Healing From Anxiety | Ep 296

This is episode number 296 of the podcast we are recording in July of 2024 . For those of you who are watching or listening from the future and kind of want to know that sort of thing , I am Drew Linsalata , creator and host of the Anxious Truth .

I am , as of July of 2024 , a therapist in training , specializing in the treatment of anxiety and anxiety disorders .

I'm a three-time author on the topic of anxiety and recovery , a social media guy , an educator , an advocate and , unfortunately , a former sufferer for many years of my life , on and off from things like panic disorder and agoraphobia and OCD and even clinical depression .

But those days are past me and I'm doing much better now , living a very happy , full , healthy life . Thank you for asking If this is your first time here at the Anxious Truth . If you've just stumbled upon the YouTube channel or the podcast and you're not sure what you're going to find here , stick around .

I hope what you hear or see is helpful or useful or applicable to you in some way , that you hang around next week too and , of course , if you are a returning listener or viewer , welcome back . Thank you for supporting this work , and I always like having you guys around every other week when we fire up the camera and do one of these .

So everybody wants to talk about healing from anxiety and this week that is what we're going to talk about . We're going to talk about healing from anxiety or , more accurately , we're really going to talk about how we use the words heal and healing and apply them in the context of anxiety , chronic anxiety , anxiety disorders and recovery .

But before we get to that , just a very short reminder that the Anxious Truth is way more than just this particular video or this podcast episode . There are 295 previous podcast episodes . There are three books on anxiety and anxiety recovery .

There are low cost very low cost actually workshops and webinars that I've produced , designed to give you sort of a psycho educational boost in terms of understanding your anxiety disorder and beginning the recovery journey .

So all of those things can be found on my website at theanxioustruthcom If you're interested in what you hear today and want to know more about this particular topic and want to check out the things that I have on offer again , most of which are free or , if not , they are extremely low cost . Go visit my website , that's theanxioustruthcom .

Check it out , avail yourself of all the resources . I think you're going to find them helpful . Anyway , let's talk about healing from anxiety . Everyone wants to heal from anxiety . I mean , really , it's probably more accurate to say that everybody wants to feel better , which is totally fine . I would like everyone to feel better too .

So when we talk about recovery or overcoming our struggles with chronic or , say , disordered anxiety , often the word healing is going to enter the picture . People will ask questions like how can I heal from this ? Will my nervous system ever totally or completely heal ? They might ask me I'm in a very stressful situation , can I still heal from my anxiety ?

Or they'll ask me how did you heal yourself , drew , from my anxiety ? Or they'll ask me how did you heal yourself , drew ? Now ? If you're going to scroll at all through any mental health social media today , you are likely going to see some content that includes the word heal . Is that bad ? Well , I mean not necessarily .

I'm certainly not here to be the anxiety word police , because that's my job , but that's not my job , that is . But given that our use of language and the ability to think symbolically is one of the things that gets us into trouble with anxiety , to begin with , it is worth looking at the words and terms that we use from time to time .

It's just a worthwhile thing for us to do . Now , just a quick disclaimer before I get into this . If you love the word heal because it strikes a chord with you or it feels like it really applies in your situation , then I'm here to support you on that . Keep using it . Go ahead and heal all day long . I mean I want you to heal like nobody's business .

Absolutely go for it . Everyone gets to use whatever language they want to use and all of us , including me , get to respect those choices . So if you are a fan of the words heal and healing and you like to use them , go right ahead . I'm definitely not here to try to stop you .

But , that being said , if you have been working like a dog to heal from anxiety and can't seem to get anywhere with any kind of consistency or durability , then maybe we do need to take a look at that healing target . The words we use create the rules we feel we must follow . This is just the way human brains work .

Our words create kind of internal algorithms and those algorithms do influence how we see ourselves , how we see the world , and they anxiety disorder . We should probably look at that , because the words we use are ultimately going to determine how we behave , or at least influence how we behave . So we all want to heal .

If we are injured or wounded , that's not even a question . But when we are working on overcoming chronic or disordered anxiety which is always the thing I'm talking about here is healing what we're trying to do . There are three primary issues with the word heal that I want to throw out there today so that you can kind of chew on those Again .

I'm not here to force you to use or not use words . I just want to give you some things to sort of think about . The first issue I want to talk about is healing . As a descriptor , a descriptive word , healing is a word that we're going to use to describe the repair of something that is broken or damaged .

So if you break a bone , you might have to wear a cast or a brace and wait for that bone to heal . It gets repaired . It repairs itself . If you accidentally cut your leg and you need stitches , you wait for your leg to heal . It repairs itself . The cut goes away .

If you experience the end of a long-term , serious romantic relationship with somebody who is very important to you , you're probably going to experience emotional pain . That's like the metaphorical broken heart . Now we wait for time to pass so that it can heal that wound . Healing implies a break or damage of some kind .

Now , if you are unlucky enough to have a physiological issue that creates the physical state that we identify as anxiety maybe you have a hormonal issue or a known neurological issue then of course you have to acknowledge that and you have to work with that .

Now , in that situation , healing might be an excellent word to describe , to use as an accurate descriptor of what you have going on .

But when we look at a cognitive behavioral model of anxiety disorders , especially if we look at well-studied theories that identify the role of language and cognition , the development and perpetuation of these disorders it would be hard to find the broken or damaged thing in this equation , right ?

Because if healing implies something that's broken or damaged For instance , someone with GAD that has decided that worry and rumination are good ways to spend their time , because thinking is seen as a way to find and solve every possible problem . What's broken and in need of healing ?

In that scenario , I probably ask the same for health anxiety or social anxiety when is the break ? Where is the damage or defect that needs repairing , healing ? In those situations , it's kind of important that we stop and consider that .

If we operate from the assertion and I am that all humans experience anxiety , sometimes because that's just part of being alive , and we acknowledge the fact because this is a fact that many , many humans even have panic attacks without developing anxiety disorders , then how should we describe a situation in which any one person maybe listening to the podcast today fears

the experience of anxiety and therefore makes drastic or dramatic lifestyle modifications so that they can avoid or control those experiences . Where's the break ? There Is something broken and in need of repair in our bodies simply because we experienced this thing that we've all decided to call anxiety or fear , or even panic . This applies to extreme anxiety too .

I might even go so far , and I know that this sometimes is controversial or difficult to talk about . But I might even go so far , and I know that this sometimes is controversial or difficult to talk about , but I might even go so far as to argue that if painful memories of very difficult events trigger anxiety , is something broken there .

Would we not expect memories of scary events to create responses in our bodies ? Would your nervous system not be operating as it was designed when it reacts the way it does the things that you fear , regardless of the timeframe or question ? Maybe memories of past events or things that are going on right now , I mean , that doesn't seem like a break to me .

That needs healing . So I would ask is healing an accurate descriptor for the process of discovering that you don't have to fear your own thoughts or emotions or bodily functions or even painful memories ? Are you actually broken ? Does something need to be repaired inside of your body or brain before you can function properly ?

You know , must you heal or must you experiment , learn and then grow from that particular process , which is kind of what I'm always talking about here ? So things to think about Do I need to heal or do I need to learn ?

The second point that I want to make is that healing can accidentally become a recovery goal and while that might make sense at face value hear me out . I mentioned earlier that everybody wants to feel better . I do not find any fault in this at all . Why would an anxious person not want to feel less anxious ? Of course you do .

It's okay to want to feel better . That's just wired into us . We like feeling good , we hate feeling bad . None of that is news , nor is this a problem . Welcome to being human .

But when we are working with anxiety disorders again always my focus , if you've been listening to the podcast or reading along with me or watching long enough you begin to recognize the paradox many paradoxes that comes with efforts to feel better , even to try to feel different .

When we rely primarily on what we would call control strategies to manage triggers , or manage or alleviate your symptoms or wrestle with your thoughts and turn them to happy thoughts or stomp out emotions that we think we can't handle , and we generally try to stay far away from internal experiences that we insist we should never allow ourselves to have , we kind of

wind up in a very fragile state of recovery , if we recover at all , control strategies are pointed at feeling better as the primary target . You might want to feel better right away , which I get . Again , I don't fault you for that .

But when we operate from the control point of view , we run a much greater risk of experiencing slow or no progress , setbacks or even total relapse . Now , those are also controversial words , but this is just supported in the data .

When you study this sort of thing relapse and setback and that fragile state of recovery actually becomes a problem when we shoot for control-based strategies .

There's actually a reason why one of the most common and valid criticisms of control-based CBT methods which would be the second wave , if you're into that sort of thing was that relapse was a real problem in a significant number of cases . That criticism was not wrong . That actually is a problem .

So if you work hard to feel better , you run the risk of either not feeling better or feeling better temporarily and winding up bruised , battered , confused and discouraged when that never seems to actually last recovery , which is what you're always hearing me talk about . We have a far better track record .

There is a reason you hear me talk about things like acceptance and tolerance and surrender and learning that you can be okay even if you are anxious , and you rarely hear me talk about ways to instantly feel better . Now , that's always a hard message to deliver , but there's a reason why I deliver that message .

If you are reading or listening to my words , you're hearing my particular theoretical orientation , which tells me that feeling better has to be accepted as a happy secondary outcome . When we stop insisting that we must feel better or retreat from the world , what happens ? When we heal , we feel better . When injuries or physical damage heals , we feel better .

We feel less pain . There's probably less discomfort . You don't have a fever anymore . Maybe you can literally breathe easier or you can walk around without experiencing discomfort once that broken leg is on the mend , and that's a good thing . When emotional pain heals , we feel less distress and emotional discomfort , maybe in response to memories or thoughts .

Healing is a feeling better thing and that's awesome because sometimes we really are working toward feeling better . That's okay . Healing is not universally bad . Feeling better is not universally bad . It just belongs in a context .

But if control strategies designed specifically to feel better are sort of paradoxical landmines , if you will , in anxiety recovery , should we be insisting that we must heal our anxiety or heal from our anxiety ?

Is that a coded demand to feel better as a direct primary goal and not the happy secondary outcome that I've been describing in everything I say or write something to think about . The third thing that I kind of want to bring up before I close today is that healing can also be sort of an intention-grabbing , a little bit of an emotionally inflammatory word .

So let's look at the word healing as an attention-getting device , because in a time when anxious people are going to immerse themselves in endless scrolls I get that , I get you're looking for good information and you're trying to find recovery information , advice and techniques then getting the attention of those anxious people is really important .

For people who choose sort of content creator as a profession , Now you might be listening or watching and saying , well , isn't that you ? Well , in a way , it is me . I am creating content . That's just not my profession . That's not my primary means of putting food on my table . It's something that I do as just part of the bigger thing that I do .

But if you are a content creator by profession , that's how you define yourself and you're looking for that sort of influencer status and keeping people's attention is very important .

So if you're going to look at that , then you got to ask yourself what is more attention grabbing or attractive for an anxious person scrolling through , say , instagram on any given day A reel about healing you know , feeling better or a reel about learning how to move through the experiences that have been trying so hard to never have .

Math is really not that hard to do in this situation .

If I were to start talking about healing instead of acceptance and tolerance and learning to navigate through , if I started using that word liberally and I shifted the content I make toward trying to show you ways to instantly and directly feel better , it's really no mystery my social media influence will grow .

I would in fact get more attention and my social metrics would improve . If that was important to me , I might be tempted to do that . But if we go back to the data , that shows us that acceptance-based strategies provide consistently better outcome . Sort of the old school , second wave control-based strategies provide consistently better outcome .

Sort of the old school , second wave control-based strategies Telling you how to heal all the time would be like trying to sell you a VCR in 2024 . Some of you watching might not even know what a VCR is . Sure , you can watch movies on a VCR , but if you really are a movie fan and you want to watch movies , is that really the best choice now ?

Probably was in 1993 , but it isn't now .

Now listen , I know I spend a fair amount of time pushing back against social media trends and social media platforms and I'm not here to get into sort of a full-blown rant on this , but consider that the word heal might not be the most accurate or helpful word for an anxious person to glue themselves to , but that it absolutely is an attention-grabbing word .

The word heal carries emotional appeal for somebody who is struggling or even suffering . I get that If you're feeling really bad , you're going to be attracted to words that indicate that you will feel better right away .

So you know that thing where some anxiety guru on the internet is trying to sell you a $5,000 or $6,000 mentoring package and they use phrases like break free or end anxiety forever or never be anxious again . Is it possible that the word healing might fall into the same category ?

So really , we sort of have three issues here that I wanted to bring up today about the word healing Healing as sort of an accurate descriptor of what's really going on . Healing as a word that might point you at a less than productive or durable goal in your recovery .

And healing as a little bit of a tool that social media can use to get you to pay attention to information that could potentially be sort of leading you astray or leading you to that sort of frustrated place that you might find yourself in today . So those are the things I want you to think about Again .

Everyone gets to decide what language works for them and applies to their situation . I'm totally fine with that , and in lots of situations in life , healing really is a good word . It's accurate , it points us in the right direction , it works for us , it fits the context . That's 100% true .

But I'm only pointing out today that sometimes the word healing is misapplied in the anxiety disorder context and used to get your attention , which is sadly often not the same as actually helping or supporting you . It's just something to consider , right ?

I just want to point out that not every content creator that uses the word healing is trying to scam you or separate you from your money or hurt you . That has to be said . I'm not here to try and call those people evil . In many instances , you'll find content creators that have the best of intentions .

They're just coming from their particular paradigm , or maybe they have a theoretical orientation because they've been formally trained in this , but they probably truly believe that healing is the way to help you . They may not necessarily be fully aware of the mechanics of anxiety disorders and the paradoxes that come along with that .

And why would they if they didn't take the time to learn about it ? Because maybe they just don't feel like have to or they haven't been formally trained ? Again , it's not a crime . It's not that everybody that uses the word healing is trying to scam you in some way . It's just something to look out for , that's all .

I'm not going to try and start a global campaign to cancel the word heal , but I think it is kind of worth taking a few minutes to at least consider the impact of that word , how we're using it and how it might be sort of working or maybe not working for you , like operationally Sometimes .

Sometimes taking a step toward recovery means that we have to drop some of the language that's designed to really only soothe us without actually changing anything .

And if you think that the word heal might fall into this category for you like hey , you know what , drew , now that I think about it , it might not really work for me , it might actually be helping to keep me stuck Then it's okay to drop it on the floor and try something else I promise you don't have to cling to healing to get better .

So that's my 19-minute sort of mini rant on the use of the word healing in the context of anxiety and anxiety disorders . Sometimes healing is a wonderful thing . Sometimes people with anxiety disorders attach to the word healing and , for whatever reason , it works for them .

Other times we just have to take a few moments and see if we can be a little bit critical or at least look critically and objectively at the language that we use to see whether or not it's helping us or hurting us . That is episode 296 of the Anxious Truth in the books . You know it's over because music is playing .

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I actually look forward to these episodes and if you do want more on this , remember there's more stuff on my website at theanxioustruthcom . And if you want more podcasts on this , aside from my previous 295 episodes , I urge you to pop on over to disorderedfm . Check out Disordered . That's the podcast that I do with Josh Fletcher . That's a really good one .

That's also fun for us to do . So that's it . No-transcript , wouldn't be doing this . Thanks for listening . I will see you in you next time .