Anna Holtzman is a former television editor who, after healing from chronic migraines, shifted gears to become a licensed therapist and coach specializing in chronic pain recovery. Anna both helps people better manage their chronic pain, as well as understand the emotional cause behind it in an effort to release the pain from its source.
In our conversation, Anna shares that chronic pain is linked with our stress response and is nothing more than a protective reflex trying to alert us that something deeper is going on. We discuss the power of communicating with the body in order to better receive that message, as well as understand how we can go about addressing it. Anna shares many unlikely, yet powerful tools – including journaling – that you can start using to feel better today.
As you’ll learn from this conversation, there are many ways to work with chronic pain that don’t involve more prescriptions, more doctor visits, and more ‘coping’. Whether chronic pain is new for you, or you’ve been dealing with it for a long time, this conversation is a must listen.
Anna Holtzman is a former TV editor and lifelong writer who, after healing from chronic migraines, became a licensed therapist and coach who specializes in chronic pain recovery. While working in TV for over a decade, she edited shows like MTV’s MADE, Teen Mom, 16 and Pregnant and many more. As the Co-Director of Education and Advocacy for the New York Editors Collective, a group of more than 1000 professional TV editors, she ran education and advocacy seminars on labor rights and social justice issues in the industry.
Now a licensed therapist and chronic pain recovery coach, Anna offers an online course called Writing to Release Chronic Pain and is launching a new group coaching program, From Chronic Pain to Passion, for passionate creatives who want to heal from chronic symptoms and reclaim their energy. She also facilitates groups for Curable, a world leader in chronic pain education and recovery. Anna’s weekly blog is syndicated by The Good Men Project and Medika Life, and she’s been interviewed on some of the top podcasts on the chronic pain recovery.
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Zack Arnold: I am here today with Anna Holtzman, who's a former Film and Television editor and a lifelong writer. And after healing from over a decade of chronic migraines, she is now a licensed therapist and coach who specializes in chronic pain recovery. And a first question How in the world has it taken this long for you and I to get on a microphone together? What in the world this? Could there be a more perfect fit of two people, pleasure to have you here today.
Anna Holtzman: It's such a pleasure to be here. I am so excited to be on this podcast much more so than any other podcast I could be on. Because there's just so much in common here.
Zack Arnold: Yeah, there's so much synergy that it's almost downright scary. As I was telling you a little bit before we officially got started, I get a lot of outreach. Now for people that want to be on the podcast from a variety of different industries. Some of them are so bad, I literally collect them. So the students out of my networking class, they see the inner workings of my bad outreach folder. They're collecting, like baseball cards, I've got a lot of them. Yours came in and emits the slew of all those other ones. I'm not sure I made it past either the subject line or the first sentence and I immediately forwarded it to my producer and said no brainer, yes. And boom, here you are like two weeks later, because it's downright scary how many parallels there are between your career journey and my career journey. And the areas where you focus in the areas that I focus. There are so few people that can really understand and empathize with what you and I have gone through both as creatives but also as entrepreneurs that serve creatives.
Anna Holtzman: Yes, absolutely. And you've been at it quite a bit longer than I have. So you know, I was following your podcast when I still was an editor. So it's super exciting to be here talking to you. Oh, that's amazing.
Zack Arnold: Oh, that's amazing. I didn't even realize that part of it. Oh, yeah. Um, so you're here from way back in the Fitness in Post days?
Anna Holtzman: Yeah, as I mentioned in my email, yes.
Zack Arnold: That's that's absolutely amazing. So I definitely want to talk a lot more about the work that you're doing now how you help creatives deal with chronic pain and emotional issues and physical issues. But first, I just I need the origin story, because it's really fascinating how you made the transition that you've had. So let's start from the beginning of all this and what it is that you used to do as an editor working in reality, and what it was that really sparked this change?
Anna Holtzman: Yes, well, actually, the stories of how I switched careers and how I came into the niche that I'm in now are very much intertwined. So I started working in reality TV as an editor in I believe it was 2008. And I got my very first migraine on my very first day of my very first reality editing job. And I keep saying very, but it was very, very clear to me that this was not a coincidence. I mean, I the My stress levels were shooting through the roof. And anyone who's listening, who's an editor will completely understand what I'm talking about. It was so so stressful to be on that first day of a first job. And as editors know, it's a uniquely stressful career and realities, like the pace is just nuts. So I got my first migraine on that first day. And then I worked. I worked as an editor in reality TV for a little over 10 years. And during that time, I continued to get migraines, they were very seldom at first and they got more and more frequent over time, which is kind of the pattern with chronic pain. But then in terms of just the career. I'm sure a lot of listeners will relate to this to you know, editing reality TV was never the end goal. For me. I wanted to be an AAU tour, I wanted to be a filmmaker and you know, directing independent films and I needed to make, you know, to get a job and there are lots of jobs and reality TV for someone who can edit. So that's where I wound up. The money was good. The work was consistent and 10 years later there I still was working on content that I wasn't crazy about. I mean there were a few shows that I really liked. And then there were a lot of shows that I really hated. There were a lot of great people that I met, there were a lot of working conditions that I hated and hours and, and work schedules that I hated. And at a certain point, I tried a number of different times to kind of transition to different kinds of work within film and TV. And just none of it really worked out. And I think my heart just wasn't entirely in it to stick with it. And at somewhere along the line, I started going to therapy myself, not because of not because work was stressful, necessarily, but because like a lot of people are just having relationship issues. And that led me into therapy. I found the process of therapy to be very interesting and intellectually stimulating. And somewhere along the line, I thought, gee, maybe I could do this for work. I mean, on the surface, it's very different from editing. But it's all about storytelling, listening to people's stories, finding the patterns and the themes, and what is this really about. And so I started to research. It was three years before my visit, I think it was three years before my 40th birthday. And I thought, I don't want to be in my 40s still in this career. And so I started researching grad schools, how to become a therapist, it seemed really daunting, because you can't really go part time as an editor while you go to grad school. That's not a scenario that exists. And so I couldn't figure out how to make it work financially, initially to go to grad school. So I instead found a life coaching certification course, that was a lot less intensive, I could do it on the weekends, still a stretch, you know, while doing the editing schedule, but I can still fit it in. I did that really loved it and thought, Alright, this is definitely the right direction. For me, I really enjoyed this work. And then little by little I wound my way out of the TV world, I did go to grad school, got licensed as a mental health counselor, that's my degree, and started practicing as a therapist in 2019. And along the way, here's where the chronic pain recovery niche ties in. So what I think is really kind of funny in hindsight is I knew all along, a lot of people who have chronic pain don't realize that there's an emotional component to it, they think it's only physical, and that's one of the common barriers to recovering from it actually, I different from that, I knew that it was related to stress and emotions, and, you know, past traumas and all that stuff. I I sensed that pretty much right from the start, I had a therapist who kind of got that, but didn't really know how to help me, you know, shift out of the pain. So I had this theory that when I left TV and went to grad school for counseling, I thought maybe the migraines will subside them because I will no longer be in this high stress environment, this very coercive work environment. You know, as I got deeper into my therapy, and learned about boundaries, and coercion and all this stuff, I was like, Dang, this stuff is happening at work all the time. And it's encouraged and it's like, part of the culture here. So I thought, well, I'll go to grad school and it'll be all about you know, feelings matter, and you can feel your feelings there. And I think the migraines will go away. But the exact opposite of that happened. So migraines were they'd already become an annoyance in my life, but they weren't taking over my life until I went to grad school. And they totally spiraled out of control to the point where I was getting up to three like debilitating headaches a week, and I was having to miss classes here and there. I was still seeing coaching clients for you know, as a life coach, I was having to cancel on clients and I thought, How am I going to have a career as a therapist, you can't just cancel on clients, they'll stop seeing you. And that's when I dove into research and found the mind body methods of chronic pain recovery that helped me to recover and that I now use in my work. But the way that I understand what happened now looking back is that I arrived at grad school with like, my pump was primed. I thought this is going to be the place where I feel so safe, to feel my feelings and be myself and let it all out. So the pump was really primed like the the balloon of emotions inside of me had welled up and then I got there I was like, Oh, I I don't feel so safe here. There's still like certain aspects of this environment that are high heirarchical and rigid and a fair amount of like old school etiology that pathologize is big emotions and, you know, terms, reactions to stress as disorders. And so I felt kind of like, I was about to let out all my emotions and neural and now I'm going to hold them in, and they kind of just went nuts inside of me.
Zack Arnold: Well first of all, I'm not surprised that on day one of week, one of your first project in the reality television industry, you got your first migraine. We both definitely agree there's not a coincidence there. But I've certainly seen the pattern, similar to as I'm sure you did, even earlier in the life coaching days, and on the therapy days, where the assumption is, well, there's a correlation, I started day one, and I got the migraine. So I leave in the migraines go away, and I see this with my clients all the time, they say, I know, this is what I don't want to do. And as soon as I find something else, then finally the problems go away, and life will be better. And they all of a sudden make that transition or succeed or reach that goal. And they're like, Hey, wait a second, my life still has problems. And I'm still dealing with all these things. And there's often things that are a lot deeper underneath the surface. And what I find so interesting, and I think this is so key for anybody that's interested, but also afraid of making a major career transition is understanding where the transferable skills lie. Because when I was transferring from being an editor, and I'm still in a position of transitioning, but transitioning to what I do now, massive imposter syndrome. I've only done one thing my whole life, why would somebody pay me to do something else until I realized and it sounds like you had this realization to? Well, I'm going from editing to therapists, there's no connection. Oh, hold on a second. I've actually been a therapist for most of my career, haven't I?
Anna Holtzman: Yeah. Yeah. But there was absolutely I relate to that. So so much. And I actually, I recently made a video on Instagram that was like, what's the connection between imposter syndrome, creative block and chronic pain, they're all stress responses. And when you make a big career transition, even if it's one that you really want to do, or maybe even, especially if it's one, you really, really want to, so the stakes are high. That's a stressful experience. It can be a very positive move, and it's stressful, and it's going to bring up all your fears.
Zack Arnold: Yeah, and that's something that especially this year, because this is kind of the year that I put the stake in the ground. And I said for the first time out loud, I am a former Film and Television editor. I still feel that emotionally when I say that sentence out loud, because I'm not even totally sure I believe it yet. But the first time doing it, I don't think it's any surprise, and I'm sure you can help me better understand this as we go through our conversation today. This year, emotionally, physically, mentally shitshow total complete shit show just been, you know, what, what we call in our community. And we've talked about this on other podcasts. This is the messy middle, right, just massive growing pains. I don't think there's a coincidence that the last seven years of bouncing a podcast and coaching and building a website didn't experience any of that this year. No, this is the year I'm doing it. And it's just been an emotional shitshow.
Anna Holtzman: Yes. And I think it's it's no coincidence that it's called Growing Pains. And not everybody experiences their stress as physical pain. But physical pain is just one manifestation of how stress can show up, it can show up as anxiety, it can show up as pain. It can show up in so many different ways. But making a big career transition is like in the chronic pain recovery world that I'm now a part of. It that's like so well known to be one of the most common triggers is changing careers, advancing in your career, buying a house, getting married, having a kid like anything where you're expanding in life. There are going to be these growing pains and they're it's upheaval, and it's change. And it's the unknown, which is really scary. And when you said that you said you you told me that you had said for the first time. You're a former TV, film and TV editor. I actually felt something physical in my body. As I was listening to you, I felt my stomach drop. It was like, oh, oh, that's so scary. Because it took me right back to a moment in my life coaching certification when I had decided, I guess it was the moment that I decided, alright, I am going to do this. I'm going to leave TV. I'm going to go into this new path. And the moment of deciding I had this massive stomach drop and freakout feeling. I was like, Oh my gosh. So like everything that I've achieved up until now that I've worked so hard to achieve, that I've been really proud of and I like going to, you know parties and meeting new people and saying I work on this show and that show and I'm like, you know, I know all these people in this field, like, that's all going to go away. And who are my friends going to be? And what's my identity going to be? And what's my personality going to be? Because I thought the personality I had as a TV editor, which was like, all fast and loose and making inappropriate jokes and all this stuff, like, that's not really going to be appropriate as, as a therapist or as a life coach, and it was a very scary moment to me.
Zack Arnold: Yeah and I can very much relate to both, you know, who are my friends going to be? What is the new social circle look like? But ultimately, and you kind of alluded to this, and I just really want to hit this point home, it's who am I going to be? Like, who do I think I am? That I could have done all these things and just decided, yeah, that was all fine. But that was the last 20 years, that was a waste, I made all the wrong decisions, because now I ended up here. And it's taken a while to really kind of realize, well, that was needed to get me where I am. Now, I didn't waste any time. But it's also very hard. Like you said, like, I like going to the parties and say I work on these shows, and to work on one of the most popular TV shows on the planet, currently. And Sam, a former editor, like, that's really hard when people are like, Are you crazy, right? Most people are saying you shouldn't be doing this, you should keep doing what you're doing. Job offers come in. And it just, the higher that you climb, the harder it is to say no to opportunities. And it's just, it's terrifying to just constantly have to say no to these things. And then the reality world, you are working at a high level.
Anna Holtzman: Yeah, and you know, listening to you, I'm remembering another aspect that I've kind of forgotten about, which is, I think when I went to grad school, that was something I felt more comfortable telling people it was kind of more mainstream, or whatever you want to call it. But when I first left TV, I, my first step was I'm going to try to make a career as a life coach before going to grad school. And I was worried like, what am I going to tell my TV friends that I'm a life coach? Like, I think that's becoming a more accepted term nowadays, maybe. But
Zack Arnold: It's got a lot of baggage though. So I definitely have baggage.
Anna Holtzman: It's got a ton of baggage, and I knew there would be some people that would hear it and say, Oh, cool. And other people that would be like, Oh, what happened to her? You know, she kind of like, went off the deep end.
Zack Arnold: Yeah, duh. first image that comes to mind, I think often with people is that you're going to come on with flowers on your shirt, and you're going to cure all of my issues with crystals and incense. That's what the life coach is going to do. For me, all I need to do is manifest my destiny, assemble my vision board, sit back and wait for it all to happen.
Anna Holtzman: Which by the way, if you said that to me, then I'd be like, Yeah, I don't want to be that. And that isn't really it doesn't happen to be my particular vibe. But I'll go to a coach that has that vibe. I'm much more open to that stuff these days.
Zack Arnold: Yeah, so I can understand where it's not just leaving the one identity. But am I even right for the new identity than I'm assuming. And it's it's a process. And in going through all of that. What I'm curious about is you're having all the migraines experiencing other kinds of chronic pain. I'm assuming there were ways you're managing it at the time, whether it's just taking ibuprofen or going to the doctor and doing this or that. What was the moment not necessarily when you made the transition, but when you knew it was time where you just like, something has to change. I know I can't do it this way anymore. What was that spark? Because I think most people listening are probably at the point now where they're ready to make the transition or they've made it. They're saying, I'm the person that's getting all the migraines, and I don't get it. So what was your moment when you just knew?
Anna Holtzman: Yeah, so absolut, it's just as you described, I was managing it with initially with its, you know, over the counter Excedrin, and that worked fine for a while and then when, when they started to become more frequent. I thought, you know, maybe this is something I shouldn't because I didn't even occur to me to talk to a doctor about it initially. When they became more frequent. I did speak to my doctor about it doctor sent me to a neurologist, the neurologist prescribed sumatriptan, which it's just like one of the most common prescription migraine painkillers. And so I took I swapped the Excedrin for that and I took sumatriptan for years, I still take it sometimes. But that was that was working fine to manage things until I as I mentioned, when I got to grad school, the migraines became much more frequent. And sumatriptan like many prescription drugs, you can only get a certain number of them per month because it's not safe to take more than that. You can get nine in the US and I was getting up to like 13 migraines a month in grad school, so I didn't have enough painkillers to take and it wasn't safe to take more painkillers. And so you know I started for Get out like, what? What am I going to do here? And what if they become even more frequent, because that was the trend. And I dove into Google, which, for a lot of people who have chronic pain, they go straight to Dr. Google, and they live on Google. And you know, but oddly enough, I hadn't done that until they got so bad and so pervasive. And then I dove into Google. And I happened to be really, really lucky timing wise about when I dove into Google, because unbeknownst to me, but I was about to discover there was like a renaissance just starting to happen in the chronic pain world. And there was this new app, it was only two years old. But because it already existed, then it came up in my searchings. It's called curable. And I don't get any money for advertising curable at all. But I can't recommend it enough. I recommend it to all my clients who have chronic pain actually work as a facilitator for them. Now they have a online groups program. And it was just amazing. It's, it's, it's kind of like those meditation apps that will like teach you how to meditate and give you all these mindfulness classes, but it's completely targeted to chronic pain recovery. And it clicked, as soon as I started listening to like this psycho educational clips that are on it, it made so much sense. So that was a starting point. But I think it was maybe a couple of days after I found this app, I'd already lined up another appointment with a new neurologist to see if you know, they had any new take on things. And when I went to this new neurologist, that was a really old school guy, you know, well, meaning prescribing what he thought was the best thing. And he said, Well, now that you're getting so many migraines, you shouldn't switch from emergency meds, which means like, take as needed, and instead go on a daily medication. And I was like, I don't want this. I don't like this is just not where I want to go. So I was like, No, thanks. I'm going to try this app. And then, you know, the rest was the rest of my life started to change in so many ways. So much so that, what I like to say is that, that that pain recovery journey started with chronic pain being the headline. And eventually it became the footnote, because it was really, the pain was an invitation into this discovery process that was about so much more than the pain, the pain was just the alarm bell getting me to pay attention.
Zack Arnold: And we could easily do a four hour three part series about everything wrong with the traditional Western medical system and how it really addresses the symptoms and not the underlying cause. But I think it's interesting, the way the doctor said, oh, we'll just put you on something where you take it every day, that's like going to a contractor, and saying, I've had this leak in my roof for a while. And the floors not wet yet. But the pots that I'm using are filling up and his response is just get a bigger pot. Like how about we fix the leak in the roof.
Anna Holtzman: Yeah, and I want to, like, be clear and say I like I have no interest in shaming that doctor, for example, he was just giving me the stuff that was to the best of his knowledge, and no shame to people who do choose to take daily meds, you know, whatever you find that's helping you, if it's helping you, that's awesome. But I that route just felt very wrong for me personally.
Zack Arnold: And I think that it's so important. I equally agree with you as well. I've talked all the time about how for the right people, whether it's antidepressants, pain medication, prescription medication, I'm not saying you have to go the eastern route, forget the western route. I don't believe in any of that. But I have a really big problem with the way that it's all about treating the disease and the symptom and not understand standing the root causes. So I want to I want to talk a little bit my language. Yeah, again, I just this is the perfect synergy and how we didn't meet, you know, seven, eight years ago, and it's been this long. I don't know that we're rectifying that today. But what I want to talk about are symptoms, what symptoms are like, like how they're a language that our body speaks, as I had an extensive conversation with an integrative medical doctor, my personal physician, Dr. Edison Demello. I'll put a link to that in the shownotes. But I want to talk about what symptoms are and what the most common symptoms are that you see, specifically for people that do creative work. Migraines are one of them, what are some of the other red flags that you treat on a regular basis?
Anna Holtzman: So there's such a wide range of different symptoms that that are all basically, alarm bells that the nervous system uses to get your attention to say, Hey, I'm really really stressed out and you need to listen to me like find out what's going on, and take better care of me in, you know, whatever ways that is, and the nervous system has. I've discovered as I've gotten into this work, not just through, you know, the work that I personally do with clients, but what I learned from my colleagues who've been at this for longer than me is that the nervous system has like some incredibly diverse and sometimes shocking ways of expressing itself in that way. So for me, it's been migraines has been the most persistent and kind of like, that's my nervous system and tried a bunch of different things and was like this, I found the thing that's going to get your attention that you cannot ignore. And for me, it happened to the migraines. But as I've gotten into, you know, my recovery journey. Looking back, I can see oh, there have been lots of other ways that my nervous system was trying to get my attention through anxiety through occasional panic attacks, I only really had one big panic attack, but it sure did get my attention through like neck and shoulder pain and tightness. I mean, it's interesting to me to look back now, I used to attribute it purely to just editing and being in that body position. And now, I know better, I mean, obviously, the body position that, you know, it's not helping things, but that was absolutely not all that was going on there. I think it's maybe useful to name, I've had pelvic pain and other pelvic issues. And I choose to name that because a lot of people experienced this and feel embarrassed about talking about it. But it's a really, really common place for the nervous system to send an alarm bell. Some of the more back pain is a really, really common one carpal tunnel, which isn't talked about, I don't know if people are still using the phrase carpal tunnel, but you know that repetitive stress injury is a very common one. Some more unusual ones that I've both come across in my practice and heard about from colleagues are include hyperacusis, which is related to tinnitus, but instead of a ringing in your ears, it's like pain, sound causes pain, or triggers pain in your ear. burning mouth syndrome, where it feels like your mouth is burning. And you can actually have physical manifestations of it can be caused by stress. Fibromyalgia, IBS, you know, all kinds of stomach and digestive issues and food sensitivities and allergies. I mean, just the it's really endless, the ways that the nervous system can grab for our attention to say, Hey, I'm not doing well. And I need your love and support. And maybe I need you to protect me in certain ways.
Zack Arnold: I could probably cross half of those off of my personal list of all the things I'm like, yep, yep, yep. Yep, had that before had that now, all those things. And the one specifically that I will bring up that has been a, I don't know if I would consider a chronic pain in the traditional sense, but I want to dig a little bit deeper into this, and you can help me and everybody else listening better understand it. But for the last several years, as most everybody already knows, that listens and watches. I've been training for American Ninja Warrior. So at my age, probably not the best choice as far as the makeup of my body and my athletic abilities. But it's just that that's the way that I roll. And I've had chronic tightness in the shoulders and the neck. And the suboccipital is like I am putting my chiropractor's kids through Harvard right now. Like I am constantly in there getting adjusted, getting fixed, knowing that they do a great job of keeping me aligned, but I just keep breaking myself. So it's almost kind of like they continue to treat the symptoms, because I'm just, I'm doing so many things to myself physically. What's happened this year, has felt different. And I'm going to explain it from my perspective, and then you can help translate because it honestly doesn't make sense to me, but I think it will to you. Yeah, I have done a lot of work on mobility because I'm just chronically tight. And the more that you strengthen your muscles, the more your muscles constrict, and they tighten, right, so I've noticed that like my ability to reach over my head much more difficult because I do so much pulling and pushing. And up until this year, it all just felt like I've got to roll this out, or I've got to see them as suits and that's better. But something intuitively has been telling me this year as I'm getting so much tighter and less mobile. It's like, this isn't physical. There's something emotional. I can't explain it. But intuitively, it just feels different, which again, don't think it's a coincidence based on where I am in my journey. But help me translate what The hell was going on?
Anna Holtzman: Yeah, well, yeah, I mean, when we are stressed our muscles tighten and brace, it's, it's a protective reflex, really. And so I'm just going to share with you the, the, there's so many different tools for exploring this stuff. And one that I happen to really love is expressive writing and journaling. And I use a particular prompt and no pressure to like, have any clear answers come from this as we're like, in the moment having a conversation. But when I am experiencing a symptom and tightness is something that I experienced as well. I'll journal in conversation with it. And I'll ask it, these this series of questions. And I'll speak to it kindly, which is really important to to mention because, um, you know, if our body or nervous system is afraid of something, and it's feeling defensive, and it's got its walls up in that physical tightness, it if we yell at it and try to get it to stop doing what it's doing, it's only going to tighten up more just like any frightened defensive person would if we yell at it, or express displeasure, or annoyance, or you know, any of that stuff. So I'll say to the tightness, deer tightness. What are you feeling right now? Like, are you feeling sad? Are you feeling frightened? Are you feeling angry, frustrated? You know, what's going on? What are you feeling? And then I'll ask it, what would you like me to know? And oftentimes, when I asked that question, it'll, it'll just like, go off on it. You know, like, everything's falling apart. You know, I'll like calamitous stuff. And then I'll ask it, what are you trying to protect me from? And, oftentimes, and this can take a while to like, build enough trust with that tightness for him to open up about what's going on. But oftentimes, what it's trying to protect me from is, you know, has to do with some childhood wound, feeling rejected, feeling unloved. Feeling like, I thought I was doing great. And I thought everyone liked me. And then whack someone, you know, told me that everybody hates me and like the class bully, did something mean or you know, whatever it was? And I'm just curious what listening to my self conversation sounds like to you? And if there's anything that comes up for you,
Zack Arnold: Yeah, well, first of all, I immediately started feeling things as you're going through this, and I want to talk about those in a second. But I think what you mentioned is so important. I want you to summarize the three prompts again, 123, what are they?
Anna Holtzman: Dear symptom? What are you feeling emotionally? What would you like me to know? And what are you trying to protect me from?
Zack Arnold: Alright, so anybody that's listening, write those down. And we're gonna talk more about the journaling process in a second, which my producer, that's, you know, on the line here, right now, Debbie, she's like, Oh, my God, this is crazy. Because this has been a big topic of conversation recently. It's one of those things where the universe has just said, it's now time for you to talk about this. But going back to this idea of working through the pain, or the tightness, or whatever, you would watch me do a foam rolling session or lacrosse ball session, and you would just shake your head and like really like, because it's just like, Oh, come on.
Anna Holtzman: I wouldn't, though, I wouldn't shake my head. Because I'd be like, I would take the stance that I take with my self, when I you know, and I'm because I'm hard on myself too. And this is what I tell to my clients is that we've got to find the outermost layer where we can be gentle with ourselves. So maybe that outermost layer is like forgiving ourselves for being so hard on ourselves, because that's what we've all been taught that's, like, ingrained in the culture. We've all been brought up in, and we're just doing our best.
Zack Arnold: Yeah, well, the reason I bring up this idea about journaling, and it's just one of those things is kind of come back into my life. And I actually talked about this on another podcast with a productivity expert. His name is Mike Vardy, whether or not that will have come out when this one does As of recording this. I have no idea I have a feeling they're going to be very closely intertwined one way or the other. But I am I've talked about this with my audience. For years a bit was diagnosed with adult ADHD and now ADHD when I was about 25. And I'm that person that buys a journal every six months. Oh, no, this time. I'm going to use it this time. I'm going to write in it in about a week ago. I was going through, I have a little exercise room on the other side of this wall that I've been avoiding like the plague. Because I knew I just needed to clean it up and I had a bunch of books on the wrong shelf, and it was stopping me from exercising and stretching. I'm like, Alright, fine, I'm just gonna go through the bookshelves. And all of a sudden, I found all the journals. And I was like, I have like half a bookshelf, of journals that have like 12 pages in them, and they're empty. I mean, this is this is the world or the universe or whatever force you believe in trying to tell me something. The next day, I get on a podcast with a productivity expert, having no no sense of this is where we were gonna go, we started talking about the benefits of journaling. So I'm like, Alright, fine. I'm going to try it again. And this was literally just about a week ago, I opened up one of my journals, which is the it's called The Five Minute Journal. It's a gratitude journal, where you basically just have a couple of prompts. Here's what I'm grateful for. Here's one one. Well, today, it's very simple. It's not actually a five minute journal for over thinkers, like myself, but whatever. And the last entry was in 2017. And one of my goals is a goal that I have this year. And I'm like, interesting. I'm five years later chasing after the exact same goal with the exact same number, which tells me, there's some pattern that's stopping me from wanting to actually literally take the actions to pursue this goal. So fine, I'm going to just start journaling random stuff, which also forgot to completely mention and my doctor's appointment a month ago, the first question he asked me was, have you been journaling? I'm like, I have time to journal. What? No, I'm not journaling. So just over and over and over. I've been writing a whole bunch of random stuff a lot of it at like, 230. In the morning, I wake up the brains, you know, the gears are turning. And I've had two gigantic career breakthroughs in the last five days, both of which were ideas that came through because of journalism.
Anna Holtzman: That's so cool. I'm curious, I'm curious if you got any clues also as to what the resistance had been about?
Zack Arnold: Well, there's still here's the the other interesting thing, I'm actually getting more physical resistance this week than I've gotten in a long time, right? I bet I bet it's not a matter of I can take a deep breath. And I feel better physically, I actually kind of sort of feel worse, because it's, there's a lot of resistance, like not wanting to let this stuff go. Yeah, but I'm feeling though, like you said that the floodgates and everything like whatever it was, that balloon is starting to really expand. And I'm already seeing it happen just from randomly reading a bunch of totally random ideas and bullet points in a journal. And those prompts literally scare the shit out of me right now. Yeah, I don't want to sit down and answer your questions.
Anna Holtzman: Of course, of course. And I can actually completely relate to the resistance that you're describing. And it's the most common thing. I mean, I think it's very rare for people to just take to the journaling, especially, you know, in the work that I'm doing with chronic pain recovery, it's the most, it's often talked about, as you know, the place of deep, deepest healing can come from, and it's the most avoided chronic pain recovery tool. And I avoided it I, I was a year into my pain recovery path. When I finally got into journaling. And I, as I mentioned, I was using this app called curable, and they've got a bunch of different types of exercises. And writing is one of them. And I was doing everything else except for the writing and I just wouldn't do and I didn't even think too much about why it was even. It didn't even occur to me, I was avoiding it. I was just like, Nah, not interested in that one. And a year in I got like, a really extreme setback or flare up. And I was like, Alright, I need a new tool. Everyone keeps talking about this journaling stuff. I'm feeling really desperate now because I just got a really bad scary migraine. And so I'll try anything at this point. And that's when I finally dove into it. And then I like I dove in, really out of desperation initially, you know, it was not like, Oh, I really want to do this. This is fun. And it's like, I am freaking desperate. And I need something and that's what pulled me into it. And it took a while for it to become something that I come to because I love it and enjoy it and feel connected to myself through it. But I think that two of the things that I think it goes on for a lot of clients that I work with, and you may or may not relate to this, as there's a fear that when they go to the page, that they'll put all their field things out there. And then there'll be alone with these big, unmanageable feelings. And there's a fear of that. I personally don't think it's a fear of the feelings itself, I think it's a fear of being alone with them, and having them put out there and not having them met with kindness. You know, like, if you pour your heart out to a friend and cry to them, and tell them everything that's, you know, going on, that's difficult for you. And then the friend is like, whatever, anyway, I gotta go. That feels awful. And I think that's what a lot of us have been trained to do is to leave ourselves hanging with our emotions, or to yell at ourselves about our emotions. And that's a terrible experience. So for me, what's been really important with journaling is learning how to not just express the desires, the pains, the feelings that are inside of me. But to meet those with approval and kindness and softness and caring, too. That's the magic potion.
Zack Arnold: Yeah, I think that that's a really important insights. And it's also really important to just kind of without going too deep down a totally different conversation and tangent. There's a reason that we have an obesity crisis, there's a reason that people are addicted to their phones, and Instagram and social media, and why people are binge watching Netflix, three episodes past their bedtime. And I really think it comes down to this fear of confronting the things that you're talking about. And by the way, I've been, I've been doing most of the things you're not supposed to be doing when you're on a podcast about optimizing yourself. Because I just know that something is going on, I just feel it. I've been through this probably two other times in my career. And now that I think about it, coincidentally when I was making pretty major transitions, or I was growing through something pretty big and scary. So I just recognize that this is another one of them. Yeah. So it's been a matter of, you know, just kind of eating a lot of things I shouldn't be knowing that there was no like, I don't have the knowledge. I know this is bad for me. I know I should be in bed already. I know it should be exercising and doing the things my trainer tells me to do. I'm doing none of it. I'm doing nothing. I've completely. I literally texted my trainer and said last two weeks, not only have I fallen off the wagon, I face planted on the way down. But I feel like it's a necessary part of the process was just something that's telling me yeah, just go through it. And I know that you have something that you call similarly, like, what's called a day or week, or in my case, a month. Yeah, so my intuition is just get through this, eat the crap, stay up late, skip the exercise, because it's just I feel like that's the journey I'm on. But explain it because I don't get it
Anna Holtzman: Totally Well, the first thing I want to say is I am just in total support and resonance with you. And I, I feel the most important thing we can do with resistance is to accept the resistance. Because I mean, and this is something that I've got to come back to and remind myself of over and over and over again. Because I'm also human, and you know, like we all are, and we've all got this social conditioning to beat up on ourselves and be mean to ourselves and pressure ourselves. And if we get mad at ourselves because of the conditioning, you know, get mad at ourselves for being mean to ourselves or for having resistance. It just digs in harder.
Zack Arnold: Yeah, and it just the, the self flagellation, for lack of a better word, it just gets worse and worse and worse until I was like, you know, what we're just going to, and one of the things you talk about is I'm just going to follow the things that I kind of sort of want to do intuitively. If I could do whatever I want. I'm an adult, I make a good living, I'm successful, I'm going to do what I want, and nobody's going to tell me what I'm going to do. All right, I'm gonna eat ice cream, great. I'm gonna watch two extra episodes I'm going to sleep in, I've just been kind of following that it's been a really, really interesting journey. And that's, like, as you say, it's not necessarily a deviation or an avoidance of the process, it kind of is the process. Why is that so hard for me to accept?
Anna Holtzman: And, and I would say, you know, if, if we're doing all of that stuff, and we are refusing to be conscious that we're doing that stuff, and we're not occasionally checking in with ourselves and saying, All right, so this is going on and how are you feeling? And how are you doing? You know, if we're also not doing that at all, we're probably just gonna get deeper and deeper and deeper into the hole because that's how this works. But if we can just bring a gentle awareness to it, not angry awareness to it, like why the FBI doing all this bad shit, but like, oh, wow, I'm doing this stuff either. I must be pretty scared or angry or I must have some pretty big overwhelming feeling about something that's interesting to now. I'm gonna check in on that occasionally.
Zack Arnold: And I know that you've mentioned that and kind of an extension of what you're saying now is that it really is just about kind of loving, accepting, here's where we are. And we shouldn't necessarily try to fix ourselves, we shouldn't try to treat ourselves. But as somebody who leads a podcast and program called Optimize Yourself, you know, that's, that's a challenging and unknown scary place to possibly be
Anna Holtzman: Completely. So I have a bunch of things to say about this one is when I first like, I'd been on my own pain recovery journey for a while, and I'd actually been working with clients on pain recovery for a little while, before I kind of put it out there publicly that this is what I do, like, I'm a chronic, I'm a chronic pain recovery therapist and coach, this is now my identity that I'm projecting out into the world. I had like a major flare up right around that time. And it took me a bit to figure out what was going on. But what I figured out eventually was, Oh, I thought that if I'm going to put myself out there, as someone who has recovered and is helping other people recover. That means I can't ever feel pain again. That means I can't ever get a headache again. And if I do get a headache again, I'm a big old fraud and everything's shit. And I need to like crawl under a rock and hide. So, yeah, it's that it that perfectionism thing, which is really underlies all of these symptoms for most people. These crazily unrealistic expectations to be something other than a human being who's just like going through it. Those expectations puts so much pressure on our nervous system, that it's a freakout, and the nervous systems gonna respond the way it does to pressure and stress by holding the alarm bells. Yep,
Zack Arnold: Anybody that has been a long, longtime listener of the podcast may have already heard the story. But it's been about five years since I've told it. So I want to make sure that anybody else hears it. And I think it's important for you to hear it as part of this conversation, but for listeners to hear it as well. And it's a very hard story for me to tell. And I rarely do but what you talked about just nailed it. So about five, five and a half years ago, I consider 2017, what I call my last year, give or take about six to nine months of it was just a giant chasm of nothingness and me living in a ball a ball of fear. And yes, I was able to function I was able to go to work, I was able to pretend my way through the job and cut my scenes and do my notes. But outside of that I was barely functioning as a human being. And the thing that triggered all of it, all of it comes down to one specific moment that I'll never forget, I was running a five day challenge for the people on my mailing list and had affiliates sending it out was called the 5x Challenge, where you're going to 5x your energy, your creativity and your productivity. And I had this Facebook group, and I had 1100 People join this challenge I expected like 50 to 100 1100 people on six continents, join this challenge. And there's one Facebook post and it leveled me for six months. I'll never forget what it said. I don't even remember the rest of it was the first sentence. Zack, you are a true thought leader. Whoa, no nu nu nu nu nu nu nu Adobe saying things like that don't put that pressure on me. Holy crap, that imposter syndrome, like I've never experienced, it took me almost a year to recover from that. And even though it's a lot lesser, I'm feeling a lot of the same symptoms that I did five and a half years ago.
Anna Holtzman: Thank you so much for sharing that story. I I'm just loving that story and getting a lot from it. And the visual that I got when you just said that was like, dang, that's a really high pedestal to like I would get vertigo on that pedestal being like, what happens if I fall off?
Zack Arnold: So let me ask you this, given that you are going through something relatively similar when you're kind of right on the cusp of nope, I'm ready. This is the transition I'm making. I thought at the time, that's where I was until this imposter syndrome hit and now I'm back at that same place. What did we just as logical for me to say, oh, no, no, this is the universe telling me I've made the wrong decision. We need to retreat and go back to what we were doing because this isn't right. How are we supposed to know the difference?
Anna Holtzman: Yes, I love love. Love that question because this is something that I love coaching creatives around, because it's it's like this is how it happens for so many of us. It's like just as we're about to step into the thing we really want that we desire that we're really passionate about. That's oftentimes when we get whacked over the head by symptoms, whether it's chronic tan, or something else, and the natural reflex is like, Oh, it must have been bad that I stepped out of my comfort zone. And, you know, who did I think I was, this must be punishment for me, like, you know, taking on ears of grandeur and thinking I could do something that I really wanted. And so it's it's only natural that we think that our the big step forward we took is what triggered the pain. But it's not pursuing our passion that triggers the pain. It's the fear that comes on, in the wake of stepping into our passion. It's the fear of like, oh, no, what if, you know, what if people say nasty things about you what all the what ifs that come in. So we do and need to spend some time and care and love and attention with that fear that comes up. And it wouldn't come up if we weren't stepping into something we really cared about. So I also look at those symptoms, like every time I've taken a bigger step into this career, I've had some kind of a flare up, and I'm like, Oh, wow, I must be really stepping forward. I must be moving ahead on my trajectory. Because this flare up is evidence of that. And the fears that are coming up are evidence of that.
Zack Arnold: Yeah. And I think it was my type A personality and like type A and giant 200 point font bold couple of pluses after it. My immediate response to all of this what I've been going through this years, I thought we had this figured out, did have we already gone through this and figured it out. Why is it that we have to deal with this again, I'm kind of over it. Right? I did, I was supposed to be optimized. Remember, this was in 2017, this isn't happening again.
Anna Holtzman: I feel like this might be kind of random. But for some reason, it just reminded me of my very first job, which was I've had a lot of different stops on my career path. So before I was in TV, I worked in publishing. And I got a job pretty much right out of college as a junior editor at a magazine. And this felt like a really huge deal. To me, it's like, I wasn't expecting to get such a cool job right out of college. And I thought that since I was an editor at the magazine, it's so funny to think about this now, I thought that I had to know everything that this decades long magazine had ever written about. And so I set myself this task of staying after work every single night to read all of the back issues of this established magazine. And the moment when I really felt like I had developed expertise in that job was when I finally realized that I didn't have to do everything.
Zack Arnold: Yeah, that's something that I've actually talked about on a few different podcasts. And I wrote about recently, it's called the Dunning Kruger effect. Are you familiar with that? You should look it up afterwards. I actually have a link that I can send you as a matter of fact, we'll put it in the show notes because I wrote a newsletter about it. But essentially, the Dunning Kruger effect is that as an absolute beginner, you're aware that you don't know anything, right? I've got a lot to learn, oh, yeah, started. But then as you start to climb the curve, very, very quickly, you develop what you believe to be a lot of competence in whatever that subject or that skill might be to the point where you believe you kind of start to know it all. This is something that they call the peak of Mount stupid, because it's a tremendous amount of ignorance, not realizing how little you know. And then the more you learn, the more you realize you don't know. So those that say, Oh, I have so much more to learn. And I really see this as a beginner. Those are the experts, because they've reached that point where they realize there's so much to know about the subject. I barely scratched the surface versus no, I feel pretty good that I know everything, right? It's that inverse proportion of knowledge to competence. And it sounds like you kind of reach that level of oh, I actually, you know, there's a lot more to know about this. And I'm never going to know all of it.
Anna Holtzman: Yeah, and I'm sure I have all I know I have decades and decades to go with developing into this. But the, the, the moment when I started to become really confident as a chronic pain recovery therapist and coach was when I realized I can still get headaches and still do this work. And in fact, the fact that I get headaches that that's how I frickin know about this stuff. I wouldn't know how to relate to the people I'm working with. If I wasn't, you know, my own science experiment, and if I wasn't experiencing this stuff like I wouldn't, I would not, you know, if if I were at the beginning of my recovery process, I would not want to work with someone who said, Oh, I'm never experienced is pain any more at all? And, you know, why are you still experiencing pain like that would be such a turnoff and a trigger. And it would be a lie too, and it just wouldn't be helpful.
Zack Arnold: I really believe that the most important component and there are many of them, but ultimately, the most important component of being not just a good competent coach. But a great one is empathy. If you can't have empathy, you can't really coach somebody, you can have all the sympathy in the world. But if you don't have empathy, meaning I've been through it, I know what it feels like I have had this challenge I have dealt with this obstacle, here's my way of solving, I feel you have to have that component, to really be a great coach, you can have read all the books, taken all the classes. But if you haven't actually been through it, it's very difficult to empathize. And I think, especially in your case, the fact that you still get the migraines only increases your credit, credibility as opposed to decrease. Logically, that makes sense emotionally, yeah not so much.
Anna Holtzman: And, you know, everyone's chronic pain experience is different, their recovery experience is different. And I really like to emphasize, like, there is no gold standard of where you're supposed to get to. So for me, I actually don't get debilitating headaches anymore, at all, which is awesome. But I do get head tension, like, you know, annoying, distracting head tension, like, on a fairly regular basis when I'm stressed. And it doesn't have to be like the sky is falling down stressed is like, Oh, I'm about to be on a podcast dress, you know, like that kind of thing. And what the shift that that moved this, you know, head tension from controlling my life and holding me back from things and sort of being the headline of my life to not holding me back. And you know, not being the headline, and not being something that I'm preoccupied with all the time was really mostly about developing self empathy.
Zack Arnold: Yeah, that's a that's a tough one for Type A personalities like myself. Yeah, it's a really tough one.
Anna Holtzman: It is, and it's not a light, you know, like all of this stuff that we're talking about. It's not like, oh, I should have self empathy. Okay, now, I'm gonna do that now. Everything's fine. No, it's like, I've got to have a lot of empathy for myself, or how what a process it is to unwind from self harshness, because it's, it's really a process. And it's not a straight line.
Zack Arnold: No, it's definitely not a straight line. And I think the other barrier that I keep bumping up against that I think is very common for both ambitious people, but also creative people, is that I am very well known for talking about setting proper expectations, avoiding burnout, building a more sustainable and balanced life. If there's anybody that needs to hear that advice, more than anyone on the planet, it's me, right? But it's such a challenge, because I have these expectations. And if the timeline is not met, I don't have time to give myself empathy, I have an expectation to meet, somebody else didn't set it, I did. So it's always the expectation, I'm not moving towards this thing fast enough. So I don't allow myself the time to just work through it and have the empathy.
Anna Holtzman: Yeah. And that's why you know how to talk about this in a way that's helpful and relatable to other people. And I get a lot of feedback on I, I post regular regularly on Instagram about chronic pain recovery. And I've got a weekly newsletter, and I got to get a lot of feedback from people saying, Oh, this is exactly what I need to hear. And I'm like, Well, that's because it's exactly what I need to hear. And I really write this stuff. For me, these are self reminders that I share with other people.
Zack Arnold: Yeah, it's no different than, like, what one of the areas of the industry that I'm quasi obsessed with not completely obsessed, but have a soft obsession for is stand up comedy, I love stand up comedy. And the deeper you get into understanding that part of the industry. They all say that, you know, the most people you stand up comedy, because they're using it to work through very, very serious traumas, that's their way of expressing and communicating with the world, what happened to them, or whatever it is that they're working through. I can't even imagine the person that I would be if I didn't have a podcast and a newsletter. I'm just compelled to it because right now, this is making a really positive difference for me. But it's also really exhausting. Right, because just putting all this stuff out there knowing other people are going to hear it. But to me, this is a really serious and important part of therapy, which is just this is my way of journaling.
Anna Holtzman: I was just gonna say that that's so funny. I was just gonna say like, you know, you say you've been avoiding journaling and you know, maybe that's a whole other path of discovery that you're about to go down. And you been engaged in regular self expression out Loudoun in public no lasts for a really long time. So you've been doing your own form of expressive expressing.
Zack Arnold: So let's dig into that. Let's just go even deeper. Why is it easier for me to journal 1500 words to 1000s of strangers than it is for me to journal in my own notebooks that anybody's ever gonna read?
Anna Holtzman: Well, I don't know the answer to that. But I'm curious how you are feeling toward yourself and about yourself. When you sit down to write
Zack Arnold: The number one thing that comes up as far as the different symptoms that you talked about as anxiety, there's no question that I have been dealing with a much more heightened level of anxiety than I've been managing for the last several years. One of the reasons that I took up all the Ninja Warrior Training and the really serious physical effort is that just you know, getting on the treadmill for 20 minutes or going to the gym does nothing for me, I need to really push myself to the physical limits. And that, to me, is what I would call my weekly Prozac. Or when I go would go to my ninja workouts on Sundays like, that's my therapy for the week, I need that to quote unquote, physical therapy, to be able to really dig in confront my limits, and then I walk away from it. I'm like, I feel so much better. I can't lift my arms. But Emotionally, I feel fantastic. And my entire family sees it. Saturday, I'm a very different person than Sunday afternoon, and I come home, which is why they not only allow me to but encouraged me, they're like, We have important plans tomorrow on Sunday. We need you to go and go to your workout, though. And that's the sign of like, Oh, I've been kind of an ass this week, right? So I've learned that that's something that's really important for me. And I've noticed that even with all the things I'm doing the anxiety is really starting to well up. And I feel it the most when I forced myself to stop and open a notebook. I'm just like, nope. The other thing I've noticed is that I'm in four years, I practice yoga and meditation. I'm specifically avoiding both of those things and making excuses. Anything that forces me to slow down and stop. Yeah, I'm having a complete and total aversion to
Anna Holtzman: And what I mean, you may or may not have a clear answer to this, and that's fine. But do you? Are you aware of like, what is the self talk that's coming up when you even think about sitting down to journal or to do yoga? Like, how are you relating to yourself in that moment, it may or may not be clear,
Zack Arnold: I don't think that it's necessarily clear, the first thing that came to mind, is that what the excuse that I'm making, it's not necessarily self talk, like, oh, you should be doing this, or it's not some sort of form of self flagellation, it's more, we don't have time for this. There's way too much of an urgency partly because as I make this transition, I've gone from a place of being very financially stable to there being financial instability, and uncertainty around finances, because I now have a team when I was doing this as primarily an editor, anything I did as coaching, well, that was great. I could invest in online courses, or I could buy the new cool Thera gun or whatever it was. And it was like, it was nice to have a little bit of extra cushion. As soon as I stuck the flag in the ground. And I said, I'm a former Film and Television editor, all this financial pressure and anxiety came up. So I make the excuse. I don't have time for this, because I have to keep doing things that generate income, otherwise, this all becomes a failure.
Anna Holtzman: So a couple of things come up. In my mind. One is the word excuse. It does sound kind of self critical, which I can completely relate to, and is normal. It kind of sounds like pressure. And it sounds like there's a really big thing that you're afraid will happen if you slow down. And that, I mean, that would scare me from slowing down. And I can also relate to that particular, you know, fear about slowing down. I mean, it sounds like everything's gonna fall apart if I slow down.
Zack Arnold: That's pretty much the the the feeling and the the voice in my head. And I feel like I've fairly recently developed an awareness around it. I'm still not sure how to move past it. I know that it's not a logical thought. I know it's largely an emotional one, but I have not I've yet to figure out how do I move through it?
Anna Holtzman: What if instead of trying to move past it, what if that was the thing you dialogued with first like, you know, I'll just use my journaling framing because that's how my head works. But I might sit down and write like, fear fear that everything's gonna fall apart. If I slow down what are you feeling? What are you trying to let me know? What are you trying to protect me from? Because it sounds like it's trying to protect you from a lot
Zack Arnold: I'm going to I'm actually going to crack this open as we speak. I cannot even believe I'm doing this. Because the question that I asked was, why don't I want to slow down at 230? In the morning yesterday? Why don't I want to slow down? So it's it the your prompts, I think, are they dig even a little bit deeper, but I finally just forced myself to externalize that. Right? And some of the answers, oh, so why don't I want to slow down? What am I afraid will happen? Well, I will have a failed business, which by the way, is triggered by the fact that I have had a failed business before. And the failed business was driven largely by financial pressure, and amassing a large amount of debt. And that happened in a row give or take about 12 years ago. So that's a traumatic experience, where I've actually watched my business dissolve and fall apart. So that would be one of them. The and I think that this is an even bigger one. If I fail, it's not even about the business. It's the fact that I now have to go back to working for other people. I don't work well, for other people. I work really, really horrible working for backing that spills the crap out of me.
Anna Holtzman: Yeah. Yeah. And I'm also curious, and this may or may not feel like it fits in for you. But I know for myself and for a lot of the people I work with, there's also a fear that if we, you know, if X, Y and Z happens, and we quote unquote, fail at something, there's this fear that, then we will abandon our own self that will be so angry at ourselves that we will bully ourselves. And, and that's a really scary prospect.
Zack Arnold: Yeah, I mean, I've made it it's when I say it, I say it as a joke. But I know there's a lot more truth to it, than it just being like a fun anecdote. But the joke that I make now that I'm an entrepreneur, and I've even written about this, I've never actually published it. I've got a whole section that I wrote for a newsletter, and I hit delete, because it didn't fit the narrative. And now I'm realizing maybe that was more out of fear than not fitting the narrative. But I started writing an entire newsletter, about the worst boss that I've ever worked with, that had no boundaries, that did not respect my needs that never let me slow down. And then the punch line was, by the way, that boss is me. Yeah. And it's still sitting somewhere. I don't know where the Google Doc is. But I wrote this whole thing about a mic near this isn't really relevant. And it's a tangent to the newsletter that I wrote. But I'm now realizing that was something that I had to get out of my system.
Anna Holtzman: And it sounds like it's probably something that nearly everyone who read who if they do read it, if you decide to share it, well, even if they're just hearing it on this podcast, will probably relate to in some way. I think most of us can relate to that.
Zack Arnold: So the next question that I have, which maybe is a little bit of a tangent, I don't think is that much of a tangent. But this is something that I've really been pondering for years with just working through this whole process, both emotionally and logically. I know that I am a highly, highly creative person. Yeah. Why is it so much harder for creative people, and maybe it isn't, maybe I'm just projecting this. But there are a lot of people that I've met in all my travels and all my networking, and they're just some people that go to their job for 40 hours a week. And it's ho hum, and they kind of like the people and the work is so they can you know, have the money to go on trips or vacations. And the job is just the job. And I'm like, it's like talking to an alien. Why is it so hard, it's so much harder for creative people to manage all of these fears and emotions and issues and everything else.
Anna Holtzman: Um, so I'm going to share what, what comes to my mind and tell me if it does or doesn't really relate directly to what you're talking about. But I feel that creative people in particular, can be prone to things like chronic pain and anxiety and all this stuff. Not that other people can't, but in this particular way, where we kind of get squeezed between this vise of one fear that's called urgency, one fear that says if I don't share my truth with the world, like now, it's all going to be too late and like no one will ever know who I am. And I desperately need to share, you know, my message or my voice or my vision with the world.
Zack Arnold: So God, it's like you just crawled into my brain. That's terrifying. Sorry, my brain. Continued Jesus. That's scary.
Anna Holtzman: Yeah. So there's like one dog leash pulling in that direction. Like, I've gotta get my stuff out there. And then there's another dog leash pulling in the caution directions saying like, Oh my gosh, if I show myself in public if I, you know, pop my head above the crowd, if I expose, you know, myself to being seen by other people. I'm going To be judged, I'll be criticized I'll be rejected like, no, no, no, don't go there. So it's like one energy, one fear energy and us is pulling us under the rock to go hide and the other is pulling us out into the sun to go, you know, scream it from the hilltops. And it's like, they're two leashes that are like wound around us in a vise and squeezing us and it hurts. It's not a party.
Zack Arnold: Yeah, not only is it not a party, it's it can be exhausting. Yeah, but I know that another thing that I experienced, and I don't know if all creatives do but I think that and there are so few people, maybe none in your field that would be able to relate and empathize as much as you because you're also an editor. But I feel that specifically for editors, and this can be true for many creatives, but we can speak as being editors, you have to have both a highly creative side, and I highly analytical side, because you have to understand the technical, and you have to be able to organize large amounts of information. You can't be just the you know, the free spirited, creative, you have to have both. And those two, it's just constant. They're always fighting each other. And like you said, it's very similar to that idea of these two different leashes.
Anna Holtzman: Also, as an editor, I think one of the uniquely stressful aspects of being an editor is that you are a highly creative person. But you don't get credit for being the creative person. That's a whole other episode. Yeah. So you're misunderstood. So you're like dying to be recognized. And also, you are constantly being criticized and commented on, during the act of creative expression, which I honestly can't think of anything more stressful than that for a creative person.
Zack Arnold: Yeah, so imagine being a novelist. And every day you write five pages, and it's not just the editor that's collaborating with you. It's your audience. I didn't like that. That was stupid. Well, why would you want to write the next five pages? Right?
Anna Holtzman: As you're writing? Why did you write that word? Why is that we're there what? That shouldn't have be a period?
Zack Arnold: Oh, you made a mistake there. Sorry, is this done yet?
Anna Holtzman: Constant threats to the nervous system, your nervous system is getting pinged like ping, ping, ping, ping. So, you know, why are editors shoulders all knotted up involved? It's not a big mystery.
Zack Arnold: Man. In all the years that I've done, what I've done both as an editor and all the things that I've done with this program, it has never so succinctly made sense to me, why we are so stressed as editors, and you just perfectly painted the picture. Because you're right, we're highly creative. We want to express ourselves in the second it gets out literally the second it gets out of our brain into a timeline into a monitor with somebody on their couch with their phone or their laptop. Nope, I don't like that. Nope, that was a bad choice. Oh, that music? Yeah, let's switch that you're like, Man, I didn't even get to do the thing yet.
Anna Holtzman: Yeah. And like, specifically very relevant to chronic pain is then so like, when someone is criticizing you all the time, like constantly throughout the day, because that's what the job entails. The biological reflex response to that is, for most people is anger, right? Like, half off, I'm doing my thing, like, a way for me. So that's just a biological response, like that anger wells up in us. But as an editor, to keep your job, you have to be super diplomatic, and play cool and have a cool personality. So that anger, you know, like, going back to the story I told about going to grad school, and my pump was primed, but it wasn't safe for the emotions to come out. Same deal. It's like that anger, that's, you know, it's not personal. It's not a personality thing. It's just a biological response. It wells up, and then it's got nowhere to go. And so it's going to express itself in other ways, and pain is one of them.
Zack Arnold: What I want to do with the few minutes that we have left, because as somebody that talks about time management, I do want to be respectful of your time and your expertise. But for those that are going through this kind of chronic pain, and now I mean, you literally have crystallized so much in my life and the stress like in this one image. It's just it seems so obvious now. So I appreciate giving that clarity, both domain to the audience. But let's assume that you're talking to me 10 years ago, or you're talking to somebody that's in the middle of the migraines, they could literally be listening to our conversation in their earbuds while they're doing notes with a director in front of them. Where do we get started? I know we talked about creative journaling. What are some other things we can do to get started to start working through this and better understand it?
Anna Holtzman: Yes. So I would say that creative journaling is not the starting point. The starting point is education. It's re educating yourself about pain because what most of us know about pain is the medical model like you were talking about before you know, just dump meds on the symptoms and don't address the root cause and don't even know what the root causes. So, for me, and everyone really, that I've met in the chronic pain recovery world, the starting point is, is chronic pain education. And that can be with a book, it can be with a podcast, it can be with an app, I can throw out some suggestions, I have a list of favorites that I send to people. I don't know, if you want me to list them out here, we can throw them in the show notes if you'd like. But
Zack Arnold: I mean, you can, you can definitely send send them along to Debby. And we will definitely get all the resources in the shownotes. But it's interesting because even though we may not have taken all the the exact same courses, we have a similar approach, my answer is always you need awareness. First, you can't solve a problem unless you understand what the problem is. And basically what you're saying, and so many words, you need awareness, then you can dig into it. So I think for me, the level of awareness is high enough, I can dive into the journal, but it's not a matter of man, I got migraines, let me start writing about this today.
Anna Holtzman: Right, you need to have a framework. And that helps. And that helps with establishing safety, which chronic pain recovery is all about establishing safety, because pain is a dangerous signal, it's the nervous system feels that it's in danger. So everything that we do with recovery is about establishing safety. And that first step to establishing safety is coming out of the confusion and establishing a clear framework.
Zack Arnold: So I've got a framework, I've done a little bit of re educating myself, I've developed a little bit of awareness, I know that the answer can be a million different things. But in general, where do you think I might go next?
Anna Holtzman: Next, I might go into journaling. So in, in my path, which, you know, there's just so much commonality to everyone's path who's gone on this pain recovery path. So for me, it, I kind of broke it down to four key phases, it started with re education. The second phase was when I got into journaling, it was about emotional expression is really about emotional hygiene. And some I like to use humor because like pain can be scary humor can take down the fear. It's like if you didn't go to the bathroom every day, and you were all backed up in your bowels like that would be physically painful, that is physically painful. And it happens. Same deal with emotional energy. If we're not flushing it through ourselves on the regular, it's gonna get backed up and it'll be physically painful. So one was education. Two is learning, emotional digestion or emotional hygiene,
Zack Arnold: Emotional digestion, I love that term.
Anna Holtzman: Third, developing learning how to develop self love, which I know when a lot of people including myself in the beginning, when they even hear the term self love, they cringe like. And that's a big indicator that we need a lot of work there. Culture has taught us that loving ourself is wrong and gross, and weird and icky. And that's in my opinion. That's all of what got us into this pickle to begin with. So that's third. And then fourth, for me is letting go of the perfectionism about healing itself, releasing the pressure to be perfectly healed, whatever. That even means.
Zack Arnold: Well, if Step number three is embracing self love, I can see why I'm scared of step two. Because that is a very scary concept for me as well, because it's just it's not the way I was raised. And it's all about having the the achievement and moving forwards and, you know, having the time and energy to just be and just accept that's a that's a scary, unusual concept.
Anna Holtzman: Yeah. And it's cultural, right? It's not the way almost any of us were raised. And so like we're in it together, stumbling our way through it.
Zack Arnold: Well, there is another step to add. And I want to do the promotion work for you. Because I know that as creators, we don't often like to promote ourselves, but I would assume that amongst one or any or all of those steps could be seeking out somebody to help you through the process, which is also what you do now
Anna Holtzman: Absolutely. Yes. And I have two programs that I am very excited to share with people. One is a self paced course that people can find on my website, and it's called Writing to release chronic pain. It's obviously about expressive writing. And the other is a group coaching program that I'm going to be launching in January and it's called from chronic pain to passion and it's specifically for creatives for passionate creatives who want to recover from chronic pain and reclaim their energy so they can use it to bring their dreams alive. And I'm super psyched about that because I love working with creatives.
Zack Arnold: Yeah, I can once again just there's so much synergy between both the people that you help and how you help them as the people that I'm working with as well. So I'm certainly going to do my best with this podcast, both the conversation that we're having and the newsletter and elsewhere to make sure that people know about your services. Because this is a service I cannot provide, and cannot even do it remotely at the level that you do. So if somebody's listening to this, and these are services that they require, just know that you already have my endorsement. And this sounds like this could be tremendous. The amount of benefit I got just from a podcast conversation for 45 minutes, is immense. So I can't imagine what it must look like to be in a supportive group program for weeks or even months.
Anna Holtzman: Well, I so appreciate it. And I gotta say, I'm so thrilled to be here talking to you, because I've been admiring what you've been doing for years. So it's just so cool to be here, chatting together.
Zack Arnold: Well, it's amazing what happens when you decide to take that chance and overcome the imposter syndrome or not even overcome it, just embrace it and put yourself out there so many amazing people in my life because I chose to embrace that fear and just, you know, walk walk right into it, step into discomfort and would never have met you or had this conversation without having done that. So I'm glad that we found each other
Anna Holtzman: Totally me too. And one of one of the chronic pain recovery. Experts in the field, who I've learned a ton from her name is Nicole sacks. One of her things she loves to say is that recovery is a choice between what hurts and what hurts more. Because recovery, as we've been talking about, it's triggering, it brings up all this stuff, just like making a career change does. But it's so freakin worth it.
Zack Arnold: Yeah, it's so funny you say that, because I will often tell like, for example, I have a group of Spartans that I'm training for Spartan Races. But I also tell my other students that you're not making a choice between what you really want to do. And what you don't want to do is like, which one is going to hurt less? Right? Or which one? Are you? What I will often say is which one are you scared of more, that's when you probably need to do obviously, if it's, you know, an unsafe environment, it creates tremendous anxiety that's different. But if something is making you more scared and more nervous, or even excited, you have to lean into that. And it's so similar to this idea between what hurts and what hurts more that totally resonates.
Anna Holtzman: Yeah, like, do you want to be stuck in chronic discomfort that is ongoing? And you know what that's like? Or do you want to try something that might make things a little bit more uncomfortable for a period? And then there's all this other stuff on the other side of it?
Zack Arnold: Yeah, I love it. So anybody that is listening, what is the best way to find you? And specifically, if they decide that they want to work with you and partaking your services? How do they do that?
Anna Holtzman: They can go to my website, which is Annaholtzman.com, ANNAHOLTZMAN.com. Or they can find me on Instagram at Anna underscore Holtzman.
Zack Arnold: And I also understand that you have an entire Guide To Helping passionate creatives deal with pain recovery, do you not?
Anna Holtzman: I do indeed, yes. And you can find that a both on my website and on Instagram. It's the passionate creatives guide to chronic pain recovery.
Zack Arnold: Yeah and I just scan through it. And I'm probably going to dig into it even further. Because there's a lot of stuff in here that I clearly need to embrace at the moment. So on that note, and I cannot tell you how thankful and grateful I am that you reached out, and that I actually saw your message and opened it and pass it along. And you're here now really excited about all the things that we talked about. And I have a feeling that there will be future conversations and some synergy and potentially collaboration as well.
Anna Holtzman: I truly hope so. It's such a pleasure to be here. Thank you so much for having me.
Zack Arnold: You're more than welcome.
This episode was edited by Curtis Fritsch, and the show notes were prepared by Debby Germino and published by Glen McNiel.
The original music in the opening and closing of the show is courtesy of Joe Trapanese (who is quite possibly one of the most talented composers on the face of the planet).
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