The Anxious Morning

One of the most common fears in our community is the fear of depression. Note that there is a difference between being in a depressed state, and being afraid that one might wind up in a depressed state. This fear is expressed so often that I wanted to take 700 words or so today to address it and clear a few things up. Knowing is not a cure, nor is it automatically protective, but having some facts in hand can be very helpful when addressing this fear.

First, nobody can ever guarantee you that you won’t experience depression. Life is mostly uncertain. While nobody wants to experience depression, the frantic attempt to guarantee that it won’t happen is pointless and will only have a negative impact on your mental health.

There are certainly good self-care and mental health practices that can help us remain resilient, psychologically flexible and, and more capable of navigating through difficult challenges including depression. But we can never be 100% sure that we can block depression or keep it from ever happening.

Depression is not a death sentence. Not by a long shot. In 2017 the World Health Organization estimated that 300 million adults worldwide experienced a depressive state at least once in the previous year. The Depression and Bipolar Support Alliance reports that approximately 17 million American adults will experience a depressive state in a given year. Depression is the second most common mental health issue in the US, behind anxiety disorders. Yet, we do not lose 300 million people to depression or suicide (the ultimate fear for many that fear depression) each year so the fact that depression is commonly and regularly treated is on clear display in these statistics. Experiencing depression does not automatically mean being depressed forever or becoming suicidal.

Sadness and low moods are not depression. Sadness is a normal, healthy, transient human emotion that we all experience regularly. Being sad does not indicate that you are on the way to depression. It is common in our community for people to remain on guard against any hint of “negative” emotions or lower mood in an effort to protect themselves against the onset of depression that they fear so much.

It’s OK to be sad. You are far better off to learn how to be sad in a healthy way rather than to find ways to block it, prevent it, or squash it because you are afraid that it might be the harbinger of something worse.

Thinking about depression does not equal depression. Being afraid that you might become depressed is not a signal that you are going to become depressed. Thoughts are not predictors of the future or hidden signs that something is wrong.

I am asked often how to handle the fear of depression. The best advice I can offer - and you should always defer to your medical team and mental health provider - is that if you are afraid that you might be depressed, or afraid that you are depressed now without knowing it, do your best to acknowledge those thoughts and move on with your day. Let reality show you that your thoughts are just thoughts. If reality shows you otherwise, you can deal with it then, but you will not solve this problem or help yourself by sitting passively and ruminating on the topic of depression.

Remember that anxiety can make you feel unmotivated, hopeless from time to time, and irritable. The fear and resulting restrictions that come with an anxiety disorder can disconnect you from old hobbies and interests. This can closely mimic the common signs of depression that you’ll see listed on the Internet, but this does not automatically mean that you are depressed. Again, do your best to remain aware that your fear of depression will magnify and distort things to a great degree. Anxiety disorders and depression are linked. That is true. But your anxious mind will turn that link into certain doom if you indulge it.

Finally, you are absolutely NOT alone in this fear. It’s one of the most common disturbing thoughts and fears among anxious people. Being afraid of depression does not mean you are broken or doomed to get worse or to never get better.

Josh Fletcher just did an episode of The Panic Pod covering the fear of depression, so you might want to check that out. It was a great episode.

I often talk about the difference between understanding the principles of recovery, and asking for recovery instructions. See episode 179 of The Anxious Truth podcast for more on this. Why do I talk about this? Why is it important?

Let’s take a look at a real life recovery example as an illustration.

Once in a while a member of our community will pop up to say that they’ve been working hard at recovery and making good progress. Then they will ask for tips or advice on taking a next step forward. Going back to work or returning to school after an extended absence are two common examples I can point to. This person will talk about how they’re doing so much better and are now in a position where they can take this step forward that they’ve been working toward for some time.

Awesome, right?

But in asking for tips and advice on taking the next step, you are often forgetting the principles of recovery that got you to that point to begin with. Remember that we are working on building a new reaction to anxiety and a new relationship with fear. We’re learning that we are safe even when anxious and that we do not have to treat anxiety like an emergency.

When you go back to these principles, you see that you already know how to take the next step. You’re just doing the same thing you did when you took your first steps. You know how to do that.

How do you go back to work or school when you think you’re ready? Or even when you’re not entirely sure that you’re ready? You go do the things, expect to be challenged, the respond to that challenge the same way you’ve been responding to the challenges that came previously. If you get anxious in your office, then allow that, relax into it, and let it pass. If you get anxious in the classroom, the same rules apply. The good news here is that there are no new or special instructions for you to follow. Just follow the basic principles you already know and have practiced.

We can acknowledge why people sometimes ask for tips at this stage of the game. Maybe your confidence is still lagging a bit behind so you’re not sure that you’re really ready. Maybe you’re concerned that unlike a short exposure, being at work or school all day means you can’t escape. This is also a confidence issue. You’re still afraid that “too long” might be “too much” and that you won’t be able to handle it. But remember when you took your first scary steps forward in recovery? Remember how you were really afraid that you would not be able to handle that?

But then you did. Then you did again. And again. Then you handled more. And more.

So while you might not be feeling all that confident, and you might be feeling like your recovery is a bit fragile and might break if you “push it”, you’re still OK. The only way to be convinced that your recovery is durable and that your progress is lasting is to take that next step and let it unfold like all the others unfolded.

This is an exciting, but still sometimes scary place to be in your recovery. If you started at ground zero and you’re on the edge of something big, take the step. You know what to do. I can’t believe I’m going to write this but …

You got this. ;-)

Hey it’s Monday and that means that today at 2 PM Eastern I’ll do my “Recovery Monday” livestream on YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter. Come join in!

By show of hands, how many people have been told that the vagus nerve is one of the keys to managing anxiety or making it stop? I can’t actually see your hands of course, but I’m guessing quite of few of you would have them raised right now.

This is another reason why we can’t have nice things.

Before I get into this, let me state clearly and unequivocally that the vagus nerve does in fact play a role in transmitting signals from your brain to the rest of your body. It is tied to sympathetic and parasympathetic functions. This is not news, nor is it in dispute. Everyone pretty much agrees on this. But this does not mean that your vagus nerve holds the key to some magic anxiety fix.

So where did things go off the rails when it comes to the vagus nerve?

Back in 1994, a professor of Psychiatry by the name of Stephen Porges first talked about polyvagal theory at a conference. Porges decided to divide the parasympathetic nervous system into two branches that were active or inactive depending on your state at any time. You could be in “safe mode” or you could be “immobilized”. He attributed control of a third state - “mobilized” - to the sympathetic nervous system.

This kinda sounds like fight or flight stuff, which I know we’ve all heard about many times. If you take what Porges says at face value and it sounds like fight or flight which we all know and love, you can already see how polyvagal theory began to catch on. This is kinda how the vagus nerve started to become a bit of an anatomical celebrity in the mental health field. Polyvagal theory seems to make sense. It’s relatively easy to explain to the layperson, and it provides a relatively simple explanation for experiences related to conditions like PTSD and panic disorder. Polyvagal theory sounds kinda cool, and it feels good. As such, over the last 25 years, polyvagal theory has become popular in mental health circles and is referenced constantly by content creators, mental health influences, coaches, and even some therapists.

But here’s the problem. Stephen Porges made a few physiological and evolutionary assertions when unveiling his theory that are not only unsupported, but that directly contradict a large body of existing research findings in areas like evolutionary biology and evolutionary psychology. The very foundation of the polyvagal theory beloved and adopted by so many is incredibly weak. It has been refused, rejected, and disputed from the get-go by a mountain of evidence from other areas of study.

Porges himself has yet to provide any hint of good evidence that his assertions - and therefore his theory - may hold water. Yet that did not stop him from creating a bit of a mental health business empire based on the theory.

In short - and I realize I am likely going to annoy some folks here - polyvagal theory sounds and feels good so it became really popular, but it doesn’t even really meet the requirements to be called a theory at all. It’s an idea. A conjecture. Maybe a framework or a way of visualizing things. There’s nothing wrong with that. We need those things. Those are part of how science works, but hypothesis and conjecture are the starting points for discovery, not the end points. Yet practices based on polyvagal theory are often sold to desperate people as evidence based and proven, which they absolutely are not.

I’ll stop short of calling it snake oil (even though I really want to), but when a legion of evolutionary biologists are presenting clear data that humans do not differ from other species the way Porges needs us to in order for his “theory” to be credible, proponents of polyvagal theory and the techniques it has spawned continue to assert that any doubt about the theory is based on a “lack of understanding”. Only they get it. The rest of us are clueless.

Really? All this evidence is worthless because only you have a true understanding of the issue? Is that really the hill you want to die on?

Why do I care about this and why am I ranting a bit about it? Because I have been in conversations with people that call themselves mental health advocates, educators, and even recovery coaches (especially in the trauma space) that love to tell me about polyvagal theory. Then they stare blankly when presented with my argument against it. The response I usually get is something along the lines of … “Well, I like it.”

I’m not so sure that this is a solid basis for mental health interventions. Liking something.

So next time someone wants to teach you - or sell you - 17 ways to somehow manipulate your vagus nerve to achieve that coveted “ventral activation”, consider that there’s a good chance that they not bothering to look at the actual data, or they have, and they’re ignoring it because its either bad for business or upsets the neat conceptual apple cart they’ve come to enjoy so much.

Let me clarify one thing before I get off my soapbox. Using the framework of polyvagal theory as a basis for exploration, or as a way to conceptualize or visualize things like trauma response is not a bad thing. There are excellent, highly qualified clinicians that do this, and they do it well. They just won’t tell you that the way out of the dark is to ride your magically and specially evolved vagus nerve into the healing zone.

Sometimes humans have a maddening habit of taking good things and twisting them into an unrecognizable shape that completely misses the original point. I kinda feel like the whole vagus nerve craze is a great example of that.

Rant over. Have a good weekend.

“Science is the great antidote to the poison of enthusiasm and superstition.” - Adam Smith

Every Friday I’ll share one of my favorite quotes. They’ll often have direct application in recovery, but sometimes they’re just generally funny, inspiring, or thought-provoking.  I hope you enjoy them.

Invariably when someone asks me for tips on how to to scary things, they are really asking for ways to make those things less scary and less uncomfortable.

When people ask me how to be brave, they are often asking me how to not be so afraid.

Both questions are understandable without a doubt. Both both questions are also completely missing one of the foundational concepts of recovery from an anxiety disorder. When we become afraid of how we feel and what we think - when anxiety and fear become the source of more anxiety and fear - the way out of this dilemma is to unmask the irrational nature of this fear. Recovery is essentially learning that while anxiety can feel really scary, there’s no danger and therefore no reason to be afraid in the end.

If we accept part of the essence of disordered anxiety as fear without actual corresponding threat or danger, then the way out that pickle is to break the link between the anxiety itself, and the perception of impending doom or harm. When the link is broken we are left with simply experiencing anxiety as an unpleasant and unwanted sensation, but not an emergency.

Odds are you’ve been trying everything you can think of to break that link with thoughts, ideas, words, quotes, memes, and soothing techniques. Has that worked? I’m guessing that since you’re reading this, it has not, at least not consistently or for any length of time.

Now you’re left with an inconvenient alternative. Facing the fear rather than trying to think or talk yourself out of it. I understand that nobody wants to do that, but we most effectively break that faulty mental link between anxiety and danger by allowing the danger to happen, then seeing that it never actually does. That means facing what you are sure is dangerous (even when it is not), which means being AFRAID. The fear is a key part of the experiences that teach us the lessons we need to learn. Without the fear, we learn nothing, and we remain stuck.

So being afraid is not your problem. It’s really the solution to your problem. This means that you have to stop grasping for ways to get around fear or stop it from happening, because you can’t have that and recovery at the same time. Seeing the presence of fear as failure is putting yourself in an unfair and untenable situation, and totally misses the point of why you are trying to do scary things to begin with.

It’s not natural or intuitive to welcome fear, or to see it as a teacher or ally. We are wired to see fear as an enemy. Hell, that wiring is part of what created the problem you’re trying to solve right now. But in this case, our way out is to put aside our natural drive to avoid fear … and move toward it.

When you make your life smaller and smaller to remain calm and to feel safe all the time, you are stuck. If you are working on your recovery and you are afraid, you are on the right track!

Yet another statement that must look downright absurd to anyone not well versed in the mechanics of disordered anxiety. I feel like an absurdity machine sometimes, but there is wisdom in the absurd for folks like us, so let’s embrace it rather than running away from it.

Have you listened to this week’s episode of The Anxious Truth podcast? Check it out out on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Amazon Music, or my website and YouTube channel.

Sometimes people labor under the misconception that in order to recover they must learn to never feel things. Being sad or afraid is instantly called failure, triggering a desperate search for magic tips that will keep those reactions from happening.

Recovery is not about learning to be a robot. I have never said that and never will.

When you are anxious, afraid, uncertain, and feeling vulnerable, you WILL have feelings and emotional reactions to that. How could you not? You are human, and alive. You WILL feel things when confronted with a challenge like recovery, especially one that can stretch out for a longer period of time. Some days you’ll feel pride, accomplishment, and even happiness or joy. You never call that failure, right?

So, please stop looking for ways to not feel emotions. Your emotions are just fine. There’s no need to prevent them from happening or to declare them to be disastrous.

When we break this down, the issue is not your emotions at all. The real issue is that you have likely developed the habit, maybe dating back long before your anxiety problems, of treating your emotions as automatically the most important things in the room at all times. I can totally understand how this happens. We are immersed in an ocean of self-help, personal development, and mental health “advice” all squarely based on the idea that everything you feel always matters and must be examined, honored, decoded, deciphered and unpacked. Everywhere we turn we are told that we must get in touch with our emotions and find the hidden meaning in them all the damn time. We are told again and again that our emotions are VERY important.

So if you are deeply enmeshed with every emotion, thought, feeling, and sensation, I understand why. Many people have been taught that this is the proper way to be a human.

Sometimes wellness and growth is found along that path, but not always. Sometimes we just have to accept the fact that our bodies and brains are not perfect, nor are our souls. We have to at least consider the possibility that it really is OK to disregard some of what they throw at us. Sometimes emotions and thoughts are not important at all. This is one of the foundational concepts when dealing with anxiety disorders. Yes, it is is often completely counterintuitive. Yes, it can seem somewhat cold or even de-humanizing and invalidating. And yes, you may not like this idea from a humanistic or spiritual standpoint.

But what we like and don’t like don’t really enter into this. We don’t need warm, fuzzy, or easy to grasp. We only need effective.

This may be an unpopular way to get back to work here on The Anxious Morning, but I want to challenge our widespread use of the word “healing”. Before I go on, I am not here to invalidate anyone’s pain or past experiences. Many problems in life are emotional in nature, based on past experiences. They do involve emotional pain and the need for things like healing and forgiveness for ourselves and others. I’m not dismissing that. But try to open your mind and consider for a minute that not EVERY problem is automatically a healing problem. Also consider that more than one thing can be true at a time.

If you have learned to be afraid of your own body and thoughts, are you broken? Is that a disease? Are you defective as a result of a structural shortcoming or wound?

If you listen to a song that you like and mis-hear some of the lyrics, you may love that song and sing those incorrect lyrics for years. You are completely convinced that your favorite artist is singling one phrase, when the rest of the world is hearing a totally different phrase. Your brain is sure that it is correct. Just like your brain is sure that you are in danger when you feel anxious, while the rest of the world sees no such danger. If you are to correct your misheard lyrics error, must you heal yourself? Are you broken, diseased, or damaged? I’m guessing you are going to say no, you just need to learn the right lyrics and start singing them.

So why do we so often insist that recovery from an anxiety disorder is based on healing? Because our sacred thoughts and emotions are involved? Because our bodies are involved? Surely these things are critically important and therefore they deserve something that carries more weight than simply learning! Learning isn’t profound enough for our special thoughts and feelings! We need HEALING!

But really, do we? What if you are not broken, wounded, or damaged? What if you were just mistaken? What if you are not diseased or ill? What if you’d just learned and reinforced some bad habits? Imagine that?

There may very well be pain, negative experiences, or even trauma in your life that will require some healing. But that doesn’t mean that every challenge you face and every problem you are trying to solve is a healing problem. You may have pain to heal, but you may also have incorrect lessons and bad habits to correct. More than one thing can be true at a time, and one of them has nothing to do with you being broken and in need of being healed.

Hey it’s Monday and that means that today at 2 PM Eastern I’ll do my “Recovery Monday” livestream on YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter. Come join in!

I need a break.

This is not always easy for me to say, and harder for me to do. Call it a flaw. I tend to treat myself like a machine, and even when my body, my mind, and the universe are clearly showing me that I am not a machine, I tend to ignore that and carry on. One might argue that this tendency could have contributed to developing anxiety problems to begin with, but that’s a different topic for another day.

Sometimes on The Anxious Morning I talk about what life looks like after recovery. Today, it looks like coming to grips with the idea that I need a little break. I’ve talked about knowing that when I have an anxious day or experience anxiety symptoms that it tends to mean that I’m pushing myself a bit too far into the red zone and need to step back for a few minutes or a few hours to re-group and quiet things down. Well I’m not experiencing anxiety or anything like that, but my enthusiasm and creativity are sagging a bit for the last couple of weeks so this tells me that its time to step back, make a little room, and re-charge the battery.

This is where remaining in touch with reality rather than responding only to thoughts and feelings can be helpful. If I put all my stuff out on a table where I can see it clearly, it makes things easier to navigate. I’ve now written a morning newsletter and created a morning podcast every day since January 1. I still produce a weekly podcast. I’m still posting on social media and trying to remain active in my Facebook group. AND I’m a full time graduate student and running my old businesses at the same time. In the old days I might get swept up in WHY I’m feeling like this, and what it means, and worrying that I might always feel like this. But now I can look rationally at the situation, and see that I’ve been operating at a high level for a very long time without stopping. I can recognize that humans do need to take breaks now and then. Making these observations of reality, this then becomes a very normal transient human state that does not morph into an emotional or anxiety crisis, even though I’m tired and feeling some things, which used to spell disaster.

That is part of what recovery looks like. Much of my ability to work through things like this comes directly from the lessons I learned when working on overcoming anxiety disorders and depression. For this I will always be grateful.

So, next week - July 11 through 15 - there will be no new editions of The Anxious Morning newsletter or podcast. I will likely not create any social media content next week, might be totally absent from the Facebook group and I may even not release episode 216 of The Anxious Truth next week. All of this makes me uncomfortable but I tell you guys to do uncomfortable things all the damn time so I can do it too, right? And really, I know that I can best serve the community by disconnecting for the week and coming back refreshed, so that is what I will do.

I appreciate all of you and the support you so enthusiastically give for the work I do. Keep doing the things, keep learning the lessons, and we’ll be back at it here on July 18, bright-eyed and bushy tailed.

In fact, I think we’re gonna do a little thing called “What I Did Over Drew’s Summer Vacation.” If you wanna post your exposures, your challenges, and your wins online, you can do that in my Facebook group or on Instagram. Tag me either way. On Instagram use the hashtag #IAmMore because we are ALL more than just anxiety. I’ll complile them and we’ll spread some love when The Anxious Morning returns. Yeah, I’m digging this idea, so let’s go!

What interests me in life is curiosity, challenges, the good fight with its victories and defeats. - Paulo Coelho

Every Friday I’ll share one of my favorite quotes. They’ll often have direct application in recovery, but sometimes they’re just generally funny, inspiring, or thought-provoking.  I hope you enjoy them.

There are questions that plague humanity day in and day out. They are asked in all walks of life. Our brightest minds and deepest thinkers slave to find answers to these profound queries, yet we make no headway and remain mired in the dreaded uncertainty baked into the Universe.

You know many of these questions.

Chicken or egg?

Coke or Pepsi?

Cup or cone?

Star Wars or Star Trek?

These questions speak directly to our essence as sentient beings and an evolved civilization, but they pale in comparison to a question that gets asked in thousands of mental heath influencer posts every day and likely will until there are no atoms left intact and the universe becomes a cold, thin shadow of its former glory.

Panic attack or anxiety attack?

I know you’ve seem this discussed more times than you can remember. When an anxiety Instagrammer runs out of ideas, this is always on the back burner waiting to be dusted off. “What’s the difference between an anxiety attack and a panic attack?”

Who even cares? Why does it matter? What do we stand to gain by debating this again and searching desperately for an answer to a question that doesn’t seem like it even needs to be asked?

Let’s just put this to bed by refusing to use the phrases panic attack or anxiety attack ever again. Let’s just start calling them both “transient states of variable discomfort”. Damn. That’s solid. I should write romance book titles with this kind of skill.

Seriously, I know that NOBODY is going to start using the phrase “transient states of variable discomfort” because there’s no clickability in that, but you have to admit, that the phrase does accurately describe both anxiety attacks and panic attacks. In both situations we experience discomfort that varies in intensity both between and within experiences and is transient in nature.

So why must we label these experiences? Are we looking for solutions? Fixes? Strategies? Does accurately defining the boundary between them lead us somewhere closer to a recovered state? Are we somehow treating them differently because they are different things?

No!

In recovery we are learning how to tolerate transient discomfort at all intensity levels. Maybe today you’ll have an anxiety attack. Maybe you’ll have a panic attack. Maybe you’ll just feel generally anxious. Maybe you’ll have a great day and feel awesome from the moment you wake to the moment you fall asleep. The whole point of recovery is to learn that all of those states and all states in between are OK and handle-able. So there is literally no point in paying any more attention to the difference between an anxiety attack and a panic attack.

Consider them the same thing and know that your “strategy” remains the same regardless of how you are experiencing discomfort within the context of an anxiety disorder and the recovery process.

Next time you see someone post this on social media, don’t feed the algorithm. Don’t click the like button. Scroll on by without stopping. Only you can prevent forest fires, and only you can end the scourge of anxiety attack vs panic attack posts on the Internet. Together we can rid the world of this menace!

Now excuse me while I go and design a few “Transient States Of Variable Discomfort” t-shirts.

Have you listened to this week’s episode of The Anxious Truth podcast? Check it out out on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Amazon Music, or my website and YouTube channel.

Yesterday I used this very common question as an example of a recovery question that you could work on answering on your own, allowing yourself to maybe get it “wrong” in the process. No disaster will happen if you do that.

Today, I thought I might offer a short discussion on the principle behind the idea of “sitting with” anxiety, fear, or any emotion. Learn the principles. Then apply them. It’s way better than asking for specific instructions every time.

What does “sitting with” anxiety even mean? Is it literally stopping and plopping yourself in a chair or on the floor when anxious so you can fully experience anxiety?

Sometimes it does look like that. But not automatically.

Do yourself a favor and totally forget ever hearing the words “sit with” when it comes to anxiety. Instead, use the word “allow”. Your job is not to sit with your anxiety but to allow it without resistance. When it rears its head, you want to work on responding to it and relating to it in a new way. In many ways, NOT responding or reacting. Just dropping the fight and the resistance, and allowing it to come in whatever form it comes (yes, even panic).

Sometimes you can allow anxiety and fear without resistance by sitting quietly and doing nothing. I strongly encourage doing this sometimes when the context allows. It’s an EXCELLENT (though challenging) way to practice building this new recovery-focused reaction to and relationship with anxiety. But while this is an excellent practice when you can do it, you can’t always drop everything and sit down when anxious. Life doesn’t work that way.

Sometimes you will have to allow anxiety without resistance while you do other things. Walking. Talking. Eating. Showering. Petting your dog. Dancing. Driving (yes, driving). You can do all of these things while allowing anxiety to surface and play itself out. These are also incredibly valuable recovery experiences that teach you all kinds of important lessons, first and foremost being that you are capable even when not feeling your best. Do NOT avoid this lesson. You kinda can’t fully recover without learning it. It’s that important.

So when do you literally sit, and when do you keep going? It depends. What situation are you in? Who are you with? Are you under some kind of time constraint? Are you even physically able to stop and sit in the current context? If not, keep doing what you’re doing. What action will most closely align with your values in a given moment and/or fit into a given social context? There is no proper answer here. Sometimes you can sit. Sometimes you can keep going. You may sit on Tuesday and choose to keep going on Wednesday in what look like identical situations. Mix it up. Do it all. Have all the experiences. Practice multiple ways. This is the best way to build a durable, portable, and lasting recovery.

So do you need to sit with your anxiety?

You only need to allow it without resistance. Sometimes you’ll do that on your rear end. Sometimes you won’t. How’s that for a perfectly ambiguous set of instructions?

Many members of our community get caught up in doing recovery right. Some get REALLY caught up in that, becoming highly entangled in reading, watching videos, listening to podcasts, and asking questions about the correct way to recover. This can lead to choppy waters in recovery when the drive to do it right starts to overshadow the principles of recovery and the reason you’re doing the work to begin with.

Sometimes I will say that we do not recover so we can live. We live so that we can recover.

I stand by this statement and will repeat it from time to time.

In life, sometimes we get things wrong. We make mistakes. We misread cues and make less than optimal choices. We get lazy or unmotivated sometimes. We get confused. This is all part of being alive. All humans make mistakes and get things - even important things - wrong sometimes. Recovery is no different.

In fact, I might argue strongly that an ugly, imperfect recovery can be more valuable in the long run than somehow reading all the books, understanding every word, then executing a flawless recovery plan and racing back to “feeling better”. I mean, everyone wants to feel better and I would love it if you felt better, but the magic in recovery is not in figuring out how to feel better. The magic is in learning how to DO better.

We live so that we can recover. This means that we start doing life to the best of our abilities so that life can reveal our competencies and our strengths for us. Part of being competent and strong is learning how to fix mistakes, change direction when needed, and navigate through errors or mis-steps. “Helicopter parents” catch heat for robbing their children of the lessons of resiliency and flexibility. If we try to engineer error-free perfect lives for our children, how will they learn to rise to meet a challenge or pick themselves up when they fall down. The same applies in recovery. Are you “helicopter parenting” your way through your recovery, or are you willing to accept that part of this process is sometimes getting the process wrong?

Especially for our friends driven by overachiever, perfectionist, or hyper-responsible self image issues, getting it wrong can feel really uncomfortable sometimes. Reading, then doing without confirming the correctness of said doing seems irresponsible and like throwing caution to the wind or inviting disaster. But I promise, it is not. Doing recovery this way, by working to understand and apply the principles without demanding specific foolproof techniques or instructions is hard. It means that you will make mistakes sometimes, but it is far more productive and in the end far more rewarding.

How can you allow yourself to get it wrong sometimes? Try something without asking for verification first. When you want to seek specific instruction or technique, ask yourself what principle of recovery applies to your situation at the moment then try to build your own instructions from there. When you fee like you must confirm that recovery is possible or that someone has solved the problem you’re trying to solve act first even in the face of this uncertainty and state of not knowing. Expect and accept the discomfort this brings and practice moving through that discomfort.

I’ll leave you with a common example.

“Am I supposed to literally sit with my fear, or should I try to get on with what I was doing and let it tag along?”

My answer to this common question is … “sometimes”. This means that you’ll just have to try it both ways and see what happens. You’ll also have to learn when one method applies and when the other applies. You’ll have to work out when that might flip depending on context, then flip back.

You might get it “wrong” sometimes, so strap in. But really, as long as you learn something from the experience, there is almost no “wrong” anyway.

I’m currently just getting started on “Reclaiming Conversation” by Sherry Turkle. I found this one when it was referenced in Cal Newport’s “Digital Minimalism” so I was encouraged to give it a try. It’s a more academic read, but I have a real interest in the impact of digital media on how we related to each other so I’m enjoying it.

Every Tuesday I’ll let you know what I’m currently reading. I read quite a bit on psychology and philosophy, but really you never know what I’ll have in my Kindle or Audible libraries! If you’re on Goodreads and into books, you can follow/friend me over there. Here’s a link to my “currently reading” shelf. I’d love to see what you’re reading and what you recommend.