Hi, my name is Piper Harris, and welcome to the Untangled Mind Podcast. On today's episode, I get honest with you. I tell you a little bit about my story and how I struggled with wondering am I totally broken or is this just fear? And honestly, most of us struggle with this. And I'm going to provide some ways for us to combat it. Thanks again for joining the Untangled Mind podcast. Hey all, welcome, welcome, welcome. So let's talk about the cat and take it out of the bag. Some of you that have been following are noticing that some things have changed on the podcast. I'm Piper Harris, so I'm the same voice, but I am here to introduce you to Untangled Mind. I'm very excited, went through a rebrand. I've really been thinking about my efforts as a mental health counselor and how did Piper Harris coaching uh really confuse people? So, really, what I've done is I've shifted, but I wanted Untangled Mind to represent not only the coaching aspect of things that I've done for years and years, but I also wanted to represent my mental health counseling. And then there's all kinds of areas in between. For some of you, you might not know, I have a very holistic approach to my work with individuals as well as in my history. So I've done the nutritional counseling. I was a behavioral nutritionist. I've done actual personal training. I owned my own women's gym. Um, so I've been a chef. I've been, I mean, like I could tell go on and on. I even did flood mapping, which is kind of weird. But all that to be said, I think that untangled mind really represents what I want to do for you. And so, welcome, welcome, welcome to the Untangled Mind podcast where I help you to untangle life's challenges. So, today we're gonna jump right in. Today we're gonna jump right in. Uh, so fear are broke. Um, so last week was an anniversary for me. Um, anniversaries, I hear a lot about this um in my counseling sessions, and a lot of us remember anniversaries, right? The anniversary of our child's birth, our our wedding anniversary, birthdays. You know, there's anniversaries, there's dates, dates matter. Well, last week I had an anniversary. It's my third year anniversary of losing my hearing. And so I want to tell a little bit of the story. If you've heard it before, go ahead, fast forward. If not, um, hopefully you'll hear me in this. And and here's what I want to say with today's podcast is I want to get real with you. I think oftentimes I hear clients be like, oh my gosh, you have problems. Yes, yes, I do. Um, and so I want you to hear from me. I'm trying to just share a little bit more about me and that I share, I excuse me, I struggle with very similar things that y'all come and share with me. And so I think it's only fair that you get to know, hey, Piper's a human, and um, she goes through these things as well. So last week was my three-year anniversary of learning, excuse me, losing my hearing in my right ear. So we're gonna go all the way back to 2020. Yes, the the year nobody wants to remember. Um, so COVID hit. Everybody knows COVID hit um the shutdown, everybody was thrust into environments at home with people maybe we love, maybe we don't love. Um, we're seeing people die, we don't know what the world is going to be. It was a very scary time. So, right before the shutdown happened, um, we had a huge leak in the roof of our house. And I mean like a fire hose was poured down into our house. So in February, this all happened. They tore out this wall that connected my dining room to the garage, and then COVID hit and there's a shutdown. So that was fun. I had a hole in my house and nobody to fix it because nobody's allowed in and out of home. So, all that being said, it was hard. You know, I was like everybody else. I was trying to push through, trying to deal with my children and their fears, and it just was a lot. So then we're gonna hop forward to June. Uh, we're here in Georgia, me and my family are here in Georgia, and they started releasing some of the lockdowns. And my husband and I at this point were like, oh my gosh, we have got to fix this wall problem. And we had to have major renovation because it ruined our floors. Like, it was bad, y'all. It was a mess to live in um until it could be renovated. And he said, you know, the the we're getting out of lockdown. Why don't we go rent a cabin up at the local lake? And then we'll go up. You and the kids can stay up there in the dogs while the renovation is happening. I'll stay in the house while the renovation is happening. So, you know, somebody's on site. Um, but you and the kids, let's let's go up. He knows too. I'm from the Pacific Northwest, y'all. Yes, I'm in Georgia and I love it here and is beautiful, but my heart is in the northwest, which means please throw me out in the middle of the woods and let me just breathe. I need to breathe. And he knew I was really needing that. So we that was our plan. So we went up to this local lake. It's just absolutely beautiful, rented a cabin up there, and I was just breathing in that mountain area, y'all. I mean, it was oh, I can tell you, glorious. Got up early. I did my Bible study out on the patio looking over the lake. The dogs had fun, my boys went fishing, we whittled sticks, like it was just so much fun. So we went out, and the first day we went out, my husband went with us and got us all, you know, tucked in at the cabin. We decided we're gonna rent a pontoon boat. And my family and I, we went and swam and played and laughed, and there was so much joy to be free from you know the COVID, these restrictions, this lockdown. And so um, it was just wonderful. We had a great time swimming in the lake. So um my husband headed back to the house to watch things um for the renovation. My boys and I hunkered down, stayed the night that night, everything was great. Got up the next day, like I said, you know, I enjoyed my Bible study. We went swimming, we went fishing, we went hiking. I mean, it was just so amazing, so amazing. I came to tell you, like I look back at the pictures and I was like, oh yeah, that was the afternoon before. So, what I mean the afternoon before was um my folks then decided to rent a cabin next door because they wanted to come have fun. And we had a great time that evening. We made a big meal. Mom and I had too much wine to drink, and it was just really, really fun. And then um that night I called my husband and said, Hey, I'm locking down and love you, and thanks for staying at the house to watch the renovations, and I mean, I'll call you tomorrow. Well, later that evening, probably about I guess morning, it was 12:30 in the morning. Um, I woke up and I was in excruciating pain on the right side of my head. My face was completely numb, and I had this awful ringing in my right ear. I mean, I'm telling you, when I said it was excruciating pain in my ear, I thought it was because this like ringing. It it I can't describe what it was. Um, I was shivering. I obviously had a fever, and I thought, what's going on? Um, and my face, I couldn't feel it. So I called my husband, obviously, very upset. I didn't want to wake up my boys. I don't want to scare them. We're out in the middle of the woods somewhere. My parents are next door, but I'm just you know, I'm trying I'm trying to manage the situation. And he's like, hey, you know, maybe it was just too much wine. You know, maybe it's too much sun, too much wine. So he's kind of trying to talk me down, and I'm trying to calm myself. I'm like, something's really wrong. And um, it just didn't get better. So as the night wore on, the fever got worse, the pain got worse, um, and it got to the point where I was in the fetal position saying, What's going on? I couldn't feel my face, I didn't know if I was having a stroke, I didn't, I didn't know what was going on. So ultimately, um, first light, um, I was like, Okay, I I I need to go to the hospital. Something's wrong. So, and again, we're out in the middle of the woods. So I drove myself into town and um said there's something wrong. And by the way, I'm completely deaf in my right ear. So my face is numb. I have a fever, I don't know if I've had a stroke, I don't know what's going on, and I'm completely deaf in my right ear. Um, for any of you, um, hopefully you can hear this. Um if you have any hearing impairment, um, gosh, it is a pretty wicked, awful thing to have happen. It's you can hear things correctly. You can it's just, I don't know how to explain it. It was the scariest thing because I can't hear if anybody's coming around my right side. I I can't like my whole body feels out of sorts. My my ear that's worked for 43 years, well no, 41 years back then, um, is broken. Like, what what's wrong? So, all that to be said, got into town. We went through just uh so many tests. They did decide, um, they found that I didn't have I did MRI, there was no stroke, um, they checked me for COVID. It wasn't COVID. I mean, it was like, what the heck is wrong with Piper? Um, so they started giving me huge amounts of um, I can't think of the word, uh, the anti-inflammatory, I can't steroids, to try to help me because I we don't know what's wrong. Um, blood tests are normal, everything's normal, but the hearing is gone. Like it's it's dead. The anti-inflammatory started helping with the numbness in my face, so it sort of started coming back. So eventually I ended up at an ENT. He had no clue what was wrong with me. Um, so the best bet was okay, we're gonna put the steroid into your ear. Let me tell y'all, if I wasn't afraid enough with what was happening to me, not knowing what's happening to my body, um, when somebody walks up to you with a three-inch needle and says, You have to lay very still. We have to get this exactly in the ear canal, or you're forever going to be deaf. Um, not fun. And I had to go through four of those. So ultimately, um, I got some of my hearing back. I am hearing hard of hearing. Um, so one of these days I'm gonna have to get a hearing aid, and I'm okay with that. I'm really trying to make my brain fight for it right now, but boy, I have some bad days with my right ear, y'all. Bad days. But really, what happened after all of this is I really fell into a very deep depression and also this like anxiety of I have to have my ear. Like, I have to have this to care for my clients. Why am I losing the thing that I need to do what I love? You know, keep in mind, I'm only like six months into my master's program. I'm like, am I not going to be able to be a therapist? It was scary. Um, so fast forward to today or last week, I realized, gosh, that was my three-year anniversary. Um, I'm fortunate to say I have probably about 60 on a good day, 60% of my hearing back in my right ear. Um, and I've learned to adapt. So I use captions when I do telemental health, um, and I do the best I can. But all that to be said, what I wanted to say is when I was reflecting on this last week on this anniversary of mine, in that moment, all I could think of is I am broke. I'm just broke, flat out broke. I'm broken, I'm broke. But then the more I thought about it, the fear was so palpable. It was so palpable. And you know, fear is an extraordinarily powerful emotion, and it really does interfere with our ability to think clearly. And that's really what I want to talk about today. When we have fear, and it's so it's so um real, so palpable, it it stops our ability to really logically think of things. Was I broke? No. Did I have something that was going to forever change my life? Yep. But I'm not broke, but that was going through my mind. It was just like the worst thoughts about myself, the worst thoughts of my future. But fear, listen, is an absolutely normal human emotion, right? It's it's something that all of us experience at some point in our lives, and it's some of us experience it pretty routinely. But fear can be useful in some situations, like, you know, a bear is chasing us, or maybe there's a speeding car toward us, you know, and they have no brakes. I mean, there's fear. We need fear to jump us into action, but then there's other situations where fear is really not good for us. Fear interferes with our ability to think logically because it's based on assumptions that aren't always true. It's like the way the worst case scenario, that's what we're gonna come up with, right? And it usually doesn't, like me. I'm never gonna be a therapist. This I'm broke, this is what's gonna happen. It never happened. Or something will bad is gonna happen because I feel afraid. And I've talked a lot about my last podcast was Feel for Real. And um, feelings don't always necessarily tell us the truth. So a lot of us have heard that acronym um of fear, false expectations um appearing real. And that's really what this was for me. This fear was this false expectation of danger. Um, for me, fear in that situation, it was it was real. I don't want to diminish my pain or anybody else's, but it was a belief that something was going to continue bad was going to continue to handle or happen, and I wouldn't be able to handle it. So I kept imagining this threat, like, you know, somebody was out to get me, and you know, or I was never gonna live past this experience or something else bad was gonna happen and hurt me. I was stuck in this loop of false expectations appearing real. And so often too, you know, when we're faced in these situations, much like I was wondering if I was just completely broken and devastated, fear, you know, oftentimes masks itself about um telling us that, you know, we're out of control, we're inadequate, we might believe that you know, we haven't done everything perfectly. Um, you know, it just it's a cycle, it's a cycle that we go through when it comes to fear. So I want to ask you when you experience fear, what are some questions that you could actually ask yourself? Because I was in the depth. I was in the depth of fear, despair, anxiety. I mean, it was it was uh a black pit there for a little bit. And so when I say what are some questions we can ask ourselves, because if we can logically take a breath, turn off that that part of our autonomic system that's saying, oh my gosh, there's a bear chasing us, and ask us questions that's gonna slow that response. So, one of the questions, you know, I sat with myself after um they'd done all the shots in my ear. I was starting to regain some of the hearing. Um, what was unfortunate with what happened to me is most people lose hearing on either the high end of things or the low end of things. So most people can't hear high pitched noises or really low. I'm the lucky one that lost everything in the middle. And so what's hard about that is at the time I couldn't hear my boys' voices. Their tone was perfectly in the middle where I lost the hearing. And so I had to sit down with myself. It was probably about a week and a half after everything happened. I'm like, okay, what am I actually afraid of? Because they said I don't have um, you know, a tumor on my brain. They said I didn't have a stroke, you know, all the really awful things they've ruled out. So what am I actually afraid of? And I'll never forget, I broke down, I had an anxiety attack, panic attack. Um, it was pretty severe. Um, I I have a history of that, and my husband knew exactly what to do. Um and as I'm sitting there just sobbing to him, I was like, what am I afraid of? And it just all came out. I'm afraid of never hearing my boys' voices. I'm here, I'm afraid of unrealized dreams of finally, finally doing this therapist thing because I'm broken. I have a broken ear. Um, I'm afraid of, you know, just what if I can't hear an intruder coming in my house? What if like all these stupid what-ifs that just chased me? But the more I started thinking about what am I actually afraid of, um, and then I asked myself, okay, if I'm afraid of that, then what would happen if it happened? Or what would happen to me if that happened? And really I was able to kind of backtrack it and find that one, there were false expectations appearing real, but also like, okay, this might be a legitimate fear. Maybe this is something that's gonna happen. Like, you know, maybe you won't be able to hear the intruder out of your right ear, um, but your left ear works pretty darn good, you know. So I had to work through that and it helped me um really let go of some of the pain and some of the fear so I could think logically. So, again, like I said, fear is a normal and healthy response to danger. It's an it's an emotion, but the problem with it is it causes our body to react. You know, fight or flight responses increases our heart rate, you know, rapid breathing, must muscle tension. And it really causes us to avoid situations that actually might be beneficial for us long term or for our well-being. For example, with me, I really was struggling, you know, probably about a month out. I still, my brain had it normalized what it felt like not to have hearing in that right ear. Um, and it was unnerving. It made me um almost like seasick, almost gave me seasick legs. So I just didn't want to go out. The other thing that happened with it is that my left ear became so acutely able to hear, is that it was so painful for me to be in an environment where there are a lot of people. I was actually walking around with um earplugs in my ears. It hurt. I can't explain. It was like a clanging cymbal in my ear, and I couldn't do it. So I started avoiding going out. So I've been in a lockdown for COVID. Restrictions are getting lessened. You go deaf, and now you're just gonna hunker down in the house that you've been hunkered down in. It was not good. It was it was not good for my my health. It was not good for my mental health, nor was it good for my physical health. Because if I'm being really honest with you, I was freaking out pretty good. And I was drinking a good bit of wine. I was, I was numbing this. I was like, I'm not gonna think about it. Um, so it it was not a good thing. And by the way, drinking wine with an ear problem just makes it worse. It's called tinnitus. If you're a listener and you know what I'm talking about, oh the wine just made it worse. So that was a bad choice on my part. So let me ask you this too. When when we have fear and we wonder if we're just flat broke, oftentimes we're fearing something that we might fail at something. And we we ask ourselves, you know, well, what would happen if I I failed? What, you know, what if I fail? You know, we go through this cycle. And so I think for me too, when I had this whole ear situation happen, it was like, well, I'm a failure. I'm never gonna finish this master's degree, or I can be a deaf therapist. How is that gonna work? I mean, it was just awful. I mean, I was awful to myself, berating myself. And the thing is, is I kept telling myself, you failed, Piper, you failed. What did I fail? What did I what did I do to bring this on? And by the way, what the doctors came up with with how did Piper lose this hearing? What attacked her? Well, the day that I went swimming with my family on the pontoon boat, we're jumping in and out of the water. Well, I got water stuck in my ear. And I finally got it out that night. Um, but what they determined is there was some sort of parasite in the water, got in my ear, swam down in there, and attacked those different, um, I can't remember the exact ones, um, the different areas of my ear, my inner ear that attached to my brain and it killed them. That's what it was. So thank you, Mr. Parasite. Kind of gross to be thinking about, but that's what happened. But all that to be said, I was fearing failure, you know. And I guess another question we can ask ourselves to bring that logical brain back online is okay, if I do fail, suppose I'm just never gonna be a therapist, would would anything actually change in my life? Well, yeah, I might have to pivot, right? I might have to pivot. But in essence, what's wrong with pivoting? Let me say it this way: what can we do with our fail, our fear or our brokenness? What can we do with that? We're all gonna fail, we're all gonna make choices, and there's gonna be unfortunate circumstances that we're thrust into, but what can we actually do with it? We can sit in it, we can wallow like I did for a good few months, or we can do something with it. Sometimes in my work we we talk about this, like making meaning. It's important to make meaning. So, you know, I I learned from my mistakes, my mistaken thinking during this process, and it really did grow me as a person. I got back up, I chose not to see that I was a failure, and I decided to take a new approach to things, a different approach. Um, so this failure, this fear of mine, it was important for me at that point to embrace it rather than to be afraid of it, if that makes sense. In fact, what I did, you guys can check it out on my YouTube channel, is I actually created something carrying through COVID series. And I worked with women in all kinds of different areas and I promoted their work. We made workbooks, so I had someone that did SEO, I had an interior decorator, I had a sleep coach for babies, I had all these women on, and we did live streams to provide people that were still in lockdown all over the United States an opportunity to learn something to help them make meaning in the midst of COVID, in the midst of everything's going on. And that was how I made meaning. That was how I said, okay, I I'm gonna pick myself up. Yep, I can't hear I want ear yet, um, but I'm gonna do something with this. I can't sit in this because it hurts too much. I'm gonna embrace what I'm going through rather than being afraid of it because being afraid of it's keeping me stuck and on the couch. So that's a little bit about that. Was I fear or was I broken? Um, was it fear or was I broken? And it's it's funny. I look back at it now, it was definitely fear, false expectations appearing real. Was I broken? Well, I guess if I consider that question now, and I I I think about the emotions, y'all, I felt broken. I did. I was demoralized, I was all of the things, but does it mean I'm broke? No. And in fact, now, three years later, I often tell people and they'll hear me say, God took my hearing so I would hear. God took my hearing so I would hear. Because there were areas in my life that I needed to make some real changes. And it took me going deaf, being afraid of dying, being afraid that I'm gonna lose my family, you know, I have a tumor, I whatever it is. It took that for me to actually listen. So here's the thing. We can what if all the negative outcomes like I was doing, and more than likely, they're they're unlikely or impossible. But if you're afraid of something that's keeping you hostage, then you get into this worry trap, right? Um I'm afraid of something that's likely to harm me or someone else, and it's just like something's gonna happen, right? I was on this worry reel. I'm fearful of these false expectations of being real. I have this thing chasing me, telling me that I'm broken. And then it just puts me on this hamster wheel worry. It was exhausting, right? And I can't control the future. How can we control that? So I'm just gonna stay on this worry hamster wheel. But this is what I want to say to you is that we have to stop the worry when we're in this cycle. And I get it. You're saying, yeah, okay, Piper, whatever you make it sound so easy. I'm not saying stopping worrying is easy. In fact, I hear people say that to me all the time. I get people rolling their eyes at me, like, yeah, okay, Piper, stop worrying about, you know, my future, stop worrying about what's happening to my my health, stop worrying about my family, stop worrying. You know, I get it, I hear you, but we've got to learn to break this cycle of focusing on the brokenness, the false expectations of we of fear, and being on this hamster wheel of worry. So, a couple ideas for you on how we break this hamster wheel of worry is number one, identify the worries and write them down. Get them out of that noggin, stop noodling around with them, write them down. There's a lot of catharsis in writing them down. Our thoughts have to go somewhere. The second thing you need to do is analyze each worry objectively and consider whether they're realistic or not. Like my husband did when I was in the middle of a panic attack. He's like, Listen, I hear your fear. I know this is appearing real. I understand your worry, but let's look at this. He was so good at being able to uh talk me out of that, talk me down from what was happening. So, number three, I want you to focus on the present moment instead of worrying about the past or the future. That's worry. It is. It doesn't keep us present. There's some um opportunities on my website for vagal activation that's really good. There's some mindfulness practices, and that's number four. Practice mindfulness exercises like deep breathing or meditation to calm your mind. Um, asking questions of your mind is helpful to stop that. But if you're in a really heightened fear state, we've got to calm your mind in a different way. It's not quite ready to be logical and do cognitive work. So do some deep breathing, some meditation. Again, you can find that on my website at untangledmind.net. Number five, engage in physical activity. Got to burn off the excess energy and reduce stress. You have to. Our body is full of natural antidepressants and anti-anxiety medication. It is. And I know it's the last thing you want to do. I get it, but it is the thing that's gonna help. And I'm telling you, the second I was like, okay, Piper, you got to turn this around, I got back out in the gym. Like, I have to do this something. I gotta get this worry, I gotta get this out of me. It hurts. It's hurting me more. The next thing I want you to do after you've done those five things is I want to chat, I want you to challenge the negative thoughts by replacing them with positive ones. And yes, this sounds easy. This is cognitive, this is CBT, this is called reframing. And I'm not saying do butterflies and unicorn gel, but you have to challenge that negative thought. Is this a false expectation appearing real? Is there some sort of expectation that is real in there? Okay. So, how can we replace it with something? How can we make meaning of this? What can we do with this? Again, we're bringing it to a cognitive level so it's not sitting way back there in our primal brain activating that fight, flight, or freeze. The seventh thing I want you to do is I want you to prioritize your tasks. Create a to-do list for the day and tackle them one at a time. I'm not saying this gigantic list. I'm talking about like three very realistic and doable tasks for the day. Our brain loves to prioritize tasks. It's gonna make you feel better to get these things done. So tackle them one day at a time, one task at a time. Number eight, I want to taught you to talk to someone you trust, whether it's a friend or a therapist like me, you've got to share your worries and gain perspective. When we get caught on that hamster wheel of fear and am I broken and worry, we need perspective. We do, we need perspective. And listen, someone we can trust, it can be a friend. But our friends are usually pretty darn subjective. They just want to love on you. And I think that's wonderful. But if you've got that friend that can say, hey, whoa, hold up, Piper, you're kind of you you just like jumped into the deep end. Like this is too much. This is this is too far. Then you need that. But if you don't have that in your life, really, truly consider a therapist because we do help you gain perspective. That's what we're there for. Number nine, I really want you to consider limiting your exposure to sources of anxiety like social media that can trigger additional worries. So, with my ear, I'm in the middle of COVID. So, not only am I worrying about what's happening with COVID, then I'm worrying about what's going to happen with my hearing. You know, all of these things are rushing my through my head. I had to turn off all of social media because it was driving the pain. It was driving the anxiety, it was driving the fear. It was awful. So you've really got to think about limiting your exposure to those sources of anxiety. And finally, 10, here's the big one. We have to accept what we can't control and let go of the rest. I ultimately realized in the midst of all of this with my ear, I can't control if I get any of this hearing back. I can't control, you know, if I have a tumor. I like I can't control these things, but what can I control today? And just let go of the rest. I had to, y'all, because if I held on to it, it was literally breaking my body down more. So that's a little bit about that today. Today is a quick one. Today is a quick podcast, but I want you to ask yourself if you're in the midst of saying to yourself, I am super broke, I'm broke, not like broke financially, maybe you are, but telling yourself, like, I'm a broken piece of human. That's more than likely a thought that's being propelled and promulgated by fear, a false expectation of appearing real. What is that fear? Ask yourself, what is that fear? What really is at the root of that fear? And then once we see that, once we see, okay, I'm I'm stuck in this mindset of I'm broken, I'm I'm a worthless piece of human being, we look at that fear rather than avoiding it, and then we see, oof, I'm on that hamster wheel of worry. I want you to consider this. This is a process for every single one of our brains, every one of us, and we can overcome it. We can overcome it with these 10 steps to avoid the worry. We can overcome it by taking our time to breathe and center and focus. We can take the time and talk to individual individuals and say, Am I a broken piece of human being? Nobody's gonna say that to y'all. They're not. They're gonna say, No, you're a human being, you're here, you're breathing, you're living, you have purpose. So make meaning of it. Look at that fear rather than avoiding it and say, Okay, I'm gonna make meaning of this. So that's all there is for me today, folks. I hope that um gave you a little bit of peace of me and you enjoyed today's show.