The Anxious Truth - A Panic, Anxiety, and Mental Health Podcast
Struggling 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! Â * Featured in the New York Times: "6 Podcasts to Soothe An Anxious Mind" (April 27, 2024)* Featured in Vogue Magazine: "The 15 Best Mental Health Podcasts Recommended by Therapists" (October 2023)Listen to the podcast, read the books, join the social media community, and get on the path to recovery.
When OCD Comes Back w/Jess Marriner | EP 355
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If you have OCD, you've probably heard that it can never be cured, only managed. That can leave you wondering what happens if it comes back. This week I talk with Jess Marriner, an OCD therapist in the UK who also has OCD, about what that actually looks like and what she does when it happens.
A few days before we recorded, Jess had a morning where she fell down the rabbit hole of ruminating about one of her classic themes. She's open about that because she...
How To Turn Off Anxious Self-Scanning and Checking | EP 354
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"How do I stop scanning and checking myself all the time?"Â
If you struggle with anxiety or OCD, you've probably asked some version of that question. Scanning your body for sensations. Scanning for bad thoughts. Checking whether a thought or emotion is the right one. I get asked how to make it stop almost every day.
In this episode I tell you the honest answer. You can't turn it off. Even my therapist brain scans and checks. I get migraine aura, and while I...
Anxiety And The "Almost" Story | Ep 353
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"I almost passed out."
"I almost made a scene."
"I almost ruined everything."
If you have an anxiety disorder or OCD, you probably recognize that sentence. The word almost shows up constantly, and treating it like a fact is one of the things that keeps the cycle going.
In this episode I want to talk about what I call the almost story: the narrative anxiety and OCD write after a difficult moment to give your escape behaviors and compulsions credit for...
Anxiety, OCD and the Cost of Negotiated Avoidance | EP 352
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Every time you give in to an avoidance or a ritual, it seems reasonable. Skip one social event, spend a few extra minutes on a compulsion, take one "me day" instead of pushing through. In isolation, none of it feels like a big deal. What's the harm?
That's the trap. Not the individual behaviors themselves, but what happens when you add them all up.
In this episode I want to talk about what I call negotiated avoidance: the process by which each individual accommodation to...
Anxiety and OCD: The Strategy Mismatch Issue | EP 351
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Anxiety disorders and OCD are what you get when a perfectly functioning brain applies its usual problem-solving strategies to the wrong problem. Your brain is good at solving things. The trouble is it keeps trying to solve something that isn't actually the problem, and that's what keeps you stuck in the loop: trigger, fix, feel better for a while, repeat.
In this episode I want to introduce the concept of strategy mismatch. The things that seem to need fixing in anxiety and OCD (the intrusive thoughts, the...
Anxiety and Avoidance Explained | EP 350
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Anxiety and avoidance go hand in hand, and most people struggling with an anxiety disorder have been told that avoidance makes things worse. But there's a lot of confusion in this community about what avoidance actually means. What are you avoiding? What aren't you avoiding? And why does it feel like letting go of the scary thought is the same as ignoring the problem?
In this episode I want to clear that up. The key is understanding the difference between the content of your anxiety and the...
Anxiety Recovery Relapse Prevention - The Morning Routine | EP 349
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One of the more common mistakes people make as they progress in anxiety disorder recovery is treating recovery as something separate from the rest of their lives. You do the therapy work in one box, and everything else goes in another. That tends to backfire.
In this episode I want to introduce the concept of relapse prevention, and I want to do it in the context of building a daily routine that keeps you connected to the strategies and principles that helped you make progress in the...
How Do I Stop Obsessing Over ...? | EP 348
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Everybody wants to know how to stop obsessing over whatever has them scared right now. In this episode I explain why that's the wrong question, and what to ask instead.
In OCD and anxiety disorders, an obsession isn't just a strong thought or a passing worry. It functions like a threat. That's why you can't just decide to turn it off. You can't out argue it, out logic it, or replace it with a happier thought, and I'm guessing you've already tried all three.
The...
The Truth In Anxiety Recovery. There Are No "Game Changing" Moments | EP 347
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In my anxiety recovery journey, there were no game-changing moments. No mic drops, no epiphanies, no single concept or technique that suddenly moved me forward. And when I look at the people I've worked with in my therapy practice and the community I've built around this podcast, that's pretty much how it goes for everyone.
You're probably searching for one, though. I get it. Everybody has a right to want to feel better quickly, and the endless scroll is very good at promising you the ONE thing...
Core Principles of OCD Recovery w/Kimberley Quinlan | EP 346
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In this episode, we are breaking down five core principles of OCD recovery. To help explore this topic, I am joined by Kimberley Quinlan, an anxiety and OCD specialist practicing in Los Angeles and host of the Your Anxiety Toolkit podcast.
OCD recovery is often viewed as a rigid list of steps, but it is better understood through specific attributes and ingredients that you can learn to practice and strengthen over time.
Here is what you need to know about the core components of OCD...
How Does an Anxiety Therapist NOT Get Triggered? | Ep 345
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How Does an Anxiety Therapist Talk About Anxiety All Day Without Getting Triggered?
People ask me this constantly. I'm a former sufferer of panic disorder, agoraphobia, OCD, and depression — and now I spend my days immersed in all of it. Therapy clients, podcasts, books, social media. Anxiety is basically my entire professional life. So how does a person like me not end up right back where they started?
The answer isn't a trick or a technique. It's what recovery actually produces — and once you...
OCD and Acceptance - How Does That Work? | Ep 344
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Many people with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) struggle to understand how the concept of acceptance applies to their recovery. While it seems straightforward in the context of panic disorder or health anxiety, where sufferers learn to accept temporary physical sensations, applying acceptance to distressing intrusive thoughts and images can feel confusing or even dangerous.
In this episode of The Anxious Truth, I'm joined by OCD specialists Joanna Hardis (Cleveland) and Lauren Rosen (Los Angeles) to clarify the role of acceptance in obsessive-compulsive disorder treatment.
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<...Neuroscience and Therapy w/Ana Lund | Ep 343
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This episode of The Anxious Truth dives into the messy intersection of neuroscience and psychotherapy. I’m joined by Ana Lund, a UK-based psychotherapist specializing in the link between brain science and clinical practice, to discuss how we actually use research to help you recover.
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We often hear about "evidence-based practice," but translating a laboratory study into a th...
Blood Pressure Anxiety. How To Stop Checking and Start Living | EP 342
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If you recognize the sound of a Velcro rip and your heart starts to pound the minute you hear that familiar hum, we need to talk. You likely bought a home blood pressure monitor to feel safer and healthier, but now you might feel like a slave to a rubber tube and a plastic screen.
In this episode, we are looking at how a responsible health habit turns into a psychological nightmare in the form of fixation and obsessive fear. We discuss why blood pressure anxiety happens...
Regular Emotions ... or Anxiety Recovery Problem? | EP 341
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In this episode, we tackle a common trap: viewing every uncomfortable emotion through the lens of anxiety recovery. When you spend months practicing desensitization, acceptance, tolerance, and exposure, it is easy to mislabel normal human stress as a setback, a relapse, or a recovery problem.
Disordered vs. Non-Disordered Anxiety
Disordered...Anxiety and OCD Are Like Cult Leaders In Your Head! | EP 340
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Want to talk about what you heard today? I'm hanging out on the Disordered Community space.Â
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Living with an anxiety disorder or OCD often feels less like a medical condition and more like being trapped in a dysfunctional, predatory relationship. In this episode, we explore the metaphor of the "cult leader in your head" to explain why you keep getting tricked by your thoughts—even when you logically know they aren't true.
We discuss five specific way...
Anxiety Recovery Questions & Answers | Ep 339
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Overcoming an anxiety disorder comes with a TON of questions, so let's answer some!
Questions Answered in This Episode
03:45 — Why is it so hard to "just let the symptoms be"? I discuss why doing nothing in the face of fear is the biggest hurdle in recovery and why your struggle to do so...Negative Self Beliefs in Anxiety Recovery | Ep 338
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In this episode of The Anxious Truth, we look at why the lessons of floating, mindful acceptance, and exposure can feel out of reach. While the principles of recovery are simple, they are difficult to execute because they are counterintuitive and require facing the things you fear most. Beyond the initial fear, deeper obstacles rooted in background, culture, and personal experience often stop people from...
Understanding Mental Compulsions in OCD and Anxiety | EP 337
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When compulsions are behavioral, like hand washing or door checking, they are easy to identify. But when they are mental in nature, things get much fuzzier. In this episode, I’m joined by OCD specialist Lauren Rosen to take the mystery out of mental compulsions and explain why your "problem-solving" brain is actually keeping you stuck.
We br...
Anxiety And The Bad Weather Trap | EP 336
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When a blizzard or thunderstorm is in the forecast, do you find your anxiety levels spiking long before the first snowflakes or raindrops fall? You aren’t alone. Many people struggling with anxiety disorders or chronic states of anxiety find themselves extra triggered by significant weather events. In this episode, we’re looking at why anxiety and weather often go hand-in-hand and why it isn't actually the snow or rain that is the problem.Â
We dive into the two underlying processes that create the "bad w...
Anxiety and Fear: Anxiety Disorders Are Just ONE Fear | EP 335
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When you have an anxiety disorder, it can feel like your list of fears and triggers just keeps getting longer. You might have started being afraid of one or two things, but now it seems like everything sets you off. Driving, being home alone, intrusive thoughts, physical sensations, even opening a new bottle of medication.
Despite what it feels like, you're actually only afraid of one thing.
All those different triggers lead to the same place, no matter how varied they seem. Whether it's a...
Mental Health Misinformation: Why is Online Anxiety "Science" So Confusing? | EP 334
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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...
Stoicism, Anxiety, and and Marcus Aurelius ... Gone Wrong? | EP 333
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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 th...
When Coping Skills for Anxiety Go Wrong | EP 332
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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...
Kids, OCD, Anxiety, and Implications for Adult Recovery | EP 331
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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...
When Life Naturally Makes You Anxious | EP 330
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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 crea...
Anxious Parenting? Learning to do LESS with Joanna Hardis | EP 329
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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...
Questions and Answers About Anxiety And Recovery | EP 328
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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.Â
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 s...
How Anxiety Is Constructed In The Brain | Ep 327
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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...
How To Calm Your Anxious Feelings | Ep 326
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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...
Anxiety Recovery: Feeling Good About Feeling Bad? | Ep 325
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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...
Anxiety Recovery: Mindset, Belief, and Motivation? | EP 324
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If you're struggling with anxiety disorders and constantly being told you need a positive mindset, stronger beliefs, and better motivation to recover, this episode is for you. I'm breaking down why these three concepts are tragically misunderstood and misapplied in anxiety recovery—and why they might actually be keeping you stuck.
What You'll Learn:
Why you can't just "decide" to believe in yourself or adopt a positive mindsetThe counterproductive fantasy that words will change how you think and feelWhy motivation follows action, not the ot...Exposure For Anxiety: Common Misconceptions and Mistakes | Ep 323
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Exposure for anxiety is the gold standard treatment for anxiety disorders, but most people get it wrong, especially when trying to use exposure without professional help. In this episode, we're breaking down why so many people struggle with exposure for anxiety and how to avoid the common traps that lead to frustration and giving up.
If you've ever tried exposure therapy for panic disorder, agoraphobia, OCD, social anxiety, or health anxiety and felt like it wasn't working, this episode is for you. Learn the real science behind...
Agoraphobia to Astrophotography: A Recovery Story | EP 322
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For 25 years of my life, I struggled with panic disorder, agoraphobia, OCD, and depression. I was so anxious that I couldn't leave my house or be alone for more than a few minutes at a time. But last week, I finally did something I've wanted to do since I was 9 years old.
In this episode, I share a personal story - not as a blueprint for your recovery, but as encouragement that anxiety recovery is possible. When I was in elementary school, a trip to the planetarium...
When Your Mind Becomes Its Own Worst Enemy | EP 321
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This week on The Anxious Truth, we're talking about what happens when a problem solving mind sees itself as a problem to solve.
Your mind is an incredible problem-solving machine - it's what sets humans apart and has helped us thrive for thousands of years. But when that same problem-solving ability turns inward and starts trying to "fix" your own thoughts, emotions, and internal experiences, things can go very wrong very quickly.
If you're stuck in cycles of overthinking, constantly trying to figure out your...
Medication for Anxiety: Why We're Not Talking About It | Ep 320
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I get asked about medication every single day. Can you get better without it? Is it necessary? What's the best one? Is it cheating to take medication?
Today I'm explaining why I don't answer these questions - and why you should be cautious about content creators who do.
In this episode, I cover:
The three main reasons mental health content creators shouldn't give medication adviceWhy personal beliefs and autonomy matter more than you might thinkThe countless variables that make medication...How Do We Use Mindfulness In Anxiety Therapy? (Part 2) | EP 319
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How do real anxiety therapists apply mindfulness principles when working with real anxiety clients in real therapy sessions? Let's check out part two of my chat with therapists Lauren Rosen and Joanna Hardis. We all make heavy use of the principles of mindfulness in our practices, and in our daily lives.
What you'll learn in this episode:
Why "being present" isn't about feeling calm or peacefulThe concept of being "aggressively present" when anxiety strikesHow mindfulness is really attention training, not relaxation trainingWhy meditation for...Mindfulness in Anxiety Treatment (Part 1) | EP 318
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What happens when three anxiety specialists get together to talk practically about how they use mindfulness in anxiety treatment? This week on The Anxious Truth, we find out.
I'm joined by Lauren Rosen, who practices in Los Angeles specializing in OCD and anxiety disorders, and Joanna Hardis from Cleveland, also an expert in treating OCD, anxiety, and anxiety disorders. Together, we break down how mindfulness in anxiety treatment actually works in real therapy sessions - not the Instagram version, but the practical, sometimes messy reality of applying...
OMG! Nothing Works For My Anxiety!!! | EP 317
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If you've reached the point of declaring "I've tried everything and nothing works for my anxiety," this episode is specifically for you. Many anxiety sufferers fall into this trap and conclude they're uniquely broken or have a special form of anxiety that's resistant to recovery.
As both a therapist and someone who personally recovered from panic disorder and agoraphobia, I'll explain why this frustrating experience happens. You'll discover why commonly-tried control and avoidance strategies can provide temporary relief but ultimately strengthen anxiety's grip on your life.
<...Anxiety and Fearing Emotions: Becoming More Emotionally Allowable | EP 316
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Do you find yourself running from difficult emotions or trying desperately to control them? Many people with anxiety disorders develop a deep fear of their own emotions, believing they're too intense or unbearable to experience fully. In this episode of The Anxious Truth, Drew is joined by therapist Joanna Hardis to explore the concept of "emotional allowability" – learning to coexist with our emotions rather than fighting against them.
They discuss why trying to control emotions is ultimately futile, how the stories we tell ourselves about emotions cause mo...
