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

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 disc...

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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 relap...

Want to talk about what you heard today? I'm hanging out on the Disordered Community space. 

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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 whe...

Want to discuss what you heard today with Drew, Josh Fletcher, and others that share your struggle and experience?

https://disordered.fm/community

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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 you...

Want to discuss this episode with me and others that share your experience?

https://disordered.fm/community

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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 ob...

Questions about what you've heard today? Want to interact with Drew and other listeners of this podcast? Check out the Disordered Community space.

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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 y...

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...

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 differe...

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 informati...

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...

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 yo...

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 ...

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 w...

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 &quo...

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. 

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 symp...

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 Les...

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 ...

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 rea...

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 ...