Speaker 1Hello, everyone. Welcome back or welcome to Recovering Out Loud podcast. Another bite-sized tips and tricks episode for how to handle life in recovery. Today, I'm going to be talking about the fear of the future. Something that plagues a lot of people that I talk to in recovery, myself included, is fear of the unknown, right? This either I have something that I have to do tomorrow that I don't want. I'm really not looking forward to doing it. I really don't want to do it. And it's plaguing my mind all day today or that fear of uncertainty of what's going to happen next if I don't do this or if I do this or I just I want to know. I want to know what's going to happen next. I need to know. I need to be in control of the outcome. So if it's your first time here, welcome. My name is Anthony. I'm an addict and alcoholic in recovery. Been in recovery for 10 years. Relapsed after eight years, clean and sober. Coming up on 11 months again and I am so grateful that I'm back on this side. I'm grateful to be able to do this with you and giving you all the tips and tricks, all the recovery wisdom that has been passed down freely to me over the years. And there's a lot. I've retained a lot. I've learned a lot about my own disease, my own addiction. So welcome. If you like the episodes, like what you're hearing, please follow, subscribe, rate the podcast. It's the best payment I could get from you all for free. I'm not making any income off of this and I'm doing it. Really, I'm doing it to stay sober myself, right? Because when I'm of service, I'm not thinking about myself. When I'm talking recovery, I'm not thinking about my problems and my poor me. So I'm going to break down today what fear of the future really is from a neurological level, I guess. Psychological level. Why fear hits hard in recovery. The lies that fear tells us. How fear shapes our behaviors. Tools to break the fear cycle. What a healthy relationship with the future looks like. And then I'm going to challenge you to something. I'm going to ask you a few questions that you can take home and reflect on yourself because recovery is all about self-examination, reflection, quiet time. Who am I? Why do I use drugs? How do I live life successfully without the need to use drugs and alcohol? So fear is common for everybody. Our bodies are designed to anticipate threats. And so we want to be aware of those threats so that we can prepare for them. Back in the day, a long time ago, we used to have to be on guard for predators, for lions, for bears. And our nervous system was designed to keep us alive so that we can anticipate the attack. Unfortunately, or fortunately, this has evolved with us. And now we are afraid of a lot of things. One of my favorite acronyms for fear, and there's a few of them, false evidence appearing real. Another one is fuck everything. Run. Another one for you is face everything and recover. But essentially fear is normal. It's our perspective, our perception. That's the problem. Our perspective of said problem. That's the issue, not the actual problem itself. It's our story, the story that we spin on the outcome. For example, I've been going through a lot of financial debt as a result of my addiction and alcoholism. And I had a fear every single morning for a long time in my early recovery, I'm still in early recovery, but in the first few months, it was every day I'd wake up with, how am I going to solve this? I'm going to fail. I'm not making enough money. All these stories I would spin onto myself, right? When in reality, I was okay. I was safe. I was sober. I was alive. And there was no need for me to be obsessing over the fear of financial insecurity. I spun a story in my head that I wasn't safe and I needed to fix this problem right now. In reality, like I said, the problem itself was my relationship to the financial insecurity. I was trying to fix everything in one moment in the here and now, and that was just impossible. It was impossible. So I had to turn that over. I had to accept the fact that I was where I was financially. And slowly when I stopped obsessing over it, the answer came to me in the quiet, the moments, right? And for me, that answer was, dude, just pay off your minimum payments one at a time. And today I can honestly say I'm back on the track. I'm back on track to financial freedom, which is really the goal here, right? I mean, at the end of the day, I just want to be financially safe and free and have the ability to live without panicking about it. But again, that's my perception of it. So you're not broken. Fear is your brain recalibrating to the lack of chaos and the quiet and the sort of normalcy that you've now cultivated in recovery. So our brain hates uncertainty. Addiction sort of created a predictable chaos for us, for a lot of us. And then recovery removes that predictability pattern where it's like, now I don't know what's going to happen next. And I can't just check out of life with drugs and alcohol where I used to before. Whenever the fears used to come up of tomorrow, I would just check out by doing a line or smoking a joint or drinking. And then, so this uncertainty feels dangerous and it feels like my life is threatened. My life is in jeopardy. When really it's not. It's just my brain telling me a story. I'm like a movie projector going around the world and projecting my story onto the movie screen. It's not reality. It's my version of reality, my story, my perception. So there's anticipatory anxiety, which is sort of this state that we like to cultivate, that I like to cultivate, where it's like, if I can predict the worst thing that's going to happen to me, I feel in control. I feel safe. Meanwhile, I'm freaking out and panicking over the fear of what possibly is going to happen to me. And I'm like, I don't could happen. And it's usually the most outlandish thing, right? False evidence appearing real. For example, I moved careers. I'm not making a steady income like I used to. I'm going to fail. I'm going to be a bad husband. I'm not going to be able to support my family. All these stories start to spin up in my head. And then it takes me away from the solution of the problem, which is just shut up, keep going and trust the process, right? When you're on the right path, it will come just not in your time. The money will come. I keep telling myself that the financial freedom will come just not in my time. So this fear of the future shows up in a multitude of ways, but more specifically overthinking, catastrophizing, avoidance, wanting guarantees or expectations out of life, right? Expectations are nothing but premeditated resentments. And then when I don't get that expectation of making enough money and what is enough money anyways, like seriously, what is enough money? Once I get here, I'll be okay. Once I make six figures, I'll be, and then it's never enough. You get there and you're like, wow, this doesn't feel that good. It's because it's an external motivator, external factor. You'll never be happy from external motive. It just, it's so cliche, but listen to anybody that's made it rich. They always say it isn't what they thought it would be, right? Picture it as like a ladder at the top of the ladder. There's a bag. And the guy that's been to the top of the ladder is telling you, dude, there's nothing in the bag. There's nothing in the bag. Don't bother going to the top of the ladder and doing all these things to get there, manipulating, lie, cheating, steal, work hard, whatever. And then no, you know, I, yeah, I believe you, but I got to still see for myself. You climb up the ladder, you do all the things you got to do to get ahead in life. You get to the top, open the bag. It's empty every time. Why does fear hit so hard in recovery? Because there's an identity shift for a lot of us. It's if I remove the drugs and alcohol, who am I without it? I'm not fun bar drinking guy. Meanwhile, I was the only one that thought that I'm not life of the party, Anthony, who always has a bag on him and people love to have around by the end, nobody wanted me fucking around. And I was alone in a hotel room every single time. So you come into recovery, you lose your coping mechanisms, your solution, drugs, and alcohol. Now what? Without numbness, the future feels raw and unpredictable and real. Then there's the fear of failure and relapse. And the myth that you tell yourself of one mistake sort of erases everything, whether it's a relapse or, you know, a bad decision you made or something that affected your life in a detrimental way, a relationship you lost. Now I've lost all my recovery. I've ruined it all. This sort of zero to 100 thinking this catastrophizing. Then there's the fear of success, which is the pressure expectations. Like I said already, responsibility. I have so much on my shoulders. I have such a big load to carry. And this one sounds a little strange, but I found that a lot of people struggle with this one, myself included. It's this like chaos was familiar for me. Now I have like a sort of mediocre, not high, not low life. Things are just sort of moving along and peace feels foreign. I don't like this feeling of quiet. It feels boring. You know, is this all my life is now? I always say that. All right. Most common lies that fear tells us. Lie number one, I won't be able to handle what's coming. Counter that with, listen, motherfucker, you've been through the deepest, darkest depths of hell in addiction. Okay. I think you can handle a little financial insecurity. I think you can handle getting another job. Maybe just not in your time. Maybe it's not what you want, but you'll get what you need if you stay sober. In my experience, most people have never been to the rock bottoms you've been. Why can't you handle this blank thing coming up? Lie number two, something bad is going to happen, right? This is going too well. This is too good to be true. Something bad is coming. Fear confuses possibility with probability. It's like Murphy's law. You know, you're always living in this. Anything that can happen will happen to me today, right? Now, I'm going to flip my car on the highway. I don't know. Whatever it is for you. Lie number three, if I can't see the whole path, something is wrong. Something is off. Recovery teaches us one step at a time, one day at a time, one minute at a time sometimes, right? One breath at a time. Just keep moving forward. Lie number four, I'm behind in life or behind in my program. Comparison is the thief of joy. Stop comparing yourself to other people that are at the middle of their movie, their story. You're at the beginning, they're in the middle or at the end. Stop comparing it to... A good comparison for me was, you know, when I first got on social media, I was always comparing myself to these other sober creators that had 20, 30, 40, 50, 100,000 followers. And I was like, why do they have so many and I don't have any? Dude, you just fucking started. What you haven't been looking at is they've been running on the treadmill for the past five years. You're just getting on the treadmill now and you're complaining that you don't have what they have. You got to put in the work. Lie number five, good things don't last. For people like me, I don't deserve good things. I'm a bad person. That's just shame, okay? You're seeing the world through a shame lens right now. You do deserve good things because you're working hard and you're sober and you're just the same as everybody else. We're all equal here. Nobody's special. Addiction got you used to being in the shame lens, wearing the shame glasses, right? Because you were exhibiting behaviors that went below your moral code, i.e. drinking and driving. Drinking in front of your kids. Disappearing for days at a time. I don't know what, you know, insert whatever thing you did. All right, next. How fear shapes behavior. So fears are one thing. They start in your head. They're just thoughts. How do they move into now actual behaviors, actions, right? If we draw that triangle that they teach you in rehab, if you've been to rehab, it's thoughts, emotions, behaviors, and then shame about, I probably fucked that up, but something along those lines. It starts as a thought. An emotion. Then it goes into a behavior. And now you're in the shame of the behavior, shame, guilt of the behavior. And then it's goes back, back and like a endless cycle of pain. So for example, staying in toxic relationships, avoiding growth, staying small to stay safe, not taking any chances, right? With at work or at school or doing something you love, just going to not take any risks so that I don't have any potential consequences. I'm not going to go to that thing because I'm in, I'm afraid that I'm going to relapse all the time, or I'm afraid that I'm going to embarrass myself. Don't stay stuck there and then self-sabotage to avoid pressure. So I'm a piece of shit, you know, put the two by four down, stop beating yourself up. It already happened. Accept it. This all circles back to emotional sobriety, right? Emotional sobriety is the most important thing to long-term recovery. In my opinion, my experience, I have to keep my emotions in check. I have to regulate my emotions. Whenever fear, shame, guilt, anger, whenever they crop up, I have to check that shit. I have to turn it over to God, to the universe. Hey, could you work on this? I'll check back in with you tomorrow. In that silence, the answer comes to your problem, whatever that emotion problem is. It's different than avoiding it. You're not avoiding it. You're acknowledging that it's there. You're laughing at it and saying, wow, that's crazy. Why am I having that emotion, that feeling? You're talking about it. You're journaling. You're working through it. You're not avoiding it. You're turning it over to somebody more qualified than you, whether that's a power greater than yourself or a therapist or a group of people at your meeting, doesn't matter. Turn it over. Don't keep it in your head. All right. Some tools to break the fear cycle. What the fuck can I do to get out of this? How do I get out of the fear cycle? I don't like, I don't like being here. Yeah, me neither. First, shrink the timeline. Your job is not to plan the next five years out. Your job is to stay sober today. That's it. That's job number one. No matter how far along, whether you have three months, one day, 10 years, 30 years, your job is to stay sober. If you stayed sober today, you're not going to be able to stay sober. You're not going to be able to stay sober today. That is a win. If not, try again tomorrow. Don't beat yourself up. Live the next 24 hours with integrity. Integrity is doing the right thing when nobody's watching. Doing the right thing when nobody is watching. How hard is that? Wow. Powerful stuff. And don't ask me what is the right thing. You know, deep down. Okay. You know, when you get that feeling in your stomach of that, not that butterfly, that uncomfortability, not even the butterflies, that uncomfortability, that gut-wrenching, feeling, you're probably not doing the right thing. Stop doing the wrong thing. And if you do do the wrong thing, don't beat yourself up about it. It all comes back to two things, right? If I fuck up and I make a mistake, I apologize for it. I make an amends immediately. If somebody wrongs me, I forgive them no matter what. Those are the two actions in life. That simple. Forgive if you are wronged and apologize, make amends if you wrong somebody or somebody else. Two, name the fear. Spoken fears feel like a mysterious green monster. When you name the fear, it becomes a problem you can work on, right? So for example, I don't want to go to my business meeting tonight at my home group because I hate business meetings. They don't serve me, right? They're uncomfortable, whatever. Name the fear. I don't want to go because I'm doing this in real time with you, by the way. I don't want to go because like I said, it doesn't directly serve me. It's inconvenient. I have to drive in traffic. So I am afraid of, I am afraid of not getting what I want out of the situation. That's typically fear comes down to fear of I'm, I'm scared to lose something that I have, or I'm scared to not get something that I want. Three, action before clarity. You can't think your way out of fear. You have to do something about, you have to act your way out of it. Whether you call somebody and tell them about it, get out of your house, go to a meeting, go for a walk. You have to act your way out of it. You can't think your way into good action, but you can act your way into good thinking. I'm going to say that again. You can't think your way into good action, but you can act your way into good thinking. When you go and help somebody else, it clears your brain, makes you feel good about yourself, gets that dopamine going in a natural way. Help someone else. Four, anchor yourself in evidence. Love this one. List out what you survived. Be honest with yourself. What you learned, who you are today versus then. Fear does not survive evidence. It rarely survives evidence. You've been here before. You've done hard things before. Why not this? Why not me? All right, number five, build a future safety plan. Not a prediction, a preparation. Plans are good. Who is in your support system? List them down. What do you do when you feel overwhelmed? What you commit to daily. So if that's going to the gym, going to the coffee, journaling, meditating, praying, whatever your thing is, find that. That brings you relief without drugs and alcohol. And six, reframe uncertainty as opportunity. There's a little bit of cognitive behavioral therapy. Recovery gives you the chance to build a life you never thought was possible. Uncertainty equals potential. Well, if I don't know what's going to happen next, that means anything can happen next. That means anything amazing can happen next. I could become the president of the United States, right? Maybe not that extreme, but you get what I'm saying. Not knowing the future is a gift. It's a blessing because I can tell you when I came into recovery, if you asked me where I would be 11 months later, I would have sold myself short. And you'll hear a lot of people say that if I gave out my, where I am now, the job that I have doing well in school, helping others doing, you know, the podcast, enjoying my life again, I would have sold myself short. I would have listed out things that I thought I was going to achieve and it would have been short. And again, it's not material things. It's never like, Oh, I'm going to have a house by this point in our car. Cause that shit doesn't make you happy. It doesn't, it really doesn't. It's those tangible, internal, intrinsic motivators, right? Those I am, you know, my show up and my family wants me to be there. Like that's a gift of recovery. People call me and ask me for help in their opinion. I'm useful again. I can be a good husband and my wife doesn't look at me like with that look of how are you going to let me down again today, Anthony, what a beautiful gift. That's what recovery offers. All right. Next segment. What a healthy relationship with the future looks like. You don't need guarantees. You need some direction, some guidance. My spiritual people, this will be a lot easier for you, right? If you don't believe in God, that's okay. If you don't believe in spirituality or the power greater than yourself, the universe, you're going to pay the consequences of that or feel the consequences of that. If you do believe in spirituality and a guiding force and an inner teacher and a God and something greater than you, a greater plan, whatever it looks like, then you're going to get the consequences of that, which are unlimited. There's no cap on the potentials. If you don't believe in God, you're going to feel the consequences of that. If I leave my plan up to a power greater than myself, the universe is able to deal with any problem 10,000 times better than I am. Think about that for a second. I am limited in my ability as a human being. How many times in your life have things turned out way better than you thought they were? And you're like, wow, that was better than anything I could have planned or controlled or tried to achieve. That's spirituality. You leave the results up to a power greater than yourself. Stop trying to control everything. Maybe you're not going to be able to do that. Your plan isn't as good as the universe's plan or your higher power's plan. Think about that. Life doesn't reward people with certainty. It rewards people who show up. Showing up is 90% of the battle. You hear that all the time. Vulnerability is, this is from Brene Brown, vulnerability is showing up without any knowledge of the outcome, right? Just showing up and you have no idea how it's going to turn out. Could be good, could be bad, but you're showing up either way. I always say that. I'm not going to lie to you. I'm not going to lie to you. I'm not going to this. My biggest problem today, my biggest problem today is I'm right. Yeah, but. I know contempt prior to investigation. When I know something is going to go, a certainty that's a dangerous place to be. I have to go into all situations today knowing that I could be wrong. And I kind of want to be wrong because if I'm wrong, that means there's other answers that are other perspectives, greater perspectives, better outcomes than I thought. We want to move from control to trust, from fear to curiosity, from avoidance to participation. Faith is choosing to walk even when the path is not visible or you can't see where it's going. All right, we're reaching the end here. So I want to challenge you with something, some self-reflection homework. Three things, okay? Three things, ready? What future are you afraid of? Number one, what future are you afraid of? Number two, what is one action you can take today that your future self will thank you for? Okay, what is one action you can take today that your future self will thank you for? And then three, what stories are you telling yourself that no longer fit who you are becoming? What stories are you telling yourself that no longer fit who you are becoming? Reflect on that, write it down, get it out. Think about it, message me your answers. I would love to see them. If you're struggling, message me. I'm here for it. Remember, we are all like movie projectors going around the world, projecting our stories, our movies. On to the screen. It is not reality. Same reason when you talk to any cops and they talk to witnesses of a crime, there will be 10 to, you know, depending on the witnesses, if they ask 20 witnesses what happened, they'll get 20 different stories, 20 different perspectives. Some of them might be similar. They'll have different spin, a different spin on them, a different perspective. You don't have problems today. You have perception problems. Your only problem, is how you are looking at said situation, how you look at the world. Are you looking at the world through a fear lens, a shame lens, a trauma lens, an anger lens, or are you looking at it objectively and with curiosity and turning it over to your power, power greater than yourself? You know, there's a reason you come into recovery and meet people with 30 plus years, 20 plus years of sobriety and they all talk about God. There's a reason those people are happy all the time. They're not drunk. They are tapped in. They're tapped into a power greater than themselves that they don't know how to describe it. It's an indescribable guiding force. Maybe you should try it. Fuck, what do I know? I've only been around since 2015 and I've been happy, joyous, and free. Maybe I'm wrong. Again, thanks for listening. I love all, every single one of you. I'll leave you with this. Recovery makes the future possible, not dangerous. Anything is possible. Get out of your own way today. Give back to somebody else. Ask for help if you're struggling and do the next right thing. If you can't do the next right thing, do the next thing right. Until next time, I love you all. Message me. Send me some more podcast ideas. Have a great day. This too shall pass. If you're going through something right now, this too shall pass. It always does. Just not in your time.
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