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

The Internet is packed with anxiety and mental health advice, but not all of it is useful or helpful.  Some of it can be harmful. This week I'm joined by Emma McAdam, the therapist behind the Therapy in a Nutshell YouTube channel, to dissect the often misleading and sometimes dangerous information circulating online about conditions like anxiety, depression, ADHD, and bipolar disorder. Emma s...

Healing from chronic or disordered anxiety. How do we do it?  Do we do it at all?  This week on The Anxious Truth we’re talking about  healing from anxiety because this is a topic so many people want to hear more about! For full show notes on this episode: https://theanxioustruth.com/296 If you are going to scroll through any of mental health social media today, you WILL see content that includes...

What if you could transform your relationship with anxiety simply by changing your approach? This week on the Anxious Truth, we tackle the misunderstood phrase "sitting with anxiety" and reveal how it doesn't mean you have to be physically still. We'll break down the true essence of this concept, emphasizing the importance of allowing yourself to experience anxiety without tryi...

HELP! My panic attacks come totally out of the blue! I don't know how to handle that! For an anxious person struggling with the process of anxiety disorder recovery, it can sometimes seem like panic attacks strike completely randomly and "out of the blue", where no clear source of anxiety can be identified as triggering the attack.  This can be frustrating, especially if you've...

Thinking and feeling are important to humans. Thinking and feeling about thinking and feeling is important to anxious humans! In the world of recovery from disordered or chronic anxiety, what we thinking and feeling about thinking and feeling - our metacognitive beliefs - play an important role in the process but are often overlooked. This week on The Anxious Truth I'm pretty exhausted so we&...

You’re in the middle of a huge wave of intense anxiety and fear, or maybe you’re experiencing a full blown panic attack.  Someone with all the best intentions and trying to be helpful instructs you to identify five things you can see, four things you can touch, three things you can hear, two things you can smell, and one thing you can taste. This is the 5-4-3-2-1 grounding exercise. If you’ve foll...

Among people that struggle with chronic or disordered forms of anxiety, there are a wide range of individual primary fears or concerns. When you ask a large enough number of our friends what they are afraid of, you’re going to get a pretty wide range of answers primarily because everyone experiences fear, worry, concern, and anxiety in a slightly different way.  But hidden within this apparently w...

People struggling with chronic or disordered states of anxiety often find themselves in a situation where they are hyper aware and therefore overwhelmed by sensory input.  Non-anxious humans are so oblivious to what we sense that we sometimes pay to have people tell us to notice what our eyes, ears, noses, and skin are sending and perceiving. But for anxious people dealing with chronic or disorder...

Sometimes the toughest opponent we have in anxiety recovery is the belief we can't outrun. This episode challenges you to question the certainties that have defined your battle with anxiety. Is the intensity of our emotions a reliable compass? Is our self-knowledge as accurate as we believe? We'll explore the potential for a fleeting moment of power even amidst the storm of fear, and how...

DO I HAVE TO STOP BEING AFRAID TO TRULY ACCEPT ANXIETY (AND TO GET BETTER)? Good question.  But this is a backwards interpretation of acceptance so let’s clarify. Acceptance is not finding a way to turn off your fear Acceptance is not figuring out some method for hating your anxiety less Acceptance is not about creating a new state of being or feeling from an emotional or mental standpoint Accepta...

Anxiety Triggers: When The List Is Growing Many members of our community will find that over time their list of anxiety triggers or panic attack triggers is growing. More and more things become triggers, which starts to get frustrating and disheartening.  Let's talk about why that happens, and what it means in the recovery process. Important Timestamps: 02:17 - Everything becomes an anxiety t...

Let's do an old fashioned anxiety questions and answers session, shall we?  Today we're answering questions from our friends on Facebook. 02:24 How do I face a scary exposure? 05:58 Is it normal to still have symptoms or scary thoughts in recovery? 08:48 What do I do when I'm not anxious and have no symptoms or thoughts to deal with? 10:40 Which comes first, scary sensations or scar...

Having panic attacks does not always mean you have panic disorder. This week on The Anxious Truth we're digging into what differentiates panic attacks - even recurring panic attacks - from panic disorder. In a nutshell, the primary differentiator here is fear/avoidance.  When you begin to fear panic attacks because you interpret them as dangerous or too overwhelming, then you begin to modify...

Struggling with constant anxiety, recurring panic attacks, or a full blown anxiety disorder? Avoiding anxiety and panic triggers might seem like the safest path, but let's look at why this understandable and common response can be more foe than friend. In this episode we'll look at some of the mechanics of panic attacks and panic disorder, shedding light on why evading anxiety can inadve...

LIVING WITH ANXIETY ... I HAVE TO RECOVER SO I CAN LIVE MY LIFE AGAIN! But really, do you?  Or is it better to do your best to re-engage in life so that you can recover? This week we're examining the concept of life AS recovery rather than life as something you get to do only after you've reached some magic state of "recovered".  Yes, at times recovery from an anxiety disorder...

HOW TO CALM DOWN FROM A PANIC ATTACK? This is one of the million dollar question in our community, so let's take a look at how to calm down from a panic attack. I know you likely want tips and tricks for how to stop a panic attack and calm down, but could the act of embracing, rather than fighting off a panic attack, be the hidden doorway to "calm"?  Let's look at true acceptan...

WHAT DOES A PANIC ATTACK FEEL LIKE? Let's unpack the harrowing reality of a panic attack, peeling back the layers to expose the heart-thumping, breath-stealing beast it can be. My journey as a therapist in training, fused with raw personal encounters, brings a unique perspective to the forefront. We dissect those suffocating episodes, where your own body feels like an unwieldy adversary, and...

Ever wondered how to recognize a panic attack? Want to understand the physical and mental symptoms that hint towards an oncoming episode? Not sure if what you're experiencing are panic attacks or something else? This episode of The Anxious Truth is for you. Tune in as we delve into panic and panic attacks, demystifying the sensations, the thoughts, the fear,  and the need to escape that often...

Struggling to find the right anxiety therapist? Are you curious about how a therapist becomes a therapist? Let's take a look  through the maze of credentials - from Licensed Mental Health Counselor (LMHC) to Licensed Professional Counselor (LPC), Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist (LMFT), and Licensed Clinical Social Worker (LCSW). Let's shed some light on the demanding journey of tr...

Do you need to find a therapist that knows and follows the "Claire Weekes method"? This week we unpack the impact of Dr. Claire Weekes, shedding light on her influential role in the therapy world, specifically in the realm of anxiety disorders. Dr. Weekes' groundbreaking principles of acceptance have proven to be timeless, remaining relevant in therapy practices today. We go beyond...

Anxiety recovery can be a highly individual journey. This is especially true if you have ADHD, Autism Spectrum Disorder, or otherwise identify as neurodivergent. While there are certainly general principles we rely on, every person will find recovery to present specific and unique challenges that have to be addressed as part of the process. For neurodivergent members of our community, this is also...

Anxiety and the recovery process do not exist in a vacuum. You are an entire person, and all the parts of you come into this process. Holistic is not a word you hear me use often, but it is a word we need to acknowledge because when dealing with chronic/disordered anxiety and the recovery process, your background, experiences, beliefs, and views of yourself and the world will enter the picture in...

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 t...

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:/...

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 uncomfor...