Butterflies in the stomach, sweat on the palms, and terror on the mind!! I launch the podcast and am instantly flooded with a hurricane of anxiety. I go over the justified causes of my fear and label the interpretations, body sensations, and urges I have as a result. And then I check the hell out of all the facts and walk you through that process. I start off all jittery and nervous, and by the end, I'm actually remarkably calm. Therapizing for the win!

Anonymous survey about self-harm beliefs

Fill it out here

Helpful resources from this episode:

DBT references

DBT Skills Training Handouts and Worksheets – online pdf version

DBT Skills Training Handouts and Worksheets – buy the manual from a Black-owned book store!

DBT handouts used in this episode

General Handout 1A – Options for Solving Any Problem

Mindfulness Handout 5 – Taking Hold of Your Mind: “How” Skills

• Nonjudgmentally

Mindfulness Handout 5A – Ideas for Practicing Nonjudgmentalness

Emotion Regulation Handout 6 – Ways to Describe Emotions

• Fear

Emotion Regulation Handout 7 – Overview: Changing Emotional Responses

Emotion Regulation Handout 8 – Check the Facts

Emotion Regulation Handout 10 – Opposite Action

Emotion Regulation Handout 11 – Figuring Out Opposite Actions

Distress Tolerance Handout 14 – Half-Smiling and Willing Hands

• Willing Hands

---------

More resources are available at https://therapize.joygerhard.com/

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Swan Lake by Tchaikovsky

You've got shit. I've got shit. We've all got shit. So, let's therapize that shit, with your host, me, Joy Gerhard.

Please note: I am not a therapist. I cannot and do not diagnose anyone, or prescribe anything. This is just me – someone who struggles with my emotions and with intrusive thoughts – sharing what skills I've used and how I've used them.

Also, a trigger warning: in this podcast, I talk about sensitive topics including: mental illness, suicidal ideation, self-harm, rape, childhood sexual assault, trauma, and more. I also swear here and there, so listener discretion is advised.

Welcome, welcome. Folks! Excitement! We are catching up to present day. I have been posting 2 episodes a week to try and get up to more current recordings and we're getting closer.

I'm recording this intro on December 19th, 2021, and what you're about to hear is from November 22nd, which is a little under a month ago. And that recording – more excitement – is actually with the new microphone. It was such a pleasure to edit this episode because the sound quality is so much better.

So, today we are going to be talking about anxiety. What you're about to hear is a recording of me about 3 minutes after I distributed my podcast and turned it on. I was experiencing just so much anxiety and discomfort and racing thoughts and all sorts of things.

So, you're going to get to hear me describe that and then process it live on air. It's not live, it's from a month ago. Anyway, I did want to note, I'm leaving in some of the longer pauses.

Normally, I take them out, but the pauses I'm leaving in are when I'm trying to describe how I'm feeling. It's not always an immediate finishing of the phrase, “I'm having the thought that...” or “I'm having the feeling that...”

Sometimes it takes me a couple of seconds to clue into what I'm thinking or feeling or what sensations I'm having in my body. I wanted to leave those pauses in so that it was a more authentic depiction of what I sound like when I'm trying to describe how I'm thinking or feeling.

I tried taking them out for a couple times, and it's too immediate. It's like, “I'm having the thought that I’m worried everybody will make fun of me.” I'm like, that's not how it happened. It was, “I'm having the thought that... long pause... I'm worried that everyone will make fun of me.”

So, for the sake of authenticity, that's what's going on there. And as a kind of corollary to that point, you will notice me saying how I'm feeling and what sensations are going on in my body. Being able to check in with body sensations and identify emotions is a skill. That is such a skill.

It took a ton of practice. It's a continued necessary practice and that was not always the case. I didn't come out of the womb knowing how to do that.

How I was raised, I didn't know how to do that. It wasn't until I started DBT skills group in 2016 that I began learning how to communicate what I was feeling, to be able to observe it and describe it. Before that I could tell you that I was angry and that was it.

A lot of my emotional literacy is very recent, within the last five or six years. So, if you're listening and wondering how that's possible, I do mention at the end of the recording you're about to hear that Emotion Regulation Handout 6 in the DBT manual is a game changer.

Because it actually gives a bunch of synonyms, prompting events, what it feels like in your body, all this great stuff. And it was invaluable in helping me identify how I was feeling and be able to communicate it. So yeah, very exciting.

Oh, and also I am working on an outline for an episode about self-harm and, as part of that, I want to address some common myths, misconceptions, beliefs, and answer some questions.

So, if you have any thoughts, beliefs, or assumptions about self-harm, or if you have questions, there is a survey linked in the description where you can share those with me anonymously. And I'll talk about them in that eventual episode.

Anywho, you are about to hear me – my reaction to posting or publishing my podcast for the first time. So let's listen in together, shall we?

Swan Lake by Tchaikovsky

Ok, so, I am experiencing some emotions right now. I just have been working on getting all of these episodes up on the various platforms, and getting the podcast host, and getting the RSS feed distributed. all of those fun, highly technical things.

If you go to Apple Podcasts, or iTunes, or Stitcher, you see this podcast. Which is really, really, really uncomfortable. So, I thought now would be an excellent time to talk about identifying emotions, because I'm having that. So doing some emotion regulation.

OK, where to start? I guess I want to start with talking about what emotion I'm having. And so I am going to be referencing the DBT Handbook, Emotion Regulation Handout 6. And Handout 6 is one of the longest handouts in the whole thing, because the same handout is used for all the main types of emotions.

So it's like 9 pages long, 10 as it says right there at the top, if I could read. I want to talk about fear, because I think that is the emotion that I'm experiencing. It is on the fourth page of Emotion Regulation Handout 6, if you want to follow along.

OK, so the question is, I guess, well, no, strike that. Let's start at the very top. Let's start at the very beginning – a very good place to start.

“Words for fear, fear, anxiety, apprehension, dread, edginess, fright, horror, hysteria, jumpiness, nervousness, overwhelm, panic, shock, tenseness, terror, uneasiness, and worry.”

What's interesting here is that “nervous” is not included as one of those words. What's lovely about this is that they're all listed alphabetically. So, I'm just looking at the ends on all these other words, or their adjectives...

Clearly, one of the side effects is getting tongue tied. I'm looking at the other emotions to see if “nervous” is included, which it's not, so I'm going to add that because that is definitely a fear word. Because I'm feeling really nervous.

“Some prompting events for feeling fear: having your life, your health or your well-being threatened.”

Currently I don't think any of those things are threatened.

“Being in the same situation or similar one where you've been threatened or gotten hurt in the past or where painful things have happened.”

I have never launched a podcast before, so I don't know that that is accurate.

“Flashbacks”

Not having flashbacks.

“Being in a situation where you've seen others threatened to hurt.”

I am not seeing anyone else threatened to hurt

“Silence.”

That's interesting. A prompting event for feeling fear could be silenced. Fascinating. You know, what's interesting is that is kind of actually my experience. I pressed distribute and nothing happened. I mean, something did happen. The episodes got distributed.

But it's not like there's any trumpet sounding, or even somebody saying, “hey, I got it.” There was just silence, and that was really unnerving.

“Being in a new or unfamiliar situation.”

Is another prompting event for feeling fear. I am in a new and unfamiliar situation. OK.

“Being alone, like walking alone, being home alone, living alone; being in the dark; being in crowds; leaving your home.

Of those, I mean I am alone, but not in a... I guess my folks are down the hall.

“Having to perform in front of others.”

Ok, ok, so a podcast isn't exactly performing in front of others because there's not a live audience. And yet there is the putting my thing out into the world where other people can hear it. Oh no. The last one is:

“Pursuing your dream.”

Ah, OK. OK, hang on. Hang on. Hang on. OK. So right now what I'm doing is doing some willing hands. I'm sitting cross legged on my bed, so I'm resting the back of my hands on my knees so that they're palm face up. And kind of stretching my hands out to be as flat as possible.

That's opening up my body posture because I really want to run away and hide right now. So those are prompting events for feeling fear. And now I'm going to talk about prompting interpretations, so interpretations of events that prompt feelings of fear. So, there's a distinction between an interpretation of an event and the actual event itself.

What I had just listed were the actual events. These are the things that if an alien is standing in the corner of the room, he can observe these things happening, and go, “OK, write it down in my log. This is the event that happened.” The interpretations are the thoughts we have. So these are beliefs that we have about an event. So:

“Believing that you might die or are going to die; you might be harmed; you might lose something valuable; someone might reject, criticize, or dislike you.”

So that's definitely a belief that I'm having as a result of posting this podcast.

“You will embarrass yourself.”

Oh, God yes. Yeah, yeah, we're coming back to that one.

“Failure is possible or expecting to fail.”

So again, remember, all of these are believing that. So believing that failure is possible or expecting to fail. I definitely have that thought.

“Believing that you will not get the help you want or need; believing you might lose help you already have; believing you might lose someone important; believing you might lose something you want; believing you are helpless or losing a sense of control; believing you are incompetent or are losing mastery.”

OK, so a lot of beliefs coming up, obviously. I have the belief that someone might reject, criticize or just like you. Definitely having that thought. Definitely having the thought that, because I'm trying to do this as authentically as possible, that it's not rehearsed, that you're actually listening to me use the skills as they happen...

I am doing a lot of thinking on the fly, and I have the concern that I will use a stupid metaphor, like a metaphor that is not only ineffective but is actually like incorrect. What I'm comparing an experience to is not an accurate comparison.

So, I have the concern that people will listen and be like, “yeah, Joy doesn't know what the fuck she's talking about. Like, that's not at all an accurate comparison. That's not at all a useful metaphor.”

So, also having the thought that I will embarrass myself, clearly. I put this podcast together because I thought I had something valuable to share with people, even if it's just 15 people.

So, an embarrassment would be to hear that nobody finds any of this valuable, and I have just been full of myself this entire time and... God. OK, we're going to come back to the beliefs for a second, because right now I really want to talk about the physical sensations in my body.

This is a learned skill, actually being able to check in with my body, because having dissociated for so long and been invalidated for so long, there's a kind of futility that I learned.

Like a learned helplessness of like, “why bother checking in with my emotions, because, you know, even if I were aware of them, someone's going to tell me they're not valid and they're not caused and they're stupid and I'm being hysterical or irrational or illogical or whatever else.”

So, I learned over decades and decades to not pay attention to how I was feeling. That is why Emotion Regulation Handout 6 is so, so, so, so helpful. Because it actually will walk you through, “Hey, if you don't know what emotion it is, look at what's happening in your body.” So these are some biological changes and experiences we have when we feel fear.

“Breathlessness.”

[Cackling] Ok! That's like... I'm so uncomfortable right now. You've been listening to my nervous laughter, I guess is what... Is it laughter? I don’t know. Nervous exhalations. So, there is a sense of breathlessness that I'm experiencing.

Fast heartbeat.”

Absolutely.

“Choking sensation or lump in throat.”

Uh, OK, so it's not quite in my throat, but it definitely is kind of like at my clavicle, like where my throat meets my chest. Definitely feeling tight.

“Muscles tensing and cramping.”

Absolutely. Like I can feel... how to describe what I'm doing right now? If you try to jut your your lower jaw out as far as you can, you kind of tense the muscles... Like I'm tensing the muscles in my throat and those are the muscles that are getting tense.

I'm not getting my chin out but, whatever muscles you use to do that are the muscles that I'm experiencing tension. Also, I can tell that I'm really super intense through my shoulders right now.

“Clenching teeth.”

Oh no. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, while I was working on posting these, getting the website up on an actual host and distributing it, I had my night guard in. I sleep with a mouth guard because I grind my teeth, and I've actually chipped two teeth from grinding so hard while I sleep.

And I've noticed that just in day-to-day life. There was an entire section of my master's thesis that I wrote with my mouth guard in because I was grinding so badly. And at the time didn't have the skills to address it.

I woke up one morning – it was the one night I forgot to put my mouth guard in while I was in grad school – and I woke up and I'm like, “why is my mouth... why do I taste blood?”

It was because I had chipped the vampire tooth. What is that? Canine, I think. I chipped off this massive chunk of it and it was sharp enough at the time – because it was a brand new chip – that I had cut sliced the inside of my lip and was bleeding. So that was fun. So definitely clenching teeth.

“The urge to scream or call out.”

Yes, which is why I keep turning away from the microphone when I'm exclaiming and making these loud noises like [vocalizing]. Yep, that that sound that I'm making that is the urge to scream.

“Feeling nauseated.”

I don't actually, right now, so that's a blessing.

“Getting cold or feeling clammy.”

Oh, no. Yesterday I was working on creating all the descriptions for the podcast, and writing up various and sundry things. And my hands were shaking. I had my space heater on intermittently, but I felt cold. I normally run cold. My fingertips are usually cold and my toes are usually freezing. But I was unnaturally cold yesterday when I was working on all this stuff.

“Feeling your hair standing on end.”

That's not really accurate right now.

“A feeling of butterflies in the stomach?”

Absolutely I am feeling that. Another biological change is:

“Wanting to run away or avoid things.”

Yes, yes. Oh yeah. And I really... The body posture I want to have is elbows in and my fists are clenched like up near my shoulders. If you are like me and, when you're cold, your nipples are like headlights, whatever posture you would have to hide them with your forearms.

So not crossing your arms, but like your forearms are parallel to each other, aimed up like you're trying to punch yourself in the chin. That is the body posture I want to have right now, so that is why I am purposefully sitting with my hands on my knees.

I'm sitting cross legged so my hands are open palm, sitting on my knees. Do kind of opposite action to that that urge. So here are some expressions and actions of fears. These are urges we want to do and/or actions we actually do when we're afraid:

“Fleeing or running away.”

Yep, Yep, Yep.

“Running or walking, hurriedly; hiding from, or avoiding what you fear; engaging in nervous or fearful talk.”

Hello, podcast.

“Pleading or crying for help; talking less or becoming speechless; screaming or yelling; darting eyes, or quickly looking around; frozen stare; talking yourself out of doing what you fear; freezing or trying not to move; crying or whimpering; shaking, quivering or trembling; a shaky or trembling voice; sweating or perspiring; diarrhea; vomiting; erect hair.”

I don't know that that's really an action, but it is an expression, I guess. I really want to go run, dart out of the house, and just go running and screaming down the street right now. Yes, I have it that that would feel really good. I have that thought.

Right now, I'm,

“Engaging in nervous or fearful talk.”

I'm doing this on purpose because this is a podcast, so I have to be talking. But certainly I've been around people – and I've also been the person myself – who is like, “yeah, but what about this? What about this? And what if this happens?”

Kind of the what ifs, catastrophizing and fortune telling about the future, that sort of thing. OK, so going back to the interpretations. I mentioned I have the “belief that I will embarrass myself.” And that I “might lose something that I want, or lose someone important.” I am really embarrassed about sharing this with my therapy friends. I actually haven't told anybody.

So as of this recording, only two people know that I'm doing this at all: my sisters. And I have multiple episodes. I've recorded multiple episodes; they are not up yet because I just figured out today how to put them up. Goddamn. Ok

But I haven't wanted to share this with anybody for a variety of reasons. I have had the thought that they will give me unwanted feedback. Like, “oh, you should totally do it this way. Or have you thought about adding this, blah blah blah.” And right now I am not interested in feedback.

Which is not to say that I'm not interested in feedback ever. I think the type of feedback that I was avoiding specifically is shifts in the format of the podcast. Like, “Oh, you should include this.” Or, “it would be totally awesome if you did this.” Or, “my favorite podcast does this. You should try it.”

And right now, I guess I'm kind of in survival mode. I'm just trying to figure all of it out. I'm trying to figure out how to host it. I'm trying to figure out how to distribute it. And I'm not really in a space for trying another new thing. Because everything is new. Which is not to say that in a week, I will have calmed down. By body will have calmed down. I will no longer feel as anxious.

And maybe in a week somebody will say, “hey, here's a thing you might be interested in trying.” Or a listener will make an observation, and say, “hey, when you do this, this has this impact. You should stop.”

I'm very open to that, and right this second, right this very second, I am not. So, what I'm realizing, as I'm talking through this, is that I need to... Because I want one of my... Speaking of being tongue tied here.

Because I want to be open to hearing feedback, and changing things, and addressing things that aren’t working, and hearing the impact if I'm doing something that's ineffective, I need to not be in this space, like this anxious, panicky, “Oh, my God, the world is ending” space. So, I need to regulate this emotion.

Because if this podcast gets any traction whatsoever, I'm going to be hearing from people who will have opinions. I want to be effective at listening to those opinions. And yeah, that's kind of my diatribe about... I don't want to stay in this space. I want to eventually not be in this panicky, fearful space so that I can be effective in hearing people's feedback and in growing the show and all of that.

And right now, this is where I am. So, we're going to sit here for a second. I am having the thought that my close friends, who are also in therapy, will listen to this and judge me, which... Checking the facts.

I have some amazing, amazing friends, a little, tiny group of very thoughtful, very self aware, very emotionally intelligent people who have done a huge amount of work on themselves around their own trauma and their own mental health and they're not judgmental.

I mean, they can judge, yes. All of us can judge. But they don't live in that space typically. And they're very validating. So, this concern that I have – that my close, dear friends who love me will think this is shit and tell me that it's shit, and not want to be my friend anymore.

Or will sit at home and be like, “wow, I thought Joy had it all together and look at what a mess she is.” Oh, that's a thought that I'm having. I'm having that thought. OK, so while I'm sitting here, I am experiencing a lot of butterfly flutters. It's actually...

It’s not down in my pelvis or around my uterus, kind of lower belly. It's more up right below my diaphragm, so right underneath my rib cage. Oh, I notice a huge amount of tightness specifically around my collarbone. Like I want to shrug my shoulders up to my ears and... What is that? Protecting my neck, is that the desire there? I don't know.

Another interpretation of an event that can prompt feelings of fear is: “you're helpless, or losing a sense of control.” Definitely having the thought that I'm losing control. Yikes. Oh, that brings up something interesting.

As with all social media, we curate our lives, right? We choose what we share, what pictures we show, and what posts we make, and what things we link to, and what reposts we do. And certainly, when I'm chatting with friends, I do a lot of it via text, Facebook Messenger, whatever.

I'm realizing that there is a curation. Now, with most of my super close friends, there's no attempt to look better than I'm actually feeling. But I can delete typos. And I can, if I send something that's super messy, I can unsend it before the person sees it and try again.

And I'm purposely trying not to do that on this podcast. Which isn't to say... I do go in and if I say something that I'm like, “no, that's actually not what I meant,” I have, in the past, edited that out and redone it. I'm wondering now if that's not an effective thing to do.

I don't want this to just be like an absolute disaster of “umms” and “uhhs” and a lot of tripping over my words and everything else. And I can see that there is some value in showing that part.

It also makes me really nervous because a lot of people have mentioned I'm a very effective writer, and I'm having the thought that people are going to... People who thought that I was a really effective communicator (because they only interacted with my writing) are going to hear me talk and be like, “Oh no, she doesn't know anything. She's a shit show.”

Judgment, judgment, judgment. That thing you just heard me do, by the way, we haven't talked about this yet, but talking about judgments. So, non-judgment is a mindfulness skill. And if you want to read more about that, I'm flipping through my notebook here.

Non-judgment, you'll see it on Mindfulness Handout 5 in the DBT manual, and ways to practice non-judgmentalness is also a Mindfulness Handout 5A. Both of those are super helpful, and we'll get more into that later.

But one of the techniques I use to be aware of when I'm judging is, when I hear myself judge, I just say out loud: judgment, judgment, judgment. It's kind of like a little neon sign to myself. It's like, “hey, that was a judgment just then.”

Yes, yes, it was. So, I'm definitely having the thought that people who think I'm an effective communicator because of my written communication will hear this and think less of me. I'm having that concern. Another interpretation is that:

“You are incompetent or losing mastery.”

Same kind of vein there, that this will sound so much worse than the type of communication that I normally share with the world that, not only will people judge me for sounding worse, but I will have the experience. Because I do, I'm judging all of this.

Every time I hear it, every time I say “umm” or “uhh” or I do the – right before I start to talk, the little... I don't know what it is, that tongue smack. I hear it and it annoys me. It annoys me on behalf of you, the listener, and it annoys me on behalf of my own ego because I think it sounds bad, which is a judgment.

So, I hear every single verbalized pause, all my “umms” and “uhs” and all of that. And every time I do it, I have this little judgement of, “that's bad Joy. That's not what a good or effective speaker does. If you were really a good speaker, you wouldn't have any verbalized pauses.

“You wouldn't be making those sounds. You wouldn't be getting halfway into a sentence and then talking over yourself and undoing it. You would know what you wanted to say, and you would say exactly that.”

All of that is my interpretation of what a good speaker is, and also “good” is in quotation marks. Uh... Oh! Verbalized pause! Another one. I'm just going to pause for a second here. So I'm having the belief – I'm uncovering the belief – that an effective speaker sounds a certain way.

That there aren't any verbalized pauses, that there aren't any stuttering, or getting the words wrong, or saying a word incorrectly, mispronouncing it, meaning to say one word but saying another word by accident, like none of that.

And I don't know that that's accurate. I think that may be true for speakers who are speaking from a script. But I think human beings don't have that experience of speaking unless you've memorized something and are speaking completely from memory.

So, I'm aware of that judgment that I'm having about myself. I want to check the facts on that. Is that accurate? I don't know that it is accurate, that speakers – effective public speakers – never stutter, never say the wrong word.

I think what makes a speaker effective is that they communicate what they mean. They do it in such a way that the audience or the listeners can understand what they're saying. So that is me checking the facts. checking the facts is another Emotion Regulation skill, B-T-dubs. Oh my God, what was that I just said!? By the way.

Checking the Facts is a skill that we use to change our emotional responses. And if you want to learn more about that, it's on Emotion Regulation Handout 8, which we will go to in much more depth at a later episode.

On a later episode at a later date. Not at a later episode. See that sort of thing, doing that sort of thing. I'm very uncomfortable with you guys hearing me do that. I'm sitting with that discomfort. I'm aware that I'm judging myself.

So, I just went over the prompting events for feeling fear, things that actually happened, that an alien standing in the corner would be able to observe happening. And I've gone over the interpretations of events that prompt fear. And the biological changes that I'm experiencing.

Now we can get to the echoes and aftereffects of fear. So, aftereffects and echoes are things that happen even after you've kind of calmed down from the peak experience, from that peak emotional experience.

They are protective in intention. Like for sadness or anger or emotions that you don't enjoy feeling, those aftereffects, those echoes are our bodies way of being like, “hey, we didn't like that. Let's not have that happen again. Let's not have that happen again.”

So, an echo is how your emotion – that emotion you just experienced – influences my attention, mood, thinking, and action as the day goes on, and how the week goes on, etc.. Some aftereffects or echoes of fear are:

“A narrowing of attention; being hyper vigilant to threat; losing your ability to focus or becoming disoriented or dazed; losing control; imagining the possibility of more loss or failure; isolating yourself; and ruminating about other threatening times.”

All of these things... I've experienced a lot of these, not right this second necessarily. “Isolating” is definitely one that I want to do right now, and I'm going to need to do some opposite action to that through the rest of the day.

“Imagining the possibility of more loss or failure,”

Is another aftereffect that I am kind of anticipating. I can't really get into the aftereffects right now because the day hasn't progressed yet. I'm still in the thick of feeling anxiety, fear.

But based on past experiences, I'm guessing that I'll definitely be imagining the possibility of failure, and isolating. I really don't want to spend the rest of my day doing that. I understand what that's trying to do for me. My body is trying to protect me from this anxiety.

It’s like, “well, if we're afraid something bad might happen, if we're afraid that we're going to fail, let's just not do anything. That way, we can't fail, right? Like it'll be impossible to fail if we just don't do anything.”

And actually, I'm realizing now... Oh, no. I'm realizing now that that was one of... I was doing that. So, I recorded like 3 or 4 episodes right after the breakup, and I... Here's a fun fact: my very first episode of how to find a therapist, I recorded at 5:00 the day of the breakup. Three hours later is when my partner broke up with me.

And I hadn't realized that, looking back at the timeline and everything. So that's fun. I realized that, after recording 3 or 4 episodes, I recorded kind of the body of it and hadn't gone through and cleaned up some of the excess noises or big pauses that I made while I was thinking.

I hadn't gone through and added the intro and the outro and all of that stuff. I was just sitting on these episodes because I was afraid. That's what it was I was avoiding. I was avoiding failure.

I just kind of stopped working on the podcast for like a month and a half. At the time I justified it because I was also painting my room, and unpacking stuff, and hanging things on my walls, and building a desk for myself, and, you know, kind of readjusting to living with my parents again.

So that's fine and that's all valid. In addition to doing that – being actually distracted – I was purposefully distracting. I was choosing not to work on the podcast because it scared the shit out of me. It still scares the shit out of me.

It's super, super vulnerable. This is out in the world, right? So, people can listen to it and they can hear what it sounds like when I'm crying, and when I'm super, super anxious. And that also feels really, really scary.

So, I want to check the facts really quick. This concern that I have about being judged – and I know I said that I was going to do this in a later episode, but I think it's actually appropriate to do it now.

So, just a little bit of background on what Checking the Facts is, like where it fits in the larger context of using therapy skills. So, in response to any emotion or any situation, let's say that. When facing a problem, there are five things we can do. We can solve the problem – whatever the facts of the situation are, we can address those. That’s number one.

We can change how we feel about the problem, which is emotion regulation skills. We can accept what is currently so, which involves a lot of distress tolerance and some radical acceptance. We can do nothing, or we can make it worse.

Do nothing and make it worse... definitely “make it worse” is something I'm trying to avoid. There are times when, quite literally, the best I can do in in a given moment is to just not make it worse, just do nothing and not make it worse.

But since we're talking about emotion regulation today, and because I'm feeling a lot of anxiety, I wanted to talk about changing how I feel about the situation. And that's where we get into a Emotion Regulation.

So, checking the facts is a way to change how we feel.

“I'm checking whether my emotional reaction fits the facts of the situation. Changing my beliefs and assumptions to fit the facts can help me change my emotional reactions to situations.”

That, what I just read, is from a Emotion Regulation Handout 7, if you want to follow along. So, there's certainly emotional responses that I have that don't fit the facts. I'm trying to think of a good example. Oh, here's a good example, and I think I actually mentioned this in episode 1, maybe 2. I don’t know.

When I'm talking about accepting the breakup. I was having a lot of thoughts, including: “my life is ruined. I'll never be able to have what I want,” those sorts of things. Now, while it is true that I am not going to have – or that I do not currently have – what I thought I was going to have and what I wanted to have, I don't know anything about how the future will go.

That degree of despair was not consistent with the facts. Now there was a lot of sadness that was. I did just lose my partner, and I lost the future I thought I was going to have. And there was a lot of things that I'd lost and a lot of sadness that came up from those losses that did fit the facts.

And a lot of the despair – like, the really strong emotional reaction that I was having that had me basically want to give up – were based off of interpretations or beliefs (like fortune-telling about how the future was going to go) that was not consistent with the facts.

So, in the process of doing that acceptance and actually sitting with it and checking the facts, my emotion went from being a 9 out of 10 – or we've been using the 100 scale for our Subjective Units of Distress, our SUDs. It went from being a 90 out of 100 down to a 60.

So, the problem didn't get solved. It didn't magically make my partner wanna be with me again, didn't give me my old life back. And it did change the degree of distress I was experiencing about the situation.

So that's what Check the Facts can do. It can help us feel better, literally. Go from being super, super distressed, maxed out emotionally down to something a bit more manageable.

So, Checking the Facts: I'm going to walk us through Emotion Regulation Handout 8 in the DBT book. Just to start off with what facts are.

“Many emotions and actions that we experience are set off by our thoughts and interpretations of an event rather than the event itself.”

If you're anything like me, oftentimes the interpretation happens so quickly immediately after the event that it's indistinguishable from the event. And it's scary. The interpretation doesn't occur to us as an interpretation, it occurs as fact.

My partner broke up with me - my life is ruined. It is. That's the fact, or that's the thought I'm having. My life isn't in fact ruined. But that's an example of, “here's the event, here's the interpretation.” And they are super glued together.

Checking the facts gives us that crowbar that allows us to add some wiggle room, to pry those things apart, and see that the interpretation is not, in fact, what happened. It's a thought or belief that we have about what happened.

So, our emotions can be set off because of the thoughts we have about an event. It can go: event, and then the thought, and the thought causes emotions. You can also have emotions that trigger thoughts. So an event happen... event happened. Here's me being tongue-tied again.

An event can happen. The event can cause emotions. Like, for example, if you've ever walked down the hall and somebody's jumped out at you. There's not an interpretation, you're not having a thought. You have that huge biological response to scream or shout or throw your hands up in the air. That's an emotion that comes.

And then you could have the thought, “you're a jerk,” to whoever jumped out at you, or “that was really mean,” or “my partner doesn't love me. My partner doesn't listen to me when I tell them, ‘don't jump out at me.’”

Those are all thoughts that happened after that really, really strong emotion. So, Fhecking the Facts basically checks in with what actually happened. “My partner jumped out at me” is not the same as “my partner doesn't love me.” There was the event. There was a strong emotion. There was the thought I had. To Check the Facts, we ask a series of questions. First off:

“What is the emotion I want to change?”

So right now, sitting with you, the emotion that I want to change is anxiety, fear. And the prompting event for my emotion – that's question #2:

What is the event that prompted this emotion?”

Well, I hit submit on Apple Podcasts and Stitcher, and I think one other that I can't remember right the second. Then I went and searched in iTunes and on my stitcher app, and found my podcast. So that's the emotion or the event that prompted this emotion.

So it was seeing my podcast listed in public spaces, places where people can access it. So, this is me:

“Describing the facts that I observed through my senses.”

Because that's one of the things... When you describe a prompting event is to describe the things that the alien standing in the corner of the room can observe, things that we ourselves can observe through touch and sight and smell and sound, and – I always miss the fifth one. What we touch - I'm sure you're all yelling at the phone right now.

Touch, smell, eyes, nose, ears, skin and tongue! Taste. There we go. So I:

“Described the facts that I observed through my senses,”

Which for me was just what I saw. And then:

“Challenge the judgments, the absolutes, and the black and white descriptions.

I'm not experiencing a lot of black and white descriptions, though I did have the thought that all my friends are going to think I'm an idiot. Which, “all,” the use of the word “all.” But that's an interpretation, which is the next question. But for now, the event prompting my emotion was seeing my podcast in public spaces. So, the next question #3 is:

“What are my interpretations, thoughts, and assumptions about the event?”

I've talked about these, the thoughts I have that people will discover that I'm really not an effective communicator because I say “uhh” lot, and I get tongue-tied, and I say the wrong word, and I forget how to read periodically.

I'm having the interpretation that that will mean I'm not as effective as I thought I was, that I will basically be losing mastery in public, in front of an audience. People will be watching me be less effective, or realize that I'm less effective than I thought I was. A part of this one is to:

“Think of other possible interpretations. Practice looking at all sides of the situation and all points of view. Test your interpretations and assumptions to see if they fit the facts.”

This is very uncomfortable, what I'm about to do, so I'm going to sit with my legs crossed, again. And put my hands palms face up on my knees, so I'm having kind of the willing hands posture.

I have the thought that thinking this podcast will help anybody is just so much ego and hubris, and it's me being just this egocentric, megalomaniacal narcissist. That's a lot of judgment you just heard me say. Judgment, judgment, judgment.

It feels strange to voice out loud some other interpretations, and I'm going to try it. That's why I'm sitting in this posture, because I really want to curl up in a ball right now. OK. So another thing I'm going to do is I'm going to... Because I want to curl up in a ball, I'm going to do exactly the opposite of that.

I'm sitting super straight, really tall. I am basically pretending somebody's pulling a string through the center of my head. So, I'm stretching out, my neck is really long. I'm trying to be super tall, and I'm going to have my eyes wide open instead of scrunched shut, which is what I want to do.

Possible interpretations that are not the negative ones that I just mentioned. What could happen that is not all my friends thinking I'm a moron and me very publicly failing.

My friends could think that this is great. They could love it, they could say it's exactly like talking to me in person, and they enjoy listening to it and they think it's funny and very relatable. God, this is uncomfortable. So, I'm having judgments right now – judgment, judgment, judgment – that this is like boastful, what I'm doing.

I'm going to do it anyway. Because I want to hide, I'm choosing not to hide. Opposite action! And for those interested in Opposite Actions, by the way – which we will get into much more in detail later – Opposite Actions are actions that we do that are (guess what!) opposite to the urges that we have from an emotion.

Like if you want to run away, the opposite action would be to stay put, and to look whatever you're afraid of in the eye in an objectively safe situation. So, the DBT manual actually walks you through what opposite action is on Emotion Regulation Handout 10.

And then for each emotion – the main emotional categories like disgust and anger and sadness and jealousy and love and whatnot – the Emotion Regulation Handout 11 walks you through how to do opposite action to those emotions.

But for now, I'm just sitting here and choosing to sit up really tall because my urge is to hide and cancel everything and delete all my episodes and give up. I'm going to choose, instead, to say the thing I'm afraid of.

So another possible interpretation is that a lot of people listen, not just my 5 friends, but that this podcast gains an audience of like 100 people, which would feel huge and absurd. And that people find it helpful and are engaging with it and like emailing with questions and wanting to create a little community around it of mutual support.

Another interpretation is that I share it with my therapy group, and they think it's great and they want to listen to it. And some of them volunteer to be like, “hey, can I come on your podcast to talk about a thing?” That would be lovely, cause I love having conversations around how to use therapy skills and actually demonstrating them with other people.

So that would be lovely if that happened. I know that there are podcasts that have astronomical success, and millions of listeners, and get a book deal, and tour the world performing their podcast live, and all of that sort of stuff. And I don't know...

First off, I don't think this podcast would do great live. I don't know that I want that level of fame, and I can certainly say no to it if we ever get there. But I can see a possibility of kind of a grassroots sharing, and going from 100 listeners to like 500 listeners, 1000 listeners.

I'm really uncomfortable saying those large numbers. I really want to fold in on myself right now. So, I'm forcing my posture even more open and sitting up even taller. Yeah, 1000 listeners. 10,000 listeners. And I can feel the emotions rising up in my body right now.

I feel deep inside, like not butterflies in my stomach. It's like butterflies in my lungs, like right inside my chest cavity. Yeah. Yeah, it's very uncomfortable to say that. So, that's me practicing looking at other sides of this situation. The next question is to ask #4:

“Am I assuming a threat?”

This is actually one of the most useful questions. As someone who has PTSD, oftentimes my body goes into fight or flight mode, or freeze or fawn, and will do things automatically from that place of panic.

And I couldn't actually tell you what I'm afraid of. There have been times – and this actually happened a couple of days ago at the gym – I looked around the weightlifting area and noticed that I was the only woman in this big room.

And it wasn't that there was a huge amount of men. There were probably 10 dudes in there. And it's a big room, so we weren't all like bunched together. But I was just aware in that moment that I was the only woman in a large room of large men. Often when I have those realizations, I will feel panic rising up in my body.

The panic feels really diffuse and hard to express. And so this question: “am I assuming a threat. Label the threat.” There is something really... and it it's really strange. It doesn't make sense to me the mechanism by how this works.

But saying out loud, “here's what I'm afraid is going to happen.” The threat I am assuming is being excluded, like being judged by my friends, and losing those friendship. And also public mockery, I'm also afraid of that.

And there's something about saying those things that takes this kind of diffuse anxiety and actually kind of condenses it into liquid form, something you can actually do something with. So, the next part of that is label the threat:

“Assess the probability that the threatening event will really occur.”

So how likely is this to happen, this threat? So my experience at the gym, I label the threat that I will be attacked. That's kind of the worst case scenario. The more likely thing is that one of the guys, or one of the groups of guys, will make fun of me, will call me out in front of everybody else, will harass me in some way.

I'm guessing that... Looking at it, I've actually never done this all the way to the bottom, like, examine this fear that I have at the gym all the way to the bottom. So there is the concern that they'll be laughing at me because my weights are too light, or that I'm not doing correct form or what have you.

And they'll make fun of me and they'll harass me about it. It won't just be somebody sitting in the corner noticing me and going, “well, she's doing a shit job,” and then going about their business. They'll actually say it out loud. They will draw attention to me.

And oh yeah, I feel that anxiety, like having all of these men focus their attention on me. I guess the threat I'm assuming will happen then is that they will... I will not feel welcome, like I’ll feel like I need to leave. I don't think I think they're going to actually hurt me. And it's a public place.

But I do think... I think what it is is the threat is that I will not feel welcome at that gym, that I won't be able to go anymore. And so:

“Assessing the probability that that event will happen.”

So, it's not just the probability that someone will mock me, it's the whole thing: the probability that somebody will mock me, everybody's attention, all the men's attention will focus on me, and that they will do or say something that will have me feel like I'm not welcome there.

So what is the likelihood of all of that happening? I mean, the likelihood of the first thing – that they'll be mocking me internally – is probably pretty high. I imagine that, at some point, there have been guys at the gym who've looked at me and gone, “oh god.” But what is the likelihood that they'll voice it out loud and draw the attention of everybody there to look at me?

I've never seen that happen at the gym. Yeah, I know that it has happened. I know that there are stories that people have told where people have been gross at the gym, and have made gym-goers feel uncomfortable. So it's not a 0 probability, I would say, I don't know 10%. So then:

“Think of as many possible outcomes as I can.”

In the gym situation, even if somebody mocks me out loud, another outcome would be that somebody else, another guy, would stand up and say, “hey, that's not OK, leave her alone” or an employee at the gym would say something, that there would be a collective kind of supportive thing that would happen. That would be lovely.

The threat I'm assuming for this podcast – my friends rejecting me or that I will be publicly mocked – I think the likelihood of my friends rejecting me is really, really low. Like 2%, let's say. And then the likelihood of me just failing spectacularly in public, people commenting on message boards...

This is me getting specific, like actually labeling the threat. It's not just public mockery. What does that actually look like? What do I actually think is going to happen? And what am I actually afraid of happening?

So yes, people posting on Reddit or on Facebook or whatever, and just dumping. Having this onslaught of people saying, “This is stupid. You're bad at this. Listening to you feels like nails on a chalkboard. You are actually incredibly racist or transphobic or something.” The things that I most want not to be.

I have the fear of being called out for saying or doing something on this podcast that impacts those marginalized communities that way. And then having this dog pile of everybody piling on in comment sections.

And BuzzFeed writes an article about, “Have you seen this? This white chick over here thinking she knows her shit! Well, let us tell you how much she doesn't know her shit!” What is the probability of all of that happening?

Gosh, I'm just thinking about... BuzzFeed has bigger fish to fry than me. I've seen them do think pieces about podcasts that have had negative impacts or whatever. So, it's not a zero. And I don't know that I've ever seen them write a blog post or an article about somebody who had just 15 listeners, so...

Even if I have more listeners, I don't know that it would warrant a BuzzFeed article. But what is the likelihood of having a dog pile of people commenting and saying how much they hate this podcast? I don't know, let's say 20%. It's probably actually lower than that, but it's not a non-zero amount.

Another possible outcome, aside from that, is instead the reverse happens. Instead of a dog pile of negativity, people dog pile on saying how much they love it, and how helpful this is, and how it's really affirming, and it feels nice to hear somebody else talk about it, somebody who's in the shit actively.

And they recommend it to their friends. And that even if I do or say something that is hurtful and that somebody will and I do get called out for it that, I can engage in a dialogue with that person or the group that I've affected, that I've hurt.

And acknowledge it, and be accountable to it, and do better, and heal that hurt. Yeah. So those are some possible outcomes. Question #5 here on how to Check the Facts – I'm going back to Emotion Regulation Handout 8 – is:

“Ask: What's the catastrophe? Imagine the catastrophe really occurring. Imagine coping well with the catastrophe through Problem Solving, Coping Ahead, or Radical Acceptance.”

OK, so yes, my catastrophe is gaining a lot of listeners, and then having someone very famous or with a huge following call me out for saying something or doing something racist or transphobic or xenophobic or homophobic or ableist. There's a lot of things.

So, imagine that happening – somebody with millions of followers says this and all of their followers dog pile on me. How would I handle that well? I think I'd want to reach out to the person or people who've instigated, who pointed it out originally.

And talk to them about it, and fully get their experience, understand the impact that I had. Not just the impact of this one interaction, but the impact it has when I have a listenership and I'm disseminating hurtful ideas or thoughts or beliefs. Yeah.

Really getting that impact, and then acknowledging that I did that, and that I hurt people, and the ways specifically that I hurt them. And then asking... having a dialogue about how to be accountable. Because I can't tell anybody like, “Here. Here's a Band-Aid. You're alright now,” right?

I can't tell anybody when they need to rub some dirt in it get over it. It's really a question of: “what do I need to do to make this right by you?” And doing my own research and looking for ways to make it right.

And because this is a public podcast and people are going to hear me make mistakes publicly, I think I also need to address it publicly. And have a conversation with the person or group that I've hurt about what they would feel comfortable with around me addressing it publicly. Yeah.

Then do better. Not just get around to doing better, but actually put in place things to make sure that I do better. Because an apology is bullshit if you just keep making the same mistake over and over and over again.

Yeah, I guess that would be how I would handle that version of the catastrophe. The other catastrophe would be my friends judging me, and saying this is shit, and thinking, “wow, you're actually a horrible therapy-skills user, and you don't talk very effectively, and you're confusing, and it's a mess. And because of this, I don't like you anymore.”

I guess if that were the actual case – if somebody actually had those thoughts – I'd want to have a conversation and try to identify if there's any hurt or just disappointed expectations, I guess.

Yeah. And given that this is a hypothetical situation, I actually don't know what would be the thing that would have them choose not to be friends with me anymore. Yeah, I'd want to have a conversation, and understand their experience, and see if there's anything that I can acknowledge or be accountable for, take ownership of in in that. So, yeah.

So, that's the catastrophe. What's really strange right now is that I'm actually feeling super calm. Actually walking through how I would handle the worst case scenario, I think I'd be OK.

Which isn't to say that it wouldn't suck, like I wouldn't have strong emotions, and I wouldn't feel sad or embarrassed. All of those things may also happen. I may feel all of those emotions and clearly, I just I think... I'm just babbling now.

I have skills and I have resources where, if I do get into a place that I'm struggling, I have a therapist and I have friends and I have my DBT therapy group to get some support. So final question on Checking the Facts is:

“Ask: does my emotion and or its intensity fit the actual facts.”

This is an interesting question. Not just that the emotion fits the facts, but the intensity. Typically what happens is – what I'll observe is – that the my emotion fits the facts. The prompting event that happened does align with what a prompting event for fear or anger or whatever motion I'm talking about, that I'm experiencing.

Typically the intensity does not fit the facts, and usually the intensity is because I then had a thought or an interpretation that is not in line with what actually happened. Looking back at these Emotion Regulation Handout 6 pages for the different emotions, usually what I'll experience is the prompting event for feeling and emotion will have me get up to, you know, like a 5 or 6.

But then I'll have an interpretation or belief that will take that emotion... I keep doing this. I keep mixing the things out of 10 versus things out of 100. So, the prompting event will have me be at like a 50 or 60, and then my interpretation will get me up to like 90. And an interpretation is not actually what happened.

Me publishing my podcast just now is not me embarrassing myself. I have a thought that I embarrassed myself. I have the thought that I could lose someone important, AND me publishing my podcast is not me losing someone important. That hasn't happened.

To be fair, nobody knows that it's published yet. So, these fears are based off of a future that hasn't happened. And the fact is, the prompting event of “being in a new and unfamiliar situation,” and “having to perform in front of others,” those do fit the facts.

That is what just happened. I am in a new and unfamiliar situation performing in front of others. The intensity does not fit the facts. Throughout all of this, and now let's see if I... when I started going through actually looking at what emotion I was having, and then doing the Check the Facts.

When I started, I would say I was at a 75 or an 80 out of 100. And right now, I would say I'm at a 40, which is pretty great, all things considered. Because I was really... I was shaky for a bit.

But anyway, I hope this is helpful. Just reading over Emotion Regulation Handouts 6 is really lovely. Because for me, I didn't grow up knowing any of these words. I didn't grow up knowing how an emotion felt in my body.

So, somebody would ask me how I felt – and I think I've mentioned this before – that I was an emotional sausage-making machine. No matter what you put in, it all came out as anger. I was really kind of hamstrung, I guess.

I was at a disadvantage in entering into therapy and not being able to describe how I was feeling, not being able to understand what was going on in my body. Why do I feel this way? And so, going through and reading what the prompting events were and the biological changes, how it feels in our bodies, it's super helpful. It really is very validating.

Swan Lake by Tchaikovsky

OK, now we're back into the future and I have some kind of closing remarks, if you will. I have clarifications and some attributions. For starters, I mentioned that there are five ways to handle any problem: solve the problem, change how I feel about the problem, tolerate the problem, and stay miserable or make it worse.

Those aren't my original thoughts. That list is actually from the DBT manual, specifically General Handout 1A. In fact, the option to make things worse isn't included on the handout. That's something that my original DBT instructor included.

Strangely enough, this is a thing that doesn't have to be taught. I think most everybody kind of innately just knows how to make things worse.

Also, as I was listening back to this, I described the catastrophe that I was anticipating in launching the podcast, and what I said in the recording you just heard was that my catastrophe would be being called out in a spectacularly public way for saying something harmful, and then getting dog-piled on.

And while that is a catastrophe, I don't think it's the worst catastrophe. The actual catastrophe, worst case scenario, is me actually doing something harmful. The call-out is not the catastrophe. It's a consequence of me hurting someone, and it is not the worst-case scenario.

For my ego, of course, the call-out is the scariest thing, because I want to look good and not be embarrassed. But as far as what I'm trying to accomplish with this podcast and how I want to relate to folks, hurting somebody is way worse than being called out for hurting somebody.

Alrighty, so that about sums it up. If you have questions, thoughts, concerns, or want to point out something I said that was harmful, I'd love to hear from you. You can get all my contact info for e-mail and social media on the website. There's a link in the description.

As always, thank you for listening while I therapize some shit. I hope this helps you therapist your shit. And since I never know how to end this, I'm just going to go with my standard, really super abrupt-

Swan Lake by Tchaikovsky

This has been “Let's Therapist That Shit!!!” with your host, me, Joy Gerhard, if you like what you heard, please rate, review, subscribe and tell your friends about it. I'll see you next time.

Intro and outro music is Swan Lake Opus 20 by Pyotr Tchaikovsky, performed by the London Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Anatole Fistoulari, released on LP by Richmond High Fidelity / London Records in nineteen fifty-two.