Latest / The Virtual Couch / All These Fears Will Be For Your Good - Facing the Fear Trap

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All These Fears Will Be For Your Good - Facing the Fear Trap · The Virtual Couch

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So, some days I do the majority of my therapy sessions in person.
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People are here on the couch, not necessarily laying down, but they are in person.
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And then there are other days where I feel like I have several sessions that are online
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and doing teletherapy, telehealth.
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And a few days ago, I felt like it was the old joke that the internet must have been
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down for cleaning. It just felt like a very slow, laggy internet day.
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And I felt like all of my sessions, there was the glitches. And if you've ever seen, there's a commercial I think on TV where if the person's telling
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me that they are not doing well, but if the not glitches out and they say they're doing
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well, then that could cause for a completely different experience and therapy of me thinking
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that I'm communicating something and the client feeling like I have no idea what they're talking
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about and they feel so unheard and so unseen.
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So on this particular day, I kept getting these disruptions.
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The internet, it just kept buffering and glitching and our internet connection was unstable.
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And I found myself, honest to goodness, not moving and not even moving my mouth and going
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very monotone as if that would produce some sort of video and audio signal that would
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be much easier to make it down the crowded bandwidth of internet that is leaving my building
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and going out to the rest of the world.
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So that actually is not the way the technology works. And it reminded me of a metaphor that then led me to today's episode.
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This ACT metaphor is one talking about feedback and when you get in front of a microphone and what happens.
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So you know that horrible feedback screech that the public address system sometimes make
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or if you've been somebody that has jumped up on a stage and you have a microphone that
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is providing feedback.
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When I spoke at the Utah Mental Health Association at the end of last year, we had a little bit
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of struggle at the beginning of the feedback and I think everybody laughed the first couple
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of times it happened but then it started to get very annoying.
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But it will happen when a microphone is positioned too close to a speaker.
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So then when a person on stage makes the least little bit of noise, it goes into the microphone,
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the sound comes out of the speakers, amplified, and then back into the mic a little bit louder
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than it was the first time it went in.
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And then at the speed of sound and electricity, it gets louder and louder until in a split
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second it's unbearably loud. All of that's happening so quickly.
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So in ACT, we often say that your struggle with your thoughts and emotions are like being
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caught in the middle of this feedback screech.
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So what do you do? You kind of do what anybody would do or what I found myself doing on a teletherapy session a few days ago.
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You try to live your life whispering very quietly, always whispering, maybe not moving
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around as much, always tiptoeing around the stage of life, hoping that if you are very,
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very quiet. There won't be any feedback.
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So you keep the noise down in a hundred different ways. There are ways that you try to keep that noise down.
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It could be drugs. It could be alcohol, a lot of avoidance and just withdraw and so on.
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So the problem is that this is a terrible way to live tiptoeing around.
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It's a terrible way to do therapy when I'm trying to go monotone and not move
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because I can't really be myself because you can't really live without making noise.
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But notice that in this metaphor, it isn't how much noise you make that is the problem.
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It's actually that amplifier. that's the problem. So our job here is not to help you live your life necessarily quiet or quietly at all or free of all emotional discomfort or disturbing thoughts. The job is to find the amplifier and to take it out of the loop.
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Well coming up on today's episode of the virtual couch we're going to talk about one particular amplifier that we may know as fear,
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and we're going to talk about ways to really take that out of the loop.
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So we're gonna talk about that and so much more on today's episode of the virtual couch.
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Music.
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Hey, everybody, welcome to episode 372 of the Virtual Couch.
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I am your host, Tony Overbay.
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I'm a licensed marriage and family therapist, and I was going to come on and I had this
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very dramatic, true or false. Are you ready for a little quiz?
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Please answer true or false to each of the following statements.
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And then right before I hit record, I noticed that I was slouched over my desk.
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And if you're watching this on YouTube, you will see that I am not.
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I'm standing up straight.
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And I just had one of those moments that I think this is so indicative of the very basics,
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the very core of that we don't know what we don't know, that I would continue to lean
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over and I would put them so that the microphone was close to my mouth so that I would sound
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clear or as clear as possible in speaking in the podcast.
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And then I just looked over at the microphone arm and I turned it sideways a little bit
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and then I moved the microphone to my mouth and then I twisted the little knob that makes
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the microphone go tight.
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And 372 episodes later, now I'm much more comfortable in my chair.
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And here I have been leaning over the entire time and trying to figure out the best way
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that I won't, I don't know, get a sore back or I won't fatigue over.
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What a demanding job, right? as I'm continuing to speak into a microphone.
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But I just think it's one of those funny things where I'm sure somebody else
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could have walked in here and said, Hey, have you ever thought about moving the microphone arm
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or maybe just tilting the microphone slightly up?
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Because that's what the little hinges for.
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And I could only imagine that I would have thought, well, how dare you?
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I'm the podcaster, this is what I do.
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Here's some radical acceptance that I could have done that a lot differently this entire
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time. So that is definitely a thing. But I am grateful for the opportunity to recognize
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and notice and self-confront and all those wonderful things. So let's get to the true
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or false quiz. And I did a similar episode many, many moons ago. And this is yet another
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one of those things that I love is sometimes I feel like, well, I did this episode four
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years ago or something similar, so I can't do it again. When in reality, I don't remember
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many of the things that I podcasted about three or four weeks ago. So if anything, this
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could be a good refresher, but I think this is a very important thing to be aware of.
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So let me take you through this true or false quiz. Are you ready?
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This is from the book The Confidence Gap by Russ Harris, and it is honestly one of the
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books that I highly recommend above all other books that have to do with mental health because
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it's about acceptance and commitment therapy. And even the title alone I used to make light
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of the confidence gap. I thought it sounded too motivational speaker-y, but the general
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premise is that we often think, when I am confident, then I will do this wonderful thing.
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But in reality, we may be putting off that, what it even means to be confident to do this
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wonderful thing that we want to do our entire lives. But if we know what that wonderful
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thing is that we want to do, then we actually have to do it in order to gain the confidence,
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therefore the confidence gap. So here's the quiz. Ready for a little quiz? Please answer
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true or false to each of the following statements. Albert Einstein was a below average school
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student. You only use 10% of your brain.
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3. Positive self-statements such as, I will succeed, or I am lovable are a good way to
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boost low self-esteem.
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Now, I figure if you are one who is overthinking, much as I do often when somebody presents
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me with a true or false, I'm trying to think, okay, is it just the obvious? Because I think
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that most of us have probably heard each one of these, that Albert Einstein was a below-average
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school student, or that you only use 10% of your brain, or that these positive self-statements
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such as, I will succeed, or I am lovable are a good way to boost low self-esteem. So either
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Those are true, and what's your point, Tony?
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Or they're false, and what? I don't understand what's going on, or maybe it's a combo pack or a mixture of all of the
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above. But let me share from the book The Confidence Gap.
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Russ Harris says, Most people answer true, for most are all of these statements.
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And this is only to be expected. After all, countless books, TV programs, and articles on self-improvement tell you these
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things as if they were hard facts.
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The fact that we're told often is that Einstein did poorly at school because the message that
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we are being told is that if Einstein could go on to such greatness despite his early
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failures, well then you can too. So if Einstein was a bad student and now he's considered
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one of the foremost geniuses that ever walked the face of the earth, and if you didn't do
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so hot in middle school algebra, which I absolutely did not, then I may also achieve this greatness
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of Einstein. Or they tell you that you just use 10% of your brain because that message
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is imagine what you could achieve if you used all of your brain. And as a matter of fact,
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I remember before I ever learned, when we'll talk more about this,
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the answer, the real answer of, do you only use 10% of your brain?
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I remember having a conversation with someone and he was just waxing on philosophic
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in the spiritual realm of saying that, well, that's what the afterlife is all about.
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That's when you use the remaining 90% of your brain.
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And he had spent a large portion of several years trying to figure out what the additional knowledge
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that you would learn with that extra 90% was.
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And it was at the time that I was reading this book, but I didn't have the heart to say,
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I actually think that that's been just thrown out there and it isn't true.
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And we also hear that if you use these positive self-statements that those will give you higher
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self-esteem. So the message that it's easy to eliminate negative self-talk. And if you have
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listened to many of the virtual couch episodes, that is where I feel like the concepts of just
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just say or think something different, I feel in the grand scheme of things can actually do
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a little more harm than good in the long run. Russ Harris says, as you may have guessed from
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my tone as he's writing this, all these widely known, frequently quoted, facts, that is in
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quotes, are actually false. Yes, Einstein did do poorly in French in his early teen
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years, but overall he was a good student. He excelled in math and physics and his marks
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in all subjects averaged more than 80% in his final year at school. And as for only
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using 10% of your brain, he said this idea started in the early 1900s, but it has been
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popularized in the past 50 years, yet despite the fact that thousands of self-development
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programs quote this, air quote, fact, you will never see one shred of hard scientific
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evidence to support it, and that is because, he says, it is complete and utter nonsense.
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Scientists have studied the brain extensively in a myriad of different ways, from MRIs and
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PET scans to examination under a microscope, and guess what? They have never located one
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single part of the brain that is redundant. Every part of it serves a function, and you
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you use 100% of your brain each and every day.
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If a stroke or a tumor or disease or injury destroys even a tiny percentage of the brain,
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then this usually results in significant disability.
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And here's the one that I think is so, so fascinating. What about positive affirmations?
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He said, chances are that you've read or been told that if you are experiencing self-doubt
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or low self-esteem or generally lacking confidence in yourself, then the solution is to think positive things
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about yourself over and over until you believe them.
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He said, have you really ever tried doing this? And if so, did it work for you?
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Or did you find that it just caused your mind to get into an argument with itself?
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And this is where I wanna put a big pause and say, if it is working for you, then honestly, that's wonderful.
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And it's amazing and I don't want to say that even the things that I'm trying to
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proclaim here, professor, all or nothing statements, because there are times where I can think,
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you know what, I'm probably better at something than I think I am. So that might help me in
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that moment. But he says, while motivational speakers and self-help gurus love to espouse
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the benefits of positive affirmations, and the concept really does appeal to common sense,
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he said, there's actually no scientific evidence to show that it works. And if at first you
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well, we don't need science to back up everything. I said, actually, we've got the data that,
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supports the very opposite. In 2009, a team of Canadian psychologists, Joanne Wood and John Lee
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from the University of Waterloo and WQ Elaine Perunovic from the University of New Brunswick
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published a groundbreaking study in Psychological Science Magazine, which Russ Harris points out,
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is ranked among the top 10 psychology journals in the world. But their study entitled Positive
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Positive self-statements, power for some, peril for others, made world headlines.
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Why? Because it showed that people with low self-esteem actually feel worse after repeating positive
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self-statements such as, I am a lovable person, or I will succeed.
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Because rather than being helpful, these positive thoughts typically triggered a strong negative
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reaction and a resultant low mood.
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So for example, if a participant with low self-esteem said to herself, I am a lovable
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person, then her mind might answer back, well, no, you're not.
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And then run through actually a list of all the ways in which she was not lovable. This,
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actually starts the border on the concept of catastrophizing where at times if your
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brain is starting to say negative things, it all of a sudden feels like, hey, it's
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open season. So what else do we have? And we start to catastrophize and bring all kinds
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of negative things into our conscious or our awareness. So Russ Harris says, not surprisingly,
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this would make this person even feel worse than before if when she said, I am a lovable
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person, her mind answered back with, no, you're not. And let me now lay out the data and put
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and put a whole case together of why you're not lovable.
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But, on the other hand, when these participants were told that it was okay to have negative
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thoughts about themselves, their moods lifted.
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Now, I go back to the concept, Marshall Rosenberg's concept of nonviolent communication, and I
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wonder at times that if you are listening to this and you hear this, if that's, you're
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making an essence, an observation of what I'm saying, and then a judgment.
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So if you're saying, okay, well, I guess then you just have to accept that you're just going
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to tell yourself that you're a horrible person.
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No, look back at this where it says it's okay to have or notice these negative thoughts
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about yourself. Not try to push them away.
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Not try to say, no I'm not. But it's like, okay, I am a lot of good things, but I'm also noticing there's a thought that
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is saying that no you're not.
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Okay, well that's a thought. That might lead to an emotion or a feeling.
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So Russ Harris says, what does all this have to do with confidence?
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So the connection, he says, is a bit oblique, but it does demonstrate the fact of, and this
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is why I love this book and Russ Harris is a very I love the way he writes because it
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is all based on data and evidence, but he also uses a lot of humor. He says we are all
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full of it. He said, hopefully you're starting to see that we all walk around with our heads
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full of inaccurate and misleading information. He said, confession, I too once believed all
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of those above myths and I will tell you I absolutely believed that Einstein was a bad
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student. We only use 10% of our brain and if I just tell myself I'm awesome, then eventually
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What is it? Fake it till you make it. Then I will all of a sudden think I am awesome.
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But he said, we are all too ready to believe all sorts of seemingly common sense ideas
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without stopping to question their origin or their validity.
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This is one of my favorite things to talk about is when I like to break or bust pop psychology myths.
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And one of the ones that I love doing more than anything is that it takes 21 days to
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build a habit because it actually takes a lot longer to build a habit.
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And that 21 days, I think that I've even confabulated the story around that.
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But from time to time, I'll go back and look it up. I believe it had to do with someone named Maxwell Maltz, and I believe he was maybe
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a plastic surgeon in one of the wars, and went out and then put some data together where
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he felt like he was noticing that people had lost limbs.
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And then after approximately three weeks or 21 days that they started to, well, they stopped
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feeling like that phantom limb was there.
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So he published this data and people then made the assumption or just ran with that
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data and said, okay, 21 days, then your brain changes. That must mean that's how long it takes to create a new habit.
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I spoke at a youth conference over the weekend and I heard someone espousing that, that,
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you know, and three weeks later, 21 days later, voila, you've got a new habit.
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But as a practicing therapist and a human being in general, I often get people in my
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office that will say, and then I tried to do whatever it is.
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I tried to eat better. I tried to exercise.
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I tried to be more patient for 21 days and I got to the 21-day mark and I had not changed.
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So therefore I knew the data was clear, I was broken.
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Which is completely inaccurate. It can take anywhere from four, five, six, seven, eight months or more to create a new
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habit and the reality is we're going to continue to start to do something different and then
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we will forget to do it.
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And then we will beat ourselves up and then we'll remember again and we'll think it's
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too late and we'll want to start on Monday or we're going to want to start next week or next month.
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And so that's all part of the human condition.
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But the more that we get back on that proverbial horse and do the things that we think are
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important to do, then over time it will be a lot easier to do them.
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And eventually that will become part of what you do.
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So he's saying that it's important though to keep this in mind, that being aware of the validity of the origin of a lot of the things that we just take for granted.
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He said, as the great writer Mark Twain put it, it ain't what you don't know that gets you into trouble. It's what you know for sure that just ain't so.
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So with this in mind, he said, let's quickly review four widely held beliefs. And this is one of my favorite concepts. He's talking a lot about fear.
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One of the first ones is that fear is a sign of weakness.
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That fear impairs performance, fear holds you back, and therefore, then confidence is the absence of fear.
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So if that is something that you have been told or felt or worried or wondered about,
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then I want to just bring some nice awareness to that is absolutely a myth.
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And this is part of what got me on this doing this episode today because a little bit of story time.
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So over the weekend, I had an amazing opportunity to speak at a youth conference.
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In my area. And here's the funny part to me. I was asked to speak by a good friend and
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it was a couple of months ago. So I was grateful to get that heads up and I was able to put
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it on the calendar. But just the context that I was given, I assumed because I get a chance
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to speak at a lot of events and I thought this was what was often called a fireside
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youth conference where I would do about an hour, maybe an hour and a half max during
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the evening in a setting where I've got all the people together. And I was going to talk
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about emotional and spiritual resilience, which is one of my favorite topics. I have
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a lot of data that I can pull from there. And then a few days before, I thought it would
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be good to figure out more about where I'm talking, what time I'm talking, and just maybe
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a little bit more about the environment or just more data. And I talked to my friend
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and he said, okay, yeah, so it's four one-hour workshops that you'll be doing throughout
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the day. The first two are, I believe, at 10 o'clock and 11 o'clock, then there's a
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a three hour break, then you come back, you've got one at three and four.
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So all of a sudden, my I'm not sure if I'm speaking for an hour on Saturday night or
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Sunday night turned into here's the full day Saturday and it was going to be a lot of youth
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with a wide age range.
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And even more interesting is they would be in these groups of I think six to eight youth.
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And there was a husband and wife couple that was with each group.
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So now all of a sudden, instead of just speaking to a large group of people, now I'm going
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to be in a classroom interacting with maybe 50, 60 people, youth and adults.
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And not that that is going to change the content, but it's interesting when you can start to
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look at the couples that you're speaking to as well as the youth, because everybody is
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having this different experience.
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And sometimes I want to speak directly to the audience that I am working with.
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So the reason I bring that up is that did instill a little bit of fear.
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And I love, I absolutely love speaking in public. I love it.
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I love it because I love the things I get to talk about.
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Back in the days when I would tour the country or the world and speak at computer conferences,
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I enjoyed-ish the speaking part, but I honestly didn't even realize that I didn't know
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entirely what I didn't know about what I was speaking about.
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So in those situations, it was more about the opportunity to get up in front of a crowd
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and speak and try to share some things, but then I would always try to work in humor or,
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giveaways or just try to make people feel alive or like they were having a good time for a moment.
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And now I get to do that as well as speak about these topics from the heart around mental
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health and emotional resilience and the spiritual resilience.
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But then finding out that it wasn't just going to be a one-hour talk, that it was going to be four
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one-hour sessions, that I know that the way that those work is there will be questions that will
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come up or there will be different groups or I will be triggered. It can be such a strong word,
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but by even some of the people that I may know that are in there, even some of the kids that I
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may know or I might know of their parent situation. And so I'm going to find myself
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wanting to address certain topics or different topics. So all of a sudden, here comes a little
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bit of fear. And it was one of those wonderful moments, just like I talked about when I opened
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in the podcast today and just talked about just bringing some awareness to the fact that
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I didn't ever really think much about I could move my microphone handle, which sounds so
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silly to then compare that to. I also recognize that, okay, it is okay to feel excitement
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about this speaking opportunity, to also feel some fear around knowing that now there was
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a fair amount of uncertainty that in each one of these hour-long classes, it wasn't
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just knowing the way that I like to present or speak. I wasn't going to have this just
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solid outline and I'm going to read just line for line, I would have a few bullet points
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and we kind of see where the day went. So there was fear. So back to the confidence
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gap and Russ Harris's point where he says it's a myth that fear is a sign of weakness.
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So he said, do you buy into this idea? He said, let me quote a couple of people who
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you would hardly call weak. It's interesting. I don't know when this book came out, but
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the first one that he talks about, which is athletic accomplishments were still very impressive,
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but he said, legendary long distance cyclist, Lance Armstrong, one of the greatest athletes
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of all time, and blockbuster movie star Hugh Jackman, whose rippling muscles caused both
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men and women to swoon.
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Lance Armstrong said, I feel failure. I have a huge phobia around failure.
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So that would seem very interesting coming from somebody that competed for a living.
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Or Hugh Jackman said, I've always felt that if you back down from a fear, the ghost of
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that fear never goes away. It diminishes people.
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So I've always said yes to the thing that I'm most scared about.
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And this this reminds me of a quote that I keep going back to from the guest that was on my podcast Mike Rucker.
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And he is the author of The Fun Habit.
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And here's the quote that he said. I am killing time right now.
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That is not the quote that he said, but I pulled this document out.
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Here we go.
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He said, time is this really rubbery thing. He said, it becomes interesting when you don't realize that you're wasting time.
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Because when you're in those moments that aren't really encoding new memories, they just fly by and he said it's not flow by any sense,
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But when we reminisce back on them, they kind of get condensed as one memory,
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So we actualize them in a strange manner where?
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Where you think that we're kind of led to believe through cognitive error that I'm just I'm just passing time.
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But he said when you start to encode richer experiences Then those are the things that start to light you up because now you have this whole tapestry of really cool stuff,
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So that's more of what I think about when I think about Hugh Jackman saying
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I've always said yes to the things that I'm most scared of that I want us to
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create this tapestry of really cool stuff because that might be part of the
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doing that will get you that confidence as you're starting to figure out the
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things that really are important to you. So he said now stop stop listening he's
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saying stop reading this so stop listening for a few seconds and notice what your mind is telling you. He said did you hear your mind protest with
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something like this well yeah but it's different for them I'm not competing in
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the Tour de France or starring in Hollywood movies, so I shouldn't be afraid.
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But if your mind did tell you something like that, he said, it's hardly surprising because it takes time to fully assimilate the information about the fight or flight response that we, I mean, I often talk about this fight or flight response.
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The fact is that every normal human being experiences this response when they step out of their comfort zone and when they step into a challenging situation.
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He said it's not a sign of weakness, but it's a sign of normality.
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If you don't experience this response, this fear response, when you first take a risk
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or face a challenge or leave your comfort zone, he means one of two things.
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There's actually something more wrong with your brain or you're a fictitious character like James Bond.
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So it is absolutely normal and important and regular to experience that fear or that worry about pain.
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So now he talks about the Russ Harris says the size and shape of your comfort zone is
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is inevitably going to be different from that of Lance Armstrong or Hugh Jackman, or that
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of your parents or your children or your next-door neighbor's mother-in-law. He said that's
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a given because we are all individuals. You are the only version of you that's ever
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walked the face of the earth. But no matter how big or small your particular comfort zone,
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is, it's a fact that the moment that you leave that comfort zone, then you're going
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to have a fight-or-flight response. And then the greater the step that you take out of
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that comfort zone, the stronger that response and the greater the fear you'll experience.
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So again, when you step out of your comfort zone, you take a risk or you face a challenge,
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you will feel fear. That is not weakness.
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It's the natural state of affairs for normal human beings.
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And Russ goes on to say that as you work through the book, The Confidence Gap, he expects that
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your comfort zone will actually start to expand. It's not that it will go away.
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And then when this happens, that if you have once struggled with fear or anxiety or self-doubt,
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you're likely to be more at ease and able to engage fully in what you're doing without
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that ongoing battle with your thoughts and feelings because you are going to feel fear.
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You will feel anxiety and you will feel self-doubt, but again, that's just part of being human.
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And there's no way to expand that comfort zone without starting to step into it or without
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knowing that you can challenge how you feel in any given situation. And then the moment that
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you take that step, it is 100% normal that your fear is going to show up. So another myth is he
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says fear impairs performance. So if you talk to top athletes, movie stars, public speakers,
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musicians, or other stage performers, he says, you'll soon discover that this isn't true.
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So when performers put themselves out there in the public arena, the indisputable fact is that they are taking a risk.
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No matter how accomplished they are, no matter how much their fans love them, no matter how successful they've been in the past,
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there's always that chance that this time they're going to screw it up.
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And the fact is that they face a genuinely challenging situation that it does a number on their skills, their abilities.
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And he says that when any human being takes a risk and faces a genuinely challenging situation, what do they experience?
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And again, they experienced that fight or flight response. Even if I just go back to the speaking event on Saturday,
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it was really interesting.
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The very first one that I, the very first class that I did, and again, they were about an hour long,
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the air conditioner wasn't on, and I really started sweating a ton.
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And then I'm noticing that I'm starting to get really warm, and I'm starting to wonder,
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are people gonna notice that I'm sweating? I'm a bald guy, my head's gonna get shiny.
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I started realizing I talk a lot with my hands, that concept that's called gesticulation.
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And if I raise my arms too high, I don't normally let them see me sweat.
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But I'm thinking, oh my gosh, what if they can see me sweat?
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So I'm starting to keep my arms down low, and I'm trying to not make as big of hand gestures.
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And finally, I recognize, maybe somebody in the back can turn on the AC.
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And they did. And then for the rest of the day, that wasn't an issue.
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But I remember then in the second one, I was going through my notes,
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and there was a part that I didn't feel necessarily landed or resonated in the first seminar,
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or the first class so then I took that out just in the moment impulsively in the second one
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and then I started talking about another concept that I realized the one that I just took out
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really addresses so I tried to go back in and then make a little bit more sense of what I took out,
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but then I wanted to say oh what you don't even know that I took out is but that wasn't something
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that would make sense so it's really interesting that in any given moment whether you're speaking
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or whatever you're doing, performing.
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So much of that that's going on is something that's happening for you and the people that are watching or listening are not even aware
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That that is your experience I think that is a good example of that when again any human being is taking a risk and they face these challenging situations,
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they're going to have that fight-or-flight response and that's perfectly normal and,
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if you can accept that then you can also have those moments where I really felt like there was connection and I was able to
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Express myself and find this whole sense of purpose that I so enjoy when I'm speaking to a crowd.
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So he said, top performers rarely refer to this response though, as fear or anxiety or nerves.
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They're more likely to call it being pumped, which is really funny because I did. I noticed that.
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I thought, okay, I'm excited. Somebody had sent me a text and when they heard that I was there and they said, hey,
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really thinking about you and grateful that you're willing to put yourself out there for
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all of these, the youth.
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And I texted him back and I said, I'm so grateful to be here and I'm excited. Let's go.
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And it was funny because I can look back on that now and that was this adrenaline.
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And so that is nerves, that's anxiety. So it's being pumped, revved up, amped, having this adrenaline rush.
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And when people use words like that, rather than words like fear or anxiety, then they
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have discovered what Russ Harris says is a very important truth.
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Fear is not your enemy. It's a powerful source of energy that can be harnessed and used for your benefit.
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And this is where I'll say that one of the most powerful things that not that means you
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You have to become a public speaker.
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But when you really start to recognize that it's okay to have all of the emotions, excitement
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and fear and sadness and pain and joy, and you can have all of those human emotions,
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and that it's not an all or nothing thing, that then when you can have those in that
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very moment within a 50-minute and hour-long class, then I had these moments of connection,
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I had these moments of fear, I had these moments of sweat and worried that I was pitting out,
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and I had moments of, how long is this going to last?
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Had moments of, holy cow, I'm not going to have enough time.
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And that, in that sense, then you are just being in that moment.
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And every moment, it can be good. It can be bad. It can be happy, sad, all of those different things.
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So he goes into his final fear or his myth where he says, myth of the myth is that fear holds you back.
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So he said it really is a variant of the last two myths. The story is that fear somehow holds you back from achieving what you want in life.
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And luckily that does not have to be the case.
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What holds you back is not fear, but it's your attitude around it.
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Again, accepting the fact that, oh, I'm going to be scared. I'm going to freak out.
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That the tighter you hold on to that attitude, that fear is something bad.
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And that you can't do the things you want until the fear goes away. That is such a key.
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That if I can take care and alleviate all the fear and all the anxiety, then I can do the thing.
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But no, I have to do the thing even though I'm going to feel some fear and some anxiety.
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If you are trying to get rid of the fear before you will then do this new whatever it is,
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then the more stuck that you're going to be. And he said, in fact, that very attitude,
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the fear of something bad, will not only keep you stuck, but it will actually increase your fear.
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And you get to beat yourself up and you get to say what's wrong with me and you get to be afraid,
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So that can lead to be it can lead to this fear about your fear,
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Anxiety about your anxiety which leads to more fear and then nerves about your nerves
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And he said, indeed, this attitude plays a major role in all common anxiety disorders,
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from panic disorder to social phobia.
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So top performers, again, learn to accept their fear. They are going to be afraid.
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They are going to be nervous.
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And then they channel that into that performance. He said, however, occasionally a performer buys into the idea that fear is bad,
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and the moment that they adopt that attitude, then they develop stage fright.
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And it's interesting because I've worked with just a small number of professional athletes,
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and there was someone that I worked with that is a golfer, and they've done very well in the world of golf,
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And there's a thing called the yips, which is where you just have a little sudden moment where you pull your shoulder or your head up or whatever, and then you can miss a putt.
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And it was interesting because the person was trying to get rid of those yips so bad that they became so worried that what if it comes, what if it happens, I need to get rid of the yips, I need to hope that that's not going to happen.
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Where in reality, we got to a point where there was an acceptance that that may happen.
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And then the occurrence of them was less and less.
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So then in the acting world, it's that stage fright, maybe in the professional sports arena,
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that could be the yips or missing free throws or whatever that could be.
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And all of a sudden that fear starts to be a serious problem,
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a major obstacle, something that they really struggle with.
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And generally the more that they struggle with it, the worse it gets.
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And he says that the simple fact is this, it is not fear that holds people back,
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it's their attitude toward it that keeps them stuck.
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Yeah, are you gonna be afraid? Absolutely. Is something wrong with you? It is not.
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And you are going to be afraid as well as many other things.
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He says some performers struggle with their fear so much that they even start
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taking drugs or canceling their performances or both hoping to make it go away.
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But this is futile. Eleanor Roosevelt. Here's the quoting Eleanor Roosevelt.
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You gain strength, courage, and confidence by every experience in which you really
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stopped to look fear in the face.
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The danger lies in refusing to face the fear and not daring to come to grips with it.
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I said that that was the last myth, the previous one, but there's one more.
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The myth confidence then is the absence of fear The story goes that confident people don't feel anxious or afraid and that again if you can tell is simply not so,
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So the fact is that a challenging situation even for the most confident people on the planet. They will still experience fear,
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However, when you know how to handle it effectively, it doesn't destroy your confidence and this gives you the second rule
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He says of the confidence game genuine confidence is not the absence of fear. It is a transformed relationship with fear,
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So I hope that you can get the sense that we're getting back into that world of acceptance.
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And I did an episode a couple of weeks ago that if I'm unwilling to have it, I will.
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Meaning that if I am unwilling to be afraid, then I am going to be trying to do all kinds of things to manage my fear,
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which is going to cause me to be even more afraid of the situations that I am afraid that the fear will take over.
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But if I accept the fact that, oh, I'm going to be scared, then I get to go and I get to do and I get to have those moments.
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Moments and I'm also going to be afraid. And it is such a powerful, powerful tool.
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Let me wrap things up here with a couple of ACT metaphors. I feel like I don't do these enough.
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There's one about acceptance that is talking about quicksand,
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and you might see where this one's going pretty quickly. So acceptance involves moving toward pain rather than away from it,
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toward the emotion or the thoughts or the feelings that we dislike.
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So suppose you were caught in quicksand. Naturally, if you've seen movies, you would try to get out.
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But if you try to walk or jump or climb or run, you just sink deeper because you end up trying to push down on the sand.
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So if you struggle, if you wiggle or push with your hands or crawl,
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you sink in deeper. So often as people sink, then they get panicky and they start flailing about and down they go.
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So in quicksand, the only thing that you can do is to create as much surface area as possible to,
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lay out on the quicksand, getting in full contact with what you've been struggling with,
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but without more struggle, full contact with the fear, Full contact with the anxiety and trying not to struggle.
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Here's one that I hadn't heard in a long time and it's called finding a place to sit.
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So picture that you, it's as if you need a place to sit.
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And so then you start just describing this chair. And you give yourself a very detailed description of the chair.
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It's a gray chair, it has a big comfortable cushion, it has this metal frame,
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it has these wonderful wheels, it's not going to scratch the floor,
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it's covered in this just very luxurious fabric.
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It's a very sturdy chair. Alright, now, can you sit in that description?
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No, I mean obviously you can't. Well, maybe the description wasn't detailed enough.
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What if I were to describe the chair all the way down to the atomic level?
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Could you sit in the description.
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Sounds kind of silly, but here's the thing and you can check your own experience,
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hasn't your mind been telling you things like,
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About even whether it's fear or anxiety or the world is this way and that this is your problem
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and this is this and that is that and your brain decides tries to describe and describe and figure out and evaluate and solve and
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It just wants certainty and all the while it starts to make you feel mentally and emotionally exhausted,
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You getting tired So you actually need a place to sit and your mind keeps handing you over more and more elaborate descriptions of chairs
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Then it says to you. Okay, have a seat again. It's telling you. Here's how the world is now now go interact in the world,
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Descriptions are fine. But what we're looking for here is we actually need the experience not a description of an experience,
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The our brain is continually telling us about descriptions of experiences, especially around things like fear and anxiety.
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But our mind cannot deliver the experience even if we feel like well, I know how that's gonna go So you really don't.
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You're trying to manage your own anxiety. You're trying to come up with reasons not to do something.
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So our brains then can only blab to us about our experiences elsewhere.
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Well, this is how this thing was.
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Yeah, totally was. Or this is what happened in the past and it did.
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But you continue to need experiences.
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So we'll let your mind describe away. But in the meantime, why don't you go ahead and look for a real place to sit?
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If you have questions or thoughts or just anything around the concepts around acceptance
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and commitment therapy, please feel free to shoot me an email at contactattonioverbay.com.
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I'm always grateful for the.
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Music.
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Distance don't explode allow the understanding through to heal the legs and heart.
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Music.