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If you've been searching online for ways to deal with your anxiety, you've probably noticed there's an avalanche of information claiming to be "science-based" or "evidence-based." But here's the problem. That isn't always true.

This week I'm joined by Dr. Birthe Macdonald, a research psychologist and cognitive neuroscientist, to talk about why online mental health information is so confusing and full of misinformation. We discuss why things that aren't actually science still look like fact when you're struggling and searching for relief.

We touch on polyvagal theory and vagus nerve claims, SPECT brain scans and their limitations, genetic testing for antidepressants, and why confident voices with credentials can be so convincing even when the science doesn't support their claims.

Dr. Macdonald shares insights on what makes good science (hint: it's humble and tries to disprove itself) and why you should probably be most skeptical of those who sound the most confident.

The goal here is helping you become a more critical consumer of mental health information so you can make informed decisions about your wellbeing. Be skeptical of everything you consume online, including me. If someone claims something is science-based, question it.

That said, if you find something helpful that's moving you forward and not hurting you, keep using it. You deserve information you can actually trust.

Useful Links:

• Dr. Macdonald's website
• Her journal club page
• Her instagram
• Episode 124 of Disordered

Support The Anxious Truth: If you find the podcast helpful and want to support my work, you can buy me a coffee. Other ways to support my work like buying a book or signing up for a low cost workshop can be found on my website. None of this is never required, but always appreciated!

Interested in doing therapy with me? For more information on working with me directly to overcome your anxiety, follow this link.

Disclaimer: The Anxious Truth is not therapy or a replacement for therapy. Listening to The Anxious Truth does not create a therapeutic relationship between you and the host or guests of the podcast. Information here is provided for psychoeducational purposes. As always, when you have questions about your own well-being, please consult your mental health and/or medical care providers. If you are having a mental health crisis, always reach out immediately for in-person help.

Send in a question or comment via text.

If you're struggling with panic disorder, health anxiety, OCD, GAD, or other anxiety issues you've may have encountered online content that references Stoicism, warrior philosophy, and Marcus Aurelius. The message: master your emotions, be tough, control your fear through discipline and suffering.

But that's not what Marcus Aurelius was actually writing about.

In this episode, I dig into what Marcus actually wrote in his Meditations—his personal diary that accidentally survived 2,500 years. When you read his actual words, you see a man repeatedly struggling with the same issues: getting out of bed, dealing with difficult people, managing anger. The repetition isn't proof of mastery. It's evidence of practice.

For people with anxiety disorders, the modern misinterpretation of Stoicism can be harmful. Panic disorder, OCD, health anxiety, and GAD are all fueled by attempts to control internal experiences. The therapeutic approaches that work—acceptance and commitment therapy, exposure therapy, mindfulness—work because they teach psychological flexibility, not control.

Real courage isn't "I don't feel fear." Real courage is "I feel afraid AND I'm doing this anyway."

Topics covered:
- What Marcus Aurelius actually wrote (specific passages from Meditations)
- Why the "warrior approach" doesn't work for anxiety disorders
- The masculine shame trap that keeps men stuck
- What Stoicism really teaches about control
- Why flexibility beats toughness in anxiety recovery

Resources mentioned: The Meditations by Marcus Aurelius (Modern Library translation)

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The Disordered Guide to Health Anxiety is here

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For full show notes on this episode:

https://theanxioustruth.com/333

Support The Anxious Truth: If you find the podcast helpful and want to support my work, you can buy me a coffee. Other ways to support my work like buying a book or signing up for a low cost workshop can be found on my website. None of this is never required, but always appreciated!

Interested in doing therapy with me? For more information on working with me directly to overcome your anxiety, follow this link.

Disclaimer: The Anxious Truth is not therapy or a replacement for therapy. Listening to The Anxious Truth does not create a therapeutic relationship between you and the host or guests of the podcast. Information here is provided for psychoeducational purposes. As always, when you have questions about your own well-being, please consult your mental health and/or medical care providers. If you are having a mental health crisis, always reach out immediately for in-person help.

Send in a question or comment via text.

Anxious people love coping skills and coping strategies. Everybody loves to cope. But today we're going to talk about how coping can go off the rails and become part of the problem instead of part of the solution.

When you're dealing with chronic anxiety or an anxiety disorder, coping strategies can actually backfire. Every time you frantically reach for your grounding techniques or breathing exercises because you desperately need to calm down, you might be reinforcing the belief that your internal state is dangerous and must be controlled at all costs. If you've been stuck in the trigger-cope-trigger-cope cycle for months or years and you're still terrified of the next episode, something isn't working.

This episode breaks down the difference between internally and externally generated anxiety, and why that matters when we talk about coping. We'll look at how coping can create conditional okayness that shrinks your life, and we'll explore what it might look like to use coping techniques as brave experiments instead of frightened control attempts.

This is a challenging topic, but if you've been wondering why all your coping skills don't seem to be moving you forward, this episode might help you understand what's actually happening.

For full show notes on this episode:

https://theanxioustruth.com/332

Support The Anxious Truth: If you find the podcast helpful and want to support my work, you can buy me a coffee. Other ways to support my work like buying a book or signing up for a low cost workshop can be found on my website. None of this is never required, but always appreciated!

Interested in doing therapy with me? For more information on working with me directly to overcome your anxiety, follow this link.

Disclaimer: The Anxious Truth is not therapy or a replacement for therapy. Listening to The Anxious Truth does not create a therapeutic relationship between you and the host or guests of the podcast. Information here is provided for psychoeducational purposes. As always, when you have questions about your own well-being, please consult your mental health and/or medical care providers. If you are having a mental health crisis, always reach out immediately for in-person help.

Send in a question or comment via text.

Children with OCD and anxiety disorders have the same diagnoses as adults, but their experience looks and feels different in important ways. In this episode, I sit down with child anxiety and OCD specialist Natasha Daniels to explore those differences and what they reveal about the fundamental nature of these disorders.

When you ask a young child why they're doing a ritual, they often can't tell you. They report vague discomfort or say "it just feels weird if I don't." Adult brains, on the other hand, build elaborate narratives about danger, responsibility, and catastrophic consequences. This difference isn't random—it reflects how our brains develop the capacity for abstract thinking and meaning-making as we mature. Children operate in the realm of concrete experience, while adults layer complex interpretations onto those same uncomfortable sensations and intrusive thoughts.

This developmental perspective reveals something crucial about anxiety recovery: the core problem isn't the thoughts and sensations themselves, but the meaning-making machinery of the adult brain that treats every uncomfortable internal experience as significant and predictive. If children can learn to overcome OCD by tolerating discomfort without an attached narrative, what does that tell us about the stories we tell ourselves as adults?

This episode isn't just for parents supporting anxious kids. If you're an adult struggling with OCD or anxiety and find yourself stuck because the perceived risk feels too real to challenge, this conversation may help you see your experience in a new light. The narrative feels compelling and true, but as Natasha and I discuss, that's just a function of how human brains develop—not evidence of actual danger.

Natasha Daniels is a childhood anxiety and OCD therapist with two decades of experience and specialized training in treating pediatric anxiety disorders. Find Natasha here:

https://atparentingcommunity.com/

Find full show notes and more links to Natasha's work at 

https://theanxioustruth.com/331

Support The Anxious Truth: If you find the podcast helpful and want to support my work, you can buy me a coffee. Other ways to support my work like buying a book or signing up for a low cost workshop can be found on my website. None of this is never required, but always appreciated!

Interested in doing therapy with me? For more information on working with me directly to overcome your anxiety, follow this link.

Disclaimer: The Anxious Truth is not therapy or a replacement for therapy. Listening to The Anxious Truth does not create a therapeutic relationship between you and the host or guests of the podcast. Information here is provided for psychoeducational purposes. As always, when you have questions about your own well-being, please consult your mental health and/or medical care providers. If you are having a mental health crisis, always reach out immediately for in-person help.

Send in a question or comment via text.

Sometimes life throws real challenges at us—loss, relationship changes, health concerns, financial struggles—that naturally trigger anxiety. But when you're dealing with an anxiety disorder, these moments become especially confusing. How do you tell the difference between "normal" anxiety and disordered anxiety? And what do you do when recovery concepts don't seem to apply?

In this episode, we explore what happens when bad things really do happen in life and trigger genuine anxiety. We'll talk about why not all anxiety is disordered anxiety, how anxiety disorders create a unique challenge when facing legitimate life stressors, and why there are no tricks or hacks to make these feelings instantly disappear.

If you've ever found yourself struggling with big emotions during difficult life events and wondering how you're "supposed to" handle them, this episode may help you understand what's actually happening—and offer a more compassionate perspective on being human during challenging times.

For full show notes on this episode:

https://theanxioustruth.com/330

Support The Anxious Truth: If you find the podcast helpful and want to support my work, you can buy me a coffee. Other ways to support my work like buying a book or signing up for a low cost workshop can be found on my website. None of this is never required, but always appreciated!

Interested in doing therapy with me? For more information on working with me directly to overcome your anxiety, follow this link.

Disclaimer: The Anxious Truth is not therapy or a replacement for therapy. Listening to The Anxious Truth does not create a therapeutic relationship between you and the host or guests of the podcast. Information here is provided for psychoeducational purposes. As always, when you have questions about your own well-being, please consult your mental health and/or medical care providers. If you are having a mental health crisis, always reach out immediately for in-person help.

Send in a question or comment via text.

Anxious parenting can feel overwhelming, especially when your own anxiety drives you to do more - more rescuing, more protecting, more intervening. But what if the path to better parenting actually requires learning to do less?

In this episode, I'm joined by anxiety/OCD specialist Joanna Hardis to talk about how anxious parenting patterns keep us stuck and what we can really do about them. Joanna just released her new book "Just Do Nothing (For Parents): Parenting Better by Doing Less". Joanna brings training, experience, and insight into why anxious parenting makes us want to swoop in and fix everything our kids feel.

We discuss:

• Why anxious parenting drives us to do MORE when we need to do LESS
• The false binary many parents feel trapped in (super involved vs cold and callous)
• How to tell if you're reacting to your own distress or responding to the actual situation
• The difference between danger and discomfort in anxious parenting
• Practical ways to build distress tolerance as a parent
• Why anxious parenting patterns don't stop when kids get older
• How to practice "microdosing discomfort" to break anxious parenting cycles

If you struggle with anxious parenting, whether you have toddlers, teenagers, or adult children, this conversation will give you a new framework for understanding why you do what you do and how to make different choices that serve both you and your kids better.

ABOUT JOANNA HARDIS Joanna is an anxiety and OCD specialist practicing in Cleveland with extensive experience working with families and training in SPACE (Supportive Parenting for Anxious Childhood Emotions). 

Find her at joannahardis.com

RESOURCES Find show notes and links at theanxioustruth.com/329

Support The Anxious Truth: If you find the podcast helpful and want to support my work, you can buy me a coffee. Other ways to support my work like buying a book or signing up for a low cost workshop can be found on my website. None of this is never required, but always appreciated!

Interested in doing therapy with me? For more information on working with me directly to overcome your anxiety, follow this link.

Disclaimer: The Anxious Truth is not therapy or a replacement for therapy. Listening to The Anxious Truth does not create a therapeutic relationship between you and the host or guests of the podcast. Information here is provided for psychoeducational purposes. As always, when you have questions about your own well-being, please consult your mental health and/or medical care providers. If you are having a mental health crisis, always reach out immediately for in-person help.

Send in a question or comment via text.

This week we're doing a special "no frills" edition of The Anxious Truth (just like the old days). I asked my Instagram audience for questions, and I'm here to do my best to answer them. 

If you're dealing with panic disorder, agoraphobia, OCD, health anxiety, or generalized anxiety disorder, you've probably asked yourself many of these same questions.

I cover the most common questions about anxiety symptoms—heart palpitations, dizziness, nausea, breathing difficulties—and explain why treating them as individual problems to solve actually keeps you stuck. We also tackle common questions about intrusive thoughts, including fears about insanity, self-harm, death, and never recovering.

One of the biggest categories of questions revolves around control: How do I stop feeling this way? How do I quiet my mind? How do I prevent panic attacks? I explain the fundamental difference between acceptance-based approaches and control strategies, and why the frantic attempt to control your internal experiences is part of what creates the disordered state.

I also address:

• The often-overlooked meta-emotions (frustration, despair, feeling like you've lost yourself)
• Whether lifestyle changes like diet and exercise help with anxiety recovery
• How to handle family dynamics and unsupportive relationships
• Morning anxiety and nocturnal panic attacks
• How to actually learn from exposure experiences instead of wasting them

This episode clarifies why most common questions about anxiety point to the same answer: you don't need special instructions for your specific symptom or thought. Recovery is about building a new relationship with your own body and mind.

Resources mentioned:

• Books by Dr. Sally Winston and Dr. Martin Seif
• Disordered podcast (Disordered.FM)
• The Anxious Truth website (theanxioustruth.com)

Remember: Small changes and experiments add up over time. Any move in the right direction counts, no matter how small.

For full show notes on this episode:

https://theanxioustruth.com/328

Support The Anxious Truth: If you find the podcast helpful and want to support my work, you can buy me a coffee. Other ways to support my work like buying a book or signing up for a low cost workshop can be found on my website. None of this is never required, but always appreciated!

Interested in doing therapy with me? For more information on working with me directly to overcome your anxiety, follow this link.

Disclaimer: The Anxious Truth is not therapy or a replacement for therapy. Listening to The Anxious Truth does not create a therapeutic relationship between you and the host or guests of the podcast. Information here is provided for psychoeducational purposes. As always, when you have questions about your own well-being, please consult your mental health and/or medical care providers. If you are having a mental health crisis, always reach out immediately for in-person help.

Send in a question or comment via text.

Anxiety that you cannot control, that keeps coming back, that you don't understand and are terrified of, will trick you into believing that something is really wrong. But what if that intense fear you experience—while absolutely real—is based on a prediction your brain is making that isn't actually true?

In this episode, I speak with Dr. Lisa Feldman Barrett, neuroscientist and author of How Emotions Are Made and 7 1/2 Lessons About The Brain about how anxiety is constructed in the brain. Dr. Barrett explains the theory of constructed emotions and how your brain uses predictive processing to create your internal experience of fear and anxiety.

In this conversation, we explore:

• How anxiety is constructed in the brain through predictive processing, not reactive circuits
• Why your brain's primary job is managing your "body budget" and how this relates to anxiety
• The difference between your experience being real versus the prediction being accurate
• How your brain uses past experiences to construct categories and predict future threats
• Why anxiety disorders may involve predictions that are either too general or too specific
• What "practicing predicting differently" means and how it can help with anxiety recovery
• Dr. Barrett's personal experience using these principles to manage stage fright before her TED talk
• The role of interoception in how your brain constructs anxiety
• Why changing how anxiety is constructed in your brain is hard work that requires practice

This conversation gets technical at times, but offers valuable insights into why anxiety feels so real and compelling, even when you're not actually in danger. Understanding how anxiety is constructed in the brain has important implications for how we approach recovery from panic disorder, agoraphobia, OCD, and other anxiety disorders.

Resources mentioned:

• Dr. Lisa Feldman Barrett's website: LisaFeldmanBarrett.com
• How Emotions Are Made by Dr. Lisa Feldman Barrett
• Dr. Barrett's TED Talk
• 7 1/2 Lessons About The Brain by Dr Lisa Feldman Barrett

For Show Notes On This Episode:

https://theanxioustruth.com/327

Support The Anxious Truth: If you find the podcast helpful and want to support my work, you can buy me a coffee. Other ways to support my work like buying a book or signing up for a low cost workshop can be found on my website. None of this is never required, but always appreciated!

Interested in doing therapy with me? For more information on working with me directly to overcome your anxiety, follow this link.

Disclaimer: The Anxious Truth is not therapy or a replacement for therapy. Listening to The Anxious Truth does not create a therapeutic relationship between you and the host or guests of the podcast. Information here is provided for psychoeducational purposes. As always, when you have questions about your own well-being, please consult your mental health and/or medical care providers. If you are having a mental health crisis, always reach out immediately for in-person help.

Send in a question or comment via text.

If you're struggling with anxiety and searching for ways of calming your feelings, this episode is for you.

I break down why the most popular strategies for calming your feelings - like using logic to talk yourself out of anxiety, trying to replace negative emotions with positive ones, attempting to control your body's responses, or avoiding triggers - often backfire when you're dealing with anxiety disorders.

Drawing from mindfulness principles and acceptance-based therapy approaches, I explain a counterintuitive truth: calming your feelings often happens when you learn to be with difficult emotions rather than fighting them. Using the metaphor of a loving parent comforting a crying child, I explore how harsh judgment and control attempts often increase distress, while kind acknowledgment and acceptance can lead to genuine relief.

You'll learn why calm follows capacity rather than control, and how developing the ability to tolerate and navigate through difficult internal experiences can reduce the fear of your own thoughts and feelings. I address the reality that this approach is challenging to implement when you're triggered, while offering practical insights into building emotional capacity over time.

This episode focuses on working with the reality of being human rather than fighting against uncomfortable emotions - an approach that may help you discover how to move through anxiety and distressing feelings in a more adaptive way.

Topics covered:

• Why common calming strategies fail for anxiety sufferers
• The difference between capacity and control in calming your feelings
• How acceptance can lead to genuine relief from emotional distress
• Practical insights for building tolerance to difficult emotions
• Learning to navigate through anxiety rather than against it

Perfect for anyone dealing with panic disorder, generalized anxiety, OCD, health anxiety, or agoraphobia who wants to move beyond quick fixes toward lasting change.

For full show notes on this episode:

https://theanxioustruth.com/326

Support The Anxious Truth: If you find the podcast helpful and want to support my work, you can buy me a coffee. Other ways to support my work like buying a book or signing up for a low cost workshop can be found on my website. None of this is never required, but always appreciated!

Interested in doing therapy with me? For more information on working with me directly to overcome your anxiety, follow this link.

Disclaimer: The Anxious Truth is not therapy or a replacement for therapy. Listening to The Anxious Truth does not create a therapeutic relationship between you and the host or guests of the podcast. Information here is provided for psychoeducational purposes. As always, when you have questions about your own well-being, please consult your mental health and/or medical care providers. If you are having a mental health crisis, always reach out immediately for in-person help.

Send in a question or comment via text.

There's whole industry built around helping people feel good about feeling bad, and while validation has its place, this endless cycle of anxiety content might actually be keeping you stuck. In this episode, we explore how consuming validation-focused content can become a form of modern reassurance-seeking that maintains anxiety disorders rather than promoting recovery.

We'll discuss the research showing that excessive reassurance-seeking provides immediate relief but leads to increased anxiety over time. You'll learn the difference between helpful validation and the validation trap, and why automatically turning to anxiety content when you feel uncomfortable might be functioning as a safety behavior.

This episode covers the distinction between feeling understood and actually moving forward in recovery, how social media consumption patterns affect anxiety levels, and practical guidelines for consuming mental health content in ways that support rather than sabotage your progress.

If you've been consuming anxiety content for months or years but still feel stuck, this episode will help you examine whether feeling good about feeling bad has become another way to avoid the discomfort that comes with real change.

Topics covered:

• The research on reassurance-seeking and anxiety maintenance
• How validation content can become a safety behavior
• The difference between active and passive content consumption
• Red flags in wellness and mental health content
• Moving from understanding to action in anxiety recovery
• Why you don't need to feel good about anxiety to live your life

Recovery isn't about feeling good about your anxiety. It's about learning that you don't need to feel good about it in order to build a life worth living.

For full show notes on this episode:

https://theanxioustruth.com/325

Support The Anxious Truth: If you find the podcast helpful and want to support my work, you can buy me a coffee. Other ways to support my work like buying a book or signing up for a low cost workshop can be found on my website. None of this is never required, but always appreciated!

Interested in doing therapy with me? For more information on working with me directly to overcome your anxiety, follow this link.

Disclaimer: The Anxious Truth is not therapy or a replacement for therapy. Listening to The Anxious Truth does not create a therapeutic relationship between you and the host or guests of the podcast. Information here is provided for psychoeducational purposes. As always, when you have questions about your own well-being, please consult your mental health and/or medical care providers. If you are having a mental health crisis, always reach out immediately for in-person help.