The Anxious Truth - A Panic, Anxiety, and Mental Health Podcast The Anxious Truth

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 that assertion, and you will start to see that you are not just being triggered into an anxious state, but that you are being TRICKED by that anxious state. When you begin to see the trickery involved in internally focused disordered anxiety, things can begin to change.



When you can nail a "tricked" point to the circle, that can become the point at which you start to peel off the circle on a tangent toward recovery. Noticing and understanding that anxiety is tricking you into behaving as if you are in danger creates a fork in an otherwise endless circular road. It gives you a point at which you can choose a new path and ultimately break the cycle that has trapped you up to this point.



For full show notes on this episode:

⁠⁠https://theanxioustruth.com/275

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My books, social, and other links: ⁠⁠⁠https://theanxioustruth.com/links ⁠⁠⁠

Support The Anxious Truth: ⁠⁠⁠https://theanxioustruth.com/support ⁠⁠⁠

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 catch my "Recovery Monday" livestreams on YouTube (either live or via replay any time):

https://youtube.com/@TheAnxiousTruth



See you next week, and thank you for all your support!

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 closer look at self-care in a way that might not all that obvious.



For full show notes on this episode:

⁠⁠https://theanxioustruth.com/274

---

My books, social, and other links: ⁠⁠⁠https://theanxioustruth.com/links ⁠⁠⁠

Support The Anxious Truth: ⁠⁠⁠https://theanxioustruth.com/support ⁠⁠⁠

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 some specific questions.


AFTER THE CRISIS HAS PASSED, DO YOU STILL NEED THERAPY? DO YOU STILL HAVE TO WORK ON YOURSELF?
WHAT'S THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN OCD AND GAD OR PANIC DISORDER AND HEALTH ANXIETY?
HOW CAN YOU BE SURE THIS IS JUST ANXIETY?
WHEN AM I ALLOWED TO REST?
HOW DOES MINDFULNESS FIT INTO RECOVERY?
ARE POSITIVE AFFIRMATIONS OK?
HOW DO I ACCEPT ...?
WHAT ARE THE MOST EFFECTIVE WAYS OF SELF-REGULATING WHEN ANXIOUS?
WHAT ABOUT THIS KIND OF ANXIETY?



For full show notes on this episode:

⁠⁠https://theanxioustruth.com/273

---

My books, social, and other links: ⁠⁠⁠https://theanxioustruth.com/links ⁠⁠⁠

Support The Anxious Truth: ⁠⁠⁠https://theanxioustruth.com/support ⁠⁠⁠

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 automatically trying to do something .... anything ... to solve that problem and make it disappear.



The thing is, this is often paradoxically harmful in that it can keep us trapped in the very state we're trying to escape. Learning that it is possible to do nothing about negative internal experiences - learning to ride through them without hitting the panic button - can go a long way toward getting us closer to where we want to be both in anxiety recovery and in life. And as it turns out, if we look at what Joanna wrote about in her book "Just Do Nothing", we see that even as we struggle with recovery from an anxiety disorder, we're not all that different from all the other humans walking the planet. The issues are often the same, just experienced at a different degree in our community. This is good news, because we're afraid and unsure, but not defective and not broken.



For more information about Joanna and her book:

https://joannahardis.com



For full show notes on this episode:

⁠⁠https://theanxioustruth.com/270

---

My books, social, and other links: ⁠⁠⁠https://theanxioustruth.com/links ⁠⁠⁠

Support The Anxious Truth: ⁠⁠⁠https://theanxioustruth.com/support ⁠⁠⁠

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 topic, it can be helpful to stop and consider what more you think you need to hear, and why you need to hear it.



Consider that asking for encouragement or cheerleading is likely more productive than getting stuck in the "tell me more" cycle, which can lead to judging yourself negatively because you can't seem to move forward.



For full show notes on this episode:

⁠⁠https://theanxioustruth.com/271

---

My books, social, and other links: ⁠⁠⁠https://theanxioustruth.com/links ⁠⁠⁠

Support The Anxious Truth: ⁠⁠⁠https://theanxioustruth.com/support ⁠⁠⁠