HealthyGamerGG - Therapist Teaches You How To Open Up

Episode Date: September 20, 2022

Dr. K dives into how to open up. He talks about understanding what you feel, starting small, common threads in people who are afraid to open up, and more! Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/healthygamergg/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

So for a lot of people who are afraid to open up to other people, what we discover is that there's somewhere in their life where they did open up and they like weren't really, they didn't get the answer that they were looking for. How to have the courage to open up. I've noticed for a long time that I have a habit of bottling things up and dealing with things on my own, such that in the past I was prone to easily isolate myself and dismiss any uncomfortable emotions since I didn't quite understand the act of acknowledging and being present with it. I believe I've gotten better since I found a system where I would immediately journal my thoughts and

feelings away whenever things arise. I also resist the urge to isolate from other people, however. However, I still have a super hard time allowing myself to be vulnerable and ask help to process out my true feelings. I still have the strong sense of not wanting to burden people about my problems, nor I never think they're worthy to be shared since I feel silly to do so. It's like I know the steps on how to make myself feel better and rely on myself, but why can't I also allow myself to lean on someone else too? I feel like I know the right answer to this already. It's like I've read so many self-help books, but I know I can't do everything on my own.

Maybe this is my way of sharing and wanting some form of help, or just to process things out. I already have the urge of wanting to delete this post later and process it by myself. But it'd be nice if there are tips to challenge the thoughts of not wanting to be vulnerable with people. So I love this post from our Discord. I love it because this is exactly what I'm happy to see in our community. Which is like, okay, so we start off and we don't know our emotions. I don't know how I feel.

right? I'm like unfamiliar with emotions. I like don't like the way that I feel. And so we start like working on our emotions internally because that's where emotions exist, right? They're in here. So I start working on emotions and then I learn how to journal and stuff. I become more emotionally aware. And even in the case of this person, they also become aware that I want to delete this. But there comes a point where like as we're exploring our emotions, there's like this very big divide. There's like a cliff. I'm totally fine exploring a moment. motions by myself, but I can't lean on other people. I can't open up to other people. I can't burden other people, right? It's all got to be by myself. And if we pay attention to this post,

you may be similar in the sense that you're also thinking about like self-help books, right? How do I do this on my own? I become emotionally aware on my own, but I still can't open up to other people. So what do we do about this? So what I'm going to do is we're going to talk a little bit about why this happens, and we're going to share with y'all five things that you can do. And the fifth of which is quite revolutionary. The first four may be things that you've sort of thought of or worked on in some way. But it's really the fifth one that I think is going to be quite different, okay? And it's going to completely reconceptualize how you think about this. The other cool thing is that the fifth one will help a lot because it'll transform the way that you think about this.

So number one is be aware of your own emotions. So this person has already done this. So they've sort of recognize that in order to have a discussion with someone else about emotions, we have to be aware of what we're feeling, right? It's very hard to have a discussion with someone when we don't even know what we feel. That's actually part of the reason that we have discussions with people, by the way, is to figure out what we feel. But it starts with some amount of awareness of your own emotions. So like this person does, you can journal or something like that, but just start to like think a little bit about, okay, like what am I feeling right now? Is it physical? Is it mental? Where in space is like, you know, am I feeling a negative emotion or a positive emotion?

Why am I feeling this way? So you have to have some amount of awareness of emotions. Second thing is you've got to be, you've got to start small. So when it comes to awareness of emotions, there's this thing called the emotions wheel, or the feelings wheel, which someone made up, I don't know exactly who. I've seen lots of iterations. And so there are all kinds of like emotions, right? So we can figure out negative emotions, positive emotions.

There's stuff like shame, anger. But in terms of anger, that anger can, there can be all kinds of anger. There can be a sense of feeling betrayed. There can be self-loathing. There can be anger towards other people. There can be feelings of unfairness. There are all kinds of emotions, sub-emotions that we're not really aware of at the very beginning.

Most of what we feel is angry. So if we want to understand our own emotions and how to be able to open up, we've got to kind of start small and kind of meet ourselves where we're at. So I'd start by even asking yourself something simple like, do you know, are you experiencing a positive emotion or a negative emotion? What's the color of the negative emotion? Is it angry? Is it frustration?

Is it shame? Is it fear? Is it sadness? Is it worry? And this is where there's a tip I'll give you, which is that oftentimes frustration is the first thing that we feel. But frustration is usually an umbrella emotion that covers other emotions. So when I say, I'm frustrated, you know, like I'm frustrated by not being invited to parties.

I'm frustrated that my friends always forget to invite me. But if you really dig underneath that, that's an umbrella emotion. What I really feel is like lonely. What I really feel is devalued. Right? So there's a lot of stuff kind of under there. So start small, start wherever you are, and start to kind of dig in a little bit slowly.

Okay? Other thing to consider when it comes to emotions and opening up is that when we feel some kind of negative emotion, we feel vulnerable. and when we feel vulnerable, we feel like hiding or isolating. This is like a primordial human response. Anytime we're vulnerable, we're going to feel like isolating, pulling back, you know, because we don't want to show those kinds of things.

Even in terms of if you look at like the anthropology, like anthropological perspectives on mental health, historically we've hidden mental illness. Why do we have a stigma against mental illness? It's because for a long time, like historically, like when people are mentally ill, we sort of consider that a vulnerability. We sort of consider it shaming. And so we try to hide those kinds of things. So, you know, it's okay to talk about positive emotions. Yeah, I'm happy today.

I'm courageous. You know, I'm a good person. This is a success. But when it comes to sadness and being angry and being frustrated and being ashamed, we oftentimes don't share those kinds of things and we feel like isolating. Now, there's a good reason for that. it's not just anthropological, it's not just historical, it's also because oftentimes when we share negative emotions, what's the response that we get?

We paradoxically frequently get an invalidating response. Oh, I don't feel like I'm attractive. And then your friends, because they're your friends and they care about it, it's like, oh, you're crazy. You're beautiful. How could you not feel attractive? You're so amazing. How could you be so stupid that you don't realize

how beautiful you? you are. What is wrong with you? How can you be so idiotic? You're amazing and you don't even see it. So it's paradoxical, but oftentimes when we share negative emotions, oddly enough, people are actually quite devaluing. So that's where like we sort of learn this. It's kind of weird. So when you're trained to become a psychiatrist and we learn how to talk to people who are suicidal, when someone says, I'm suicidal, what we sort of get trained in is not to say, oh, you're, you're, you're crazy. Like, you have so much to live for. Don't you see that? It's to actually ask them, hey, what makes you suicidal? Like, help me understand why you're thinking about ending your life.

And they'll say, well, my kids don't, you know, my kids don't respect me. I'm losing my job. I feel like my wife and I are growing apart. And it's only a matter of time before she divorces me. And then, like, interestingly enough, sort of the right thing to say, sort of textbook-wise, is to say, wow, I can totally understand why someone in your situation would feel the way that you do. because it sounds like you're being separated from your family. It sounds like you're afraid of a divorce. It sounds like you care a lot about your marriage and you're afraid it's going to end. So we can be very validating, which is not usually how people respond to us when we share negative emotions.

So there is this very natural instinct, and this is the third thing to understand, is that the instinct is to isolate, especially when we feel vulnerable. So the next thing that we can kind of look at is understanding why we have a fear of opening up in the first place. So for a lot of people who are afraid to open up to other people, what we discover is that there's somewhere in their life where they did open up and they like weren't really, they didn't get the answer that they were looking for. So sometimes we grow up in households where people are not very emotionally supportive and it's actually like very devastating to express emotions. So, you know, for example,

I remember when my dad passed away, like all of the men from our social circle told me to be strong. And they're like, you know, be strong, Aloka, be strong, be strong, be strong. Now is time for you to be strong, be strong, be strong. And I was like, I didn't really understand what that meant. I didn't understand what being weak in the situation. Like, what does that mean? Right? Is that like when people come over and I'm carrying a pitch of water, pitcher of water over to like serve people who are visiting after my dad passed away,

Does being strong mean I'm going to fill up four pictures and like carry four pictures because I'm going to be strong? Or does it mean like what does that even mean? So oftentimes, especially in my culture, it sort of means like don't express negative emotion. So for people who have difficulty opening up, let's understand this. So if you are trying to open up to someone else and you feel afraid, where does the brain and the mind learn fear? Right. So we have some kinds of instinctive fears. So like human beings are instinctively afraid of like snakes, for example.

But when it comes to interpersonal interactions, a lot of the fears that we have are based on our experiences. So if you want sort of understanding and you want power over your ability to open up, which you've really got to understand is where does this come from? Where did you learn to be afraid of opening up? And as you sort of discover that, it can change your perspective in the moment because then you realize, okay, like, I actually don't have a problem opening up to this person now. There's a part of my mind that is warning me based on the past that sometimes this hasn't gone well. So, like, I acknowledge that now, like, my mind is on high alert and it's actually looking out for me.

Once you recognize that that's what your mind is doing, it'll help you open up a lot. The last thing that we're going to talk about, and this is the one that's kind of bizarre, but will hopefully change your perspective completely. So when we look at this post on opening up, let's take a quick look. I want to point out a couple things to you. The first is how to have the courage to open up. So how does this person think about opening up? They think about it as a weakness that needs to be overcome, right?

There's negative emotion right here. Second thing is I have a strong sense of not wanting to burden people about my problems. And that's very common, right? I don't think they're worthy. So I don't want to burden another human being. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to journal. I'm going to become aware. I want to feel better and rely on myself. So if we look at opening up to other humans, it's kind of weird, but we think about it as an internal thing. How do I have the courage to open up? How do I overcome this weakness? I don't want to burden other people.

So here's the key thing to understand. When it comes to opening up to other people, it's no longer a strong. solo game. Suddenly there's a relational component. So when you say, I don't want to burden other people, that's where the way that you resolve that is not through courage. You don't overcome your fears of burdening other people. There's a relational component. So what you do is talk to them. Ask for permission. Ask for feedback. Hey, is it okay? Ask for permission if I talk to you about something that's like I'm struggling with right now. So the whole point of opening up to another human being is it's a relational, there's a relational component to it.

It now involves more than one person. And what we try to do is solve all the anxieties in our head without ever interacting with the other person. And so here I am trying to overcome all these like, oh my God, I don't want to burden people. How do I get over this feeling of not wanting to burden people? Whereas like, you can deal with it very, very easily if you just ask them, hey, when I talked to you last week about, you know,

how I'm having trouble. with my significant other, did you feel like that issue was silly or did you feel burdened by it? I sometimes feel guilty because, like, I'll talk to you about things and, you know, I don't think, like, you can actually do anything to help me. Is it okay if I have that kind of conversation with you? How does it feel when we talk about something like this? Do you feel burdened? Do you think this is silly? Like, what's going on there? Like, how, what's your experience of this conversation? And so the cool thing is that you don't actually have to have the courage to like overcome all that stuff. Since this is relational, you can just ask the other person, hey, is it okay for us to talk a little bit?

I've got something going on right now and I kind of need to unload. And what's really cool is that this person is actually doing this. I feel like I know the right answer. I've read so much self-help and do everything on my own. Maybe this is my way of sharing or just to process things. I already have the urge of wanting to delete this. Basically, this person is asking for permission on Discord. They're practicing it right here.

Is it okay that I'm doing this? And so this is the key thing to really understand about having the courage to open up with other people is that, like, at the end of the day, you don't have to figure it out all on your own. That's the whole advantage about having a relationship, is that you can ask for permission. And once they give you the green light, it'll do so much for your internal anxieties. because anytime you're struggling to open up with someone, I don't know if this kind of makes sense, but you're struggling with two things.

One is the thing that you want to talk about, and one is the additional emotional burden of like putting it on someone else. And so the reason it's so hard is because you're carrying both of these emotional burdens. There's not only the original thing, which is hard to deal with, there's like, now I've got to burden someone else with it,

I got to feel silly, and there's all this other crap. And this is what actually gets in the way. And so by sort of asking for permission, by asking for feedback, by acknowledging that this is a relationship by not trying to solve all this on your own, you can actually deal with this completely, just by asking for permission, and then like, you come over here and then you can share your thing. The cool thing is that when you do this, it actually can deepen your relationship, right? So that's where afterward there should also be feedback from you. Hey, I really appreciate

you talking to me last week. I felt a lot better. Thank you so much. So instead of feeling guilty, appreciate. And then say, hey, my door's always open. If there's anything that you want to talk about, you know, I'm happy to listen. And then, like, now you've done something really cool, which is that you've crossed this bridge, and then you've left it open for them to cross back. And that's how you deepen relationships. And as you form deeper relationships,

it becomes easier to open up. Right? So that's how to really get the ball rolling. So it's a really common problem that people have in terms of not having the courage to open up. And it starts with some pretty simple stuff, which is all internal. right? So having awareness of what you're feeling. Being able to sort of identify, sit with what you're

feeling, et cetera. Discovering kind of, is starting really small, sort of discovering the source of discomfort, discovering where you learned that opening up is a bad idea. But the thing that's really going to be a game changer is that oftentimes as we open up, there's a relational component that we don't consider. We think that overcoming this fear of opening up is something I have to do it on my own. But the whole point is that when we're opening up, there's a relational element to it, there's another human being,

and they can help you with that. So ask for permission, ask for feedback, express appreciation. That'll make it way easier. Questions? Lesbian 04 is, say, I'm so happy I discovered Dr. Kay a few days ago. Welcome, lesbian 04.

Okay, that's a good question. The legend of Mercurius is saying, how do we motivate someone else to open up when they seem closed off or isolated. So, when someone else seems closed off or isolated, we don't necessarily want to motivate them. What we want them to do is feel safe. So what I'd say is, like, the way that you get people to open up

is by opening a door for them and letting them walk through it if they want to or not. You just want to make it clear to them that the door is open for them. So oddly enough, like, I think, it's almost like instead of motivating them, we want to be like a vacuum. Right? So we want to create like a negative space where they can come in and fill it in if they feel like it. So it's about making them feel safe as opposed to motivating them to open up.

The other thing that you can do if someone's closed off is just ask them, hey, I'm noticing that you're a little bit quieter today. Do you just need a little bit of space? Are you like doing okay? Or is there something that, you know, you're anything I can help with? So just kind of don't assume what's going on, but just point out the observation. Like, just make an observation, which is that, hey, I'm noticing you're quieter today. If there's something going on, happy to help.

And if you're just kind of like kind of taking it easy today, that's totally fine, too. Right. So we want to be like, we want to open the door. We want to give them the opportunity to walk through it. I wouldn't go digging and trying to get them to open up. So Rockwell is asking, what if I don't ask for permission? If I open up, throw my stuff at someone else and only ask how they felt about it at the end, that's totally fine. Right?

So it's not ideal, but I think it's completely acceptable. So like if you unload on that, I wouldn't ask them right then and there. I'd actually circle back the next day and say, hey, I kind of opened up, you know, in the future. Like, maybe I should check in with you before I do that. What was that like for you? That's what I... So like, here's the thing. A lot of times when it comes to interpersonal interactions, we try to be perfect from the get-go.

Right? Like, we try to be like, okay, I'm going to do A, B, C, D, E, in this order, and it's going to be perfect. The thing about relationships is that, like, people don't behave perfectly. It's totally fine to go back later and try to fix something if you think it was a problem. Now, that doesn't, well, is some of the damage done? Sure, there are people not going to like it, potentially. But, like, the strategy that you want is the one that's going to, you know, be the best. for the most number of people, which is like, you can always apologize for something later if you

don't think you handled it well. If anything, it'll signal to the person that you're thoughtful about things aren't going to let things slip under the rug and that you value the relationship. If someone comes to you and says, hey, I'm sorry, you know, if I screwed something up, just kind of checking in. Like, how is that person going to receive that? Hopefully they'll receive that as, oh, like, this person values this relationship and they're thoughtful about it. And they'll hopefully try to maintain it. How do you deal with the guilt of shutting someone down who opens up too much with you. Great question. So I think that's where, how can I say this? So sometimes we have a friend who opens up too much. And we have to remember what the role of the

relationship is. So if this is a friend, friendships tend to be reciprocal. And sometimes what happens is people who have emotional needs will get their emotional needs met through, a relationship, which is part of what a relationship is, but sometimes it becomes a primary part of the relationship, or it becomes this is what's more devastating, the primary way we get our emotional needs met. So I'll give you all just a simple example. I've worked with some people who are kind of like co-dependent, or at least one person is dependent. This person has a strong feeling of loneliness, right? I'm terrified of being alone. And so what they can do is actually smother their partner, because then their romantic partner is not just a romantic partner.

The romantic partner has the burden of solving my loneliness. And once I place that burden on them and they set any kind of limits with me, they're going to feel guilty. Because now if they say no to me, now I'm feeling alone. Whereas the real problem is that the romantic partner is there to alleviate some amount of loneliness. But when it comes to our own emotional needs, another human being is not responsible for all of them. And so if you're shutting someone down who, you know, is opening up too much to you, that's where you've got to start thinking a little bit about your own emotional needs and what's the limit of this relationship.

And it's okay to like, you know, like have a boundary around that and still care about the person. This is what's really confusing to people is a lot of times people will feel guilty for setting a boundary. So I care about my patience a lot. Like, you know, we do a lot of really, really deep work together. But I also don't invite them over for Christmas because that's not appropriate. And some of them are alone during Christmas. And do I feel a little bit guilty for that? Yes.

And at the same time, there's like a boundary between, you know, my family and my patients, even though I care about them both. And so in that same way, like, you can set limits on people and then you may feel guilty. And that's where like I don't think it's, you know, it's about understanding, okay, why do I feel guilty? How did we fall into this situation where I have become the primary source of like venting for this person? The other reason that you can feel guilty is because oftentimes when someone becomes like, when someone is venting on you in a very dependent way, it doesn't actually improve their life over time.

So they'll come to you, they'll vent, vent, vent, vent, vent, a day goes by, a week goes by, they're venting, a month goes by, they're venting, six months go by, they're venting, a year goes by, they're venting. a year goes by, they're venting. And like, they've started to become so dependent on you as an emotional, like, dumping ground that they don't actually take the steps in their life to prevent those emotions from piling up again. Does that make sense? And so that can be like, then you can start burning out as a friend. And then you have to set limits on that because, like, they're totally fine because they've found someone to take out the trash. So they keep on accumulating single-use plastic.

at an astronomical rate because they've got you come into their house every day and emptying the trash. And then, like, if you don't show up to empty the trash,

then their house fills up with trash. And then you feel guilty because you've somehow stepped into the role of, like, being responsible for keeping their house clean.

So it's really tricky. But try to understand how did this pattern develop. What is really my role in this relationship? Some of it is emotional support, but is this reciprocal? Is this person becoming

becoming dependent on me. Right? And the other thing to acknowledge is that you have emotions and needs too, and you don't have to be a dumping ground for someone else. Okay. So for meditation for the day, I want to share something cool with y'all. Okay, so we're going to do a meditation today about emotions. Okay. And what we're going to do is recognize the physicality of emotions. So, a lot of people don't really know what they're feeling. And that makes a lot of sense because we don't really teach people how to name what they're feeling, how to isolate what they're feeling. So it turns out that there's a paper from the, our favorite journal, P-N-S, the proceedings of the Natural Academy of Sciences, okay, that talks about the maps of subjective feelings. So the cool thing is

they looked at a hundred emotions. And what they did is actually look at where these emotions or experiences map onto the body. So blue is negative emotion, for example. So social exclusion is felt here and here. Ostracism is felt here and here. Panic is felt somewhere else. Disgust is felt somewhere else. Despise something.

Hostility. Losing is felt somewhere else. Shame is felt somewhere else. Do you guys see how each of these is actually like a little bit different? So what we're going to do today is y'all can, this is a paper that's in the public domain, so y'all can download it. It's called Maps of Subjective Feelings. But there's also other kinds of emotions that we can feel like, you know, illnesses will create certain things.

There are also places where we feel homeostatic feelings, like, like hunger, thirst, feeling full. And then there's some like other weird things like being dazzled, sleeping, vitality, urinating, forgetting. Where do we feel forgetting in our body? Where do we forget in our body? There are cognitive experiences as well. There are positive emotions.

You know, like where's laughing? Where is happiness? So laughing is more in the belly. Happiness is more in the heart. Pleasure is actually more in the head. love is also like more diffusely through the heart. Sexual arousal is, I guess, not surprising in the loins. Where do we feel longing for?

Social longing. So all of these things, there's actually been a study where they've mapped this to a particular part of the body. Like that's pretty cool, right? So what we're going to do is actually combine this with a meditation. So what I want y'all to do, the next time you're trying to understand something about emotions, What I want y'all to do is adopt a meditative posture and notice where in the body you feel the emotion. So there are two ways to do this practice.

One is when you're feeling emotional, if you can actually take a break and do a quick meditative practice, what I do is sit up straight, okay? Back straight, neck straight, head straight. We're going to close our eyes. And we want to be careful here because we don't necessarily want to do a whole lot of controlled breathing. because there's evidence that shows that breathing is associated with the alteration of emotion. This is why we'll sort of tell people to take three deep breaths and things like that. So we want to be very careful about controlling our breathing. So we don't actually want to breathe deep.

We just want to close our eyes and notice whatever sensations arise as we feel a negative emotion. So this is going to be tricky because when you close your eyes, the first thing that you're going to want to do is breathe. So if you find that closing your eyes alters, your brain. breathing, you can actually open your eyes and just focus on the sensation. So try to really do a scan from the top of your head to the bottom of your feet. And just notice what signals you're getting from your body in this moment. And then we'll also go into the second way to do this practice, which is if you're not feeling emotional in the moment, you can recall a period of time, hopefully recently,

where you felt very emotional and really try to remember what it was like to be in that moment. And what I want you all to do is be very methodical. Start at the top of your head. Kind of notice, in my head, am I feeling something? And go to the throat, even top of the throat, middle of the throat, bottom of the throat. Move to the chest and try to notice, is it more on the left or the right? Is it more on the outside of the chest or more centrally? Does you feel it more in the front or in the back?

And then move down to the stomach, the abdomen? And where do you feel it? in the abdomen. Once again, more on the outside, more in the center, top or bottom, deep in the stomach or more on the surface. Where exactly is the pit of your stomach? Where do you feel the butterflies of your stomach? Then you can go to the limbs, arms, legs. You may notice tension in the back, the desire to clench your fists, and even in your body, maybe like in your back, the desire to curl in, just notice what, where you scan your body

and try to find whatever feeling you can put your hands on. And remember, you don't have to figure out what the feeling is. Just scan the body. And now that we're sort of, you've isolated it, you may notice, first of all, that this process alleviates it some, which is okay. Side benefit, I suppose, this alleviates your negative emotions or positive emotions. Remember, you can do this with negative

or positive emotions. So if you all have a pet or a child or something like that or a loved one and you're kind of laying down and they're like laying with you and you feel peaceful and content, like where do you feel that contentment? If you're laying on the beach and you're content, where does that contentment exist within you? And then the cool thing is that you all can go to this paper from the proceedings of the Natural Academy of Sciences. And then you can map it on. And you can see, okay, like, where is this emotion actually existing? So where did you feel it? So we may notice that, like, aching, shivering, itching.

So these are all physical sensations. But that social exclusion and ostracism have slightly different locations, right? Loneliness, depression. Even loneliness is like a little bit different. So social exclusion is a little bit more faint. loneliness is a little bit more in the head and stronger over here. Ostracism is stronger over here, but a little bit less so in the head. So even between these three kinds of things, we can actually feel like subtle differences.

And this is a great way to like understand what your emotions are. Because if you're someone who struggles to like put names to your emotions, even, you know, ostracism versus social isolation versus lonely, we may jumble all those three things up together. So by using techniques like this, we can start to increase the sophistication of our emotional measurements. And as we increase the sophistication of our emotional measurements,

we'll gain awareness over them. And if we agree with the yogis, awareness is the first step to control or power over something. And the simplest way to understand that is like even if we're talking about emotions, when we numb things through practices like video games, pornography, and whatnot, substances of abuse. As we numb those things, all those feelings kind of go away. But even though they go subsurface, they continue to exert

their presence on us, right? They continue to impact our motivation. They continue to make us isolated because we're ashamed of how we compare to other people at this party. And they continue to subtly influence all aspects of our life. And so if we want to reverse that process, if you want to get over this, it starts by sort of understanding your emotions. The other really cool thing that happens is when we do this practice and we're able to discover our emotions, what we're actually doing is calling them up and not retreating from them. And as we call up emotions and don't retreat from them, this gives us the added advantage of being able to tolerate emotions because people will ask, how do I sit with emotion? It's so

painful. And this is going to be a beautiful way to start sitting with emotion. Because that's what you're literally doing. You're calling it up. You're summoning a negative emotion so that you can explore it. And if you do that enough, then what you'll realize and discover is, oh, actually, this is a thing that does not need to be feared. I do not need to fear social isolation. And paradoxically, it's the social isolation that actually keeps you at home. It's that emotion which controls the behavior. So so many benefits can sort of bloom out of an increased awareness of your emotions. And this is a great technique to start with that.