Program note: If you have not read or listened to edition 191 of The Anxious Morning, check that out before reading or listening to this one. It will matter.
If you are reading this, there is at least some chance that you are hoping that I will give you tips, techniques, and a program to follow to feel better or recover from your anxiety issues. I get it. I’d want that too.
So do I provide those things? Yes. And no.
I’m almost militant in my insistence that this is not a method or a program and it certainly isn’t the “Drew method” or “The Anxious Truth program.”. Why am I giving you what looks a whole bunch like a recovery program, then insisting that it isn’t?
Scale. It’s a matter of scale. What scale are you working at when you’re asking for tips, techniques, steps, and programs? On a larger scale - the scale of days, weeks, or months - I might accept your assertion that the content I create looks a whole lot like a program to follow. I’m explaining what the issue is, providing a framework to follow in terms of solving the problem you’re trying to solve, and giving you a rough blueprint you can follow on any given day.
What about when you work on a smaller scale? A scale measured in seconds or minutes? Then the “program” breaks down. It stops being a program. We run out of steps and tips and techniques to follow. I run out of words and instructions to give you. To bring back yesterday’s story about building a hose, at some point, “Let go” and “Hit the nail” become the same thing. It can’t really be made any more detailed or complicated than that.
Letting go might be really hard for you, like driving a nail might be hard. But sometimes we have to do things that we find really difficult. We try them. Again and again. We work at it. We recognize that we’re doing something new to us and we give ourselves time and space to get used to this new thing. What’s important to accept here is that just because a thing is really hard does not mean it can be explained more, broken down, or made easier to do through instruction. Sometimes the doing - even if that doing requires effort and bravery - IS the instruction. The doing is the step you are looking for.
So is “The Anxious Truth” a program for recovery? It is. And it is not.
When you’re sitting at your kitchen table reading my books and mapping out your recovery on the large scale - in a moment where you might be feeling motivated and optimistic which is therefore a moment that is not terribly urgent - this may very well be a recovery program. But in a much smaller moment where you are afraid and trying to hang on so tightly - a VERY urgent and important moment in your view - the program breaks down. There is no program.
Let go. Surrender. Allow the worst thing. Accept that it is there and that you must experience it and move through it. That’s it. That’s the program at the small scale in the most urgent moments. If I had a program or 400 pages worth of words that you could use to let go or surrender, I would give it to you. But I do not. Nobody does.
The “program” is certainly designed to help you recover. But really, recovery happens in the moment where there is no program at all. Only doing things second-by-second. Like driving a nail, just much scarier.
This is why I am so adamant that this is not a program or a method at all. Because in the moments that count, it really isn’t. And until someone pressed me on this, I didn’t really understand it myself. Hopefully this thing that I’ve learned about my non-program will help you apply my non-program in some way.
Thanks for listening.
192. Part 2 - Tips, Techniques, Steps and Programs for Getting Better