BPD and Anxiety Pt 2: Rumination, Avoidance, and Learning to Trust Yourself (The BPD Bunch S7)

[00:00:00]Most mornings when I wake up, I might have a panic attack.

[00:00:02]>> What's my fears? What if that happened?

[00:00:05]What if that happened? What if that happened?

[00:00:07]>> Then you run away from the thing.

[00:00:08]Anxiety decreases, which teaches your body, ooh, we want more of this anxious emotion.

[00:00:14]>> I never really spoke about anxiety to anyone. If I can't attend to my breathing, how can I attend to anything [music] else?

[00:00:27]>> [music] >> Hey everyone, welcome to the BPD Bunch.

[00:00:32]I'm your host Zany and today I'm here with Caris, Katya, Selene, and Dan.

[00:00:40]We're continuing our conversation from last week about anxiousness. Just as a quick recap, this season we are revisiting the traits of borderline personality disorder, but through the lens of the alternative model. And we are currently in an 8week session where we are deep diving into the pathological personality trait of negative affectivity which reflects a tendency to experience frequent and intense negative emotions including sadness, irritability, anxiety, and fear. Last week we talked about some of our experiences with anxiousness. So if you didn't watch that yet, definitely check it out. Today we are going to be talking about all of the tips, tricks, skills, and life lessons we have learned that help us manage anxiety in a more effective way to build a life worth living. Who wants to go first? What are some of your top skills for dealing with anxiousness? Pick me. Pick me. Um, [laughter] last week when Seline was talking about some of her experiences about feeling the like massive panic attacks, I remembered something that um, one of the first DBT practitioners that I met with said. She said, "If I can't attend to my breathing, how can I attend to anything else?" And when I get in these situations where whatever it is, whether it is anxiousness or anything that I'm so flooded, I am having a hard time uh making decisions or whatever it is. I just think that I'm like, "Oh, if I can't control my breathing, how in the world can I control anything else?"

[00:02:16]Okay, breathe. And then I just focus on breathing. And it doesn't even matter.

[00:02:20]It's not like box breathing or like any particular type of breathing. It it does not matter. What matters is I can tell myself to breathe slowly and then I breathe slowly. I can tell myself to inhale and I can inhale. Exhale and exhale. That's it. After I was able to do that, then all the other skills come in. But like first and foremost, I mean you got to control your breath because if you're not breathing, you're not doing anything. [laughter] >> That's so true. comparison in terms of DBT and distress dist distress tolerance skills. I think when I was thinking of what my tips are, they they tend to be proactive now that I've learned so much about myself through therapy, but actually going back to the moment where I was really struggling. The distress tolerance skills were what I really needed most. And for me like my distress tolerance in the moment, how can I stop these maladaptive coping mechanisms of running away and or having a panic attack or screaming is very much self.

[00:03:22]So my goto if I'm overwhelmed if I can is go to my bed and get my blankie and rub my blankie which is soft on my face just like I was a child like when I was a toddler like when I was a baby. I just need warm bed and soft blankie and that's how I bring everything down and it gives me a pause moment to then try and get my emotions to a state where I can think clearly.

[00:03:49]>> Yeah, I think for for me um I there's like sort of three elements to it. So like I radically accept that I anxiety is pervasive in my life. So I don't attach shame to it anymore. And if I'm when I most mornings when I wake up, I might have a panic attack. But then that comes onto the second which is opposite action. So if I feel like oh I just want to stay here and like not not face the world today, I just get up and do that.

[00:04:14]And then the third thing that's been really helpful is journaling. Like I think I touched on this previously but I think it does cover every area is that I used to journal just when I felt bad like but now I make a point of doing it when I have good experiences as well cuz before they just happened and I was like oh don't need to worry about that. But that's really helped in going actually I felt really crappy this morning but now I've done X Y and Zed but I actually had a much better day than perhaps if I'd given into the maybe the the difficult emotions and not challenged myself. Um and I also have a physical health condition that has made that gives me chronic fatigue. Um, so that was another thing that layered on shame. But again, accepting that and managing my day and my work schedule around basically what works for me rather than I used to very much go yes yes yes to everyone because I was so in need of their acceptance and like took everything cuz like oh well they don't like me they hate me then if they you know if if they critique me at all they hate me and I must make them like me and that has um definitely helped. It's still there, but I think that that using those three approaches has definitely helped me to have a more functional and consistent life and also allow myself to have those, like Selene said, those self soothing moments as well. And as particularly as a man, just go, yeah, that's okay to do that. It's just selfcare is really important. It's not a bad thing that you need to take take an afternoon or take a couple of hours to chill out for yourself. Man, what you said about the chronic illness stuff and organizing your day around that has been such a big thing for me.

[00:05:50]And it's not even just with the chronic health stuff. I mean, there's been so much of this self pressure to put myself into the box of what I thought a normal person was. Nobody fits into that box.

[00:06:02]Actually, like even the quote unquote normal people don't fit into that box.

[00:06:07]It's like, you know, like if I were trying to put on Barbie pants. A Barbie is 12 inches tall. Like there's no human on the alive on the planet who can wear Barbie pants. It's not a has nothing to do with losing weight. Like no one can put those on, you [laughter] know? And that was the same kind of vibe that I had with the person that I thought I needed to be. And letting go of that and letting myself be myself made such a big difference, you know, because then I was able to see what I was really working with instead of trying to force myself to be something that I could that no one could ever be. One of the major things that helped me with anxiousness specifically was something that I think a lot of people don't this is one of the useful things I learned in my psychology degree. So I took a class on learning in behavior. It turns out that one of the struggles with anxiety is that the action urge associated with it which is to run away from whatever is you know potentially going to go wrong. It's self self-reinforcing because you feel the anxious emotion, then you run away from the thing, then that anxiety decreases, which teaches your body, oh, we want more of this anxious emotion because it gets us away from the thing we're afraid of. That's part of why exposure therapy and exposing yourself systematically to the things that are anxietyinducing is one of the ways that you decrease your anxiety. And I will just as a disclaimer, if you have like a phobia that gives you very strong physical sensations, it's probably good to work through this with a therapist or somebody who can observe this with you.

[00:07:42]I'm not saying that people should go out and do like hardcore exposure therapy on their own. It's just for me there were a lot of situations like with exams in school where I would feel physically not well because as I said last episode I had a tendency to have these very strong physical symptoms because of the anxiety. One of the things I would do when I was taking an exam was I would do willing hands uh from DBT. So I would sit with my well and while like while I was reading the questions I would sit with my hands under the desk open like this. I would do like um paste breathing. So breathing in I I wasn't counting it because I'm focusing on the exam but breathing in for a shorter time than I'm breathing out because when you're breathing out your heart rate goes down. So that's what I would do during the exam. I'd be reading the question with willing hands and trying to do the pace breathing and then when I thought of the answer I would write it down and then go back to the willing hands. And that was how I pushed through a lot of the anxiety to be able to be there. And there are some exams I probably didn't do as well as I could have done if I wasn't anxious. But pushing through that anxiety to actually make it through the exam, I was able to teach my body, look, I'm still alive on the other side. You know, >> I read something a while ago that says this is your comfort zone. And if you gently just push against the edges or maybe just go outside and do something on the edge of your comfort zone, your comfort zone gets bigger. And that's a bit like building mastery in DBT. The more you push yourself through the stuff that makes you anxious, the more you become more confident, the less you're going to be, and the more you're going to build mastery over it, which is a skill in itself. So that's when you were saying pushing yourself through the anxiety, it reminded me of that comfort zone getting bigger.

[00:09:32]>> Well, that's such an important piece of it, too, because I think expanding my comfort zone has gotten me to the point now where it's kind of weird to say, but I'm comfortable with my level of anxiety. I know that I'm going to have some amount of it because that's a part of being a person. And because I'm facing my anxiety regularly, I am always increasing my confidence that I can handle it. and especially all the other skills, right? Like as I've gotten more emotional control, I'm less scared of having difficult conversations with people because I know that I'm not going to have a BPD episode in response to the situation. And that's not one of those things where you like you learn a skill and you've got it. It only really happens from doing it consistently over time because so much of this is in your preconscious or your subconscious or in your body, right? You have to you you kind of have to teach your body that in fact we can handle this situation. But you can't you can't like you can't tell yourself that and then it just becomes true. You kind of have to live it so that you can believe it. And that I think is one of the hardest parts of this for me in the beginning was I didn't feel that. I didn't feel that change the first couple times and I wanted to be like f this. I'm out because it wasn't working fast enough for me. And even after I got to the point where I was in functional recovery where I was managing my symptoms really well and it's gotten way way way way better even since then. So, you know, I think it's just one of those things that the more you do it, the easier it gets.

[00:11:05]And yeah, >> another thing for me that was really helpful to manage the physical symptoms that we discussed quite a lot last week was actually medication. And I know it's not for everyone, but for me, thinking with a psychiatrist and looking at different medication courses has really helped. And the one that I'm on and have been on for about 6 years seems to address that physical symptoms of basically diarrhea and vomiting that I was getting that was getting so debilitating that I felt like I had no control over my body. So that now I can go into a work meeting with my boss and not have to run to the toilet or vomit or like you know yeah have those uncomfortable conversations and things like that where I know that my body is not going to give out on me and that I know it makes me more confident to deal with the situation in the same way when you push through your comfort zone. Now I have a little bit of help through that to manage my body that I don't then need to worry about that bit. I can then worry about how do I feel about this?

[00:12:08]how can I cope ahead and things like that and that's helped me access other skills now that that's sort of off my worry list. I find the journaling is really helpful. As like Dan said, I I am one of those people that journal when I'm feeling bad and I'm not so regular and I'd like to be more regular with it when I'm feeling good. But the when I feel bad and triggered, it helps me identify actually what the root cause is. And I think that's what I also touched on last week in terms of a fear inventory. Um, which is you could also say is a bit like coping ahead and that you're working through what's my fears?

[00:12:44]What if that happened? What if that happened? What if that happened? And you work through all the way to the end. And actually, a lot of them come from probably what your core fear is or you know, and we we talk about not being able to cope in terms of anxiety or it might be not being good enough or whatever it happens to be. And then figuring out that a lot of your different fears or anxious triggers relate to one thing makes it feel, at least for me, a little bit more manageable in that I know where it's coming from. I understand it now. and then maybe I can work on it bit by bit and build up my tolerance to that general level of anxiety that is considered a bit more normal.

[00:13:21]>> The coping ahead has been such a huge thing for me as well because I have had a very pervasive catastrophizing potential deaths um like of my pets of my loved ones and imagining then that I was going to handle it really badly. And one of the things that I worked on with my therapist was whenever those thoughts come up, I try to instead of instead of allowing myself to imagine that I'm going to fall apart, I use my vivid imagination to imagine myself handling it well. I imagine myself uh you know, feeling the grief and being grateful for having had the relationship. So that has been really effective for me in being able to manage some of those anxieties is I imagine myself handling what could or might or will happen effectively and that sort of prepares me to actually be able to handle it more effectively. Taja has been silent this whole episode.

[00:14:27]>> What are your thoughts?

[00:14:28]>> I've just found it really useful to listen to your strategies cuz mine are slightly different. So, it's really good to hear everybody else's strategies just to see if I can steal a few. Um, [laughter] so, so I think for me, I think the biggest problem that I had was just that I never really spoke about anxiety to anyone.

[00:14:51]And I think that does track all the way back to my childhood. As I mentioned in the last episode, just because of the environment that I grew up in and the difficulties that my family faced when I was a child, I never wanted to vocalize how I was feeling because I didn't want to burden them with my anxiety. The byproduct of that was that I conditioned myself to minimize those feelings that I had. And one of the hardest things that I've had to do is actually learn how to talk to other people about how I'm feeling and about my anxieties and my fears and my worries. And the first few times I did it, it was so awkward. Like I actually just laughed when I was doing it because I was that awkward and I didn't really know how to have that conversation.

[00:15:38]So I found it really useful to actually write down the things that were making me anxious. So when I was talking to another person about it and sharing those feelings, actually not looking at them because eye contact would just set me off laughing and just reading from a sheet about what was making me anxious.

[00:15:54]And that was kind of like the foundational building blocks to having those kind of conversations. So that was really key for me in being able to open up to people because once I spoke about my anxiety, it actually relieved a lot of the pressure because I wasn't carrying it around all on my own shoulders anymore. But I think another thing for me as well was especially thinking about some of those romantic relationships I had, especially with people that were naturally quite avoidant or, you know, there were definitely situations where I was allowing myself to be strung along by people. And the kind of insecurity that that was breeding was feeding into that anxiety. And I think one of the best things that I did was I noticed that when that was going on, I was very much centering that person and centering that relationship because I didn't have an awful lot that was going on to take my mind off it. And I think a lot of that was situational because when you're in those kind of relationships, I don't know if anyone's had them before, but I imagine probably a few of you might have, you're kind of hanging around for the other person to kind of pick you up and put you down. So naturally that doesn't lend itself to you having a very fulfilling life outside of the relationship because you're waiting for that person all the time. So one of the best things I did was actually cultivate cultivate hobbies and really creating a life for myself outside of that relationship so that I didn't have that as my sole focus anymore. So the anxiety naturally started to dissipate because I cared less because I was getting satisfaction and self-esteem and confidence from external things to that relationship. And yeah, you know, definitely there were situations where it dragged on for a very long time before I woke up and realized that actually the only way that I'm ever going to get past my anxiety at this relationship is to end it. And that was usually because I'd created a life for myself where that relationship was less important. So it was easier to walk away from it. So I think that those two were probably the biggest things that I did to cope with anxiety. And also don't date avoidant people. Like if you have BPD, like please [laughter] don't do it.

[00:18:07]Like it's not the best thing in the world.

[00:18:10]>> I liked the example that you gave of you weren't used to talking about your emotions and that was hard for you and so you started off just like not making eye contact and reading from a sheet.

[00:18:21]And that's kind of similar to what we were talking in terms of expanding your comfort zone, but only a little bit at a time. So, if you push yourself too far, you're not going to you're going to you might, you know, not get through it.

[00:18:33]Whereas, if you just start small, like starting the conversation, even if it's just reading from a sheet, then you're going to get better and better at it.

[00:18:40]And I just thought that really struck me.

[00:18:42]>> Yeah, me too. Also the fact that you know I think what you said when someone else is sharing the load to me some of what's useful in talking about what you're feeling is that I because I have such a vivid imagination it often feels like there are no boundaries to how fantastical or wild my anxious thoughts can be and then when I share them out loud with another person it's kind of like they're brought into the boundaries of reality and it's like oh you know like Not only is this person sharing the load emotionally, I also now that I've said it out loud to another human, I realize that, you know, either it doesn't have the power that I thought it did or the likelihood of it being as bad as I imagine is not, you know, not quite in line with reality. [laughter] >> Yeah, it helps with perspective.

[00:19:32]Definitely.

[00:19:33]>> I have a little different take on sharing the load. This I personally believe is why I don't have the overwhelming and the crippling anxiety that I had for most of my like postpubescent life. A lot of stuff led up to it like 100% learning DBT skills absolutely especially the distress tolerance skills because if I'm overwhelmed I can't think. um medication. Absolutely. I'm actually just titrating off my SNRI and this time next week I will be off all my medications including u my ADHD meds as well and I'm responding surprisingly to myself surprisingly well.

[00:20:20]But I believe that this is all because I have come to terms with the reality that what I do is what I do. As long as I'm showing up authentically as myself, it's going to be okay. I've lived through a lot of BS and I'm okay. I've lived through a lot of wonderful stuff and I'm okay. I have this belief in my heart that the creator of the universe is there walking beside me and telling me just show up authentically, Caris, and and it's going to be all right. Like, I made you with all this. Your brain is not messed up. It's perfect. It's exactly how I intended it to be. Like, yeah, you've got troubles with all like whatever I do. I have lots of weaknesses. I have lots of shortcomings.

[00:21:06]But I'm I'm finding that as I start to accept my own weaknesses and vulnerabilities that the people who are being brought back into my life or that I'm meeting, they have complimentary skills that can strengthen up those parts of my life that I have challenges in. And I don't have the responsibility, I don't have the burden of making it all work out, okay? because there is nothing that I can do that will be perfect.

[00:21:36]That's impossible because I'm a human and humans don't do perfection. We do human.

[00:21:44]So it's like I'm like I'm not special but I am. But I'm not like there's nothing I can do no matter how much I stress about it that is going to turn out without flaws. Embracing that is really there's a there's a line in DBT that it's simple. It's not easy. This is this is really simple concept, but it's not an easy one to like fully wrap my head around, but it is the most simple thing ever to recognize. Yeah, I'm going to screw stuff up 100%. It will happen. All of my anxiety is not going to change that. Even if I do something that I think is perfect, somebody else will come along and with a different understanding and say, "Hey, it can be improved in these ways." And I used to feel shame.

[00:22:39]Um Selene, you were talking about that core uh the core fear. My core fear has always been shame. People will make fun of me. People will think I'm dumb.

[00:22:48]People will whatever. It's always about what other people will think of me.

[00:22:53]That's shame. Um, and once I realized that I'm not shameful, I do human stuff just like every other human does. And and that's that's fine.

[00:23:04]It just let me let go of all that.

[00:23:06]>> I like what you said about the creator of the universe point because you might have a higher power or be spiritual or not not believe in anything at all. But as a Christian myself, I think something sometimes I forget like part of my belief system is that I can ask for help to my higher power through prayer. And I probably don't do that enough. But when I do, I feel like I always get that sort of that lightness feeling or that like acceptance that you're talking about is that I'm only a human and I can only do so much in my human strength. I'm not a super human. I'm not a superhero. I can't do everything and beat everyone to everything. And that level of radical acceptance about my limits and my boundaries is also really helpful as I've got a bit older and managed to recognize that >> I can't wear Barbie pants.

[00:23:55]>> Yeah. [laughter] Unfortunately, uh, but it's so, you know, the I think one of the things that I'm getting from what what Carrison and Selena just said is that is that acceptance of the fact that we really don't like so much of the anxiety I I think for me has come from this place of the illusion that if I could just come up with the right solution, then somehow I could control the situation and that really I don't there are a lot of things I can influence but there are Not very many things that I can control. Most things I cannot control. And a lot of the things that I think I can control, I'm really just influencing. And it's a combination of influence and luck that it hasn't gone south. That's a hard reality to accept because, you know, especially when you are prone to strong negative emotions that want to take you over, the idea that we really don't have as much control as we would like to think can be really scary. And I find that when I accept that, it makes it easier to let go of the anxiety because as Cara said, no amount of anxiety is going to change the outcome, right? there's no amount of worry that is going to actually affect what's happening.

[00:25:13]>> Was that song the Bos Lurman song in the early 2000s? Um the one of the lines is don't worry or worry but know that worrying is about as effective as trying to solve an algebra equation by chewing bubble gum.

[00:25:28]>> I love that.

[00:25:30]>> Yeah, >> it just has a distinction, right?

[00:25:32]There's a difference between worrying and and and and actually coming up with potential solutions, right? Right. And th those are different things.

[00:25:39]>> Yeah. There's consideration, like careful consideration, and then there's anxiety.

[00:25:44]>> Yeah. [laughter] >> And I think we trick ourselves into thinking that they're the same thing just to avoid the shame of the anxiety.

[00:25:51]>> Mhm. Yep. If I just worry about this enough, somehow it will magically solve itself. That will that will just immediately translate into solutions.

[00:26:01]No, if I want solutions, I actually have to think of them. That is that's actually how that works. There's no amount of worrying where the solutions will just miraculously be there at the end.

[00:26:12]>> Do you know what on a related note, I don't know if this helps anyone else, but something that's definitely really helped me is that I tend to group any uncomfortable emotion that I experience as anxiety because I really struggled to break it down into more specific feelings that come under the anxiety umbrella. So for me for example like being nervous I always used to confuse that with anxiety but actually being nervous is more of like an anticipatory feeling and it's not necessarily a negative but because it kind of gave me that sort of uneasy kind of like butterflies in the stomach feeling. I was like oh that's anxiety but actually when you break it down it's not anxiety it's just being nervous and that's not necessarily a negative feeling. So, I think for me it's really helped looking at the feelings wheel and breaking down those individual emotions because a lot of what I thought I was experiencing as anxiety as a negative emotion is actually not.

[00:27:15]>> Yeah. Nervous nervousness is like is like the is the is like a emotion that gets you ready to do the thing.

[00:27:21]>> Yeah. That's not anxiety. Um, there was somebody on I don't know some of my social media who was like, "Anytime I feel anxiety now and panic, I just tell my brain that I'm actually excited." And [clears throat] she's like, "I'm surprised by how effective [laughter] it is." So, I wonder if there's like a little bit of the backwards of it, too.

[00:27:42]Like trying to figure out what it is, but if you can't figure out what it is in the moment, you can just say, "Hey, perhaps I'm excited."

[00:27:50]>> Reframe.

[00:27:51]>> Yeah. I watched I don't know you guys have seen this film, A Beautiful Mind with Russell Crow. Um, and it's film I think it's based on a real professor. I can't remember his diagnosis, but basically he sees characters who aren't really there. And at the end of the movie, there's a scene that resonates with me because the characters are walking in the distance and somebody who's real says to him, "Do you still see do you still see these people?" And he says, "Yeah, they're still here, but they're just they're just quiet in the background." And I kind of like think that although it's different, it's similar in the way I look at my emotions. like rumination then they're still there they're just not there all the time I they get scheduled now a bit a bit more for like rather than just rather than they control my routine I kind of control the routine a bit more now so they still come up every now and then and can be a bit annoying but like not all the time if that if that makes sense >> I got a new therapist um about a year ago maybe a year and a half ago one thing that he he's also a Christian um as I am and he reminded of a text whether you're Christian or not. It's really really good advice. It's a uh a response to fear.

[00:28:59]And uh here we go. Systemizing an effective response to fear. This is how I how I write when I'm in my flow state of trying to figure out what I'm doing with my life. It's >> writing at every angle. [laughter] I love it.

[00:29:14]>> Right. There's still space on the page if I go this way. Um, so my therapist reminded me of Philippians 4:6-8.

[00:29:25]Don't worry about anything, but pray about everything with gratitude. Offer up your prayers and requests to God. And you can replace to your higher power or to the universe or to like what replace the words with whatever you need to replace them with because the core content of this is so so helpful regardless of of your belief system.

[00:29:48]Especially the next part which is the part that I always it gets kind of glossed over. Then God will bless you with peace that no one can completely understand. And this peace will protect your hearts and minds. And then then keep your mind on whatever is true, pure, right, good, friendly, and lovely.

[00:30:10]And it was that last part that never really sunk in. I could get to the point where I changed my mind. I could get to the point where I got peace, but it never stuck around because my mind would go to other things. I would either like listen to music that got me in an anxious state. I would watch something on TV that got me ruminating. My social media would get me in like a panic. But the then keep your mind on whatever is true, pure, right, good, friendly, and lovely. That was like the lasso of like lassoing up my thoughts, reeling them in like whenever they started to go off into nope, Caris. Uh-uh. Uh-uh. If you want this piece to stay, you got to keep your mind on these things. [laughter] I think um a lot of us who grow up in like a Christian culture, that text gets quoted a lot and the emphasis is giving the the anxiety over to God or giving that over to your higher power and then praying for peace or whatever. But I think very often we forget about the most important part which is to take our thoughts into captivity to keep them on good things. Not not I'm not talking about tox like uh what is it toxic positivity or like what I forget what it's called. I'm not talking about that.

[00:31:38]I mean, once we know, and this is maybe a mindfulness exercise, too, where once you notice that you're starting to ruminate and like you're your mind is stuck on the thing that is causing distress, stop. Use the distraction technique. Do whatever it is, but get your mind back onto whatever is good, whatever is pleasant, whatever is true.

[00:32:04]I actually did this last I was ruminating in the middle of the night when I got up to let my dog out. I couldn't get back to sleep and I started to ruminate about what I did and didn't do when I broke up with someone 7 years ago, right? I'm engaged in a happy long-term relationship. But for some reason, that's where my mind was ruminating. And I just caught myself and I try and practice mindfulness and meditation as often as I can to be mindful enough to catch myself. And I went, "No, I'm not going to continue thinking about that. I'm going to think about something that makes me happy."

[00:32:37]And so I just started to think about my dog and how he was curled up on the bed and how cute he is. And then I fell back asleep.

[00:32:44]>> Yeah. Some of this, I think, is also like the environment, like being mindful of how your environment affects you. I think that's part of sometimes what can be hard about getting out of anxiety is you may teach yourself how to step away, redirect, but then like for me going through breakups, I used to listen to music that would make me as sad as possible.

[00:33:10]>> Yeah. you know, and and there would be like moments where, you know, if I was struggling to cry, maybe that would be a good initial release, but I would literally listen to a really sad song on repeat for 3 hours in bed. It's very hard to use any kind of skill to get out of that, right? So, I think there there is a difference between avoidance and being cautious about what you're taking in, right? Like, I do think it's important that we don't like shy away from the edge of our comfort zone all the time. And there are sometimes things that keep you stuck in that rumination.

[00:33:45]And and that's what I get from the text that Caris was sharing is that you can do all of these things. You can pray to your higher power. You can think, you know, whatever. But if you are not being aware of what you're exposing yourself to, it's very hard to stay in that peaceful place. And so that's sort that's what I that's what I took from that. And that's one of the things that I've had to like especially with music, be very cognizant.

[00:34:08]Am I listening to something that is uplifting me and making me feel good and excited about life? Or is this literally activating all of the emotions that just keep me stuck in ruminating about sad things?

[00:34:23]>> I've noticed that anxiety is not always a bad thing. There is healthy anxiety.

[00:34:26]Like I think to bit touch on what you were saying like I'm doing an acting course soon. I haven't acted in years but I'm like super excited about it but like nervous about it as well. and I'm starting my script writing course next week and exactly the same thing. But before I would have kind of taught myself out of doing it. I would have gone well, you know, I'm not I'm not going to do that cuz I'll fail it. But then the reward you can get for sometimes pushing through I think is like absolutely important. But yeah, I think learning learning sometimes to go where when anxiety is protecting us from potential trauma or bad things, but then sometimes it's preventing us from living our lives. And it's really important to distinguish the difference. And as well touching on being aware when you're ruminating like both you and Selene have said that's something I I do but I also allow myself time to do that but a specific time if that makes sense. So like I I learned when I was trying to completely cut out ruminating about anything it would almost then I'd ruminate about that. So now I've kind of gone right I'll give it set time of like 10 minutes a day where I'll do that maybe have a cry that's okay without the negative emotion then get on with my day whereas if I wasn't mindful of that it would just be like it's just chaos and I'd ruminate about it for hours and just drift off and not be present at all.

[00:35:38]>> Yeah. One of our other cast members Sen does that with venting. She will ask somebody if she can vent to them for like five minutes. That's it. that's the end because she doesn't want to be dumping on people extensively, but that's the opportunity to kind of get it out there and then, you know, they both agree. So, okay, after the five minutes, it's done. I mean, this doesn't have to be like some big co-rumination or let's talk smack about something for hours.

[00:36:04]It's like you get that moment to get it out and then you move on. [laughter] >> Absolutely.

[00:36:10]>> Thank you everyone so much for watching.

[00:36:12]We hope you got a nugget of wisdom to take with you on your journey. We will be back next week to talk about the next section of negative affectivity, separation insecurity. So this is uh you know fears of abandonment, frantic efforts to avoid abandonment, all of the struggles associated with relationships and potential relationship loss. So we will see you there. Please consider supporting us on Patreon. We have extended cuts, exclusive deleted scenes, merch, and more. So check that out in the link down below and we will see you next time.

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