Hey everybody, welcome back. I just wanted to take a few seconds today before we get
into it and say thank you for viewing, watching, whatever. I've noticed a fair amount of people
have found the podcast already. I haven't shared it anywhere. I don't really post it
on any socials or anything. It's sort of more something you can really look for if you sort
of need it. I haven't really got that many places to share it. A lot of the groups, the
Metaphobia ones, don't really let you promote anything. So it's basically just what it is.
It's whatever. I don't want to have like, you know, like, I don't want to like make
a thing out of this. I just want it to be like a little thing, little community. I just
want to give my advice and help whoever I can. But yeah, thank you for watching and
listening. Thank you for any ratings or views or anything. I do really appreciate it. Yeah,
thanks. So what I wanted to talk about today was how avoidance can negatively impact a
Metaphobia. So, or your recovery, at least. So I've dealt with this for a while. It's
something I've been dealing with pretty consistently over the years, is avoiding things. I can
avoid, it can be like avoiding certain foods, social events, like people's birthdays, like
a wedding, fucking lunch with a friend, whatever. It can be like crowded shopping centers. It
can be going to the grocery store earlier on in the day when everyone's there and just
going at nighttime. It can realistically be anything. And I find a lot of the time we
give ourselves excuses as to why we do these things, instead of acknowledging that it is
avoidance. We see it as, you know, sort of a quick fix. It's like a bandaid, almost.
It makes us feel a little more in control at the moment, makes it feel like a little
more manageable. But in reality, it's actually damaging us more than it would benefit us.
And I know that firsthand. I know a lot of us are self-aware enough to know that, you
know, it's something you sort of take a while to realize. Because what else are you supposed
to do? Like, I get it. You know, as soon as this sort of phobia hits people, like I know
most of us had moments where it sort of just hit, it didn't just gradually build up over
time. It sort of just came out of nowhere and just like hit us. It can be very challenging
to do anything else but avoid. Like, we don't want to put ourselves in our perceived danger.
So when we are afraid of something we see, it's like it might seem a bit silly. But it's
a real fear to us. That's real. That's real danger. Our bodies see that as something really
scary, even though it's not. It's not in reality. But to us it is. So we will pretty much avoid
anything that could happen or like that could have that happen, whether it's us, someone
else or, you know, anything that has anything to do with sickness. And like I've been there.
I've been there for a while. I've been in that. I still do have a tendency to do that
occasionally. I'll try my hardest not to and I'll acknowledge it and try my best to be
like, no, I know what I'm doing here. I need to stop this and sort of get out of that cycle.
But it can take a lot of effort to do so. But we all know what avoidance is. And we
all do have a tendency to do it. I'd like to say like pretty much all of us do have
a tendency to do that. But how do we stop that? So for me, to stop like 95% of it because
I really don't do it that often unless I'm in like a really bad space, I'm having a bad
luck month or something bad, few weeks out of the year, whatever. Obviously, I've been
pretty open that I'm not doing the greatest at the moment. Just previous times just tells
me that I have done the right things to sort of break that cycle of avoidance in that timeframe.
But obviously, I needed to do something different this time. So gradual exposure to those things
is pretty key. It's pretty obvious. I feel like I sort of waste time making episodes
about these things sometimes because it's pretty much 99% of it is gradual exposure
to things. But specifically, yeah, gradual exposure to the scary situations. So you don't
have to dive into things head first. Like you don't have to just jump straight in and
go to like a hotel in fucking, I don't know, Sydney or something, and leave your house
for two weeks, you know, and just put yourself in like the most panic inducing situation
you could possibly be in. But gradually exposing yourself to a point where you can have lunch
with your friends or you don't want to call out of every time you go out to dinner, or
you don't want to go to dinner and not eat anything or you know, you're scared of that
certain food, you know, whatever it may be that you are avoiding, you can get to a point
where you don't have to do that anymore. And you don't have to be so afraid of that. And
it takes a lot of fucking work. I'm not gonna lie, it takes a lot. It takes a lot of energy.
It's gonna cause you probably a little bit of pain, it's probably going to cause you
some stress, some anxiety, it's probably going to give you panic attacks. Hopefully not.
But it might, you know, it gave me some panic attacks. But then again, I probably didn't
do it the right way, at least the way you should do it, you know, at least 100%. Whatever,
you know, we're past that point now. So I'm going to share my advice with you guys. I
hope that didn't give you like a little bit of doubt or anything. It's all good. Like
I didn't do anything drastic. I just you know, gradual exposure is just the key. So if for
instance that you are trying to go out to lunch with your friends, let's say you can
go to lunch, but you can't eat anything, we're going to start off with something small. You
know, your safe food, if it's on the menu, if there's something on that menu that you
think will cause you the least distress if you eat it, suggest ordering that and just
explaining that you may not eat all of that. You know, you might feel rude to not, you
know, eat all the food, leave it on the plate, but you can take it to go in most places.
Or you know, just it's whatever, you know, maybe you can give it to someone else after
you've eaten what you want to eat, or maybe you just want to eat a little bit and you
don't really care what people think. It's okay to just have bread. If you go from not
eating at all when you go out to lunch or dinner to having a little bit of bread, you've,
that's a win. That's gradual exposure. And continuing to do that on a consistent basis,
trying to arrange something with your friends, family, whatever that you do go out to dinner
once a week. And you gradually try to eat a little more each time. And soon you'll realize,
maybe not soon, it'll take a while, but you'll realize eventually that it isn't so scary.
You know, you might have a few hiccups along the way where, you know, that piece of bread
might make you bloated a little bit or that salad might, you know, the dressing on it
just didn't hit right and something about it is making you feel a little weird. That's
probably going to happen, but it's going to be okay. You've got your coping mechanisms
and if anything fails, you've got your mints or your gum or whatever. You've got that.
So you've got that there. You've got your backup. You're going to be okay no matter
what, as long as you just try. And same thing if you can't go out to dinner, for example.
Like this is all just an example, you know, you can utilize this in like, like you can
use this in any situation, like gradually exposing yourself. You just have to make your
own steps for it. It's sort of hard to judge where you want to put those steps, but it
is solely the key to beating basically anything like this. So if you can't go out to dinner,
for example, you're going to gradually drive closer and closer each time where you're going
to meet friends closer at a closer coffee shop or down the road or at your house. Have
them come over and cook dinner for them. You cooked it so you know it's a hundred percent
safe. You can get them to check the chicken or whatever or the steak or do whatever they
need to do. And if they need, you need them to leave, I'm sure they'll understand because
they're your friends, you know? So there's always ways around what you need to do and
how you can break it down the smaller steps that are a little easier. So you don't have
to throw yourself directly into the deep end because you really do not want to do that.
Apart from that, another thing I found that was sort of hard was having my mindset be
the way it was and trying to change it into a slightly more positive one. Because I was
downright negative a lot of the time. Like I was pretty defeated most of the time. Especially
if I couldn't do something that day, I would completely just ruin myself. You know, like
if I was like, I need to go to the supermarket, but I'm avoiding it because I don't want to
get sick. Like I'm perfectly capable of doing it. I did it yesterday, but today for some
reason I can't do it or like whatever it might be that I was trying to do. And my mindset
was pretty broken around that. Like I was, you know, just being so negative for literally
no reason because there was no one that was benefiting. It definitely wasn't helping me.
In fact, it was making me worse. You know, like I tried to sort of, instead of seeing
it as like something really scary, I tried to view it as a natural response to something
that I couldn't necessarily control. I tried to not take it as like I'm just like paralyzed
with fear and more like I am like scared of something that doesn't quite make sense to
me, but that's okay. It's okay that I feel this way right now. Like I'm probably going
to feel this way again, but I am strong enough to deal with these symptoms. I don't need
to listen to the voice inside my head that tells me that I'm going to get sick every
time I do anything. You know, I'm just not interested in that. And it's hard, you know,
sometimes you are going to listen to it and you're going to take your eyes off the road
or whatever, metaphorically, and you're just going to get stuck talking to yourself, that
little monster inside your head more like it. And you're going to be like just having
a conversation with something that's trying to keep you home and keep you safe in quotation
marks, keep you certain, but you can't be. It's just not that, it's just not something
that can exist. You can't be a hundred percent certain. It's just life, you know? And the
more you disengage the conversation with that monster and you do not take everything that
happens as a major negative thing or treat it as the worst thing that's ever happened,
the better you will be at dealing with those things when they come in the future. It'll
take a while to sort of expose yourself to that even, to a better way of thinking. Like
I'm not even completely there yet. I know it's working, it's slow and I fuck up sometimes
and I have conversations with that monster and I sit there and I, these symptoms, I'm
like, fuck, why me? Why me? I can't believe this is happening to me. Why won't it stop?
Like all that negative shit, it's not helping anything. I've got to be strong. Even if I
don't fully believe I'm strong enough, I'm going to sit there and tell myself that I
accept the symptoms that I feel and I will be okay. Because I've been okay more times
than I've been sick. And I know that. And sometimes that just gives me enough edge to
do the thing I need to do and sometimes it doesn't. But the more you do that, the more
practice you have, the better you're going to get at realising that and recognising the
signs because every time you feel sick, you probably feel the same. Like I'm at the point
where I can tell that I'm not going to get sick but I definitely feel sick. You know,
like I know that I'm not going to, you know, nothing's actually going to happen but this
feeling I have inside me is not good. And it's sort of, I'm sort of more scared of the
feeling of it rather than the actual action, you know, and I'm sure a lot of people probably
could actually, I don't know, I really don't know if anyone could relate to that but I
know for me, I'm more scared of the actual nauseous, like the nauseous feelings rather
than anything else. But aside from that, yeah, it's like the mindset we all probably need
to work on. I know we are pretty hard on ourselves. We like to blame ourselves a lot. We like
to be really mean to ourselves and we like to sort of catastrophise everything. Is that
how you say that? Let me know. I don't know. I don't know if I pronounced that right.
Whatever. But we all like to make things a lot worse. And it's hard not to do that, especially
when you have an anxiety disorder and you have a phobia and those two mixed together.
It's pretty much a recipe for overthinking and making everything worse than it is. But
if you can sort of pull yourself back to reality, if you can use your mindfulness, you can use
your deep breathing, you can use all the skills that you've learnt over this time because
I know you've learnt things. Okay, you might feel like you've gotten nowhere but you have.
Every day you get a little closer, even though it's only a little bit. So use those skills
you've built, the healthy ones, to remind yourself to bring yourself back down to earth
just enough. You might even be able to do that thing that you were trying to do. Take
a minute, take 10 minutes. It doesn't matter what you do. But as long as you're being nice
to yourself and you are like, but as long as you're being nice to yourself and you are
trying to change that mindset just a little bit. And if you find yourself, you know, not
sticking to that positive mindset or that not so negative mindset, then pull yourself
up on it. If you catch yourself doing that, make sure to hold yourself accountable. Hang
on, I know what I'm doing right now. I need to stop this. I know what I need to do. And
you should be right going from there. I know it's really confusing. I know I'm confusing.
But I promise you, putting those things into practice and doing those things for yourself
will do nothing but good. Some other things that helped me were celebrating my progress.
So I've talked about this before, but writing my small wins down or my wins doesn't have
to be small, big, whatever the fuck, it doesn't matter. Any type of win you have. And as I
said, I've gone over those in another episode. So so be sure to check that one out. I think
it might have been the one before this one. I don't remember the title. Sorry. But yeah,
definitely try to do that. I know it can be a bit like weird to sort of write down those
things or acknowledge those things like you had a shower today and it might feel a little
weird, you know, like everyone has to show it's normal, but it can be a step. It is a
step. It is most definitely a step and it's a step in the right direction. Anything like
that. Doing the dishes, taking the dog for a walk, just going outside for a few minutes.
If you know you couldn't do that yesterday and you did that today, or even if you did
do that yesterday and it's hard today, still it's going to get easier. You just have to
keep going. I promise. Another thing is definitely be patient with yourself. You are the person
you are trying to heal. It's you against you. So you need to be okay with that. And you
need to be okay with yourself taking the time that you need to do these things. You are
not going to get out of this in a week. You can make progress in a week. It's going to
be slow progress. It's not probably not going to feel like much or it might feel like a
lot. I don't know. It depends on your situation. For me, progress is always pretty slow. It
always seems to feel like it takes a while for me to get to a different point with my
metaphobia like with the things that I do, the exposure, everything. With enough repetition
and enough just doing it, everything I've talked about today, it does improve. And definitely
seek out support with a therapist or someone that you can talk to, whether it be a friend,
family member, partner, anyone you can. It is definitely a good idea to reach out for
help when you need it. Never be afraid to do so. There are people out here that can
support you and your family, friends, whatever they do love and care about you. And if you
don't have many friends, neither. I don't really either. But I do have a few. There
is one or two good ones there that I really can depend on and trust. So definitely look
for support and seek it out when you do feel like you need the help or you do need someone
to talk to. There is places that provide a service where you can call, text, come in,
whatever. I don't know how it goes for your country specifically, but I know here there
is things like that. So I'm sure that goes for everywhere. But most importantly, just
keep your head up a little bit. I know it might be a hard time for you right now. I
know shit might just feel like it's not getting any better. You know, every day might feel
like a repeat of the last day. It might feel like you're in a cycle even. It might feel
like you have some good days, but then you have some bad days and it seems like it never
ends. Trust me, I've been there. I know. But it does end and it does get better. But you
just got to keep your head up. Keep fighting. Keep strong. You'll be okay. Okay. You will
beat this. We all will. But that'll do it for this episode. It's like three o'clock
in the morning here. I did start recording this earlier, but I had some things come up
weirdly. So it is what it is. I'm going to go to bed, but I will just let you guys know
you can find my socials at the bottom if you do, at the bottom of the app you're using,
I guess. If you do want to hit me up for any reason, like if you want to come on the show
or you've got some questions or anything or I've said something that you don't quite agree
with, feel free to tell me why. I'll hear you out. I'm not going to argue with you about
it. I'm more than happy to hear other people's opinions. So it is what it is. Please leave
a rating and a review if you can. And I will see you in the next episode. Until then, keep
safe. See ya.