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

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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.

Website and Social Links

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https://theanxioustruth.com/links

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.

Full show notes for this episode can be found at https://theanxioustruth.com/97

Being in an abusive or controlling relationship is difficult for anyone.  Struggling with an anxiety disorder complicates things, making the situation even more difficult to handle. Statistics show that 1 in 3 women, and 1 in 4 men, will be involved in an abusive relationship at one point in their lives. This is a problem in the general population.  My experience in the anxiety disorders community leads be to believe that it is even more prevalent among people suffering from anxiety problems.  Today I was joined by Colleen Merlo and Wendy Linsalata of Long Island Against Domestic Violence.  Colleen and Wendy were kind enough to give their time to discuss the problem and answer questions posed in my Facebook group.

Resources:

• National Domestic Violence Hotline (United States): 1-800-799-7233
• National Domestic Violence Hotline web site: https://thehotline.org
• Long Island Against Domestic Violence: 631-666-8833
• Long Island Against Domestic Violence web site: https://liadv.org

Join The Discussion Group
——————————————–
https://facebook.com/groups/TAGForum

My Links (social media, podcasts, etc.)
——————————————–
https://theanxioustruth.com/links

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.

For full show notes on this episode, visit https://theanxioustruth.com/96

Perfectionism.  It's a label I hear frequently self-applied by many going through the process of recovering from an anxiety disorder.  Labeling oneself as a perfectionist results in challenges that make recovery more difficult than it has to be.

Today I was able to spend time with Dr. Tara Sanderson, a licensed doctoral level psychologist practicing in Oregon.  Tara not only specializes in behaviorally oriented therapies for anxiety issues, but she has experienced the "curse" of perfectionism in her own life and has written a book on the topic.

Changing and challenging perfectionism requires an understanding of why you may be labeling yourself that way and attempting to make everything right and perfect in the world.  Are you bolstering your self-image by wearing perfectionism as a badge of honor?  Are you convinced that making everything perfect will make life better or easier?  In both cases, accepting the reality of a life where neither of those motivations is serving you is the first step toward changing things.

Join The Discussion Group
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My Links (social media, podcasts, etc.)
——————————————–
https://theanxioustruth.com/links

Find Tara On Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and on her practice website.

Find Tara's book, Too Much Not Enough on her book website.

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.

For full show notes on this episode, visit https://theanxioustruth.com/95

Just six months ago, Martine was experimenting with medication, housebound most of the time, and considering hospitalization to deal with her anxiety problem.  Today she is working, participating with her family, living a normal life, and looking forward to what comes next. Today Martine took some time to chat with me about how she changed direction and took control of the situation.  Where once Martine has no direction and no plan for recovery, everything changed when she decided to start doing things she was afraid to do.  Through repetition and incremental progress, everything changed.   

Her message?  “Don’t give up.  It will get better!”

Truer words were never spoken.  Thanks, Martine, for taking the time so share your story.

Join my Facebook group and get involved in the discussion:

https://facebook.com/groups/TAGForum

My website and all social links:

https://theanxioustruth.com/links

Intro and outro music - “Afterglow” by Ben Drake (with permission)

https://facebook.com/BenDrakeMusic

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.

For full notes on this episode, go to https://theanxioustruth.com/94

Too often, the responses that result from anxiety disorders and/or traumatic experiences are classified as mental illness.  We talk about anxiety disorders and post-traumatic stress disorder.  That word - "disorder" - leads many people to believe that they are broken, damaged, abnormal, or ill. The word "disease" is thrown around, leading to additional despair and distress.

It's important to understand that the sensations, thoughts, and feelings you are experiencing, are a NORMAL part of being human!  These are learned responses resulting from your past experiences.  Feeling afraid or anxious is normal and to be expected.  Why then, do we call these illnesses and disorders?  Fear-based responses to anxiety and trauma may be driving your life in directions you do not like.  Recognizing these responses as simply learned responses can help provide the confidence you need to start to make changes.

Join The Discussion Group
——————————————–
https://facebook.com/groups/TAGForum

My Links (social media, podcasts, etc.)
——————————————–
https://theanxioustruth.com/links

Find Monique Online
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https://cptsdcoach.com

https://instagram.com/cptsdcoach

https://facebook.com/cptsdcoach

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.

For the full show notes on this episode including a link to the diaphragmatic breathing video I mentioned:

https://theanxioustruth.com/93

For many people, feeling dizzy or unsteady is one of the most enduring and difficult to deal with anxiety symptoms.  If you are

There are two main steps in dealing with dizziness and unsteadiness:

1. Change the way you think about and talk about this sensation.  This isn't true physically debilitating dizziness that makes you literally unable to stand upright. This sensation is simply a feeling of visual and physical discomfort when moving through space.  You are uncomfortable when moving, but you are still able to move through space and function without impairment.  Being uncomfortable isn't ideal, but start to embrace the difference between incapacitated and uncomfortable.  They are not equal.  You are unsteady, which is uncomfortable for you, and you are likely reacting in fear to that discomfort.  When think about this issue, this is how you must frame it.  When you talk about it, you must change the narrative.

"I'm so dizzy I cant do anything."

becomes

"I feel unsteady and its uncomfortable and scary, but I'm still capable of living life".

2. Change the way you react to this sensation.  Rather than stopping, retreating, avoiding, bracing and fighting, you must accept and fully surrender to the feeling of dizziness and unsteadiness. Rather than sitting down, leaving to go back to your safe zone, or "going to ground" (a term I hear all the time, you will relax your body, breathe slowly into your belly, and train your focus on your breath or some other point of your choosing rather than on the sensation and accompanying thoughts.  You can slow down and continue doing whatever it is you were doing or want to do, remaining physically relaxed, breathing properly (to avoid the over breathing/hyperventilation that makes the sensation worse), and and focused on the task at hand. Let the sensation and the thoughts come at you full force and surrender to the worst case that you can imagine.  It won't ever happen.

Remember, you are trying to learn that even when uncomfortable due to unsteadiness, you are OK.  Your goal with this symptom - as usual - is to learn that you do not have to fear it.  Lose the fear and the fear driven reaction and as usual, things will improve over time.

Join The Discussion Group

——————————————–
https://facebook.com/groups/TAGForum

My Links (social media, podcasts, etc.)
——————————————–
https://theanxioustruth.com/links

Intro and outro music - Afterglow by Ben Drake (with permission)

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.

Monophobia - the fear of being alone - is a common component of the panic, anxiety and agoraphobia complex.  When left unchecked, panic disorder leads to agoraphobia.  When this happens, monophobia often develops at the same time.   If your coping mechanisms rely heavily on a "safe" person, or safe people, then you are more likely to develop monophobia.  Monophobics expend a great deal of effort and energy in an attempt to never be alone.  This can be VERY disruptive and impactful when it comes to daily life, and relationships with those people designated as safe or rescue people.  

Monophobia is not a different or special kind of problem.  It's simply your fear of anxiety and related symptoms expressed in a given context - being alone and out of reach of your safe or rescue people.  This is simply the mistaken belief that you need someone to safe you from panic and its related sensations.  When deprived of that rescuer or rescuers, the monophobic perceives an even greater danger and reacts accordingly.  This is why monophobics often say they have no safe place.  In monophobia, safe places are replaced by safe people.

Overcoming monophobia is handled the same way we handle everything else we discuss here.  Moving toward the fear and exposing oneself systematically and incrementally to those fearful sensations and thoughts without reacting to them.  This can be done by working on other situations - driving, shopping, going to work, going for a walk - or by attacking the "alone" context directly via systematic and incremental periods spent alone, confronting the fear and the associated sensations and symptoms.

Repeated experiences with positive outcomes - afraid but still safe and OK - will break the connection between fear and danger.  Once the monophobic person is no longer afraid of his or her own body and mind in any situation, they no longer require rescue and therefore no longer fear being alone.

Show notes for this episode can be found at https://theanxioustruth.com/92

Join The Discussion Group
——————————————–
https://facebook.com/groups/TAGForum

My Links (social media, podcasts, etc.)
——————————————–
https://theanxioustruth.com/links

Intro and outro music - Afterglow by Ben Drake (with permission)

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.

Worry and worrying are problems that many people struggle with along road to recovering from an anxiety disorder.  I'm asked to cover this topic again and again.  So ... a few words about worry and worrying.

Full notes for this episode can be found at https://theanxioustruth.com/91

Worry is simply thinking.  Thinking by itself has absolutely no impact on the real world.  Worry, therefore is not protective, predictive or proactive.  Worry does not keep you safe from disaster.  It does not keep bad things from happening.  It does not prepare you for when they do.  Worry is just thinking, and its not terribly useful.

Worry is related to planning.  Planning is thinking accompanied by action.  When planning, we take our thoughts and transform them into real world actions required to respond to and react to real world events.  Planning is useful.  Planning is helpful.  We all plan in some way. Worry, on the other hand, is thinking WITHOUT action. Worry is half a plan and has no worth or purpose.

Worry is not a life sentence. Being  a "worrier" isn't your fate for the rest of your life.  You can change this.

Being a "worrier" is often a self-applied label that we secretly wear as a badge of honor.  This is also not helpful.  Worry is not a substitute for love and caring, nor does it prove that you are loving or caring.  Worry matters only to the person worrying.  No matter how much you worry about someone, that person can never experience it because worry exists only in your head.  You can love and care for someone without engaging in worry about them. You can drop the "worrier" label and still be a kind, loving and caring person.

We can get off the worry train two ways:

1. Some worries can be transformed into actual plans.  By adding action, we can convert a worry into a plan.  Once you've created a plan, you can remove this item from your worry bucket and move along.  This sometimes involve recognizing that you are simply skipping the action part, or dropping the belief that you are incapable of action.

2. Worries for which there is no plan can be dropped on the floor. This is done by learning how to not engage with worrisome thoughts.  Learning to relax and refocus away from worry is a skill that can be developed through practice and repetition.  This can be difficult because you may be confusing worry with action and safety.  Disengaging with your worry thoughts may make you feel vulnerable to disaster.  Through repetition you will learn that you are just as safe when not worrying as you are while worrying.  Learning the skills of refocus and relaxation will help you break the link between worry and safety that perpetuates the habit.

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Get Involved In the Facebook Support Forum

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Find me on the web, my podcast, and all my social media accounts:

https://theanxioustruth.com/links

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.

Not really a podcast episode so much as an angry rant about a subject I feel really needed to be addressed.  If you've been seeing your "anxiety" therapist for months on end, or years on end, and your progress is kinda nowhere, you may find this helpful.  At a minimum you may be entertained. 

Join The Discussion Group


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My Links (social media, podcasts, etc.)
 

https://theanxioustruth.com/links

Send in a question or comment via text.

One of the common worries while recovering from an anxiety disorder is the fear that it might "come back" after recovery.  This is something I hear from many many people.  It's also pretty common in the community surrounding the podcast to see people arrive that have been through these issues before. They thought had it all solved, but find themselves back in the grips of panic, anxiety and associated nastiness.

This is closely related to what I've been calling the "acceptable bubble".  This is the bubble we build when we do the "recovery things", but we engineer them to do them without anxiety.  Often this means that someone has found a panic-free way to do all the required basic life things, then kinda stopped doing the work.  The hallmark of the "acceptable bubble" is the existence of limits and limitations in one's life.

If you feel like you've recovered, but you still "can't" do things that outside your normal daily experiences, you may be in an acceptable bubble. When are rely on safe people or safety mechanisms to get the bigger tasks done, there's a chance that you're in an acceptable bubble. If you are enduring your days, pushing through anxiety and trying desperately to just get through, you've built an acceptable bubble.

When we build a panic free acceptable bubble, we never reach the ultimate goal of recovery.  The real end game of recovery is to learn to not be afraid of our own bodies and minds.  We must learn to experience fear and discomfort without being afraid of being afraid.  This is what recovery is all about.  Going to work, or the supermarket, or on a family vacation are the happy results of achieving this goal.  They are not the goal itself.

In the end, avoiding the dreaded acceptable bubble is a personal thing. You must be able to look in the mirror and know that you are truly not afraid of panic or anxiety any longer. You don't have to love it, but you can't be afraid of it, in any circumstance.  When the day comes that you can honestly say that a level 10 panic attack while alone 200 miles from home isn't a scary thought any longer, you've achieved your goal.  When you work toward that, you never have to worry about it "coming back" again.  Reach that goal, and this recovery journey will be the last one you'll ever have to embark on.

Join The Discussion Group
——————————————–
https://facebook.com/groups/TAGForum

My Links (social media, podcasts, etc.)
——————————————–
https://theanxioustruth.com/links

Intro and outro music - Afterglow by Ben Drake (with permission)

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.