Send in a question or comment via text. People struggling with chronic or disordered states of anxiety often find themselves in a situation where they are hyper aware and therefore overwhelmed by sensory input. Non-anxious humans are so oblivious to what we sense that we sometimes pay to have people tell us to notice what our eyes, ears, noses, and skin are sending and perceiving. But for anxious people dealing with chronic or disordered forms of anxiety, this is not a problem at all. We have th...
Apr 24, 2024•21 min
Send in a question or comment via text. Sometimes the toughest opponent we have in anxiety recovery is the belief we can't outrun. This episode challenges you to question the certainties that have defined your battle with anxiety. Is the intensity of our emotions a reliable compass? Is our self-knowledge as accurate as we believe? We'll explore the potential for a fleeting moment of power even amidst the storm of fear, and how reassessing our core beliefs can unlock new possibilities. The though...
Apr 10, 2024•24 min
Send in a question or comment via text. DO I HAVE TO STOP BEING AFRAID TO TRULY ACCEPT ANXIETY (AND TO GET BETTER)? Good question. But this is a backwards interpretation of acceptance so let’s clarify. Acceptance is not finding a way to turn off your fear Acceptance is not figuring out some method for hating your anxiety less Acceptance is not about creating a new state of being or feeling from an emotional or mental standpoint Acceptance is an ACTION, not a feeling. Acceptance is a precursor to...
Mar 27, 2024•20 min
Send in a question or comment via text. Anxiety Triggers: When The List Is Growing Many members of our community will find that over time their list of anxiety triggers or panic attack triggers is growing. More and more things become triggers, which starts to get frustrating and disheartening. Let's talk about why that happens, and what it means in the recovery process. Important Timestamps: 02:17 - Everything becomes an anxiety trigger when you're in an anxious state 08:08 - If you feel like ev...
Mar 13, 2024•20 min
Send in a question or comment via text. Let's do an old fashioned anxiety questions and answers session, shall we? Today we're answering questions from our friends on Facebook. 02:24 How do I face a scary exposure? 05:58 Is it normal to still have symptoms or scary thoughts in recovery? 08:48 What do I do when I'm not anxious and have no symptoms or thoughts to deal with? 10:40 Which comes first, scary sensations or scary thoughts? 12:37 How can I be sure if it's just anxiety or my intuition? 15...
Feb 28, 2024•26 min
Send in a question or comment via text. Having panic attacks does not always mean you have panic disorder. This week on The Anxious Truth we're digging into what differentiates panic attacks - even recurring panic attacks - from panic disorder. In a nutshell, the primary differentiator here is fear/avoidance. When you begin to fear panic attacks because you interpret them as dangerous or too overwhelming, then you begin to modify and restrict your lifestyle to prevent or avoid them, you are pani...
Feb 14, 2024•21 min
Send in a question or comment via text. Struggling with constant anxiety, recurring panic attacks, or a full blown anxiety disorder? Avoiding anxiety and panic triggers might seem like the safest path, but let's look at why this understandable and common response can be more foe than friend. In this episode we'll look at some of the mechanics of panic attacks and panic disorder, shedding light on why evading anxiety can inadvertently feed the beast, intensifying and fueling the cycle of fear. Pr...
Jan 31, 2024•22 min
Send in a question or comment via text. LIVING WITH ANXIETY ... I HAVE TO RECOVER SO I CAN LIVE MY LIFE AGAIN! But really, do you? Or is it better to do your best to re-engage in life so that you can recover? This week we're examining the concept of life AS recovery rather than life as something you get to do only after you've reached some magic state of "recovered". Yes, at times recovery from an anxiety disorder involves manufactured exposures and doing things that don't look all that much lik...
Jan 17, 2024•22 min
Send in a question or comment via text. HOW TO CALM DOWN FROM A PANIC ATTACK? This is one of the million dollar question in our community, so let's take a look at how to calm down from a panic attack. I know you likely want tips and tricks for how to stop a panic attack and calm down, but could the act of embracing, rather than fighting off a panic attack, be the hidden doorway to "calm"? Let's look at true acceptance, and unpack the idea that true calmness emerges not from a frantic search for ...
Jan 03, 2024•17 min
Send in a question or comment via text. WHAT DOES A PANIC ATTACK FEEL LIKE? Let's unpack the harrowing reality of a panic attack, peeling back the layers to expose the heart-thumping, breath-stealing beast it can be. My journey as a therapist in training, fused with raw personal encounters, brings a unique perspective to the forefront. We dissect those suffocating episodes, where your own body feels like an unwieldy adversary, and thoughts of impending doom loom over you like a dark cloud. In th...
Dec 20, 2023•14 min
Send in a question or comment via text. Ever wondered how to recognize a panic attack? Want to understand the physical and mental symptoms that hint towards an oncoming episode? Not sure if what you're experiencing are panic attacks or something else? This episode of The Anxious Truth is for you. Tune in as we delve into panic and panic attacks, demystifying the sensations, the thoughts, the fear, and the need to escape that often accompany these episodes. This is the first in my "Foundations of...
Dec 06, 2023•14 min
Send in a question or comment via text. Struggling to find the right anxiety therapist? Are you curious about how a therapist becomes a therapist? Let's take a look through the maze of credentials - from Licensed Mental Health Counselor (LMHC) to Licensed Professional Counselor (LPC), Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist (LMFT), and Licensed Clinical Social Worker (LCSW). Let's shed some light on the demanding journey of training and education, from undergraduate studies to intensive graduate ...
Nov 22, 2023•32 min
Send in a question or comment via text. Do you need to find a therapist that knows and follows the "Claire Weekes method"? This week we unpack the impact of Dr. Claire Weekes, shedding light on her influential role in the therapy world, specifically in the realm of anxiety disorders. Dr. Weekes' groundbreaking principles of acceptance have proven to be timeless, remaining relevant in therapy practices today. We go beyond the surface, debunking myths about her work and examining the current relev...
Nov 08, 2023•22 min
Send in a question or comment via text. Anxiety recovery can be a highly individual journey. This is especially true if you have ADHD, Autism Spectrum Disorder, or otherwise identify as neurodivergent. While there are certainly general principles we rely on, every person will find recovery to present specific and unique challenges that have to be addressed as part of the process. For neurodivergent members of our community, this is also true. This week Dr. Terri Bacow took some time to chat with...
Oct 25, 2023•36 min
Send in a question or comment via text. Anxiety and the recovery process do not exist in a vacuum. You are an entire person, and all the parts of you come into this process. Holistic is not a word you hear me use often, but it is a word we need to acknowledge because when dealing with chronic/disordered anxiety and the recovery process, your background, experiences, beliefs, and views of yourself and the world will enter the picture in various ways. * They will influence how you conceptualize yo...
Oct 11, 2023•23 min
Send in a question or comment via text. The anxiety cycle starts as a seemingly never ending loop where you get triggered, you fight through it, you calm down, then you worry and fret over the next time you might get triggered. It can become an exhausting merry-go-ground if you're new to this process and convinced that high anxiety and panic are horrible disasters that must be avoided or "managed" at all costs. But over time, you will likely begin to notice that your logical brain will question ...
Sep 27, 2023•20 min
Send in a question or comment via text. No new podcast episode this week, but we will be back next week with a new episode on September 27, 2023. Going forward, new episodes of The Anxious Truth will be produced every other week . I'm making this change based on time constraints and the fact that we are producing episodes of "Disordered" every week, and that's a really good podcast! Listen to Disordered here: https://disordered.fm On the weeks with no new episode of The Anxious Truth, you can ca...
Sep 20, 2023•3 min
Send in a question or comment via text. Self-care in anxiety recovery. We hear about it all the time, but is self-care always essential oils and hot baths and candles and soothing? It certainly can by, but self-care is also giving yourself what you really need, which isn't always what you want. Sometimes self-care means challenging yourself a bit to help break the avoidance cycle. Sometimes self-care means you choose to be uncomfortable now to feel better about yourself later. Let's take a close...
Sep 13, 2023•24 min
Send in a question or comment via text. This week we answered some common - and not so common - questions about anxiety and recovery. Thanks to everyone on Instagram that submitted a question. I appreciate it! First I reviewed some basic principles you can fall back on when asking many of the questions that were asked. That's about the first 15 minutes of the episode, which will be useful if you're new to this or need a refresher to remind you of what you're dealing with. Then we moved on to som...
Sep 06, 2023•39 min
Send in a question or comment via text. This week my guest is anxiety and OCD specialist Joanna Hardis who stopped by the podcast to talk about the art of doing ... nothing. Wait ... what? Nothing? Yes. Nothing. Humans are conditioned to automatically spring into action to solve problems, and often we declare that our emotional and mental states are automatically problems that must be solved. When we experience discomfort, distress, anxiety, or any "negative" feeling we can get trapped into auto...
Aug 30, 2023•39 min
Send in a question or comment via text. If this is all new to you, asking for more information is normal, expected, and healthy! Everyone needs more information and explanation to start. But if you are not new to this and you've heard me and others talk about your scariest symptom or stickiest recovery issue over and over, ask yourself what you are hoping to get when you ask us to talk more about it. After multiple books, videos, social media posts, livestreams and podcast episodes on a given to...
Aug 23, 2023•22 min
Send in a question or comment via text. Help! I can't get motivated to do my exposures and work on my recovery! This is a thing I hear often in this community, so this week let's address motivation and the myth surrounding it. Often we think that getting motivated means that we create a certain feeling, then we act on that feeling. This is incorrect. In fact, it's almost entirely backwards! Demanding to conjure of a feeling called "motivation" before you can act is selling yourself short and can...
Aug 16, 2023•18 min
Send in a question or comment via text. EMDR. It's become an insanely popular therapy over the last few years. Originally developed as a trauma recovery tool, EMDR is often touted as being appropriate or effective in many more clinical circumstances. But ... is it? Is EMDR an anxiety disorder recovery treatment? This week I'm joined by Florida therapist Anne Thomas to talk about EMDR, what it is, what it isn't, and how it might be applied in the context of panic disorder, agoraphobia, and other ...
Aug 09, 2023•31 min
Send in a question or comment via text. Just a quick update on reaching the field/clinical work phase of my masters degree and why there's no actual podcast episode this week. We'll be back with another episode of The Anxious Truth next week as usual, but in the meanwhile why not check out Disordered, the podcast I do with Josh Fletcher. Find that podcast at https://disordered.fm Of course, you can also check out any of the 268 previous episodes of The Anxious Truth that I've recorded over the l...
Aug 02, 2023•2 min
Send in a question or comment via text. It's not really what I did in my recovery that matters. Its WHY I did it. This week we're talking about why its far more useful to focus on the principles I followed in recovery than to try to mimic my recovery step by step and action by action. Don't use my recovery as a literal blueprint for yours because you are not me and I am not you. We are all different and those differences matter in terms of specific steps, actions, and instructions to follow in r...
Jul 26, 2023•15 min
Send in a question or comment via text. Let's talk about the dreaded social media doom scroll and the negative impact it can have in your recovery. Learning to be a bit more mindful and intentional with your social media use can go a long way toward helping you get what you need while avoiding some of the more common traps and pitfalls that default scrolling without purpose can have. For full show notes on this episode: https://theanxioustruth.com/267 --- My books, social, and other links: http...
Jul 19, 2023•22 min
Send in a question or comment via text. When you decide to start facing your fear, doing exposures, meeting challenges, and breaking your avoidance cycle, that's awesome! You're being brave and choosing to do hard things because it's help you in the long run, so take the credit for making that leap! But you may - like many do - accidentally fall into the trap of only meeting challenges, doing your exposures, and generally doing hard things only on the days when you feel "good". This week on the ...
Jul 12, 2023•18 min
Send in a question or comment via text. There is no automatic immune response that fixes an anxiety disorder while we retreat, rest, wait, and hope. This is an active process that requires that you do more than just hope and wait. This week we're trying a little experiment! I'm re-visiting episode 11 of the podcast from way back in 2015 to give it a little update, add some detail, clarify a few things, and make some much needed corrections. I hope you find this helpful in some way. Feedback - as...
Jul 05, 2023•16 min
Send in a question or comment via text. Recovery from an anxiety disorder can impact not only the recovering person, but the people close to them. Sometimes our helpers wind up needing help themselves! When that happens, we may want to be supportive of them, but anxious fear may also turn this into a disaster. Anxiety may tell you that your helper reaching out for help is a nightmare and that the fear, uncertainty, and discomfort you feel about this turn of events means you must insert yourself ...
Jun 28, 2023•17 min
Send in a question or comment via text. HOW CAN I ACCEPT OR ALLOW ANXIETY WITHOUT SPIRALING? This week on The Anxious Truth let's answer a common question about "spiraling". This is a term used every day in our community so lets dismantle it a bit and re-conceptualize spiraling in two parts. One spiral - the downward spiral - is based on how you feel. The other spiral - the anxiety itself - is an UPWARD spiral, which is more accurately described as a storm. Let's look at how we can address the f...
Jun 21, 2023•21 min
