Hey everyone, welcome to Being Well, I'm Forrest Hanson. If you're new to the show, thanks for listening today and if you've listened before, welcome back. Anxiety is something that we all experience from time to time, and because it's so common, it can be easy to take it a bit lightly. But the truth is that almost a third of adults
will have an anxiety disorder at some point in their lives. And we recently had an episode on social anxiety and today I'm going to be exploring anxiety with a true expert on the subject, Joshua Fletcher, also known online as anxiety, Josh. Josh is a psychotherapist based in Manchester, UK, and the author of several books, including his newest and how
does that make you feel? Joshua also co-hosts the podcast Disordered and you may have bumped into his content on TikTok or Instagram where he has over a quarter million followers. So Josh, thanks for coming on the show. Are you doing? Hey, Forrest. Yeah, thanks for having me on it. So I've been looking forward to this. I would love to start by just introducing you to people who might be a little bit less familiar with your work. And I'm wondering why did you choose to focus on anxiety?
Yes, so as a therapist who specializes in anxiety and anxiety disorders, I was drawn to it because in my young 20s, I was diagnosed with aminesia at home. Four or five anxiety different types of anxiety. Originally it was generalizing anxiety and then it was panic disorder and then it was obsessive-compulsive disorder, then a bit of social anxiety. And basically I was trying to play bingo with my doctor and I was trying to go through
each diagnosis, but I think it stopped at four maybe far. Oh, a bit of depression actually I threw it in as well. Nice. Just the top of it off. So you could fill out the whole row. You're a good to go. Yeah, and I go when I was initially quite on well with anxiety, thankfully many years ago now, I live a very happy content life, but I was really, really unwell and I was experiencing very strange symptoms. I was experiencing lots of panic attacks, intrusive thoughts,
and they all kind of hit me at once. And I'd never really thought I had anxiety before this. And yeah, just hit me once, all at once in one morning and it scared me. And for several years I had to kind of find out what was going on with me and I was working in schools at the time. And yeah, I discovered psych education about what was happening to
me, what was happening in my brain, what I was doing, different therapies. And yeah, after like kind of teaching myself and then finding the right therapist, I got to a good place of my anxiety. I learned how to basically turn it off and go back to being me. I say go back to probably go forward being me knowing how my brain works a bit better. And it inspired me so much that I initially wrote a book about my recovery many years ago and then started
to be a psychotherapist. And during the start of COVID, I made, said, why don't you make an Instagram because everyone's losing their minds. And I was like, okay, and that really seemed to resonate with people that exploded. Yeah, that's where I'm at now. The birth of anxiety Josh, my mom didn't call me that birth. That would be quite fatalistic and sadistic. But yeah, that that's where it is. And it's something I really enjoy.
You just mentioned a second ago that you had a first experience with anxiety that was frightening and intense. A lot of people have kind of an anxiety origin story. That's something that you also write about in the book. For many people, it's like a first panic attack or something like that. For others, it's not quite as acute. But you know, they can normally trace it back to something. Are you comfortable talking about that experience
like what that was like for you? Yeah. And definitely I'm an open book. I like to talk about it, particularly as a British man as well, very emotionally conservative over here. You know, like we'd stiff up a lit. We know we don't talk about that. Get on with it. If you've ever been to London, you'll see the Keep Calm Carry on Mugs, which I find not to be abhorrent because incredibly British. Yeah, no. It feeds into this culture where
we should be emotionally conservative and not convey our emotions. I like to challenge that a bit. Yeah, my anxiety started with a big panic attack, nervous breakdown, whatever you want to call it. My first ever symptom was something called dissociation or also known as the realization or depersonalization. I was at work in the morning. I was making a cup of tea back to being stereotypically British. I dropped a spoon on the side and it's
like a slight clang and it kind of, you know, a mild shock. I looked up and everything just looked really strange. All of a sudden, I was like, whoa, it was like I was neo that just woke up out of the matrix. I was like, what on earth is going on here? I didn't feel like me. Things looked far away and up close at the same time. I felt like I was in a dream like state. I recognised where I was, but things were strange. People's faces
looked like clay. I could be depersonalised. So I couldn't hear my own voice. That triggered a panic attack. I was like, I'm losing my mind to finally done it. You know it's a panic attack when it's, what if you go crazy, what if you lose in your mind, what if you die from fright, etc. I didn't even know what. I'd never had a panic attack before. He started from there. I went home because I thought I was really unwell. That was the start of agro
phobia or agoraphobia for my American friends. Thank you for humoring us, Josh. We appreciate that. I didn't leave the house for six months. I'm very mind I was perfectly fine with all this. I was working with kids who were excluded from mainstream schools because of their behaviour. So I was quite happy going into work and having scissors thrown at me being bitten, I was fine. You just happened one morning. Now I know now looking back it's because my life
was really stressful. I had accumulated stress and my brain's threat response tried to warn me that this isn't sustainable. Just one morning, that's what happened and it started from there. I didn't know it was a panic attack. I thought I was going crazy. I kept monitoring for the panic attack. I didn't want to feel like that again. Then subsequent they had panic attack after the panic attack, which is known as panic disorder. But again, I didn't
even have that terminology. I had no idea what was going on. Very isolating experience. For starters, thanks for sharing. What I really appreciate about the story that you're telling here, Josh, is that many of the things that you're describing are not things that
I think that most people probably think about when they think about anxiety. That level of derealization experience or that dissociative experience with all of this symptomology that people are like, oh, anxiety is something that I feel when I'm a little uncomfortable
walking into a room. If they have a full-blown panic attack, particularly for the first time, they might not even connect the dots back to like, this is an anxiety driven experience because it feels so off the board from that for people. Absolutely. As an expert in the field now, every time someone asks me about, can you talk about anxiety? The first port of call is by separated between conventional anxiety and disordered anxiety. Conventional anxiety is that anxiety that we all relate to. It
lies within social norms. I'm worried about a first date. I'm worried about the dentist ripping my teeth out. I'm worried about my driving test. I'm worried about this upcoming medical examination and appraisal with my boss, an exam. Yes, that is still legitimate anxiety and it's something that we all relate to. I'm happy to talk about with people because everyone's like, yeah, I know what it's like to have an exam. I know what it's like to
have a first date. I know what it's like to have a driving test with being observed. That is okay. If you're anxious about that, that is legitimate anxiety. I specialize in the other side of things which is the disordered anxiety, the juicy fruity stuff. Why am I having intrusive thoughts on a man with my family about throwing a plate at my loved one? Why am I having intrusive thoughts about harming my child? Why am I having inappropriate sexual
intrusive thoughts? Why am I having panic attacks in Walmart? Why can I not go a certain distance from my home? Why am I worried about what this person thinks and I'm fornic? Why do I keep playing through conversations and the shower in my head because I'm afraid of what this person thinks? Basically, the anxiety that becomes chronic and excessive and gets in the way of everyday life. That could just be by panic attacks, worrying about
worry itself, obsessing over symptoms, health anxiety is another one. You've ever had a headache and then googled it. A week later, you know, two hours later, you're googling your own funeral because that headache, obviously, according to Google, is your instant demise. Every headache just leads to cancer. If I've learned one thing from the big Google doctor, it's that everything is cancer at the end of the day. Yes, absolutely.
Your brain is not interested in the fact that you've not drank a glass of water for 24 hours. Yeah, or have subsided purely on a diet of carbohydrates and caffeine, yeah, for sure. Exactly. Yeah. I specialize in that. I think it's helpful to split between conventional anxiety or disorder anxiety and then you unpick which kind of anxiety that you have. When you were talking about panic attacks a second ago, you mentioned the kind of the cycle of anxiety, this notion of panic attack,
leading to a panic attack, which leads to a panic attack. You also mentioned something about threat monitoring that state of being constantly on guard, which then leads to more anxiety over time. This is one of the things that's so tricky about it is that we start becoming anxious about the fact that we're anxious and it creates this kind of vicious cycle for people. Absolutely. Yeah, threat monitoring is something I did for many years and what a lot of people do.
Now, when we say threat monitoring, you can define almost every anxiety disorder using this because it depends on what the threat is. Now, a threat to our ancestors were obviously things that can eat us, you know, or warring tribes that want to come and take over whatever. They're the threats to our ancestors and it was really helpful and evolutionary for people to
advantageous to have this threat monitoring system. Like the mere cap where if I'm constantly looking for threats all day, my livelihood can be saved, sustained and it can progress. But when you're sat at the computer in an office and you threat monitoring systems, fire and not, it's not really that helpful. When it comes to anxiety disorders, you can define almost any anxiety disorder through threat monitoring and our behavior. So for panic attacks, it's a rush of adrenaline
and cortisol and that creates lots of physical symptoms and sensory differences. So things look different, things feel different, things you can hear things different because our senses have a change slightly. We can also have chest pains, heart palpitations, our digestion, messed up, things like that. We feel lightheaded, dizzy, tense sweating. Okay, that's completely normal
actually for that response. But when we fear that the symptoms of a panic attack or an adrenaline rush as I like to call them become the threat in itself, that's what happened to me initially. So panic disorder, all panic disorder is is I have a huge adrenaline rush in a very incongruous situation and it took me off guard and it frightened me so much that I'm now going to threat monitor just in case it happens again. So it's always my chest tight, my panic attack. Oh,
everything around me looks strange and I'm dissociating. Am I having a panic attack? I can't quite catch my breath. I've got air hunger. Am I going to stop breathing? I'm going to have panic attack. And that's just panic disorder. People's social anxiety, their threat monitoring all the time, usually in the reactions of other people, threat monitoring for their expression, signs of rejection or non-approval. Yeah,
pressure signs of being pushed away. That could be even in a loved one or your partner. Are they unhappy with me, etc. Generalizing anxiety is the fun one. It's a chicken or the egg. Sometimes our threat system kicks off first and then the brain just starts suggesting threats. Like, what if it's that? What if it's that? What if it's that? What if it's that? Oh, it can happen the other way around. What if it's that? Bang triggers the threat response system.
Oh, which can be quite cyclical. Yeah, it just depends. Agrophobia, agoraphobia, me was, I'm safe here, but if I go far away from my home, maybe I'm going to have a panic attack, that's the threat. Threat monitoring is very internal. Almost all anxiety is internal. OCD, in particular, that's threat monitoring 99% of your day. Notice that it's not necessarily you, but it's your threat or threat response being very persuasive and it takes your attention.
So, correctly, if I'm wrong about this, of course, Josh. But my understanding with one of the one of the things that people are often dealing with when they experience a lot of anxiety is that you become very acutely aware of these different signals inside of the body, like you're saying, it's a form of threat monitoring, that suggests to you that something bad is about to happen. But the thing is that when you start to feel those feelings, you look for bad things out in the
world. You become more aware of your surroundings. You start interpreting information through the lens of this feeling that you're having internally. So, an internal feeling is starting to now create your external reality or your interpretation of the external reality. Does that kind of make sense? Yeah. Someone's read my book. Well, that's... Oh, yeah. Did my best. We tried to do our research around here. Also,
full disclosure, I've definitely experienced a fair amount of anxiety in the past. I've definitely done this myself. But no, and that kind of like strong coupling of essentially almost like taking yourself too seriously. If that makes sense, I don't know if that's quite the right way to put it, but I hope you know what I mean. No, absolutely. Yeah. The whole point of anxiety is to strive for your attention just in case. Those three magic words just in case. I would argue,
and if you look at evolutionary psychology, you could ask your data about this one. I would argue anxiety is the reason why we're the top of the food chain, because I'm not going to win a fight with a lion. I'll give it a go. It depends if he's stolen my lunch. That's my lunch. I paid the money for that pie. Come back, Simba. But in general, we can't outrun stuff. You're not going to outrun a cheetah. You're not going to fight a bear. But what we did have, again, like the meerkat, was this
sense of planning logic and a part of our brain that made us act just in case. So, for example, let's take my ancestors, Uncle Tony and Auntie Sandra, they're walking across the Serengeti. My Uncle Tony's anxious. Unfortunately, his GP wasn't available. And they're walking along that the Serengeti and my Uncle Tony says, I feel like something bad is going to happen. Now, my Auntie Sandra goes, what you're on about? You're always worried. My Uncle Tony goes, no,
I feel like something bad is going to happen. And so his behavior changes. And like you said, the lens of threat comes. So he looks up. And he's trying to find what's wrong because he feels anxious. Now, most of the time, my Uncle Tony feels anxious, there's nothing bad happening. He's looking around. Oh, it's just me worrying again. But this time, he looks up and low on the hold. Bang. There's a pride of lions. And they wouldn't have noticed it if they were just walking,
talking. And with the human brain of being able to plan, have the logic and use strategy, the options are there for them. They can sneak around the lions, or they can just go the other way, either way they're protected, and they have the advantage. Now, that's never, that's the oldest part of our brain. It's never had to evolve. It stays there. It stays, it's called the amygdala. It's a shape like an almond and it's wedged in the front of your brain. It's responsible for
all anxiety. It's probably saved your life at least once in your life. And that's enough, because you're here, you listen into this podcast, but it's really annoying when it's misfiring, because that's what creates disorder anxiety. That's what creates threat monitoring. That's what creates the symptoms, the worry. And when you take that lens of threat into like beers with your mates, or see in your family, or trying to be a parent, or whatever, it's really debilitating.
When you don't understand it, you can be very self-critical. I'm wondering what your process was, working with your anxiety, Josh, and how you now take that into your work with people. So for me, my process is, starts with psyched education, because I'd argue that probably saved my life. I was so anxious and thought I was going crazy and I wasn't getting the right help. I discovered the works of my hero, Dr. Claire Weeks, who I think died in the early 80s,
wrote some great, the first major works on anxiety disorders. And she influences what I write about today. She's my hero and explaining in a way that basically what happened was I wasn't broken. Things were just a bit jumbled. I like the word disorder, which means not in order. I mean, my brain, my threat response was just firing off. It was just going, I didn't understand
while it was firing off in situations that were safe. For me personally, it was as a reaction to traumatic events, but mostly stress, accumulated stress and traumatic events, built up, built up, built up. Again, that oldest part of your brain, the amygdala, doesn't understand subjective stress, doesn't understand things like deadlines, exams, everyday stresses, money, finances, things like that. It doesn't understand it. And when all these things build up
and build up and build up, it can miss fire. So my first step was realizing, I'm not crazy. I'm not broken. And when you internalize that belief and realize, okay, I simplified my world, which went from obsessing about symptoms, obsessing about how I felt, obsessing about scary what ifs, I'm going crazy, threat monitoring, seeking reassurance, thinking and truth of thoughts meant I was weird to, ah, this is one thing. I just got a misfiring threat response.
I can work with that. And I did. And now, all right. One of the phrases I've heard you use, Josh, is either willful tolerance of uncertainty. I think it's a phenomenal phrase. And it's also a great target when working with anxiety. Would you mind talking about that a little bit? Yeah. I mean, I think the way out of all
anxiety disorders is the willful tolerance of uncertainty. It's not mine. It's something I read from Dr Sally Winston and Dr Martin Seaf, who were two anxiety disorder experts in Maryland in the US. And their works really inspired me. And I pinched that. And I use it as part of my practice. We're in a world, we're in a world where of instant fixes and believing that when something doesn't appear normal, we have to fix it. And that's what I was trying to do. When I was first
anxious, I tried everything to fix it. Honestly, everything. Forrest. Try meditation. Do this. Have you fixed your gut by own? Have you tried this plan? Ashwood Gander? Have you done these mantras in the morning? Have you tried doing all these things? I tried them all. Herbal remedies, CBD, I smoked a joint once, which made it 10 times worse. I was trying to do everything to get read to fix because when I was anxious, that meant I was doing something wrong. And I'm trying to fix
a misfiring threat response instantly. The willful tolerance is a skill like much like learning the guitar, much like, I don't know, learning French. It's a skill that helped me get better. And it's a skill that I'll take with me to my grave. It's when we feel uncertain, we don't instantly react to it like it's something like a problem. So panic attacks make you feel uncertain. Well, I'm going to practice the willful tolerance of uncertainty, knowing that this is grounded in the fact
that I'm okay. This is just adrenaline and cortisol. My threat response is going to suggest all sorts of what it's. What do you have? What if you have a heart attack? What if you die? What if you freak out? What if you humiliate yourself? What if you do this? I don't know. But at the moment, I practiced the willful tolerance of uncertainty and I know that this feeling will pass. We've all heard of the cliche phrase, this too shall pass. But it's true because all feelings are transient,
whether it's utter terror or even happiness. We even know when we're feeling joyful and elated that it doesn't last, but also the same with horrible feelings like anxiety and depression and things. When things are grounded in psychoeducation, you can practice the skill of willful tolerance. I know I'm okay. I know this is my misfire and threat response. I know if I give it attention, it thinks it's being important. Can you do that instantly and one quick fix? No. But do you practice
it over time? Give yourself a pat on the back and realize, I'm getting quite good at this. Then yeah, that's when you get to a good place. Yeah, I think you add a line along the lines of, I'm anxious. I don't really like it, but it can be there. I don't mind. And that's in reference to anxiety. And so you're essentially describing in a funny kind of way, almost lightning up about your own experience of that internal threat monitor. Those are own signals that your body is
sending to you that are tied to your threat response system. Now it's kind of easy to say, lighten up about your threat response system, but that's a hard thing to lighten up about. And so I'm wondering how you work with people around that. I think it's about teaching people. It's not as serious as it feels. Now don't get me wrong. If you're someone listening in new struggle with anxiety or no, a loved one who has anxiety,
it feels horrible. Yeah. It feels isolating, feeling terror, the scary symptoms, and it's horrible. But what I teach people is that you've probably, if you've got anxiety, you've probably out of every day or weekly or whatever. It's not actually anything new. That's what we can ground ourselves with. Oh, look, so more scary. What ifs? Oh, look, I'm exhausted again. Oh, look, I'm agitated. Oh, I'm getting these weird symptoms, etc. and the list, hundreds of
physical symptoms that come with it. That's as bad as it gets. So if you're anxious and you like, I can't cope, I'm spiraling, you've tolerated anxiety. It's absolute worst, which is incredible. Whether you believe it or not, factually, if you're listening to this and you struggle with anxiety or know someone who struggles with anxiety, remind them that, hey, you've tolerated everything life's thrown at you right up into this point and you're still sat you. Yeah, you might
be hyperventilating, worrying about true symptoms. That doesn't matter. Look, look, you are more capable than what you think. Anxiety will convince you that you're about to break or snap whatever. No, it doesn't do that. You're all right. I think what's really important is to change your relationship with it. But if you don't know what's happening and this is why I was so ill, I didn't know what was happening to me. When I really understood what was happening to me, the mystery is
removed and it gives you the confidence to leave it alone. So, for example, if I have an intrusive thought, I'm really getting truce of thoughts nowadays. But when I get one, I go, well, the brain's just weird and will just suggest random thoughts. They don't mean anything to you. And my threat response might pick up on that. So my old threat response might be like, oh yeah, that's the old lion's thing. My ancestors use that to pick up lion. This thought isn't a lion.
Now, what am I going to do with my behavior to turn off the threat response? And where is in the past out of sat there, I would have ruminated on it, I'd have overthought it, I'd have been like, what does this mean? How do I fix this? And now with that psycho education and that line up about it, it's just like, oh, that's supposed to happen. It doesn't mean I'm crazy, it doesn't mean I'm stupid. I'm just going to leave it alone.
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into a water down life. Grab a vitamin water today. Vitamin Water is a registered trademark of glass O. For many people, anxiety is tied to certain kinds of situations or circumstances, doing certain kinds of things. You were talking about agoraphobia to pronounce it like an American. And that's tied to leaving the house. You're doing an activity. You're being in a place that's uncomfortable and familiar, less safe, or your brain perceives it as less safe.
Braving that is very difficult for people. And being in those little moments where we're trying to do something that we haven't been able to do in the past without having a panic attack or without having severe activation of anxiety is really tough. We call that exposure sometimes. Approaching exposure is a bit of a complicated topic for people. Exposure can get a little bit
of a bad rap. But I was hoping that you could describe how you were able to do that with people or how you start to walk through that when you're working with somebody. Yeah, I love exposure therapy. It's interesting with exposure therapy because if you look from a neuropsychological point of view, you can only rewire the amygdala, which is your fearsome to when it's activated. So that's why things like
techniques at home. Now that's clever Josh. Yeah. You have to feel the fear. Like on some level, we don't overwhelm ourselves. Anyway, there's two types of exposure. You've got graded exposure and you've got flooding. Flooding is intense. I'd never do that because it's unethical and it's I would I just wouldn't do it personally either. There's some things I would do it like public speaking. I'd be like, I'm just going to do it. I'm going to just do it. Whatever. Let's see what
happens. But for some people, you know, that there's flooding. So for people like with agoraphobia or panic attacks, flooding would be what's a flooding exposure can do. All right, get a plane to New Zealand. No, that's just not reasonable. It's not nice. No. But what we do is graded exposure, which is a little bit at a time, an incognitive behavioral therapy and third wave CBT like acceptance commitment therapy, etc. Will you do something called an exposure ladder? Whereas we write down
our end goal and the little steps that we can do to get there. So if your end goal is to go for go to a party and speak to a load of friends and that terrifies you, the first step on your exposure ladder might be, why don't I just ring a friend and call them and have a conversation. And then your next step might be like, why don't I meet a friend for a coffee? And then the next step might
be, why don't I invite two friends to an event? Let's go watch Taylor Swift or something. And then, as it builds up and then you're teaching the activated amygdala that there's no threat in being around people. And by the time you get to the final stage, the big party with people there, yeah, it'll be a little bit scary, but the brain's done a lot of rewiring there. I do it with driving anxiety all the time. I'm afraid to drive in the fast lane on the highway.
Okay, I'm not going to say just get in the car and drive in the fast lane on the highway. I'm going to be like, why don't we practice a little bit in the slow lane? Cruise behind the truck that's doing 40 miles an hour. And then when you're bored in the brain's rewired itself, go into the middle lane and then come back and practice a little bit at a time. For me, as an anxiety therapist, there's
always got to be some level of exposure because that uncertainty is where the brain rewires. Not only, I mean, you can get on nerdy like the brain rewires, but also personally and holistically, you gain confidence from that. I believe I've learned that I am more capable than what I think. I realized I'm not male of glass and I did something that even I couldn't expect that I could do. And it starts to positively snowball. I love exposure therapy, don't ethically and correctly.
It's something I have to do. I still say this now. I did, I was a keynote speaker in the UK, we have my registering body, called the BACP. And I was invited to be the keynote speaker, which is talking about a thousand odd people. And I'm still on there. Arm pits are like swimming pools, sweat in, heart pounding, absolutely terrified, intrusive thoughts about soiling myself and throwing up on the front row. I was really horrible. And I went on there and I was, it went well because I've
been practicing willful tolerance. But that was less scary than my first ever exposure, going to the supermarket because of the way the threat response works. So yeah, I'm going to toe to toe with fear and doesn't matter where you are, it's fear is fear. As people go through that process, this is a piece of feedback that I've sometimes gotten when I talked about exposure on the podcast in the past, people will say something along the lines of
forest, well, I try to do the hard thing. Whatever the hard thing is for me, I'm thoughtful about it, you know, try to resource myself before it, try to pick something that's the right amount of heart. It's hard, but it's not too hard, just like you're saying. But while I'm doing the thing, even if the thing is just, you know, walk down the hallway. Inside the whole time, my brain is screaming at me, I hate this, I hate this, I hate this. Or inside, I'm just freaking out the whole
time. And I can, you know, hold it together, I can regulate myself and then I get back to my room and I go, oh my God, I feel so much better just being in my room. I don't want to do that again. And I'm wondering if you're working with somebody and they kind of bring that to you, how would you interact with that? Oh, I'm glad you asked that. I've done this too. There's exposure and there's exposure done right. Now, don't get me wrong. If you have attempted to do
something scary, well done, that's really good. I'm not, that Ed will never downplay courage. Exposures are effective when you take away the micro compulsions. The biggest mistake in exposure is people make it something called white knuckling. Yeah. People on a rollercoaster, you've got the one person, I'm this person, by the way, holding on for dear life, screaming, all sorts of expletives. There's a nine-year-old behind me traumatized by the language that's coming out
my mouth. I'm holding on for dear life. And then you've got people that are just freely going and like, yeah, I know I'm safe, you know, hands and legs in the air, good for them. But I use that example in terms of exposures for things like walking down the corridor. A micro compulsion is any safety behavior. So I talk about this a lot about the attitude shift of when you're doing an
exposure. The whole point of an exposure is to feel scared. If you're doing it whilst white knuckling, you know you're white knuckling if you're walking down the corridor when you're doing, when you're only getting through it with words like 30 seconds that I can go home, 60 seconds that I can go home. I'm almost home. People who are in work meet, I hear this in work meetings all the time. Josh, I sat in a work meeting, 60 minutes, I got through the whole thing and I felt so much
better when I got out. What are you signaling to the threat response there that there is still threat? An exposure is, yeah, yeah, yeah, an exposure is, I'm practicing being anxious. So it sounds quite cruel, but like when I say, like when clients come to me, they say, Josh, you've not been anxious
all week, which is great. I mean, they've had many years of being anxious. I've not been anxious all week, but me who wants to keep pushing and encouraging is that's great, but I want to know what you did whilst being anxious, because remember you can only rewire the brain while you feel uncertain. So when people say, oh, my exposure was to go to the theatre. I went to the theatre, wasn't anxious at all. I enjoyed Hamilton. Well, that's great. And I'm glad you had a really nice
time. But I like, I went to see Hamilton and I was really scared the whole way through, but I stayed and actually towards the end, I could feel anxiety coming down and I managed to engage. That's an exposure because the brain is rewired. So if you're walking down the corridor and then running back, you're white and ugly. You're actually sig, it's still good, but you're signaling to the brain. They're still at danger because you're literally doing fight off-light. You're running away.
I need to run back. An exposure is good when you are remind yourself that the success is doing this with anxiety. Then the anxiety comes down because the amygdala is like, well, I've been suggesting to forest all these catastrophes that will happen to him and they've not happened yet. So I'm going to encode that memory, rewire, and now this corridor is actually safe. And that's when it relies. And you know this. Anyone can relate to this. How are you nervous on the first day of work?
Of course you are. You know some second day of work, probably. You nervous one year into a job. No, you probably bored. Can't wait for your lunch break so you can eat a sandwich and scroll TikTok because your brains rewired. Throughout that process, it's pretty easy for people to experience a lot of self-criticism tied to it, even just in the things that we're talking about. Wow, I have this kind of an experience when I'm getting ready to go out and see my friends.
How sad is that? How crazy is that? How, you know, like, I'm so messed up that I have this kind of a feeling before I'm, you go to the pub and hang out with somebody that I actually like. Yeah. I mean anxiety isn't a sign that you're doing anything wrong. Anxiety means you care. Yeah. You're anxious before an exam because you care. You're anxious before a job interview because you care. Now it might be a bit nuanced and
convoluted. It depends on what a threat is to you. Mentioned before about threat responses, what is a threat to you? And this is where it's really important. This is where I, being a therapist and training us to really help, is that I try to identify what is a threat. Now a threat to someone seeing their friend, maybe in the city, a threat might be, I don't like getting the underground train to meet them. To someone else, the threat might be like, last time I was in
that neighborhood, I had a bad experience. The threat someone else might be, last time I was there, I thought they had a problem with me. The threat might be judgment. The threat might be performing. To understand what threat is, you look at the threat response itself, fight, flight, freeze and form. You know, you're a fighter when your threat is to be aggressive and agitated or angry when you're anxious. You know, you're a fighter when you want to run away,
like the corridor analogy, but I feel scared so I'm going to run away. You know, you're a freezer when you have a compartment for vegetables. And if it's a very expensive freezer, you might create ice cubes. Now you know, you're a freezer when you freeze. Most panic attacks are freezing. It's not like Netflix. You know Netflix when something, the depiction of a panic attack on Netflix, the rolling around on the floor, you know, memories of whatever. No, most panic attacks are not that.
But you might freeze and fear. I don't know what to do. I know what to say. And then you've got the phone response. So if it's particularly around social anxiety and you're meeting up with people, you'll be a foreigner. And you know you're a foreigner when you stand in a room, you're back towards the door, someone just walks through the door and you can sense their mood just by them walking into the room. And you've seen nothing. The foreigner's responses,
are they angry? Are they upset? You know, you're a foreigner when you're ruminating before, during and after a social event. You know, you're a foreigner when you people please and say no, I mean, say yes, when you really want to say no. Can you do this extra thing for me? Actually, rational brain says I'm hitting burnout and you just go, yeah, okay, I'll do that.
Because you're a foreigner when you play Kate, even though at the expense of your own opinion, because the threat there is judgment being pushed away, etc. It depends what the threat is. The threat might just be the panic attack itself. I don't want to go out and see my mate because the threat is I might have a panic attack. Yeah. I don't want to see this certain family member
because I'm having intrusive thoughts. So understanding the threat response is really important and when I get asked by people on the radio and stuff like, what's your top five tips for anxiety? I'm like, we got an hour because we need to understand what the threat response is. Yes. So do you think that having that kind of psycho education or having that understanding of the threat response helps people work with that more self-critical aspect?
Yeah. And also that's where therapy comes in as well. What's your relation to the threat response? You and I, Forest could be sat there both simultaneously having a panic attack. My reaction to my panic attack is, hmm, I'm having an adrenaline rush. It must be stressed. Maybe I should go easy on myself. Your response might be, I'm having a panic attack. What am I doing wrong? Yeah. This is horrible. I need to fix myself. I'm weak. I'm useless. We're both physiologically
having the same experience. But this is where self-esteem comes in because if you're interpreting your anxiety as a mistake, as something you've done wrong, then you're going to be stuck there for a long time. Whereas, yes, psycho education is great because it kind of grounds everything in facts, rationality and what's happening. But as a, this is why I trained to be a therapist, is that what are the other hurdles for you accepting that and doing the right things to turn off
the threat response? And if you're someone who has low self-esteem or, you know, you just beat yourself up, it's going to take probably taking you a little bit longer to get there because you've got to be your friend first. Yeah. I think one of the biggest issues that we have with motivating different kinds of behaviors, or just teaching people how to work with their own internal, you know, stuff, everything that's going on in there, is that when we talk about learning, we often frame
things in terms of like punishment reinforcement. Essentially, we try to punish ourselves out of the behaviors that we no longer want to do. But then we never get around to rewarding ourselves towards the more good behaviors. It's like those typical American dad vibes, you know, like no participation trophies, I'm not going to reward you for doing what you should have done. I'm only
going to reward you for going above and beyond like that kind of a thing, right? So, crates is kind of loose loose where you've got intense self-criticism going on when you're doing what you should be doing. And you have self-criticism going on also when you're not doing what you should be doing. So like kind of either way you lose, right? You're either beat yourself up because you're not doing it as well as you should be doing it, or you beat yourself up because you're not doing
it at all. And so the brain has nothing to learn from, right? Like there's no new experience there. It's turtles all the way down. So like, why should we ever change? Yeah. It's like a negative feedback, Luke. You're only rewarding yourself or giving yourself value when you judge it because you're judging yourself on final output and not intention and effort. This particularly prevalent in people whose parents are just knobs.
Sometimes the British vernacular really comes in clutch. Just like the ability to refer to somebody as a real knob, I think is like the perfect way to put this. You know, the parents are so crates self-critical like, I remember when I was younger, I worked really hard on some coursework for English. And I got a B. And I was really proud of that. I really nailed it. And I went home and said, Mom, I got a B in English. She was like, well done. I know how hard you
work with a great brilliant, that's brilliant. And that's good and probably contributed to better steam issues. My same friend got a B, went to his parents like, why have you not get an A, you're lazy, all those times you're playing PlayStation, you could have been studying to get an A. And they wondered why when he went to university, he's got depression burn out anxiety because he only values himself on, because he only feels he has value if he's perfect, if he gets everything.
I know he worked on that. He's not a slacker. And these voices are something that you challenge in therapy too. The projected voices of authority figures or cultural figures or people at school. Don't get me wrong, you take the positives, but also negative interjections get absorbed there and therapists love to challenge those. That's why we're always really nosy about your parents. When I see a new client, I just flip a coin, is it more or more dead? And if it lands on its side
both, and I'm like, oh god, you're going to be here for a while. The inception dreidel turner thing where it just spins and spins forever, just never lands. It's the running joke and people listen to the show, I don't know if jokes quite the right way to put it, but it's like, does everything just come back to my relationship with my parents? Like, please, just for one time, could it not? I think parents stuff, and this is how I work. So therapists work in a different
way. You read my book, I joke about how we all once a year try to kill each other who could depend on you. It's true. Therapist hunger games is a real thing. Yeah, the younger games. The younger games. Yeah, hey, how I work with anxiety is that, and I'm very passionate about this, particularly with other therapists and stuff, is that it's not all about your parents. It's not all about these things. It's not all about the Oprah Winfrey. What happened to you?
It must all be on that. It plays a part. We are multifaceted human. Anxiety disorders can happen just because of genetics. You could have the braided bunch as your parents or whatever. You could have the perfect parents. You could have Stuart Little's parents. The parents that decided to prioritize the well-being of a mouse over their human job. But anyway, it doesn't matter. Sometimes you can just be predisposed to a misfiring threat response.
But there's a very reductive narrative, particularly in therapy, particularly on trauma. Everyone's banging on about trauma at the moment. The therapeutic growth isn't just about identifying trauma and applying some kind of medicine to that. You see it as part of the bigger picture. So actually, if I'm working with someone who's been through trauma, it's like, shall we look at the effect on what that's doing with a misfiring threat response? If it's serious trauma, you may have PTSD.
So we look at that. Or if it's neglects and horrible things in childhood, you could have complex PTSD. But you've got to step away from the reductive narrative, particularly in therapy. It's like, if I identify that one point, I fixed everything because you're falling back into fixing culture, or is actually we break it down a little bit at a time. That's how I work anyway. Some therapist might come at me with pitchforks and torches, whatever.
You're an integrative therapist, Josh. That means you're better than them. You're not one of those one-modality types out there, you know? I would never say that. I only think it. Ben, I'm now living a house with not one, not two, but three therapists. Oh my god. I'm sure you're really good. I'm getting it from all sides here, Josh. I got to tell you. That must be insufferable.
My now my fiance is a therapist and live with two other good friends, one of who's training to be a clinical psychologist and the other works in crisis work and is licensed. So it's a whole mess over here. Interesting that you married someone that has to write, to simulate your parents. Unfortunately, the episode with Joshua Fletcher couldn't be a... We lost this one due to corruption, guys. Sorry, the audio files. Something horrible happened to it on the way to our host.
But okay, all right. Defebably attempt to rescue myself here. So in the book, I know you're talking about my book. It's fine, carry on. Okay, okay. Yeah, yeah. One of the things we do talk about on this show a lot is like trying to identify different voices and kind of like where they come from for somebody. It's not necessarily like a whole
unvoiced dialogue thing, although of course that can be useful for people. But most people have more self-critical parts, self-critical voices, more nurturing parts, more nurture and voices. And I thought it was really interesting actually how in the book you tried to essentially write your internal monologue at different points in it marked by in terms of these different voices,
like detective, intuition, all of these different parts. And I thought that was such an interesting thing to like bring that to the surface rather than having it in the background. Thanks for us. I really appreciate that. Yeah, it's a different way of writing a book.
So in, and how does that make you feel? If you've ever seen Inside Out or Inside Out too, it's basically the adult, abhorrent version of that in therapy where I want to show people how therapists, particularly me, and like Inside Out, there's different voices talking, arguing, fighting, agreeing, not. And I'm trying to balance the multitude of things that happen in the therapy room. And I'm showing you my exact thought processes because I think to encourage more
people to go to therapy, particularly in the UK. I wanted to show people like listen, I'm a big tall man who knows what it's like to be emotionally conservative. I grew up playing rugby and boxing and stuff like that, conventionally masculine things. And I wanted to show them, actually know that as a therapist, this is what we do. And also sharing absolutely banana stories from my personal life, which there are some banana stories from your personal life. I learned a
lot about you in this book, Josh. I got to tell you, there's no stone left unturned over there, buddy. But I do want to ask you about something, which is like, do you think that having that sort of granularity, being able to look inside and be like, oh, this is my analytical voice, they're like, oh, this is more my intuitive voice, my critical voice. Do you think that's a helpful trait for people to be able to develop for themselves? And do you think it can also help them work with
anxiety? Oh, absolutely. Yeah. We all have different voices in our head depending on the mood or in or what on the situation. Say voices, just different types of thoughts. Yeah, totally. They don't. I think a lot of people who struggle with mental health issues believe every thought that goes into their head, particularly if you're struggling with depression, if you've got a, if you're struggling with depression, and you've got a voice that's saying you're a burden,
you're useless, you're that that's one voice in your head. There's 13 voices in, well, I'm using the book here, but there's different perspectives in your head. You can listen to this one dude, who's mild enough, or you can listen to the other voices you're having, like compassion. And you know compassion exists, even for the most depressed, you know compassion exists because that voice speaks up when you think of a loved one, or when you're being kind and empathetic. So you are capable of
being compassionate. And a lot of the time it's like, well, I know it's there. How can I direct it towards myself? Why is inner critic taking over this analysis? And same with anxiety, you know, anxiety, but anxiety will always begin every thought with what if what if that happens? Shut up, anxiety. Another one is I should. You know it's anxiety because they always begins with a sentence with I should. You're the people with productivity anxiety, you're the people that feel guilty for
stopping. You sit down, eat ice cream and watch married at first sight or some trash TV because you like it. And then you have this guilt inner critic comes in. No, learn to stop, learn that it's okay. I should do this. You're the people with them to do lists that are so long and then you take them off and you feel like you've got some sense of productivity. And then the next thing, you know, at the end of the day, that to do lists is twice as big, even though you've been taking them off
because you're chasing that sense of satiation and feel guilty for not taking stuff off. You've got productivity anxiety, my friend. And you need to address that. Is there anything that you do with people to help them get a more granular sense of those voices inside? A lot of people when they first start doing this kind of work, they're kind of blended to use a term for my FS. Like, it's all sort of feels like it's just one voice, but then they develop more of a granular sense of
each of these little bits and pieces. Does that kind of make sense? Yeah, definitely. Even when I mentioned before about the works of Sally Winston, people, when you look at anxiety, they just split it into three voices, which is worried voice, false comfort, and wise mind. So worried voice could be what if this happens? And false comfort is that voice that way you immediately want answers and reassurance. And then worried voice goes, yeah, yeah, but you
should do this. And then they just go back and forth because you can never get 100% assurance about anything. And then wise mind is you two are consuming my attention and we're missing out on life here. Why don't we just take our attention somewhere else? And I like that, the seeds of what I was doing there. And then I just introduced nine more, so I'm like, to be excessive. But in general, like, yeah, I think it's in, for some people, it just depends. It's not for
everyone, but for some people like to conceptualize. For me as well, it really helps me. I'm autistic, so it's nice to be able to see things what they are. It just depends. Sometimes it relates to people sometimes it doesn't be, I'll suggest. I work differently with the client, depends what the client wants wants to know. And we work with what works for them. Well, we're landing on this at the end of our conversation here, Josh, but I do want to ask you because you just mentioned that
you're autistic. And for people who are not neurotypical, who ADHD autism spectrum disorders, whatever it might be, there are particular challenges for anxiety-driven experiences a lot of the time. And I'm wondering if there's everything you've found in your own experience that's been particularly helpful for you in working with anxiety. It depends because obviously people's neurodivergence presents differently, I think. It's a huge, massive feel, a full of differences.
One of the issues that people have is trying to like monolith different groups of people, like just saying that everybody with ADHD has the same kind of challenge. Everybody with AST has the same kind of experience, absolutely. Yeah, exactly. And that's why I love conceptualizing
the stress job. The stress is to a neurotypical person. Well, stress is between everyone a different, but if you're going to look at it at a neurotypical versus a neurodivergent, for me, if I'm really stressed one day and I can feel my stress drug filling up, I might avoid going to the supermarket because the lights give me sensory overload. Or if I'm going to go to a gig,
I wouldn't avoid it. I don't avoid anxiety, but I need to acknowledge that I probably be a bit more stressed in here because the panoramic sound, people bumping into me and me not feeling grounded. I never avoid it though, but I compassionately say to myself, don't compare yourself to everyone else. Yes, you don't like it when this happens or this happens or whatever, but it just depends. And also, I use this term loosely and I hope people don't get be offended by it, but very high functioning
autism. When I say high functioning, what I mean is I find it more not as difficult to access neurotypical behavior and activities as opposed to so other people. Just how my brain is, I'm not trying to say I'm better than anyone else. I'm just saying I'm quite blessed that it doesn't affect me. Whereas some of my friends who struggle with ADHD or perhaps their brains work differently because they're autistic in a different way, they may struggle with that. I'm lucky
that my brain does that. So yeah, I just, but when I'm working with anxiety, I will work with kind of, well, let's work together and what your stress is here, what's too much, what's not. And the stresses can go from everyday stuff to interacting with people, relationships, etc. or understanding of the world. It's different for each person. I never lead with my autism ever. I think I don't know why. I don't know. I try, I own mask more now though. So I did a talk
the other day where my hands just stemming and I just like, I don't care. You can watch me in my weird hand just do funny things. Because I don't care anymore because it's just me and that's what I do when I'm anxious. But it just depends for different people. I can't speak for the neurodivergent community. I can only speak for myself. Is that something that I kind of self-comfort or a self-confidence that you're you developed over time? Do you think? I just don't really care anymore.
I used to. I grew up caring. I used to, I grew up caring. That's a form of self-confidence right there, Jazz. I got to tell you. Kind of. It's almost kind of my roast as well. I think when I, I mean, you read in the book with some tragic stories. I've lost, I've lost some people in my life and through grief. I just came, it came home that I just, I just don't really care. I just, I used to, I grew up caring about what everyone thought. Everything. But we're so ashamed. And
now I just like, I don't care now because it's not important. What is important is my values, people who I care about, what you people I love and respect, think of me. And don't get me wrong if my favorite footballer walked into the room. I probably care what they thought or etc. But in general, no, when it comes to stuff like that, I mean, what's the worst that can happen? Always is a bit different. Good. You remember different people. You don't remember the normal people
anyway. I think you're totally right. And it's so funny that this is like coming to me at the end here. But there's this great, just incredible line from Buddhist practice that there was this great teacher, his name was Ajahn Chah and he was in the Thai Forest tradition, really wise guy. And he essentially referred to the, the journey that you go on as you deepen in Buddhist practice. My dad's obviously a serious Buddhist guy and I was raised inside of that tradition.
Is that you find something that he referred to as a kind of boredom, which another translation for it is disenchantment, which I think is kind of what you're referring to here, Josh, that like things arise, they fall away, things come in, they flow out, things happen to people. You know, it's kind of a form of boredom, like things become less worthy of desire or craving or attachment. I love them. Yeah. Yeah. This is a disenchantment. I love what I do and what I do.
And I like my joy is seeing it reach people, but yeah, people, yeah, yeah, they're disenchanted from people's opinion of me genuinely. I know people say it's a platter tube, but actually genuinely not really caring is a nice place to be. And I think it's actually a very healthy place to get to because it's not that you're pushing away. You're not, it's not a form of revulsion. You're not, you know, like judgmental about it in a bad way. You're just kind of shrugging in the
general direction of it. Like that's a healthy place to be. Yeah. And unless I do make a mistake then I am guilty. I feel like, oh my god, forever, forever. Yeah. But when I know, when I know my intentions are okay, I don't care. But when I'm like, oh, that was a real doozy. Hey, I mean,
you could, we could all be clear-seagabat ourselves. That's what it's fun to be into. I mean, there's, there's nothing healthier than not being too attached, but also being able to look at yourself on a slanting like, yeah, you know, if I, if I got a second shot at that, I would probably take up. Thanks so much for doing this, Josh. This has been really fantastic. I've totally loved
talking with you today. Thank you, Forest. I'm a really lovely podcast to come on. It was really nice to meet you and I appreciate you reading my book as well. I had a great time today talking with Joshua Fletcher. Having him on the show was a ton of fun. He's such a smart guy. He's so insightful about anxiety. And I loved how he was open to talking about his own experience. And one of the things that was really great about that is that we have
the set of symptoms that we think about when we think of anxiety. Anxiety feels a certain way when we picture it in our minds or when we think about the kind of common experience that people talk about when they talk about being anxious before going to a social event or before some kind of a big presentation at work. And that anxiety is very normal, very real. But there's this whole other set of symptoms that could come in for people when they're in more of the disordered
world of anxiety. They're having a panic attack. They have generalized anxiety disorder. And it's pretty normal for people to have their first major anxiety experience and to not be able to link it to anxiety because the symptoms feel so intense and they don't feel like they fall into that typical group of things that we talk about. Intense forms of disassociation,
feeling like you're watching yourself from the outside. People thinking that they're having a heart attack because their body is working so hard in their threat system is so intensely activated. And that seemed like a lot of the lens through which Josh approaches work on anxiety
in general is through understanding that threat system. He talked a lot about psycho education throughout the podcast, particularly focused on the amygdala and the ways in which our brain is designed to view the world through the lens of what could happen as opposed to what's likely to happen. Because when you're dealing with life or death situations, your brain is totally
comfortable being wrong 99 times about there being a tiger in the bushes. So it's right the one time that there is actually a tiger in the bushes because that one time ends up saving your life. Now that made a lot of sense for our ancestors who were in truly life-threatening situations, time after time after time, and it certainly can make sense in particular discrete situations
these days. But what can happen for people with anxiety is they start applying that tiger in the bushes principle to going to work or to hanging out with their friends or to filing their taxes or whatever it is that they have to do. And I'm not trying to downplay how unpleasant those experiences can be for people. It's more about just appreciating the intensity of the machinery that we're working
with here. And then type to that appreciating how a big part of the task here for people who are really working with intense forms of anxiety is the learning how to take those anxiety signals from the threat system a little bit less seriously. Josh's overall model when working with anxiety is not trying to fix people, not trying to cure people. He really talked about that a lot during the conversation. The target is the willful tolerance of uncertainty.
Anxiety recovery is measured by our reaction to the presence of anxiety. Everybody gets anxiety. The question is what happens next? What do we do when we're faced with those feelings? Anxiety recovery isn't I don't feel anxiety anymore. It's I'm anxious. I don't really like it. But it's okay. It's there. I notice it and I can go about my day regardless. We talked about a lot of different ways to approach anxiety treatment, but the major one that we focused
on was exposure and Josh talked about exposure in some detail. What I really want you to take away from that is that there is a massive difference between good and useful productive ways of engaging exposure and ways of engaging exposure that just end up retraumatizing people. Exposure works by giving your brain something to learn from. You need a new kind of experience so that it learns that it can relax around anxiety. As Josh said, your miktola can only learn while it's being
activated. People tend to make two different kinds of mistakes with exposure. The first mistake is that they don't expose themselves at all. Like Josh said, it's the example of going to the theater and you didn't experience any anxiety whatsoever and you were really pleased with yourself for not experiencing any anxiety. That's great. You should be pleased with yourself. Like wait a pat yourself on the back for doing something that used to evoke a lot of anxiety and
now doesn't. But that's not really an exposure because you're not experiencing any anxiety. The whole point with exposure is that you try to experience the thing that's tough for you and then not fall into the habitual coping patterns that you had associated with being in that kind of a situation. The other mistake that people make with exposure is they expose themselves way too intensely or they whitenuckle through the exposure. And both of these mistakes have a similar
problem. You're not giving your brain anything to learn from. You're just having the same painful experience over and over again with no real variation inside of it. So a big question with exposures, how can we put ourself in a situation that the brain can actually learn from? How can we have a slightly more positive experience with it? How can it be graded to a level where we can manage the unpleasant experiences that we're having? Where we can stay within our window of challenge
without going all the way into overwhelm? And what can we do inside our own minds while that experience is happening to not fall into some of those habitual coping behaviors that we might have or to give ourselves a little bit of positive reinforcement along the way? This then took us into a conversation about the self-critical and self-nurture and voices inside of the mind. And Josh's own approach inside of the book that he wrote recently of piecing out all of the different kinds
of voices or thoughts that a person might be experiencing. And being able to get really granular and specific about that can actually be very helpful when we're working with anxiety because we can piece out that anxious voice in the mind and learn to take it a little bit less seriously. Something that we just touched on but which Josh really talks about in his work in general is self-efficacy. The sense of yourself as a force for change inside of your life. The sense of yourself
as the solution to the problem. Something that can be sturdy, that can be stable, that can be strong, that can be a force for good for you with whatever it is that you're dealing with right now. Many people have an internal model of themselves as something that is fundamentally weak and vulnerable and dependent on the world around them. It's an understandable model, comes from a lot of different places we joked about, developmental experiences during the episode, that's certainly one place that
it comes from, but we internalize those messages from the world around us as well. Very, very common to experience things that way. A huge part of the process is increasingly internalizing the sense of yourself as strong and capable as something that you can rely on. We talk about this on the podcast very regularly. Rick's core practice of taking in the good is a great way to start doing this where you're really internalizing moments where you have those positive experiences where you are able
to get things done in an effective way. That's a really good way to start working with that process. We also have a whole bunch of episodes in the catalog that are focused on this topic specifically. I'd recommend the learning to learn episode that we did about a year ago or so, which focused on a study that Rick was a part of on taking in the good that was really interesting. Then at the very end of the episode, we got into this really interesting conversation, which we didn't have much
time for. Josh was at the very end of his day and I wanted to be respectful of his time. That was essentially about healthy disenchantment, not being so wrapped up in the views that other people have of us and how we're able to cultivate that healthy disenchantment over time. I thought it was a really cool way to end the episode that connected to some of what we had been talking about throughout. If you're interested in seeing more from Josh, you can find him on
TikTok and Instagram. He's anxiety Josh over there and his new book is and how does that make you feel? It was a really wonderful book. I really enjoyed it. If you've made it this far but you are not subscribed to the podcast for starters, surprising. You should subscribe to the podcast. It helps us out. We would love that if you also want to leave a rating and a positive review on iTunes or on Spotify. That also really helps us out. If you're watching on YouTube, you can subscribe to the
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