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Nov. 7, 2023

Reframe Your Approach to Anxiety w/ Dr. Martin Seif EP 52

Reframe Your Approach to Anxiety w/ Dr. Martin Seif EP 52

Struggling with intrusive thoughts and anxiety? You're not alone. Join us this week for a great conversation about anxiety and intrusive thoughts with special guest, Dr. Martin Seif, a distinguished clinical psychologist and anxiety treatment specialist.

We talk about the intricate world of intrusive thoughts, drawing a clear line between fleeting and persistent intrusive thoughts. Dr. Seif sheds light on the paradox of thought suppression, explaining why efforts to evade certain thoughts only make them more persistent.

Ever found yourself seeking reassurance over and over? We delve into how this seemingly harmless habit can spiral into an addictive pattern, further fueling anxiety.
We'll share insights from Dr. Seif on how this cycle influences relationships and discuss the notion of the 'sticky mind' in the context of rumination.

Also, get ready to reframe your understanding of anxiety management with the concept of 'therapeutic surrender,' a potentially liberating approach to dealing with anxiety. We'll explore strategies to change attitudes and perspectives, encouraging a lean-in approach to anxiety rather than avoidance. Tune in for a wealth of information perfect for anyone navigating the turbulence of intrusive thoughts and anxiety.

If you need further support, check out the Anxiety and Depression Association of America. 

Books by Dr. Martin Seif:  As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying orders.
Overcoming Unwanted Intrusive Thoughts
Needing to Know for Sure

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The information on this podcast or any platform affiliated with Top Self LLC, or the Top Self podcast is for informational and entertainment purposes only. No material associated with Jealousy Junkie podcast is intended to be a substitute for medical advice, diagnosis or treatment, Always seek the advice of your p...

Transcript

[00:00:00] Shanenn Bryant: Today I have Dr. Martin Seif who is a clinical psychologist, also a anxiety treatment specialist and author of some really great books, 

[00:00:13] Shanenn Bryant: "Overcoming Unwanted Intrusive Thoughts", "Needing to Know for Sure". an d several others. So you know that I will always talk about my experiences, what I've tried, what worked for me, what didn't work for me. But I'm not a licensed professional. So I also bring on guests like Dr. Martin Seif to talk about these things. since they specialize in them. 

[00:00:42] Shanenn Bryant: So I always recommend, you know, try one thing. See how you do with that. If it doesn't work. Try something else. 

[00:00:51] Shanenn Bryant: So today, Dr. Seif Is going to talk about intrusive thoughts and what we can do about anxiety. 

[00:00:58] Shanenn Bryant: So let's dive in. 

[00:00:59] Podcast Intro: Welcome to Top Self, the podcast dedicated to relax your mind, achieve change, and become a healthier, more present you. Are you ready to move past the daily anxiety? Comparing and doubting yourself and feeling like you're not enough? I'm your host, Shanenn Bryant, and I've ruined many good relationships because of my jealousy and stayed way too long in some bad ones because of my insecurity.

[00:01:32] Podcast Intro: But I stopped letting fear drive my actions, and now, I can't wait to share with you as I dive into these emotions, shed light on how they might be impacting your life, and uncover strategies to break free from their grip. It's time to start living a life of confidence. So get ready to ignite your self worth and transform your life, because my friend, you are worthy.

[00:02:00] Shanenn Bryant: We talk a lot on this podcast about intrusive thoughts. I certainly experienced it myself when I was in the throes of deep extreme jealousy. So to talk about this in a little bit more detail, 'cause I know this is something that you suffer with quite a bit. I have with me, Dr. Martin, Seif , has a couple of books too, "Needing to Know for Sure". And then "Overcoming Unwanted. Intrusive Thoughts". I know that you are a master clinician. Have spent what, more than 35 years developing treatment methods for anxiety disorders. Um, also the founder of Anxiety and Depression Association of America. Welcome, Dr. Seif.

[00:02:42] Dr. Martin Seif: Thank you. It's a pleasure to be here.

[00:02:45] Shanenn Bryant: Yeah. Well, I also know you specialize in helping people, like the fear of flying and bridge phobia, all of that, which both of those I can certainly understand. But I want to talk to you about, intrusive thoughts.

[00:02:58] Shanenn Bryant: And if we could just start with what are intrusive thoughts? How would you describe those?

[00:03:03] Dr. Martin Seif: Okay, well, um, I want to make a distinction between passing intrusive thoughts and unwanted intrusive thoughts. 

[00:03:11] Dr. Martin Seif: So everybody has a kind of a flow of conversations that go through their head, and sometimes we get these thoughts that seems strange or silly, or. Where the heck did that come from in some way?

[00:03:24] Dr. Martin Seif: Most of the time we forget about them, quite honestly. unless they're funny or particularly creative, and we think about it in some way. So those are intrusive thoughts that everyone has. I'll give you, an example of intrusive thought. I live in the Manhattan area, we have subways.

[00:03:39] Dr. Martin Seif: You're on a subway platform, you think, you know, I can push that person over the subway And you, you say, well, you know, you don't, you don't take it that seriously. Oh God, I can't believe I think that, Just thoughts. And they kind of strike you as odd. Sometimes the thoughts are naughty, sometimes they're funny. Anyway, those are passing intrusive thoughts, and we're gonna not talk about that because we also have unwanted, intrusive thoughts. These are thoughts that somehow get stuck in our head and they're upsetting, they're distressing.

[00:04:09] Dr. Martin Seif: We wanna get rid of them, okay? We think to ourselves, for example, wait a second. Do I really care about this person? Do I not care about this person? Does this person really care about me? Do I not care about me? And these thoughts don't go away. They continue and they reverberate, and they loop around and around.

[00:04:28] Dr. Martin Seif: In our head, though, that's an unwanted, intrusive thoughts. And the problem with unwanted, intrusive thoughts is that the content of them always are very disturbing. And there's a reason for that because we get stuck on thoughts that. we don't particularly wanna have in some ways. So, when we have a thought, I know that you deal a lot with relationships, you deal a lot with people who are struggling in relations or maybe struggling with their feelings or emotions or thoughts in relationships. And they might have a thought that they don't wanna have. Do I care about this person? Does this person really care about me? Even though there's virtually no evidence to back that up.

[00:05:12] Dr. Martin Seif: We're talking about someone who's completely ignoring someone.

[00:05:15] Dr. Martin Seif: We have a thought. We don't like having that thought. So, we try to push it away. And the problem with that, as soon as we try to push a thought away, the thought comes back and gets stuck. And I can, you know, I, if I say to you, listen for the next five minutes, you can have any thought you want. Don't think about pink elephant.

[00:05:35] Dr. Martin Seif: Okay, don't think about pink elephants for the next five minutes. There are millions of thoughts. The probability is that you're not gonna succeed in not thinking about pink elephants. And here's this. The harder you try, the less successful you're gonna be. So, if I say to you, bear with me, I have a little machine that could actually read your mind.

[00:05:56] Dr. Martin Seif: And if you think about pink elephants, I'm gonna hurt you and every person that you really care about. If that were true, there's zero chance of you not thinking about pink elephants. So, the problem is when we're dealing with anxiety, often effort works backwards. And when people get a thought that they find disturbing, they try not to have it, and then it comes back more.

[00:06:20] Dr. Martin Seif: That's a stuck thought. That's an unwanted, intrusive thought. Long answer to a short 

[00:06:26] Dr. Martin Seif: question. 

[00:06:27] Shanenn Bryant: No, that's, that's great. Thank you so much for explaining the difference too. 'cause I think we have all had those, I know I've certainly had conversations with my husband like, don't think I'm a, don't think I'm weird, I don't know why I thought that.

[00:06:39] Shanenn Bryant: Um, and so I think we all have those and then sometimes we feel really guilty because we had 'em, or like, what's wrong with me that I was

[00:06:46] Dr. Martin Seif: Well, here's the point. Here's the point. My sense is, and I can get into it, that there's no reason to feel guilty for having a thought. And here's the reason why. Because thoughts. A lot of our thoughts are under our control, and believe it or not, a lot of our thoughts aren't under our control, and there are times that we really like that.

[00:07:08] Dr. Martin Seif: For example, when we're being creative. 

[00:07:11] Dr. Martin Seif: We can't sit around and say, wait a second. I think I'll have a creative thought. Right now. You don't do that. It pops into your mind if you're trying to write something, if you're a poet or if you're an artist. these creative thoughts just come out in spite of us.

[00:07:23] Dr. Martin Seif: So, there's a part of our brain that's and a part of our thinking that's in our control and a part that's not in our control. And we have to understand that. I tell patients often. , your brain is not as smart as you think it is. Or another way of looking at, it's an old saying, the mind is a great servant, but a poor master.

[00:07:43] Dr. Martin Seif: So, you have to understand there are limitations to what our mind can do and how much control we have over it. 

[00:07:49] Dr. Martin Seif: 

[00:07:49] Shanenn Bryant: Well, so we have those, we know those, those are the ones that probably someone listening into this podcast not really worried about. Where it does get hard for us or disruptive in our lives are the unwanted that you talked about where, um, especially for the, someone listening to this podcast, and I certainly did it myself. Kind of making up a story that we're thinking and having these thoughts of, oh my gosh, my my husband has somebody new that he works with and oh my gosh, they're probably talking every day. They're probably getting close now. They're probably at lunch, they're probably having dinners, and then it just continues to go and go and go where we don't have any evidence of that. But it is something that, that we do often. And then you have that anxiety as if it's real.

[00:08:47] Dr. Martin Seif: What you're describing is a creative imagination and all of us should appreciate the fact that we, we are creative, and our imagination is creative.

[00:08:56] Dr. Martin Seif: But there are times that we get, um, embedded in our imagination, okay? And, and, and lose track with the basic realities that we're paying attention to. So, for example, there's a big difference between, being married to someone who comes home with lipstick on their collar and, you know, uh, late at night and drunk and claims that they were working late or something.

[00:09:23] Dr. Martin Seif: Because at that point there's some evidence to say, wait a second, what's going on at, at the very least to kind of wonder what's going on. So, there's real life, and what you are describing though is something which a person becomes absorbed in their imagination based on virtually no evidence at all, except for the fact that they're working with someone in some way.

[00:09:46] Dr. Martin Seif: And a person like that can really get involved and start to believe their imagination more than their perceived facts. And that's the sort of situation that creates a lot of anxiety. What happens then is a person then begins to look for reassurance. Okay? So, what they do, they get very anxious about it.

[00:10:08] Dr. Martin Seif: They might check their cell phone, they might check the emails, they might check, they might call people around. What they're trying to do is to relieve their anxiety about what if something problematic is happening with my spouse or my lover, or my husband

[00:10:27] Dr. Martin Seif: my wife, or whatever, in some way. The problem is that reassurance like that in the long run just reinforces the need for more reassurance.

[00:10:37] Dr. Martin Seif: Think of reassurance as a form of a drug. and the more you take it, you take a drug, you feel good for a while, and then the drug wears off and you need it again. And I bet anyone who's gone through a reassurance thing, either checking the phone, feeling terrible, checking their text messages, going through all these things, they feel relieved for a minute.

[00:11:02] Dr. Martin Seif: or for a mid or for a day or for a short period of time. And then doubts start to come. Yeah. Did I check it? Is it possible? Is another phone, is this going on in some way? They get more anxious about it, and they need to check again. So, there's this constant sort of anxiety over what if something bad is happening based on their imagination?

[00:11:22] Dr. Martin Seif: A need for reassurance. Get reassurance. You feel better. That's a little bit like. You're hit your drug hit in a certain way. You feel chilled for a while, and then you get a rebound effect. And so, it continues a cycle of anxiety, reassurance, anxiety, reassurance with your imagination, playing a big role in it in some way.

[00:11:45] Dr. Martin Seif: Is that, is that familiar to.

[00:11:47] Shanenn Bryant: Absolutely. so, this podcast used to be called Jealousy Junkie for that very reason.

[00:11:52] Dr. Martin Seif: Well, interesting. We, because the book that you had mentioned, where we called it needing to know for sure, but we used, we wanted to call it initially the Reassurance Junkie. 

[00:12:02] Shanenn Bryant: Oh

[00:12:02] Dr. Martin Seif: But, but the editor didn't like that concept in some way, so we had to change it. But people become reassurance junkies. And not only that, they, they get really concerned about it and say they're, they're, they, they ask their spouse for reassurance and it's, it becomes such a bother that their spouse actually starts to move away from 'em in some way. And that makes em even more anxious because they say, oh my God, the person really does, the person really is moving away from it, and they're not aware that it's the constant request for reassurance that's actually instigating that behavior.

[00:12:38] Dr. Martin Seif: All started by being absorbed in their imagination of the story that you just like the story that you've created.

[00:12:46] Shanenn Bryant: Yeah. So where would you ha like that person that is doing those sorts of things? It really is starting to affect their daily life. Um, and I certainly struggled with this. I mean, I had constant anxiety. My stomach hurt all the time. I felt like I was on edge. I was super busy. I always say, man, if I could have gotten paid for all the time that I was seeking reassurance. Um, I, I would, I would be very well-off right but, uh, so someone who is doing that, how would you classify that? Um, because I think there's, some people seem to have different, um, opinions about it, but would you classify that as a form of mental illness? OCD. Just anxiety.

[00:13:35] Shanenn Bryant: Where do you feel like that falls?

[00:13:36] Dr. Martin Seif: Well, look, I'm an anxiety disorder specialist, so I never use the word anxiety. It's like an, it's like an Inuit. They don't actually, they don't have a word for snow. They, they, they have 11 different words. Snow is a general term that we, they have a term for dry snow and wet snow and heavy snow, and light snow and driving snow and whatever.

[00:13:56] Dr. Martin Seif: So, to me, anxiety is too big a characteristic, but it's too big a classification. But I would say certainly it's an uncomfortable feeling for a lot of people. I think one of the things that goes on, for whatever reason. People often who have this issue, often have what I'm gonna call a sticky mind. And a sticky mind is are people who tend to loop about things in their mind.

[00:14:25] Dr. Martin Seif: Think about it a lot. You know, there's some people that goes in one out the other, you're not that So you tend to think of things, and you tend to ruminate, you tend to loop around And those thoughts have the capacity to drive up your anxiety, especially when the thoughts start to go into the catastrophic direction.

[00:14:46] Dr. Martin Seif: You know, it's what if you know it's not, what if this great thing happens? It's what if this is a problem? What if we can't work this out? What if I mess up this? And it's, by the way, these, what if thoughts are not just about one's spouse? You also can start to loop in your mind about do I care enough about him or her?

[00:15:08] Dr. Martin Seif: Is this the right person for me? Am I being unfaithful if I look at someone at work? Am I, I mean, so the concept of, are my motives pure enough? Are his motives, are her motives pure enough? These are all the substance of loopiness. Now I don't think it adds too much. To add a diagnosis, but certainly there are some people who have what's called generalized anxiety disorder, which is just a fancy term for worry disorder.

[00:15:38] Dr. Martin Seif: And a worry disorder is where you're always what if-ing and you know, and worried about it and sort of answering it. In some cases where it becomes very explicit, it can, it can sort of loop on onto obsessive compulsive disorder.

[00:15:55] Shanenn Bryant: Mm-Hmm.

[00:15:55] Dr. Martin Seif: People used to think that obsessive compulsive disorder was obsessions were thoughts and compulsions were like behaviors where you're washing your hands or checking something.

[00:16:05] Dr. Martin Seif: People now know that most OCD is entirely in your head, so any back and forth that goes on can meet the criteria for obsessive compulsive disorder, technically both OCD and GAD, obsessive compulsive disorder and generalized anxiety disorder. Are considered to be anxiety disorders so that gives the answer to it in some way.

[00:16:28] Dr. Martin Seif: However, a lot of is situational and depends on the particular life that you live in. The partner that you have are, are most of the people who watch your podcast or who are involved in your podcast, are they people who are in a relationship or moving into a relationship or out, or moving out of a relationship or?

[00:16:49] Shanenn Bryant: Yeah. Most of them are in a serious relationship and, and, and so what I hear and what I experienced myself was, you know, kind of in the beginning of the relationship, I was the coolest girlfriend. Like I was the coolest one you wanted to have until I started to have feelings for someone, then all of the jealousy would start.

[00:17:10] Dr. Martin Seif: Because the thought, what if really creates a fear, okay, that I could be hurt, whatever reason. I mean, there, there, you don't have to explain if you're, if you're, if you have feelings for someone, you don't have to explain the idea that. If something went wrong, you would feel hurt. That's obvious about that in some way.

[00:17:29] Dr. Martin Seif: The real question is how do you cope with that idea? Do you cope with it by, by either asking for reassurance from someone else, or do you learn to cope with it by saying, wait a second, this, this involves my own insecurity and my own anxiety, and I have to learn to sit with it and become more able to cope with the difficulty or the discomfort of the uncertainty and also to make a distinction between what’s a realistic uncertainty and what is an unrealistic uncertainty. I'll give, I'll explain to you what I mean by that. 

[00:18:06] Dr. Martin Seif: Lots of people don't realize that we have lots of different emotions about the same thing at the same time. And that's part of being alive and part of being a human being.

[00:18:17] Dr. Martin Seif: I tell my patients, listen, if we didn't have lots of different feelings about the same time. Things would be so simple. We'd say, I feel this way about this. I feel this way about this, and I feel this way about this, and I'd be out of a job. There would be no need for my work. And your podcast would fold also. 

[00:18:35] Dr. Martin Seif: But that's not the way it is.

[00:18:37] Dr. Martin Seif: We have a complex of emotions, and we have to kind of sort them out in some way. 

[00:18:42] Dr. Martin Seif: And the question is, we need to sort them out by teaching ourselves to somehow cope with the discomfort of uncertainty rather than relying on someone else to reassure us 

[00:18:59] Shanenn Bryant: Yeah. I love that. Discomfort of uncertainty. Um, and I always, I refer to it a lot as like sit in the suck. like you were talking

[00:19:07] Dr. Martin Seif: What did you say? Sit in the, what'd you say? Sit in the,

[00:19:11] Shanenn Bryant: Sit in the suck.

[00:19:12] Dr. Martin Seif: yeah, I 

[00:19:12] Shanenn Bryant: like this sucks. I hate it. I'm uncomfortable. But just because you're uncomfortable doesn't mean that there's something to do about that always.

[00:19:24] Dr. Martin Seif: Actually because, and so we, we used to say, what you wanna do is surrender the struggle, uh, against uncertainty. But patients hated that because they would say, oh, we should just give up. Is that it? And they say, so we thought up with the term therapeutic surrender. That's, that sounds a little more sophisticated.

[00:19:42] Dr. Martin Seif: It's really the notion that, that if you look, when you're dealing with anxiety. Remember I said initially that effort works backwards. The harder you try not to have a thought, the 

[00:19:53] Dr. Martin Seif: it is. Anxiety has what's called paradoxical effort, which is really, people have to understand that it's, it's a difficult concept in general, the more effort we put towards something, the greater the chance of success, either in achieving something at work or. Even moving something, if you wanna move, you have to put effort into it. In order to do something in anxiety, it works entirely opposite. So somehow people have to learn not to put effort into it.

[00:20:28] Dr. Martin Seif: They have to learn to leave it alone. And it's true when we're dealing with anxiety, it's, it's a true example of less is more. Okay. So, once you understand that this is your anxiety, what you wanna do is less. Okay, and that's the concept of therapeutic surrender. It's hard for us 'cause a lot of us are type A 

[00:20:50] Dr. Martin Seif: people, you know, we kind of figure we gotta do something about that.

[00:20:53] Shanenn Bryant: Right. Well, So part of, I think that really struggle, especially for, um, those who are jealous in relationships. And I can even give an example and there, I did a podcast episode about it. My husband and I went to Costa Rica this past January and have done a lot of work getting over my jealousy. I'm, we have a completely different relationship, but it still creeps in there from time to time, especially In Costa Rica on the beach

[00:21:21] Dr. Martin Seif: I know.

[00:21:22] Shanenn Bryant: right? Whoa. exactly. So, um, there was an uncomfortable moment and I kind of lost it a little bit, what, you know, I was able to recover

[00:21:36] Dr. Martin Seif: Well, what can I ask you? What do you mean by when you say you lost it? What? 

[00:21:40] Dr. Martin Seif: What did you do? 

[00:21:41] Shanenn Bryant: What happens a lot, and I have a ton of conversations, um, with people that This is the scenario. So they get jealous. They're in this situation, let's just use my example. We're on the beach. Um, there is the woman in front of us, you know, butt cheeks out the whole, you know, bikini type thing. And I became really jealous. And a lot of times what happens is this, this almost uncontrollable where we get to the point we say pretty nasty things

[00:22:14] Dr. Martin Seif: When you, can I ask you, when you say you got really jealous, what, are you jealous that he was looking at her? Or that she was what? When, like, so I would say, I'm sorry. Is that all right? Did I ask you this question? 

[00:22:25] Dr. Martin Seif: So you say you, you, when you say you got jealous, what, what, what were you first aware of in some way?

[00:22:32] Dr. Martin Seif: You know, like. You saw You saw this woman who was, and everything is, a lot of things are hanging out, and then what happened then?

[00:22:39] Shanenn Bryant: Yeah. So where, when it happens, and we know that, um, it is, it is not necessarily rational, but it's the thought of, oh my gosh, he's looking at her, he finds her attractive. He finds her more attractive. I feel embarrassed. I feel, um, you know, the, the comparison piece and. Then it's like we don't, we get really jealous and don't wanna be in that situation.

[00:23:11] Shanenn Bryant: I don't want him to even see her. Um, because it makes me feel a certain way about myself. So then it's almost like this temper tantrum reaction where like, I'm gonna get angry with him, you know, I'm angry with him. And then there's usually an argument, you know.

[00:23:27] Dr. Martin Seif: So, so, so my sense would be the goal that you have, We want changes in attitude and changes in perspective. And so I would say the first thing is to help you. I mean, if you, you're not on my patient, but if I a patient like you, I would help 'em to try to change their perspective. And what that means is to take a. Mindful metacognitive perspective to be able to say, wait a second, my imagination is popping up right now, and it's making me think that he finds her more attractive.

[00:24:03] Dr. Martin Seif: And the fact is, who knows? that's what's driving my anxiety right now, and I, and to say, wait a second, that's my imagination. So let me just observe that in some way, that's the first thing, that's the change in perspective rather than, which is to be able to kind of, sort of float above yourself a little and to watch your imagination start pumping you up even without change.

[00:24:27] Dr. Martin Seif: Now, the change in attitude is that. We have a kind of a built-in desire to avoid feeling anxious. And so we explode in some way better to get into a fight than 

[00:24:37] Dr. Martin Seif: to to be anxious. So the change in in attitude is to say, I'm going to lean into my anxiety. I'm gonna let it be, wait a second, I'm having this imagination.

[00:24:48] Dr. Martin Seif: It's making me anxious. I'm going to just let it be. I'm gonna let, I'm gonna see what happens with the anxiety. And here's the thing. If you don't fight it, it tends to go away much faster than if you fight it in some way. It's truly the notion where the less that you do with it, the more it is the way that we say it.

[00:25:09] Dr. Martin Seif: The way that my professor would say it is that it's the attempts to avoid anxiety that keep it going. 

[00:25:16] Shanenn Bryant: What would be some examples of avoiding it?

[00:25:19] Dr. Martin Seif: Having a fight would be avoiding it. Let's go. Let's leave. Um putting her down. These are all way or to, to tell yourself, oh, I don't care about that. Who caress about, I mean, basically in, in any, or to, or to change the subject or to throw sand in the face or throw sand in her face.

[00:25:38] Dr. Martin Seif: I mean, anything to do that somehow gets you. All these things are avoidances of anxiety in some way. And what we're, what we'd like you to do is just leave it alone because your, our body react, our body feels better, much faster when we leave it alone in some way. Think of anxiety as a wave that kind of comes, 

[00:26:01] Dr. Martin Seif: oh my God, I can't stand it.

[00:26:03] Dr. Martin Seif: I can't, and then you kind of, the wave passes and at some point. You start to say, okay, whatever, you know. Sorry, just a thought. That's alright. I can handle it

[00:26:14] Dr. Martin Seif: 

[00:26:14] Shanenn Bryant: it's okay. That I feel uncomfortable.

[00:26:17] Dr. Martin Seif: Yes. And the discomfort tends to go away, uh, if you leave it alone in some way, you know? Um,

[00:26:24] Dr. Martin Seif: it's all, it's certainly a right to feel uncomfortable. I would just phrase it that way, you And, um, the discomfort tends, there's a, there's whole theories about how our brain works, but the concept is that if you allow yourself, if you expose yourself to it and let your, and let it go away on its own, that your brain actually creates neural structures, which, which makes the, uh, jealousy, in this case, the jealousy, anxiety, less intense, you 

[00:26:55] Dr. Martin Seif: When you imagine doing something in the future that's going to be difficult for you, we look at the avoidance that is the avoidance nature of anxiety. We do have lists of do's and don'ts, but really, I think the general concept is we're trying to get people to communicate in a way that essentially doesn't implicitly ask for reassurance but ask for factual information.

[00:27:21] Dr. Martin Seif: In some that's, that's having to do with needing to know for sure. Um, you know, we've written a bunch of books, do's and don'ts. I, I, I think that we try to avoid don'ts. try to avoid don'ts because whenever, if we're saying we want you to allow yourself to experience this whatever through and whenever we say don't, then it suggests that people are going to try to avoid it in some way.

[00:27:50] Dr. Martin Seif: So it's truly less is more. Yeah,

[00:27:53] Shanenn Bryant: It's like the pink elephant. If I say, don't do this,

[00:27:56] Dr. Martin Seif: exactly. Don't Exactly. It's exactly like that.

[00:28:03] Shanenn Bryant: This was very helpful um, and I am gonna link to all of your books in the show notes.

[00:28:10] Dr. Martin Seif: Yeah. And linked to, um, there's an organization called the Anxiety and Depression Association of America. Um, many, many years ago, I was one of the five or six or seven founders. It's a big organization, helps people with anxiety. And, uh, depression and it has a lot of resources on it 

[00:28:29] Dr. Martin Seif: It's a good website. 

[00:28:31] Shanenn Bryant: ​That'll do it for another episode of top self and till next time take care and remember you're not alone.

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Dr. Martin Seif

Author

Dr. Seif, Ph.D., ABPP is a master clinician who has spent the last thirty five years developing innovative and highly successful treatment methods for anxiety disorders including: Panic Disorder, Agoraphobia, Specific Phobias, Social Anxiety Disorder, and Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder.

A founder and founding board member of the Anxiety and Depression Association of America, Dr. Seif also served on its Clinical Advisory Board.