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From ER Visits to Full Recovery: Clayton’s Story · Bye Bye Panic

• 0:00
  [SPEAKER_00]: Hey guys, welcome to the channel and as always we have a new person sharing their story with us and I have a feeling this is going to be a story about how sometimes you need to hear one simple thing a thousand times before it actually clicks.
• 0:17
  [SPEAKER_00]: So I am here with Clay and Clay left a program a little bit ago, but here's going to share his story so Clay if you want to introduce yourself
• 0:28
  [SPEAKER_00]: to the people watching and it's yours.
• 0:30
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
• 0:30
  [SPEAKER_01]: Thank you, Mirca.
• 0:31
  [SPEAKER_01]: Um, see how my name is Clay.
• 0:32
  [SPEAKER_01]: I live in San Diego and, um, you know, I work from home and long story short.
• 0:40
  [SPEAKER_01]: Uh, I found your guys is I found by by panic after getting into a pretty crazy cycle with some symptoms I had never experienced before.
• 0:50
  [SPEAKER_01]: And I can get into that story here, but yeah, thanks for having me honest.
• 0:54
  [SPEAKER_01]: This is really, I'm really excited because once that breakthrough really happens, you just want to share it because you're stuck for so long.
• 1:02
  [SPEAKER_01]: And I know that there's so, because I used to watch videos like this of you guys interviewing people and saying, man, I wonder if I'll ever get to that point.
• 1:10
  [SPEAKER_01]: And like, it can happen and it's going to take time, but there are just a few things that you really have to realize.
• 1:17
  [SPEAKER_00]: I'm so happy to have you and you can't imagine how happy I was when I got the email forward to me.
• 1:22
  [SPEAKER_00]: Hey, I want to share his story and I'm like, yes, I always love when people like want to share their story not just when we ask them and they're like, yeah, okay, okay, I'll do it.
• 1:32
  [SPEAKER_00]: I love when people want to share because it's like, yeah, now you have the knowledge, now it's finally click.
• 1:36
  [SPEAKER_00]: Then of course, if you were one of the people just sitting and watching every single video and
• 1:41
  [SPEAKER_00]: It just wasn't connecting.
• 1:43
  [SPEAKER_00]: And it's like, damn, I don't know, you realize, okay, now I really see it.
• 1:47
  [SPEAKER_00]: So I want to open, you know, people's eyes, even if it's just one person, it's, it's more than a percent.
• 1:53
  [SPEAKER_00]: Okay, so let's start here.
• 1:55
  [SPEAKER_00]: How did the anxiety begin?
• 1:57
  [SPEAKER_00]: You remember?
• 1:57
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
• 1:58
  [SPEAKER_01]: So, um, now there were, there were things that foreshadowed that I was eventually going to get into a site into this cycle.
• 2:08
  [SPEAKER_01]: I had had certain belts with anxiety in the past, but it had never really manifested itself in just unexplainable, constant symptoms.
• 2:18
  [SPEAKER_01]: It was really like all up in here, and I just we kind of get over it, and then that was it, right?
• 2:24
  [SPEAKER_01]: And so long story short, in January of twenty twenty two, I had gone through a really, really big problem with some business partner of mine.
• 2:34
  [SPEAKER_01]: And I thought I was going to lose everything that I had worked for.
• 2:37
  [SPEAKER_01]: And I thought the business and everything was going to collapse.
• 2:40
  [SPEAKER_01]: And that caused some serious chest pain right away.
• 2:45
  [SPEAKER_01]: And I was like, okay, I dealt with this kind of stuff before, it's fine, whatever.
• 2:49
  [SPEAKER_01]: The next night at dinner, and that's when this whole thing really kicked off, I had a panic attack at dinner with family because of the chest pain.
• 2:59
  [SPEAKER_01]: And it happened all so fast.
• 3:02
  [SPEAKER_01]: So we're all sitting there.
• 3:03
  [SPEAKER_01]: My sister's birthday dinners early January, twenty twenty two.
• 3:06
  [SPEAKER_01]: And I'm just like not doing good.
• 3:08
  [SPEAKER_01]: And I go to the bathroom.
• 3:09
  [SPEAKER_01]: And I take a walk outside.
• 3:10
  [SPEAKER_01]: And I'm sitting down.
• 3:12
  [SPEAKER_01]: And my Apple watches telling me that my heart rate is a hundred forty beats per minute sitting down.
• 3:17
  [SPEAKER_01]: And that's when the panic starts going.
• 3:19
  [SPEAKER_01]: And I go, I got to go.
• 3:22
  [SPEAKER_01]: And I went to the ER.
• 3:24
  [SPEAKER_01]: And this is in Pasadena, California.
• 3:26
  [SPEAKER_01]: And so long story short as many people who were probably watching this channel know, you go to the doctor.
• 3:32
  [SPEAKER_01]: They run all the tests.
• 3:33
  [SPEAKER_01]: They did the EKG.
• 3:34
  [SPEAKER_01]: So I literally thought someone was happening in my heart.
• 3:37
  [SPEAKER_01]: The EKG, the did all the blood work.
• 3:39
  [SPEAKER_01]: They did everything.
• 3:40
  [SPEAKER_01]: And my heart rate when I was on the EKG machine was in the seventies.
• 3:43
  [SPEAKER_01]: I was like, oh, well, that's really weird.
• 3:46
  [SPEAKER_01]: Okay.
• 3:47
  [SPEAKER_01]: So
• 3:48
  [SPEAKER_01]: that begun a cycle to where the chest pain never really went away the other I had like I said foreshadowing about three or four months prior I had gone to the yard with some chest pain but the chest pain went away in a couple days and I and now in retrospect it's because I didn't keep that fear alive at that moment and the pain just went away this time though it was different
• 4:12
  [SPEAKER_01]: and the chest pain state.
• 4:14
  [SPEAKER_01]: So about ten days later, I went to another ER to say, hey, something doesn't feel right and they're like, well, you're fine again, but you should go to your primary.
• 4:22
  [SPEAKER_01]: So I went to my primary and everything was fine.
• 4:26
  [SPEAKER_01]: And from that point, so that was January, twenty-two, for that next year and a half, I had done
• 4:35
  [SPEAKER_01]: I had probably gone into the ER, you know, no less than twelve times.
• 4:41
  [SPEAKER_01]: And I had seen a couple different primary doctors.
• 4:44
  [SPEAKER_01]: And for anyone watching this who has ever struggled with chest pain, trust me, I have felt anything you can humanly possibly feel.
• 4:53
  [SPEAKER_01]: Every symptom I went for and got checked.
• 4:57
  [SPEAKER_01]: I mean, we're talking dull chest pain, sharp and sudden chest pain, what feels like flutters.
• 5:04
  [SPEAKER_01]: One time I had a stinging chest pain that went, but it felt like someone was sticking a needle through my chest and it went all the way to my back.
• 5:12
  [SPEAKER_01]: I have felt shortness of breath.
• 5:14
  [SPEAKER_01]: I would feel this random twitch that would physically one time I was working next to a business partner of mine.
• 5:20
  [SPEAKER_01]: And it jolted me so bad that he goes, whoa, is everything okay?
• 5:24
  [SPEAKER_01]: And I'm like, yeah, everything's fine.
• 5:26
  [SPEAKER_01]: Everything's fine, but he didn't know deep down.
• 5:28
  [SPEAKER_01]: Like, no, I am not okay.
• 5:31
  [SPEAKER_01]: And every single symptom, you could possibly think, rapid heart rate, skipped heart beat, ectopic, a really powerful heartbeat where you have to take a deep breath.
• 5:42
  [SPEAKER_01]: And I had gone to the emergency and I also live in a place where the ER is literally a block away from where I live right now.
• 5:50
  [SPEAKER_01]: So it's like, it's kind of like, oh man, it's like you get tempted to do that.
• 5:55
  [SPEAKER_01]: And so
• 5:57
  [SPEAKER_01]: And not only that, but so that was all at twenty twenty two and half of twenty twenty three.
• 6:01
  [SPEAKER_01]: And again, the doctors that we go to sometimes I don't really understand all this stuff.
• 6:06
  [SPEAKER_01]: And so they were doing all the tests and my doctor ended up saying, okay, you know what?
• 6:11
  [SPEAKER_01]: Let's go full on.
• 6:12
  [SPEAKER_01]: Let's do a stress test and an an an echocardiogram.
• 6:18
  [SPEAKER_01]: So not just an EKG, but the echo.
• 6:20
  [SPEAKER_01]: And where I could see the blood vessels in the heart, everything was fine.
• 6:26
  [SPEAKER_01]: And even then, and this is another thing I want to, someone that people to understand, is even when I got the most extensive testing that you could possibly imagine, it still wasn't going away because I had not addressed what was up here.
• 6:39
  [SPEAKER_01]: And then two months later, I once at ER one more time, and literally, I don't know if you remember this story, but I signed up for the mentorship,
• 6:50
  [SPEAKER_01]: from the ER in August of twenty three before I had been seen so understand this anyone watching I am in the ER because I'm scared of because I had some crazy I mean but I specifically remember this one it felt like
• 7:10
  [SPEAKER_01]: someone took a pin or something and like jammed it and twisted it into here and then I felt a couple heart beats and I'm like, oh, that was different.
• 7:17
  [SPEAKER_01]: I got to go.
• 7:18
  [SPEAKER_01]: But even with that, I'm like, deep down, I'm like, no, I know that I'm okay.
• 7:24
  [SPEAKER_01]: And so I was literally on my phone waiting to be seen and I signed up for the program and then I went to be seen.
• 7:30
  [SPEAKER_01]: Of course, everything was fine.
• 7:32
  [SPEAKER_01]: And then that's when I started the program and like,
• 7:36
  [SPEAKER_01]: We've all seen people who have like succeeded right away.
• 7:40
  [SPEAKER_01]: I was not one of those stories because I had let myself be affected for so long and my nervous system couldn't catch up to all of the logic that you guys were talking about on the one-on-ones on the group calls on everything.
• 7:53
  [SPEAKER_01]: And so it took me a while and so
• 7:57
  [SPEAKER_01]: I was in the mentorship and then, you know, with all the resources that you guys recommended on, you know, the books that you would recommend for me personally.
• 8:07
  [SPEAKER_01]: And I want to like make sure that I'm following here, but the, so like I just said, the worst symptoms were all those things.
• 8:13
  [SPEAKER_01]: And once I got into the mentorship, you guys were preaching what the things to do, right, to alarm and to not do the five F's, to not fear, to not flee, to not do any of that.
• 8:25
  [SPEAKER_01]: But when you're in that flow, and as I was just talking with you right before America, I'd be on one on ones with you, and you'd say things that are so simple and so clear, and so like stop focusing and stop ruminating, but when you're in that cycle, like you literally can't feel like your nervousism is not gonna let you deal with logic.
• 8:44
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's like when you're running from a tiger in the wilderness, all the other things are shutting down, and so you're in fight or flight.
• 8:51
  [SPEAKER_01]: And so that's kind of like the basic story, and I can kind of go into the latter half of what that, because this is a three-year process, right?
• 8:58
  [SPEAKER_01]: The first year and a half was me going to hospitals all the time.
• 9:02
  [SPEAKER_01]: This past year and a half, I have not gone to one ER, but that doesn't mean that the symptoms went away.
• 9:08
  [SPEAKER_01]: And so you have anything to interject, feel free, and then I can kind of continue if you want.
• 9:14
  [SPEAKER_00]: I'm just laughing here as you're talking because yeah, I know and listen so many times I get the question whether be group calls, whether be one-on-one calls and people like how do you not get tired of saying the same, oh, I'm sorry, got me all and people are how you not get tired, you know, saying the same thing over and over again and I'm like, well, it is tiring but I also know it's needed because
• 9:41
  [SPEAKER_00]: This is just how brain works and I know what it is to be in your head and everything is spinning and glowing and there were questions and thoughts that I literally like illuminated over thousands of times until I was able to let go.
• 9:54
  [SPEAKER_00]: So that's why I'm not frustrated repeating it and that's why I understand.
• 9:56
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
• 9:57
  [SPEAKER_00]: Some people take short of time.
• 9:58
  [SPEAKER_00]: Some people take one good time for it to click.
• 10:01
  [SPEAKER_00]: At least when it clicks, it clicks.
• 10:03
  [SPEAKER_00]: When is a win?
• 10:04
  [SPEAKER_00]: Let's count it as that, right?
• 10:06
  [SPEAKER_00]: And I just wanted to say, uh, was just just to kind of go through what we usually go through before you signed up with us apart from going to doctors and getting all the tests.
• 10:16
  [SPEAKER_00]: Was there something else that you also try to fix your anxiety?
• 10:20
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yes, so I had actually wanted to join the mentorship or the mentorship before, but I just stopped myself.
• 10:28
  [SPEAKER_01]: And what's funny is I had seen a livestream from Sean, and it's still to this day.
• 10:33
  [SPEAKER_01]: I can remember how he said it when he looked and it was like a livestream that he'd done on YouTube.
• 10:38
  [SPEAKER_01]: And he was just like looking and talking about how
• 10:42
  [SPEAKER_01]: most people this process starts with a panic attack and I'm like, oh, yes, that's what happened.
• 10:46
  [SPEAKER_01]: And then when he was talking about the symptoms and he's talking about, about living life like like you don't like, how are you living life before you got into this cycle?
• 10:57
  [SPEAKER_01]: Because then he like looked in the camera and said, because look, there's nothing wrong with you.
• 11:02
  [SPEAKER_01]: There's nothing wrong with you, right?
• 11:04
  [SPEAKER_01]: Like if you've got in checked, and the doctors are very good nowadays of diagnosing these things, he was kind of laughing.
• 11:10
  [SPEAKER_01]: He's like, there's nothing wrong with you.
• 11:11
  [SPEAKER_01]: And I'm like, and again, it just came this high, but it did not sink deep.
• 11:17
  [SPEAKER_01]: And it took hearing that time after time after time.
• 11:21
  [SPEAKER_01]: And so, but I tried, obviously, I mean, in those early days, especially, right?
• 11:25
  [SPEAKER_01]: I was Googling everything.
• 11:27
  [SPEAKER_01]: I always had my head on a swivel for an ER room.
• 11:31
  [SPEAKER_01]: I was, of course, trying the breathing exercises.
• 11:34
  [SPEAKER_01]: Also, I was on meds for a little while from about, um, spring of twenty twenty two until May of twenty twenty three.
• 11:44
  [SPEAKER_01]: May of twenty twenty three is when I took my last ever at the band.
• 11:47
  [SPEAKER_01]: They wanted, they tried to put me on Prozac or whatever it was that the daily one.
• 11:52
  [SPEAKER_01]: I said, I can't do it.
• 11:53
  [SPEAKER_01]: I can't do it.
• 11:54
  [SPEAKER_01]: I'm not going to do it because I know that I don't need it, right?
• 11:57
  [SPEAKER_01]: But the Attivan was the thing I would just take periodically.
• 12:00
  [SPEAKER_01]: And it got to a point where I was like, I'm not doing that anymore either.
• 12:03
  [SPEAKER_01]: So I'm now over two years from having taken it.
• 12:05
  [SPEAKER_01]: So the meds, the breathing, all the things.
• 12:10
  [SPEAKER_01]: And I think that's kind of another theme that we're going to get into here.
• 12:14
  [SPEAKER_01]: is the more I did, and I'm gonna use your word that you used before we went on.
• 12:19
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's like, I was trying to do all these things to get a certain outcome, and it was only reinforcing things in a worse way.
• 12:28
  [SPEAKER_01]: It was making things worse.
• 12:30
  [SPEAKER_01]: It was making me focus on them more.
• 12:32
  [SPEAKER_01]: If I wanted to go for a walk on the beach, I was doing it because I thought it would calm me down, not just because I wanted to go for a walk on the beach, and because of the leisure that I was going to get out of it.
• 12:44
  [SPEAKER_01]: And every single thing in my days, and this was kind of a foreshadowing to the struggle in the last nine months with insomnia, that I also have broken free of, thank God, that I'll get into here in a little bit.
• 12:57
  [SPEAKER_01]: But all those things I tried, and like, oh, the less, and I'm not saying to load up on caffeine, if it meets you anxious, but oh, the stop taking caffeine, stop doing this, and all these routines and meditations and stuff for me, the more I
• 13:14
  [SPEAKER_01]: did those things, the mort was reinforcing the, that I was afraid of those symptoms.
• 13:21
  [SPEAKER_01]: And it's like, I felt like the nervous system is saying, wow, look at all of the things you're doing, that must mean you're really scared of this thing.
• 13:31
  [SPEAKER_01]: And that's what it breaks through.
• 13:34
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
• 13:35
  [SPEAKER_00]: That's exactly it.
• 13:36
  [SPEAKER_00]: That's the click.
• 13:37
  [SPEAKER_00]: Mind blown, the more we are, the more we're resisting anxiety, the more we are telling our brain.
• 13:42
  [SPEAKER_00]: What is happening right now is dangerous.
• 13:45
  [SPEAKER_00]: I'm scared of it, but your brain doesn't really know because danger shouldn't be coming from inside.
• 13:50
  [SPEAKER_00]: Danger is always outside, right?
• 13:52
  [SPEAKER_00]: So your brain is like it.
• 13:53
  [SPEAKER_00]: Okay, so you're scared.
• 13:54
  [SPEAKER_00]: So we're in danger.
• 13:55
  [SPEAKER_00]: So what's happening?
• 13:56
  [SPEAKER_00]: I don't see a tiger.
• 13:57
  [SPEAKER_00]: I see we're in restaurant or restaurant.
• 13:59
  [SPEAKER_00]: Then you're with them.
• 14:00
  [SPEAKER_00]: Okay, now we're going to panic and restaurants.
• 14:02
  [SPEAKER_00]: Congratulations.
• 14:02
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
• 14:04
  [SPEAKER_01]: So it's like what's funny is that next month we had another birthday dinner.
• 14:08
  [SPEAKER_01]: So after that big panic attack, we had another birthday dinner and I didn't have a panic attack at that dinner, but it was on my mind and guess what, I had they had given you a really low dose of Xanx at that point.
• 14:20
  [SPEAKER_01]: And so I kept that in my pocket because I was like, Oh, well, this just happened.
• 14:25
  [SPEAKER_01]: So it might happen a month later and thank God it didn't, but it was still on my mind.
• 14:30
  [SPEAKER_01]: And so your brain starts to detect, oh, we're in danger now when we are out for these family gatherings because look what just happened, you know, and so yeah.
• 14:41
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, so absolutely.
• 14:43
  [SPEAKER_00]: And okay, so let's kind of jump into the second half to the final click.
• 14:48
  [SPEAKER_00]: Obviously, you were a member, you were in mentorship and you admitted yourself.
• 14:53
  [SPEAKER_00]: It didn't click back then, which we tried our best.
• 14:57
  [SPEAKER_00]: I tried my best, but I think the fact that, you know, a couple months after you left, you were like, hey, guys, head of breakthrough, kind of something stuck.
• 15:06
  [SPEAKER_00]: Something stuck.
• 15:07
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
• 15:08
  [SPEAKER_01]: And I will say this.
• 15:10
  [SPEAKER_01]: Another irony of all this is that I at times wasn't putting in the work to participate as much in the mentorship as I know I should have.
• 15:19
  [SPEAKER_01]: So like in my opinion, it's like if you are going to join like you get in and you immerse
• 15:27
  [SPEAKER_01]: And then that's when the fastest breakthroughs are going to happen because if you did like I did, where you let it go and then you join every now and then, but then you just don't do anything and then you just and then all within three months later, I'll get on another Monday night call.
• 15:42
  [SPEAKER_01]: No, like, I feel like you get in and you get immersed and then you, and then once it's over, you're good and you live your life.
• 15:52
  [SPEAKER_01]: And so like, everything, every time I would get on a call, I was like, whoa, and it was so helpful to be on a call with other people because truth be told.
• 16:03
  [SPEAKER_01]: When we are going through this, most people around us are not going, oh, we at least don't know that they're going through this.
• 16:08
  [SPEAKER_01]: But if we have close friends and family that we are around, we know that they're not going through this.
• 16:13
  [SPEAKER_01]: And they just can't understand, right?
• 16:16
  [SPEAKER_01]: And I've had really good friends of mine where I would tell them what was going on and they're like, man, I'm really sorry about that.
• 16:22
  [SPEAKER_01]: But they can't truly empathize that it's all day, every day.
• 16:29
  [SPEAKER_01]: And like, one thing I would tell someone too is like, you're not weak.
• 16:33
  [SPEAKER_01]: If you're going through this, you're not weak.
• 16:35
  [SPEAKER_01]: If anything, you're probably stronger because most people are just going throughout their days with all the normal struggles of life.
• 16:43
  [SPEAKER_01]: without being in fighter flight.
• 16:46
  [SPEAKER_01]: But you are having to do life with it.
• 16:49
  [SPEAKER_01]: So when you come out of it, you're going to be way stronger and it's going to be way better.
• 16:53
  [SPEAKER_01]: And so the advice I would have is like you get
• 16:59
  [SPEAKER_01]: you take the advice and you implement it with force and you try to move on with your life as fast as possible once you understand the core concepts.
• 17:10
  [SPEAKER_01]: You don't do what I did where it took a year and a half to really like
• 17:17
  [SPEAKER_01]: to apply things and then you fall off and then you don't like and then you just like, oh, it'll it'll take care of itself.
• 17:24
  [SPEAKER_01]: No, you have to like steer your mind in the right principles and every time I get on the call, I'm like, oh, this makes so much sense.
• 17:32
  [SPEAKER_01]: This makes so much sense.
• 17:33
  [SPEAKER_01]: And then what I'll say in a two about when you see other people on the call with you and if you saw this person walking down the street, you wouldn't think that this person would be going through something and it's just kind of
• 17:44
  [SPEAKER_01]: like good to know that you're not alone in this and you see other people that are going through it and it's like, oh, like, and then you can see actually in this another, like, key benefit key thing is like, you would see other people like struggling with something and you can see the flaw in their thinking.
• 18:03
  [SPEAKER_01]: But when you are having that problem,
• 18:07
  [SPEAKER_01]: You don't see the flaw in your thinking.
• 18:08
  [SPEAKER_01]: Like you're like, oh, that person shouldn't be doing that or thinking that way.
• 18:12
  [SPEAKER_01]: And I'm like, oh dang, I've been doing that.
• 18:14
  [SPEAKER_01]: You know, and so yeah.
• 18:17
  [SPEAKER_00]: Clay, you have no idea how happy you're making me because you are saying all the right things.
• 18:22
  [SPEAKER_00]: And even though you're admitting that you weren't participating the way we're supposed to.
• 18:26
  [SPEAKER_00]: Exactly.
• 18:27
  [SPEAKER_00]: People that do best and that really recover the fastest, especially late.
• 18:30
  [SPEAKER_00]: They with all the information we have and all the guidance we have.
• 18:33
  [SPEAKER_00]: We're seeing people recovering way faster.
• 18:35
  [SPEAKER_00]: Like, I thought I was fast, right?
• 18:37
  [SPEAKER_00]: Like, even a half, good job.
• 18:38
  [SPEAKER_00]: And now I see people being like, hey, three months, you know, I don't want to do great symptoms.
• 18:43
  [SPEAKER_00]: So there, yeah, but they don't bother me.
• 18:45
  [SPEAKER_00]: And I'm like,
• 18:46
  [SPEAKER_00]: How did you get to that mindset so fast?
• 18:48
  [SPEAKER_00]: It took me so long time.
• 18:51
  [SPEAKER_00]: But you're staying all the right thing.
• 18:52
  [SPEAKER_00]: So yeah, participation is important because joining a program doesn't mean you're solving something.
• 18:58
  [SPEAKER_00]: It gives you that feeling like you're solving something, but participation and application.
• 19:03
  [SPEAKER_00]: Very important.
• 19:05
  [SPEAKER_00]: But despite the fact that you weren't participating as much as you should have, now you're having the exact right mindset and it's clicking.
• 19:12
  [SPEAKER_00]: I can hear it because now you're talking like me, like I would on a book call.
• 19:17
  [SPEAKER_01]: yeah exactly yeah well what's funny is like and the little nuggets you like I never forgot things like there was one time I was it was a Kaylee was on the call and I was like and I was talking to her specifically and she was saying like because again it's just
• 19:35
  [SPEAKER_01]: anyone watching this to like when you come out of this mentally you're gonna be on just a different level and have so many tools to battle anything that comes in life because like I was sitting there and thinking oh no the longer this is going on the more you worry and she's like the longer your nervous system is in that state it's not like now yes a lot of my
• 19:59
  [SPEAKER_01]: recovery has happened in these last few months when a few concepts finally clicked, but it was a slow process.
• 20:07
  [SPEAKER_01]: For that first year and a half, I was always focused on ERs, ERs, ERs, ERs, where am I going to do?
• 20:13
  [SPEAKER_01]: I need to stop doing this.
• 20:14
  [SPEAKER_01]: I need to stop doing that.
• 20:16
  [SPEAKER_01]: And then the last year and a half, I didn't see one doctor, not one.
• 20:21
  [SPEAKER_01]: But that doesn't mean my symptoms went away.
• 20:22
  [SPEAKER_01]: I was still frustrated by them and I was still just like not doing well.
• 20:28
  [SPEAKER_01]: And yes, but and I remember being specifically on a call with you and I'm like, you know, slowly.
• 20:34
  [SPEAKER_01]: things are coming back and I honestly now in retrospect, I think I may have also been dealing without knowing it some de-realization because I was walking my dogs one time and I just got a whiff of grass that I'm like, whoa, like
• 20:52
  [SPEAKER_01]: I don't think I smelled that smell in a long time.
• 20:55
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's like when you come out of that fighter flight sometimes you like, whoa, what's going on?
• 20:59
  [SPEAKER_01]: I finally feel like a human being and a couple months ago in May I was walking here on the bay.
• 21:06
  [SPEAKER_01]: And I literally got a whiff of sea water that made me like almost emotional because I was like, whoa, I feel like I'm being taken back to when I was like a kid in the nineties going to the beach.
• 21:19
  [SPEAKER_01]: Like I had flashbacks of like what it was like to experience senses normally.
• 21:25
  [SPEAKER_01]: And so yeah, it's just, it's been a long journey.
• 21:30
  [SPEAKER_01]: So it takes a while and the longer you're in it,
• 21:34
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yes, it is challenging, but once you start to get a couple things, the breakthroughs happen really quickly too.
• 21:40
  [SPEAKER_00]: Okay, so now we already went through how it started, what you did when you joined your worst symptoms, obviously panic attacks, chest symptoms, insomnia, all of that.
• 21:53
  [SPEAKER_00]: So now tell me, how you're doing right now, compared to before you joined, and what were the breakthroughs then?
• 22:00
  [SPEAKER_00]: What, what click would finally change?
• 22:03
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yes, so what really finally changes, I was telling you before this, but like, I felt like this calendar year was like, anxiety's last stand.
• 22:12
  [SPEAKER_01]: It was throwing a lot of things at me.
• 22:15
  [SPEAKER_01]: And these past nine months, not only was I experiencing some still chest pains, periodically, well, every day pretty much, but I was kind of just mentally over it.
• 22:24
  [SPEAKER_01]: I was like, you know what, it's going to go when it's going to go.
• 22:26
  [SPEAKER_01]: And I had a few things that I was like fear mongering myself about, but I was like,
• 22:32
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's fine.
• 22:33
  [SPEAKER_01]: Again, once you start, once your brain is like experienced so many of these like fall like these fear-monger things, you're just like, okay, all right, fine.
• 22:44
  [SPEAKER_01]: Be stressed about it for a day and then you're done, right?
• 22:46
  [SPEAKER_01]: But the sleep was something because my chest pain wasn't debilitating me throughout my day.
• 22:52
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, it was annoying.
• 22:53
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, it was scary at times.
• 22:55
  [SPEAKER_01]: But as well, though, sleep can really affect your days.
• 22:58
  [SPEAKER_01]: And if you are someone who's struggling with sleep, I want to say that I empathize with you greatly.
• 23:02
  [SPEAKER_01]: These last nine months and finally, these last few weeks.
• 23:05
  [SPEAKER_01]: And again, this is the type of experience where once you hit a breakthrough, a few breakthroughs, the positive things start coming very quickly because really starting in like October, November,
• 23:18
  [SPEAKER_01]: maybe around there right last eight nine months or so I would be waking up in the middle of the night I fall asleep very easily but I will oftentimes wake up in the middle of the night but for a long time I would be able to go right back to sleep right but starting in the back part of last year towards the end of last year I started waking up really early and not always being able to go back to sleep right and it started by
• 23:43
  [SPEAKER_01]: I stay awake for another hour and a half and then I go back to sleep until it's time to wake up.
• 23:48
  [SPEAKER_01]: But this calendar year waking up at one thirty two a.m.
• 23:53
  [SPEAKER_01]: three a.m.
• 23:54
  [SPEAKER_01]: and it got so bad to where I would say more than sixty percent of my days.
• 24:01
  [SPEAKER_01]: I was pretty much operating waking up and staying up at those times because I would wake up at those times.
• 24:09
  [SPEAKER_01]: And I couldn't go back to sleep and I was scared.
• 24:12
  [SPEAKER_01]: And here's where the final, final breakthrough of everything clicked.
• 24:16
  [SPEAKER_01]: Because as I told you, I had been kind of over the chest of for a while, but this brought it all home, the insomnia thing.
• 24:24
  [SPEAKER_01]: And so I'm sitting there and I'm starting to try to look up all of these solutions for insomnia.
• 24:29
  [SPEAKER_01]: I know deep down that I shouldn't be trying to do things, right?
• 24:33
  [SPEAKER_01]: But sleep feels like something you can kind of control.
• 24:36
  [SPEAKER_01]: When you have unexplained symptoms,
• 24:38
  [SPEAKER_01]: from a doctor, doctors like, well, I don't see anything.
• 24:42
  [SPEAKER_01]: And okay, you at least kind of have some relief.
• 24:45
  [SPEAKER_01]: Well, I got the test, but when you sleep bad, you feel it, your energy is low, your mood is bad.
• 24:50
  [SPEAKER_01]: Everything is worse, right?
• 24:53
  [SPEAKER_01]: And so for me, what I started doing is I started trying all these things.
• 24:57
  [SPEAKER_01]: And one of the resources you guys recommend is a book by it's called At Last A Life.
• 25:03
  [SPEAKER_01]: And there's a chapter called Give Up The Fight.
• 25:06
  [SPEAKER_01]: And it's what you guys talk about all the time.
• 25:08
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's like, it's so it doesn't really click on our brains, but it's like, the more you do to try to stop these things, the worse it's going to be.
• 25:18
  [SPEAKER_01]: And when it comes to anxiety, and when it comes to anything fear based, like sleep,
• 25:23
  [SPEAKER_01]: It makes it worse.
• 25:23
  [SPEAKER_01]: So the breakthrough that I had really within the last three, three, four weeks is I really started trying everything with sleep.
• 25:31
  [SPEAKER_01]: I realized that I was doing about ten different things in my day to try to force sleep at night.
• 25:38
  [SPEAKER_01]: I'm going to keep caffeine under a hundred milligrams.
• 25:40
  [SPEAKER_01]: I am going to stop caffeine at ten a.m.
• 25:45
  [SPEAKER_01]: I am going to start dimming the lights in the house at about seven, eight p.m.
• 25:48
  [SPEAKER_01]: I'm going to wear my blue blockers in the evening.
• 25:51
  [SPEAKER_01]: I'm not going to drink water past a certain time.
• 25:53
  [SPEAKER_01]: And I'm going to play with certain meals and melatonin and some of this and some of that.
• 25:58
  [SPEAKER_01]: And guess what?
• 25:59
  [SPEAKER_01]: None of it helped me because all day.
• 26:03
  [SPEAKER_01]: I was just focused and worry of all my gosh, I'm going to get up at two o'clock again and sure enough I did and then you hear about all these techniques.
• 26:13
  [SPEAKER_01]: Okay, well, what you need to do then is you immediately need to get out of bed and I really hope to set someone free.
• 26:21
  [SPEAKER_01]: You need to immediately get out of bed.
• 26:23
  [SPEAKER_01]: and go to a different room, so your brain doesn't associate your bed with rolling around and being frustrated.
• 26:30
  [SPEAKER_01]: So what would I do?
• 26:31
  [SPEAKER_01]: Oh, it's two o'clock.
• 26:32
  [SPEAKER_01]: Okay, let me get up.
• 26:33
  [SPEAKER_01]: I'm gonna go read, but then I start worrying of, oh, well wait, I'm not getting sleepy.
• 26:40
  [SPEAKER_01]: So I'm just like staying up all night and I don't want to go back to bed because the very sleep restrictions strategy, again, I know it's worked for some people,
• 26:53
  [SPEAKER_01]: But for me, it was actually making it even more things to think about.
• 26:57
  [SPEAKER_01]: Oh, well, how many hours did I get?
• 27:00
  [SPEAKER_01]: How many, you know, I'm gonna take some water once a second.
• 27:07
  [SPEAKER_01]: Okay, we're gonna restart.
• 27:09
  [SPEAKER_01]: So how many hours am I getting?
• 27:13
  [SPEAKER_01]: How many hours did I miss out on?
• 27:15
  [SPEAKER_01]: How do I feel all that kind of stuff?
• 27:19
  [SPEAKER_01]: And it finally clicked.
• 27:21
  [SPEAKER_01]: where I was like, oh, all of these things I'm doing is reinforcing about how scared of insomnia I am.
• 27:33
  [SPEAKER_01]: And then as I was telling you, the information overload that you see online, all the fear-mongering articles about sleep is if you don't get this amount of sleep, you're screwed.
• 27:46
  [SPEAKER_01]: or your brain starts to do all this.
• 27:48
  [SPEAKER_01]: Your health is gonna deteriorate.
• 27:51
  [SPEAKER_01]: And I would get to a point to where it was just too much.
• 27:55
  [SPEAKER_01]: And I finally, all the sleep hygiene stuff and all of the stuff, I finally said, screw it all.
• 28:03
  [SPEAKER_01]: I don't care anymore.
• 28:05
  [SPEAKER_01]: And I don't know if you would classify this as paradoxical intention, but I started, again, this is not always for the light of heart,
• 28:14
  [SPEAKER_01]: but for whatever, but I started doing all the opposite things.
• 28:20
  [SPEAKER_01]: I started saying screw the caffeine limit.
• 28:23
  [SPEAKER_01]: And here's the other thing is that you genuinely have to be, you genuinely have to say screw it all.
• 28:31
  [SPEAKER_01]: Instead of just like, well, I'm gonna do this, it's just such a game, right?
• 28:35
  [SPEAKER_01]: So I started saying, forget the caffeine limit.
• 28:38
  [SPEAKER_01]: forget the blue.
• 28:39
  [SPEAKER_01]: I haven't worn my blue blockers in weeks and I've been sleeping better than I ever have because what was going on here was far more important than anything physical.
• 28:48
  [SPEAKER_01]: I have gotten I'm in my thirties.
• 28:51
  [SPEAKER_01]: I have gotten thousands of days of amazing sleep.
• 28:56
  [SPEAKER_01]: Not caring about blue light at night, not caring about caffeine, not caring about this and that and oh my gosh, I better not associate my bed with poor sleep.
• 29:08
  [SPEAKER_01]: I got far, I got way more worse nights trying to strategize about how to control and force sleep.
• 29:18
  [SPEAKER_01]: And I heard someone say, like sleep is not something that you control.
• 29:23
  [SPEAKER_01]: Now, so circling it all back is that's breakthrough within Somnia, gave me the wreck, like everything has been better since because what you guys say every time, finally clicked.
• 29:39
  [SPEAKER_01]: give up and I guess you can call it acceptance but the way Paul David says is like give up the fight.
• 29:49
  [SPEAKER_01]: Stop fighting and I wish I could just drill that into everyone because for years it was me it was me who would hear it and it's like
• 30:00
  [SPEAKER_01]: And I hear people on the group calls that we would do too.
• 30:02
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's like, I could feel it not resonating with them.
• 30:07
  [SPEAKER_01]: And I empathize because when you're in the cycle and when you're in fight or flight, it's so challenging to take logic.
• 30:15
  [SPEAKER_01]: And so that was like the big breakthroughs in the past few weeks was giving up that fight.
• 30:21
  [SPEAKER_01]: And once I did that,
• 30:24
  [SPEAKER_01]: And then one quick example is a few weeks ago, I had a bunch of family members staying here at my house.
• 30:29
  [SPEAKER_01]: And this is when I really started to break a couple days when I was really starting to have my big breakthroughs.
• 30:37
  [SPEAKER_01]: I had a shot of espresso with my cousins at seven PM.
• 30:40
  [SPEAKER_01]: Something just a week prior, I would have never done.
• 30:45
  [SPEAKER_01]: But I did it.
• 30:46
  [SPEAKER_01]: And I was like, you know what, I want the shot of espresso after dinner?
• 30:49
  [SPEAKER_01]: Because I want it.
• 30:51
  [SPEAKER_01]: And so,
• 30:52
  [SPEAKER_01]: I realized that all of these things I was doing, the walks I was taking, the breathing things I was doing, it was all for a certain outcome.
• 31:01
  [SPEAKER_01]: But when I do them just to do them and not worry about the outcome, it's like, ah, everything is better.
• 31:11
  [SPEAKER_01]: And so that's some of the biggest, some of the biggest breakthroughs that I had.
• 31:17
  [SPEAKER_00]: I love it because everything you said, that's exactly the solution, giving up the fight and you said you can call it acceptance, but like it's giving up the fight and the thing in one thing I'm always saying, it's like, okay, if you can't grab your head around acceptance, try not resistance.
• 31:33
  [SPEAKER_00]: Because, you know, if you remove resistance, then you're accepting.
• 31:37
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yes.
• 31:38
  [SPEAKER_00]: If you're not fighting it, right?
• 31:39
  [SPEAKER_00]: So, yeah, it is exactly that.
• 31:42
  [SPEAKER_00]: And, you know, I think for you, what kind of like kind of broad that click on is, I always say people either apply.
• 31:51
  [SPEAKER_00]: Sea results and then that kind of carries them over for the rest of the journey because they apply.
• 31:56
  [SPEAKER_00]: They really give it a chance.
• 31:57
  [SPEAKER_00]: They start seeing results.
• 31:58
  [SPEAKER_00]: But application requires consistency, which you were missing at the start.
• 32:02
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yes.
• 32:03
  [SPEAKER_00]: So they either apply Sea results and that carries them to the end or they get tired fighting.
• 32:11
  [SPEAKER_00]: It just gets too much and they give up.
• 32:14
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, it's like it's funny because I didn't give up in a bad way.
• 32:18
  [SPEAKER_01]: I just gave up I was like I was like
• 32:22
  [SPEAKER_01]: I'm done with all this fighting.
• 32:23
  [SPEAKER_01]: And now when I have an intrusive thought, I'm like, okay, that's fine.
• 32:27
  [SPEAKER_01]: That's funny.
• 32:28
  [SPEAKER_01]: Okay, what now?
• 32:30
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's great.
• 32:31
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's just like the shield that you get.
• 32:33
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's just amazing.
• 32:35
  [SPEAKER_01]: And so there were a lot of mistakes.
• 32:39
  [SPEAKER_01]: And there was like, as we've talked about, the fearing it.
• 32:44
  [SPEAKER_01]: And the resisting trying to do all of these things, it just always, always made it worse.
• 32:50
  [SPEAKER_01]: And I, and so a couple of the, one of the notes I was taking while I already said headset it, but it's like, there's not something wrong with you.
• 33:01
  [SPEAKER_01]: And it's like, and you're not weak a lot.
• 33:05
  [SPEAKER_01]: I think a lot of things too is I would always get so frustrated.
• 33:08
  [SPEAKER_01]: I'm walking around and I see people just enjoying life and they're on the beach and I'm like, oh my gosh, and this is really destructive thinking, but
• 33:16
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's like, I bet you that person is not struggling with chest pain right now.
• 33:21
  [SPEAKER_01]: That's like, what was that doing for me?
• 33:23
  [SPEAKER_01]: Like, what was that doing for me?
• 33:26
  [SPEAKER_01]: And like, I'm reading this book called Same as Ever.
• 33:29
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's an amazing book.
• 33:30
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's not really anxiety related.
• 33:31
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's about life.
• 33:32
  [SPEAKER_01]: But he says like, if you're not willing to do a one hundred percent wholesale swap with that person's life, don't wish that like, oh, you wish you had no symptoms like them.
• 33:44
  [SPEAKER_01]: Okay.
• 33:44
  [SPEAKER_01]: Well,
• 33:46
  [SPEAKER_01]: then you're probably, like, don't wish that because there are many things that they're struggling with that you would rather have your life any day of the week.
• 33:56
  [SPEAKER_01]: And so that was just, you know, thinking in those ways and then I actually brought that to the call one time and you guys were talking about how destructive that is and the compares and comparing yourself to what other people are going through.
• 34:08
  [SPEAKER_01]: You don't know what other people are going through.
• 34:09
  [SPEAKER_01]: Half the people on these coaching calls, you're like, whoa, it can happen to that person, it can happen to that person, it can happen to that person, that's crazy.
• 34:16
  [SPEAKER_01]: And then, you know, for me also another amazing book I read was a man search for meaning.
• 34:23
  [SPEAKER_01]: That was just an incredible incredible book.
• 34:26
  [SPEAKER_01]: Not really about anxiety, but he does talk about some of these things and actually about paradoxical intention where he'll say how we say, I'm not sure the phrase you use, but you said reverse resistance or something like do the opposite of resist.
• 34:39
  [SPEAKER_01]: So for me, I was doing all these rules with sleep.
• 34:43
  [SPEAKER_01]: Less than a hundred milligrams caffeine cut off caffeine at ten a.m.
• 34:46
  [SPEAKER_01]: Now I'm like, and again, caffeine consumption is all on your own with your own preference, whatever, but for me, I'm like, okay, I'm gonna just have three or four cups of coffee throughout the day as it might see, and you know what?
• 35:00
  [SPEAKER_01]: I don't care about what time it is, and also I stopped caring about what time I would fall asleep too.
• 35:04
  [SPEAKER_01]: So you always hear all the
• 35:07
  [SPEAKER_01]: that your bedtime is the most important appointment that you need to make with yourself.
• 35:11
  [SPEAKER_01]: So what did I start doing?
• 35:12
  [SPEAKER_01]: I started being like, oh my gosh, it's starting to get to take close to TMPM online.
• 35:17
  [SPEAKER_01]: I'm still out right now with friends.
• 35:18
  [SPEAKER_01]: This is not going to be good.
• 35:20
  [SPEAKER_01]: And guess what?
• 35:22
  [SPEAKER_01]: It wasn't good, but it had nothing to do with me being out late.
• 35:26
  [SPEAKER_01]: It had everything to do with me mentally.
• 35:29
  [SPEAKER_01]: Wearing about it.
• 35:30
  [SPEAKER_01]: And so I just, I wish there was a way I get through it, but it's like,
• 35:36
  [SPEAKER_01]: give up the fight, like truly, truly, when I broke through with this leaping, it really wrapped it all, brought it all home, where I'm like, oh, everything in my day, I'm doing to try to produce an outcome.
• 35:51
  [SPEAKER_01]: And here's another thing that you and I were talking about right before, right?
• 35:54
  [SPEAKER_01]: All of our lives, we were taught that you have to do something in order to fix something, right?
• 35:59
  [SPEAKER_01]: Look.
• 36:00
  [SPEAKER_01]: If you want to grow a business or if you want to work out hard and you want to build whatever and you want to or build a deck, you have to go do something.
• 36:08
  [SPEAKER_01]: You have to get the raw materials and do these things.
• 36:12
  [SPEAKER_01]: But when it comes to our brains and our fear and anxiety and things like insomnia, it's the opposite.
• 36:20
  [SPEAKER_01]: The less you physically try to do and the irony of this all is in at last a life,
• 36:29
  [SPEAKER_01]: Keep in mind, this is a book about anxiety.
• 36:33
  [SPEAKER_01]: He, what towards the end of the book, he says, okay.
• 36:37
  [SPEAKER_01]: Now, stop reading books about anxiety.
• 36:43
  [SPEAKER_01]: He's like, I know this might seem crazy, but he's like, you live your life as if you don't struggle with anxiety.
• 36:50
  [SPEAKER_01]: And people who don't struggle with anxiety don't read books.
• 36:52
  [SPEAKER_01]: Now, maybe if it's a part of your profession or whatever, then okay.
• 36:57
  [SPEAKER_01]: other people they live and that's why honestly the title alone is powerful to me and I think about it all the time at last a life because I know what it's like now like when I walk my dogs I'm like
• 37:10
  [SPEAKER_01]: Like this is what life is supposed to feel like.
• 37:12
  [SPEAKER_01]: And again, by the way, I still feel symptoms.
• 37:16
  [SPEAKER_01]: I still get symptoms.
• 37:17
  [SPEAKER_01]: My sleep is still not always perfect.
• 37:19
  [SPEAKER_01]: But another thing you guys would always say is don't measure your success by the level of your symptoms.
• 37:25
  [SPEAKER_01]: And that's the breakthrough too.
• 37:27
  [SPEAKER_01]: Is that I always thought when I would watch these is, oh my God, I bet you one day I'll do those when I don't have any symptoms.
• 37:34
  [SPEAKER_01]: But no, it's just a matter of time because it's the reaction and the reality that you realize about your symptoms.
• 37:42
  [SPEAKER_01]: I'm like, oh, oh, like that's, I, okay, I get it.
• 37:46
  [SPEAKER_01]: I get it.
• 37:47
  [SPEAKER_01]: So.
• 37:50
  [SPEAKER_00]: This is, this is great.
• 37:52
  [SPEAKER_00]: This is great.
• 37:52
  [SPEAKER_00]: And I think actually out of the questions, we have you kind of covered a little bit with each, but I'm still going to repeat them and you can just point out the important stuff.
• 38:00
  [SPEAKER_00]: Okay.
• 38:01
  [SPEAKER_00]: So I want to ask, would you experiencing all this going through this journey still not out of rules, but also you want to.
• 38:09
  [SPEAKER_00]: Once the mindset is there and the knowledge is there, no one can take away that from you.
• 38:13
  [SPEAKER_00]: And then it really is just a matter of time.
• 38:15
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's just like, we didn't get sensitized overnight.
• 38:17
  [SPEAKER_00]: We're not going to de-sensitize over this.
• 38:19
  [SPEAKER_00]: But if you have the right mindset, you're responding properly, which means not fighting it, leaving it alone.
• 38:24
  [SPEAKER_00]: Because the only way to win this battle is to stop fighting it.
• 38:29
  [SPEAKER_00]: Walk away from it.
• 38:31
  [SPEAKER_00]: So it's a matter of time.
• 38:33
  [SPEAKER_00]: But so what would you tell someone who is in the exact same shoes as you were before you found the solution before you found us when you don't know what's happening and looking for solutions would be your advice to those people.
• 38:47
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, you know, it's been such a long journey that sometimes I don't even remember what it was like in those early days.
• 38:55
  [SPEAKER_01]: And I can understand like how scary it can be right when it happens.
• 39:02
  [SPEAKER_01]: But it's to do kind of what we've been talking about, which is to
• 39:08
  [SPEAKER_01]: Figure out how to let go of control as fast as possible and understand that the Googling and the wondering and the trying to figure out what's wrong with you is the very thing that's keeping it alive on one of the other mentorship calls.
• 39:34
  [SPEAKER_01]: This is probably last year.
• 39:36
  [SPEAKER_01]: There was a girl on the call that I don't remember what symptoms she was going through, but she had also said that at one point in her life, she had a fear of spiders, but she had gotten over it for I don't remember the exact thing that happened, but I bred up on the call.
• 39:55
  [SPEAKER_01]: I was like, you know what's funny because
• 39:58
  [SPEAKER_01]: The exact thing that you did to overcome your fear of spiders is the exact thing that will make this go away.
• 40:08
  [SPEAKER_01]: And that resonated with me in a big way because there were some symptoms that I got along this journey that didn't stick with me.
• 40:18
  [SPEAKER_01]: And so for instance, in those early days, it was the chest pain that I was most worried about.
• 40:23
  [SPEAKER_01]: But I would also at times feel like weird like numbness, like down my leg and in my arms.
• 40:31
  [SPEAKER_01]: But for whatever reason, I wasn't scared of those things.
• 40:34
  [SPEAKER_01]: I would also get some weird headaches.
• 40:37
  [SPEAKER_01]: I wasn't scared of those for whatever reason.
• 40:40
  [SPEAKER_01]: And those went away and I was like, oh, I've already defeated anxiety in different arenas, just not this one.
• 40:50
  [SPEAKER_01]: And so for me, it's just figuring out as fast as you can.
• 40:57
  [SPEAKER_01]: how to give up control and truly, truly let go.
• 41:04
  [SPEAKER_01]: And plug into this YouTube channel and everything that you guys do because you guys really get it.
• 41:13
  [SPEAKER_01]: I've seen other advice where it's like, oh man, that's now having gone through this.
• 41:17
  [SPEAKER_01]: That's probably not the best thing.
• 41:19
  [SPEAKER_01]: And you have people
• 41:22
  [SPEAKER_01]: You know, who recommending like all of these things, but like you guys actually have like a system to where it's like it's easy to remember.
• 41:29
  [SPEAKER_01]: And it's like like the desensitization blueprint was also very, very helpful for me.
• 41:35
  [SPEAKER_01]: And as you guys always say, it's like as long as you've gotten things checked out.
• 41:41
  [SPEAKER_01]: Now you figure out if you want to understand why it's happening, which is what you guys do a great job of explaining to.
• 41:48
  [SPEAKER_01]: And then giving up, giving up that control.
• 41:50
  [SPEAKER_01]: And it's like, I now know what you're talking about.
• 41:53
  [SPEAKER_01]: We're repeating the same thing over and over because it's so simple.
• 41:57
  [SPEAKER_01]: But it's not easy to implement when you're in that state of a fight or flight.
• 42:04
  [SPEAKER_01]: There's another book where there's an example of a guy who
• 42:08
  [SPEAKER_01]: sees someone who he or he sees what he thinks is a bear in the wild.
• 42:13
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's actually an experiment that they did a long time ago.
• 42:16
  [SPEAKER_01]: The book is called Psycho Cybernetics, but but it was just a man dressed up in a bear outfit, but the guy's vital signs were increasing as if it was a real bear.
• 42:30
  [SPEAKER_01]: And so it's just crazy to me that our nervous systems and our brains can speed up certain physical processes when we think one thing.
• 42:39
  [SPEAKER_01]: I was walking up some stairs yesterday and the bottom flat stair had the same design as the actual stairs.
• 42:48
  [SPEAKER_01]: So I stepped up in like almost fell and I was like, oh, I thought there was a stair there.
• 42:55
  [SPEAKER_01]: So naturally, I changed physically what I was doing.
• 42:59
  [SPEAKER_01]: And I'm like, that's just another parallel.
• 43:01
  [SPEAKER_01]: There are so many things that are like that.
• 43:03
  [SPEAKER_01]: We need to remember that this is the same thing.
• 43:07
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, actually the thing is that our brains, no matter how smart and how powerful they are, and they manage to keep us alive, and do all those things that, like, you wouldn't be able to take care of yourself consciously, right?
• 43:20
  [SPEAKER_00]: Like blinking, swallowing, you're pumping your lungs, breathing.
• 43:24
  [SPEAKER_00]: Our brain can do all of that, but then at the same time, they get fooled so easily.
• 43:32
  [SPEAKER_00]: Oh, easily.
• 43:33
  [SPEAKER_00]: In thinking your in danger into thinking so many things, I always talk about for example how the lizard part of our brain doesn't really differentiate between real and perceived.
• 43:46
  [SPEAKER_00]: There is no differentiation between past, present, and future.
• 43:49
  [SPEAKER_00]: If you think about being attacked by a bear and you kind of like we playing the thought in your mind and you almost can see it, your body starts feeling as if the bear was attacking you right now, even though it never happened.
• 44:00
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's just maybe you saw it in the movie, right, or whatever.
• 44:04
  [SPEAKER_00]: So our brains are so powerful and so smart, but at the same time, they're so dumb.
• 44:10
  [SPEAKER_00]: And it's so important to learn how your brain works, because when you know how your brain works, then you can start working with it and no longer against it.
• 44:18
  [SPEAKER_00]: Because that's where the anxiety is coming from.
• 44:20
  [SPEAKER_00]: You're working against your brain.
• 44:22
  [SPEAKER_00]: You're fighting your own brain, you're fighting yourself.
• 44:25
  [SPEAKER_00]: And then the problem is you can run away from a bear, but you can't run away from your own mind.
• 44:31
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yes, yes, not a percent.
• 44:34
  [SPEAKER_00]: Okay, so next thing, what is for you?
• 44:38
  [SPEAKER_00]: And again, you already said so many good advice.
• 44:41
  [SPEAKER_00]: So, and such nuggets, but what do you think is the most important thing that anxiety and the recovery talking?
• 44:49
  [SPEAKER_01]: Well, it taught me a lot of things.
• 44:51
  [SPEAKER_01]: So I won't kind of like rehash everything I just said, but it taught me many things.
• 44:55
  [SPEAKER_01]: Number one is like,
• 45:00
  [SPEAKER_01]: the thing again where you are not weak if this happened to you.
• 45:05
  [SPEAKER_01]: I would also compare myself to other people.
• 45:06
  [SPEAKER_01]: I mean, like, man, that person.
• 45:08
  [SPEAKER_01]: No, we got the role of the dice to whatever reason that event threw us into a physical state of fight or flight and a fear.
• 45:20
  [SPEAKER_01]: And it takes a lot to get out of that.
• 45:22
  [SPEAKER_01]: The base they taught me is that you're not weak.
• 45:26
  [SPEAKER_01]: You just got this is the hand you got dealt and think of their other hands that you probably didn't get dealt.
• 45:33
  [SPEAKER_01]: It taught me to like really just appreciate when things are going well, you know, like as I say, like sometimes I'll just take walks and what I've been trying to do lately and again, not for any anxiety purposes, but
• 45:52
  [SPEAKER_01]: going on walks without my phone or having any stimulation or music and just walking.
• 45:59
  [SPEAKER_01]: And you get to think about a lot of things in life.
• 46:02
  [SPEAKER_01]: And it's just thinking about everything that you're grateful for and your friends and family and it's like so awesome.
• 46:11
  [SPEAKER_01]: And I'm like, thank you, like God that I have all these people in my life, all these things to be grateful for.
• 46:18
  [SPEAKER_01]: And I know that these struggles are here.
• 46:21
  [SPEAKER_01]: But things could be worse in different ways that I'm not even acknowledging.
• 46:27
  [SPEAKER_01]: And so, and it's also, it taught me the power of our subconscious minds and what that can go through and understanding that it's going to take time.
• 46:40
  [SPEAKER_01]: Like, yes, when certain breakthroughs happen, it's like,
• 46:45
  [SPEAKER_01]: It goes, but it doesn't mean you don't take steps back just this morning.
• 46:49
  [SPEAKER_01]: I actually I actually woke up pretty early.
• 46:51
  [SPEAKER_01]: I'll be able to go back to sleep again, but I was up for about good like thirty five, forty minutes now.
• 46:57
  [SPEAKER_01]: I do have a trip coming up.
• 46:58
  [SPEAKER_01]: I'm leaving tomorrow.
• 46:59
  [SPEAKER_01]: So I have a lot of things going, but that was another another lesson.
• 47:03
  [SPEAKER_01]: We're always like
• 47:05
  [SPEAKER_01]: Okay, just because things don't go perfect, just because I have truly like one this bout with anxiety, but also with insomnia doesn't mean that I'm never going to have a bad night asleep again.
• 47:18
  [SPEAKER_01]: It doesn't mean that I'm never going to feel chest pain again.
• 47:20
  [SPEAKER_01]: It doesn't mean that I'm not going to have an ectopic heartbeat or that I'm going to do all this stuff like
• 47:27
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's okay, just like every other human experiences, all these other people that we think, oh my gosh, they're not in the cycle.
• 47:36
  [SPEAKER_01]: They all deal with anxiety too.
• 47:38
  [SPEAKER_01]: And so it's understanding that and I was like, okay, so there's nothing wrong with me.
• 47:44
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's just my nervous system reacted a little bit different.
• 47:47
  [SPEAKER_01]: But again, in man search for meaning, he's like, find meaning in that suffering, you are now going to be so much stronger to deal, have the tools to deal with all of these things that are coming in your life because that you just went through this.
• 48:06
  [SPEAKER_01]: There's an example in that book, man search for meaning where a guy comes to him and he was feeling a lot of grief, a lot of grief because his wife had passed away.
• 48:17
  [SPEAKER_01]: And he was just distraught.
• 48:20
  [SPEAKER_01]: This was an old man.
• 48:21
  [SPEAKER_01]: They had been married for years.
• 48:22
  [SPEAKER_01]: And he came to the author of Victor Frankle and he said, I don't know what to do.
• 48:26
  [SPEAKER_01]: I am like crying every day.
• 48:29
  [SPEAKER_01]: I am distressed.
• 48:31
  [SPEAKER_01]: And he asks the men.
• 48:34
  [SPEAKER_01]: He says,
• 48:36
  [SPEAKER_01]: If you would have died first, what would she be going through right now?
• 48:41
  [SPEAKER_01]: And he said, well, she'd probably be experiencing everything I'm experiencing.
• 48:48
  [SPEAKER_01]: And she would also be going through an unbelievably hard time for the rest of her life until she died.
• 48:55
  [SPEAKER_01]: He says yes.
• 48:57
  [SPEAKER_01]: And he's like, maybe you were spared.
• 49:00
  [SPEAKER_01]: You spared her suffering and her
• 49:05
  [SPEAKER_01]: and her grief.
• 49:07
  [SPEAKER_01]: And the man just shook his hand and went off.
• 49:10
  [SPEAKER_01]: And that is what clicked for him.
• 49:12
  [SPEAKER_01]: And it's like, we see our suffering.
• 49:15
  [SPEAKER_01]: And we think that there's something wrong with us that we're being punished at whatever.
• 49:18
  [SPEAKER_01]: Oh, my gosh, this is unfair.
• 49:21
  [SPEAKER_01]: But if you try to seek that deeper meaning of what this could mean like for me,
• 49:26
  [SPEAKER_01]: I'm so excited to share all of this with people and like I've actually come across people now with like now I talked to so many people and I'm so much more aware when they say I sleep horribly I have insomnia I'm like really I am but guys with you let me help you you know and so like you are now equipped to help other people with this because you've been through this and so you find meaning like in that
• 49:49
  [SPEAKER_01]: and so there's just so many things that I've learned through this and it's like when you're going through it you don't think that it's going to like ever amount anything and you think oh my gosh why is this happening but no you come out of this like so much stronger.
• 50:07
  [SPEAKER_00]: I absolutely agree and you will start also noticing people that you may be never thought and anxiety you will start noticing you will start noticing I'm productive thinking patterns in everyone.
• 50:19
  [SPEAKER_00]: You will start seeing that and you will realize you will hear a person talking and you would be in your head.
• 50:24
  [SPEAKER_00]: You would be like, yeah, you're not really doing yourself on it.
• 50:28
  [SPEAKER_01]: There's there's one coworker.
• 50:31
  [SPEAKER_01]: We actually have a personal development group in our company that and once a month we review a book.
• 50:37
  [SPEAKER_01]: and we'll talk about it and she was talking about how she struggles with insomnia.
• 50:42
  [SPEAKER_01]: And I was writing paragraphs in Slack helping her out and she goes, you know, it's funny.
• 50:48
  [SPEAKER_01]: Sometimes I don't get as many hours of sleep that I think I should.
• 50:53
  [SPEAKER_01]: And in my day, I tell myself, I shouldn't be feeling this good right now, because I only got this amount of sleep.
• 51:01
  [SPEAKER_01]: And I'm like, do you see how crazy that is?
• 51:04
  [SPEAKER_01]: Like, we have this idea of, oh my god, if I don't get eight point two, three hours of sleep a night, I should feel like garbage.
• 51:12
  [SPEAKER_01]: But I got only six hours of sleep this night, and I'm able to have a full productive day.
• 51:16
  [SPEAKER_01]: Stop with the outcome of like, oh my god, if I didn't do this, then I can't do this or if I got bad sleep like this year, what I started doing in terms of challenging symptoms, because one of my big stressors was like, oh man, if I don't sleep as much, I'm not going to do as good performance in the gym and I'm going to have worse results from the gym.
• 51:36
  [SPEAKER_01]: I would get in my head there and I'm like,
• 51:38
  [SPEAKER_01]: Okay, you know what?
• 51:39
  [SPEAKER_01]: When I have a bad night of sleep, I'm going to make sure I do more volume at the gym.
• 51:44
  [SPEAKER_01]: And even if I don't hit a new max on a certain reps, I'm going to do another set just to show my body that you have enough energy to do anything you need.
• 51:56
  [SPEAKER_01]: We survived in the wilderness for how long before the blue lights, before the wine down ceremonies and the sleep audios, by the way, and sleep audios never worked for me because
• 52:08
  [SPEAKER_01]: they're like only forty five minutes long so i'm like okay what if it takes me more than forty five minutes to feel sleepy oh and then once the forty five minutes hits uh... what it's the next video that's gonna play and is that gonna wake me up
• 52:23
  [SPEAKER_01]: give up the fight.
• 52:24
  [SPEAKER_01]: Just give up the fight.
• 52:27
  [SPEAKER_00]: What you just said is another thing that I talk about so much.
• 52:31
  [SPEAKER_00]: We made our lives which, hey, good for us, good for humanity, but we made our lives so comfortable that we kind of along the way we built this belief that
• 52:42
  [SPEAKER_00]: We should never be uncomfortable number one and number two that we are incredibly fragile.
• 52:48
  [SPEAKER_00]: But as you said, we survived in wilderness.
• 52:51
  [SPEAKER_00]: Pretty naked without shoes, without a little flip flops, right?
• 52:57
  [SPEAKER_00]: Trying to get fire trying to get food and we were alive and we survived.
• 53:03
  [SPEAKER_00]: So it's like you're not as fragile as you think.
• 53:07
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yes, yes, that's the thing and that was another thing with the with the heart issues and I I wish I could have talked more about the the chest stuff too because I learned so much about our heart That like our hearts are so resilient and again, please if you're feeling like if you have gotten everything checked up then okay, then but like our hearts are so resilient like in fact I was doing
• 53:34
  [SPEAKER_01]: there was uh there was something I was watching not not because I was doing research on the heart it was something I was seeing but it's like the heart at times will actually find new ways to be efficient even if something like you know this is not medical advice or anything but like if if something shut down like it will recompensate like they're like my uh my dad has struggled with um with a certain heart condition for a while and I'm like
• 54:00
  [SPEAKER_01]: When I was talking with his doctor, I was like, oh, okay.
• 54:03
  [SPEAKER_01]: So it's not like once something you feel something weird, it's just, it's over and you're done.
• 54:09
  [SPEAKER_01]: Like, no, there are a lot of people who recover.
• 54:12
  [SPEAKER_01]: Like, even the people worst case scenario who do have heart problems can actually reverse it with many things.
• 54:18
  [SPEAKER_01]: And it all depends on the situation and everything like that.
• 54:20
  [SPEAKER_01]: But like, I'm like, wow, we are so resilient as a species.
• 54:25
  [SPEAKER_01]: Our bodies are resilient and everything.
• 54:29
  [SPEAKER_00]: This is one thing that I remember to this day when I was struggling with anxiety and I didn't yet really believe it's just anxiety and I had a lot of health anxiety and my doctor told me I remember she was telling me like you see you think you're so fragile and then the smallest thing is gonna make you like just you know drop on your bag and that's it and lights out she's like you don't realize that your body is gonna do and try
• 54:57
  [SPEAKER_00]: anything before it gives up.
• 55:01
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's like your body will always fight tooth and nail to stay elastic to keep you alive.
• 55:08
  [SPEAKER_00]: So it's like if you would suddenly just croak, it's like something had to be terribly terribly terribly wrong.
• 55:15
  [SPEAKER_00]: Because your body will always, until the last freaking second, it will fight for its own existence.
• 55:22
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yes.
• 55:23
  [SPEAKER_00]: And then maybe I realized, yeah, maybe I'm looking at this like, little too much because I was like, oh, you know, when I was going through my health anxiety, it was like, wait, how much fat isn't this too much?
• 55:33
  [SPEAKER_00]: Like, you know, what about my what about this?
• 55:35
  [SPEAKER_00]: And she's like, yeah, having a treat here and there, she's like, girl, stop, stop thinking like that.
• 55:41
  [SPEAKER_00]: You're over.
• 55:42
  [SPEAKER_01]: I was just going to say that I don't want to be insensitive with this example, but sometimes you'll see videos being shared of people.
• 55:53
  [SPEAKER_01]: who are in really bad ways, who are homeless.
• 55:57
  [SPEAKER_01]: I come to streets of Philadelphia, and they are just tripping, they are on their own so many drugs that they are physically hunched over or just like in just a really bad state, but they're alive.
• 56:13
  [SPEAKER_01]: And it's like, okay, hold on here.
• 56:17
  [SPEAKER_01]: were afraid or our brains can teach us to be afraid of getting a bad night asleep, getting five, six months a year of bad sleep.
• 56:29
  [SPEAKER_01]: But this person has so many drugs in their system that they're hunched over and they're probably not conscious for ten hours and somehow their body keeps going.
• 56:40
  [SPEAKER_01]: And I'm sitting here worried about blue blockers on the blue blocker glasses at night.
• 56:46
  [SPEAKER_01]: That's what I'm sitting up saying, this all makes no sense.
• 56:50
  [SPEAKER_01]: And I think just as a society in general, not even anxiety related, this phone and the access to constant information and now chat GBT, who you can ask it anything and it's going to spit out anything.
• 57:03
  [SPEAKER_01]: We are so like paralyzed as a society now to where we can't do anything on our own.
• 57:09
  [SPEAKER_00]: for anxious people, chat GPT, and any form of AI for anxious people in my opinion, it's worse than Google once was.
• 57:18
  [SPEAKER_00]: Because with Google, you're researching, you're clicking more articles, reading articles, but this,
• 57:25
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's actually answering you and it's talking to you about your anxiety and it means well, but it's still an AI and you are human being that sensitize that worries about every single little thing and now you have that friend that doesn't care if it's three a.m.
• 57:41
  [SPEAKER_00]: You are reassurance seeking twenty four seven and that thing is ready to support you in that and I'm like the worst.
• 57:49
  [SPEAKER_00]: ever.
• 57:50
  [SPEAKER_01]: I know.
• 57:51
  [SPEAKER_01]: And back to the worry, like there's this hilarious meme, I'm not sure if you've heard about the guy.
• 57:56
  [SPEAKER_01]: I think he has like a Netflix documentary, but he's trying that either live to be like the oldest man ever.
• 58:01
  [SPEAKER_01]: We're trying to live forever.
• 58:03
  [SPEAKER_01]: His name is Brian.
• 58:04
  [SPEAKER_01]: Whatever the image.
• 58:05
  [SPEAKER_00]: I don't know the name, but I saw him.
• 58:07
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
• 58:07
  [SPEAKER_01]: So there's a side by side.
• 58:08
  [SPEAKER_01]: I'm actually about to go to Italy and visit family, right?
• 58:11
  [SPEAKER_01]: And every time I go out there, the lifestyle is so beautiful.
• 58:16
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's like, my family's from this little beach town in Sicily.
• 58:20
  [SPEAKER_01]: And this happens in a lot of parts of Italy and Europe.
• 58:23
  [SPEAKER_01]: But people sit in their chair outside and no phone and they'll just sit and just look and just take in life and talk and play cards, right?
• 58:31
  [SPEAKER_01]: And so there's this mean that's a side by side of this guy.
• 58:34
  [SPEAKER_01]: And it says Brian, I think his name is Brian Johnson.
• 58:37
  [SPEAKER_01]: But he's like Brian Johnson takes a hundred supplements a day, tracks every single thing he does and does this, this, this, this and this.
• 58:48
  [SPEAKER_01]: eighty five year old Italian man doesn't know what a calorie is.
• 58:53
  [SPEAKER_01]: Chate now not recommending you change smoke and drink but they say chain smokes and drink plays cards with his friends doesn't use his phone.
• 59:02
  [SPEAKER_01]: Life expectancy one hundred or whatever you know that all these certain vices are very actually physically bad for you but the point is is that.
• 59:13
  [SPEAKER_01]: That old Italian man who lives by the water and does it worry, and this guy over here, like, I'm sorry, but that dude Brian Johnson, he doesn't physically actually look that good.
• 59:23
  [SPEAKER_01]: He doesn't look that healthy.
• 59:26
  [SPEAKER_01]: And so there are people in Italy who look way more healthy than that guy, and this guy worries about everything, and it's just like, it's, it really is just such a battle of the mind that the more you focus on all these things, the worse it is.
• 59:43
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's, it is a mind game.
• 59:44
  [SPEAKER_00]: It is a mind battle.
• 59:45
  [SPEAKER_00]: It is whole anxiety, anxiety recovery.
• 59:49
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's all a mind game and I always say this.
• 59:51
  [SPEAKER_00]: Like people are always like, okay, should I journal?
• 59:54
  [SPEAKER_00]: Should I meditate?
• 59:54
  [SPEAKER_00]: Should I walk more?
• 59:55
  [SPEAKER_00]: Should I exercise?
• 59:56
  [SPEAKER_00]: Should I change my diet?
• 59:57
  [SPEAKER_00]: And it's like you're always looking for something external.
• 1:00:00
  [SPEAKER_00]: Get this right?
• 1:00:02
  [SPEAKER_00]: Anything else doesn't matter.
• 1:00:04
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yep.
• 1:00:04
  [SPEAKER_00]: This was amazing.
• 1:00:05
  [SPEAKER_00]: Thank you so much for sharing.
• 1:00:06
  [SPEAKER_00]: Thank you so much for the willingness and letting us know.
• 1:00:09
  [SPEAKER_00]: I always, again, I'm always happy when people kind of like instead of us having to ask them, hey, do you want to?
• 1:00:14
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, maybe a lot, you know, I love when people like, hey, I want to share my story.
• 1:00:19
  [SPEAKER_00]: I always love them because it's like, yeah, because when you experience something for a long time and you're struggling a lot and you know, you're not the only one.
• 1:00:26
  [SPEAKER_00]: There's thousands, probably millions of people out there struggling with the same thing.
• 1:00:31
  [SPEAKER_00]: And when you know that
• 1:00:33
  [SPEAKER_00]: Now I know I have to have the answer you want to share.
• 1:00:36
  [SPEAKER_00]: That's why I share that.
• 1:00:37
  [SPEAKER_00]: I was also kind of like, you know, yeah, I'm going to recover and it's going to be it.
• 1:00:41
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, right?
• 1:00:42
  [SPEAKER_00]: No more thinking about anxiety.
• 1:00:43
  [SPEAKER_00]: But then like, wait, experiencing all of this and knowing how many other people struggle with that.
• 1:00:49
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's like, I need to.
• 1:00:50
  [SPEAKER_00]: I'm almost obligated to.
• 1:00:53
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yes.
• 1:00:53
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yes.
• 1:00:54
  [SPEAKER_01]: I know like a heat-seeking missile finding people who like, if they're struggling, I'm like, and like you said, you can notice
• 1:01:02
  [SPEAKER_01]: falls in their thinking.
• 1:01:03
  [SPEAKER_01]: I'm like, okay, here.
• 1:01:05
  [SPEAKER_01]: Stop doing this.
• 1:01:06
  [SPEAKER_01]: Stop doing that.
• 1:01:07
  [SPEAKER_01]: And it's going to be better, you know?
• 1:01:10
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yep.
• 1:01:10
  [SPEAKER_00]: So thank you again for joining us.
• 1:01:13
  [SPEAKER_00]: We'll see you in the next one.