Stay ConnectedStruggling with panic attacks, agoraphobia, or other anxiety problems? The Anxious Truth will educate you, empower you, encourage you, and inspire you to get your life back!
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Copyright: © 2025 Drew Linsalata
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For full show notes on this episode: https://theanxioustruth.com/102
One of the two most common fears of anxiety and panic sufferers is the fear of going insane. Losing one's mind. Going crazy. Many worry that they will "lose it", or "snap" when at the height of panic or extreme anxiety. This is a difficult fear to face, but it remains an irrational fear that never comes true.
The fear of going insane or losing one's mind is no different than the fear of dying, or passing out, or vomiting, or anything else. The fear that you may lose your mind because of anxiety and panic is just another in the long line of irrational, distorted, magnified fears that come along with anxiety disorders. Your catastrophe (going insane) is not special and does not warrant any special approach or technique to address.
Episode Topics:
My Links
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https://facebook.com/groups/TAGForum
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, go to https://theanxiousgroup.com/101
Anxiety disorders are selfish disorders. Anxiety and fear are self-centered and will push their way to the front of the line at all times. When struggling with an anxiety disorder, the selfish nature of the disorder often makes you look selfish and self-centered. The disorder is selfish. You are not. Anxiety and fear drive self-centered behaviors in three ways:
Disruption Based on Avoidance
Anxiety causes you to spend your time scanning for threats. Every situation is evaluated based on how it may make you feel. Decisions are made based on the drive to avoid the feelings and thoughts that you hate and fear. When your anxiety drives you to cancel engagements, avoid places and situations, and flee from discomfort, the change in your lifestyle impacts the people around you ....
Becoming The Center of The Universe
Anxiety and fear will drive you focus on yourself continuously. In any given situation, anxiety will demand the lion’s share of your attention. While those around you are focused on solving a problem, resolving a conflict, or enjoying a social gathering, you likely found yourself occupied primarily with how you are feeling. While the world asks, “What shall we do now?”, you will ask, “How will this impact ME?!” ....
Feeding The Beast On Down Low
When anxiety and fear have the door slammed on them, then get creative. You may have been told by friends and family – or even your therapist – that talking about how you feel and seeking constant soothing and reassurance is no longer going to be tolerated. Your anxiety disorder does not like that news. Often it will compel you to find “sneaky” ways of making itself seen and heard ....
What Can I Do About This?
First, work on being aware of when anxiety is driving self-centered behavior. Then, get to work. You can't really fix the self-centered stuff without working on full recovery anyway, so this could be the spark you need to start moving forward! When you're doing the work that needs to be done to solve the bigger problem, change the narrative with your friends and family ...
Join The Discussion Group
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My Links (social media, podcasts, etc.)
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Intro/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.
My friend Kendra Beavis has an amazing story. This is a story about making major life changes, solving life problems, and become a better version of yourself. So much of this is based on belief. Belief in yourself, and belief in your ability to do hard things and make changes.
We can't just choose change. We can't just decide to believe in ourselves and be instantly confident. Often we must take action to make the changes we want in our life even before we are confident taking action. Meaningful progress and change isn't something you may believe you are capable right now, but that's OK.
You don't get to be confident, and you don't get to believe in yourself by waving a magic wand. Belief and confidence are things we learn through action and experience. Belief and confidence are earned by doing the hard or scary things you might not think you can do. When we make the choice to move ahead even though you don't feel ready, amazing things can happen.
Amazing things happened for Kendra. I'm grateful that she took the time to share it with us today.
You can find Kendra and her two podcasts on her website at kendrabeavis.com.
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My 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.
For full show notes on this episode: https://theanxioustruth.com/99
We naturally develop habits with respect to the way we talk about, think about, and write about our anxiety problems. This is the habit of words, and it matters. Identifying unhealthy and counterproductive habits of words, then working to replace them with more recovery-focused habits is well worth the effort.
The most common habit of words is the habit of constantly saying how you feel, what you're afraid of, and how much you hate it all. This is the habit that most people in the grips of an anxiety disorder naturally develop. This is a bad habit. Constantly talking about, thinking about, and writing about what you feel is a form of safety and reassurance seeking. This is bad because it reinforces the mistaken cognitive connection between discomfort and fear. If you are spending an inordinate amount of time telling people what you're feeling and experiencing in a passive way, you are hoping to both comforted and saved from your anxiety and its symptoms. This sends the wrong signal to your brain. This tells your brain that anxiety is a problem that requires evasive action and rescue. You are inadvertently reinforcing the foundation of the disorder.
You may understand why seeking safety or engaging in avoidance is a bad thing, however you may wonder why its wrong to want to be soothed or comforted when afraid. Aside from the reinforcement of the disorder we discussed, asking other people to make you feel better is giving away the power you have to make yourself feel better over time. YOU are capable of driving the recovery bus. When you rely on others to comfort and soothe you all the time, you are handing the keys to them. You are asking them to drive the bus. They may want to, but nobody can drive your recovery bus but you. Nobody else can drive you to recovery land.
If constantly telling everyone (including yourself) how you feel is a bad habit, then what is a good habit? How can you change this? ....
My Links
----------------
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 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
------------------------------------
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:
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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https://facebook.com/groups/TAGForum
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 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.
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