Why Has Nobody Told Me This?

Jen talks to clinical psychologist, Dr. Julie Smith about her best-selling new book "Why Has Nobody Told Me This Before?" It's the ultimate guide to life for anyone - anxious or not.

Jen and Julie talk about self-esteem, making mistakes, motivation, forgiving ourselves, and how it's been for Julie to be such a public figure on her popular and informative Tik Tok account.

For more information on Dr. Julie Smith and her book please visit: https://doctorjuliesmith.com

and you can follow Dr. Julie Smith on Tik Tok @drjuliesmith or Instagram @drjulie

For more information on Jen Kirkman, the host of Anxiety Bites, please go here: https://jenkirkman.bio.link

and to get the takeaways for this episode please visit: http://www.jenkirkman.com/anxietybitespodcast

To send an email to the show write to anxietybitesweekly at gmail dot com.

Follow Jen on Twitter @jenkirkman or Instagram @jenkirkman

Anxiety Bites is distributed by the iHeartPodcast Network and co-produced by Dylan Fagan and JJ Posway.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Yeah, this is the Anxiety Bites podcast and I am
your host, Jen Kirkman. Welcome to another episode of Anxiety Bites.
Welcome to the season finale of Anxiety Bites. I'm your host,

(00:22):
Jen Kirkman. My guest today is Dr Julie Smith. I
love how this episode with Dr Julie lined up to
be the last episode because she has a book out
that's quite popular called Why Has Nobody Told Me This Before?
And then the byeline is Everyday Tolls for Life's Ups

(00:43):
and Downs? And I think that's just a nice note
to end on why has Nobody told Me This Before?
I think that could be said when you look back
on all my guests, from therapist to dr is, to
internal medicine doctors to neuroscientists, artists, authors, researchers, all of

(01:07):
the information that they present has been around for decades,
and yet there's this if the first time you heard
of some of this information was on this podcast that
a former comedian and comedy writer currently hosts, It's like,

(01:28):
why is that person the one that brought this information
to me? Why isn't this taught in schools? Why isn't
this just I don't know, known, you know, and so
I just love I just love book ending it with
why has nobody told me this before? And I feel
that way about a lot of things when I learned

(01:48):
them for the first time. There's this notion that, oh, well,
I fad had this information sooner, Well, I really would
have nailed it it life. But I don't know if
that's necessarily true. I don't think we should take an
opportunity about learning something new to beat ourselves up for
Oh my god, imagine if I'd known this. That's more like,
thank God, I know this now, But yeah, why has

(02:09):
nobody told me this before? So obviously in Dr Julie's book,
there are things that you know, we've gone over in
this podcast, but she had a few chapters that I
thought were really important messages to leave you all with

(02:30):
that I don't even necessarily have to do with you
have some diagnosed anxiety disorder, or you have this, or
you've been to therapy, but just ways that you know, um,
having a maybe an undiagnosed mental health issue or a
diagnosed one that you're working on, or whatever it is,
that it does affect more than just your behavioral responses

(02:54):
to said mental health issue. Right, like to put it
very simply, if you had obsessive compulsive disorder, you might
be very focused on how do I get these thoughts
to stop? How do I stop ruminating? And then you
might be focused on the treatment for that. But a
lot of times there are ways that having a mental
health issue, you know, whether it's a history of depression

(03:15):
and history of anxiety, that it really affects a lot
of our parts of ourselves that we don't normally think
have to do with taking care of our mental health,
like our self esteem and our confidence and the notion
that we are not our mistakes and and so I
wanted to talk to Dr Julie about these concepts, and

(03:37):
I think there's a lot of everyday tools that you
can take right now out of my interview with Dr Julie.
And I also wanted to talk to her about the
fact that she is something of a tech talk celebrity
because she has these wonderful, easy to understand, colorful, you know,
well produced, beautifully filmed videos where she usually shows with

(03:59):
some kind of object in this very creative way, how
our minds work and how we can reframe the way
that we see things when we're taking care of our
mental health, and you know, there is a whole new
world out there for people who are therapists, who see clients,
who are psychiatrists and doctors to put themselves out there
on social media and have to navigate this new landscape

(04:22):
well maybe dealing with criticism that you know, they shouldn't
be doing this, they should be more of an anonymous
person or whatever. And so I didn't want it to
pass us by that I was also talking with someone
who deals with herself what it's like to be out
there in the world on social media and what she

(04:44):
does in order to keep herself in the right headspace,
you know, in terms of putting herself out there and
on there and mixing it up in the internet world.
So I hope you enjoy my interview and com station
with Dr Julie Smith. Will see you on the flip
side of that interview where I will give you takeaways

(05:05):
from this episode and some takeaways my own thoughts about
what it's been like posting this podcast, what I've learned
and what I haven't learned. So Dr Julie, I absolutely
love your book. Why has nobody told me this before?
And before we get into some of the great coping

(05:28):
skills life skills that are in this book. Was there
any personal reason besides the fact that you are a
doctor and you want to get this information out there,
why you framed it this way and called it Why
has nobody told me this before? And yeah, I mean
it's a good question that the title actually came out
of the reason I started doing any of this in

(05:49):
the first place, which was I was I was running
a very small private practice, and lots of the people
coming through for therapy once they had the educational aspect
a therapy, so they learned a bit about how their
own brain works and how they could impact in their
own mood and their own emotions and things like that.
That once they had that information, so many of them

(06:10):
were raring to go, and they were saying, Wow, how
how has no one told me this before? You know,
it's not rocket science. I can put it into my
life fairly simply. But when I do, it's having this
impact and my life is getting better. So this is
probably you know, And these are the things that people
would find really helpful and take away, and they were
the kind of the tools that they would keep hold

(06:32):
of that increase their confidence to be able to manage
whatever came up. So rather than needing to know that
everything was going to be okay, these seem to be
the things that helped people to know that whatever happened,
they would be all right. And you know, it was
the sort of so the title really came out of
an amalgamation of what people used to say to me.
How have I not learned this in school? Why has

(06:53):
nobody told me this before? This is really helpful? So
it was me wanting to kind of put all of
those things into one place so that people didn't have
to You know, lots of people can't have access to
therapy for many of different reasons. Um, but I don't
see why people should have to pay to come see
people like me to find out that basic stuff about
how their mind works. And you mentioned self confidence, and

(07:15):
I think we'll start there. I have been trying for
the whole time that I've I've done this podcast all
year to infuse little moments of my belief which it
didn't come up with myself, obviously, but from learning and
working on my own anxiety that once we start to
build confidence and do things that give us self esteem,

(07:37):
that becomes addictive. So it brings me to this part
of your book, this little mini chapter that's part of
a bigger chapter, why you don't need to work on
your self esteem. I love that. Obviously it's a very
provocative heading. But tell us what you meant by that. So,

(07:58):
I think self esteem it's one of these concepts that's
been um sort of talked about and promoted as um,
you you just have to tell yourself that you're okay,
and and that you have to just you know, like
yourself and praise yourself in a way that is always
positive and sometimes you know, I think self seem is

(08:19):
more helpful if we look at it in terms of
the way that we feel about ourselves can be information,
So it can be you know, whatever we're feeling towards ourselves,
whether it's positive or negative. Something that we do in
therapy is always turned towards feelings with curiosity. So rather
than just trying to change it, we look at what

(08:41):
is and then we get to work on understanding why
it is that way and how that can help us
or whether it's hindering us. So, I mean, it's it's
not UM, it's not unhealthy or disordered. If you reach
a period of your life where you're not okay with
the person that you are or the way that you're behaving.

(09:03):
You know, to have constant positive self esteem would suggest
that you've never made mistakes. Well, you've never um done
less than you're capable of. And so I think it's
okay to say, do you know what I'm not I'm
not being at my best here, or I'm not doing
my best for myself or for my family, or for

(09:23):
my career or for whatever that thing is. It's okay
to feel that dissatisfaction and then look at it with
curiosity and learn from it and move on and progress.
If we're intolerant of the dissatisfaction with ourselves and we
try to sort of convince ourselves that we are we're
okay as we are, then then sometimes that can hinder

(09:44):
our ability to progress and move forward. I think we
have to make it okay to look at um those
feelings that we're not quite satisfied with how things are
at the moment um. So yeah, that's really sort of
what that was about. And and there's a part that says,
you know, someone might tell you who's trying to help
you increase your self esteem, that you know, just make

(10:07):
a list, make a list of what you like about yourself,
and you know that's that's going to help pave the
road to your belief that you can become a success
in the world. And you say that, well, okay, but
we have to go even further back than that. That
societally right, we have a problem with the concept of
success and I you know, we think it means wealth
and winning and standing out. And I have to assume

(10:29):
that someone with anxiety the you know, I had someone
say to me once, stop comparing yourself to people way
above you. First of all, don't compare yourself to anyone,
but stop looking at people way above you, and look
at people underneath you, not to to um feel better
than them or say they're doing something bad, but just

(10:50):
to look how far you've come. Well, how many people
would want to be in your situation in life, whatever
that situation is, Like, what is our definition of success?
I don't think that's a question. I was babbling, But
if there's anything you want to step go into that. Yeah.
And the comparison thing is is tricky, isn't it, Because
we are we are built to do that to a degree.

(11:10):
You know, we're social beings, and so if we are
brains sort of naturally, you know, look outside of us
and compare uslves are we living up to the expectations
of this community or this group that I'm living in, Um,
where do I sit in the hierarchy? And you know, um,
those kind of things. They're all really useful things for
your brain to pick up on, and in terms of

(11:32):
being a social being living in a group. But in
you know, today's society where we have you know how
many billion people at our disposal who have put their
best foot forward on social media or something else. Um,
the things that we would never exposed to before. I mean,
you know, the comparison thing, it's really adaptive for you know,

(11:53):
when we used to live in smaller groups and communities,
it was a survival thing. It helped us to work
out whether we were safe in that community or we
were about to be you know, rejected from it, which
was a real survival issue. And so you know, we
can't eliminate comparison. It's going to naturally happen. And what

(12:13):
I often work with people in therapy on is is
stepping back from that and noticing that natural urge to
do that. So noticing, oh, look, I am comparing myself,
what kind of people am I comparing myself today to today?
So you know, am I comparing up? Where am I
comparing down? What's the impact of that on me? And

(12:34):
why do I feel the need to do that today?
What what's going on there? And always again coming back
to it with curiosity. So rather than setting yourself the
standard of I must not compare myself to anyone, and
or I must only compare um to people who are
worse off than me so that I feel better, or
you know, those sorts of things I think, you know,
those sorts of standards can sometimes set us up to

(12:56):
feel like we're failing all over again, um and and
it just sort of leads to this internal argument where
we're trying to think certain things and not others, and
and actually thoughts just arrive, so that the most helpful approach,
I think is to step back, notice which thoughts arrived,
notice whether they help you or hinder you, and then
practice that ability to to let them move on or

(13:19):
to hold onto ones that are helping you. So, getting
back to what you said about curiosity, Well, before I
say that, I'll just make a quick comment that when
we're talking about comparing up, comparing down and you're writing
this book based on you know something, you're your patients said,
I get so many emails on this show, and there's

(13:41):
always this time and age obsession, and everyone is saying
the same thing no matter what age they are, it's
too late. You know, someone twenty things it's too late.
So when sixty thinks it's too late, it's too late
to change. And it's like we really just make things
up to live by, you know, like there is no

(14:04):
concept of time in terms of getting better or getting
some thoughts. There's no it's too late or you can't
do it because your generation has a little harder with
you know, the economy or something. It's just you can't
either have to do it or not. But yeah, and
the more we kind of buy into those narratives, the
more powerful they are, whether they're helpful or not. And
I guess if you I mean, I love to think

(14:26):
of sort of psychology in terms of um professional athletes.
So we all we all want to function well in
our lives and thrive and be at our best in
a similar way that athletes do. But athletes apply that
to one specific performance, one specific action. And you know,
if if you take I don't know. We've just had

(14:46):
Wimbledon in England. So you know, let's say a tennis
player who is on their way up through the ranks
and they're doing well, but they have a way to go.
If that person starts to you know, let's say that
they take on a coach, if that person started to
tell that athlete that it's probably too late. Um. You know,

(15:08):
it's harder these day to progress in tennis. And you know,
maybe you're ranked it you're you know, one hundred, um,
but you know, let's compare you to the number one,
number two seed. Actually you're really far behind that. That
kind of approach a decent a decent coach would never
ever do, right that because that's going to be unhelpful.

(15:31):
That's going to make that person feel less energized, um,
less motivated to work on their craft. They're more much
more likely to give up. So you have to think about,
you know, what results you want in terms of how
you want to feel, how you want to be living,
how you want to be moving towards things in your life.
None of us can guarantee how much time we've got.

(15:54):
Is just one of those aspects of life that there
is uncertainty there, but we have to live as if
there is a future the same time. So, you know,
if if you want to be applying yourself to life
in a way that enables you to thrive and do
something of purpose and meaning, then we have to start
treating ourselves in the way that a coach would, you know,

(16:16):
and thinking about what kind of results do I want? Well,
you know, actually the way that I speak to myself
and the narrative that I'd bring up for myself is
is going to have a powerful impact too, whether I
even feel like I can apply myself let alone, whether
I go ahead and do it so, you know, I think,
and that's what happens, you know, in in therapy again,

(16:36):
when when people come along, no matter what their goal
is or the thing that they're trying to achieve, if
if those narratives come along, what we always do is
we kind of say, wow, that's interesting. Did you notice that?
What's what's that narrative? What's the impact of that? How
does that leave you feeling? You know, is it always

(16:56):
this way? Do you ever speak yourself in a different way?
So we just turned towards it with curiosity. But when
you do that, you get this kind of bird's eye
view of things. So rather than being in it and
accepting that narrative for fact, we kind of step back
from it and we look at, wow, that's one approach.
How how impactful is that? How effective is that is
that getting you where you want to go? And if

(17:18):
the answers no, then we can start to look at
more effective ways at you know, working with yourself and
relating to yourself that that can help you. And this
brings me back to my original question that I've been
not asking about the curiosity thing. So I'm going to
jump into the mind of a listener who hasn't done
any kind of cognitive behavior therapy work and they have

(17:41):
anxiety that maybe have depression, but they you know, then
that's affecting their self esteem. So when you say, you know, don't,
for the lack of a better term, like, don't beat
yourself up, but look at these thoughts of curiosity, I
assume that that might be hard for someone to do
unless they're being led in a session, because you know,
even looking at something with curiosity to be kind of
left your own devices, it might still be done in

(18:03):
this maladaptive way. So giving a free tip for everyone listening.
I liked how you just gave a concrete example there
of saying, oh, you know, that's interesting, look at that.
And if someone is let's say, sitting there worrying I
can't get help because of this or that, or you know,
you know I should be further along in life or

(18:24):
I whatever that is, for them to stop and look
at that with curiosity, what's a question they can ask
themselves to begin doing that in a way that is
helpful and not more beating themselves up. Yeah, I think
I think you're right. It's really key. It's one thing
to be able to um go into something and and

(18:46):
talk about it. It's another thing to do that in
a way that's productive rather than um just stressful or retroubishizing.
And so I would say, you know, it can that
stuff can be with a therapist. And I think if
there's really complex, different stuff to to talk about, then
it's always recommended. But actually, you know, we've been helping

(19:06):
each other through difficult things for you know, the the
entirety of of our ability to use language. So we
do that through connecting with other people in in a
good way, you know, finding somebody that you trust that
you can talk to and and starting to use words
between you and um. And if you don't have someone
in your life that you can talk to all that

(19:27):
you you know, things that you don't want to share
with another person, you can write them down. You can um,
you can record them in somewhere, whether that's you know,
writing down pen and paper or into your phone or
computer or whatever, or even voice notes to yourself, one
way of kind of getting it out of your head
and in front of you so that you can start
to see it for what it is. Because actually, what

(19:49):
we don't want to do is add perfectionism to the
whole process and say, oh gosh, now I'm being self
critical again. I'm such a being self critical And you know,
you can kind of get into this internal argument for
for having had the thoughts in the first place. It
is really hard to see the wood for the trees
when you're in it and you're feeling strong emotions and
all the thoughts are there. We learn first through hindsight,

(20:11):
so you know, if you start to develop UM, yeah,
it's just so so helpful to do something like journaling.
You know, once a day, however many minutes works for you,
whether it's fifteen minutes, half an hour and hour whatever.
That is just spending time looking over, Okay, what was
if let's say you're trying to be less self critical,
whether any moments today when I was self critical? What

(20:31):
were those things? What came before that, what led up
to that um and and how did it then make
me feel afterwards? And just just by doing things like
that where you start to look at it with a
bit of a bird's eye view, then you build up
that It's almost like a sort of mental muscle, so
the ability to see that for what it is. And

(20:53):
that's easier to do in hindsight because the emotion has
passed by the time you sit down with pen and paper.
But over time you do that and off and you
start to build up the ability to see it for
what it is in the moment. And when we start
to do that, then we open up the opportunity to
choose something different. But it has to start with, okay,
so what happened today, what happened this week? What you know?

(21:15):
And working through it when we've passed all the sort
of high emotion so that we can do that clearly.
We build up the practice by doing it that way,
and then we build up our ability to do it
more in the moment over time. So I'd say, you know,
don't don't feel like you have to suddenly just be
able to do all this stuff. It's difficult. We'll be

(21:38):
right back. You have a chapter in your book being Enough.
And this is an expression that when my therapist used
to say it, I would go crazy because I would think,
I what does that mean? It sounds you say that
some people I think that self acceptance is going to

(22:02):
cause laziness and complacency, And so what what does that mean?
When when a therapist tells us that we have to
accept ourselves and know that we're enough? I think, UM,
For me, it all comes down to um. Not necessarily
sort of being enough for everyone else or society. But

(22:27):
it's a it's a having a sense of worthiness based
on the fact that you're a human being. So it's
having that compassion for yourself that UM. So it's not
it's not lying to yourself. It's not telling yourself everything's fine,
you're doing fine, when maybe you're not. You know, UM.
And I mean, let's say, let's take an example. Let's

(22:47):
say my best friend sort of goes off the rails
for a bit, doesn't study for an exam, takes the exam,
fails the exam, and it was so important to her
to pass that in order to get into her in career.
If I'm going to be that really good friend who
is compassionate towards her, I'm not going to say, hey,

(23:08):
don't worry about it. You know it's fine, You'll be okay,
and that's not not not helpful to her. Actually, the
most helpful approach there is going to be one of honesty,
but with kindness and support. So it's gonna say, Okay,
you know you're upset, this is this is not the
place you wanted to be at. There have been mistakes

(23:29):
along the way. We can get through this together. So
let's you know, it's saying I'm still here for you.
I'm still you are still worthy to me, whether your
behavior was its best or not. It's saying, let's work
through this. It's you know. It's so it's acknowledging that
your worthiness is not based on whether you get everything
done perfectly or you achieve you know, and you become

(23:53):
the best of the best at whatever it is you've
chosen to do. Is saying, Okay, I'm here with you,
and I have your best interesting heart. So I'm going
to help you, um and support you to be the
best that you can be. And I guess that example
is from one person to another, but we can also
do that with ourselves. So it's saying I will have
my own back no matter what, because you know, I'm

(24:16):
with me my whole life and we've got to get
on well. Um. But also but also I'm going to
be my own best coach. I'm going to be super
honest with myself. You know, when we talked about the
tennis example, if if I'm a tennis player and I
miss a few shots because I've made some mistakes, I
want my coach to point that out to me when
I then don't win that match, because we want to
win the next one. Okay, if he lies to me

(24:37):
and says, yeah, you're doing great, you're the best player ever,
it just didn't go your way, then I'm not going
to learn from that experience. So it's about excepting, Yes,
I believe in you and I want the best for you,
and I'm going to also help you learn from this experience.
So I think, yeah, I think self acceptance isn't it
has to be something very different to self indulgence or

(24:59):
anything like that to be have my own best interests
at heart, because I am I am worthy, and I'm
you know, worthy of love and belonging and all those things.
And I'm also going to push myself to do the
best I can do, even when that's the difficult thing
to do. Right And using our example of this coach,
there's a chapter in your book about you are not
your mistakes, And I think what you've illustrated just there

(25:23):
is perfect because Okay, you made some mistakes in this game.
We have to acknowledge them so that we can get better.
But you, inherently, yeah, um, you made mistakes. You are
not a mistake of a human being. These mistakes were
made having nothing to do with who you are as
a person. It could have been the grip on your racket,

(25:44):
the weather, a choice you made, maybe you psych yourself out,
maybe just it happened. You know, there's going to be
those kinds of mistakes too that we can't always control.
But I love that notion of teaching people that never
thought about this before. Yes, you made a mistake, but
you are not your mistakes. And it sounds nice, But

(26:06):
what if someone asks you, well, what is that. I mean,
how could I how could I not be my mistake.
I'm the only one who made it? Like, how do
you wrangle that desire to think that from them? Again,
it's it's separating that sense of um of worthiness as
a human being from behavior. So, you know, behaviors and

(26:30):
the things you do are a set of choices that
you make. And sometimes you'll get that right, and sometimes
you'll get it wrong. And when they're doing all this
stuff on AI and and they'll they'll test a computer
against a person in terms of like problem solving, right,
and and a person is always more likely to give

(26:52):
up before succeeding because each effort towards you know, solving
a problem lum essentially, you get it wrong a lot
of the time. Right when the computer gets it wrong,
they see that as just a sample. It's just one effort.
That one didn't work, Try the next one. That one
didn't work, try the next one. So they keep trying

(27:14):
different things, right, so their effort continues the same all
the time. But they're just constantly trying different ways to
solve problems, and the human being at some point may
start to think, I'm no good at this, I'm not
made for this this, I'm terrible, right, So so we
start that, that narrative begins of I'm not good enough

(27:34):
for this, I'm never gonna be able to do this,
I'm terrible whatever. Whatever that narrative is, that then makes
us more inclined to give up and when actually we
if we were to keep going, we're more likely to
get there. And I think that's a sort of nice
metaphor fusing throughout life that along the way, you know,

(27:54):
no one gives you this manual forul this is how
to live perfectly right, This is how to get everything
right all of the time. So the reality is we're
going to make mistakes along the way. We're going to
make mistakes and relationships and work in learning in whatever
things we apply ourselves to. If we if we hold
onto okay, whenever I make a mistake, it says something

(28:15):
fundamental about who I am as a person, am I
worthiness as a human being, then you're more likely to
give up. Whereas if you're able to separate your worthiness
as a human being from efforts and behavior, then you're
more likely to learn from that experience and try again
with something different. And in the book actually include a
section on values check ins where we look at Okay, well,

(28:39):
not what you want to happen to you, but what
kind of person do you want to be? And how
do you want to apply yourself to life? How do
you want to come at good times and bad times?
And And I think that's sometimes a really nice way
of coming back from Okay, I've I've made him say,
I've done something that I feel terrible about, and I
know I shouldn't be that way. So I'm going to

(29:00):
come back to my values. Actually, what are my values
about the kind of person I want to be? In
that sort of situation? Did the way I behave match
up to how I want to be? No? So how
can I how can I start moving towards that? What
could I do to shift back towards this value that
I have about the sort of person I want to
be or how I want to show up in my

(29:21):
relationships or whatever that is? Um Which is a nice
way of just getting clarity, because if we haven't got
a direction to move towards, then we kind of feel
a bit lost. I feel like we don't give ourselves
that raise, that moment to allow ourselves to ask ourselves
that question. We're so caught up in the minutia of
I made this mistake, I felt this way during it,

(29:41):
I felt anxious, I felt this Yeah, absolutely, I mean,
you're right. It's if we if we see life as
a test of was I born perfect? Or was I
born enough and as good as everybody else? You know,
if we see it like that, then we're always going
to come up against failure and see that as confirmation
that we're not good enough. Whereas if we see life

(30:01):
as something we can constantly work towards and adjust. So
I mean I distinguished in the book between sort of
goals and value. So goals will be something that you
can achieve and once you've done it, it's finished. So
you get there, you know, you pass, your exam, is done.
Whereas a value is more like a path that it
never ends. It's always there, but it's a path that

(30:22):
means so much to you always want to steer close
to it, and life pulls you away from those pasts
at times, right, it just does that, So you know
you might have a value around I don't know, uh,
parenting for examples, the kind of parent you want to be,
but you get pulled away from that for whatever is it?
Maybe maybe your boss gets really demanding and work gets

(30:44):
really heavy, and you've not been around as much as
you want to be, and so that you notice you're
being pulled away from that value. And and then life
becomes this process of noticing you've been pulled away from
You know, you're you're getting too far away from that path,
so you've got to slightly redirect and come closer to it.
And it's accepting that you'll never or you you know,

(31:05):
won't always be perfectly on that pathway, you will be
You're pulled back and forth. It'll be a windy road.
But but it's always noticing where is that pathway? Can
I get closer to it? Can I live more in
line with my values? Um? Given sort of limitations of
my life? Um? And so it's a constant adjustment. So
then you don't need to berate yourself for oh gosh,

(31:26):
you know, I'm I'm I'm not living in line with that.
It becomes a learning experience. Actually, no, this isn't how
I want things to be, because that's really important to
me too. Um, you know, parents in that kind of
way or whatever. And so I'm gonna, I'm gonna makes
some adjustments to move closer towards it. You've given a
great example of how mindfulness meditation for those listening that. Um,

(31:48):
I've done a few episodes where people have mentioned meditation.
But that's a great way to get into that kind
of practice where we're not trying to not if that's
in our head, which is trying to notice them and
and and let them go. And um, we're you know,
there's no such thing as not making mistakes. It's it's
just how do we move on from it? And that's
that very practice is kind of what living is. I

(32:10):
know people don't like to hear that. They want like
a big fix for everything, but yeah, yeah, sorry, yeah no.
It's like that with kind of self criticism and stuff
in therapy. You know, we we don't eliminate it. We
we start noticing it for what it is. Um, we say,
you know, sometimes we'll even name it with with um.

(32:31):
One of what people who've had sort of almost relentless
self criticism, Well, what we need to do is diffuse
from it and see it as one possible perspective that's
not a factual, you know, um, reflection of reality. So um,
sometimes we'll you know, give that voice and that critical
voice and name. You know, it's I don't know, um

(32:52):
on eld girl or whatever it is, and you kind
of and so that when when you start to be
self critical, you go, oh, there she is again. That's
that's that's our critical voice, that's the one um. And
just by doing that, just by stepping back giving it
a label in that way, you you enable yourself to
see it for what it is, which is just one

(33:13):
perspective and often a really really unhelpful one that holds
you back. And you know, if you're it's a bit.
By by giving a name or even a sort of
um a person's name, it kind of it enables you
to see it in a way that I don't know.
Let's say you're you're with your family and you're all
around the table at Christmas time or whatever, and and

(33:35):
there might be someone in the family that always voices
opinions that that maybe the rest of the family don't
quite agree with or that feel it appropriate, and and
you can't eliminate that, and you wouldn't want to eliminate
that person, but you you kind of are, yeah, that's
you know, that's Auntie Janet or whatever. That's what she does.
You know, by by just kind of giving it that label,

(33:56):
you enable yourself to sort of accept that that narrative
that that it comes along, but you're kind of removing
yourself from it, and you're not getting yourself tied up
in whether it's right or wrong or making it go away.
You're allowing it to be there, and you're allowing yourself
to kind of be slightly more free of the impact

(34:18):
that it could have on you. I love this part
in your book when you say confident is not the
same as comfortable. Can you tell us what what that
exactly means? Confident is not the same as comfortable? Yeah,
I mean probably A great example is UM. More recently,
I've been going on live TV a few times and
talking about mental health and things like that, and because

(34:39):
it's brand new to me, UM, it triggers the stress response.
Right you go into a studio, you're not familiar with it.
There's a lot of sorts of you know, loads of
people and big equipment, and so it triggers off your
stress response and you feel, you know, all of those
symptoms of anxiety, heart starts to pound and those kind
of things. And then once you're in that bonts you're

(35:01):
more likely to catastrophize, so I might you know, they're
counting down five, four or three am I gonna go live?
And there's some catastrophizing thoughts say this could go so wrong.
And and while I feel the anxiety, I know that
that stress in my body is my body gearing up
to bring its a game and to perform. And without

(35:24):
that increased alertness that that stress gives me, I probably
wouldn't be performing with as much energy as if I
was just completely chilled out. And I know it's because
it's a novel new experience to me that my brain
is saying, Staler, you don't know what could happen here,
and so um. But I'm still confident in that situation
while experiencing that anxiety, because I know that I know

(35:49):
what I'm doing, So I know that I know my psychology,
so I know I can talk about that kind of thing,
and I've been talking about it for you know, for years,
and so I trust in my ability to do that.
But I also don't need everything to go perfectly right
to be okay with it. Let's say you know, some

(36:11):
I don't know, something awful happened and I tripped over
our live TV and my dress ends up over my
head or whatever. I know, you know, I know that
I am not going to use that as fuel to
get down on myself and um criticize myself and hate myself.
I know that I will whatever happens. I have committed

(36:33):
to having my own back, so I will do what
I need to do to look after myself whether things
go right or wrong for me. And it's that it's
that ultimate kind of self compassion that enables me to
be in really difficult circumstances with this sort of inner confidence.
It doesn't mean I don't feel anxious about oh, something
could go wrong here. That's still you know, that's your

(36:55):
body doing what it does best. That stresses is positive
in that sense, but it enables me to just carry
that confidence that whether something goes wrong or not, I
will deal with it with the best side I can.
We'll continue the interview on the flip side of a
quick message from our sponsors to make you an example,

(37:23):
which I know you just gave me an example. But
when this book was finished, and you know they were
printing it up and printing it, did you have a
feeling that it would be this huge international best seller?
And did that affect you in any way where you
had to do some work to get ready for the

(37:44):
possibility of all of this attention. And then, of course
I assume with that much attention brings criticism. You know,
I wrote that book twenty years ago. No one cared,
do you know. Whatever. People get jealous and they say things,
did you have to do any sort of emotional or
psychological prep to get ready to receive the spotlight or
even the possibility? Oh my god, what if it just

(38:06):
makes it thunk in the woods and no one hears it?
And now, yeah, I mean it's super scary, right, It
makes you really vulnerable, um, you know, putting things on
to paper and putting them out into the world. And
so it was. It was a really interesting emotional experience
in that sense. And and yeah, I guess I did
um look after myself in a sense that I always

(38:30):
stayed close to that that original idea for doing any
of this, which was to be helpful. There are some
really great insights from therapy that just don't make it
outside of the therapy room door for whatever reason, or
or some of them do but aren't necessarily explained in
a helpful way or a way that I would find

(38:50):
interesting or engaging or you know, approachable. And so I
felt like that that my piece of writing was about
me trying to just share good information and be helpful.
And so again, it wasn't who I am, it was
it was something I did. And um, I probably looked

(39:11):
at myself by staying away from things like reviews for
a while. I think my husband looked and stuff. But
but it would have been it would have been me
trying to get confirmation that it was okay. And actually
it was privileged. I kind of saw it as privileged
enough to be able to given given the opportunity to
write a book and have it published was enough for

(39:31):
me and um, And so I didn't then want to
experience that kind of roller coaster of putting myself worth
into the hands of other people based on based on
reading something I wrote. You know. So um that definitely
helped UM. But yeah, I guess nothing can can prepare

(39:52):
you for um the way that it's just sort of yeah,
taken on a life of its own, this book. It's
that's wild to keep it going to the old. Those
are two really important things, because you're not saying, oh, well, yes,
you know for six weeks. I got a bit six
am and I meditated and I didn't eat sugar. It's
just sort of you know, you're living your values. You
you've already set the intention, which is I'm trying to

(40:14):
put things out there that are going to help people.
It goes back to what you said about defining your values.
You know. It's these it's these almost like big girl
grown up things that you talk about in your book
that really are such I think what goes hand in
hand with cognitive behavior therapy and anxiety work and breathing

(40:36):
and all that, it's it's kind of just growing up
a little bit. I feel like this you've given the
closest thing that we have out there to a manual
of kind of how to how to grow up, even
no matter how old you are. You know, and I
think you know that. I think the whole thing was
probably helped by um having children. UM that I when

(40:57):
when I'm facing something that I probably have the urge
to avoid doing altogether because it's scary and it makes
me vulnerable, I it really helps me to return to
that sense of sort of deep compassion that have for
my children. So in thinking, okay, if my daughter was
going through this. What would I want her to have
the strength to do or to say to herself? How

(41:20):
would I want her to treat herself? And how would
I want her to feel about you know, other people's opinions,
positive and negative, and and that always helps me to
just um, sort of re engage with this idea that UM,
I don't I don't get too wrapped up in the
you know, I appreciate all the positive stuff that's come

(41:42):
out of it, but I don't I don't allow it
to change my view of myself in terms of I'm
no better, I'm no different and um. But at the
same time, if somebody picks up the book and hates it,
I'm no better or no different than either. It's just
a piece of work I did, and it's something that
I did with good intentions, trying to be as helpful

(42:02):
as I can UM in the world with what I've
learned so far, and um, and I guess it's that
that sort of solid um confidence that I would want
my daughter to have, you know, I want her to
um be UM, not too rocked by how mean or
how wonderful other people can be. It's just to be

(42:24):
certainly okay, I'm gonna make my contribution to the world,
and and and then so be what what happened? What happens.
I'll look after myself that kind of thing. And lastly,
I do want to talk about your social media presence
and and just social media in general as of course
for good um and I'll be promoting your videos in

(42:45):
the talk up intro that I do. But your your
videos on TikTok are so great. First of all, they're beautiful.
There's so just colorful and really cool to look at.
But you have these succinct metaphors and analogies and helpful
ways of talking to people about different things they may

(43:05):
be experiencing, whether it's stress or grief or self doubt
or whatnot. And look, I know we all have to
be on social media as authors, performers, whatever. I'm on
it too, and I always say I would not be
here if I wasn't trying to promote something. But you know,
I don't always think it's that that cut and dry.
I mean, obviously you want to promote your book, but

(43:26):
I think that obviously, as you know, because you're the
one doing it, these little videos exist on their own.
If if for some reason it didn't duna mean, you
had this book, those videos give me a piece of
advice you know that I can use that day or whatnot.
And to do that, I think is I think great

(43:47):
to flood the internet with things that are helpful instead
of us all going on the internet got out of control.
Is I'll just take our ball and go home. So
do you have any opinions or passions about putting help
on the internet, because I know, not everyone has access
to a therapist, some people may not even think they
need one, there may not be one available, whatever, But

(44:09):
do you think that giving kind of mental health um
advice or talking about it on the internet can be
a force for good? Yeah, I mean I certainly. I
was showing videos for you know, um almost two years
before the book came out, and and so it started

(44:32):
without thinking of it as a sort of any kind
of marketing tool. But it started with Okay, there's this
really helpful stuff in therapy that I'm teaching it to people,
and it feels like they're they're learning this for the
first time, and people should have access to this. So
it really even joining social media started as this kind
of project where it felt like a good thing to do,

(44:52):
to to share this information for free, and where is
everybody's attention, Well, it's over there on that free platform.
So let's try and put something on there. And and
then it became a bit of an experiment to make
it as creative and engaging as possible so that you know,
people were there with their their thumbs or fingers waiting
to kind of scroll onto the next video. And so
it became a bit of a challenge to you know,

(45:12):
with probably the least sexy subjects going, you know, how
can I talk about mental health and keep people watching
and keep people engaged when they might not usually, So um, yeah,
it became a it became a sort of real challenge.
And but obviously in the world of therapy, where a
lot of therapists just aren't even on social media, it
felt like I was domming against the tide professionally. But

(45:34):
I kind of felt like, you know, I can sit
in my office and complain about you know, potential misinformation
or whatever it is that people are accessing on social media,
or I can get in there and like say, add
something positive to the mix and slightly increase the chances
that anyone with those sorts of problems could come across

(45:56):
my information, which is evidence space and you know, from
therapy and things so um and and honestly, I thought
it was going to be one of those projects that
you just did for a while because it felt like
a nic thing to do, and then it would fizzle out.
I thought would be a couple of months max. And
but that the flood of messages and emails that started
to come through instantly every day, I was just overwhelming it.

(46:18):
You know, people say, wow, that's I never thought of
it like that before. This has really helped. I'm sharing
it with my mom or my sister, we're working on together.
Thank you so much. What's their next bit? And people
kind of asking for more and more and more. And
it was that realization, actually, this is reaching real people,
and it's having enough of them an impact that they
take the time to find out what my email addresses,
send me a page about how it's impacting on their life.

(46:41):
I can't stop now, I've got to, you know, I've
got to do this. And so it all started with
that idea of it being kind of free content, and
I still do all of that. You know, we put
out you know, several videos a week as men as
we can um and and the book just became really
that kind of add on where people were saying, this
is really helpful, what's the how to, what's the step
by step, what's the details. Of course, short form video

(47:04):
is a great way to reach lots of people, but
you've only got sixty seconds, so I can't get the details.
So the book really just became about getting the detail
and for the people that really wanted to take it
seriously and and put it into their lives. But I
think that again, being able to convey messages on short
form media like TikTok does prove that you are talking

(47:25):
about simple but not easy, but simple concepts. It's there's
no real mystery here too taking care of your mental health.
It's just it's available to us, just a matter of
if we want to do it. And I do think
it's a great resource also for people who do know
a lot of about this already, but maybe they want
to find a palatable way to show it to someone

(47:46):
they love instead of saying, here's a book. You you
seem like you have some anxiety. I imagine it must
be difficult for in the professional space. It's like, but
you're not recording client sessions on a hitten camera like
you're just talking about what you've learned. Nothing, you're not,
that's it. It's just educating. And I think the more
that we, you know, use simple things like that to

(48:06):
um start conversations about mental health, the more we see
it in line with physical health. You know, it's not
embarrassing to work with your physical health. It's not embarrassing
to say, do you know what, I've got a dodgy nie.
So I'm doing these exercises each day, and then I'm
going to go and visit my my doctor at the
end of the week. That's not embarrassing to do. People
do those talk about these things openly and freely. It

(48:28):
should be the same if you know, I do know
what I've been feeling X what I said this week,
and so I'm going to try this, this and this,
and I'm going to go intee my therapist. People should
feel just as free to talk opening about those things
with people they trust as they are with their physical health.
So I guess that's the dream. Anxiety Bites will be

(48:50):
right back after a quick little message from one of
our sponsors. Heyy, thanks for sticking around for this part
of the podcast. I will be giving some audio bullet
points um of things that we learned from Dr Julie

(49:12):
Smith today in our takeaway portion of Anxiety Bites. If
you want to read the takeaways, you may visit my
website Jen Kirkman dot com click Anxiety Bites and yes,
the direct link is in the show notes on whatever
app you're listening on, and you may look at takeaways

(49:32):
from every episode of Anxiety Bites all there on my website.
So key points I think to take away from today.
The obsession to have good self esteem may not be
that helpful. Self esteem is helpful in terms of the
way that we feel about ourselves in terms of that

(49:55):
that can be information. However, we feel about ourselves can
be information, whether it's positive or negative. It's important to
turn towards our feelings with curiosity before we just reflexibly
try to change them. We should look at what we
feel so that we can get to work on understanding
why that is and how it can help us or

(50:17):
whether it's hindering us. Now, you can do work like
this in therapy. If it appeals to you, you may
want to ask your therapist if you can work on
getting help with learning about how to look at your
thoughts and feelings with curiosity, and if you don't have

(50:37):
a therapist once again, you can get a copy of
Dr Julie Smith's book, Why Has Nobody Told Me This Before?
And then even just going back and listening to this
episode and listening carefully to these takeaways and visiting my website,
you can see the kind of questions that Dr Julie
Smith has her patients ask themselves, and you can start

(50:57):
there with just a daily practice of asking yourself, either
in your mind or in your journal these questions. To
have constant positive self esteem would suggest that you've never
made mistakes or done less than you're capable of. It's
not unhealthy or disordered. If you reach a period of

(51:17):
your life where you are not okay with the person
you are or the way that your behavior, it could
be a moment to admit that you're not at your
best or doing the best for yourself or your family
or your career. It's okay to feel dissatisfaction and then
learn from it and move on and progress. Comparing ourselves

(51:41):
to others is tricky because we are built to do
that as social beings. Our brains do this to see
if we are living up to the expectations of our communities.
It was once a survival instinct. However, we are in
a new moment where we have access to billions of
people on social media and can wrap the compare ourselves
to many people who are only putting their best foot forward.

(52:05):
The need to compare ourselves to others was more adaptive
when we lived in small communities and again when it
was a survival thing at the time. We can't eliminate
comparing ourselves to others because it does just happen naturally.
But what can be worked on in therapy is stepping

(52:26):
back and noticing that natural urge. Ask yourself, what kind
of people are you comparing yourself to today? Ask yourself
if you're comparing up or comparing down, and what is
that impact on you? Again, coming at this with curiosity,
and then practice the ability to let these thoughts move
on and only hold on to the thoughts that are

(52:49):
helping you. Language is important in helping us heal, whether
that's connecting with other people, finding somebody you can trust
to talk to, or you can write your thoughts down,
whether with pen or paper, at your computer, on a
voice memo. As long as you get the thoughts out
of your head and start to see them for what

(53:10):
they are now. I know I said on a voice memo,
as though you write on a voice memo, but speaking
it into something that is going to record your words
so that you can listen back to them later and
here where you are at on a certain day, or
hear what you're thinking sounds like because I'm just interjecting.
Our thinking can seem pretty normal to us until we

(53:31):
see it on paper and sometimes hear ourselves say it.
And again that's if you, um, I want to do
that on your own, if you want to talk to
a friend. A lot of times just we need something
to reflect what we just said, especially if what we
just said is something that is really destructive in terms
of how we talk about ourselves and think about ourselves,

(53:52):
and a lot of times things that just aren't true
that we say to ourselves. If you're trying to be
less self critical, ask yourself at the end of the day,
if there were any moments when you were self critical,
what were those things, what came just before that moment
of self criticism, and how did it make you feel afterwards.

(54:14):
Being quote enough means that you have a sense of
worthiness based on the fact that you're a human being.
Worthiness is not based on whether you get everything done
perfectly or achieved being the best. It's a way of
saying to yourself, I'm here with you and I have
your best interests at heart. When we make mistakes, it

(54:35):
does not mean that we are a mistake and that
it says something fundamental about who we are. It's okay
to say that you've done something that you feel terrible about,
and then it's time to come back to your values
and think about the kind of person you want to
be and how you can start moving towards that. Having

(54:56):
self compassion means that you're committed to have in your
own back whether things go right or wrong for you.
Once again, thank you to Dr Julie Smith for coming
onto the podcast. You can get her book Why Has
Nobody Told Me This Before? Wherever you get books and
visit the show notes to find her TikTok account and

(55:21):
her Instagram account where she does really great, short, really
visually stimulating, colorful, helpful videos about all aspects of mental
health and the way that we think about things and
and these videos give a a quick lesson in how
to reframe a lot of situations that we're in in life,

(55:46):
and on this last episode of Anxiety Bites, I I
don't have any deep, profound thoughts about what this experience
has been like, but I've been completely blown away. And
thanks to my producers j J and Dylan for booking
such incredible guests. But that that the guests said yes
to my request for them to come on the show,

(56:07):
I was really honored and talked to a lot of
people who have long been heroes of mine and teachers
of mine, you know that had no idea they were
teaching me. But one thing I found interesting during Anxiety Bites,
and it had nothing to do with actually getting on
the microphone and doing this podcast itself, was some of
the questions that people asked me. And these are people

(56:29):
I know. A few people I know asked me all
separate times. Is doing the podcast every week something that
actually makes you more anxious? And honestly, I wanted to
jump out of my skin and just I was almost
a little mad at that question. No, first of all,

(56:53):
on nineteen levels, right, you know, you think someone who
knows you a little bit went understand that I started
this podcast because I felt like I had something to offer.
I felt like I had enough anxiety recovery to be
able to speak intelligently to my guests who were going
to be talking about some of the things I had

(57:14):
gone through. But I didn't want to be the expert
and be telling you all what to do. But I
wanted to be able to kind of keep up with
my guests and not be learning everything for the first time,
although I did learn a lot for the first time
through all of my guests, of course, But if it

(57:35):
was something that made me anxious, I would have talked
about it on the podcast and had you you know,
I would have wanted you all to experience me walking
through that anxiety to see what it would look like
as an example of what it looks like when we
walk through anxiety. Now again, the people that know me
that asked me that maybe they don't even listen to

(57:56):
the podcast, and that's fine, but and and one person
that I don't know very well, but they asked me
what I do, and I said, I'm a writer, but
I also put podcast and they wanted to know what
the podcast was about. Blah blah blah. So they asked
the same question, and I think, what's so frustrating about
it is well, first of all, as we know, I

(58:16):
can be easily frustrating. We've talked about my a d
h D diagnosis, and how you know, there's that kind
of like quick to react things. I mean, I didn't react,
but I only reacted in my heart. But it's frustrating
because talking about it is exactly what we need to
do to lessen the anxiety. And and by the way,

(58:36):
maybe we don't even need to think about why we
need to talk about it, oh, because it will bring
down all of our anxiety because we're already putting too
much expectation on it. We should just talk about it
because we should talk about everything. We should talk about
everything that we are experiencing as humans, because all too often,

(58:57):
even the smartest people have told me that they think
they're the only people who feel a certain way. And
it's just almost impossible that you would be the only
human being on earth to feel a certain way. And
if that's true, then you should be being studying in
a lab and you, you know, get an award you
the most unique person who ever lived. But no wonder

(59:17):
people think this because we don't talk about anything. We
don't even talk about our feelings, whether we have a
diagnosable anxiety disorder or not. We just don't talk about feelings.
My biggest annoyance in life is small to right. So
think of how many times a day and he goes, hi,
how are you and you got good? That's not true.

(59:38):
I mean, maybe you're good, maybe there's many details to it.
Maybe you're good because you just had therapy. Maybe you're
good because you just had a change in perspective on something,
but this morning you weren't whatever. I mean, it would
be so interesting if we answered this question honestly. I mean,
it might be time consuming, but in general you can
just see little examples like that of how we're just cultural.

(01:00:00):
You taught two just say good, keep moving. And so
for me, it's like again, if if talking about anxiety
on this podcast caused me anxiety, I would have mentioned
it to you and talked about that. But in general,
we're not trying to avoid anxiety because that only feeds it.

(01:00:24):
I mean, most of our problems, if we were anxious,
comes from not just the anxiety itself, but we keep
the anxiety going, like throwing five logs onto a fire.
We keep the anxiety going when we use our maladaptive skills,
which a lot of times involve avoiding something that makes

(01:00:46):
us anxious. Whether it's you're avoiding driving over a bridge,
or you're avoiding talking about it, whatever it is, it
often involves avoidance, sometimes avoiding even thinking about it, which
is why a lot of people are hesitant to do,
you know, like more kind of exposure therapies like we
talked about on the O c D episode and so no, no,

(01:01:07):
no no, And even if talking about anxiety on this
podcast made my anxiety worse, I would still do it
because it's like I talked about with Josh Anxiety Josh
from the UK on an earlier episode, when I told
him that I'd been avoiding going on this subway line

(01:01:28):
because it goes over a bridge outside and I just
don't sometimes don't like that feeling, or I'm I'm worried.
I won't like that feeling, even though I love being
on a subway and I don't mind, you know, it's
a small height, I don't mind looking over the bridge
over the city. It's really cool. But it was like
I was worried about panicking. I wasn't even worried about

(01:01:48):
the actual thing I was doing. And he said, then
you get back on that subway and you practice, you
practice sitting there having a panic attack, You practice the
feelings of de realization. And again, so any time that
something we're doing is causing us anxiety and not the
kind of anxiety that's really you know, a red flag

(01:02:10):
and is telling us this is dangerous. But but but
what people were asking me about, oh, doesn't it make
you more anxious, It's like, no, it's always an opportunity
to practice sitting with the anxiety, letting it do its thing.
And however you have been um working on it too,

(01:02:32):
let it dissipate or just let it be with you
until it's okay. Because we're going to have anxiety, we're
going to have panic attacks. We're going to have even
if you don't have anxiety or panic thoughts that plague
us whatever it is. I'm not saying the answer to
everything is to just talk about it and sit with it.
But for sure the answer is not don't talk about

(01:02:53):
it and don't do a podcast about it because it
might make you more anxious. And I also think what
they don't realize they were asking is aren't you over
analyzing it? That's what I really I felt there was
no I don't think they were aware of it, but
like an accidental almost judgment on their part. But but again,

(01:03:13):
I don't think they were judging. I don't think they
would think they were judging. But it's that the thing
I've heard before from people when when they would find out,
you know, or you go to therapy every week and
you've been going this long, and it's like, aren't you
done over analyzing everything? It's like, well, that's for somere
not analyzing anything. I'm speaking about things and someone is

(01:03:35):
helping me make choices about how I want to work
through them or how I want to look at things
so that I'm not actually a burden to myself and others,
so that I'm able to get the coping skills I
need to be a productive member of society. I mean,
there's this notion like the more therapy or in the worst,

(01:03:55):
it gets, which is just not true unless, of course,
you are having some kind of psychotic relationship with your therapist.
But in general, there's this notion of if we look
at something, it gets bigger, and I believe it's exactly
the opposite. It doesn't necessarily get smaller, but our perception

(01:04:15):
of how big it is might change. So that's my
parting wisdom, which is although I will not be here
for the rest of the year, you will not hear
new episodes of Anxiety Bites, you can still talk about anxiety,
and I would be honored if you use this podcast
as a way to bring up talking about anxiety with anybody.

(01:04:36):
If if you relate with any episode, you want to
pass it on to someone in order to say to
them this is what I have or this is how
it feels to be me. That's another great way to
use this podcast. The episodes will be up and again
all the takeaways will be on my website. And if
you want to look at audio grams, which is you know,

(01:04:56):
um anywhere from one to three minute audio lips of
every episode and in the audio gram it will tell
you who the guest is, what the episode number was.
You can find all of those on my Twitter which
is at Jen Kirkman. They also exist on my Instagram
and on my TikTok. All of those accounts are at
Jen Kirkman and you can scroll through and listen to

(01:05:19):
little bite sized ones anytime that you want. They're also
on my YouTube page. Um so again. If you click
the link in the show notes to my bio link,
you can get access to all of my social media
and find out where else you can find me. If
you grew attached to me, I would like to keep
up with what's going on with me outside of this podcast,

(01:05:39):
So thanks again for listening, for subscribing, for all of
the great feedback I got, and remember anxiety bites, but
you're in control. For more podcasts from my heart Radio,
visit the I heart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever
you listen to your favorite shows.