Disordered: Anxiety Help

Mindfulness is good for anxiety, right? Isn't this what everyone says? Mindfulness fixes anxiety and makes you happier? Isn't that it? Well ... not really. This week Drew and Josh are taking a look at the practical applications of things like meditation and mindfulness practice in the context of anxiety disorders and anxiety recovery. A few key points: Mindfulness is paying attention to wh...

Everyone talks about the fight or flight response. But what about the freeze and fawn responses, which are also found in the anxiety disorder community? This week Josh and Drew dig into the freeze response to anxiety, panic, and perceived threat. What is the freeze response? What does it look like? Does the freeze response mean being literally frozen and completely immobilized? Do we need special...

When working through the process of chronic or disordered anxiety recovery many will find that at some point they are fixated on or have become a bit obsessed with monitoring and evaluating their mood. This week on Disordered Drew and Josh take a look at why recovering and anxious people tend to get stuck in "mood monitoring mode". Generally speaking, the issue here is the belief that mo...

How does one approach recovery from chronic or disordered anxiety when grief is part of the picture? Do the same principles apply? Do we use concepts like acceptance, surrender, or willful tolerance when handling grief? Grief is a powerful thing that will almost certainly impact not just anxiety recovery but all aspects of life and even daily functioning at times. In this episode Josh and Drew exp...

This week on Disordered we're looking at anxiety focused on relationships, specifically a form of OCD known as Relationship OCD (ROCD). ROCD - like all forms of OCD - will glue itself to things that really matter to us. In this case, being in loving, secure, successful relationships with people we love and who love us. Someone with ROCD even when involved in what by all accounts may be a very...

WHAT ABOUT NOCTURNAL PANIC ATTACKS? HOW DO WE DEAL WITH THOSE? Nocturnal panic attacks are scary, disturbing, disruptive, and often feel like they are different from any other kind of panic attack. Anxious people will often insist that they are special, they can't possibly be approached with an attitude of tolerance or surrender, and that there must be special instructions or techniques for pr...

WHAT DOES "VALUES DRIVEN RECOVERY" MEAN? Anxiety recovery can be seen as one long journey away from fear driven behavior and toward behaviors that support the things we really value in life. This week Josh and Drew are talking about what values driven recovery mean and how your values - the things that matter to you and make you who you are and want to be - play a role in the recovery pr...

BUT WHAT ABOUT WHEN YOU'RE TENSE AND SORE? HOW CAN YOU HANDLE THAT? This is one of those questions we get asked all the time. In this episode of Disordered, we're taking a look at how tension, soreness, twitches, and feelings of muscle weakness fit into the anxiety and recover picture. Anxious, scared bodies are going to anxious, scared body things. That's how we're designed. There...

"I know I'm not supposed to focus inward or engage with my anxious or intrusive thoughts, but what am I supposed to think about?!" This week Josh and Drew answer an excellent question from a listener that hasn't really been asked before. What do you do when your anxious thoughts keep coming even when you don't want them to come, and when you insist that you MUST only focus ou...

WHAT RECOVERY LENS ARE YOU LOOKING THROUGH? This week Drew and Josh take a bit of an unexpected turn to explore ways that CBT and exposure-based approaches to recovery can fall short. Recovery can't always be about facing, accepting, exposures, and Claire Weekes. While we might not look to other models to unearth deeply hidden root causes for an anxiety disorder, other theoretical frameworks c...

MY NERVOUS SYSTEM IS DYSREGULATED! This week Drew and Josh get up close and personal with " nervous system dysregulation ". This is a term that might have some benefit when dealing with issues like stress management or general wellness, but goes straight off the rails into the unhelpful zone when it comes to anxiety disorders. Declaring an anxious state to be a state of dysregulation mig...

This week on Disordered we're taking a grand tour around the OCD loop! Josh and Drew talk about pure-O, somatic, and "traditional" obsessive compulsive disorder subtypes. While not every possible theme and subtype can be covered in a short podcast episode, the guys touched on some of the more common themes found in the community, taking care to address how regardless of the specific...

What Is Your Therapist Thinking While You're Talking? Therapists are people too. They have feelings, opinions, insecurities, fears, and personality quirks. And they - like you - sometimes have an inner dialogue. If you ever wanted to know what goes on inside the mind of an anxiety therapist, this week Josh and Drew dig into this a bit, including a few moments where the guys exercise their dram...

This is the one-year anniversary episode of Disordered! We've been at this now for a full year, and we cannot be more grateful for all the support you guys have provided along the way. What better way to mark a year of Disordered than with an episode dedicated entirely to celebrating the community surrounding this podcast? If you need some encouragement or inspiration in your recovery, listen...

What about all this "neuropathways" talk? What does it mean in anxiety recovery? Funny that you asked! This week on Disordered Josh and Drew are talking about neuropathways, anxious habits, and how the concept of "building new neuropathways" applies in the context of anxiety disorders and anxiety recovery. Let's start by acknowledging that even counterproductive anxious hab...

OH NO! IT'S COME BACK! The habits we develop and the neuropathways that get created by a disordered state of anxiety mean that even long into recovery, an anxious person might be re-triggered by life events, stress, memories, or any number of expected issues. This is normal. If this happens, we can feel things again ... anxiety, anxiety symptoms, and scary thoughts. This is not failure, or ret...

BURNOUT! Running out of gas and being emotionally, physically, and/or mentally drained can happen to any human. This week on Disordered Drew and Josh explore how an anxious mind can twist and distort the concept of burnout. In many ways, the fear of burning out, and the catastrophic interpretation of what that might mean, can be worse than burnout itself! The guys explore different signs of burnou...

Are you using wellness concepts, techniques, programs, and principles as a way to resist feelings of anxiety? There's absolutely nothing wrong with taking care of oneself and wanting to be healthy physically, mentally, emotionally, and even spiritually. But in a large community of people struggling with disordered and chronic states of anxiety, compulsively seeking, chasing, and engaging in we...

The default state for most humans - to varying degrees - is for the brain to launch into inward thinking and inner dialogue when there's nothing else to pay attention to. If you're struggling with chronic or disordered anxiety, this can become a real issue and a major struggle. This week we're looking at the inward compulsion . That fear-driven habit of not only having thoughts, but an...

"Is it normal for my symptoms, or thoughts, or my anxiety to get worse when I start engaging in recovery?" Even Dr. Claire Weekes acknowledged this experience when writing about recovery many years ago. This week on Disordered we're talking about feeling MORE when you stop hiding from anxiety. This is often misinterpreted as "getting worse" but feeling more doesn't mean...

"What does anxiety therapy look like?" "What goes on in a session with an anxiety specialist?" "How can I find the right therapist for me?" This week Drew and Josh address these questions, including a really interesting 12-minute mock therapy session to start the episode. Josh plays the therapist while Drew is the client struggling with panic and extreme levels of anx...

But what about hormonal issues, perimenopause, and menopause???!!! This is a question that we are asked all the time, and rightfully so. This week we're joined by Helen Bennett, a qualified UK psychotherapist specializing in supporting people who are dealing with fertility challenges and struggling with the menopause transition. This episode is chock full of excellent information about the exp...

Do you ever get anxious ... because you're not feeling anxious? This is a real thing in our community! Anxious people who begin to experience moments where anxiety and agitation fade into the background will often find themselves becoming anxious because they're not feeling anxious! This week Drew and Josh explore this confusing but all too common anxiety recovery issue. The discussion inc...

" Healing " is a VERY popular word in self-help, mental health, and wellness circles. For many, this word resonates. For our friends struggling to overcome chronic and disordered anxiety, it can sure feel like there's healing to do. But what if recovery wasn't all about healing? What if there was as much learning as there is healing in the process? Or what if the healing part doe...

Anxiety triggered by exercise, exertion, or being in the gym is a common struggle for anyone dealing with issues like panic attacks, agoraphobia, or any anxiety disorder that places a focus on physical anxiety symptoms or feelings of shame, inadequacy, or embarrassment. This week Drew and Josh share not only a professional take on this aspect of anxiety, but their own lived experience struggling w...