14 - Radical Acceptance: What Finally Worked for My Chronic Anxiety

Acceptance is the is the doorway and the key out of your anxiety, but I know that it's so counterintuitive to everything in your body and everything your brain is telling you to do. Now let me just say I've known Maggie for 16 years. She is a completely different person since implementing this stuff. 180 degrees. I can't even put into words how different she is. We joke now because I've taken it to such extreme levels where I'm like, yeah, I might die. Yeah, I don't know how it's just because people like, what if I die? I'm like, you know, it happens when you, if I die, I won't even know because I'll be dead. And if I die, like I was supposed to die, like everyone thinks acceptance means laying on the floor and accepting this is it forever. Acceptance is what opened the door for me to begin creating the exact life I want without being terrified of everything all the time. Yeah, without having to be the the savior of the day that needs to come in and solve the problems, it was the door opener to to being able to feel comfortable in my body and at peace in my mind, because guess what, I don't have to solve all of this. Hello, everybody. Welcome to the Real Work Podcast today. Welcome to episode 14. It's exciting. We're so glad you guys are here with us. We'd love to remind you if you have not yet to subscribe to the podcast or follow it on wherever you listen, but on Apple or Spotify, we also love to read your reviews and comments comments on Spotify. That's fun. And then yeah, we'd love to know what's resonating with you and helps us get discovered by other people who are looking to feel better. I know a lot of people about YouTube. Some people may be watching this on YouTube, but I think most people don't. They're probably listening. First of all, I do. I want to talk about YouTube. I want to talk about how much I love YouTube. I'll be honest with you guys. My love of YouTube came during this journey. Now it was a little toxic at first, but I found lots of people in the mind, body space, people that were healing, people that were telling these amazing stories. I was finding a lot of time on YouTube and we were at the beach one day and Ryan was like, I canceled YouTube premium when I was like, what? Why? And he's like, why are you reacting this way? I was like, I use YouTube all the time and he's like, I didn't know that. So anyways, I love YouTube. I love watching YouTube on my TV. I love being subscribed to people. I check YouTube every day, and I love it because I feel like it fights against our short attention spans and short form content. I've been really loving long form content, including like four as I heal my nervous system. It's just more conducive to making me listen. And so I'm on YouTube now. I started a YouTube channel about a month ago and it's growing quickly and it's super exciting. And I'm sharing content that obviously is going to be a little more different than the podcast because it's more edited and stuff. It's going to be a thing between TikTok and the podcast. Totally. It's somewhere in the middle there. So whatever your attention span is, you can find me on TikTok. You can listen to YouTube. It is going to be the mid range and then my podcast is where, you know, it's even longer long form. So, yeah, if I'm you over on YouTube, subscribe if YouTube is your thing, but I love it. I love YouTube. And it's fun making content that's YouTube specific. You're going to get a lot more, you know, like info that's like my top tips, like more quick delivery of ways you can implement as you're on this journey of healing and calming down and moving out of stress and survival and all that. Cool. So let's get into it. I have a loose outline for today's what's up here, loose outline in my brain. I think that something that we haven't talked a lot about on this podcast yet because it is a baby podcast is acceptance. And I was listening to a really good interview on YouTube the other day where someone was talking about therapies and I've done a lot of therapy in my life, a lot of therapy I started when I was 15 actually around the time that all of this stuff started for me. And she was talking about how she loves therapy and how she loves things like CBT cognitive behavioral therapy, which you know focuses a lot on thinking because it helps you get aware of your thoughts and she loves somatic therapy because it helps you get back into your body. However, if acceptance and allowing things doesn't come first, there's a really good chance that those therapies aren't going to be very helpful for you because they are being used in an attempt to fix something in an attempt to make something go away, which in and of itself is resistance. So we're automatically working up against resistance. I am here doing EMDR to make my anxiety go away. Spoiler alert, because I get so many questions about EMDR did not work for me. And part of me does wonder if that's because I had so much staked on the reason I did EMDR is because I got a brain scan at the immun clinics and they recommended that I do that for the trauma aspect of what was going on in my brain. Okay, so real quick, can you pretend I'm a fifth grader and explain to me what allowing and accepting us? Well, I have a YouTube video that actually goes into the differences between both of those. Go ahead and plug that one more time. I do. I'm pretty sure it's allowing versus acceptance. Yeah, there's one down there. Yeah, there is because I just saw it. Literally, the thumbnail says allowing versus accepting. So find that. You could link them to show notes even. And so acceptance, I'm going to kind of explain the way that I explained it in that video, which is I see acceptance and allowing is two different things. We have talked about allowing on this podcast before. It sure we could go way more into depth on that, but acceptance to me is kind of like this acceptance. I know I'm kind of using the same word, but of the situation at large. It's this putting down the resistance, the mental resistance that you have to fighting your situation. So my situation was, oh my God, I've been living stressed out for 20 years of my life. I've been in survival mode. I have this internal motor that runs out of 15 out of 10. Now my body is breaking down. I don't want this. I need it to go away. I'm anxious all the time. I hate this acceptance for me was looking at that situation and saying, this is where we're at right now. Can we apply this more specifically though? Cause that was a very broad. I mean, I know it's something you've been dealing with for a long time, but you had to apply it more specifically when you had facial pain that nobody could solve. Yeah. You were having nerve pain in your face and there was no way for anyone to diagnose anything. Yeah. And so that really drove up your anxiety really bad because you didn't have a solution for your nerve pain in your face. Yeah. Yeah. And that was that was the state that I had to be in in order to use acceptance, but it applies to anything that you're resisting. So basically anything you want to go away. So if you struggle with anxiety or overwhelm or overthinking or obsessive thinking or intrusive thinking or feeling stressed out in your body, any of those things, we resist them. We don't want them to exist. We want them to go away. So acceptance is saying, this is where we're at right now. And so for those of you who are on a healing path, whether you're healing your nervous system, healing your anxiety, whether you're healing in a broad sense or healing in a very specific sense, even though it all is the same thing. There has to be a moment where you accept that you are here. I am in this position right now. And I, there's nothing I can do to escape that position today. What does the opposite of acceptance look like? Resistance. Okay. Resistance and fighting. But like, what am I doing to resist? Resistance is, I know you want me to put these in very like tangible terms. Resistance is not a thing. Resistance is an experience. It's a fight. It's, it's, it's so much of it. The reason why I talk about acceptance being more of a mental thing is because acceptance and resistance are things that primarily happen in the mind. There are these thoughts and these beliefs that I can't deal with this. I don't want to deal with this. It needs to go away. And you can apply that to whatever it is. You are fighting that you are actively saying, I don't want this in my life. I need to make it go away as quickly as possible. Who can help me? Who's the doctor? What's the supplement? What's the program? What's the book? Tell me what to do? What do I do? What do I do? What do I do? I need to do something to make this go away. I want you to know that that is inherently a resistance to what you are experiencing. And I think there's a lot of confusion around acceptance that we can get into today for sure. But it's something that must precede anything else that you do. Why? Because the resistance is what is keeping these things here. The resistance and the fight, both within your brain and the way that your brain is working by how much attention you're putting on it. I want you to imagine that if you didn't have a problem to fix, what would you be doing in your life? You wouldn't be spending all day learning about it. You wouldn't be spending all day trying to figure it out and get to the bottom and figure out what you need to do next. That resistance and that fight and that urgency, your brain reads that as there is an active threat and it keeps those things alive. It keeps them on. So acceptance is what I see as you need to put down the mental resistance. You need to put down any belief that you have that this shouldn't be happening right now, that you shouldn't be in this situation, that it should be gone, that you should be further along. Every one of those thoughts and those beliefs is a resistance to your reality. And one of the first quotes I ever heard as I got into the self-help world from my therapist at the age of 15 that I still remember at age 36 is a quote by Byron Katie that says, "When you argue with reality, you lose, but only 100% of the time." And when we are in these situations where we are so stressed out to the point where our life is showing it, we are suffering, we are not present with our children, we are not enjoying our job, we are not enjoying our relationship, we are not enjoying our life. And if you keep going down that scale, our body is screaming, we have chronic pain, we have chronic issues, we're not sleeping at night, there is a level of needing to accept that you are where you are, because I think a lot of people try to make changes in their life based on hating where they're at. And that's going to lead to a lot of floundering and looking for a solution and being all over the place versus saying, "This is where I'm at and I'm not going to resist where I'm at anymore," because that is me arguing with reality. And I think that what people don't understand about acceptance is that it opens up the door for you to find those solutions, you want the resistance out of the way, you want the fight out of the way. That resistance is actually fighting against you. Yeah, I realized in retrospect after going to therapy for a few months, a couple of years ago that my therapist was in the entire time just trying to get me to accept reality. And it didn't solve the problem completely, but it made me a little more comfortable. He said something to me one time, he said, "You're a problem solver, but right now I need you to be a problem watcher." And that's just complete acceptance. I know, and it's funny because I did a lot of therapy. I never had any therapy that was anything around Unidix. We need to stop trying so frantically to get you out of the place that you're at and more so help you get better at living where you're at and finding a new path forward. And I never had any level of that where it's like, "We need to be. " And when you're anxious, that's the last thing you want to hear. You don't want to hear anything about how, and that's what I was telling Ryan, we were kind of like talking about the topic of this yesterday at lunch, I feel like. And I was thinking about how resistant I was when there was a book that I still haven't read this book, by the way. But there was a book recommended to me called the Happiness Trap, and it's based on acceptance and commitment therapy, which I still, I don't know what that is. I haven't looked into it, but I assume it's very similar to what I've been implementing. And I remember that was put in my face at the time when I was going through my absolute panic and sheer terror about the situation I was in that no one could help me with. And I remember when someone brought up acceptance, I was like, "Is this a fucking joke?" I couldn't believe that that's what was being recommended, because I just had a misunderstanding of what acceptance was. So maybe we can talk a little bit about that, like what acceptance, and I would love to hear your take on what it has looked like since I've changed to a more acceptance based approach. But when I heard acceptance, I thought that was accepting defeat. I thought it was accepting that I was going to be this way forever. I thought it was in some way making peace with this reality forever. And it wasn't any of those things. I had so much of this belief that I was somehow in the wrong spot, like this wasn't supposed to happen. How can this happen? I can't even believe this is possible. There was so much like this can't be right, this can't be right, this can't be right, feeling where I was at. And so I just had a misunderstanding of what it was at. And so there was something that happened almost exactly a year ago, where I finally was like, "This is where we are." We've gone everywhere looking for everything, trying to figure this out for a year, panicking, you know, pendulum swinging from hope to desperation. Like this is where we're at, this is what we're dealing with. And as of today, there's nothing I can do to make this situation change. But maybe if I put down the fight, if I accept that this is where we're at, this is where we're starting from, this is exactly where we're supposed to be, because it's where we are. I'm going to put down the fight against this situation I find myself in. And maybe if I bring some acceptance to the situation, I'll be able to actually apply things that could actually really help me. And so it was pivotal, pivotal part, but it wasn't me accepting that things would never get better. It wasn't me accepting that this was my reality for the rest of my life. It was, I'm going to put down the resistance I have in my mind that things should be any different than they are right now. And that freed up so much of my energy and almost just allowed the path to just unfold itself right in front of me. Because when you don't like how you feel in your body, when you don't like that you're constantly overthinking and stressed out and anxious, when you don't like that and you resist it, you'll do anything to make it go away. You'll try anything. And it was almost like I was so welcoming of the relief of just putting down the fight and just being like, I'm just going to stop fighting. I can't do this anymore. I can't, I can't fight this. And then that just opened up the doors of, of allowing, which I'll talk about briefly since this episode's more on acceptance. But the way I see allowing is the way that we deal. I see acceptance is more mindful mind-based like I'm going to put down the fight in my mind that all things should be different than they are. Allowing is like we put down the fight in the body. Allowing is the moment to moment interaction that you have with your, whatever you're experiencing. Whether it is your feelings, your sensations, your pain, your, whatever, but it's what you're feeling in the body and can also be applied to thinking as well. But I'm just going to let this be here. I'm going to get really good at, at sitting side by side with whatever I'm experiencing. Again, without the resistance, without the fight, allowing is similar in the fact that it's putting down the resistance that you have moment to moment with what you're experiencing in your body and your mind. Versus the overall like, all right, well, this is the journey that we're on. We're on this journey of healing. We're on this journey of exiting, you know, living my life for everybody else, whatever it is that you hate, that you don't want to be experiencing in your life anywhere. I'm going to put down the fight to it and I'm going to accept the situation at large and I'm going to allow the moment to moment experience of what it's like to live in the reality that I'm currently living in. It's easier said than done though, right? It's nearly impossible. It's the most important thing and I say it's nearly impossible just because the meaning we give on it is like, what am I supposed to do if I'm not supposed to be figuring this out? That's what I hear from people all the time. What do I do? What do I do? And it's not that you don't do anything but the acceptance must come first because if you've accepted, I know that you've put down your weapons, you've put down your fight, you've put down the resistance. And now it's like inviting you to do gentle practices or changing things in your life becomes a much easier process. When you try to do that, just imagine the resistance and the lack of acceptance is you like clinging to this thing. And then I'm saying, hey, have you tried this and you're like, I don't have any hands for that. I can't grab because if I let go, then I'm unsafe. Then who's going to figure this out if I don't figure it out? And if I'm going to take what you're offering me, I have to put something down and that's why we don't want to let go of our resistance. We don't want to let go of the fight because we want to know that we're fighting for ourselves and that no one else can help me. That was my mantra that whole time is nobody can help me. It doesn't mean that it isn't on you to get to the bottom of this but nobody will and nobody will do it for you but it doesn't mean nobody can help you. You know, we have to people can be helpful. It is on you to figure it out but you have to you have to release the fight and the obsessive fix that is based on the assumption that there is something broken and wrong in you that you need to find the magic cure for. And all of those, notice that all of those cures are external. They're all someone you can pay somebody for something and you can go to a doctor and you can get a scan and someone will give you something that's going to fix it. Acceptance starts from the inside. Acceptance starts from you putting down that internal battle and force to fix in this urgency that comes from I cannot be with this for a moment longer because you can and you have. And chances are you've actually been with it for a really long time and you can continue being with it and you sitting there with it while telling yourself you don't have the capacity to be with it is number one not true and also number two not serving you. It doesn't help to break the it doesn't help to break the loop that you're in because you are that's all that you're in is the loop and if I told you that your resistance is keeping you in the loop. Would you be down to practice some acceptance if I told you that the resistance and the lack of acceptance is what is keeping your brain on high alert and is what is keeping you continuing to live the same day over and over and over again. And over time that same day is getting it's turning into a worse and worse and worse and worse day because it starts with chronic stress it starts with chronic anxiety it starts with chronic people pleasing perfectionism being type a personality that's how it starts. And it will look like I'm exhausted all the time I have nothing to I don't enjoy anything anymore I live my life for everyone else I have no idea what I enjoy that's. That's how this process of I don't know how I would even explain it that's it doesn't start there because it's obviously from years of living in that state but that's a state that I work with people in a lot that's a lot of my clients are in that state they're they've been pushing for a really long time and they're they're getting to that tipping point where they're just like I'm just stressed out all the time I'm anxious all the time I'm over thinking I have these really deep people pleasing tendencies. I'm living my life for for everyone else and if we don't practice some acceptance of this is where I've ended up because of lots of things of the way that I was nurtured of the as of the way that I was modeled. We have to accept their otherwise you're going to have to be accepting on the other end of the scale which is when your body starts yelling about the fact that it needs a break. Correct me if I'm wrong in order to start to relieve your whatever symptoms you have you have to regulate your nervous system and you can't you can't begin to regulate your nervous system without acceptance. Yes, I think a lot of people try and I think that you're going to hear me talk a lot about the difference between fixing and supporting because I think it's a huge I think it needs to be talked about more I think that many people are like I need to heal my nervous system and when they say that they mean fix it. Something is wrong with my nervous system and it needs to be fixed and of course you'll hear me use that phrase too because it's the one that most people resonate from but are you doing it from a place of it's broken or are you doing it from a place of it's working a little bit too well and I need to support it in coming back into balance. It's a little bit out of it's not malfunctioning it that doesn't mean it's not throwing some errors that doesn't mean it's not over reacting but it isn't broken it's working exceptionally well based on the state that it's been perpetually in and there's no organism can live in that state of stress for that extended period of time 10 20 30 40 50 60 years all that time. That we were not created to live in a state of chronic stress like that you will eventually get diseases you will have this doesn't end well whether it happens in your 70s or 80s or it happens in your 30s or 40s or 20s like our systems aren't meant to live at this level for an extended period of time. And I see I know because I lived a lot of my life on that brink I I dealt with chronic symptoms for years and my chronic symptoms looked like trouble sleeping and anxiety to varying degrees and it took an external situation I was so seriously it was all the same thing but it took this external situation of like real real threat that just took me off the deep end as far as as the stress level so we don't want to come at it from there's a problem here that needs to be fixed because when you come at it from that level you are going to be looking for tips and hacks and tools that help you calm down in the moment that people are confusing for nervous system regulation those are just coping tools that help you calm down temporarily breathing deeper is not going to heal your nervous system you know doing Vegas nerve exercises is not going to heal your nervous system yeah your Vegas nervous it's messed up it's it's it's off because of the disregulation is what we're always going to be coming back to and you don't need you know all of these random tools you need to work on the stimulation that's going on the state that you live your life in you have to make a lot of behavioral changes with the way you show up in your life it's you're never going to heal from like brain retraining alone you'll never heal from the tools the tools are there to support bringing down like your baseline level of stress I was just coaching a client on this two hours ago about she's having a lot of success using the tools that help her bring awareness into what she's doing to pause so that she can respond because if you've lived in a in a chronically stressed out state you do a lot of reacting but she was hitting a bit of a wall and what we were able to identify was we were hitting a wall because she needs to work to lower her baseline level of stress and the way that I teach that is based around living in a different way prioritizing time for yourself getting out in nature doing things that you enjoy reducing time on your phone doing those things that really do change your environment and how you're showing up every day and then we use those tools that bring us back into the moment and help us pause and help us respond as things that support us in bringing down the baseline stress activation so that's kind of where she's at her motor is still running a little bit too high we want to get that down a little bit and then you use those tools and it helps you so if that is you know something that you're working on right now and you're you know that you're a woman whose motor is running really fast and you find yourself feeling really fried and overwhelmed without much enjoyment because you're living in that mode my membership is an excellent place to work through that between the coaching and the courses that are available there. We're talking about acceptance in terms of like the deep dark stuff too but I think it's a pretty good life skill it applies to like so much other stuff that is so deep and dark you know. Yeah, this is the tools that I'm teaching I did have to learn them and I work I work with a lot of people I talk to a lot of people I have a lot of people on my social media that are in that state where we have gone we are so far in the direction of of this is manifesting. The situations are harder the acceptance yeah but there's I mean they're absolutely necessary but if you find that you're just on the chronically stressed out part of this scale it's going to help you. In every area of your life because at some point we all collectively took on this we need to look at our life and look at what needs to be fixed so we apply this to relationships we apply it to business we apply it to stress we apply it to parenting it's like this is a problem it needs to be fixed instead of this is reality right now. Just I want you to even hear the difference in energy in those two things approaching this is like this is a problem we need to. Who can help get get the computer out we need to look for someone who solves this problem life is going to include problems life is going to include. Situations that present themselves to us that we feel like don't like this why would like to change this immediately and I think we need to get better use to saying I'm not enjoying this experience but this is the experience right now. I don't need to resist this to change I don't need to hate this to change I can just decide I want a different experience notice that was just me completely putting down the fight let's say you and I I don't know how issues in our relationship we don't this is going to be a great example but let's say like we have this issue and I I feel like I need to fix it or I need to leave the relationship or I need to like you need to change immediately the only reason I would want any of that is because I don't like how I'm feeling and if I can fix this situation then I don't have to feel this way anymore versus this is the situation this is what we're going through and I'm feeling a lot of big feelings we have made feeling feelings wrong we have made it we have made feeling a problem and I feel like acceptance just as this is what I'm experiencing and you know there's so much talk out there about like validating like all feelings are valid like people love to say that but we are not validating our own emotional experience in any way we resist it we resist the anger we resist the anxiety we resist the whole all of it anything that feels uncomfortable to us and so you applying acceptance to this is the state of my relationship right now this is the state of my relationship with my child this is the state of my business right now this is the state of my health this is the state of my nervous system it's just I don't know what the resistance we have which I'm sure we can explore a little bit but I don't know what the resistance is that we have to this is what we're looking at right now this is our starting place it shouldn't be different you shouldn't be different I shouldn't be different but when you have that acceptance you get to ask yourself is there anything I would like to change but we don't do it from this forced place of I need you to change immediately it's it's just I don't think we realize how much resistance stands in the way of us actually changing our life and how much harder we are working when we are trying to push through resistance versus releasing resistance and getting a much clearer picture I feel like it lets us use that higher part of our brain a lot more when we aren't fighting against the resistance and this urgent need to change things so that we don't have to feel I say don't change anything practice feeling practice accepting practice allowing practice feeling whatever's coming up for you knowing that it is all a valid emotional experience acceptance doesn't mean you're choosing to stay here forever it means that you're just putting down the fight that is keeping this experience you don't even want around I think that most of our experience is resisting what is and it's hard the thing is everyone wants to change and what I'm trying to drive home is that changes very hard if there isn't some level of acceptance of where we are because I think the resistance has so much to do with where we think we should be and what we think should be happening and how they should be different this should be different I shouldn't be dealing with this all of that is based on a resistance to what is and I think that more comfortable you can get with this is the reality we're dealing with it's okay for it to exist it frees up a lot of our energy it takes a lot of your energy to live in a resistance to what you're experiencing I feel like that's a good stopping place for today I think something that would be really helpful is if you guys have specific questions around acceptance and around a lot of the things that I teach we would love to hear them you can comment on this episode on Spotify would be probably a good place YouTube comments YouTube comments because this will be posted on YouTube as well so you can go find this over at YouTube even if you listen to it somewhere else but I want to know how to make this more clear for people I there it's making me think of a comment I got on one of my YouTube videos the other or TikTok the other day where she was just saying like so am I just supposed to like accept that it's here like she had so much confusion around it it was just because of the fear that we have of being with what is and I think I can speak more to that and get more clear in the way that I explain this concept because it's going to be pivotal if you are trying to heal your nervous system heal from chronic anxiety for for my anxiety suffers this is enormous for you you want to fix things you are constantly googling you're constantly going to doctors trying to figure this out trying to become a less anxious person acceptance is the is the doorway and the key out of your anxiety but I know that it's it's so counterintuitive to everything in your body and everything your brain is telling you to do let me just say I've known Maggie for 16 years she is a completely different person since implementing this stuff yeah come like 180 degrees I can't even put into words how different she is we joke now because I've taken it to such extreme levels where I'm like yeah I might die yeah I don't know how it's just because people like what if I die I'm like you know what happens when you if I die I won't even know because I'll be dead and if I die like I was supposed to die like there's something about making peace with like holding a little bit looser and something that I want to percolate a little bit more in my brain is this this cross section between acceptance and creating the life that you want and everyone thinks acceptance means laying on the floor and accepting this is it forever acceptance is what opened the door for me to begin creating the exact life I want without being fucking terrified of everything all the time without having to be the the savior of the day that needs to come in and solve the problems it was the door opener to to being able to feel comfortable in my body and at peace in my mind because guess what I don't have to solve all of this and now I have all of this space to be like what do you want what do you want to experience so I feel like there's this cross section between acceptance and manifestation or another word for manifestation is creation so if you guys want to hear a podcast on that concept directly let us know I'm going to I'm going to continue thinking about it more because it has changed my life it's changed my relationships it's changed my work it's I have changed when I decided that I was not broken this is just the experience I'm experiencing right now it doesn't mean anything about me or my worth or anything that needs to be fixed and then suddenly everything else became so obvious it became easier and I it wasn't all on me all of the time to solve all these invisible problems so it's it's been pivotal but I want to know if you guys have exact questions or specific questions about this topic I'd love to talk more about it and I will all right we'll see you guys next week