Fear and Anxiety

Marty: Hello and welcome back to the Tru You Podcast with bill Tierney, oriented coach who comes from the heart and is well trained in internal family systems. And me, Martin Kettelhut. an executive coach from the ontological tradition with a specialization in leadership. And today Bill and I we're talking about anxiety, a certain kind of fear called anxiety. We wanna get into that a little bit deeper and hope hopefully also provide a path through out, through anxiety to the other side for the listener here today.

Bill: Thanks for the introduction, Marty. Yeah.

Marty: The reason I wanna, I wanna hand this right over to you actually, because part of the, and the reason is because, um, you've experienced any evolution in yourself, in your relationship to anxiety. And so I think that's a good place to start.

Bill: I think it is too, because that's really what informs my ideas about it. It's certainly not a college education 'cause I don't have one. I don't have a doctorate. I don't have a master's. I'm not a therapist. I'm a coach. And but more importantly than that, I'm a human being that's experienced a tremendous amount of fear and anxiety in my life.

Marty: Mm-hmm. Well, it's funny, as you're saying, don't have a doctorate. I don't have a master. I started to get all anxious.

Bill: What is, okay, great. Uh, what did you experience? How did you know you, you were feeling anxious.

Marty: in my memory to passing all those tests and taking all of that.

Bill: Oh,

Marty: There was a lot of anxiety going through all of that in

Bill: I see.

Marty: school,

Bill: I see.

Marty: but I didn't study psychology, so not a, I don't know anymore about anxiety than your average bear.

Bill: And my mentioning getting a doctorate and getting a master's triggered memories in you that created anxiety, took you back to a time when you had a lot of anxiety as you were trying to reach those, those, uh, milestones. Yes.

Marty: Sure. Yeah.

Bill: Well that's, isn't that interesting? So what did you, what did you notice in your body? So you, you also had a thought, you had, you had the memory. Maybe it was just the memory and the physical sensation. Yes.

Marty: That's pretty much as far as I got. Yeah, Uhhuh,

Bill: I mean, it was pretty quick. It was happening as I'm using these words.

Marty: right

Bill: What was the physical experience of anxiety? Why did you call it anxious?

Marty: tightness around my solar plexus. A swirling of my thoughts, you know, that kind of ah, overwhelm, I guess you'd call it those two. Those are the first two bodily sensations I noticed.

Bill: By the way, when you said that, I went directly to Story. Oh, Marty's experience. Marty's anxious because I'm revealing that I'm not a therapist. I haven't got a doctorate. I don't have a master's. Now he's scared that that. What, whatever. He's scared that I'm, I'm, I'm gonna say something, uncredible.

Marty: No, not at all. Not at all. Um, that's another, that's a topic for another day that you know, but. Just so you know, um, even though I have a bunch of advanced degrees, the most important things I've learned in life were not from people teaching in those institutions, and that's not a dig at those institutions either. I love education, I love higher learning, and only, it's only part of being human. It doesn't even have to be part of being human.

Bill: I've got a little bit of an envy that you did that. Um, I'm glad for you that you did and envy, because I kind of wish I had as well. Um, I, I spent I think maybe nine months, about 15 years ago exploring what, what it take for me to become a therapist. And, and I started out by trying to knock off some prerequisite classes in a community college here in Spokane. And, um, I didn't follow through with that because I, I, I looked at the timeline and at that time I was around 54, 55 years old and realized I would be my current age, probably before I'd actually have all the credentials needed to be a therapist, and I'm 70 now. That, and the, the, the stack of student debt I would've ended up with. I just became discouraged. I and I, and I was motivated by two things. One. I was discouraged by being in the mortgage business in the first place,

Marty: Mm-hmm.

Bill: drove up my anxiety. Oh my God, I had so much anxiety back then.

Marty: Mm-hmm.

Bill: And two, I, I was contrasting my experience of all this anxiety from being in the mortgage business, especially during the financial meltdown of 2008 and 2009. This was about 2010. I'm trying to find my next way to survive on this planet,

Marty: Mm-hmm.

Bill: I'm thinking if I can become a therapist, maybe, maybe that's what I can do. To not only survive, but also to be able to contribute to the world in a way that feels really good. Uh, every job I'd ever had, including being a mortgage loan officer, was a job that I had to survive. I, I had these jobs so that I could pay my bills and survive on the planet and provide for my family. Those aren't bad, um, motivations for taking a job, but none of them for very long touched on anything that I loved so much that I felt like I was contributing in a way that felt, that I felt good about.

Marty: Mm-hmm. Well, interestingly, I don't, I don't, I don't wanna take us too far afield from the topic of anxiety, but. You know, um, it was part of my job in academia I don't come from money. I had to, I had to teach what I was learning to make money.

Bill: Mm-hmm.

Marty: you know, I was a ta, I was a professor's assistant. I was all these things to, to make money, to support my being able to study or. I applied for lots of, I got all these different, you know, a little bit of money from this university to write this re report. A little bit of money from that, you know, like the Mellon Foundation or the, in my case, the Fulbright Foundation, in order to spend some time working and thinking on this topic. So, and then I took out, you know, the government sponsored loans. so they were, you know, the cheaper interest rate and I've since paid all that off, but I was, so, I had like lots of, so, and then I had a separate job, you know, um, working, I was the stage manager and librarian for the local symphony, so I got four different sources to help pay for all. It was a part-time job just to keep it all paid for.

Bill: Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I'm certainly not envious of that. What I, what I do have some envy, and I don't mean envy in a way where like there's this jealousy or resentment or anything like that. I just, I enjoyed that nine months of exploration at the community college so much. I was always the oldest person in the class, always older than the professors, certainly older than the students, sometimes sitting next to an 18 or 19-year-old girl or boy that's fresh outta high school or maybe even still in high school. And, and um, and I. And, and interestingly, I, I expected to feel completely outta place, but I felt like I belonged. I mean, I loved the classes, I loved learning, and, and there certainly was a part of me that wished I could have continued just to be learning something all the time. Uh, I'm a, I'm a life long learner, at least starting at at, at around the age of 27 when I got sober. And I've always enjoyed learning, but it's been, for the most part, self-directed. So this was great to have structured, um, a syllabus to know what was expected of me, to know if I'd pass the milestones and reach the next level. And it was fun. Um, any anyhow, all of that to say, uh, I didn't get that education. You did, but what we have in common, well, I, we human beings have in common is that we have the potential to experiencing anxiety. So go ahead.

Marty: Well that just popped, uh, a memory of when I did my, um, they're called qualifying exams. Once you've done all the classes for a master's, you take exams to see if you've. it all and then you then that's like permission. Once you pass your qualifying exams, you're qualified to go on to do a, a PhD, write a dissertation, and I was so nervous. I was so anxious. we go about taking my, qualifying that in to my first master's degree in musicology

Bill: Mm-hmm.

Marty: that I went to the school nurse or doctor. And I was, I was like, you know, what do I do? You know, I need to pass and I want to pass, and like, I can't think straight when, when I let all the anxiety, when I feel all that anxiety. um, she prescribed beta blockers.

Bill: What do those do?

Marty: They basically, um, they quiet. A lot of the, the, she showed me the science of it. There are, there are four waves, alpha, gamma, delta, and theta it helps quiet in your brain. Um, those are the, the, those are the, uh, waves that are associated with of that fluttered thinking like, oh my gosh, what do I do? Right? That, that constitutes anxiety. Um. And I, I could, I can't d distinguish them and differentiate them thoroughly right now, but they all are related to that. And so when those are calm, you're sort of in, you're, you're, you're able to really access your full, um, capacity, your full thinking capacity. You're not and, and, and, and, um, you know, distracted and all of that.

Bill: It sounds like they calm the beta blockers, calm your nervous system so that you're no longer in fight, flight, or freeze. Is that accurate?

Marty: Exactly. And people, the most common use of beta blockers is for people with a heart condition that they don't get into that kind of thinking and it gets the, causes a heart attack.

Bill: Okay, so you're actually making my point right now. I've got a theory. And it's not scientific other than you've, you've corrected me in the past about this to, to that, that in fact it is somewhat scientific in, in that I am taking the evidence of my own life and the life of the people around me, like my co my co coaching clients, and I'm beginning to form theories, and then I'm testing them and, and then,

Marty: That is science right there. That's the nature of science.

Bill: okay, so here's the theory. Anxiety's caused by fear. And not just, not just being afraid of the bear that's breaking through the, you know, that, that came on the front porch when I was on vacation or the, uh, that howling in the woods that I heard around the campfire. Or looking at the checkbook and wondering how I'm gonna pay rent this month. It's not just one individual fear. I, my theory is that an accumulation of fears builds to the point where it challenges or or overcomes our capacity to manage all of that fear and turns into anxiety.

Marty: I think that's a very interesting theory. I would like to go into it. I, I wanna complicate it a little bit and see what you think,

Bill: Sure.

Marty: uh, what this means. Um, I, before. It's actually labeled as such. Oh, that's anxiety. It exists in us. Like we have anxiety before. We are calling it that. Or you could say, we never, we don't have anxiety because we don't, we're not calling that, we just have this vague, uncomfortable feeling.

Bill: Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Marty: sensations that you were talking about, and then we learn the word. Anxiety and it's sort of like, oh, that's what I'm feeling. And then we can reinvoke the concept. And, um, I, part of what I think is interesting about that, and if this is taking us a field from what you want

Bill: No, you're good. Love it.

Marty: then, uh, that is that, um, there's a danger, I guess, of reifying, know, making it real like metaphysically there, like a thing.

Bill: Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Marty: That, you know, like, as opposed to a vague feeling, um, that you know, that we need to attend to and look at and all.

Bill: Right.

Marty: as when you reify it, then it's like, well, it's just what it is and I can't do anything about it. But when you notice like, oh no, this, this is a, a term we've come up with to describe the condition it looks like you're having right then, then there's more power around it. You know, there's, there's the ability to sh to shift it and, and to, look at, well, what's causing it and everything, as opposed to, it's not like running into wall. It's not a real thing. Right. In that

Bill: I, I think I'm tracking it. You're basically saying, uh, it's, it helps to normalize it.

Marty: Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah, that's true.

Bill: that, that people experience anxiety when fear builds up so, so much that their capacity to be with it is challenged or over overwhelmed.

Marty: Well, I also think that maybe like in another dimension, another culture probably, um, that you could, you could. Talk about it in a different way. They could call it whatever anxiety is spelled backwards and, and what, what then? Then the way they would talk about it in this other culture would be, There's something behind you. There's a fear. You're, you have a fear here, something that you're afraid of. Let's talk about what that is and maybe

Bill: Yes, yes.

Marty: or maybe we can find ways of dealing with it,

Bill: Yeah.

Marty: as opposed to making it a thing,

Bill: Yes. Yeah. Yeah. So here's something that I do with my coaching clients and, and, and this will just really validate what, what you just said. Uh. First of all, I'll say, you know Joe, and they'll say, Joe, I don't think so. Joe, who, I don't know his last name, but he has anxiety. Joe has anxiety.

Marty: Yeah. Like, yeah, I, right. Mm-hmm.

Bill: Oh, I, I don't know Joe, but I know a lot of people that have anxiety. All right, what if we changed that? Let's start there. What if Joe is experiencing something that we've been calling anxiety rather than having it?

Marty: Mm-hmm.

Bill: He doesn't possess it. He doesn't own it. It's not a part of who he is. He's having an experience and it looks a lot like what we know of it as anxiety. And now let's.

Marty: That already, I think is very helpful. You're having a kind of experience, right? I mean, there's a lot more to say, uh, you know what that implies, but at least it's um, uh, and ex Well, I happen to be reading this book.

Bill: Experience in nature, John Dewey.

Marty: And one of the things about the why this is such an interesting topic is that there is no nature outside of experience, and yet we think of it as kind of opposed to it, right?

Bill: Mm-hmm.

Marty: on that we can study and we can alter and, and that alleviates the anxiety.

Bill: I was experiencing two or three different things that I was, was trying to enjoy at the same time. One was the cover of that book. I love it. I love the cover of that book. It's all in black and white. The, for those that are just listening, experience in nature, all written in lowercase with, oh, there's one letter, two letters in that are up, uppercase, interesting. R and and and p. And then in contrast to that is a white background and the author's named John Dewey all in black. And uh, so

Marty: of the point, I mean, I think it's clever because part of the point is that it's never black or white.

Bill: yeah.

Marty: I.

Bill: Yeah. Yeah, yeah. That's great. Really great. Grab grabbed me and the other is the, what, what you're talking about. You know that, that we, I guess my takeaway from what I heard you say there is that we make these assumptions that someone with anxiety is someone who has anxiety. For example, someone who is experiencing anxiety is someone who has anxiety that therefore that person, oh, that's an anxious person.

Marty: And we tend to treat it then like, like an object that we need to remove or. Crush or you know, or treat with another reified thing like a pill.

Bill: Yes. Well, here's the thing. Why would we wanna do that? Why would we wanna crush it or change it?

Marty: Well, part of it is this metaphysical status, we give it like that. It's an object. Well, let's remove the object, get it out of there.

Bill: Even if we look at it that way, why would we wanna remove the object?

Marty: It is uncomfortable,

Bill: Yes. That's what I'm getting at it. It, it creates suffering

Marty: right?

Bill: and suffering. My relationship to suffering is only recently as long as I've been on the planet. It's only recently changing from suffering. Let's fix that to suffering. What's it telling me

Marty: Mm-hmm.

Bill: and fear I, here's another theory. I think that the fear that we feel physically, the fear that we think, the fear that we experience emotionally, it's telling us something.

Marty: By the way, this is, is parenthetical, um, I hope I'm not interrupting your thought.

Bill: No, you're good. I've got my pivot foot down.

Marty: The word semiotics. The study of signs was invented by the ancient Greeks, Greek word semiotic, um, that was invented by doctors. What is that symptom pointing to? What is it trying to tell us? What do we need to attend to? It's a sign of something,

Bill: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Something that needs attention.

Marty: Right.

Bill: Yeah. And fear. Fear is a voice inside that's saying, Hey, this needs your attention. And, and if you don't give it some attention. I'm gonna scream a little louder. I.

Marty: Which, and again, I'm just saying this as not to get us stuck in something, but to just fill out sort of the knowledge base here. Um, that's why it's important to, to recognize psychology as a science. There's still people that are just like, that's not a science, It's full of signs. We look at anxiety as a a, a semi right? A sign that's pointing. We, we then we go into the science of it. Well, let's test it. Let's ask questions about it. Let's investigate it. Let's gather information and see if we can come up with a hypothesis about why you're experiencing that. So I think that legitimizes the scientific of psychology.

Bill: The scientific. I love that. Did you just make that up or is that a real word?

Marty: I'm sure I'm not the first to use it,

Bill: I love that word. It's like the word. Uh oh. Um, nevermind.

Marty: so, so I just wanted to, that's a parenthetical, like a footnote comment, but

Bill: yeah.

Marty: to what you're saying.

Bill: Well, let's, let's see where we're at so far. Let's kind of summarize it. We've got maybe maximum of 20 minutes left before I need to shift into. Uh, my focus, taking my focus elsewhere.

Marty: Mm-hmm.

Bill: I think where we're at so far is that we we're, we're building on some assumptions based on a theory that I'm presenting. And then you're, you're actually supporting it wonderfully with, with some, some facts and some science, some quotes, some references. This is great. This, um, let me ask you, can you summarize what we agree on so far, at least that we're building this conversation around?

Marty: Um, that when someone, including yourself is having the experience of anxiety, um, that. We wanna ask, well, what's at the source of that? We can, we can investigate, we can, we can find, it's not like a given, um, irreversible thing. It's something that we can dig into and understand and treat.

Bill: Not a set condition, not that person has a personality that is anxious. This is, or that that's a, that's an an. That person has anxiety

Marty: Or that this is something like unavoidable, like a mountain that's just sitting there, you

Bill: and.

Marty: you just have to climb or go over or through. It's, it's, um. It has a different nature, like it lives somewhere else. It's not in the physical world. Yes, it has physical symptoms that point to it, but it doesn't have that sort of immovable or irre, you know, um, nature. That's the part that I'm kind of curious about. But,

Bill: Say it again. What are you curious about?

Marty: but what I wanna get onto is how. How you work with people who are experiencing anxiety.

Bill: Well, I start by working with myself

Marty: Mm-hmm.

Bill: and, and, um, thank God. Thank God Byron Katie helped me start doing U-turns about 25 years ago. Prior to that, I didn't know how to do it. And I know I've talked about this in other episodes, but, but boy, the, did the light come on When I realized that I'm actually responsible for what I think, what I feel and my, what I experience, I am responsible for all of that.

Marty: That's, a great way to say it.

Bill: yes, and, and so when I, real, before I knew that I had, I lived in a state of anxiety. Because if I don't, if I'm not responsible for my own experience, then who or what is and who knows? I, I wouldn't know until I was ex having that experience and, and often my response to it was fear. I'm scared. This is, I'm scared. This is gonna hurt me. Something's gonna be taken away from me. I'm gonna, I'm gonna lose something. I'm gonna hurt somebody else. I'm gonna make some a mistake. I'm gonna be judged. Something like that. There's this, this fear,

Marty: Mm-hmm.

Bill: and I was so accustomed to living in fear that I didn't know there was another way to exist. And when Byron Katie. Introduced me to the idea of the, what she called the turnaround, what IFS calls the U-turn. In other words, being able to take the focus off of the external world, which I had given all responsibility for my experience too, and putting it on me. At first, I really resisted that I was so invested in my story of about how the world was hurting me or could hurt me. But once I found my way to see, seeing how I. I through what I had believed, and, and I, through my thinking, had what was the source? I was the source of my own suffering. I, I finally grabbed onto a lever that I didn't even know existed in front of me called How to Run My Life,

Marty: That's, that's beautiful. I mean, that's an example of transformation right there.

Bill: yeah, and it was practically overnight. I didn't, I didn't have the experience that Byron Katie had where she went to bed. As a workaholic, rageaholic alcoholic. I don't know if she ever named herself as any of those things, but I've read some of the stories and she was like suffering as much as anybody suffers

Marty: Mm-hmm.

Bill: woke up the next morning completely liberated and has been that that ever since. I didn't have that experience, but.

Marty: I mean, I wanna, I wanna also just, again, I'm just trying to, uh, punctuate what, what you are saying today if I can, and by adding that, any mental state, it's your responsibility. Right. Not only anxiety, but also, you know, being on top of the world, you know that, that too is your responsibility. You know, being, being in wonder, you could be responsible for living in wonder. You know, it's a choice. It's a practice,

Bill: Now that's gonna be real hard to, to, to chew on and digest. For someone who's so deeply in depression or so much overtaken by anxiety, it doesn't feel like there's any choice in the matter. If there's no choice in the matter, how can I be responsible and to, and, and in a way that's actually valid for someone that's in that state. And the reason I can say that with so much surety is that, because that's the state I lived in, and that's why it was so difficult despite being in 12 step program and, and, and attempting nine different fourth steps, never actually being able to see my part at all until I was introduced to the Byron Katie method. Oh my God. I would've just, I would've been angry just to hear you suggest that I was responsible for that

Marty: Yeah, well, it's not, it's, there's another whole conversation to have about the meaning that we give, being responsible, like some people think that means you're to blame,

Bill: Exactly. Yeah.

Marty: that's not what I'm talking about

Bill: Well, I know you're not, I'm just saying that I know you're not. But had you said that, said that to me 25 years ago. Uh, you couldn't have convinced me that, that you weren't talking about blame because what's the difference?

Marty: at the same time, it was somebody saying something like that, that woke you up.

Bill: Yes, yes, it was. Um, I can laugh about it.

Marty: the same sort of thing happened to me when people started saying, well, don't you see that? That's you. You could do something about that. And I'm like,

Bill: You don't understand.

Marty: no. Get away from me. You know?

Bill: Right, right.

Marty: but I went home and mulled it over and muled over and started to go, wait a minute. Maybe, maybe, know, and get help with that. And lo and behold, now I'm, you know, much more responsible for my experience.

Bill: Life is marching along with the automatic con, automatic conditioning that helped to survive to this point at some point when, when survival is not enough. Or when the suffering is so great, despite the success in, in suffering or in survival, there need, there comes a pause, whether that pause is from an intervention or a breakdown or, uh, just a, uh, a stroke of insight. Uh, the pause precludes awareness, a, a, a change of mind,

Marty: Right.

Bill: the consideration of a different concept, a different idea.

Marty: Mm-hmm.

Bill: And from that transformation can grow, it can blossom, and it can be, it can, it can turn a life around. And I can say that again with all this confidence because that's exactly what happened with me.

Marty: Yeah. I think another way that it happens, and maybe this is included in what you just said, is that it. I recognize, wait a minute, this thing that I have toward authority. To this, let's say, to this authority, like this reaction on having to, this guy claiming to know more or to have power over me. I had that with this person over here in this context too. And I'm, and, and I'm afraid of living or work, you know, being with that person because it might bring that up again. Like, wait, there's a repetition here going on. Like maybe. The common denominator is me.

Bill: Yeah.

Marty: another way I think that, that we come to have the, the, the breakthrough is we start to recognize the same phenomenon in different contexts.

Bill: Facing that unworkability is terrifying if you don't have a path to continue in that direction, which is why I would've, why I avoided it for years.

Marty: Mm-hmm.

Bill: If, if this, if this unworkability, if I slow down long enough and recognize that my life is unworkable as it is, then I better have a solution or else I'm just stuck in helpless suffering.

Marty: Mm-hmm.

Bill: I'm just, I'm stuck having to accept that my life is unworkable and there's nothing I can do about it.

Marty: Right. That's the, that's exactly why, you know, that's why I have this reaction to reifying it.

Bill: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Marty: just means you're stuck with it, like it's like a boulder that landed in your living room.

Bill: So let's talk, let's talk in these last seven minutes, seven to 12 minutes about what to do about it.

Marty: Mm-hmm.

Bill: you know, if someone's listening and they're in that place, I doubt that anybody listening to this podcast would actually be in that place. But maybe, maybe, maybe you're in a, a place if you're listening that where you just feel like life is happening to me and you just don't understand, um, or from a place of depression. Like, I, I cannot get myself out of this deep, deep, dark hole or out of anxiety. Like I cannot pull myself off of the ceiling.

Marty: Yeah.

Bill: Life is just too terrifying and scary for me. Um,

Marty: And just as an introduction to that conversation, look, we've both been there.

Bill: mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Marty: We have both been there.

Bill: And I've been in both directions. Deep, deep, dark holes, and can't pull, can't peel myself off the ceiling. I'm just so scared.

Marty: Mm-hmm.

Bill: So let's, let's take the ladder. Let's look at anxiety. One of the first things I believe that needs to happen in order to begin to peel myself off the signaling to come down from anxiety is to get present. And the best way I know to do that is to, um, focus on the something, physical breath is wonderful, just slowing down. If I can't sit down, keep moving. But notice my breath.

Marty: Mm-hmm.

Bill: once I start noticing my breath, I might notice I can sit down. Then once I sit down I might notice that I'm grounded to, to the earth and that I'm actually being supported without me doing anything about it. And now I'm, my system is beginning to calm a little bit. And as it calms, if I pay attention to the evidence that it's calming, it calms even more. 'cause I'm in this present moment. That's step one. Pause and do whatever you need to to focus on this present moment. I had a coaching client one time that called me in a complete panic attack. Because their house was supposed to sell on Friday. The new house was closing an hour later, and the sale of her house fell, fell through.

Marty: Hmm.

Bill: She called me in a panic and I heard all of it, and, and, and I said. Are you in the old house now? And the, and she said, yeah, we can't be in the new house yet. Would you go out to the backyard? What? Just go out to the backyard, keep the phone with you. And what? Let me go with you now. Tell me what you see. I see the lawn. I see a tree. Okay. Is the tree. Tell me about the tree. It's got leaves in it. I said, go look at the one of the leaves. What? Just go look at one of the leaves. Okay, I'm looking at a goddamn leaf now what? And I said, can we just take 30 seconds? I want you to study that leaf really closely and tell me something that you see by studying it that surprises. Oh my God. It's got all these spines coming out of a, and now she's present just like that. I said, now check how's, how's your system doing? How's your nervous system doing? And from this place now, what are you called to do about this situation that you're faced with? And she had all this clarity,

Marty: Mm-hmm.

Bill: like

Marty: Yeah.

Bill: she's been doing a lot of personal work, so she's able to get there pretty quickly. But that's an example of how to get present by getting into your body or getting to something physical. Listening for three sounds at the same time. You know, noticing the sound of breath coming in through and through and through and through the mouth or nose, stuff like that. Second, go ahead.

Marty: I just want to, there, um, there's a exercise. Um, you know, there are lots of them, but, but. Where you, when you are in an anxious state, it has four, five parts. Write down the thoughts you're having, crazy as they may seem. Then down what you're feeling, right. And really you look for, get a list of feelings a hundred feeling and look through it. Find, really distinguish, differentiate the feelings you're

Bill: You'll find that on the internet. Just search for emotions or emotion list.

Marty: Then what are the facts about the matter?

Bill: Mm-hmm.

Marty: What's actually, so like, well, you know, they've, they've asked me to do this job I've never done before, or whatever it is,

Bill: Yeah.

Marty: I, I have never done this job before as a fact, and I've been asked to do it as a fact like

Bill: Yeah.

Marty: et cetera. And this is the part that I wanna bring out. Because I, I agree with you, that moment of presence that's prerequisite to any anything else, and I wanna add the next pieces. Once you've got your thoughts, motions, and facts in place. Now be, before taking any what are you committed to? Like, who do you want to be in the matter? If not anxious, then who do you wanna be in the matter? might be some reliable way of being like kind that you've always known. I can identify with, I can find what the kind thing is to do. I'm gonna fall back on kindness. Right? Or it might be something you invent in the moment, like, well actually, you know what would be good to be in this moment is flexible. Okay. You know, maybe I can do this job that they've asked me to do, even though I've never done it

Bill: Or courage.

Marty: Courage. Exactly. You invent, you know, it could be a way of being that you've been committed to in the past, or it could be something you invent for this occasion. And then, and only then would you be able to really think about what the appropriate action to take is.

Bill: Well, Marty, that's beautiful and very, very aligned with what I do with my clients, very similar to what I do with my clients now. What that'll do is bring you out of a state of anxiety and into a state of presence, a state of, of, um, workability and a state of what a IFS calls, calls self energy.

Marty: Mm-hmm.

Bill: However, that is temporary most of the time. So there's more work to do. Um, I mean, that's a better life, but it does require ongoing input, effort, and, and investment. To keep managing the fears when they come up, when, and hopefully do that, get, get so good at that, that you begin to enjoy what it feels like to not have all those fears so that when you begin to have them, you're more motivated to take action earlier before it turns into full blown anxiety.

Marty: You guaranteed though, right? You will. You will enjoy that more.

Bill: Of course, I remember in 12 Step I used to say, uh, the reason I do all this work. I don't, I still say it sometimes. Here I am saying it again. The reason I do all this work is because I'm kind of a suffering woosie now. I don't have much tolerance for suffering anymore. Now that I know what it feels like to not suffer. So as soon as I begin to suffer, I'm, I'm, I'm wanting to do that U-turn.

Marty: Yeah.

Bill: to go inside and see what is it about my thinking, what would, what is it about my expectations? What is it, uh, that's going on that I haven't, that I am now suffering? And what is this suffering trying to tell me? What is the fear trying to tell me? And now that, so that leads me to the more permanent work, and that is,

Marty: lemme acknowledge you quickly before you go onto that. I love that. Who you, one of the things that we can say you are is unwilling to suffer.

Bill: yes.

Marty: going on, I'm gonna do something about it. I love that.

Bill: Theme of my life before 2002 when I discovered Byron Katie was endure, tolerate, and survive. Nobody did it better.

Marty: Mm-hmm.

Bill: Yeah. Thank you for that acknowledgement. So I just really wanna suggest if you're not familiar with the Internal Family Systems model that you do some reading. Um, there's some great books. Richard Schwartz, the creator of the Internal Family Systems model, wrote no bad parts. The Internal Family Systems, uh, therapy books. Um, there's a couple of additions for that. Go for the second edition. If you get that one, uh, you are the one you've been waiting for. If you're in relationship and you're suffering. Great book for that and, and watch some videos and learn about the IFS model and, and how it is that you're made up of parts. Many of these parts trying to protect you from things that happened in the past as if they're gonna happen again now and, and that gets so involved in your present life because the past was unresolved that they accidentally go about recreating that past so that you get to experience it again because you're so equipped for it, you're not really equipped for not suffering. It took me a long time to get trained to live a life absent of suffering. Now I still suffer. But not for long. I, I really as, as I just mentioned, get de dedicated and the, and the tool that I use always now, internal family systems.

Marty: I saw a beautiful, um. I guess it's a kind of meme photograph. Um, today on Instagram, somebody was, um, circling around, um, the first picture shows, um, a dad and his down syndrome child. You can always recognize that you know, the shape of the face and all things like that. And, um, and it talked about how, um. You know, they, they suffered over this in various ways and, and, and then they suffered, especially when this down syndrome child said he wanted to have a child. And it just complicated things like, oh gosh, you know? Right. The tore the, it was hard for the family. And then the next, then there's another picture sitting right next to it, which is, you know, a middle aged, handsome guy. Who's got his arm around his Down syndrome dad, who's about 60 now, that little baby the Down Syndrome child that grew up to be to, you know, to be a perfectly normal, healthy child is now taking care of his older dad.

Bill: Isn't that beautiful? I can, I can hear it in your voice that you're really moved by it. I saw the same photos and the same uh, article and the thing that I loved about what he said, the Down syndrome Dad said when they told him, you can't have kids, he said, I don't know a lot of things, but I know how to love.

Marty: Yes. I didn't wanna say that 'cause it would make me cry. Yeah.

Bill: Marty.

Marty: that guy dealt with suffering in a beautiful way.

Bill: All right. What a wonderful conversation this has been. I wish we could continue and I need to prepare for the next thing.

Marty: Have fun.

Bill: I will, and thank you again for this conversation. Take care.

Marty: Thank you.