Anxiety Recovery: When The Techniques Don't Work (Episode 76)

Disordered: Anxiety Help

What do you do when you're working on recovery from an anxiety disorder and your techniques stop working? How do you handle those hard days when you can't make it stop or go away?

Well ... this is one reason why in the Disordered community we rarely if ever talk about tips, techniques, tricks, hacks, or steps for calming down, preventing anxiety, or managing anxiety or symptoms.

This week Josh and Drew are talking about what happens when we try to use calming, relaxation, or wellness techniques to make disordered anxiety go away. There will be surprises here ... the number one technique we use in anxiety disorder recovery is to not try to use any techniques. The most valuable lesson we can learn is that even without taking special steps, our internal experiences come and go and are not worthy of changing our lives over, even when they are highly uncomfortable or scary.

This episode also touches on the use of calming, relaxation, and stress management techniques as important parts of overall wellness outside the context of an anxiety disorder. Not everything is an exposure and acceptance problem in life. There are times when engaging in good wellness and stress management practices can be very helpful!

The bottom line this week is that trying to use techniques to directly control how you feel and what you think in an urgent or frantic way is generally a bad plan. Applying techniques to teach us how to better handle stressors and move THROUGH our uncomfortable experiences is probably a better way to go.

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