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Full show notes for this episode are at https://theanxioustruth.com/98

Telling someone in the grips of a raging anxiety disorder to "check in with themselves" is a TERRIBLE bit of advice.  If you are in the grips of a ranging anxiety disorder - finding it near impossible to STOP thinking about how you feel all the time - it's OK to reject this advice.

While in the grips of raging disorders like OCD, health anxiety, panic disorder, and agoraphobia, specifically making time to focus inward on how one is feeling is like pouring gasoline on a fire.  A person that is desperate to STOP paying constant attention to how they feel and what they think does not need to turn inward to see what they need.  What they need is to stop focusing inward.  The inward focus is driving their problem.  Telling this person that they need to check in with themselves to see how they're feeling is like telling an inmate to escape from prison by running back into the cell block.  It's just terrible advice in this context.  Sorry, but it is.

Sometimes part of the anxiety problem is compulsion to think about one's state.  Engaging in inner dialogue with fear driven distorted and disordered thoughts becomes a dysfunctional game that the sufferer is powerless to resist.  Every waking moment is spend scanning one's own body and mind for threats to sanity, life, and limb.  Inward focus and self-examination can become a literal torture chamber. This is a fact for many wrestling with anxiety problems.

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