER_00]: I'm going to be very confident.
- 1:40:41[SPEAKER_00]: Put me in a situation where I don't know anybody and there's already established relationships.
- 1:40:46[SPEAKER_00]: I might not come across with that same confidence.
- 1:40:48[SPEAKER_00]: Core confidence, however, is, no matter where you're at, no matter where you are, no matter what symptoms you're experiencing or not experiencing, you have confidence in yourself, then no matter what happens, you know you'll be okay.
- 1:41:00[SPEAKER_00]: And so, recovery is about regaining that confidence.
- 1:41:02[SPEAKER_00]: This is how people don't fear about falling back in the cycle.
- 1:41:05[SPEAKER_00]: They've developed this core confidence.
- 1:41:07[SPEAKER_00]: So you might be thinking, okay, how do I develop this core confidence?
- 1:41:10[SPEAKER_00]: Well, it's a few things.
- 1:41:11[SPEAKER_00]: Number one, it's about getting better.
- 1:41:13[SPEAKER_00]: It's about learning to deal with setbacks.
- 1:41:14[SPEAKER_00]: And as you get better at this, as you get better at the response, remember, this is a practice.
- 1:41:19[SPEAKER_00]: This is a skill.
- 1:41:21[SPEAKER_00]: It's just a skill that you didn't learn.
- 1:41:22[SPEAKER_00]: As you learn the skill, and as you get better at it, the confidence will come on its own.
- 1:41:27[SPEAKER_00]: So many people try to be confident first and then overcome their symptoms.
- 1:41:30[SPEAKER_00]: They're waiting for that right time.
- 1:41:32[SPEAKER_00]: They're waiting for that right moment to recover, but they're just lying to themselves.
- 1:41:36[SPEAKER_00]: You know, I see people all the time saying, ah, I really want to, but I just put it down, people know my house, or I gotta go on this trip.
- 1:41:41[SPEAKER_00]: And, you know, I'm quite honest with it.
- 1:41:43[SPEAKER_00]: I'm like, you're gonna hate the trip.
- 1:41:44[SPEAKER_00]: You're not gonna enjoy it.
- 1:41:45[SPEAKER_00]: You're gonna be panicking.
- 1:41:46[SPEAKER_00]: Everyone's gonna be miserable around you because you're like constantly using them as a reassurance.
- 1:41:50[SPEAKER_00]: I know this is very confronting, right?
- 1:41:51[SPEAKER_00]: But it's about being honest with ourselves, right?
- 1:41:54[SPEAKER_00]: The key is is that as you focus on this, every other aspect of your life gets better.
- 1:41:59[SPEAKER_00]: And so it's recognizing that as you're going through this healing journey, the confidence comes later.
- 1:42:04[SPEAKER_00]: So when we're guiding people in the recovery programs, we're not building on their confidence.
- 1:42:07[SPEAKER_00]: We're not teaching them how to be confident.
- 1:42:10[SPEAKER_00]: All we show them is how to be courageous in moments of fear in the confidence comes.
- 1:42:13[SPEAKER_00]: When I went through my first panic attack, once I really went through it and completed it and learned how to truly respond, I recognize that I don't have to do anything about these panic attacks.
- 1:42:25[SPEAKER_00]: I just need to let them pass when they come.
- 1:42:27[SPEAKER_00]: And so yeah, it was uncomfortable.
- 1:42:28[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I didn't like it.
- 1:42:30[SPEAKER_00]: But I knew what to do.
- 1:42:31[SPEAKER_00]: I had to go through the panic attacks.
- 1:42:33[SPEAKER_00]: I had to learn how to respond in order to gain the confidence.
- 1:42:36[SPEAKER_00]: It wasn't like I gained the confidence and then experienced panic attack.
- 1:42:39[SPEAKER_00]: So I hope this makes sense.
- 1:42:41[SPEAKER_00]: Now, one of the last things I want to mention is
- 1:42:43[SPEAKER_00]: You learn how to regain your core confidence and what happens is that you begin expanding your life.
- 1:42:48[SPEAKER_00]: Now you start going back to work.
- 1:42:49[SPEAKER_00]: You start going back to school.
- 1:42:50[SPEAKER_00]: You start doing things that you thought you would have never been able to do and that in itself is very powerful.
- 1:42:55[SPEAKER_00]: This is where almost self growth comes in.
- 1:42:57[SPEAKER_00]: You feel very alive.
- 1:42:59[SPEAKER_00]: I remember I used to travel around the world when I was a kid and when I struggled with anxiety, I couldn't leave my house.
- 1:43:08[SPEAKER_00]: And so when I began traveling, I started traveling domestically, that I started traveling internationally, that I started traveling internationally by myself.
- 1:43:14[SPEAKER_00]: It was very empowering.
- 1:43:15[SPEAKER_00]: It was like I was regaining my life.
- 1:43:17[SPEAKER_00]: And I felt, I felt like this high.
- 1:43:19[SPEAKER_00]: I'm like, I can do anything.
- 1:43:20[SPEAKER_00]: What else can I do?
- 1:43:21[SPEAKER_00]: But so at this stage, a lot of people fear, okay, how, what if I do fall back into the cycle?
- 1:43:26[SPEAKER_00]: I've heard of people fall back into the cycle.
- 1:43:28[SPEAKER_00]: But like I mentioned, if you know these principles of healing, you won't fall back into the cycle.
- 1:43:33[SPEAKER_00]: You'll know exactly what to do to respond.
- 1:43:36[SPEAKER_00]: And so sometimes what happens is that people just need more learning.
- 1:43:40[SPEAKER_00]: There's more lessons to learn.
- 1:43:42[SPEAKER_00]: That's the thing you need to understand that if you are still struggling or if you're still stuck, there's more lessons.
- 1:43:48[SPEAKER_00]: The journey is longer than you think.
- 1:43:50[SPEAKER_00]: It's not just superficial, as you go in deeper and deeper, you'll see more and more things.
- 1:43:54[SPEAKER_00]: And what happens is that anxiety recovery turns into self-discovery.
- 1:44:01[SPEAKER_00]: It turns into self-growth.
- 1:44:03[SPEAKER_00]: And so what happens now at this stage is that no matter what you know, if life throws something at you, you know you won't spiral.
- 1:44:10[SPEAKER_00]: You know any time life throws something at you, even if you feel the panicking sensations, if you feel intense symptoms, you'll know how to respond.
- 1:44:17[SPEAKER_00]: And what happens over time is that your nervous system gets stronger and stronger and it can handle more and more stress.
- 1:44:23[SPEAKER_00]: But it's also important to understand that still the journey doesn't end there.
- 1:44:28[SPEAKER_00]: The anxiety recovery journey stops, but then now you're in a whole different phase, which is self-growth, which is, in many ways, how do you deal with life, right?
- 1:44:38[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, you're learning more about yourself, but there's more to learn.
- 1:44:42[SPEAKER_00]: And so what happens when life stressors throw things at you that you have no control over?
- 1:44:48[SPEAKER_00]: What are some behaviors and what are some patterns that you have that might be showing up in your relationships that might be working, showing up in your job?
- 1:44:56[SPEAKER_00]: or, you know, with your mindset around money, or your personal reflections, maybe you're health and wellness, so you're health and fitness and all these things.
- 1:45:03[SPEAKER_00]: You start learning what are these unproductive thinking habits, what are these unproductive behaviors that kept me stuck with anxiety that I know that, okay, it solved itself.
- 1:45:12[SPEAKER_00]: Now I know what to do, but what other unproductive behaviors or thought patterns are showing up in other aspects of my life.
- 1:45:19[SPEAKER_00]: And what other drama am I dealing with?
- 1:45:21[SPEAKER_00]: What other stressors am I dealing with?
- 1:45:24[SPEAKER_00]: Then in many ways, I'm kind of doing to myself.
- 1:45:26[SPEAKER_00]: And so what happens is that this is the journey of self development, of self exploration happens.
- 1:45:32[SPEAKER_00]: And that's also a beautiful journey.
- 1:45:34[SPEAKER_00]: How do you deal with life stressors that you have no control over that is naturally going to create anxiety?
- 1:45:39[SPEAKER_00]: How do you respond in those moments?
- 1:45:41[SPEAKER_00]: It's not just about alarming those moments.
- 1:45:44[SPEAKER_00]: Alarming those moments is to help you from not spiraling.
- 1:45:47[SPEAKER_00]: It's to help you self-regulate.
- 1:45:49[SPEAKER_00]: But how do you deal with the stressor of life?
- 1:45:52[SPEAKER_00]: You know, when a family member passes away, when an accident happens, when something hits you really hard, this is things that everyone will go through.
- 1:46:01[SPEAKER_00]: And so how do you respond in those moments?
- 1:46:04[SPEAKER_00]: Now it's about going deeper, where it's like, okay, what are the subconscious beliefs I have?
- 1:46:09[SPEAKER_00]: What are some things that I assume that were true, that I might have developed as a kid because it had a function in that moment, but now might not be serving me.
- 1:46:18[SPEAKER_00]: Then it's also looking at, okay, what are the goals?
- 1:46:20[SPEAKER_00]: What are my dreams?
- 1:46:21[SPEAKER_00]: What are my ambitions?
- 1:46:22[SPEAKER_00]: Do you see how this journey can go forever in many ways?
- 1:46:26[SPEAKER_00]: But now it's no longer about anxiety.
- 1:46:28[SPEAKER_00]: And so the key is is that don't go into those things until you're at a stable foundation first.
- 1:46:33[SPEAKER_00]: First focus on getting better in the moment.
- 1:46:36[SPEAKER_00]: Focus on regaining your life.
- 1:46:37[SPEAKER_00]: Focus on getting good at the response.
- 1:46:39[SPEAKER_00]: Focus on getting better at responding to setbacks or opportunities.
- 1:46:43[SPEAKER_00]: Get better at regaining your core confidence.
- 1:46:45[SPEAKER_00]: Have the given of time to show yourself that you won't fall back into the cycle and then you can start exploring these things.
- 1:46:52[SPEAKER_00]: So I hope this master class helps.
- 1:46:54[SPEAKER_00]: Now that you're here, there's really two routes you can go here.
- 1:46:57[SPEAKER_00]: Number one is find a guide to help you on the healing journey.
- 1:47:01[SPEAKER_00]: Right?
- 1:47:02[SPEAKER_00]: Like I mentioned, this is like climbing a mountain.
- 1:47:04[SPEAKER_00]: The fastest way up to the peak is with a guide.
- 1:47:08[SPEAKER_00]: You can use a map, or you could try to figure it out in your own.
- 1:47:11[SPEAKER_00]: But you'll notice if you're doing it on your own, how difficult it is.
- 1:47:14[SPEAKER_00]: Even with these YouTube videos, it can still be very difficult.
- 1:47:17[SPEAKER_00]: It's so disorienting.
- 1:47:19[SPEAKER_00]: And so focusing on having someone guide you through the process.
- 1:47:23[SPEAKER_00]: And if you want that to be us, I'll put a link down below and you can apply to work with us.
- 1:47:28[SPEAKER_00]: And if you need help implementing this methodology, we help people around the world.
- 1:47:32[SPEAKER_00]: It's basically clockwork for us at this point, or you could try to figure this out on your own and continue using this content.
- 1:47:39[SPEAKER_00]: And if so, I'll put a link down below to some courses that I have.
- 1:47:43[SPEAKER_00]: Some of these courses were strictly for members in our recovery program, but I can give you access to them to help you on the healing journey.
- 1:47:50[SPEAKER_00]: And what these courses will go into is certain things like how to deal with medication while you're on the recovery journey.
- 1:47:57[SPEAKER_00]: Medication is it changes things up a little bit.
- 1:48:00[SPEAKER_00]: It makes things a little bit more nuanced.
- 1:48:02[SPEAKER_00]: And so if you're thinking about hopping off meds or if you're thinking about getting meds or if you're thinking about what are the side effects of meds in terms of my healing journey, then that course will really help you.
- 1:48:14[SPEAKER_00]: Not just to be clear.
- 1:48:15[SPEAKER_00]: The course isn't going to give you
- 1:48:16[SPEAKER_00]: tips on how to take medication, right?
- 1:48:18[SPEAKER_00]: But it's going to teach you how you and your doctors become partners in the recovery journey.
- 1:48:23[SPEAKER_00]: In the courses too, I also have a recovery toolkit, so while you're experiencing intense anxiety, you have videos of me walking you through it, walking you through how to deal with panic attacks or symptoms or, you know, the classic thoughts
- 1:48:35[SPEAKER_00]: that surface up when anxiety is high where it's very disorienting.
- 1:48:38[SPEAKER_00]: And so you have these two options.
- 1:48:40[SPEAKER_00]: You're going to have a guide, guide you step by step, focus on healing, and focus on helping you regain your life because remember, the prize is life, right?
- 1:48:49[SPEAKER_00]: Don't make anxiety recovery a goal in itself.
- 1:48:52[SPEAKER_00]: The focus is about learning the principles and then pushing anxiety aside, keeping it as an emotion like any other emotion.
- 1:48:59[SPEAKER_00]: Right?
- 1:49:00[SPEAKER_00]: Once you're a decent citizen and every system is stronger, it's a good skill set to half.
- 1:49:04[SPEAKER_00]: And then just live life fully and freely.
- 1:49:08[SPEAKER_00]: Or like I mentioned, you can also check out the courses.
- 1:49:11[SPEAKER_00]: There's a few in there that I think will really help you.
- 1:49:14[SPEAKER_00]: And I wanted to make it as affordable as possible.
- 1:49:17[SPEAKER_00]: I wanted to make it even cheaper than what you would get in a therapy session, even when a classic therapy session here in the United States would cost.
- 1:49:24[SPEAKER_00]: I hope this master class helps.
- 1:49:26[SPEAKER_00]: I wish you the best in your healing journey.
- 1:49:28[SPEAKER_00]: Stay strong.
- 1:49:29[SPEAKER_00]: and focus on long-term freedom.