Talk & Guided Meditation For Alleviating Intrusive Thoughts

This is a talk and guided meditation covering both modern clinical and 2,500-year old core Buddhist perspectives into the unconscious "ironic process" that makes certain thoughts sticky and repetitive (obsessive), along with specific practices that allow us to stem the flow of such obsessive ideations. The practices, while grounded in early Buddhist concepts, are also found in contemporary therapeutic traditions such as cognitive and dialectical behavioral therapies (CBT and DBT).

Transcript

So tonight,

Gonna start out with a famous short story by Edgar Allan Poe.

I'm not gonna recite the story just summarize it.

I believe it was called the Imp of the Perverse there was a man who carries out what was the perfect murder and quite honestly,

I don't remember how he did it,

But it was a perfect murder and he would get away with it and whenever he any thought of it Appears he thinks I am safe just repeats that phrase.

I am safe and all's well until one day He changes the I am safe to I'm safe so long as I don't confess This little subtle change leads to his complete undoing essentially trying to suppress the thought of Confessing actually drives him crazy the thoughts keep embodying him more and more constantly and the more he tries or extends effort to suppress the thought the more it intrudes eventually he falls into a spiral of panic and anxiety and then Does exactly what he was telling himself not to do which is he confesses We're gonna understand why this story by Poe is so psychologically insightful the underlying truth that it conveys and why what it's informing us is so I think vital and maintaining emotional health and well-being intrusive thoughts memories worries images Of my ruminations.

Yeah can create debilitating symptoms all anxiety disorders feature Rampant intrusive thoughts clinician at Harvard a guy named Dan Wagner who was fascinated why it's so impossible to suppress thoughts why the very act of trying to suppress thoughts leads Not just to a futile endeavor,

But also very often makes the thought that we're trying to suppress even more essentially intrusive He did a famous study which was recounted in his book white bears White bears is of course referring to polar bears in the book was referring to a famous quote by I believe it was Dostoevsky who said there's nothing more futile than trying not to think about polar bears so Wagner in fact put that to the test and he put in a room of people people in a room and Just put a white Button in front of them.

Maybe I don't know if it was white button could be a red button for all I know I don't know why I added that needless to tell he put a button in front of them and He said to one group think about polar bears as much as you like He said to the second group Don't think about polar bears and then the simple instruction was every time you think about polar bears hit the button You can't get more simple than this test folks and clinical psychology And of course if you haven't guessed by now the people that he told not to think about polar bears It turned out that was totally futile In fact,

They wound up not only thinking about polar bears just as often many thought about it Many many times more than the people who were given permission So the attempt he saw over and over and over again to suppress a thought to not think about something on its own creates what he calls the ironic process which is That which we try to a thought Which is mental content that we try to suppress Actually that very act backfires on us What it does literally is your left brain comes up with an conscious explicit Command which is not to think about polar bears But then to do that your right hemisphere sets up an unconscious process which in the background while you're doing everything else Is focusing on whether a thought about white polar bears is going to happen Well,

Guess what in monitoring for something you actually create it So if you tell your right hemisphere look out for white polar bears that very Injunction actually creates the right hemisphere to constantly have white polar Polar bears in mind so the attempting to get rid of a thought Actually creates the very causes and conditions that makes the thought happen more often And in fact,

Wegener said it creates a war in the mind One part saying not to do something while the other part Is constantly inadvertently creating the very thought that we're trying to avoid So conscious control processes eventually your consciousness becomes exhausted to the cognitive overload And eventually you'll just fall into a loop of thinking about nothing but Polar bears So during the day Constantly autonomic or automatic processes I should say Generate countless thoughts based upon unconscious triggers Your right brain is constantly Scanning the world around you people and such and whenever something reminds you of a pertinent event from your past Such as an emotional event For your past your right hemisphere will bring up a memory or an image or a phrase or even a emotional response That is triggered by this encounter for example suppose in Second grade Or third grade you had a substitute teacher Who unlike your normal teacher was unfriendly look exhausted and threw a surprise test And you did poorly on that test and during that test you felt in some way like you were going to get in trouble And there was something wrong with you Of course this never happened to you because you were all excellent students in second and third grade But just imagine that this was possible then imagine seeing someone 30 years later who has the same Distinctive features maybe the same beard or cardigan or something about them that is eerily similar to the original teacher That's associated with stress and a sense of failure What this does is unconsciously you do something called a Neurocept you unconsciously see them and you it activates a memory And then guess what you might suddenly out of the blue have a thought of i'm failing I'm not doing good enough.

What's the matter with me?

So that's an example of an automatic thought process that happens all the time where out of the blue will have a sudden despairing frightening or shocking thought that and generally the ones that get stuck and Create a sense.

I have to block this thought get rid of this thought are the ones that in some way Create a felt sense of insecurity in our social connections.

I'll say that again most people When any thought just pops into mind if it's simply a random thought Or a random song that comes into your mind that's triggered by an automatic process.

It won't get stuck.

It won't Repeat itself over and over again,

But if the thought actually has to do with Challenging your sense of security in the world How you relate to other people then?

A special circuit in your brain the ventral medial will be triggered and it will activate the right amygdala And then that will start the circuit loop of repeating that thought because now That thought seems very very very important Very very necessary for you to do something about it your left hemisphere on the other hand won't want anything to do with that thought It's got things to do places to go people to meet so your left brain is like I don't want to think about this weird random thought of i'm failing or something like that I want to just get on with my life and so it will try to suppress that thought and that will start The loop or the inner war which keeps triggering the thought Over and over again.

So for example Suppose previously In some important social event You were embarrassed at a social gathering where you had to speak And then you find out that today or tomorrow you have to go and speak at a social gathering That very impending event will trigger Your right brain to remember That previous event and it will trigger a thought Uh-oh I better not be awkward.

I have to be confident or else people will laugh at me and think i'm weird,

Right That very impending event will trigger Your right brain to remember that the thought will try to think i'm weird That very then Thought will trigger consciously this thing.

Oh,

I don't want to think about that.

I have to speak That's the last thing I want to think about being awkward And you know the fear of like looking and weird in front of people on being embarrassed So your left hemisphere will say go away And in that very action again intrusive.

Intrusive thoughts are.

.

.

Non-intrusive thoughts,

I should say.

Normal thoughts are simply your left brain's way of explaining impulses.

Your left hemisphere's job is simply to look at all of the impulses and actions and events of the outside world and to turn them into a story.

A language-based,

Ongoing,

Internal monologue that explains what's happening and gives you a sense of agency and control.

It's the slower of the two hemispheres of the brain and it has far less actual control over autonomic processes.

Intrusive,

Unpleasant images,

Memories,

And thoughts are,

Again,

The right hemisphere's way of trying to,

At first,

Warn us that something in the present is in some way reminiscent of something in the past that was challenging,

Difficult,

Or painful.

That's why you have these repetitive or thoughts that seem out of the blue or strange is because they're always your unconscious and implicit.

.

.

Implicit,

Yes,

Not explicit,

Functions trying to warn you.

Your right brain is about withdrawal,

Safety,

Security.

It's working in the background,

But it's always worried about am I going to get into a situation where somehow my security,

My social bonds,

Will in some way be compromised and whenever it sees anything that reminds it of a situation in your past that was difficult or challenging,

It will send up some kind of message,

Maybe an image,

Maybe a sudden worry,

Maybe a sudden memory.

It will send up,

But the whole point of it is to say,

Hold on,

I shouldn't move so quickly,

There's something wrong,

I should be concerned.

And when the left brain decides,

I don't want to know about this,

I just want to keep going,

Then it sets up an inner war.

Intrusive thoughts activate,

As I said,

The ventral medial prefrontal cortex.

It activates your amygdala and that's why intrusive thoughts can seem so real no matter how ridiculous they are.

Sudden fears of one's entire sense of security or catastrophizing thoughts can seem,

No matter how unlikely they are,

They can seem punishingly real and dangerous because they activate the exact same circuit that real threats do.

And like real threats,

When the ventral medial activates your amygdala,

Then it starts the HPA axis,

Which starts your heart racing,

Your blood pumping,

You'll feel your heart racing in your chest,

You'll start to feel all the somatic markers of I'm in and under threat.

And this is how people wind up with chronic stress.

They start having intrusive thoughts about job security,

Interpersonal challenges,

Relational challenges.

They keep thinking those thoughts,

Which keeps activating the midbrain,

Which keeps activating the HPA axis,

Which activates cortisol.

So while you can't,

And this is the unfortunate part,

It's very very difficult to think your way into peaceful states because actually there's very little axons that connect your left brain to the parts that actually soothe or down-regulate,

But you can easily think yourself into trouble,

Into fear.

There are some ways to use thoughts that can subtly soothe,

But generally there's far more effective ways which we'll talk about.

Now I'm going to talk quickly about neural perspectives and then Buddhist perspectives on this.

In contemporary neuropsychology tells us that people with intrusive thoughts that are chronic over time have a diminished capacity to process GABA,

Which is an anxiolytic,

Reduces anxiety and it inhibits the activation of your hippocampus,

Which helps prevent thoughts.

So the more you,

Unfortunately it creates a feedback loop where just having intrusive thoughts then damages the hippocampus,

Which in turn damages your ability to inhibit thoughts,

So you become more prone to it.

This is why people who have chronic stress are very often put on benzodiazepines,

Which are essentially GABA delivery systems,

But you don't have to do that.

If you actually find yourself stressed out and want to help your brain,

You can simply go to any health food store that sources their supplements well and get a thing called theanine.

No,

I am NOT a pitchman for it.

It's actually synthesized,

Believe it or not,

From green tea,

But even though green tea in itself is a stimulant,

Theanine,

Which is a part of it,

Is not and theanine is a source of a precursor for GABA,

So it helps your brain synthesize it.

The only problem is you can't take it with meals because your stomach loves GABA too and if you take it with meals it'll actually start to consume it.

Don't buy GABA,

G-A-B-A,

In and of itself.

The molecules are too big to break the brain blood barrier,

So it won't help you at all,

But theanine will.

Other people who chronically have OCD,

Mania,

Intrusive,

Non-ending,

Anxiety-based worrying thoughts,

What happens is an area of your brain called the pudimins starts to fire uncontrollably and that can easily be dealt with by run of the mill,

Over-the-counter serotonin reuptake inhibitors.

Your old-school Prozacs and all that are actually very efficient in addressing that,

So I'm not again a shill for that.

There's many other ways we can address it,

But I just wanted to note all of the tools available to you.

Now Buddhist perspectives,

One of the Eightfold Path,

Which is the Buddhist essentially program for right living,

Is right effort.

What is right effort?

It doesn't mean waking up every day and going to work.

It has nothing to do with that.

Right effort,

Samavayana,

Vayana,

Is simply sustained endeavor to bring about skillful mind states and to keep them going.

We'll talk about why that's so important.

Before I get to that,

I'll just note that the Buddhist theory of intrusive repetitive thoughts is called papancha,

A wonderful word.

Papancha literally in early Pali means to multiply something times ten.

That's all it means,

But that word took on a meaning of multiplying obsessive thoughts that just constantly produce more and more and more.

So they seem like it.

They're constantly multiplying times ten.

And the Buddha said what creates papancha,

Or obsessive thoughts,

Is speculating about self.

Now there's a lot of actually good clinical psychology behind this observation.

In many suttas like the Sabhasava,

The Buddha says the one kind of most dangerous thought is speculating how do I compare with other people,

What's going to happen to me in the future,

What is mine versus everybody else's,

Why am I different from everyone else,

And so forth.

This is why it was so important for the Buddha to undermine or make practitioners wary of self-related thoughts and why so much of the Dharma was about explaining how all experience is universal and not about me or you in particular.

One of the common Buddhist refrains is I am of the nature to grow sick,

Old,

Die.

The Four Noble Truths is in life,

No matter how you live it,

There's going to be old age,

Sickness,

Death,

Loss,

Fear,

Sadness,

Grief,

Despair,

And longing.

So the Buddha is simply in much of the Dharma trying to normalize or in essence remind us that our experience on the fundamental emotional level is not unique to us.

And there's a good reason to do that because thoughts that separate or isolate or in some way individuate us against the field of everyone else are the most likely thoughts to become intrusive,

The most likely to activate the default mode to trigger stress and to become invasive.

Now what are the Buddha's tools to remove intrusive repetitive thoughts?

There was a famous Sutta,

The Vittakha Santana,

Santahana,

I think it is a Sutta,

I think it's the 20th of the middle-length discourses,

And so there's a list of tools and there's three that he he focused that are,

You know,

The most commonly practiced and these have a lot of really really good science behind them.

They really work very well.

Remember Dan Wagner with the white polar bears test,

You know,

Well he was interested in the second test he did with the people who he had told to either think about polar bears or to not think about polar bears.

He ran a second test and he simply said think about polar bears as often as you want or,

And here's the clever part,

He said you can instead if you want think about red Volkswagens and he actually showed an image of red Volkswagens.

I have to add in a personal note I loved reading this in his clinical book because when I was young and my mother wanted to shut me up she would pay me five cents when they were on road trips every time I spotted a red Volkswagen so my sister and I would stay glued with our faces pressed and not say a word.

It was a brilliant strategy.

Anyway,

So eerily enough Wagner said the exact same thing,

Red Volkswagen's think about them as often as you like.

So the group that he never told about the red Volkswagen,

You know,

Kept hitting the button but when he gave the permission to think about something else suddenly people stopped hitting the button.

So the key to getting rid of an intrusive thought is not fighting the thought but is switching to something else that is fun and pleasurable to think about.

It sounds so obvious when you say it but so many people do not practice this one simple tool.

If you are constantly frightened of failing or being overwhelmed or not succeeding at an important event in your life and that thought has been plaguing you,

Think of a rewarding positive thought that doesn't activate your default mode operation,

I.

E.

Something that's about you personally.

Just how fun it would be to pack your bags and on a whim fly off to Bali.

Oops,

That's me,

Sorry.

Come up with a fun plan and visualize it and make it so detailed and so accurate that you will not instead pay attention each time the fear-based thought comes up.

You just say,

Hello,

You're there,

No worries,

Not going to push you away,

Not going to fight you,

You're welcome to come up as often as you like just like the people with the white polar bear.

But I'm going to think about this.

The second tool the Buddha suggested was analyze the thought from the perspective of,

For example,

Would you say this thought to anyone else?

Would you follow around a friend and knock on their head and repeatedly say,

You're failing,

You're not doing good enough,

People don't really like you or they might seem like they like you but you can never be certain or you're an imposter or you might be found out at any moment.

No,

Of course,

We would never say that to a friend.

Another classic test is would you let anyone else say the thoughts that are persistent to you?

So analyzing,

These are by the way very classic cognitive behavioral therapy tools that work very efficiently.

Asking oneself if the thought passes the test of,

Would I say this to a friend or to someone else?

Removing the sense of it if it's about me.

The third tool the Buddha offered which is very effective and the one that I constantly use is sometimes instead of creating a substitute thought,

The tool the Buddha recommended was relaxing the body that is activated by the thought.

So remember how we said intrusive thoughts activate what's called the default mode operation of the brain otherwise known as ventral medial which triggers the amygdala.

The amygdala triggers the HPA axis,

Releases cortisol,

Your heart rate starts climbing,

You start feeling your blood pressure raises,

Arteries constrict,

You start to feel a hair in the back of your neck,

You start to feel your blood pumping.

Well if you bring attention to these symptoms and directly address the body as Joseph Ledoux of NYU Neuroscience Department notes that's actually for him the most effective tool in regulating repetitive thoughts and fears.

What you do and we'll do this in the meditation,

You breathe out really long exhalations activate your vagal nerve which stops stress.

So finding the body sensations first long exhalations breathe into your belly,

Abdominal breathing is actually also engages the vagal nerve deactivates the sympathetic nervous system and so forth relaxing key vagal areas of the body opening up the chest and so forth those self soothe and if you relax the body very often the intrusiveness of the thoughts dissipates because they are actually being activated by this loop.

Another tool that you can also use the studies of the great Pennebaker at the University of Texas showed in his book I think was called writing it down or writing it out.

Another efficient tool for regulating intrusive thoughts is to write them out.

What does that do?

Well actually writing it out fully bilaterally integrates the entirety of the brain when that thought is present no longer becomes a primarily mid and right hemisphere driven it actually broken Wernicke's and all these other regions so when you fully bilateral integrate the brain then it actually helps regulate.

Boy I sound like a fucking nerd.

Alright anyway and finally Dan Wegener again in the conclusion of his his book on intrusive thoughts found in a subsequent study that people who practice even a modicum of meditation a day are far more successful in regulating and essentially mitigating or modulating the repetition of thoughts than people who don't.

So what this means is just even take ten minutes a day to simply sit relax and continually practice the tool of bringing your mind back from whatever thoughts could pop up and just continually bringing them back to your body.

That simple tool is so effective it was also shown by Sarah Lazar at Harvard to be one of the most effective tools in a sustaining vital brain regions actually for instance your cingulate which helps you focus and essentially shrinking the gray matter in right and left amygdala's.

So that's tonight's talk I hope something and it was interesting and now we're going to do a meditation which comprises all of the tools that I just described to you so you can put them into your own practice.

So thank you for listening and yeah so find a really comfortable seated position and just close your eyes if you don't like closing your eyes no worries just look at the ground in front of you you don't want to be engaged right now in exteroception which is scanning the world around you why is that well actually that is more likely to activate your autonomic nervous system than to soothe it and what we're going to be doing in our practice is cultivating self soothing safety cues to down regulate and to also help us prevent intrusive thoughts so let's just start by doing the three breaths I like to do to start the process of self soothing so take a nice complete in breath through the nose and squinch the muscles in the face really tight clench the jaw for the brow pinch the nose and mouth and then as you breathe out slowly relax the muscles now why do we clench and then release well good question when you clench and release muscles they actually require much less oxygen and carry less action potential in the nerves than muscles that haven't been clenched and released so it's a very good practice to this is a of course common in yoga Savasana so clenching and releasing is a very good practice to help lower your heart rate and switch yourself back into rest and digest states so and full breath lift your shoulders up like you're trying to touch your ears rotate them back and then with a long exhalation drop your shoulders and what we're doing here is we're opening up the chest engaging the vagal break vagal break actually is good it actually lowers your heart rate if you keep your shoulders clenched and tight you're sending a message to the midbrain that you're not safe if you keep your chest open relaxed your arms not tight by your side you're sending a message to the midbrain saying I am doing okay I'm safe here I don't have to defend myself and our third breath full inhalation as you breathe in imagine that all the air is going into your belly so it expands you feel it literally start to lift and expand and blow and then long exhalation and soften the belly now some people practice abdominal breathing by simply focusing on the abdomen so observing and exaggerating slightly the expansion of the belly during the inhalation then long exhalation and slowly releasing another way you can do abdominal breathing is first expand the belly and then have the energy flow up to the chest and expand that area too so you're handing the breath energy from your belly to your chest and then on the exhalation first the chest begins to drop and then the belly so in the exhalation you're handing the energy back from the chest to the belly so it creates a circle circular movement in the body however you do it always with each exhalation try to make it far inclined the exhalations to be far longer than inhalations you want to release as much as set a choline with the exhalation which relaxes and engages your vagal break in long inhalations or emphasis on your inhalations is associated with activity and stress so that's not what we want right now we want all the attention to that long soothing out breath so we're just going to for a little while in a moment sit in silence just to practice we're going to develop that preparation for becoming aware of intrusive thoughts and just starting the tool of soothing every time in the silent portion you notice that a thought has lured you into its virtual reality whether it's a word based thought or an image based thought just know what theme or topic the thought is about you can promise it you'll return to it later don't suppress it just abandon and bring your attention back to your body and try to join that long exhalation you could think of the breath is like surfing the inhalation you're paddling out to catch a wave and then the exhalation you're surfing riding that wave back to shore never judge yourself if you find yourself getting lost in thought over and over again that's fine each time you become aware of it just practice being very compassionate with yourself no frustration no impatience just bring it back you've got nowhere to go nothing to do right now your sole job is to pay heed care and attention to your body which is keeping you alive every moment of your life you you you you if you ever struggle during and you sit just stop and try not to meditate just relax just keep trying to just have a really settled breath relax your body but don't try to let go of any idea of what meditation is let go of any evaluating tendency find whatever feels tight and relax it just develop a very caring tender attention that surveys your body and just releases any areas that feel constricted just breathe in soften you So,

This point invites you to bring to mind a moderately challenging thought,

Not something that's deeply upsetting.

For instance,

A thought along the lines of maybe later this year I'll have to find a new apartment or I have to go to a dentist and what if it's expensive.

So,

No thought that feels especially threatening to your health and the health of your loved ones,

But just something that's oddly on a mundane level challenging.

Just whatever it is bring it to mind.

We're just going to practice the two other tools.

So,

When you have this thought and mind first bring your awareness into the body while this thought is present and just find any even slight areas where the muscles start to clench.

Perhaps you notice that the breath becomes shallower.

Perhaps you notice that there's a slight tightening of the shoulders or perhaps the forehead becomes a little bit more tightly engaged.

Just see if you can locate even the slightest articulations of clenching in the body while this.

.

.

Just give full permission for the thought to be there.

And in the classic Buddhist and distress tolerance mode we're simply going to relax the body while we have the unpleasant thought present.

So,

We're not fighting it.

We're not trying to get rid of it.

We're just soothing the somatic or physical tension,

Interrupting the feedback loop which triggers the return of the thought.

Long inhalations,

I mean sorry long exhalations using the belly,

Softening any muscles in the front of the body that get tight when you have this intrusive thought present.

So,

Again you're not trying to suppress it.

You're just each time bringing your attention to what the Buddha called the body fabrication and you're just softening classic ancient Buddhist tools still used today.

This is fundamentally how exposure therapies work.

Bringing us into contact with a feared thought or event and soothing ourselves while we do that.

And lastly,

Keeping in mind that unpleasant thought that we invited.

If you're just bringing it back to mind and now I want you to create in your mind a replacement thought,

A substitute thought,

Something that's pleasant,

That's not personally about you,

Just something that you could do.

Pleasant thought of connecting with someone,

Connecting thought of doing something beneficial for another which activates key region,

The DACC,

Which raises your serotonin and endorphin levels.

Visualize helping someone,

Connecting with someone,

Bring to mind a something positive you did for someone recently and imagine them looking at you with gratitude.

Replacing the triggering thought with a thought that is not triggering of your midbrain.

And just practice bringing your attention back again and again to the positive red Volkswagen thought.

So in a moment I'm going to ring the bowl and when you hear the sound very slowly open your eyes,

Look at the ground and just before you look around the room just try to integrate sight into your field of awareness in such a way that it doesn't push awareness of your body and your breath into the background.

We tend to prioritize thought and exteroception which is awareness of the world around us at the expense of interoception and really to have a mindful,

Healthy,

Engaged,

Auto-regulating state of well-being.

It's best to be aware of all three,

Knowing what you're thinking,

Knowing what you're seeing and hearing,

And knowing what you're feeling.

Reviews

Thank you so much for this extremely informative talk!!

Simply excellent. Buddhism and neuroscience brought together. Dightful and helpful. Thank you, Josh.

This was excellent. It is so rare to get such a detailed explanation of the “why” of certain practices. Thank you.

Great explanation of the brain and the science behind thoughts and then some concrete tools to use to stop fighting intrusive thoughts. About 1/2 lecture and 1/2 silent and guided meditation.

Powerful, helpful tools for an OCD sufferer like myself. Very insightful - thank you 🙏

Very insightful, thank you ♥️

Very informative and helpful. Thank you.

Excellent

Au contraire to how you described bed yourself , you are an elnlightened nerd:) Thanks for the talk and the surfing visualisation. This is good info and practice

Wow, as a therapist, I did some of these practices intuitively but never realized the extent of the benefit.

I appreciated that so much. It made my life a little less hell by not trying to battle my brain so hard and transforming horrible thoughts into lighter ones.

Excellent, thank you.

Being a clinician, I find the neuroscience explanation of meditation practice interesting and helpful. Thank you

Excellent talk for half session and great meditation for other half of session namaste

Loved the neuroscience, the relaxed delivery and the practical application. Thank you Josh 🙏🏼💙

Perfect blend of anatomy and physiology, psychology, nuerology, buddhism, anecdotal stories and engaging delivery followed by a 25 minute meditation. Excellent talk! 🙏❤️🙌

This meditation was insightful and helpful, and at the end of it I feel clearer and quieter inside.

I find valuable the idea of agreeing with the intrusive thought to pause a bit to one, go and lengthen the outbreath, and two, soften my body in a caring manner, and three indulge in a thought I enjoy more, and I now have a mini list of things I love that I can visit those times, like the hike trail, sausages at the mall, a quiet beach, road trip.. 😊 😊 😊 Thank you. Namaste 🙏.

Very illuminating talk and helpful meditation. Thanks!

This is incredibly helpful! Is there a transcript available?

I learn so much from you, Josh. If only I could continually employ it. I guess that is what practice is. Thank you. Always.