Hello my beautiful internet friends, welcome back. Please say hi to Sadie and Sophie's butt that you can see back there. They'll be joining us but they'll be napping and probably snoring and destroying the audio quality on this video. But that's okay because they're so damn cute. It is now 10 minus 6 days until my second amputation. While it is not how I would have planned things, I do have a cool story to tell at parties, so worth it. It's not, not worth it. I got a letter yesterday which was like the insurance approval and it said on it like approval for amputation through fibria and tibia and fibula. You would think that I would know which bones are in my leg by this point. And looking at that piece of paper, it just got a lot more real that this is actually happening and what a bizarre turn of events all of this has been. But that is not the point of this video. The point of this video is making peace with panic, which is on the sentence I would normally say. But in the past few days, I've kind of been losing it. And normally I would see that as a bad thing, normally I would see that as a like you've got to get it together sort of thing. I've been in counseling now for two years and we've talked about a lot of things but if I were to condense everything that my counselor has told me down to a single sentence, it would be joe. Just let yourself feel things. Don't do a very effective job. I don't do a great job of letting my mind and body feel what it needs to feel. I do have a very effective system for shelling emotions down, putting them in a tiny little box as labeling those boxes and putting them on shelves to be visited if I feel like it. And if I do let myself feel things, I control the amount that I allow that to happen. I've let myself feel things more over the years as I've gotten more emotionally healthy. But my counselor actually once called me emotionally anorexic, which is not an actual diagnosis. She was just making the point that I starve my emotions. I control them. I work so hard to control every aspect of what I feel that I never just feel things. I never just let it go. Right? And I know an okay amount about mental health. I know a decent amount. I speak about it a lot. But for all of that knowledge, emotions terrify me still. And I was thinking about the week weeding up to my last invitation versus this one. And this week I've just been losing it. This week I've just been like freaking out. I'm really angry over nothing. Just racked with anxiety and had a panic attack yesterday, which was not my favorite thing ever. And generally I would look at that and think I'm not doing a great job handling thing. It's like that's the narrative I would have in my head. But after I had a panic attack yesterday, which is not a pleasant thing, which is a scary and uncomfortable thing, kind of came to a realization, which is exactly what my counselor has been telling me for two years. I'm sure she would like it if I would have just listened a year and a half ago. I didn't try to stop myself when I was panicking yesterday. It just mounted and mounted until I felt like I was losing my mind. And usually what I would do in that situation is I would try to control it. I tried to like stop it down. I would be like, Joe, you're fine. You're okay. Like here's what you should do to control it. And here's what you need to do to like manage this and like stop it. And just this narrative of control. And instead of that, I just gave in to it. And I have no idea if what I'm preaching right now is a great way to talk about panic attacks or not. But I just want to share my experience in case it might help anybody else. I let that panic overtake me. I felt my chest caving in on itself and the inability to breathe or think or move. It led into me collapsing against a wall and just wailing, which sure was very concerning to my neighbors. Sorry about that. And afterwards, I felt okay. I felt all right. I didn't busy myself with trying to control what I was thinking or feeling. I just let it be. And the more that I've done that, the more moments like that that I've had, the better I've felt. If you met me in real life, I don't think anyone maybe, maybe not. If you know me, let me know if I'm wrong here. I don't think anyone would call me a control freak. But deep down I am for myself, for like everything inside of me, I try to keep everything well organized and put together. And I don't want to ever let anything get out of control. When it comes to our emotions, they're like the first thing that we experience as babies, we've been crying something's wrong. We laugh when something's great. You know, we're mad when we don't get what we want. We don't actually get the ability to communicate for years. We don't get the ability to think rationally for years after that. Emotions serve a purpose. Emotions are here for a reason. And I think the more I try to stomp them down, the worse things get. I've seen that evidence in my own life. And so just letting go yesterday, I was amazed at how much better I felt afterwards. I sought as a normal reaction to an abnormal event, to an abnormal time in my life. And I didn't try to judge myself for it. And I was thinking, as I said, about this week, leading up to this surgery versus the last one. And I mean, this is obviously very different because I know what to expect. To some extent, going into this, like I know what I'm facing. Before I am mutation, when I still had a leg going into the idea of not having a leg, I was really numb. I was really panicked in some moments, but like I didn't actually let myself feel it. I like stomped it back down and just was like, I'm just going to feel things later. I just need to focus on getting through this, which hey, that's survival. Humans are amazing. It's surviving. And there's nothing wrong with that. But maybe not the healthiest way to go about things long-term. And this time, I'm feeling a lot of things and I'm letting myself feel a lot more of them. And I feel a lot better about it. The more I express emotion, the more I'm able to actually feel hope afterwards. Instead of just feeling darker and darker and darker, which is the opposite of what I would think would happen. You think if you let yourself get really angry or if you let yourself feel all of the overwhelm or all of the anxiety or all of the terror that you feel worse after. But that is not been my experience. My experience is that if we allow ourselves to feel emotions, as humans are designed to feel, the things function a little bit better. And in six days, I'm going to go to a hospital. They're going to cut out more of my leg and recovery is going to be rough. But I'm going to get through it. And hopefully, going to get through it. Allowing myself to feel more and not judging myself for it. So if you're like me and you're a control freak with your emotions, I just wanted to share that in my experience so far, it's okay to let go. It's okay to feel things. And weirdly, it feels better when I do. And maybe it would bring you to. And on a side note, I'm really excited to take you guys along with me on this journey. Last time I was making videos, but like it was for myself. I didn't really have an audience yet at all. I didn't have a community and now I have all of you guys. And that's amazing. Now speaking of communities, and this next section, I'm going to be talking about my artwork and how to receive some. I'm going to be talking about Patreon. So if you do not want to hear about Patreon, just end the video here. But if you do want to hear about how to get some of my artwork, I'd love it if you'd listen. Isn't that just a cool noise? In my last video, I talked to you guys about the different things I am aside from just being an amputee. And one of the things I showed you was some of my artwork. And a lot of people commented that you guys really liked it and wanted to know where you could find it, or if I ever saw Prince of it or anything like that. And first off, thank you. That's really awesome to hear and bring this smile to my face. So I really appreciate that. And secondly, I wanted to answer that question because I did not put that video up strategically timed or anything like that. Like honestly, but I actually went over to the print shop today and picked up five different prints of five different pieces of artwork that I have that I'm going to send out to new patrons and old patrons alike. So stay tuned if you have been a member of my Patreon for a while. And if you are not a patron and have no intention of becoming one, you can also get one. So stay tuned to figure out how. Recently, I reorganized things over on my Patreon page. And if you don't know what Patreon is, it's kind of like an online tip jar. It's a way to support your favorite creators. I actually do it for about five. Actually, how many people do I do it for? Ten. It's a way to get behind the scenes access to things, get additional features that aren't going to be on YouTube that have never been on YouTube and support your favorite creators. So if that's something you're interested in, I'll post a link down below. I recently reorganized the tiers in my Patreon page. And I'm really excited for what they are now because right now you can either get a personalized video message from yours truly to you or you can get a hand signed one of these. So these are five pieces of my artwork that I've had printed that I will send out to you with a signature and a little note. And no matter what level you join at, you get early access to videos and you get your name in the credits and my eternal gratitude. So if you're interested in that, that's how you can actually get one of these. If you have been a patron for a while, I really, really appreciate you. And all you need to do is send me a message on Patreon with your mailing address. And I will send one out to you. I can't take specific requests because I don't have a lot of time to sort through that to be honest with you before surgery. But I really want to thank you guys for supporting me. And if you can't or don't want to support me on Patreon, I totally understand. I also want to make sure that you can get one of these. I will be giving away a number of these and sending them out to you beautiful subscribers. All you need to do to enter is follow the link down below and enter your email address. And if you win, I will email you and ask for your mailing address. My Patreon community is something that's really special to me and I always want to find ways to improve it. So please give me suggestions of what you'd like to see or what other people do that you really like. And I would love to implement. Thank you guys so much for listening. Thank you for saying nice things about my artwork. I really appreciate that. I don't usually try to promote my Patreon that much but because I made changes there and because I know that some of you guys actually wondered where to find my artwork that is that is where you can. So yes, I hope that wasn't too ad like your wonderful. Thank you for spending your time here with me today. I hope that you are doing really well and taking care of yourselves. And I love you guys and I'm thinking of you. I'll see you in the next video and I'm excited to go on this adventure with all of you. Bye guys.