Your Anxiety Toolkit - Practical Skills for Anxiety, Panic & Depression

SUMMARY: Today we have Natasha Daniels, an OCD specialist, talking all about how to help children and teens with OCD and phobias.  In this conversation, we talk all about how to motivate our children and teens to manage their OCD, phobias, and anxiety using Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT), Exposure and Response Prevention (ERP), and other treatments such as self-compassion, mindfulness, and ACT. We also address what OCD treatment for children entails and what changes need to be made in OCD treatment for teens. In this episode, Natasha and Kimberley share their experiences of parenting children with phobias and OCD. In This Episode: The difference between the treatment of OCD and phobias for children What OCD therapy for kids looks like compared to OCD therapy for adults How to practice exposure and response prevention for kids and teens How to motivate teens and kids to face their fears (using Cognitive Behavioral Therapy Special tricks and tools to help parents support their children with OCD and phobias. Links To Things I Talk About: Natasha’s Parenting Survival Online Program www.ATparentingsurvivalschool.com Natasha’s instagram @atparentingsurvival ERP School: https://www.cbtschool.com/erp-school-lp Episode Sponsor: This episode of Your Anxiety Toolkit is brought to you by CBTschool.com.  CBTschool.com is a psychoeducation platform that provides courses and other online resources for people with anxiety, OCD, and Body-Focused Repetitive Behaviors.  Go to cbtschool.com to learn more. Spread the love! Everyone needs tools for anxiety... If you like Your Anxiety Toolkit Podcast, visit YOUR ANXIETY TOOLKIT PODCAST to subscribe free and you'll never miss an episode. And if you really like Your Anxiety Toolkit, I'd appreciate you telling a friend (maybe even two). EPISODE TRANSCRIPTION This is Your Anxiety Toolkit - Episode 213. Welcome back everybody. Oh, so happy to be here. How are you? How are you doing? I’ve been thinking about you all so much lately, reflecting a lot after Thanksgiving, being so grateful for you and this community and for your support. So, thank you, thank you, thank you. I am super thrilled to have the amazing Natasha Daniels on. Natasha is an OCD specialist. She is an amazing therapist who is skilled at treating children with OCD and phobias. She does an incredible, incredible job. So please do check the show notes to learn more about Natasha. But today, she came on to talk about managing anxiety in the kiddos. We don’t talk enough about managing anxiety with the kiddos. And the cool thing for me was, it was so synchronistic because the day that she recorded and came on, we were prepping in my family from my daughter to do a really, really, really hard thing. So, I needed to hear what she had to say. Even though I knew a lot and I’d been trained a lot on it, I just needed to hear it as a parent. And if you are a parent of someone who has anxiety, you will just love, love, love this episode. So many amazing tips and tools and skills and concepts. I just cannot tell you how grateful I am to have Natasha come on and talk about these things with us today. Before we go over to that episode, I first want to do the “I did a hard thing segment.” The first one is from Becks, and Becks is saying: “I have been so anxious that I’ve been carrying COVID without knowing who I’m infecting.” Now I think this is true for a lot of us, myself included. So I think we can all resonate with this story. Becks went on to say, “Recently, I have been doing five to ten lateral flow COVID tests every day to check before leaving the house. I had run out of tests and had planned to eat with a friend with her three-month-old baby. I was so anxious before leaving the house and considered canceling to avoid the doubt of passing COVID unknowingly. But I gave my fear of talking to.” I just love that you did that. “I didn’t want to get fear to win this time. I wanted to see my friend and her beautiful new baby. I shared my fear with my friend, and without asking for reassurance, I spent the loveliest day with them. I have been ruminating a little since, but I keep reminding myself to return to my values and not let fear win.” Becks, amazing work. It sounds like you’re waiting through some difficult fear and you totally let values win. So, that makes me so, so happy. Great job. I am so in love with you guys when you share your hard thing with us. ***** Okay, let’s go over to the episode. Well, thank you again, Natasha, for being on. Before we finish this episode, I wanted to also make sure we highlighted the review of the week. I so appreciate your reviews. This one is from Paulie Bill and they said: “So helpful. I can’t describe in words how much this podcast has helped me. Kimberley is so open and accepting even via headphones.” I love that. “She has sent me on the path to recovery in my anxieties. I look forward to do the work.” Thank you so much. I do love your reviews. We are on a mission to get a thousand reviews. If you would go over and leave a review on iTunes, that would be so wonderful, the biggest gift you could give me. It allows us to reach more people. When people open up the app and they see that it’s highly reviewed, it means they’re more likely to click on and listen. And that means I get to help more people for free with this free resource. So, thank you so much, Paulie Bill, for leaving a review. I love you all. Have a wonderful week and I’ll see you here next week. Kimberley: There we go. Well, I am so excited to share the amazing Natasha Daniels. Natasha, I can’t wait for you to tell us about you. I’m going to let you explain about your work. You’re doing such amazing work. I’m actually so excited for this episode because we’re talking about managing OCD and phobias in children. We talk a lot about this stuff, but not specifically around children. So, I’m so happy to have you here. Welcome. Natasha: Yeah. I appreciate you having me. It’s always nice to talk to you. Kimberley: Yes. First, tell us about you and the work you’re doing. Natasha: Well, I am a child and anxiety child therapist, and I have three kids with anxiety and OCD. So, I get it on both hats. And I provide online resources for parents who are raising kids with anxiety and OCD because we need a lot of support. Kimberley: Right. Your platform is so great. In fact, I’ve taken one of your training, the SPACE training, and it’s so wonderful. So, I can’t wait at the end for you to share about that for people and parents who are struggling, but also for clinicians. Really, really helpful. Natasha: Oh, thanks. Kimberley: Yeah. So, I want to talk with you about ERP but also just anxiety management for the kids who are struggling with OCD and phobias. In your experience, is there a difference between how treatment looks for folks who are adults and the children who have OCD and phobias? Natasha: I think on a fundamental level, it’s very similar. The whole structure is identical, but then we have to take into consideration a couple of different things. One, I think you have to work on the motivation and incentivizing more than you do with someone who’s coming willingly. So, a lot of times we might notice an issue going on with our child, but they’re another person. And so, that approach will look different. And also, developmentally, how they can understand ERP. So, how you explain it, how you gamify it. That looks different. I think as well, we want to engage them. If you don’t have an engaged child, you don’t have ERP. So, that’s another aspect. And then I’d say the third one, the last one is developmental aspects of it. So, we’re very careful with ERP to not do a lot of education because we worry, maybe if I’m educating them, I’m actually assuring them. But with kids, I find at least with myself and my practice and with my own kids, I have to do a little bit of psychoeducation because they may not even know what’s normal versus what’s not normal. And so, I think that piece might be a little bit different than when you’re working with adults. Kimberley: Right. Yeah. I think that’s so true, particularly even, I remember when my son was really young and had a really severe dog phobia. He was around a lot of dogs, and when a dog ran at him, he actually thought they were going to kill him because they’re the same size. So, it was really important that we educated him on, “This is a dog, but it’s not a lion” kind of thing. So, it was really important for him. Natasha: Yeah, definitely. Kimberley: You mentioned gamifying, and I wanted to just-- can you explain what that means? Natasha: Well, I think we want to offer incentives. And so, because they don’t have their-- most kids don’t have that intrinsic motivation to realize the bigger picture of, “I don’t want OCD. This is going to have huge ramifications in my life.” They just see now. And so, asking them to go, metaphorically, swim with a bunch of sharks, it’s just not going to happen, but if we can gamify it and make it fun-- and I use bravery points or the earning stuff, and they can buy things at my bravery store. I use apps, I take-- I actually like the Privilege app. They should pay me because I promote them so much. Because it’s a chore app, but it’s just really easy for kids to convert it. And then they can have it on their iPad. So, I’m giving my kids points and they can hear the little change going on their iPad, like they just got something. That aspect of it really helps motivate kids to work on and do hard things because they may not philosophically get the benefits. They will long term, and even short term. Once they start doing ERP, they say, “Oh my gosh, it feels so much better.” But that’s not enough. And so, gamifying, it actually makes a lot of kids come and ask me, “Can I do another exposure?” My kids always ask, “Can I do another exposure?” if they want something. “What exposures can I do for this?” And that creates a household where we’re doing ERP for fun. Kimberley: I love that. You talk about that. I mean, we do live in such an electronic world, and it is an incentive, I know for me, my kids will do anything if there is some kind of electronic reward at the end there, and it’s a huge piece. I have a daughter, I mentioned to you before the recording, who is doing her own set of exposures right now, and she doesn’t want to do them. Then why would she? So, it’s really helpful to gamify it as much as you can. I love that you mentioned that. Natasha: Yeah, it definitely helps. And I think even people who are raw screen fans and they follow the CPS model. I hear that a lot in the parenting world. He’s not pro-incentive. And I interviewed him and even he was like, for anxiety and OCD, it can be a very important component, as long as you’re constantly, I think, upping the game so you’re doing an exposure that’s harder and harder. So, they’re not just getting A plus B equals C all the time. And then you’re pulling back those incentives over time, spreading them out, using intermittently. So, there are ways to pull it back. Kimberley: So good. So, let’s say a child at different ages, it could be-- you may even want to distinguish different age groups if that’s appropriate, but let’s say they have a fear of phobia or an obsession about something. Can you share what it would look to do ERP with a child? Natasha: I think the first part is really getting them to understand what it is, because I think sometimes I have parents that they are ready to go and they forget they have to really educate the child and get the child to meet them where they’re at. So, understanding how OCD works, that the more you avoid, the bigger it grows, and then partnering with them, ideally, if your child is in that space. So, sometimes we have to actually work on communication and trust for a long period of time. And that might be your only step for a long time. And parents miss that. They think, “If my child’s not willing to do ERP, then all bets are off.” And I say, “No, you’re at the beginning of the journey.” So, to educate them and motivate them, work on communication. But then as we progress – I’ll just use my kids as an example because it’s easy – if they have a phobia or if they have an intrusive thought, we’ll say, “Okay, what are some things--” they get the concept of, “I have to walk towards my fear or towards my discomfort.” So, we want to partner with our kids and say, “What things can we do to upset your OCD, to sit in discomfort?” And so, we might just make a list, might brainstorm. My daughter had a two-day period where she had this extreme intrusive thought about blood and it wasn’t one of her themes, but it was just-- I’m going to use this as an example. And so, it just went from zero to 60. She had one science experiment. They were online. They had to look at a body with the pathways of the veins and the arteries or whatever, and she couldn’t touch anyone because she didn’t want to stop their blood. And so, just whatever that is for your child, just sitting at them and saying, “What are some things that we can do?” And she was very resistant. “I don’t want to do anything.” And so, I was like, “Could you look at an emoji of a little thing of blood?” So, we started off making a list. And I would say, “You don’t have to do all this, but let’s just brainstorm some of the things that would upset your OCD right now.” And then some people pick a menu like, “Just pick one today and let’s just start with that.” And that’s how you begin. It’s just baby steps towards learning how to sit in the discomfort. Kimberley: I love that. Now, during the exposure, what does that look like for a child? I’ll give you a personal example. We were doing a video exposure with my daughter yesterday, and she was all tense up, leaning back, head in the pillow, grasping, gripping, resisting, all the things, and I educated her. So, what would it look like for a parent? How would they maybe, or in a clinician, how would they coach them through the actual exposure? Natasha: In a perfect really, we want them to take the lead, and it’s so hard when they have that response. And I had done needle exposures too with my kids. And so, sometimes when I see that reaction, I’ll stop, and I’ll just say-- well, actually, my son had to take a COVID test. This is another example. And he wouldn’t stick it up his nose. And so then, of course, I got frustrated. So, I was chasing him and I was like, “Give me your nose.” It was not a fine mom moment. And then finally, I stopped and I was like, “How do you want to handle this? What do you want to do? We cannot do it.” And then he’s like, “I’ll do it.” And so, I just had to walk away. But I think sometimes with exposures, it’s just taking that pause and saying, “Where do you want me to poke you?” if we’re talking about a poking exposure or “Where’s your level of comfort?” Ideally over time, we want them to start doing these things for themselves. And so, we want them to be on automatic pilot that they’re doing an exposure and we’re sitting back. So, all we’re doing at some point is saying, “This is less for a phobia that’s situational and obviously more for an ongoing thing.” But with my daughter, with emetophobia, the fear of throwing up, I might say, “What exposure do you want to do? Let me know when you do it, and then I’ll give you a brave point.” And then I might hover in the kitchen and just watch her do it, but try to be less involved. Kimberley: Right. I love that. On our end, I had to keep explaining to her that the more you tense and the more you cringe, the more you’re reinforcing the fear to try and sit still. She’s trying to practice. Again, she doesn’t have to act perfect. I always say, “You don’t have to take the fear away, but you can’t be cringing and hiding behind the pillows and so forth.” That’s a big piece of the work. Natasha: Yeah. And I think it’s such an important piece that I think a lot of parents miss, is not surviving the exposure. For my son with this anxiety, I’d be like, “Go upstairs to do an exposure. Go get your shoes or whatever.” And this was more anxiety-based, not OCD. And he’d run upstairs like he’s avoiding a killer and then he’d run back downstairs. And I’m like, “All you did was teach your brain that you survived. It’s going to work.” Kimberley: Yeah. I love that. Okay. So, I love that you’ve already shared like you didn’t have a perfect parent moment, right? Because I think parent is already-- it’s hard to be a parent. We have so many expectations on ourselves. Can you give us some ideas of what to say and what not to say or how parents may support their child better in these examples? Natasha: It is really tricky. And I think start, and you’re so good at this, the self-compassion piece. And I think parentally, we have to start with self-compassion and say, “You’re not going to knock it out of the park all the time.” You’re going to say things that you’re like, “Oh my gosh, that was the worst thing to say ever.” You might trigger your child inadvertently. So, I think having that compassion first is really important. And that’s why I always often share my mistakes because I’m human, we’re all human. But I think in a perfect world, the ultimate goal is we’re just trying to get our child to be able to sit in discomfort. So, we’re not discounting their fears. And I think sometimes parents here, “I’m not supposed to accommodate,” which they, in turn, view as “I’m not supposed to support them.” And that concerns me because I think a little bit of information can be harmful. So, it’s not that you can’t support them, but you just want to sit and validate. I know this is hard for you. I’ll take an example, just so I’m all concrete. Let’s go back to emetophobia, the fear of throw up. Sometimes parents will say, “When I say you can’t say--” I don’t normally talk like that, like you can’t say, but it’s not helpful to say, “You’re not going to throw up,” because you really want them to accept that they may or may not throw up and that they’re going to be okay either way. I’m sure they can handle the discomfort. And so, sometimes that confuses parents because then the child’s stomach is hurting and they’re saying, “I’m worried I’m going to throw up.” And then they can’t say anything. So, they’re like, “Got to go to school, get your shoes on.” It’s like turning into robots, but it’s just validating the feelings. “I know this is hard for you. I know that this is really rough and I’m so--” this is how I talk to my kids, “I’m so sorry that OCD is really bothering you right now. And I know that you can handle it, no matter what happens.” And so, giving them that support and validation without the accommodation of “Nothing bad is going to happen to you.” Kimberley: Yeah. It’s hard. I mean, it’s funny because it’s hard to see your child in pain, right? It’s hard to watch them struggle. You want to take their pain away. You want to come in. And in some cases, I will even disclose, there’s times where-- or maybe I’m not feeling I’m being a good parent in general and I want to rescue them so my kid likes me again. You know what I mean? There’s so many components that can suck us into “Let me just rescue this one time.” Where I really am curious to hear, what I really have struggled with my patients, the thing that they’re working through is when a compulsion or avoidance is done because they want their kid to go to school. Like, “Well, if I don’t do this compulsion for them, they won’t go to school, and I need them to go to school,” or “I need them to get their homework done. So, I’m actually going to do this compulsion for them and accommodate them because school is the most important thing at that point.” So, what, what is your advice to parents who get stuck in that accommodation cycle because they’re trying to keep the kid functioning in other areas? Natasha: It’s definitely a balancing act because we cannot accommodate everything at once. And so, if the ultimate goal is get them to school, and there might be some things that we have to do to get them to school, but then we have to pull back. And it can snowball. It snowballed with me. I’ll just throw myself under the bus the entire interview. Why not? I mean, Natasha, it looked really good. But when my daughter was, I think, first grade, she had emetophobia, her throw up in sensorimotor OCD where she thought she was going to pee all the time. So, both of those together was a nightmare. And we just needed to get her to school. She didn’t want to go to school. And so, initially, it was just, “I can’t go into the cafeteria.” And so, there were accommodations made, “Oh, if it’s just lunch, then we’ll have you go eat in another classroom.” But OCD is never satisfied. And so, you have to have that awareness. And that was me as a parent. Intellectually, I knew, okay, you have to be careful with this because we’re accommodating it. But then it was recess. Then it was PE. And then she was spending half the day in the nurse because we were over accommodating, and then we had to start to scale back and then get her back into the cafeteria. So, I think you just have to be aware that it is a balancing act that, yes, there are some things that you might have to accommodate, but then it’s not a permanent thing. You have to start. You have to constantly reassess and pull back those accommodations. Kimberley: Right. And I love that you share it. It’s funny because sometimes I shock myself as a clinician. I know exactly what to do and I completely forget to do it with my kids. It’s so hard. And I say, I completely forget. I’m not in denial. I actually forget like, “No, no, she’s my child. It’s my job. I have to protect her or protect him.” So, I think it’s important that we talk about that because parents can be really, really hard on themselves and beat themselves up. I know we’ve talked about that in the past. So, thank you so much for sharing that. Okay. So, what about in the school setting? How do you encourage parents to communicate this with teachers, personnel, or principals, and so forth? How much do you encourage people to disclose? Natasha: I think it’s really important to help the school understand your child. And I know that a lot of times parents are worried about stigma or their permanent record. And so, they avoid that. But really, we’re setting our kids up for failure and we’re setting the teacher up for failure. So, if they’re young, especially when they’re young, I think it is good to write a little summary of like, these are their issues. But be specific. These are the ways that it will show up in school and these are the ways that you can help. And giving that to the teacher, I always gave that to the teacher. Whenever you’d get that thing in the mail that said, or in their backpack, “Let me get to know your child,” I’d be like, I would staple this whole clinical summary in the back or email them, or I would ask them, “Can I meet with you alone after the parent-teacher conference?” But I wanted them to-- so, sometimes parents will say, “Well, I want them to get to know my child first before they see them as having a disorder.” And I have found over and over again that it only benefited my child when they knew they had anxiety and OCD, that they weren’t being a problem child. They weren’t trying to go to the bathroom to avoid. They had certain issues that were going to show up. So, I do think it’s important. Now, my son and my daughter, my older daughter, both also have anxiety/OCD issues. My daughter’s 18. Once she hit an age, I’d ask her, do you want me to notify your teachers? She hit a bump in high school and I offered, “I can go in and talk to the counselor.” And I actually did this past year because we had another issue going on, but there was a respect issue. At that point, that was her life. And my son, who’s 12, now I also ask. But when it became an issue, I said, “I need to tell your teachers. Yeah.” And so, you have to decide. Kimberley: Yeah. And now there’s no rule, right? And every kid is probably different too. I know for my kids, they’re such different little human beings, so my approach is way different with them. Absolutely. Okay. A couple of questions. I know I’m just coming up because I wanted to ask. So, as a parent managing, it’s hard to see your kids suffer and it’s also hard to see them avoid. I know it’s interesting. My first reaction surprisingly was anger, right? It made me angry that this was happening. What might parents do for themselves to manage their own emotional experience when they watch their child suffering? Natasha: It could be very triggering and it could impact your relationship with your partner because you’re approaching it differently. It can tap you out because you’re spending so much time helping your kids, that you are forgetting to focus on yourself. And so, that cliche statement of putting the oxygen mask on yourself first actually has a lot of validity because, how you view your child, how you take care of yourself, your health, your emotional and physical health, and also how you catastrophize your child’s issues will impact your child’s ability to have long term success. And so, sometimes I try to get parents to connect their child’s success with their own issues because that’s the only thing I’ll motivate them to focus inward because they’re selfless and they want to focus on their child. “Don’t worry about me. That’s not a front-burner issue. Let me focus on my child.” And I try to get parents to see you’re a pivotal point, because when you’re catastrophizing and you’re seeing a college student in front of you not functioning and they’re in kindergarten, that’s doing something to how you approach that child. That’s creating a lot of anxiety with that. So, self-work is really important. Kimberley: Yeah. It’s so important. It is so important. I did some reflecting this week in terms of, we have a dentist appointment that is going to be hard. It’s funny, we’re talking this week because this is the week that we have a huge procedure happening. And I’m doing my own work and sitting in like, it is what it is. I can support, I can encourage, I can do the exposures. But when I start getting grasping, I’m like, “No, it has to happen. She has to get it. It has to be done. And it has to be done that day.” And that’s when I don’t show up as the parent I want to be. And it shows up in many areas. It’s not just when I’m with them. It’s like, I’m angry when I’m typing and I’m frustrated when I’m taking a walk. So, it shows up in so many areas. So, I feel such deep compassion for the parent who is anticipating these upcoming events like vaccinations and Halloween being a big one for some kids. Some parents are dreading these events. Natasha: Yeah, and knowing what your own triggers are. I know what my triggers are. I know I can’t handle choking. I know I can’t handle-- my husband used to take my kids to get blood work because I have a thing with shots and blood work. And so, if you can tap out and have someone else do it, if it’s a trigger for you, that could be helpful. Or knowing how to center yourself, I had to really fake it this past year because there was no help. And they were just sitting on my lap and they can feel my energy. They can. So, I had to authentically do my own work, not fake it because they can feel it. They can feel in your body and just say, they don’t get it done. like you said, if they don’t get it done, they don’t get it done. If they pass out or throw up – because I think that’s my phobia, it’s like, I don’t want them to pass out in front of me because they always do – then it’s going to be okay, no matter what. Kimberley: Did you, as a parent, if you don’t mind me asking, have to do your own exposures to their exposures? Natasha: Taking them has been an exposure. It’s actually not an exposure because it’s just happening to me. But I didn’t. I actually didn’t. I just do my own internal work. I find just telling myself that it doesn’t matter if they pass out and they do. And they still do. And it’s all still okay. Kimberley: You’re amazing. It’s really inspiring actually to know you’re walking the walk, not just talking the talk. It’s really quite impressive. Natasha: Oh, thanks. Kimberley: Yeah. So, what do you do if your child adamantly does not want to engage in treatment? Natasha: It’s really important that we get them to enter treatment approaches on their own, because I really feel like we can break their ability to embrace approaches lifelong if we strong-arm them and we force them and we do things. I’ve had parents say like, “I just take their hand and I make them touch stuff.” And I think that child’s never going to do that on their own then because we’re always going to dig our heels back. So, I think it’s meeting your child where your child is at. And there’s always an entry point. It may not be the entry point you want, and I totally get that because my son, he did not want to do anything initially. And that’s frustrating when your child’s starving to death, but it’s not going-- you can’t force it. You can’t grab the steering wheel and drive for them. And so, what do they need for me to get them to that point? Do they need-- do I just have to work on communication with them? Do I just have to work on them trusting? They say something and I just listen. Can I just get them to watch a bunch of YouTube videos or read a couple of books and give them bravery points for doing that? That’s treatment. That’s education. So, I think it’s just finding out where does your child want to start. Kimberley: Right. I know I took one of your courses, the SPACE training, which was amazing. And I found that really helpful too, is to just catch-- if they don’t want to do treatment to catch where the accommodation is happening on the parents end. Did you want to share a little about that? Natasha: Yeah. I think that SPACE Program, Eli Lebowitz’s SPACE Program, is huge because it finally empowers parents to do something, even if their children don’t want anything to do with it. So, you can work on your trust and communication, but then there are-- OCD is a family affair, we often say, and there’s a lot that we can do that OCD wants us to do. And so, working on how we approach it, what kind of family environment do we create in our home? What things do we pull back, our accommodation? There’s a lot of work that a parent can do on their own. And that’s what the SPACE program does. And I have a study guide because I think some people just want a video of like, “Just break it down for me, Natasha.” Kimberley: That was me. I want the bullet point version. Natasha: Yeah. Kimberley: That’s what that does. And it was amazing. Okay. So, thank you so much. This has been so incredibly helpful. I’m wondering if you could give us some major points, things that you really feel that we need to know either as clinicians or parents or loved ones of a child who’s struggling with OCD and anxiety. What are some main points or things that you want us to know of before we sign off for the day? Natasha: Well, I think you cover a lot in your podcast with such good information. So, I would just add to that and say, don’t forget to make it fun, right? I mean, all this doom and gloom, the kids can feel that. And we can make OCD fun and we can gamify it. So, that’s really important. And I think the other part is not forgetting to highlight the superpowers that kids with anxiety and OCD have, letting them know that there are amazing qualities that come with a person who has anxiety or OCD. And my kids get proud of that. They start to feel like, “I’m intuitive,” or “I’m kind-hearted,” or they’ll even actually say, “My superpower is...” So, don’t forget that part. That piece is important. Kimberley: So important, particularly because with OCD and anxiety comes so many qualities, right? They can have qualities. They’re so brave. They’re so courageous. They’re so resilient. These are things that will serve them for why. Natasha: Totally. Kimberley: Yeah. Well, I thank you so much. Number one, as a human being, thank you, because I needed this this week without even realizing it. Natasha: I’m glad you need it timely. Kimberley: It was such great timing, but also thank you for all the amazing work that you do. I think this is an incredible resource. So, can you tell us where people go to hear more about you? Natasha: Yeah. And thank you for your work. I think that you’re just putting such good stuff out there. People can find, if they want to look at my online courses, they can go to atparentingsurvivalschool.com. And I provide online resources for parents and courses to teach you how to help your kids crush anxiety and OCD. They can also listen to my podcast. Kimberley: Great. And I’ll have links in the show notes for anyone who wants to access that. I am so grateful to you. Thank you so much for doing such great work. Natasha: Thanks for having me.

SUMMARY: In today’s podcast, we take a deep dive into a common question I get from followers and CBTschool.com members. HOW MUCH ERP SHOULD I BE DOING DAILY?  Because ERP is such an important part of OCD treatment and OCD therapy, I wanted to outline how you might set up an ERP plan for yourself and how that can help you with your OCD treatment. In This Episode: What is ERP (exposure and response prevention)? What an Exposure and Response Prevention plan looks like. How to determine how much ERP you should do each day Why it is important to practice ERP for OCD, health anxiety, and other anxiety disorders. How to taper off doing ERP once your obsessions and compulsions have reduced. How to practice self-compassion during ERP Links To Things I Talk About: ERP School: https://www.cbtschool.com/erp-school-lp Kimberley’s ERP Book: The Self-Compassion Workbook for OCD CBTschool.com Episode Sponsor This episode of Your Anxiety Toolkit is brought to you by CBTschool.com.  CBTschool.com is a psychoeducation platform that provides courses and other online resources for people with anxiety, OCD, and Body-Focused Repetitive Behaviors.  Go to cbtschool.com to learn more. Spread the love! Everyone needs tools for anxiety... If you like Your Anxiety Toolkit Podcast, visit YOUR ANXIETY TOOLKIT PODCAST to subscribe free and you'll never miss an episode. And if you really like Your Anxiety Toolkit, I'd appreciate you telling a friend (maybe even two). EPISODE TRANSCRIPTION This is Your Anxiety Toolkit – Episode 212. Welcome. I am so thrilled today to talk to you about a question I get asked all the time, which is, how long should I be doing exposure and response prevention per day? So we are going to go all the way through that here in just a sec. But before we do that, we always start the show with our “I did a hard thing.” Now, each week people submit their “I did a hard thing” and we share it because we want to spread the word on all of the hard things that people are doing to inspire you, to help you realize you’re not alone and to help give you that little bit of motivation to face your fears as well. Now, what we usually do after that is we do the review of the week as well, which is where people leave a review on iTunes for this podcast, Your Anxiety Toolkit. But today, somebody left a review that was also the “I did a hard thing.” So I thought, no better opportunity than to do both at once. This is from Jayjenpeezy, and they said: “Right on time! I cannot even begin to say how helpful this podcast is and I have incorporated into parts of my daily meditations and/or listen to it on my walks. A few weeks ago I was admitted to the ER and kept overnight for an observation and what the doctors originally thought was tachycardia turned out to be a panic attack which I had never experienced to that degree before. I spent the next few weeks even more anxious at the thought that it would happen again and thought I’d lost my mind and began taking antidepressants as a quick solve which now I know is not the solution I truly needed. (Mind you, I am speaking only for myself and understand that not everyone is able to be off their prescription meds.)” I love that you included that. “After doing some research I learned about this podcast and ERP and am starting to feel much better about a lot of things. I’ve also changed my diet to be more alkaline, incorporated daily meditation, gratitude journaling and have been able to finally leave my house to take daily walks. The journey is different for everyone but as she continuously reminds me that “it’s a beautiful day to do hard things” and that panic attacks are not actually attacking you it’s your adrenaline rushing through you and in time comes to pass when you are able to meet it eye to eye. I also learned to look at it as willful tolerance,” we have a whole episode on that “and it is not so scary anymore. I am taking it one day at a time and am mindful of being present as possible. Ending up in the emergency room while my children were left at home at night was enough for me to take any and all necessary steps to not allow my anxiety control me. Sending love to all and may the force be with you.” I love that. Let’s just say that is the perfect marry between “I did a hard thing” and a review. So thank you so much to our reviewer, Jayjenpeezy. I am in such admiration of you. So let’s get over to the show. Today, we are talking specifically about how long or how frequent your ERP should be. Now, when I say “should,” I’m going to disclose here, it’s different for everybody, but I’m going to tell you just briefly what I would tell any of my clients. And then from there, you get to go and decide what is right for you. Okay? So, let’s go over to that topic. When someone asks me how long or how frequent and what duration I should do for an exposure, I almost always tell them the same thing. In ERP School, the online course for OCD, and in my new book, The Self-Compassion Workbook For OCD, I say exactly the same thing in both, which is ideally, you should practice exposures for around 45 to 90 minutes per day. Now, I know that doesn’t work for everybody. So you have to go and do and find a balance of what’s right for you. But let me show you how you might incorporate that 45 minutes to 90 minutes per day. While it’s totally fine if you do this, in fact, I applaud you if you do this, but I don’t suggest that you do it just in one lump sum time. It’s hard to schedule 45 to 90 minutes if you have a job, a family, or you go to school or you have another mental illness that you’re working through. What I encourage people to do is to displace that time throughout the day. Again, you can follow my rule. I did a whole episode about scheduling and how it’s important for your recovery. You can schedule it into your day in blocks, like for 15 minutes after breakfast, you do an imaginal, or for 15 minutes before lunch, you’d go and face something that you’re afraid of. For 10 minutes before you go and make coffee, you may do some of your homework. You can schedule it in blocks. I like that. That’s my preference if it were me. But a lot of people, what I encourage them to do is pair it with activities you’re already doing, or you would already be doing had you not had OCD or this fear. So an example might be, as you’re driving to work, you could be listening to your scripting in ERP School, our online for OCD, and in The Self-Compassion Workbook For OCD. We explain extensively how to do scripting and imaginals. You can do that while you drive to work. You can do that while you make your breakfast. You can do that while you wash the dishes. You can do that while you walk around the block. You can do it while you stretch. You can do it while you’re in the shower. These are activities where you don’t actually have to stop what you’re doing to do exposures. You can do many exposures in your normal daily life. In addition, let’s say you have the fear of contamination or doing some activity and fear of what thoughts you may have. I would encourage you to try to go about your day, having the thought on purpose. So you don’t have to, again, stop your day and stop your schedule and your normal functioning. You could start to implement these things that you’re afraid of throughout the day. Or if again, something you’re avoiding, you may then want to practice implementing that back into your day, particularly if it brings you fulfillment and wellness and more functionality into your day. Instead of, let’s say, you have a compulsion where you ask somebody to accommodate you, you might actually choose to do it yourself. You get points for that. That is an exposure. That should go towards your 45 to 90 minutes per day. Now that being said, that’s just exposures. The response prevention is something that you do throughout the entire day. For those of you who don’t really understand the difference, an exposure is where you face yourself to your fear or your obsession. You face that fear of obsession. Response prevention is then not engaging in a compulsive behavior to reduce, remove, or eliminate the discomfort, uncertainty, or feeling that you’re experiencing. Some form of discomfort it usually is. The response prevention is something you will practice for the whole 24 hours as best as you can. Now, does that mean you need to do your exposure? Let’s say your exposure is to touch a certain object or face a certain object or have a thought. Does that mean you need to go completely cold turkey from your compulsion? No. In a perfect world, yes, that would be the case, but we don’t live in a perfect world. You don’t have super powers. I wouldn’t expect my clients, myself, or you to go from 0 to 100. What we can do there is we can practice it in small baby steps. You face your fear and you say, “Okay, I’m going to try and do response prevention for the next five minutes.” Then you move it up to 10 minutes. Then you move it up to 15 minutes. Then you might move it up to an hour or whatever feels right to you. What we’re talking about here is, do as much response prevention as you can, work your way up. As we say in ERP School, ERP is really like a ladder building hierarchy. You start small and you work your way up slowly. Preferably you have a plan. You know what the plan is, you know what the first step is, you know what the second step is. Life isn’t perfect, like I said, so I don’t expect it to be perfect. But I think with that model, where you first practice accumulating 40 to 90 minutes of exposures, and then you practice response prevention as much as you can, as you build up and build up and build up steps, you have a great ERP plan right there, an amazing ERP plan. One thing to consider. When my husband came on the podcast, it’s episode 99. He talked about his panic attacks that he had an agoraphobia he had on airplanes. He brought up the concern of, it’s not like he could get on a plane for 10 minutes and then get on a plane for 15 minutes and then get off. There are certain situations where you have to go from 0 to 100. So you have to get on the plane and stay on the plane. In his case, it was 17 hours to Australia. So there will be situations where you have to take that huge leap. That is okay. You can still tolerate that. I still want to reinforce and empower you to believe you can still tolerate those big, big exposure jumps from 0 to 100 or from maybe four or five to 100. You can still tolerate those. I don’t want you to feel like it’s not possible. Anyone can face their fear. It just depends on how willing they are to be uncomfortable. But what he did as he led up to that is find creative ways to practice the scenario and simulate the scenario as best as he could. He took the train. He took little buses. He took the trolley. There’s a small trolley back and forth from the mall, so he practiced on that and practiced tolerating his panic. So you can find ways. Even if it’s not the specific fear, you can find other ways to simulate that fear or that thought or that sensation so that you can practice building up to those bigger, longer exposures where you don’t get to choose how long you do the exposure for. So there are some ideas on how you can practice ERP, what frequency, what duration. Now the other question I commonly get is, do I have to do it every day? No, you don’t have to do it every day, but I always encourage my patients to do it as much as you can. This is like building a muscle. So the more mental push-ups you do, the better and stronger you get. Now we also know that you can do too many pushups and burn out. And so it’s important to keep an eye on that. I always try to talk about balance. So try to find a plan or a system or a routine in your calendar that is sustainable, that you can continue to do over time. Some people have written in and said, “I went full gung-ho, went hard, burnt out. The idea of ERP was so overwhelming after that. So I stopped.” So I really discourage you from going that kind of way. You don’t have to be perfect. Please don’t do this perfectionistically. Find little baby ways to implement it throughout your day so you don’t burn out. That is how you do this work for a long period of time. That is how you get better. That’s how you do it in a healthy, compassionate way. So that is how we do it. You don’t have to do it every day. In fact, some of my patients schedule different obsessions on different days. Other patients take a six-day exposure and take Sunday off or one day off a week. You could do whatever feels right to you. Just be really honest with yourself. When you schedule your ERP, are you scheduling it because of your values and your self-compassion or are you scheduling it because you’re secretly afraid? Even if it’s that, even if it’s the letter and your scheduling because you’re secretly afraid, no problem. We are doing the best we can with what we have. Just be really honest with yourself, and look and work on that if that’s the main issue. Thank you so much for being here today. I am honored to spend this time chatting with you. Hopefully, you got a ton from this episode. I love when I get questions from you guys. If you are, go over to Instagram and you can chat with me there. I’ll leave the link in the show notes. You can always ask me questions there. I often do Q and A’s and I’d be more than happy to answer your questions. All right, you guys know what I’m going to say. It’s a beautiful day to do hard things. Go and do the hard thing. You will not be sorry. You will be so empowered. You will feel so much better. It is hard work, so be gentle with yourself. But I believe in you. Have a good day.

In this week’s podcast episode, we have the amazing Shala Nicely, author of Is Fred in the refrigerator? and Everyday Mindfulness for OCD.  In this episode, we talked about people-pleasing and how people-pleasing comes from a place of shame, anxiety, and fear of judgment from others.  Kimberley and Shala share their own experiences with people-pleasing and how it created more shame, more anxiety, and more distress. In This Episode: The definition of people-pleasing How it is common for people who have OCD and Anxiety disorders. How people-pleasing impacts people’s self-esteem and their wellbeing. How people-pleasing anxiety keeps us stuck. How to manage people-pleasing in daily life. How self-compassion can help to manage people-pleasing. Links To Things I Talk About: Shala’s Website shalanicely.com Shala’s Book “Is Fred In the Refrigerator?” ERP School: https://www.cbtschool.com/erp-school-lp Episode Sponsor: This episode of Your Anxiety Toolkit is brought to you by CBTschool.com.  CBTschool.com is a psychoeducation platform that provides courses and other online resources for people with anxiety, OCD, and Body-Focused Repetitive Behaviors. Go to cbtschool.com to learn more. Spread the love! Everyone needs tools for anxiety... If you like Your Anxiety Toolkit Podcast, visit YOUR ANXIETY TOOLKIT PODCAST to subscribe free and you'll never miss an episode. And if you really like Your Anxiety Toolkit, I'd appreciate you telling a friend (maybe even two). Episode Transcription This is Your Anxiety Toolkit - Episode 211. Welcome to Your Anxiety Toolkit. I’m your host, Kimberley Quinlan. This podcast is fueled by three main goals. The first goal is to provide you with some extra tools to help you manage your anxiety. Second goal, to inspire you. Anxiety doesn’t get to decide how you live your life. And number three, and I leave the best for last, is to provide you with one big, fat virtual hug, because experiencing anxiety ain’t easy. If that sounds good to you, let’s go. Welcome back, everybody. This is an episode I am so excited to share with you. Maybe actually “excited” isn’t the word. I feel that this is such an important conversation. Today we have my amazing friend and someone I look up to and I consider a mentor, the amazing Shala Nicely. She’s been on the podcast before. Everybody loves her, as do I. And interestingly that I say that because today we are talking about people-pleasing—the act of getting people to like you. Shala is very easy to love, but we are talking about how invasive people-pleasing can become, how problematic it can become, our own personal experience with people-pleasing, and what we have done and are continuing to do to manage people-pleasing behaviors. It is such a wonderful, deep, comprehensive conversation, so I cannot wait to share that with you in just a few minutes. Before we do that, I would like to first, of course, share with you the “I did a hard thing” for the week. This is from Jack, and I’m so excited because Jack said: “I haven’t been able to drive on the highway since I had a severe panic attack a couple of months ago. I have felt trapped and it has put a strain on my life. I recently drove on the highway for an hour by myself. I felt anxious during it, but I was able to calm myself down. It was a huge step for me.” Amazing work, Jack. This is such a hard thing and you totally did it. This is so inspiring. You got through it. You actually stand your fear right in the face. So cool. Just proof that it is always a beautiful day to do hard things.  Let’s move over to the review of the week. This is from YFWWFH, and this review said: “Life-changing in a meaningful way. I found Kimberley’s podcast through another psychology podcast I’ve been listening to where she was a guest. I started listening to hers and was so happy. I found it. The insight this podcast offers and the expertise she shares are incredible and truly make a difference in the way you think about things and feel when struggling with some of the topics talked about. I truly love this podcast and the effect that it has.” Yay, that brings me such joy. Thank you so much for sharing that review. You can leave your reviews on iTunes. Please go over to iTunes to leave a review. The more reviews you leave, the more people we can reach, which means the more people I can help with this free resource.  That being said, let’s move over to the show, such an important interview. I am so excited and I’m so curious to see what comes up for you as you listen. I hope it’s helpful. I hope it gives you food for thought. I hope it gives you direction. And I just can’t wait to share it with you. So let’s go straight to the episode. I will see you guys next week. Have a wonderful day. It is a beautiful day to do hard things. Kimberley: Okay. So, you guys know that I love Shala Nicely, and today I have the one and only Shala Nicely talking with us about people-pleasing. And this whole conversation came organically out of conversations we’ve had recently. So, welcome, Shala. Shala: Thank you, Kimberley. And as you know, the love is mutual. So thank you for [04:42 inaudible] me again. Kimberley: Okay. I have so many questions and this is probably the most relevant topic to me in my stage of my recovery. You can share as much as you want to share, but I’m so grateful that we’re talking about people-pleasing, because I feel like it runs rampant for those who have anxiety. Would you agree? Shala: Absolutely. Kimberley: How would you define people-pleasing?  Shala: People-pleasing to me is putting your own needs in the backseat so that you can do things that you think will make others happy or like you. You’re not quite sure about that. You’re mind-reading, you are estimating what other people might want or what society might want. I think people-pleasing is not just, “I’m pleasing the individual person.” It could be, “I’m pleasing a culture, a society, a family.” But I think it’s all about putting your own needs in the backseat and doing what you think other people want in order to make them happy, but really it’s in order to reduce your own anxiety. Kimberley: Right. So, there’s so much there you said that I want to pull apart. So, you emphasized “You think,” and I think there is a major concept there I want you to share. We want to please people. Of course, we want to please people. We like seeing smiley, happy faces. I don’t like seeing sad faces and angry faces. But so much of people-pleasing is based on what in our minds we think they want. Can you share your thoughts on that? Shala: If you look at people-pleasing behavior–I’ll take me as an example–obviously, it starts with an intrusive thought, “What if they don’t like me? I’ve not done well enough. They’re going to think less of me, drop me,” et cetera, et etcetera. So, I think it starts with some sort of intrusive thought like that. And from there, it goes into how to answer that what-if. And the what-if is made up. We don’t actually know it’s a real problem. It’s an intrusive thought that has come in. It may or may not be a problem. And so, if we engage in this, we’re trying to figure out, “Well, how can I make sure that what-if doesn’t happen?” And so, you’re dealing with a really made up situation. And so, there’s really no data there for you to know what to do. And so you’re guessing. “Gosh, what if this person isn’t getting back to me because I did something wrong and they don’t like me? And I need to do something to show them how much I like them so that they’ll change their mind about me.” The whole thing is based on the premise that what if this person doesn’t like me, which is probably 99% of the time not even a premise. So, we’re guessing all over the place in both guessing there’s a problem we have to solve. And then guessing how to solve that because we don’t really know if there are problems. So we have to whack it together, you might say. Kimberley: Right. I remember early in my marriage, me getting my knickers in a knot over something, and my husband saying, “What’s happening?” And I’m like, “Well, you want me to do such and such this way?” And he was like, “I’ve never said that. I’ve never even thought that. What made you think that I would want you to be that way?” And I had created this whole story in my head. For me, that’s a lot of how people-pleasing plays out, is I come up with a story about what they must want me to be, and then I assume I have to follow that. How does it play out for you? Shala: I think “story” is the right word to use there. You create this whole story in a scenario. It’s got main characters and a plot and the ending is always horrible, and it becomes very believable in your mind. The thing is it’s in your mind. We’ve made it all up. But those stories convey very powerful emotions and then we’re acting to somehow get rid of those emotions, which were created by the story that we made up in the first place. Kimberley: Right. And that was the second thing that you said that I think is so compelling, is for me in my life goal of reducing people-pleasing behaviors, I will be on this journey for the rest of my life. I’m pretty confident of it. It’s a matter that I have to learn how to sit with the feeling instead of just going into people-pleasing to remove that feeling. Is that how you would explain it for yourself as well? Shala: Yes. And I will echo your sentiments. I will be right alongside you on this journey of trying not to people-please the rest of my life. And I think it’s sitting with some uncomfortable emotions and it’s really sitting with the uncertainty of “we don’t know” what other people think. And it’s easy, especially if you have anxiety to assume the negative because that feels like some sort of certainty. “Oh, they must not like me.” That’s actually sometimes a more comfortable thought than “I don’t know,” fit with “I just don’t know.” Kimberley: Right. Because when we tell ourselves “They mustn’t like us,” at least then we don’t have a place to work from. We can gain control back. Whereas if we are not certain, that’s a really uncomfortable place. I know as we were talking, do you think this shows up the same for folks with OCD as it does for folks who don’t have OCD? Do you think there’s a difference or do you feel like it’s the same? Shala: That’s a good question. I might only be able to offer a biased answer because I have OCD and I work with people with OCD. So, that’s going to be the frame of reference that I’m coming from most often. I think that with OCD, it could come from a foundational place of really thinking that you’re not worth very much. I think that comes a lot because OCD spends its days if you’re untreated, yelling at you and telling you are horrible and nitpicking every little thing that you do wrong. And it’s like living with an abusive person when you have untreated OCD, especially when it goes on for years and years, which happens to so many of us with OCD. And if you hear that for however long–months, years, whatever–you start to believe it. And then you don’t think you are worth pleasing, and you almost feel like, “Gosh, maybe if I made people around me happy, maybe if I got this positive feedback from other people that they think I’m worthwhile, then somehow maybe all this in my head will stop.”  I think people-pleasing for people with OCD can come from that place where they just have internalized years of abuse by their own mind that they feel like they can’t escape until they find exposure and response prevention and work through all that. But even after that, they can still have this foundational belief that “I’m just not worth anything.” And that can drive a lot of people-pleasing behaviors that can linger even after somebody’s gone through what would be considered a successful course in ERP. Kimberley: Yeah. That’s really interesting. As you were talking, I was comparing and contrasting my eating disorder recovery. I was thinking about this this morning. My eating disorder didn’t actually start with the wish to be thin. It started with pleasing other people. So, my body was changing and I was getting compliments for that. And then the compliments felt so good. It became like something I just wanted to keep getting, almost compulsively keep getting. And so then, it became, “How can I get more?” People-pleasing, people-pleasing. “Oh, they liked this body. Well, I’ll try and get that body. Oh, they complimented me on how healthy my food was. Okay, I’ll do that more in front of them.” So, it’s interesting to compare and contrast. People-pleasing was the center point of my eating disorder and the starting point of my eating disorder. So, that’s really interesting. You talked about people-pleasing behaviors. What do you think that is for you? What would that look like? Shala: People-pleasing behaviors can be big or small. It could be something like a friend calls you to go out to dinner. You don’t really want to go out to dinner. You really want to sit in and watch your latest Netflix binge show, but you feel like you can’t say no. So you go out to dinner. That could be something on the smaller end, I think. Then there’s on the really large scale, which I’ve done, and I talk about in more detail in my memoirs, Is Fred in the Refrigerator? about my journey with OCD, which is not breaking up with somebody because you’re afraid to hurt their feelings. And you can take that all the way down the aisle, which I did.  And so, I think that people-pleasing behaviors really can run the gamut from small seemingly innocuous things. “Oh, it’s just an evening,” to life-changing decisions about your partner, about how you live your life, about where you live, about your work, about how you approach, all of that. And that I think makes people-pleasing sometimes hard to identify because it doesn’t fit neatly in a little box. Kimberley: Yeah. That’s interesting. And I love the way that you share that. What’s interesting for me is that most of my people-pleasing in the past have been saying yes to things that I don’t want to do or things I want to do, but I literally don’t have time for. So I’m saying yes to everything without really consulting with my schedule and being like, “Can I actually fit that in on that day?” Just saying yes to everything, which I think for me is interesting. A lot of the listeners will remember, is I got so the burnt out and sick, because I’d said yes to everything six months ago. Because six months ago I agreed to all these things, now I’m on the floor, migraines or having nothing because I just said yes to everything. And so, for me, a lot of that, the turnaround has been practicing saying no to plan for the future, looking forward, going, “Will I have time for that? Do I want that? Does that work for me? Is that for my recovery?” How have you as either a clinician or a human started to practice turning the wheel on this problem? Shala: It’s hard for me to think how to the answer to that because there are so many ways to approach it and it’s a complex problem. And so, I have approached it in a number of ways. The first thing that comes to mind is really boundaries because a lot of this is about setting boundaries to protect your own time and to protect what you want to do. So, that’s one of the things that I have really worked on, is becoming clear on what I think is acceptable for me to be doing and what is not acceptable for me to be doing in terms of my own physical and mental health. It’s so easy to say yes to things, especially if it’s months down the road, “Oh, that’ll be fine, I’ll have time to do that.” And then you get to, you’re like, “Okay, I don’t have time to do that.” And then you’re wearing yourself out and all of that. And I think that happens a lot with people-pleasing because again, you’re putting your own needs, especially for rest and recovery on the back burner in order to do things that you think will make somebody else happy.  And so, I think really working on boundary setting. So I’m coming from a perspective of having OCD and treating OCD. Boundary setting is an exposure. So, it is about creating an uncomfortable situation because it involves saying no. And if you say no, sometimes you’re going to disappoint people. And if you’re just getting into the process of saying no, and people are expecting that you’re going to say yes because you say yes to everything, you can often get some pretty negative feedback. “What do you mean no? You’ve always said yes.” Kimberley: You’re the “yes” girl. Shala: And so then, that feels even more jarring, like, “Oh, see, it’s coming true. People don’t like me.” And so, that becomes even more anxiety provoking and thus an even better exposure, but even harder. And I think that thinking of it as setting boundaries to protect your own times so that when you do say yes to something, you are there as fully as you can be because you’re well-rested in terms of your body and your mind and your health and all of that. When you don’t have good boundaries, you end up feeling very resentful because you haven’t been able to take care of yourself. And so, in fact, by not setting good boundaries, you can’t actually be there for people when they need you because you’re too run down. And that is, I think, the big lie about these people-- one of the many big lies about this people-pleasing thing is that, “Well, I got to do all this to make people happy.” Well, in essence, you’re not putting your own oxygen mask on first. And so, you can’t. Even if there was something you really could do that would really help somebody else, you don’t have enough energy to do it.  So, I think really realizing that boundaries are the way to not have that resentment, to allow you to be fully there with the things you do want to do with all your heart and energy. And so then, you are actually really achieving your goal because you can really help people, as opposed to saying yes to everything and you’re spread so thin, you’re not enjoying it, they’re not enjoying it, and it’s not achieving the goals that you had in mind. Kimberley: Yes. It’s so exactly the point. So, boundaries is 100%, I agree. I’ll tell you a story. You know this story, but the listeners might not. Once I did a podcast that got some negative feedback and I called you, understandably concerned about getting negative feedback, because I don’t like-- I’m one of those humans that don’t really love negative feedback. Shala: I’m one of those humans too. Kimberley: I had said to you, this is literally my worst fear. One of my worst fears is being called out and being told where you’ve made a mistake. What was really interesting for me is going through that and saying, “Okay, but I did, it is what it is. I wouldn’t change anything. And here’s what I believe.” I came out of that instead of going and apologizing and changing everything. I came out of that actually feeling quite steady in my stand because I had acknowledged like, “Oh, even when things don’t go well, I can get through it. I can stand on my two feet. I can get through those,” which is something I hadn’t ever really had to practice, is really standing through that. And I thought that that was a really interesting thing for me, is a lot of the reason I think I was people-pleasing was because the story I was telling myself was that I wouldn’t be able to handle it if something went wrong, that I wouldn’t be able to handle people knowing that I had made a mistake or so forth. But that wasn’t true. In fact, all of a sudden it felt actually a bit of freedom for me of like, “Oh, okay. The jig is up. I can chill now.” Have you found that to be true of some people or am I rainbow and unicorn? Shala: I love that because I think it’s like what we do with people with social anxiety. They are afraid of going out in public in certain situations and having somebody evaluate them negatively. And one of the things that we do with those exposures is actually, let’s go out and create some of these situations that your social anxiety is afraid of. Let’s go into a shopping mall in the food court and spill a Coke on the floor while everybody’s looking at you. And then process through, what was that like? Well, I just stood there and they came and cleaned it up and everybody went back to their meal and we went on. Huh, okay. That wasn’t as bad as I thought it was.  And I think that’s very akin to what you’re saying, is we build this up in our head that if we’re rejected, if somebody doesn’t like us, if we disappoint somebody, that’s going to be catastrophic. And inevitably, it is going to happen unless you isolate yourself in your house, that somebody is not going to like you, somebody is going to give you a bad review, and being able to say, “Yup, that is okay. I don’t have any control over that. And I can handle that. That doesn’t devalue me as a person because they gave me a bad review or bad feedback or whatever.” Because if we think about what we each do, like I’ve bought products before that I’ve written bad reviews for because I didn’t like it or it didn’t work for me. I think everybody has. And even if you didn’t write a review, you thought it in your head. So, all of us have things we like and don’t like, and that’s okay.  What you’re talking about is you have those experiences and then you realize, “Wait, that is okay.” And then you feel free, like, “Okay, look at me. I can make mistakes.” You’re less compelled. Continue doing this because you’re like, “Wait, there’s freedom on the other side of this where I don’t have to try to be pleasing people all the time.” Kimberley: Right. Or in addition to that was-- and this is true in this example of, I think it was a podcast that I had put out, was people cannot like what I did but still like me in other areas. That blew me away. I think that in my mind it was so black and white. It’s like, if they don’t like one thing, they’re going to knock you out, where it’s like no. People can hold space for things they like and things they do like. Shala: That is such important. Kimberley: Right. You also just said something and I want you to speak to it, is some people people-please by going above and beyond, but you also just brought up the idea of some people just don’t leave their house. What would that look like, because they’re people-pleasers? Shala: Well, I think that is the extreme case of any kind of anxiety-driven disorder, where you’re trying to avoid having to be in a situation where others have expectations of you that you feel that you can’t meet, and so you narrow your world down to avoid those situations to avoid the anxiety. And I don’t think that’s just with people-pleasing. That’s obviously what agoraphobia is about—people not leaving their homes because they’re trying to avoid situations that are going to trigger panic attacks. But I think people with anxiety disorders in general can start making choices to avoid anxiety that end up not allowing them to lead the lives they want to lead or to take care of themselves. Kimberley: Yeah. I mean, I think that’s the question for everybody, even for those who are listening, I would say. If you’re thinking, “Oh, this doesn’t apply to me,” it’s always good to look like, “What am I avoiding because of the fear that I’ll be disproved?” or someone will give you a bad review and so forth, because I think it shows up there quite often. Shala: Yes. And in fact, there is a really good article—maybe we can put a link in the show notes—that Adam Grant from Wharton Business School wrote in the New York Times about what straight A students get wrong. And I think it goes right to the heart of what we’re talking about because he referenced people who are looking for straight A’s, which is an institutionalized form of approval, will potentially take easier classes that they can get an A in versus something they really are interested that they might not do as well in. And so, they are not pursuing what’s important to them because they’re pursuing the A, and therefore head in a direction that maybe isn’t the direction that would be best for them to have. Kimberley: Right. And you just hit the nail on the head because so much of recovery from people-pleasing is actually stopping and going, “Do I want this? Does this actually line up with my values? Am I doing it for other people?” I’ve heard many clients say, “I do what other people tell me to do and what they want because I actually have no idea of what I want.” That’s scary in and of itself. Shala: And that is a really tough problem for people with anxiety disorders because when you have an anxiety disorder, you’re used to doing what the disorder says and the disorder can really run your life. When you get better from the anxiety disorder, it’s easy to keep doing the things that you were doing that didn’t necessarily seem compulsive but may have been because they’re just part of your life, without ever stopping to step back and say, “Well, do I need to be doing this?” I’ll give you a personal example. I live in Atlanta and there’s lots to do in Atlanta. I’ve lived here for a long time. I think I felt a need that I “should” be out and doing things because I live in a big city and there’s so much to do and I need to be doing it. And so I’d have this story in my head that I need to be out and visiting attractions, the aquarium, the restaurants. We have this really cool food court called Ponce City Market. While those things are fun and I do enjoy going to them sometimes, it almost felt like I should do this because this is what people do. They’re out and about and doing things, almost like I’m pleasing a societal norm, like this is what you do if you live in a big city.  Well, COVID actually has really helped me recognize, “You know what, I actually don’t need to get up on Saturday morning and pack my schedule full of all sorts of things that I think I should be doing. I can actually just sit in my house and do things that I might want to do.” And so as you know, I’ve been doing all sorts of things lately just to try stuff out. I’m taking an oil painting class, which still scares me to death. And I’m taking French lessons because I want to learn how to speak French. And I’ve bought these art magazines because I really like art and I just want to look at it. And I’m just letting myself explore these various things to find out what I do like. And then once I’ve been through this process and find what really floats my boat, then maybe hey, one weekend I can go to the aquarium because I want to, because it meets some value or need I have and do some painting instead of trying to meet this idea of what I should be doing that’s trying to please society and what my role in society should be, which I think is very easy for people with anxiety disorders and OCD to do, is let other people make the rules, the disorder, your family, your spouse, the society in general, as opposed to just sitting back and saying, “What do I really want?” And the answer to that might be, “I don’t know.” And instead of rushing out to do something because it feels better to just be doing something than to sit with the uncertainty of “I don’t know,” letting yourself sit in that and go, “Well, what can I maybe try to see if I like it?” Kimberley: Right. And I will add to that because you and I have talked quite a bit and I’ve learnt so many inspiring things from you as I’ve watched you do this. What was interesting for me is, a part of that for me was choosing things that people don’t actually like. Some of the choices I’ve made–things I want to do with my time or that I’ve said no to–do disappoint people. They do disappoint people and they might tell you you’ve disappointed them. And so, for me, it’s holding space for that feeling, the shame or the guilt or the sadness or whatever the emotion is, but still choosing to do the thing you wanted to do. It’s not one or the other. You don’t do things just because you haven’t disappointed someone. You can also choose to do something in the face of disappointing other people, right? Shala: Yes. And I think it’s inevitable. You’re going to disappoint them. Kimberley: It sucks so bad. Shala: Because you’re not going to have the same wants and needs as everybody else. And so, it’s inevitable that if you start figuring out what you want to do and trying some things out, you can’t do all the other things everybody else wants you to do. Kimberley: Yeah. I know. And it’s so frustrating to recognize that. But as you’ve said before, tens of thousands of people could love a product and tens of thousands of people could hate a product. Lots of people will like me and lots of people won’t like me or the things that we do or the places we want to go and so forth. I think that’s a hard truth to swallow, that we won’t please all the people. Shala: Yeah. And I’ll tell you a story that I think illustrates that, is I read this book for a small book club that I’m in, and one of the members had suggested it. I just went and grabbed it, bought it. I didn’t really read what kind of book it was. And I was loving it. It was really good. It was like this mystery novel. And then we get to the last, I don’t know, 20 pages. And it turns into this psychological thriller that honestly scares the pants off me, but it was wrapped up so well. I was just sitting in shock on the floor, reading this thing, like, “Oh my gosh.” It was so good, yet so terrifying. So I got online on Amazon just to look at the book because it had just gone right over my head that this was a thriller, and I don’t normally read thrillers. I just wanted to go on and see. And I was expecting, because I loved this thing, to see five-star reviews across Amazon for this book because I thought it was so amazing. And I got on, and the reviews for it were maybe three point something stars. I started reading and some people went, “I hated this. It was horrible.” They hated it as much as I loved it. And that to me was just a singular example of you cannot please everyone. I love this book, other people hate this book. There were lots of people that were in between. And that doesn’t say anything about the writer. The writer is a whole complete awesome person, regardless of what any of us think about what she wrote. Kimberley: Right. And she gets to write what she wants to write, and we get to have our opinions. And that’s the way the world turns. Shala: And I think recognizing she doesn’t have any control over what I think, I might even write a five-star review just for whatever reason and really hate the book. So, even if you get a positive review, you don’t actually know that it’s true. I think this is all about understanding that it’s not about not caring about what people think because that’s really hard. It just numbs you out and cuts you off. I think it’s about going into the middle. It’s not about people-pleasing. It’s not about not caring. It’s about recognizing you don’t have control over any of that and living in that uncertainty. I don’t know what people think. I don’t have control over what people think. And even if they tell me one thing, that could actually not be what they think at all. And that’s okay. Kimberley: Right. Such an amazing point. I’m so glad you brought that up because I actually remember many years ago saying to my husband, “I’ve decided I don’t care what people think.” Well, that lasted about 12 and a half seconds because I deeply care what people think. But it doesn’t mean that what they think makes my decisions. And I think that’s where the differentiation is. A lot of the people who are listening, there’s absolutely no way on this world they could find a way to not care and not want to please people. It’s innate in our biology to want to please people. However, it gets to the point where, is it working for you? Are you feeling fulfilled? Are you resentful? These are questions I would ask. Are you fulfilled? Are you resentful? Are you exhausted? What other questions would you maybe ask people to help them differentiate here or to find a way out? Shala: Am I really enjoying this? Do I really want to do this? Why am I doing this? Kimberley: Yeah. What emotion am I trying to avoid? What would I have to feel if I made my own choice? Yeah. There’s some questions I would have people to consider. Okay. So, one more question. You make a choice based on what you want. You do or you don’t please people. Let’s say for the hell of it you dissatisfy somebody. What do you do with that experience? Shala: First, I think you recognize. You go into this, recognizing that is almost certainly going to happen. There are very few certainties in life. That’s probably one of [35:11 inaudible]. Kimberley: You will disappoint people. Shala: Yeah. You’re going to disappoint people. And then I think really going to a place of self-compassion. And I’m going to turn it back over to you because you just published an amazing, amazing book that I cannot recommend enough about self-compassion in the treatment of OCD with exposure and response prevention. And I’d love to hear what you think about how you could incorporate self-compassion into this, especially when you do disappoint somebody because I think that’s so important.  Kimberley: Yeah, no, I love that you swing at my way. I think the first thing is to recognize that one of the core components of self-compassion is common humanity, which is recognizing that we’re all in this together, that I’m just a human being. And human beings aren’t ever going to be perfect. Only in our minds that we create the story that we were going to be. So, a lot of self-compassion is that common humanity of, I am a human, humans make mistakes, humans get to do what they need to do and want to do and that we’re not here to please people, and that our worth is not dependent on people enjoying and agreeing with us. And I think that’s a huge reason that my people, like you’ve said, people-please is they’re constantly trying to prove to themselves their worth. So, I would recognize first the common humanity.  And then the other piece is it hurts when you disappoint someone. And so, I think it’s being tender with whatever emotion that shows up—sadness, loss, anger, frustration, fear. A lot of it is fear of abandonment. So I would really tend to those emotions gently and talk to them gently like, “Okay, I notice sadness is here. It makes complete sense that I’m feeling sad. How can I tend to you without pushing you away?” Again, I think sometimes-- I’ve seen this a lot in my daughter’s school. I’ve seen this sometimes, the school has said, “When you’re feeling bad about yourself, just tell yourself how good you are.” And I’m like, that’s really positive, but it actually doesn’t tend to their pain at all. It skips over it and makes it positive.  So I think a big piece of this is to just hold tender your discomfort and find support in like-minded people who want what you want and who are willing to show up. You and I have said before the Brené Brown quote like, “Only take advice from people who are in the ring with you.” And that has been huge for me, is finding support from people who are doing scary things alongside me. Do you have any thoughts?  Shala: Yeah. I think the more that you do this, the more that you’re willing to take care of yourself, because I really do think working on people-pleasing is learning how to take care of you. And that’s so important. And the more that you will do that and go through these very hard exercises of saying no and disappointing people, and then compassionately holding yourself and saying, “It’s okay,” like using the common humanity, recognizing we’re all in this together. Everybody feels like this sometimes. I think the more you do it, then you start to disconnect your worth from other people’s views. And that is where a whole new level of freedom is available to us.  I think that sometimes people-pleasing, because it can be so subtle, isn’t necessarily addressed directly in therapy for anxiety disorder. Sometimes it is when it’s really over. But a lot of times it’s not, and that’s not the fault of the therapist or the client or anything. It’s just, it’s so subtle. We don’t even realize we’re doing it. And so, we finish therapy for anxiety disorders, we feel a lot better, but there’s still a lot of this “should” and “have to,” societal expectations or expectations of other people, which we feel we’re driving our life and we don’t have any control over. And really working on this allows you to recognize that you are a whole good, wonderful person on your own, whether or not other people are pleased with you or not. But that takes a lot of consistent work, big and small, before you can start to see that your worth and other people’s thoughts about you are two separate things that aren’t connected. Kimberley: Right. Oh, I’m going to leave it there, because that’s the mic drop right there. I love it. Shala, thank you for coming on and talking about this. I really wanted your input on this instead of it just being a podcast of mine. So, thank you. I love your thoughts on this. Where can people hear more about you, your book? Tell us all the things. Shala: Sure. So, my website is shalanicely.com. So, anyone can go there, and I have three different blogs that I write, all sorts of information about how to manage uncertainty and OCD because that’s my specialty. My memoir, Is Fred in the Refrigerator?: Taming OCD and Reclaiming My Life, in that I talk a lot about how I dealt with people-pleasing. And in fact, the chapter called Shoulders Back, which is one of the techniques—I said there were many that I used for people-pleasing, that’s one of the techniques that I use—that chapter talks about my journey in learning about how to work through some of this by really putting your shoulders back and acting like all that stuff you hear in your head is relevant. So, that could be a resource for people as well. Everyday Mindfulness for OCD, which I co-wrote with Jon Hershfield, that also has some information on self-compassion as well if people want to learn about writing self-compassion statements. But again, I would also send people to your amazing brand new workbook, which is the only workbook that I know of, the only book that I know of, that talks about doing ERP in a self-compassionate way. So, it’s completely integrated together. And I think that is so important for building a foundation for a good OCD recovery. So, I would definitely send people your way. Kimberley: Thank you, friend. Shala: You’re welcome.  Kimberley: Well, there are so many parts of the people-pleasing and the tools in your book as well. I know we’ve talked about that and it’s one of my favorite books of all time. So, definitely for listeners, go and check that out. I am so grateful that you came on.  Shala: Well, thank you. I’m just so honored to be here. It’s always so much fun to talk with you about these topics. So, thank you. Kimberley: So important. Thank you so much, and I just am so grateful for you. ----- Please note that this podcast or any other resources from cbtschool.com should not replace professional mental health care. If you feel you would benefit, please reach out to a provider in your area.  Have a wonderful day and thank you for supporting cbtschool.com.

SUMMARY: Quite often, my clients forget to recognize avoidance as a compulsion.  While you might be spending a lot of time in your recovery reducing compulsions such as reassurance-seeking compulsions, behavioral compulsions, and mental compulsions, it is important to recognize that avoidance is also a compulsion.  In this episode, we address why it is important to address the things you are avoiding and find a way to incorporate this into your OCD treatment. In This Episode: Why Avoiding your fear keeps you stuck in the obsessive-compulsive cycle What is an avoidant compulsions? How to manage avoidant compulsions? Links To Things I Talk About: ERP SCHOOL Other podcast episodes about avoidance Episode Sponsor: This episode of Your Anxiety Toolkit is brought to you by CBTschool.com.  CBTschool.com is a psychoeducation platform that provides courses and other online resources for people with anxiety, OCD, and Body-Focused Repetitive Behaviors.  Go to cbtschool.com to learn more. Spread the love! Everyone needs tools for anxiety... If you like Your Anxiety Toolkit Podcast, visit YOUR ANXIETY TOOLKIT PODCAST to subscribe free and you'll never miss an episode. And if you really like Your Anxiety Toolkit, I'd appreciate you telling a friend (maybe even two). EPISODE TRANSCRIPTION This is Your Anxiety Toolkit - Episode 210. Welcome back, everybody. I am so thrilled to have you here. How are you doing? How is your anxiety? How is your depression? How is your heart? How is your grief? How is your anger? How is your joy? How are you? How is your family? All things that I hope are okay and tender, and there’s a safe place for all of those things to be. Today’s episode is in inspiration of a session I recently had with a client—a client I’ve seen for some time. We are constantly talking about safety behaviors, ways that we respond to fear. I had mentioned to him that of course, one of the safety behaviors we do are from fear, and in response to fear is avoidance. We avoid things. And he had said, “Oh, I completely forgot about avoidance. I completely forgot that was one of my safety behaviors.” Sometimes we put so much attention on the physical behaviors and the mental compulsions that we forget to check in on what are you avoiding and how avoiding things and fear keep us stuck. So, that’s what we’re talking about today. Before we do that, let’s first do the review of the week. This is from Ks Steven, and they said: “Short and sweet. This podcast is one of my highlights of the week. It is short, sweet and so helpful. I look forward to each new episode. Episode 99 on self-compassion has transformed my relationship with myself. As I start each day to face my obsessions, I remind myself it is a beautiful day to do hard things.” I love that review. Thank you so much. I love that. It basically is exactly what I want this podcast to be. I want it to be short, I want it to be sweet, I want it to be helpful, and I want it to remind you that it is always a beautiful day to do hard things. Before we get into the episode, we have one more part of the episode that we want to do, which is the “I did a hard thing,” and this is from Anonymous. They said: “My husband and I have been going through infertility treatments for years. This year, we did IVF and it was triggering, maybe because it felt more “real.” I was panicking that I didn’t feel perfect enough since I struggled with some mental health issues earlier this year. I had the false narrative in my mind and major intrusive thoughts about not being a good mom, ruining my children, fearing postpartum mental health issues. I wanted to cancel our embryo transfer because of all of these intrusive thoughts and fears. But on Monday, I did it afraid and we transferred our embryo. We’ll find out next week if I’m pregnant and I’m so glad I did it.” Oh my goodness, I cannot tell you how impressed I am. I wish nothing but joy for you. You did that hard thing, and I hope that however that turned out that you are standing by yourself and you are gentle and kind and reminding yourself that you never have to be perfect. Never, never, never. We are not meant to be perfect. Okay, here we go. Let’s talk about avoidance. I mean, listen, that “I did a hard thing” is exactly what we’re talking about, so we’ll even use that as a reference today. Fear is scary. Nobody wants to feel it. It’s not fun at all, and instinctually, we go into fight or flight, and flight is a normal human response to fear that has us avoid danger. Now, this instinctual response is what keeps us safe. If a bus is coming for you, you run off the street. That’s what we do. It’s the right thing to do. However, if you are using avoidance on repeat, and if you’re using avoidance to avoid the sensation of fear, not an actual current, real imminent danger, well then chances are you’re going to get stuck. So I want to be really clear, if you are actually in physical danger, avoidance is not a compulsion. It’s not a safety behavior. But if you’re avoiding thoughts about things or you’re avoiding things because there is a small or a medium probability of something happening, or even maybe even a large probability in some situations, chances are in this case, you’re going to walk away quite unempowered. Because the truth is, life is scary. Life doesn’t always go well. Bad things do happen. It sucks to say, but it’s true. Bad things do happen. And so, it makes sense that we naturally want to avoid lots of things to avoid bad things from happening. But what happens when we do that is life starts to get really, really small. We have to be willing to take some calculated risk, and ideally, the calculating part doesn’t take too much of your time either because we can spend a lot of time ruminating about potential risks, probabilities, uncertainties, and so forth. So what we want to do and what I want you to do when you’re listening to this and after listening to this is reflect on, what am I avoiding? Is the avoidance helpful and effective? Or is the avoidance impacting my ability to live my life? Is the avoidance impacting my ability to grow and thrive? Is the avoidance impacting my family and their ability to grow and thrive? That’s a big one, because sometimes our fears impact the people we love by no fault of our own. It’s not our fault, but we always want to check in on this stuff. When you avoid, ask yourself, what specifically am I avoiding? Am I avoiding actual danger? Or am I avoiding fear or other sensations? Because if you’re doing the avoidant behavior to avoid sensations or an emotion or some thoughts, the problem with that is what you suppress often comes more, what you resist often persists. So even your attempt of avoiding it so that you’re not having to endure the discomfort often only increases the frequency and duration of the discomfort or the thought or the feeling or the sensation or the urge. And so, therefore, it’s not effective. Some people avoid because they don’t want to feel humiliated or embarrassed. But the problem with that is, once we start avoiding, what often happens is people start noticing that you’re avoiding and then you end up feeling humiliated and embarrassed anyway. So what I’m trying to show you here is, while avoidance does give you some pretty immediate relief, it often has long-term outcomes that aren’t that great that keep you stuck. As the “I did a hard thing” segment that we feature each week and as we see even in the reviews often or almost every time, people who face their fear, even though it’s so painful and so uncomfortable, they leave that experience feeling empowered. They leave the experience saying to themselves, “That wasn’t fun, but at least I know I can do it. Now I have proof that I can. Now I have proof that I survived it.” And with that comes powerful cognitive learning. One of the best outcomes of ERP (Exposure and Response Prevention) is learning that you can survive really hard things. When we avoid that most of the time, the main thing we learn is when I can avoid bad things for you, but I can’t handle hard things. That’s what we really walk away learning. And our brain knows this. It’s keeping an eye on this. Our brains are very, very smart. They’re keeping track of this. And the more that we avoid, the more disempowered we feel and the more alert and hypervigilant the brain feels. “Oh, I avoided that. What else can I avoid? What else can I avoid?” So that next time you’re put in a situation where you can’t avoid, the chances are that you probably will panic even more. Panic is a huge one for people where avoidance shows up. It’s a huge time where naturally of course—this is where I want you to practice compassion—you don’t want to have a panic attack. Of course, you don’t want to be uncomfortable. Of course, you want to avoid the discomfort because it’s not fun. No one wants to go through that. I don’t blame you. I do it myself. So we’re never going to be perfect at this. I wouldn’t expect you to be perfect at this. But there is this beautiful inquiry that we can deal with in ourselves or with a therapist or a loved one to go, “This isn’t working for me anymore. I deserve to live a life where fear isn’t running the show. So I’m going to choose to face this fear.” It is a fierce, compassionate action. It is a badass, shoulders back. “I’m going to show up for myself behavior and action.” It takes courage. It takes bravery. It takes a small amount of grit, I’m not going to lie. But I really want today to be about reminding you that you can do the hard thing. You can ride that wave of discomfort. It will be temporary. It will be hard, but it will rise and fall on its own. And with repetition, if you can gift yourself with the repetition of facing your fears, not avoiding them, you will feel so strong. You will learn that you can tolerate discomfort, that you are able to get through hard things. And so, next time, when you have to do a hard thing, you’ll feel a little less afraid, or in many cases, you’ll feel a significant degree less afraid. So, I’m going to leave you with that. Compassionately do an inventory on where avoidance shows up in your life. And then do your best to work through each and every one. This is what we do in ERP School. One of the first few modules is identifying what you avoid and then takes you through the steps of one by one by one. We’re going to face each and every one of those fears. You don’t have to have a therapist to do this. It’s ideal, but you don’t have to. We had an episode last week about people who do it on their own. It’s so cool. So I want to really empower you to, number one, face your fears, but just always remind yourself, avoidance is a safety behavior or a compulsion as well. All right, I love you. It is a beautiful day to do hard things. I believe in you. I really believe you. I really want you to understand that you have everything you need. It doesn’t have to be perfect. You don’t have to show up perfect. You can face your fears imperfectly and you don’t have to have it all figured out first, just give it a try. Throw yourself in there a little. Be kind. And I hope that this inspires you a little and reminds you that it is a beautiful day to do hard things. I love you. I believe in you. I hope you have a wonderful day. I hope you’re being tender with your heart. I’m sending you all the love I have from my heart to yours. I’ll see you guys next week.

SUMMARY:  There is nothing I love more than sharing the success stories of people who are using ERP to manage their OCD and intrusive thoughts.  In this week’s podcast, I interview Taylor Stadtlander about her OCD recovery and how she used ERP School to help her manage her intrusive thoughts, compulsive behaviors.  Taylor is incredibly inspiring and I am so thrilled to hear her amazing ERP Success story. In This Episode: Taylor shares how she learned she had OCD  Taylor shares how she created her own ERP recovery plan and the challenges and successes of her plan  Taylor shares how she used ERP School to help her put her ERP recovery plan together and how she now uses her skills in her own private practice. Links To Things I Talk About: Taylor’s Private Practice: https://www.embracinguncertaintytherapy.com/ Taylor’s Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/acupofmindfultea/ ERP School: https://www.cbtschool.com/erp-school-lp Episode Sponsor: This episode of Your Anxiety Toolkit is brought to you by CBTschool.com.  CBTschool.com is a psychoeducation platform that provides courses and other online resources for people with anxiety, OCD, and Body-Focused Repetitive Behaviors.  Go to cbtschool.com to learn more. Spread the love! Everyone needs tools for anxiety... If you like Your Anxiety Toolkit Podcast, visit YOUR ANXIETY TOOLKIT PODCAST to subscribe free and you'll never miss an episode. And if you really like Your Anxiety Toolkit, I'd appreciate you telling a friend (maybe even two). EPISODE TRANSCRIPTION Kimberley: Welcome. I am so excited to have here with me Taylor Stadtlander. Taylor: Yes. Thanks. I’m so excited to be here. Kimberley: Oh, thank you for being here. I am so excited about this interview. You’re someone I have watched on social media, and it’s really cool because out of there, I realized you were someone who had been through CBT School and I just love hearing the story of how you things get to me. I love that story. So, thank you for being on the show. Taylor: Of course. Thank you so much for having me. Kimberley: Tell me a little bit about you and your mental health and mental wellness journey, as much as you want to share. Tell us about that. Taylor: I’ll start with, I am an OCD therapist right now. And I start by saying that because, honestly, if you were to tell me when I was in high school, that I would have become an OCD therapist, I would have laughed at you because I, at that time, was really when my OCD started in high school. Of course, now, knowing what OCD is, I can look back and I can see definitely symptoms back as young as eight or nine years old. But when I was in high school, it was really when I had my sophomore year, pretty intense onset of compulsions. And then, of course, the intrusive thoughts, and it really was all-consuming. But the interesting part, and I’m sure a lot of people can relate to this, is it was something I kept very hidden, or I at least tried to. So, a lot of the earliest compulsions I had were checking compulsions. So, it was these intense, long rituals before I would go to bed, checking that the door is locked, the stove was off, all safety things. I felt this immense amount of responsibility. And I remember thinking like, where did this come from? One day I was just so concerned with safety and all these different things. But no one would have known other than, of course, my family, who I lived with, and my sister, who I shared a room with, who of course saw me getting up multiple times at night to recheck things. But from the outside, it looked like I had everything together. I was the A student, honors classes, volleyball captain, lacrosse captain, and just kept that façade of that picture-perfect high schooler. I did end up going to a therapist and she wasn’t an OCD specialist, but I have to say I got very lucky because I actually have some of the worksheets that she used with me back when I was 15. And it is in a sense ERP. So, I was very lucky in that sense that even though I wasn’t seeing a specialist, because I don’t think any of us knew what was going on, to even see an OCD specialist, I did get to-- and it helped. And that’s where I was like, “Okay, you know what, I’m going to go to college and become at least major in Social Work.” So, I went to college, majored in Social Work, got my Master’s in Social Work, and my OCD pretty much went away and I thought I was cured or whatever that means. And I thought that, “Okay, that was a chapter of my life. And now for whatever reason, I had to go through that. Now I’ll become a therapist and help other people.” I say that because I had no idea what was coming. My first year out of grad school, I began working and I had the most intense relapse of OCD ever. It came back stronger than ever this time. We call it “pure O.” So like mainly intrusive thoughts. And I had no idea what ERP was. It’s sad because I went through grad school for Social Work and we never talked about that. I remember this one day, and this is circling back to even how I found you, I had stayed home from work because I was just for like a mental health day, and I didn’t want to be on my phone because going on social media was triggering, watching TV was triggering, all these different things. But I was like, you know what, I’m sitting at home. I might as well turn on the TV. So, I turn on the TV, and an episode of Keeping Up With the Kardashians is on. I am a fan of that show, so shout out to them. And I remember watching and I was listening half not. I think I was trying to take a nap. And one of the family members had this OCD specialist on the show. And I remember pausing the TV because they had the name of the OCD specialist on the TV. And I wrote it down and it was Sheba from The Center of Anxiety and OCD. So I was like, “Okay, let me Google that.” That was the first time I’ve ever even heard of an OCD specialist. So, I stopped watching the show, went on my phone, Googled her name and her Instagram came up and I just started scrolling. It was like my world, my eyes were just open and I was like, “Oh my gosh, other people have OCD, and there’s a treatment, ERP.” Then I just kept scrolling. And then funny enough, I came across your page, Kimberley. And through that, that’s where I discovered CBT School. Anyway, long story short, at that time, I wasn’t able to afford an OCD specialist. So, I was seeing a therapist, a different therapist from high school because now by this time I was married, on my own insurance, trying to navigate that. In the back of my head, I knew that I needed to see an OCD specialist. I just, again, couldn’t afford it. So, I had a conversation with my husband. I’m like, “Look, I’m going to pay for this, the CBTS course.” And I said, “I know it seems like a lot of money, but it’s really not. If I was going to see an OCD specialist, this is probably what one session would cost.” And that’s how I learned about ERP. That’s your course. It’s how I learned about ERP. So, it honestly traces back to Keeping Up With the Kardashians. I love telling that story because it’s so weird. And honestly, that changed my life because learning ERP, it finally clicked that, okay. Because I was just applying CBT techniques. Like, think of a red stop sign when you have an intrusive thought, thoughts popping, and things like that. And as we know, that was making it so much worse. So, I just dove into your course and taught myself through your course what ERP is, which then led me to seeing that at work, and then wanting to specialize in ERP, and now working with clients who have OCD. So it’s really been an amazing journey, to say the least. Kimberley: I’m nearly in tears hearing this story. Oh my goodness, how funny, your story has gone from reality TV to here, and that’s so cool. That just blows me away. Taylor: Well, and it really goes to show. I know that there can be negative sides, like technology and Instagram, but for me, most of, if not all of my education, initially about OCD and ERP was from Instagram accounts, like yours or Sheba’s. And it was like, again, I knew that, okay, this can’t replace therapy, but it was such a good in-between for me, especially being in the place where I was, where I was trying to navigate. Because it can feel like you’re stuck when you either can’t find an OCD specialist or you can’t afford it. And I know what that feels like. So, to have that in between, not as a replacement, but just as a bridging point was so helpful for me. Kimberley: Wow. And for the listeners, I have not heard that story. This is new to me. So this is so cool. So, actually really, I’m so curious. So, when you took ERP PA school, were you like, “She’s crazy, I’m not doing that”? Or what was your first take on that? Taylor: I think I was at the point where I was so determined to find relief, I was willing to do anything. And I had researched about ERP before I took your course. I wasn’t like, “Oh, I’m just going to trust this randomly.” Kimberley: Random lady. Taylor: Right. So, I did do my own research obviously. And again, I’m in the field and I have a degree in Social Work. It’s just so interesting to me that that was not discussed, and I think that’s lacking in a lot of programs. So, once I researched it myself, I was like, “Okay, this is the evidence-based treatment. This is the gold standard. It looks like I got to do this.” I just remember I would come home. I was working at the time at a partial hospital program and I would come home from work. And that would be my routine. I would get my little notebook out, I’d pull my laptop out, and I treated it as if I was-- again, I know it doesn’t replace therapy, but I treat it as if I was in an intensive program. I would spend an hour or so going through your videos and then printing out the worksheets. And that’s just what I did. And I just started to do it. I had had before that a brief, very minimal understanding of exposures. And I think I was trying to do them on my own. But through your course, I was able to understand the response prevention piece. I was just exposing myself to all these things and then leading myself in a tailspin. But yeah, I see this again, even in my own clients now that there’s just I think a certain point that you reach, that yes, it’s scary to take this step, to start ERP, but because we’re so determined to not feel the way we’re feeling, it makes it so worth it. Kimberley: Wow. Oh my goodness, I’m seriously close to tears listening to your story. So, thank you for sharing that with me. I mean, wow, what an honor that I get to be a part of your journey, but how cool that you were the journey. You deal with these works. So, what was that like? Okay, so you said you would come home from work and you would sit down and you would go through it. Tell us a little bit about how you set your own. Taylor: I think I mentioned this, I was still seeing a therapist. What was funny is, I would come to my sessions and be teaching her about ERP, because in a way I was becoming this mini expert. And as I think a lot of our clients do, because it is such a unique treatment, you do have to become an expert. So, yeah. I mean, I remember using that worksheet where, okay, identify the what-if fear then list out the compulsions. I remember at the time I was like, “All right, I need to print out 10 of these because I have so many themes right now.” I remember doing that. And then, yeah, I would just pick away-- I would write them and then go through the whole process really as if I was going through ERP treatment. That’s what I was doing. Like the same process I do now with my clients is just what I did. And I’m so lucky and blessed to have a background in mental health to have that. And even the resources that I could have had self-taught myself ERP because I know that that’s not everyone’s situation. And then what was really helpful, and I think this is really important to mention, is my husband. And I think a lot of people can relate to this. We all have our one person who we seek reassurance from. So, when I was still living at home, that person was my mom. Once I got married, it became my husband. And so, he had to learn a lot about OCD treatment and ERP and not providing reassurance. So, the poor thing, I would have him sit down and watch your video, and he would. And he is amazing and just the best support system. But that was really helpful because again, even if you are in therapy and doing this as a supplement to therapy, to be able to have those resources to watch again and again, once you buy the course, you have it. And I still reference it to this day if I am for myself or even if I’m working with something with a client. So, that piece was huge because then I could say, “Hey, look this is the science behind what I’m doing. This is why you can’t give me reassurance and things like that.” Kimberley: Right. This is so cool, and it’s so cool that he was able to watch it and wasn’t intimidated by the whole process. I mean, he probably was, but he still went through with that, which was so cool. Taylor: 100%. Yes. This was about two years ago almost to the date actually. And because now I can look back on it, I think I do lose the anxiety that I had with starting it. And I’m sure him wondering, “What the heck are you doing?” But I think that’s so important to have your partner or just your support system understand ERP because it can be very confusing to the outside. If you’re doing exposures. What was very upsetting and hard for me that I really had to come to accept is, a lot of my harm obsessions were unfortunately targeted around him. So, I’d be writing these scripts and I would feel this guilt, this horrible amount of guilt and shame, similar to what I felt back in high school when I was trying to hide my compulsions. Here I have this amazing supportive husband and I’m writing these scripts. So, I would want to try and explain that. And him understanding it, I think made the whole process so much easier, for sure. Kimberley: Yeah. And those scripts can be hard, right? I even remember-- Taylor: I think that’s the hardest part for me. Kimberley: Yeah. I even remember recording that and looking into the camera and saying, “You need to write a story about this.” And I do these with my patients all the time, but thinking like, “Why would anyone trust me?” That’s a hard thing to do when you haven’t-- so that’s really amazing that you did that. The good news, and I’ll tell you this, you’re the first person to know this, is we just renewed the whole imaginable script module. They’re three times as long now. Taylor: Oh, amazing. Kimberley: Yeah. So, you’re the first to know. By the time they start, everyone will know, but yeah, we tripled the length of it because people had so many questions about that process. Taylor: In fact, I had a session yesterday with one of my amazing clients and she’s fairly new in the treatment and we were introducing the idea of scripts. And you’re absolutely right. When you’re describing it, you’re like, “What am I saying? This sounds horrible.” I was like, “All right, we are going to pretty much write out your worst fear coming true in as much detail as possible.” And she was like, “What the heck is going on?” And sometimes I have to take myself back to that starting point, especially with working with clients, because now I’m like, “I have an intrusive thought come up. All right, I know I have to go write a script when I get home.” So for me, it’s become second nature. But I think remembering how painful it was the first several times to actually write down those thoughts and then not only write down them but say them out loud and look into them, that-- I was reminded yesterday, I can’t lose sight of how painful that is initially, but then how rewarding it is once you realize it works. Kimberley: Yeah. You get so much bang for your buck, don’t you, when you use those. This is so cool. You’re obviously a rockstar. So exciting. I can’t tell you how much this brings me such joy to hear. What would you say to somebody who’s starting this process? What was important to you? What got you through? Tell us all your wisdom. Taylor: I think the biggest thing would be to know that you’re not alone because I remember that was the biggest thing for me. Before I knew what OCD and ERP were, I thought that I was the only person on the planet experiencing these intrusive thoughts, these horrible, violent images or sexual intrusive thoughts or whatever it was. So, first and foremost, knowing that you’re not alone, that there are so many of us who have experienced this, not only experienced the pain of it, but have gone through and are now in recovery. And that you don’t have to let fear dictate the choices that you make because that’s how I lived my life. I avoided things because of my OCD. So, I wouldn’t be triggered. I let fear make the decisions for a lot of my life. And when you do go through ERP treatment, you get to be in control again and you get to live again according to your values. For example, I’ve always wanted to be a mom and I’ve always dreamed of having kids. And I remember so many times OCD in so many different ways that I can’t even get into, say, “Oh, you could never do that.” Actually, I’m in my first trimester right now, which is so exciting and has been such an incredible journey. That’s a completely different topic for another day. I’m handling my OCD attached to that. But I was thinking and reflecting about it the other day of just like, wow, I now get to live life according to my values and not let fear and OCD make the decisions. Even though the treatment seems so scary and weird at first, it is so worth it because it works. And that’s why I wanted to become really a specialist in this specific field because I fell in love with the treatment. I fell in love with the fact that it gives people their lives back. And that’s so cool to witness. So, you’re not alone. You’re also not a bad person because of the thoughts that you’re having. And I’ll briefly share, I’m a Christian and I know that a lot of the thoughts that I’ve had for a long time, I just thought, okay, I’m a horrible person, or I’m a sinner. And whatever your faith is, whatever spirituality or anything, whatever morals you have, just know that you’re not your intrusive thoughts. You are just a person with thoughts and that’s it. Kimberley: Yeah. That’s so powerful. So, number one, congratulations. I just love when people say, “I have OCD about it, but I did it anyway.” Taylor: I know. Talk about facing your fears, it’s like-- Kimberley: Right. And then the second piece where you’re really, again, speaking from a place of values, even your religion, I’m sure got attacked during that process. And it’s really hard to keep the faith when you’re being harassed by these thoughts. So, I just love that. What motivated you to keep going? Besides you said just the deep wish to be better and well, how did you keep getting up? Was there lots of getting up and falling down or did you just get up every day? Taylor: Oh my gosh. In fact, there’s times where I still feel like I am picking myself up because-- I’m so happy you brought that up because that was something that I wasn’t prepared for, the feelings of relapsing I call it, where you feel like, oh my goodness, my symptoms have gone away, whatever. And then it hits you like a ton of bricks. And I always find that it comes back so strong. And it can be really discouraging at first. And I’ve even experienced that with the first couple of weeks of this pregnancy of just like, “Wow, I thought we were over this.” Even themes coming back from when I was 15 or 16 and like, “Okay, looks we have to deal with this again.” I’m able to laugh about it now, but in the moment, it’s really hard. And so, I think the biggest thing for me that I try to keep myself reminded of in those moments where I do feel like I’m-- because it feels like you’re taking a step backwards in a sense sometimes. And I always try to remind myself that so much can change in a matter of a day and that this is temporary. And even the worst moments of my ruminating or obsessing or the nights where I would literally spend hours completing compulsions, they always passed, if that makes sense. It sounds so cliché, but the sun always rose again. I always got another chance. And I would say that I am a naturally driven and motivated person. So I think that definitely did help me. But that’s not to say that there weren’t times where it’s a hopeless feeling when you are living in your own personal hell of intrusive thoughts. The way I remember describing it to the first therapist I went to is that I was, and I don’t play tennis by the way, but I was like, I pictured myself in a tennis court with a tennis racket and someone just throwing balls at me. And those are the entries of thoughts. And I walk one away and another one comes back. It was exhausting. But being reminded that-- And also now too, and I wrote this down, I definitely wanted to talk about this, was you have to find the community support and that has been so vital for me. And again, thank you, Instagram, I’ve been able to connect with so many people who have OCD or a related disorder who I text or DM and are now some of my closest friends. And we hold each other accountable on days where it’s like-- because OCD can be really weird sometimes. And it’s really nice to have people who understand and have been there. So, that’s really helpful for me too on days where it’s like, man, it just feels like I can’t pick myself up. Kimberley: Yeah. It’s so important. In fact, I’ll tell you a story. A client of mine, who I’ve been seeing for a while, could do the therapy without me. And she knows it as well as I do. And we hit a roadblock and it kept coming up. I just feel so alone. And not having support and other people with similar issues, it was a game-changer for her. And I think we’re lucky in that there are Facebook groups and Instagram and support groups out there that are so helpful. Taylor: Yes, totally. And that’s one of the reasons I actually decided about a year ago to create a mental health Instagram because I knew how much Instagram and using that platform helped me. I literally remember saying, “Even if it helps one person.” And at first, it was really scary sharing some of the things, talking about the more taboo themes and different things like that, and thinking like, oh man, what are my coworkers thinking of me or my family members when I post this. But what’s been so rewarding is countless people have reached out to me who either I know and I’ve either grown up with my whole life or people across the globe really of just saying, “Hey, thank you for letting me know I’m not alone.” And to me, that makes it totally all worth it. So, it’s so important to find that connection. Kimberley: Yeah. And is there anything else that you felt was key for you? Something that you want people to know? Taylor: I think that it’s so important to-- a huge piece of it too was incorporating act, like acceptance and commitment therapy, which I also believe I learned from one of your podcasts. So, thank you. And that was a huge piece for me too, because again, I think that-- to be very honest, I didn’t even say the words “OCD” until two years ago. I knew in my head that I met the criteria in the DSM, but I never-- that label for me was so scary. I don’t really know why, looking back, but maybe because it was just so unknown. So a lot of the work that I’ve had to do personally that’s been really helpful is just acceptance of any emotion really, especially learning that acceptance doesn’t mean that you have to love something, and it ties into tolerating uncertainty. Tolerating, I was talking about this with a client yesterday. Tolerating is not an endearing word. If someone says, “Oh, I tolerate that person,” that’s not a compliment. We were not being asked to love uncertainty or love the fact that we have OCD or whatever we’re struggling with, but just learning to sit with it and tolerate it has been an absolute game-changer for me. As much as the exposures and response prevention was so new to me, that whole piece too was a game-changer. Kimberley: Yeah, I agree. I think it’s such an important piece, because there’s so much grief that comes with having OCD too, and the stigma associated. I’ve heard so many people say the same thing. They had to work through the diagnosis before they could even consider-- Taylor: And I also had a lot of anger in two ways towards the fact that I had to deal with this. I always thought, and of course, I think a lot of us think this about anything else, I was like, “If only I just “had” anxiety and not OCD, or just had depression, that would be so much easier to deal with,” which I know is ridiculous. But in the moment, it’s like, I think whatever we’re going through seems so impossible. And then the other piece of the anger was just the misuse of people saying, “Oh, I’m so OCD,” or seeing it displayed on TV or on social media in the wrong way. And I’m like, “Oh my gosh, if only you knew what OCD was, you would never say that.” So now, it’s been cool because I can turn that frustration more into advocacy and education, but that was a huge hurdle to jump to. Kimberley: Yeah. Well, especially because you’re over here tolerating OCD. And then other people are celebrating and it just feels like taking the face. Taylor: Oh my gosh, yes. Kimberley: Yeah. I love all of that. Thank you so much for sharing that story. Number one, it brings me to tears that we get to meet and chat. I think that that is just so beautiful and I’m so impressed with the work that you’re doing. So, thank you. Tell me where people can hear more about you or follow you and so forth. Taylor: Sure. So, my Instagram is acupofmindfultea, and there you can also find-- I definitely share my personal story, but just also ERP tips. I’m also very big on holistic findings. So, obviously, medication has been a huge part of my story as well and helpful, but I also love finding natural ways and different ways that have helped my anxiety and just building my toolkit. So, I share a lot about that on there as well. So, yeah, I would love to connect with you guys on social media, for sure. Kimberley: Yeah. I would have to admit, when I saw your pregnancy announcement, I was with my kids and I was like, “Woo-hoo!” And they were like, “What?” And I’m like, “Oh, it’s just somebody I’ve never met, but I’m so excited for her.” Taylor: Isn’t that so great? I know, I love it. I feel the same way for other people. Kimberley: Yeah. Well, thank you so much. Number one, thank you for coming on the show. I love how that creates itself organically. And number two, thank you for sharing this because I think this will hopefully give some people some hope. We were overwhelmingly encouraged to have people with stories of their recovery. So, I think this is a really wonderful start of that. Taylor: Awesome. Well, thank you so much. I’ve been listening to your podcast for two years now, and it’s been such an encouragement for me and such a huge form of education and help. So, this was truly special. So, thank you. Kimberley: Thank you.

The Self-compassion Workbook for OCD is here! Click HERE to learn more. This is Your Anxiety Toolkit - Episode 208. Welcome back, everybody. We are on the final week of the 30-day Self-Compassion Challenge. You guys, the growth has been profound to watch you guys, to hear from you guys, sharing what’s working, what you’re struggling with, the major strides you’ve made. I have loved every single second of it. I will be doing my best to compile all the audio. I think about 27 of the 30 days we did a live or the 31 days. We’ll be doing lives and I will compile them into one whole little mini-course that will be free for everybody on the cbtschool.com. That is yet to come. I cannot wait to hand that over to you guys. We are on the final week and I wanted to address the elephant in the room, which is exhaustion. Today, I want to talk to you about managing exhaustion because the one thing I know for sure is you’re exhausted. I’m exhausted. We’re all exhausted. It’s so hard to get motivation. It’s so hard to keep going. So we are going to talk about it today. Here we go. Before we go, I wanted to do the “I did a hard thing.” We do it every weekend. This is from A Life With Uncertainty. They said: “The last two years have been FULL of hard things. The hardest was telling my husband in therapy that our marriage was the main obsession during my worst OCD spike. I was scared and anxious. He wouldn’t understand. It was such a huge exposure, and I pushed through without seeking reassurance. I CRIED A LOT, but so did he. The hard thing brought a softness to our marriage that I will always have, no matter what OCD tells me.” This is beautiful. This is the work. Because what does anxiety take the most from us? The people we love. It impacts the people we love. It impacts the relationships and the things we get so much joy from. Holy smokes, A Life With Uncertainty, you are doing such brave, such courageous work. I’m so happy you put that into the “I did a hard thing.” How incredibly inspiring. I just love this stuff so much. I really do. Before we get into the episode, let’s do a quick review of the week. This is from Nervous Nelly saying: “I’m so grateful I found this podcast a couple of months ago. It has changed my whole approach to my own and my loved one’s anxiety. This podcast provided so many tools that I practice using and learning to look at my anxiety differently. The biggest change is recognizing that when I’m having anxious thoughts more quickly before they go too far and the automatic responses that I wasn’t even aware of, or should I say that I wasn’t aware, were so counterproductive to my mental well-being. Thank you from the bottom of my heart and please keep doing what you’re doing.” Yay, I’m so happy to hear that. Nervous Nelly, welcome. I’m so happy you’re here and let’s keep going together, which brings me perfectly into this episode. As you know, we’ve been doing the 31-day challenge. I think I’ve been calling it a 30-day challenge, and I’m just looking at my calendar and seeing that there’s 31 days in the month. We’ll just be imperfect. We will move on. We are celebrating the launch of my first and only book called The Self-Compassion Workbook for OCD. One of the things I talk about most in that book and talk about most on this podcast and in CBT School resources is how to stay motivated because it takes so much to stay motivated. But what’s interesting is, so many people in the comments this week said, sometimes it’s not even about motivation. It’s just about getting through the day. How do I get through the day? I wanted to share with you a self-compassionate concept that I use. It may or may not be helpful for you, but this is something I have dedicated my self-compassion practice to and I have really received some amazing benefits from it. I’ll tell you guys a little bit of a story. As you all know, I have postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome with a nice side of generalized anxiety disorder in which I manage really well most of the time. But when I am unwell and I’m having a flare-up, which recently I’ve been doing really well, but I recently went through a horrific flare-up to the point where most days I couldn’t get out of bed. I was doing all my sessions from an upright chair where I had my legs elevated. I would go to bed at 7:00 or 6:15 in the evening. It was just rotten, rotten, rotten, rotten. I was exposed to a concept called “the spoons concept.” This was written by a person who suffered with Lyme. I’ll put it in the show notes, the original article. What she did was she was saying, “Someone wants to ask me, what is it like to have Lyme disease?” Well, she assumed they knew because this person went to all of the doctor appointments and was with her when she was sick. She wasn’t quite sure what they were asking until she realized they were saying, “What is it actually like to leave in your body?” And she said, “Well, think of it this way.” She got all of these spoons out. I think she said she was in a college cafeteria at the time and she laid out these 10 spoons. She said, “For people who don’t have this problem, they have unlimited spoons in their day, and think of each spoon as a degree of energy to complete daily tasks. So one spoon to make your breakfast, one spoon to have a shower, one spoon to go for a walk, one spoon to get to work, two or three spoons or five spoons for doing the day of work, another spoon to make dinner, another spoon to do your taxes and so forth.” She said, “Most people have unlimited spoons. It just keeps going until the evening is done. They don’t even really have to consider their energy and how they expend it. But for me, I want you to imagine that I only get 10 spoons a day, and I have to decide every single day how I use those spoons.” This was profound for me because what I was struggling with was like, how come everybody else gets to have energy at the end of the day and I am a complete disaster? How come everybody else has breakfast, gets ready for work, goes to work, takes care of their children, comes home, makes dinner, does the taxes, and they’re still not a grumpy, miserable mess at the end of the day? I realized it’s because me having POTS or postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome meant that I too have unlimited spoons. I’m going to have to either refuse to accept that and keep using up spoons I don’t have. One of the main concepts she talks about in this Spoon Theory is, if you go over your 10 spoons, it’s not like you can replenish them. You’re using them up for tomorrow. Basically, if you use 13 spoons today, you only have seven left for tomorrow. I’ve talked to a lot of my patients with OCD about this, and we really agreed not to become compulsive about counting spoons. I want to really make sure we address that upfront. This is not a science. It’s a concept. It’s a theory. But think of it through the lens of, if you overdo it today, you’re going to have to accept that you’ve got less spoons tomorrow. I have found that I was living on minus spoons day in, day out. Well, in fact, month in, month out, maybe even year in, year out. No wonder I’m exhausted. No wonder I’m miserable. No wonder I’m anxious. No wonder I’m depressed. No wonder I’m exhausted. I have completely used up all my spoons. So now, I’ve had to accept that I only have 10 spoons and I have to make really skilled decisions on how I’m going to use them. It has also involved me renegotiating my day. I no longer choose to make breakfast and lunch in the morning. I do it the evening before. I asked for help. I do it in a way where I sit at the dinner table. I always finish first because I inhale my food. As my children and my husband eat their dinner, I’m making the kids’ lunches for tomorrow. That way I’m not standing, I’m still communicating with them, but I’m getting something done, and that works for me. I’ve found many, many ways to manage this, but I also had to accept that some things literally had to go. The most compassionate thing I could do is to protect my spoons. Now, how does this apply to you? Well, the developer of this theory has now extended it to people with mental illness. She believes it’s not just physical medical illnesses that mean people don’t have a lot of spoons. People with mental illnesses also have unlimited spoons because their spoons are being taken up with fear, depression, panic compulsion. For you now, I’m going to ask you to consider, number one, you get to decide how many spoons do you think you get a day? Because it’s not unlimited. If you have a mental illness, it’s not unlimited. It’s not possible. You will use up all your spoons and you will go over and feel worse tomorrow. So determine how many you have, and start to be very, very articulate and disciplined and intentional with how you use them. You’re going to probably be like, “Yeah, I expected her to say this.” But one for me is I’m no longer going to beat myself up. I don’t have the spoons for that. Literally, that is my reason for not beating myself up. Besides the fact that it makes me feel terrible is I don’t have the spoons for that. Sometimes people will say to me, “You need to do more in a certain area.” I will say to myself, “Yeah, I wish I could, but I actually, at this time, don’t have the spoons for it.” Sometimes I opt out of major disagreements, not because I’m afraid of disagreements, but I don’t have the spoons for a ton of conflict. I do that as an act of compassion to myself and an act of compassion for my clients and my family. If I burn up all my spoons, I’m a terrible therapist. No, that’s not true because that’s black and white thinking. I’m not at my best. I’m not at a place where I’m sitting, and I’m connected with my patient. So forgive me. I’m going to correct myself. I’m not a terrible therapist. That’s black and white thinking. I am not connected as deeply as I would like to. What I do here is depending on the day, I may need to rearrange some things. For you, and I will give you a case study here. One of my patients had a huge exposure hierarchy. She knew she had to get it done. Her OCD was impacting her life severely. So we brought in her family, her husband, or her partner, and she had conversations with her family and her parents and said, “I’m about to embark on exposure therapy. It involves me doing a lot of physical and emotional work. How can you guys support me by helping me and managing some of the things I have in my life so that I can keep track of my own spoons, metaphorically?” Somebody dropped the kids off in the morning for her. She ordered in a meal service, if you have the finances for such a thing. Her immediate thought was, yeah, but come on, Kimberley. Everybody else can do it. Surely, I can too. I’ll say, “In a perfect world, yes. In a perfect world where you didn’t have OCD, you could do your OCD while dropping your children off. But you do have OCD, or you do have depression, or you do have a medical illness. For that reason, can you give yourself permission to ask for help, to redistribute your spoons? Can you do that for yourself?” Many times I’ll give you a personal experience that happened to me. Just this week is obviously, I’m a little overwhelmed with the launch of this book. I also run a very medium-sized private practice. I have eight therapists who work for me. I have CBT School, which I’m so proud of, but does take up some of my time. I called my husband and I said, “I give up. I am in over my head. I don’t know how I got here. I completely lost track of my spoons.” He sat me down and said, “Open up your calendar. What’s on your calendar for today?” I told him, and he said, “This one, this one, and this one, just cross it off. It doesn’t have to happen today.” My mind was like, “But come on, come on. It should be done today. It would be so much easier if it was done today. Life next week will be hard if it’s done today.” He goes, “Kimberley, you don’t have the spoons for it today. You either rest today or you use up your spoons for tomorrow.” And I’m like, “You’re right. You’re right.” See, even I’m not so great at this sometimes. That’s why everybody needs help. I’m never above the work here. I’m always learning myself, but it’s dropping your pride. It’s dropping the ego. It’s dropping the expectations and saying the facts here that I’m exhausted. The facts here is I need a break, or the facts here is I need to shuffle things around so that I can do the thing I need to get done today for the future me. The example would be a lot of my patients say, “Well, if I take on the Spoon Theory, I have never got enough spoons to do ERP. It’s just too hard.” I’ll say, “You need to do ERP so that you can get your spoons back. Because these compulsions are taking up a lot of your time, or your depression is taking up a lot of your time. We have to do your calm work. For your future self, something else has to go. Something else has to go.” That might be that you don’t get as much exercise. Or like I said, you get a meal service, or that you get your laundry done, or you slow down a little, or you don’t see as many friends on the weekend. A lot for me has been in COVID. As COVID has started to loosen up a little, it’s also going, “Wow, I’m feeling a little overwhelmed by all the social events.” I still think I need to be protective of my spoons here. Not that I’m avoiding them at all, I’m just making logical, compassionate, informed decisions based on the facts of the spoons that I have. So I want you to think about this. Again, this is not science. I’m not saying ten spoons is all you get and all this stuff. It’s not a science, it’s a concept. I want you to think about it and see how it applies to you, because having a mental illness qualifies you for being someone who needs to take care of their spoons. Some people don’t like the spoon concept and they prefer to use it like a cup. Like my cup is full of energy, or it’s low on energy. How can I manage my energy levels? That’s fine too. It doesn’t have to be in this method. I just want you to think about how you can manage your exhaustion without letting everything go. The alternative is, get really clear on what has to get done and what matters to you and rearrange the rest of it. Let some of it go. Don’t please all the people. Don’t please anybody. For me, again, I’m really trying to not think black and white, because that uses up spoons that I don’t have. Not to think catastrophic thoughts, like telling myself bad stuff is going to happen. I’m trying to not engage in that thinking because that uses up spoons that I don’t have. Not ruminating about something I’m angry about. No, I don’t have the spoons for that. The compassionate thing to do right now is to search the internet or to do what you enjoy. Do some crafts or take a nap, read, sit in nature, go slow walk, call a friend, whatever fills up your cup. All right. That was a lot. I think what I’m going to say here is, a big piece of that is acceptance. That when you’re exhausted because you’re handling a medical or mental or physical disorder, it’s changing your expectations to more realistic expectations and accepting where you are, dropping the shoulds, dropping the I should and I could and all the things and start to take care of you. Start to ask for help. I love you. That being said, you know what I’m going to say. It’s a beautiful day to do hard things, folks, and managing your exhaustion is a hard thing. Saying no is a hard thing. Saying yes is a hard thing. Please take care of yourself. Please honor what your body needs. Sending you all love. I’m here for you. I’m loving on you. I am shouting you on. Thank you for joining me for 30 days. Do not give up. This is a 31-day challenge, but I ask that you take it for the next 31 years or 61 years or 91 years, or multiply, multiply, multiply. Do not give up on this practice. This is life. We have to do this work. All right. Love you guys. Bye.

This is Your Anxiety Toolkit - Episode 207. Welcome to Your Anxiety Toolkit. I’m your host, Kimberley Quinlan. This podcast is fueled by three main goals. The first goal is to provide you with some extra tools to help you manage your anxiety. Second goal, to inspire you. Anxiety doesn’t get to decide how you live your life. And number three, and I leave the best for last, is to provide you with one big, fat virtual hug, because experiencing anxiety ain’t easy. If that sounds good to you, let’s go. Welcome back, everybody. This is a really exciting podcast today. We have back on the show the amazing Kristin Neff. Now, as you all know, we’re doing a 30-day Self-Compassion Challenge and it is the perfect time to bring on Kristin Neff, who has written a new book called Fierce Self-Compassion: How Women Can Harness Kindness to Speak Up, Claim Their Power, and Thrive. Now, while the book is directed towards women, it actually is for everybody. So, we’re speaking today in this interview about fear self-compassion and it’s for everybody. It’s particularly valid to those of us who are struggling with anxiety and have to really work hard at facing fears every day. I am so grateful we got to have Kristin on. She had so many beautiful things to say. If you like the episode, please go over and purchase her book. She too has a book out and again, it’s called Fierce Self-Compassion, and it might help you really deep dive into this practice of fierce self-compassion. Before we get over to the show, let’s talk about the “I did a hard thing” segment. This one we have is from Eric, and he has said: “I’ve been working on my anxiety about the heat by spending every day I can in the sauna of my gym. I work up a good full-body sweat, and it feels so uncomfortable, but I stick with it knowing it will pay off.” Eric, this is so amazing. What an amazing way for you to stare your fear in the face, practice being uncomfortable. I love it. In addition to that, let’s move right over to the review of the week. This one is from Emily. Emily says: “Kimberley consistently shares a genuine compassion across all of her podcast episodes. She’s been a source of encouragement on my journey with OCD, anxiety, and depression because her message remains one of the consistent self-compassion while sharing a realistic perspective and the reality of mental health struggles.” Thank you so much. You’re so welcome, Emily. I am just so honored to be on this amazing path with you all doing such amazing hard things and really doing the hard work. It’s really an honor to hear these stories and hear the hard things you guys are doing. That being said, let’s move over to the show again. Thank you so much, Kristin Neff, for coming on. I just found this episode to be so deeply helpful with some profound concepts and I can’t wait to share them with you. Kimberley: Welcome. This is an honor to have with us again the amazing Kristin Neff. Welcome. Kristin: Thank you for having me. Happy to be here with you again. Kimberley: Yeah. You have a new book out, which is by far my favorite. I am so in love with this book—Fierce Compassion. Yes. I actually have mine on my Kindle, so I was holding it up, going, “Look, it’s right here.” Kristin: Thank you. Kimberley: I loved this book. Thank you for writing it. This is so important for our community because you’re talking about how to use compassion in I think ways that we haven’t talked about before and is so important for those people who are suffering with anxiety or just any kind of severe mental illness or struggle. Can you tell me exactly what fierce compassion or fear self-compassion is? Kristin: Yeah. Well, self-compassion, in general, or compassion in general is concerned with the alleviation of suffering. It’s a desire to help. It’s the desire for well-being of others, and then self-compassion is of yourself. There are really two main faces that it has, the two main ways that it can express itself. There’s tender self-compassion, which is really important, which is about self-acceptance. It’s about being gentle, more nurturing, warm with yourself, soothing yourself when you’re upset, really offering support, being with yourself and all your pain and all your imperfection, and really accepting a kind way. This is a hugely important aspect of self-compassion because most of us don’t do this. Most of us think we aren’t good enough or we criticize ourselves. We’re really harsh with ourselves. This is huge. But it’s actually not the only aspect of self-compassion. Sometimes compassion is more of a gentle, nurturing energy, almost like you might say a mother. Metaphorically, a mother or a father, but a parent. Fear self-compassion is more like mama bear, like fierce mama bear. In other words, sometimes in order to alleviate our suffering, we need to take action. Acceptance isn’t always the right response when we’re suffering. For instance, if you’re in a situation that’s harmful, maybe someone is crossing your boundaries, or someone is harming you in some way, threatening you in some way, whether it’s society. Maybe it’s racism, sexism, or some sort of injustice, or whether it’s yourself. Maybe you’re harming yourself in some way. Although we want to accept ourselves as worthy people, we don’t necessarily want to accept our behavior. And so sometimes we need to take action to alleviate suffering. So, that could either be protection against harm. Sometimes it’s providing for ourselves. This is especially for women, women who are told they should always self-sacrifice, they should always meet others’ needs. Actually, sometimes for self-compassion, we have to say, “No, I’d really love to help you, but I’ve got something I need to tend to for myself.” So taking action to meet your own needs. And then also motivating change. It’s not self-compassionate to let behaviors or situations slide that are not healthy. So, really taking the action needed to motivate healthy change. But it comes from encouragement, not because “I’m unacceptable unless I change.” The tender and the fear self-compassion, they go hand in hand. I like to say it’s like yin and yang. We need both and we need them to be in balance. If they aren’t in balance, it’s a problem. Kimberley: Now this is so good because my first question was how to get it into balance, right? I love in your book, you have a little questionnaire. You fill it out, is there balance, and what side is that all? But can you share how people may get some balance if they’re finding they’re doing one of the other? Kristin: Yeah. It’s a tricky question, right? Because sometimes we don’t know, but we need to ask. Really the quintessential self-compassion question is, what do I need right now to be healthy, to be well? And just pausing to ask that question is huge. Usually, we’re just doing our daily routine or we’re striving to reach these goals that people tell us we need to reach. We don’t even stop to say, “Actually, what do I really need to be healthy and well?” So asking that question is huge. And then you may not get it right at first. You may think, oh actually I thought I needed that, and I don’t. Really self-compassion is a process. But it helps to know the different types of self-compassion. You might say, “Do I need a little tenderness right now? Do I need some acceptance? Do I need some softness and gentleness? Do I need to kick in the butt? Do I need to get going? Do I need to stand up? Do I need to speak up? Do I need to say no to people? Maybe I’m giving too much of myself in order to find balance.” You really just have to ask yourself the questions. It’s really the process of being committed to yourself that you’re going to do the work necessary to be healthy and well. Kimberley: Right. You’ve outlined so many pieces of this puzzle, right? Particularly, and this is why I was just-- I think I reached out to you months before your book came out because I just wanted to hear your opinion on this. For people who are struggling with the inner bully, whether that be the disorder they have, or they’re just very self- critical, it can be really hard to stand up to that. Almost feeling like it’s just impossible. I’ve heard people saying like, “This is just who I am. I’m just going to have this voice.” I’m wondering, you might maybe share where would somebody start with this practice? Kristin: Yeah. And then we also need to get in the different parts of ourselves, right? Because the inner bully, that’s a part. We also have a part that’s compassionate. We also have a part that feels bullied by the inner critic. So, we’ve got the person who’s pointing their finger. We have the person that feels the shame. We’ve got all these different parts of ourselves. And really all of them need to be treated with compassion, but how that compassion manifests is going to be different. For instance, I have a compassionate motivation exercise in there, where sometimes what we need with an inner critic is we need to thank it. “Thank you for trying to help me.” This may be the only language it has to try to help us, and it needs to feel listened to and heard. “Thank you so much for trying to help me.” It’s actually not been that helpful, but I appreciate your efforts. That’s almost using more the tender self-compassion for the inner critic. But sometimes it needs the standing up. It’s like the mama bear, like, “I’m sorry, I’m not going to listen to that anymore. You can’t say that. It’s not okay. I’m drawing a line in the sand.” So that’s part of it. But then also, we don’t want to forget having compassion for the part of ourselves that feels criticized. People who say the inner critic, that’s just who I am. Well actually, who they are is, there’s a part of them that hurts from the inner criticism. There’s a part of them that feels compassion for the pain of that. There’s a part of them that’s trying to help, keep themselves safe through criticism. Inner critics don’t operate really to try to harm. They operate to try to help to keep us safe. I’ve talked about a lot in my book, my son has very harsh self-criticism and I can see he really believes-- by the way, I’m just going to turn this off. Sorry. It’s going to be cooking for me the whole time. Kimberley: No problem. Kristin: My son really believes that if he’s hard with himself, somehow, it’s going to allow him to get it right not make mistakes. So, usually, our inner critic, some part of it believes that if we’re harsh enough with ourselves, we’ll get it right not make mistakes. And that’s the safety behavior. So, we need to have compassion for that safety behavior at the same time that we don’t want to be railroaded by it. It is complex. The human psyche is complex. Pretty much the answer is always compassion. But what form that compassion takes just depends on what the situation is. There’s no one-size-fits-all. Kimberley: And I think that it’s so important that you’re addressing both the yin and the yang side. Because there are times when, let’s say somebody’s struggling with incredibly painful intrusive thoughts related to their OCD or their disorder, where they need to really just go, “Wow, this is so hard for you. I’m so sorry you’re going through this.” But there are other times where you have to be like, “Nope, we’re not doing this today. We’re not going to go down that road today.” So, I think it’s beautiful that you’re bringing that Together. Kristin: It’s funny, I have to use both sides with my son. He has both autism and OCD, as I was telling you, and anxiety just to make things fun. But sometimes what he needs is he needs my warmth and compassion. Just that caring, that tenderness. He knows always the bottom line is unconditional acceptance. But sometimes they need to draw boundaries. He’s learning to drive, for instance, and he started having an episode while he was driving and I’m like, “No, you cannot do this while you’re driving. It’s not safe.” Part of them doesn’t have the ability to stop it, but part of them does. So, it is complex. Sometimes I need to appeal to that part of them that does have the ability, at least temporarily, to say, “I’m not going to go there. You need to choose. You need to stop up.” Sometimes I say it almost really firmly and it shocks him, and it actually helps him to stop. So, it’s complicated. Kimberley: It really, really is. Now, it’s interesting because you and I were talking before, and I want to touch in because the first part of the book-- the book is directed specifically to women, but it also is addressed to anybody, I think. Kristin: Yeah. All people live both yin and yang. The reason I do it for women is because women are so socialized not to be fierce. And that’s partly patriarchy. Women have been kept in their place by not getting angry or not speaking up. So, that’s why it’s written for women. But a lot of my male friends have read it and they say they get a lot out of it because first of all, all the practices are human. They’re for all people, not just women. Kimberley: Right. But the reason I loved it is you did speak directly to getting angry, right? Kristin: Yes. Kristin: There’s a lot in the front about getting angry. Is it helpful? Is it not? Do you want to share? I mean, I think a lot of people who are anxious are afraid of their anger or are afraid of that. So, do you want to share a little bit about how people can use these practices for anger? Kimberley: Yeah. Well, because part of the whole messaging of the book is anger communicates expression of compassion. Again, think of fierce mama bear, that ferocity, and think of someone who tries to harm someone you loved. There would probably be this arising of anger that comes up to protect. Anger is a protective emotion. Now again, anger can be problematic for sure. It’s very easy. What’s the difference between helpful and unhelpful anger? It’s dead simple. Helpful anger alleviates suffering, unhelpful anger causes suffering. We know it can do both. But anger should not be undervalued as an important source of protection and compassion. It energizes us, it focuses us, it gives us energy, it suppresses the fear response, especially with people with anxiety. It’s funny, my son is afraid of dogs. It’s one of his anxious things. I taught him very early on that when a dog is threatening him to rise up and yell at the dog and flop his arms, scare the dog. He does that. It’s funny, it also helps suppress his fear response for the dog when he does that because he’s basically getting angry and yelling at the dog to back off. I have to say sometimes he overuses it, like he’s done that with poodles at the park. I’m like, “Poodle is not a threat. Poodle will survive.” In his mind, the poodle is a threat. So, being able to call on that fierce energy, one of the things it does is it does suppress the fear response. So, if you never allow yourself to be angry, it feeds into that fear response. That anger can actually be opposite to the fear response. Kimberley: Right. This is where this is so beautiful because actually, a lot of the work I do with my patients is, instead of being angry at the dog or expressing anger, is to talk to fear and set the limit with fear. You were talking in the book about the inner critic and the inner voice or it could be the inner fear. I often will have patients say, “No, fear, you can come with me to the dog park or you could come with me to this, but you are not winning,” and getting really strong with an angry back at fear, which I think is another approach. Kristin: Yes, that’s right. Again, you can say, “Thank you for trying to help me.” In my son’s script, “Thank you for trying to keep me safe, but you aren’t helping.” It’s both. It’s the appreciation. Because we don’t want to feel that any parts of ourselves are unacceptable. If we make our inner critic or if we make our anxiety or OCD, or any of those parts of ourselves feel unacceptable, then we’re harming ourselves. Kimberley: That’s the key point. Kristin: We can accept it with love, with tenderness. Just because my OCD is not helping me doesn’t mean it’s not acceptable, and act as a way in which it’s a beautiful part of me trying to keep myself safe. So, it’s differentiating between us as people and particular behavior. Behaviors can be helpful or harmful, but we’re always okay exactly as we are. Kimberley: Right. And that’s the point. You just dropped the mic on that one. That’s so important. This is actually a question more than a statement—as we’re navigating, standing up to fear or depression is that we’re not disregarding it or criticizing the fear that’s inside us either. Kristin: Yeah. Because it serves a purpose. All these emotions serve-- and usually, it comes down to safety or the sense of belonging or some sort of deep survival mechanism because these are all evolutionarily-- they came from our brains and our brains designed to survive. So, they have a negativity bias, say they tend to get really anxious. They tend to use the fight, flight, or freeze response. Fight is the self-criticism, flight is the fear response or shame response, freeze is when you get absolutely stuck over and over again, like rumination. Interesting, which may be related more to OCD. I’ve never thought about that. But it might be that that loopy might be the freeze response where you’re just stuck. All of these evolved as safety mechanisms as a way to avoid, like the lion chasing you, and they still remain in our brains, even though nowadays, most of us, at least in the first world, don’t have those types of threats to our physical being as often. Kimberley: Oh, I love it. Okay. You already touched on this slightly and I just want to go over it quickly is, how might people use fierce compassion as a motivator and as something that encourages them? Because I think the way I conceptualize it is, you conceptualize the basketball coach who’s like, “Get up in there and just go harder.” It’s motivating, but it’s almost also very critical. Can you share a little on that? Kristin: Yeah. Self-criticism or harshness does work as a motivator. There are coaches like that who do get some results out of their players, but there’s a lot of unintended consequences. Anxiety actually, believe it or not, is one of the poor byproducts of criticism because fear of failure, fear of not performing up to your ability, fear of making mistakes, that actually gets generated. When you know that you’re going to beat yourself if you don’t reach your goals, then that actually adds to your anxiety, and that makes it harder to reach your goals. Fear of failure, procrastination is a classic example. Self-handicapping, some people do that because they don’t want to risk failure because they’re too afraid of failing, because they know they’re going to be so harsh on themselves if they do fail. But some people make the mistake of thinking that self-compassion is just about acceptance. Like, “Well, it’s okay if you don’t succeed. Well, everyone is imperfect.” Although it’s true, it is okay if you don’t succeed, it is true that everyone’s imperfect, that doesn’t mean that you don’t want to succeed. But the reason you want to succeed is very different. Some people want to succeed because if they don’t succeed their failure, they’re going to hate themselves, they’re going to shame themselves. Other people want to succeed because they want to be happy. They care about themselves. They don’t want to suffer. It’s a much healthier form of motivation. It comes from the desire for care and well-being as opposed to fear of failure or inadequacy. And then because of that, when the bottom line is, “Hey, I’m going to try my best. I’m going to do everything I can to succeed. But if I fail, that’s okay too,” what that means is anxiety levels go down. There’s less fear of failure. There’s less procrastination. There’s less performance anxiety. This is the key. When you do fail, you’re able to learn from it. I mean, it’s a truism that failure is our best teacher. If we shame ourselves when we fail, when we’re full of shame, we can’t actually learn. We’re just hanging our heads. We can’t really see clearly. We can’t process. But when it’s like, “Okay, wow, that hurts. Ouch. Well, everyone fails. What can I learn from this? It doesn’t mean that I’m a failure just because I failed.” That ability to learn actually helps your motivation and helps sustain your motivation. It’s just much more effective. We know this with our kids and a lot of coaches know it. Not all coaches know, but a lot of coaches know their players. They may be tough like mama bear tough. But the thing about mama bear is you also know mama bear loves you. She’s doing it because she cares. When she’s just snarling at you, you don’t get that sense of being cared for. You get that sense of being inadequate. We know the difference, including with her own internal dialogues. We know the difference. Does this come from a place of care or a place of shame? Kimberley: You know what’s interesting, and you probably know this, probably experienced this, but as I was writing my book, I was saying nice things, but I caught myself saying them in a tone that wasn’t nice. I was going, “No, I haven’t said anything.” I was saying like, “You could do it, keep going,” but the tone was so mean like, “Keep going!” Do you want to share a little bit about that? Kristin: Yeah. Well, tone is so huge. One of the main ways, the idea that the feeling of compassion is communicated, especially the infants before they get language, is through touch and through tone of voice. Universally, we know the certain types of touch that feel caring and supportive and others that feel either indifferent or threatening in some way. Also tone, there’s a certain quality to the voice when it’s caring versus when it’s harsh. Most of that is communicated to infants before they know how to speak. It’s not just what you say, it’s how you say it, and it’s also how you hold your body. There’s physical touch. But even just like, is your body slammed or is upright, physical signals of care are really important. We teach both right. Kimberley: I’m asking this actually for myself because it didn’t occur to me right now is how might I be fierce with the tone? How does the fierce tone sound? Kristin: Yeah. It’s firm, but it’s not harsh. It’s like, “No, that’s not okay,” instead of, “No, that’s not okay!” It’s not vicious. It’s not, “No, that’s not okay, you stupid idiot!” It’s like, “No, that’s not okay.” Kimberley: Yeah. That’s the nuance that I think I have to work on. Kristin: “It’s not really okay. Is it okay?” It’s like waffling and wish-washy. By the way, I’m saying this, it’s not easy to get it right, and I get it wrong all the time. Fierceness and tenderness have to be balanced. My problem is, even though I was raised as a woman and for most women, they aren’t allowed to be fierce, I’m actually probably more yang than yin just by nature, just by my genes. My problem is I am too fierce without being tender enough. I’m always apologizing and saying, “I’m so sorry, please forgive me,” because I get out of balance the other way. Sometimes I just say it so bluntly and I forget to cushion it with some sort of niceness or reminder that I care. And that’s not healthy either. It’s a process. It’s not like a destination, you get there and you’re done. It’s like, “Okay, I got it wrong this way, got it wrong that way.” You always have to be trying to recorrect. But as long as you allow yourself not to have to be perfect, then you can keep going. You keep trying. It is a process. It’s a process of compassion. The goal isn’t to get it right, it’s just to open your heart. So, as long as we do all of this with an open heart, out of goodwill, the desire to help ourselves and others, then it’s okay. But it is tricky, and I would be lying if I said that it wasn’t. It is. Kimberley: Yeah. Here I am thinking that I’m really good at this stuff, and I was hearing my tone and going, “Wow, that’s not cool. You’re saying kind things, but not with a great tone.” I have two more questions or things I want to touch on really quickly. Will you talk about these two topics of fulfillment and equanimity? I know you touched on them in the book, but I loved what you are to say. Kristin: Yeah. Fulfillment is also an aspect of self-compassion. So, if we want to help ourselves and be well, we really need to value what’s important to us. First of all, we need to know our values. Is it just what society says? You have to earn a certain amount of money. You’ve got to look a certain way. You’ve got to be popular. What’s really important to us? Sometimes it’s personal, like music or art or nature. Sometimes it’s honesty or sometimes it’s helping others. But we know our inner values. Part of compassion is asking ourselves what’s really important to us and valuing ourselves enough to actually fulfill our own needs. Again, there’s a gender difference. Men have raised feeling entitled to get their needs met. It’s not really the question. Of course, I’m going to get my needs met. Isn’t it to everyone? Well, actually, not necessarily. Class, and a lot of things go into this, but gender certainly does. Women are valued for being self-sacrificing. Women are valued, especially toward their kids, for denying their own needs and helping others. That’s how people like us. That’s how we get our sense of worth. So that sets us up in a situation that in order to feel worthy, we have to give up what’s important to us, which actually undermines our own sense of self. Sometimes the term we use is “Give to others without losing yourself.” Part of that is knowing what you need to be happy and fulfilled and giving yourself permission to take the time, energy, effort to meet those needs. It’s not instead of other people, it’s in addition to. It’s including yourself in the equation. My research shows that self-compassionate people, they don’t subordinate their needs, but it’s not like my way or the high way. They actually are more likely to compromise and say, “Well, how can we come to a solution that meets everyone’s needs?” And that’s really what we need to do to be balanced. Kimberley: Yeah. I loved that. I really did. Oh my goodness, this is so good. Before we finish up, would you tell us where people can hear about you and your book or your books? Tell us where we can get to you. Kristin: Yeah. Probably the easiest place to start is just my website, which is self-compassion.org. If you Google it, you’ll find me. I got in early, so all the algorithms come to my website. Just type self-compassion, you’ll find me. On that side, I’ve got, for instance, if you want to test your own self-compassion level, you can take the scale that I created to measure self-Compassion. I have guided meditations, I have practices, I have exercises. I have a new page on Fierce Self-Compassion that especially has fierce self-compassion exercises. I have research. If you’re a research nerd, there’s hundreds and hundreds of PDFs of research articles on there. There’s also a link to the Center for Mindful Self-Compassion, which is really the nonprofit I started with Chris Germer that does self-compassion training. That’s also a really good place. You could take courses online. You can get training really easily now. Kimberley: I’ve taken the training three times and in three different ways. One was a weekend. One was the eight-week course. One was a two-day. I think that can meet everybody. Online, I did one of them that was finished online because of COVID. Really, really great. So, thank you. Is there anything you feel like we’ve missed that you want to make sure we cover before we finish up? Kristin: I just like to encourage people just to try it out. I mean, the research is overwhelming in terms of the well-being and strength and resilient self-compassion can give you. Life is tough and it’s getting tougher every day with this pandemic and global warming. I mean, everything is really, really tough. So, we have this resource available, this resource of friendliness, of kindness, of support, just available at any moment. You don’t have to sit down and meditate. You don’t have to even go to a class. You just have to think, what do I need to care for myself in this moment? You can actually do it. It’s like a superpower that people don’t even know they have. It’s just like to tell people, “Hey, you’ve got this ability. It’s right in your back pocket. You just need to remember to take it out.” Kimberley: I love that. Thank you. Thank you so much for your time. I’m so grateful. Kristin: You’re welcome. Thanks for having me. ----- Please note that this podcast or any other resources from cbtschool.com should not replace professional mental health care. If you feel you would benefit, please reach out to a provider in your area. Have a wonderful day and thank you for supporting cbtschool.com. Links:  Kristen Neff’s Website  https://self-compassion.org/ Fierce Self-Compassion  https://www.amazon.com/dp/006299106X/ref=cm_sw_em_r_mt_dp_BT4GGYF8XFE1TJ7DPGBT?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1

This is Your Anxiety Toolkit - Episode 206. Welcome back, everybody. How are we doing? We are on week 3 of the Self-Compassion Challenge. So welcome if you are new and you haven’t caught up with our Self-Compassion Challenge. We are doing a 30-day Self-Compassion Challenge for everybody, so everyone can dabble in their self-compassion practice, maybe strengthen their self-compassion practice, and hopefully thrive with their self-compassion practice. Today, we’re going to talk about the roadblocks to self-compassion. Now, this is coming directly from my new book called The Self-Compassion Workbook For OCD. However, even if you don’t have OCD, this will apply to you. I did a poll on Instagram with almost a thousand people who wrote in and polled on the biggest roadblocks that they’re having, and I’ve compiled it. Thankfully, I used it in the book. The cool news is there were so many people who agreed on those top eight roadblocks. So I wanted to share them with you today. We’re going to go through each and every single one. But before we do that, I would like to first do the “I did a hard thing” segment. Now, for those of you who are new, welcome. The “I did a hard thing” segment is where you write in and you tell me the hard thing that you have done. Today’s is from anonymous, and they have said: “I just got on a ship for a daily trip and I forgot to take with me my medication. I don’t use the medication that much, but I do feel safe when I have them with me. This makes me anxious, but I am choosing to manage my anxiety.” How cool is that? Sometimes things don’t go as we plan, and we have to rely on all of our tools and it sounds like Anonymous is doing that in an amazing way. All right. I have been doing a review of the week for people who submit a review for the podcast. However, as I’m recording this, the reviews have started to come in for the book and I couldn’t help myself but share the very first review for the book. It made my heart explode. I was taking a walk. My friend called me to tell me there was a review, and I basically burst into tears. So here we go: “I’ve read a number of books on OCD in the past, but Kimberley’s emphasis on self-compassion and its place in the ERP process is so, so refreshing and so very important. This is a must-read for anyone with OCD or anyone helping a loved one through OCD. It is a beautiful day to do hard things.” Thank you so much for that amazing review. The reviews literally are changing my life. Oh my goodness, I can’t tell you, when you write a book, there is so much anxiety involved, at least there was for me. And so to have people enjoy the book is just literally the most amazing thing. The most amazing thing. I had no idea. Number one, total massive respect to any author of any kind. Writing a book is very, very hard. And so, I’m just honored to be able to help people in that format as well as this format, and in addition to CBT School and in my practice. What a joy. All right. Let’s get to the show. Let’s talk about the Common Roadblocks to Self-Compassion. Now, the first one is related to OCD. Like I said, if you don’t have OCD, stay with me because the rest are really going to maybe resonate with you, but this one is very much hands down, was the number one roadblock people reported who have OCD to have a roadblock with self-compassion. 1. “I do not deserve self-compassion because of the content of my obsessions.” In the book, we go through each and every one of these in detail, but today I’m just gonna quickly knock each one of them out. So here we go. Your obsessions do not determine whether you are worthy or deserving of self-compassion. The minute you say that, you’re giving too much importance to your thoughts, feelings, sensations, and urges. So the big thing to remember here is, your job is to have these obsessions and not respond to them as if they’re important, and to practice taking care of yourself, whether you have them or not, that this idea that you’re not deserving of them is completely false. In fact, we talk a lot about calculations in the workbook. Some people like we have these weird algebraic calculations where we go, me + obsessions = undeserving, or me + intrusive thoughts = I’m a bad person. I want you to keep an eye out for these little nuanced calculations that you have in your mind because they are dead wrong. Your thoughts are thoughts. Your feelings are feelings. Your sensations are sensations. You are not disqualified from being treated with respect and kindness because of them. 2. “I am not worthy of self-compassion because I have a mental illness.” Now in the book, we use a case study where we talk about this idea of stigma around mental illness. I really want to urge you, as I do in the book, to start to break this belief that there is anything wrong with you for struggling with a mental illness. We have to be the change here. We have to lead by example. If you have a mental illness and someone has shamed you, or you’ve experienced the stigma of that, your job is to be the change by treating yourself how you would treat anybody else who was struggling with a mental illness. And that would be with kindness and respect and care and nurturing. You’re not disqualified, again, because you have a mental illness. There is nothing wrong with having a mental us. That doesn’t mean you’re less worthy, less valuable, less successful, less lovable. We have to break through all of those faulty beliefs we have around mental illness because it’s no different to a medical illness. In my belief, the more you suffer, the more you tend to that suffering with kindness. It’s not like, oh, well, some suffering is okay. We’ll give some of my suffering kindness, but not the ones with mental illness because society has told me that there’s something wrong with that, which is absolutely incorrect. 3. “I am too preoccupied with anxiety, panic, and uncertainty to practice self-compassion.” This is a common one, and I fall into this category as well. Sometimes when we’re anxious, we rush too much, we speed along, we try to push it away, and we don’t stop to go, “Wait, maybe I could be just kind. Maybe I could just be really gentle with myself while I feel anxious. Maybe I could slow down and tend to my anxiety.” Maybe that’s the answer instead of trying to push it away or have it be gone, because that is the answer. 4. “It feels wrong to practice self-compassion.” Now, this is a really good definition of what we would call “emotional reasoning.” It goes under the cognitive distortion that, just because I feel it, it must be true. Now, just because things feel wrong doesn’t actually mean they’re wrong. It’s often because you’ve been taught for many years based on society or your family about what’s right and wrong, and we’ve never stopped to question, is that even true? Because it’s not wrong to practice self-compassion. In fact, it’s effective to practice self-compassion. It’s helpful to practice self-compassion. We’ve already sort of declared you’re worthy and deserving of practicing self-compassion. So your job is, even though it feels wrong, do it anyway. Do it anyway. It might feel awkward and weird to start with, do it anyway. It might feel bizarre and self-centered, do it anyway. That’s what we want to do. 5. “Self-criticism and self-punishment are how I motivate myself.” Whoa, this one is so strong for some people. So many of my patients and clients have told me in the past, “If I don’t beat myself up, I’m going to turn, you know, it’s the only way I get myself to do things.” And I often say, “Okay, maybe that’s true. It might work. You might find that self-punishment and self-criticism does motivate you. But is there possibly a more effective way? Is there possibly another way that you can motivate yourself? And yes, self-compassion can be used as a motivational force. Is there another way you could do it that actually doesn’t create more problems?” In the book, one of the main concepts I talk about is compassionate responsibility, which is where you honor what your needs are, and sometimes that you do need to get things done. So you practice motivating yourself using what we call a kind coach voice instead of a critical voice. Both have the same outcome. Both are motivational. One tends to bring you down and the other one tends to cheer you on and make you feel empowered. Let’s choose the latter. Let’s choose the voice that says “You can do it. Keep going. You’ve got this. Keep trying. It’s okay that you fell down. Just one minute at a time, get up and keep trying,” instead of the critical voice and the punishing behaviors and voices. 6. “What if self-compassion makes me lazy?” This goes together with the last one. A lot of people are afraid that if they’re self-compassionate that they’ll just become some sloth that doesn’t do things and lets themselves go. I’m here to say, no. If that’s what happens, that’s not self-compassion anyway. Self-compassion is doing what you need to live a good life. It’s not letting yourself off the hook all the time. Sometimes it can be to say, “You’ve had a rough day, it’s time to rest.” But a lot of the time it’s saying, “Yeah, you’ve got some hard things to do.” Let’s be so gentle and so encouraging of you as you do those hard things. The whole phrase “It’s a beautiful day to do hard things” is a self-compassionate statement. You just didn’t know it yet. We didn’t call it that, but that’s what it is. The thing to remember here is, maybe you want to check your definition of lazy and weak. For me, this has been a huge part of my recovery, especially having a chronic illness and mental struggles. Is taking time off to rest really the definition of weak and lazy? No, it’s just what human beings do. Humans need to rest so that they can restore themselves to go and do amazing hard things. Sometimes we’re taught to believe that you should never rest, and you should never be lazy. And so you don’t give yourself that basic need of restorative rest. So, so important. 7. “What if practicing self-compassion makes me snap or lose control?” Now, this is a big one, particularly for people with anxiety. This comes under the misconception that we must constantly brace ourselves for the worst. We must constantly be hypervigilant and hyper-aware of all the possible dangers. And so we have to constantly be scanning for danger, looking for danger, what’s going on, what could go wrong. We know, number one, that that’s compulsive in nature. It keeps you stuck in anxiety. But it also is a block, a roadblock to your ability to tend to your suffering, tend to the sensations that are uncomfortable, the feelings that bring pain to you. So an exposure, we want to actually practice not engaging in those hypervigilant behaviors and practice being uncertain on whether you will snap or not, or lose control or not, and just tolerate the uncertainty of that. Sometimes self-compassion is an exposure in and of itself because when you’re practicing self-compassion, you’re not engaging in those compulsive rituals that keep you stuck in that cycle. It’s really, really cool that it can be both an emotionally intelligent behavior, but also be an exposure. It’s like to bang for your buck, I guess. 8. “Practicing self-compassion makes me self-centered.” Now, we’ve had amazing guests on the podcast who have addressed this, but I will address it again. Being self-centered is not the definition of self-compassion. Self-centeredness is this idea that we’re egotistical and everything has to be about me and so forth. What I have found in my own practice is, the more self-compassionate I am, the more I’m able to tend to other people’s needs and be aware of other people’s struggles and difficulties because I’m connected to my suffering. The more I am aware and meet my suffering, the more I can acknowledge and be in relation with other people when they’re suffering. I can sit with them and go, “Yes, me too.” I can tend to their pain without having to make it about me because I’m there for myself. I don’t need other people to make it about me anymore because I have already tended to my needs. I have unconditionally been there for myself, so I can be there for other people. It’s so, so important. So that is the top 8. In the workbook, I have room for others. There’s lines where you could add your own and you might find you have your own roadblocks. They are valid too. Identify them and keep an eye on them. The main work here is once you catch them, and you know they’re happening, you can then move on to dismiss them and correct them and move towards tending to your discomfort, being kind while you ride the waves of uncertainty and anxiety and discomfort. It’s so, so important. It’s so, so important. Let me go right to the top. You deserve this. YOU. Yes, you. I’m talking directly to you. I’m looking you right in the eye. I’m going to conclude this episode by saying YOU DESERVE SELF-COMPASSION. You are valuable. Your pain matters. You deserve kindness and respect and tenderness in your suffering. Your suffering is important. It’s not irrelevant. It’s not silly. It’s not childish. It’s important. You deserve to tend to that kindly. I’m talking to you right now. I hope you’re listening. All right, folks sending you so much love. I hope that you’re finding this Self-Compassion Challenge helpful. Continue to follow on the lives on Instagram. That’s where we’re doing tons of live work. Continue to look at the emails. If you’re not signed up for the newsletter, please do. You can go to cbtschool.com and click on Resources and we can sign you up there. Or you can click on the show notes, we have links there where you can sign up and you will get all the challenges that you need for each day and each week. They’re Monday through Friday, we take the weekends off because that’s the self-compassionate thing to do. All my love to you. Really go and be gentle. Go and be kind. Go and honor and respect your own experience. It’s so important. I’ll talk to you soon.

This is Your Anxiety Toolkit - Episode 205. Welcome back, everybody. We are on week 2 of this Self-Compassion Challenge. For those of you who are new to the podcast, or didn’t hear last week’s episode, go back and listen to that. We are on week 2 of a 30-days Self-Compassion Challenge. My whole goal is that you learn how to treat yourself kindly and compassionately as you move through difficult times. We are doing this to celebrate the launch of my very first book (The Self-Compassion Workbook for OCD), which I am so proud of and so excited about. Thank you to everybody who has purchased the book, supported me on social media, shouted me out to their friends and fellow followers. I cannot tell you how grateful I am. If you have got the book and you’re enjoying the book, please do go and leave a review over on Amazon, share your honest opinion or share your thoughts on social media or with anybody you can, because the more people I can help, the happier. I am. We are moving on today in this episode onto the second most important part of self-compassion in my mind. Now, this is taken directly from the book, even though the workbook is called The Self-Compassion Workbook For OCD. This is a concept I talk to all my clients about. It’s something I constantly check in with myself about, and it has been probably one of the most important parts of my recovery in mental health in many, many ways. So I am so excited to share this with you. Before we do that, I do want to go over and share the review of the week. For those of you who are new to the podcast or are old to the podcast, I love your reviews on iTunes. It helps me reach more people. So this week is from Looney Lovey. It says: “A gift of a podcast. I am so incredibly thankful I found this podcast. I have experienced OCD since I was 10, and this has been one of the most amazing tools. I seriously thank God for leading me to this podcast every day. It is like having a therapist in your pocket. Kimberley is so sweet, and her openness and kindness make the listener feel so welcome.” Thank you, Loony Lovey. The next thing I wanted to share is the “I did a hard thing.” Now, let’s take a step back here and really look at self-compassion as really being a hard thing. And so, a lot of you have actually written in and said, self-compassion was one of the hard things that they’ve been practicing. However, this week we have a hard thing from anonymous and they’ve said: “I have a fear of disease. I recently had two close friends get a diagnosis where this would make me feel fear for myself and my family. I chose to show up for my friends and continue on a daily basis, working on my mental boundaries, not making their illness about me, and my fear is about that stopping me from supporting them. I struggle with feeling everyday body sensations in myself and wonder if I am next. But this is so amazing, this whole ‘I did a hard thing.’” Anonymous, amazing work. It sounds like you’re really showing up and letting your values make your decisions, not your fear. This is so cool. This is just so cool that you’ve done that. Look at you go. Doesn’t that just show that fear doesn’t win, right? That love and connection and values win every single time. I just love this one so much. Thank you so much for sharing. I have a ton of submissions, but I will share again very soon where you could put those submissions in if you’re wanting to put your name in. Okay? All right. Let’s get over to the meat and cheese of the whole episode today. So we’re talking about a concept. Now, this is not scientifically proven, I have to disclose. This is my conceptualization of one of the main things that get in the way of self-compassion. I’m going to tell you a quick story. When my son was in kindergarten, the teacher had this system called the clip chart. I want you to imagine the clip chart is just a piece of cardboard, and in the middle of the piece of cardboard, it’s like a long narrow rectangle. In the middle is a peg. And the peg is put right in the middle and there is just a normal neutral face. Above the peg are these different ladder rungs. There’s a smiley face, there’s “You did well,” then there’s a bigger smiley face. And then at the very top, there’s this huge smiley face saying, “You get a treat.” Now under the peg is a sad face. And then under the peg is an even sadder face. And then under that sadder face is a really, really sad, but almost mad face. And next to it, it says, “Call your parents.” This is a ladder system that if a kid isn’t listening, they get clipped down. If a kid is doing really well, they get clipped up. At the top, if they get clipped up enough times, they get a special treat, some toy from the toy box. If they get clipped down enough times, the teacher calls the parents. This is what we would call a behavioral modification tool to help encourage kids and motivate children, usually five-year-olds, on how to act and how to behave. It’s incredibly efficient. As long as it’s not done in a shaming way, it can be a really motivating way of keeping kids feeling like they’re being motivated in courage. They’ve got something to look forward to. They’re working towards something. The problem with this is, even if you haven’t got a clip chart and you weren’t given one in kindergarten, our society runs by a metaphorical clip chart. If you act well and you put a smile on your face and you get good grades, you get clipped up. If your body looks a certain way, you get clipped up. If you make a certain amount of money, metaphorically, our society will clip you up as if you’re doing well. Now, likewise, if you’re struggling, often we clipped down. We do this to ourselves. Not only society, but we also clip ourselves down. “Oh, I didn’t do well in that test. I’m going to clip myself down.” Sad face. “Oh, I’m struggling with my panic today, or my anxiety today. I’m going to clip myself down. I did compulsions today. I’m going to clip myself down.” We use this metaphorical motivation system all the time. Now within society, we also have this inbuilt view on mental illness. This is also about racism, and there’s so many different levels of the way your body looks, social media followers. Again, like I said, how much money you make. There’s socially so many expectations put on us, that we also buy into that. Sometimes, because we rely on this metaphorical clip up and clip down system, we use only this system to motivate ourselves, which ultimately means we’re constantly on this checklist of how much we can get done so that we can feel good about ourselves. We’re constantly clipping ourselves up and down as if worth depends on it. And that’s the piece I want you to remember. We do this, and we make this calculation, that if I’m clipping up, I’m worth more. If I’m doing my homework well, I’m worth more. If I don’t have a mental illness anymore, I’m worth more. This is not true. This is all lies. This is one of the main points I make in the book, which is, when we’re stuck in a clip chart way of seeing ourselves, our identity, our worth, our value, we’re constantly anxious. We’re constantly afraid of dropping the ball. One of the most compassionate things we can do is to drop the clip chart system completely, to recognize. This is what I say to my patients all the time. You’re always at the top of the clip chart. Nothing you can do is going to drop your worth down – no mental illness, no body shape, size, color, hair color, short height, tall. None of that changes your worth. None of it. I’m specifically here talking about your mental struggles. You do not get clipped down worth-wise because of all of the struggles you have mentally. I have had so many patients and clients tell me they don’t deserve self-compassion because they’re struggling so much with this mental illness, because it’s putting their family out. It’s impacting their loved one’s lives because it causes them to do compulsions all night long. And therefore, they deserve to be clipped down. I don’t agree with that respectfully. Everybody is at the top. You’re having a bad day? You’re still at the top of the clip chart. You’re having a good day? You’re still at the top of the clip chart. Every single day, you deserve a treat, a fun, joyful experience. A pleasure, a reward. You got through the day. Celebrate. You don’t get clipped down. We have to throw out the clip chart system. Now, does this mean you have to give up trying? Absolutely not. Does that mean that you don’t study for your test and you don’t show up to work and you don’t try to make life better for you? Absolutely not. You do the things that you value. You do the things that fill up your heart. If you value getting a good grade in school, put in as much effort as you can because you value it, not because you’re on this conditional worth system where you’re just trying to prove that you’re worthy and good. Don’t do treatment. I talk with my patients, why are you doing ERP? Are you doing it because you want your life back from OCD? Or are you doing it because you feel embarrassed or ashamed for having to do compulsions? Neither is wrong, but the compassionate thing to do here is to move from a place of values, what matters to you, what makes you feel like it gives you purpose in this life, what keeps you connected to your loved ones – instead of clipping yourself up and down on this worth ladder, because that’s temporary and it’s conditional. We want our self-compassion practice to be unconditional. That’s why we throw out the clip chart. It’s unconditional. You’re having a hard day? You get self-compassion. You’re having a good day? You get self-compassion. You’re having a day where everything went wrong? You get to have self-compassion. We don’t clip you down because of that. And that is the real important piece I want you to take away. I want you to think about, if you had a clip chart, what are some of the things you’ve been telling yourself? I want you to write this in your journal, really reflect on this. What are some of the things that you clip yourself down for? What are some of the things you clip yourself up for? Do you get engaged in this sort of mental worth calculation? “Oh, I’m worthy today because I A, B, and C?” Because that’s not true. You’re worthy whether you did that or not. Do you beat yourself up because of things you’ve done? That’s you clipping yourself down. You’ve said, “I’ve done something wrong. Therefore, I need to be punished.” The whole work we’re doing this month is to move towards like we talked about last week, asking yourself, what do I need in this moment of suffering? The clip chart is usually one of the main reasons people don’t give themselves what they need, because they say, “Oh, I did A, B, and C today. Therefore, I don’t deserve it. I clipped myself down.” I have to keep saying to my patients and clients, “No, no, no. You’re at the top. You’re at the top every single day. You deserve kindness and care and compassion and treats and pleasure and joy. But most of all, compassion.” So that’s the concept of the clip chart. I want you to draw it out. Put the system. What do you have to do in order to be at the top in this metaphorical clip chart? What do you have to do when at the bottom? What bad things do you consider yourself clipped down to the bottom? And really reflect on, is this really kind? Is this a compassionate way for me to treat myself? If it were up to me, my advice is, put yourself at the top. You get compassion every single day unconditionally. Throw out the clip chart. It works for five-year-olds in a classroom, but it doesn’t work for you in a lifetime. It doesn’t work for you in your life. You deserve more than that. You deserve kindness every day. So let’s take a minute. Let’s slow it down and just check in, and just sit with this idea that no matter what, no matter what happens today, no matter how you acted or behaved or performed, no matter what grade you got on the test, no matter how you showed up, let’s just reflect and honor that unconditionally, you deserve self-compassion. If you hear a voice saying, “Yeah, but blah-blah-blah,” whatever the blah-blah-blah is, is where your work is. If it says, “Yeah, but my thoughts are horrendous, therefore I’m disqualified from this,” there is your work. You’re doing too much judgment around your thoughts. If you go, “Yeah, but I did this one bad thing, it’s unforgivable,” I go, “Okay, send your compassion around that. Go hard on that. Because that’s the thing that’s getting in the way of you really tending to your pain and suffering the way that you deserve.” You might say, “Yeah, but I’ve got too much anxiety. I’m too sick. I’m just too unwell. I’m too messed up. I’m too hopeless. I’m a failure.” We’ll do some work around that. Reflect on that, because that’s the roadblock, which we will be talking about in other episodes to come. Alright. I love you guys so much. Really take a minute and receive the love I’m sending you right now, the compassion I’m sending you. I hope you’re taking care of yourself. I hope you’re facing your fears. I hope you’re tending to your suffering as best as you can. It is a beautiful day to do hard things. You knew I was going to say it. So I want you to lean in here. Double down on this practice. You deserve this. Have a wonderful week, everybody. I love you. Talk to you next week.

Hello everyone! Today is the day that my very first book is out in the world for you to get. I could just die of excitement. So, for those of you who don’t know, I spent a large part of 2020 writing my first book. It is called the Self-Compassion Workbook For OCD: Lean into Your Fear, Manage Difficult Emotions and Focus on Recovery. I could cry. I am so excited that it is finally here. It was such a huge project in my life. Now I’m just thrilled to share it with you guys. Now, what does that mean for you? You can go and purchase the book wherever you buy books. You may order it on Amazon if you don’t have a bookstore near you. But in addition to getting the book, which is literally like, ah, I put my whole soul into this project – what you can do in addition to that is this month, for the month of October, we are going to do a self-compassion challenge. Now, before you turn the stereo or your iPhone or your iPod off, stay with me because I really strongly believe that this challenge could change your life, whether you have OCD or not. I really want to focus this month on improving your relationship with yourself, improving your relationship with self-compassion, working through the roadblocks that you have. I’m going to be doing a lot of live instruction on Instagram and hopefully on Facebook as well, depending on technology. But if you don’t follow me on Instagram, head over there, if you’re not signed up for the newsletter, head over there, because my goal is to really nurture you through this process and get you having a self-compassion practice that is rich and fulfilling and healing. So, so, so important. Today, we’re going to kick it off right away. We’re going to talk about the first main point I want you to do. Before we do that, let’s do a couple of important pieces. So first thing, we’re going to do the “I did a hard thing” segment. This one is from Elle and she has said: “I sat outside in 92-degree weather to eat my croissant. Even though being in overly hot places makes me anxious, I just wanted to be outside.” Thank you so much, Elle, for that submission. Really what I hear you saying is you were willing to tolerate heat, which is often a really big trigger for people with anxiety, but you did it because it’s what your soul was asking for, which is a huge piece of what today’s podcast is all about. Now we’ll move on to the review of the week. This is from Cynthia. She said: “I’m so excited to share these podcasts with my clients. I was first introduced to Kimberley’s clear and compassionate teaching style when I took ERP School for therapists, which is the CEU course. In the past three weeks since taking the course, I recommended both the course and podcast to my clients. So helpful. Thank you, Kimberley.” Yay, I’m so happy to hear that, Cynthia. All I have to say, it’s all coming together. I feel like years of hard work of the podcast and courses and the book, and I feel like so many people are getting on board and they’re starting to face their fears and they’re learning these skills and it makes me so overjoyed. So, thank you so much, Cynthia. Thank you, Elle. I’m just feeling such gratitude right now. Okay. Here we go. We are on Day 1 of the 30-day challenge to self-compassion. Now, I know I’ve done a lot of work on self-compassion before in the podcast. You can go back and listen. I’ve interviewed the most impressive people on self-compassion. You can go back and listen to those episodes. But for today, I want to go straight to the most important piece. We’ll work through some other things later through the month and some roadblocks, but here is the main tool for this week. Are you ready? I want you to take a couple of breaths. I want you to check in with yourself. You can do this in the form of meditation. If you’re driving, please keep your eyes open on the road. But if not, you may close your eyes and check in with yourself. Where is the discomfort and the pain in your body? Where is the suffering in your body? Is it in your chest? Is it in your shoulders? Is it in your head? Is it in your heart? Is it in your stomach? Is it in your fingertips? Is it in your legs? Where is the suffering? It could be all over your body, and that’s okay. But just check in on where it’s at. And then I want you to ask yourself this one question: What do I need right now? I don’t want you to argue with yourself. I just want you to honor what first comes up. What do I need right now? Sometimes our instincts are to say, “I want this pain to go away.” But a huge part of self-compassion is honoring what’s really happening. It’s really this truth-telling practice where you have to accept, okay, that’s not an option right now. Otherwise, you would’ve done it, right? You would’ve done the thing to remove the discomfort. If there’s an itch, you probably would’ve scratched it by now. Often the pains that we feel, the ones that cause us the most suffering are the ones that we can’t simply get rid of the anxiety. We feel the depression, we feel the headaches we have, the stomach aches we experience, the grief, the loss, the anger. All the things, right? So instead of bargaining with whether it should be there or not, I just want you to radically accept that it’s there and ask yourself: What do I need right now? And often what you need is kindness. Some tenderness around the suffering. And that might be the thing that you come up with. Before I segue to the next step, it might be to take a deep breath. It might be to slow down. It might be to rest. We’re going to be talking about that throughout the month. It might be to actually give yourself some time to fill up your cup. It might be to set a boundary with somebody. It might be to say NO to something, as long as it’s not something that you’ve previously been doing as a compulsion. We don’t want to use self-compassion as permission just to do more compulsions, but really check in on what do you need right now. And then, this is the next main piece of the homework for today, what do I need to hear right now? What do I need to hear? What would I love to be told? What would nourish me? If a warm kind loving friend came in the door right now, what would they say to me? What do I need to hear? Your homework for this week is to say the thing you need to hear, all the time. It might be, “I’m here for you.” It might be, “It makes complete sense that you’re feeling this way.” It might be, “I have your back.” It might be, “I see your pain.” It might be, “Your pain is important.” It might be, “You are enough.” For me, I will tell you the thing I have really had to listen to. I actually just had a conversation with a dear friend who’s a therapist. I put my hand on my chest and I say, “Dear sweet one, just be with your body and trust that it will hold you and carry you through this moment.” You’ll hear that some of the statements I’m using, they’re not saying, “We’re going to make everything okay.” They’re saying, “I’ve got you. I’m going to be there for you. Your pain matters. It’s important. It’s valid. There’s nothing wrong with you.” That’s the message I want you to encompass and embrace. But it’s going to be different depending on the moment. So what I’m going to say here is the advice that I need right now in this moment of suffering is going to be different in an hour. The advice I give myself in an hour, that compassionate check in is going to be different to what I need tomorrow. And so your homework is ideally, get yourself a journal or a notepad or a Google doc form or notes in your phone, and I want you to do a check in every day, at least once, and write down: What do I need to hear right now? And put in what you need to hear right now. Because what you’ll do is you’ll gather a list of things that you can rely on, sayings and statements you can rely on, at times where you’re so anxious and you can’t even access your compassion itself, or you’re just needing some guidance. These small statements can be a monumental part of your recovery, particularly when you’re totally frazzled and panicked, and you’ve lost all ability to see the rationale. So that’s what I want you to practice. Your compassion practice, again, isn’t an attempt to remove your discomfort, but to tend to it, to lean into it, to practice being your strongest supporter through your discomfort. I want you to strengthen that voice. It might be very, very, very, very, very shy. It might be very, very timid. It might be very insecure at this time. But with practice, this is a skill that you can learn so that voice in you sounds more like a mama bear, a strong mama bear than it does a timid, uncertain person. That’s your homework. I want you to check in, I want you to get yourself a journal and I want you to start to document this stuff. Dabble with it. See what works, what doesn’t. Some of the things that I’ve shared today might help, and some of it might not feel right to you, and that’s totally okay. It’s different for every person. That’s why we ask the question: What do “I” need? Not “What does Kimberly need? What does the neighbor need?” but “What do I need?” Because I matter, and you matter. So, so important. So, that’s it. That’s your homework. I want you to practice it. Come on back as much as you can to the newsletter, Instagram, social media. I’m going to be doing as much as I can, really trying to double down on people’s self-compassion practice. You don’t have to have OCD to be a part of this. I’m doing it in celebration of the book. Now that I have it in my hands, you could see me right now, imagine me holding it, like gripping it, like so excited. Now that I have it in my hands, I feel like a light shone on these important practices and I just want you to take them on and have them in your life. So, there you have it. I’ll meet you back here next week and we will double down on the next piece. And the next piece is my absolute favorite topic, the favorite part of the chapter in the entire book. So I can’t wait to share that with you. Okay? All right, team. Go and be kind. Check in, strengthen that voice inside you. And I will see you next week for another episode of Your Anxiety Toolkit. All my love. Don’t forget. You know what I’m going to say? It’s a beautiful day to do hard things. I don’t ever want you to forget that. Have a wonderful day, everybody.