 Welcome to the Anxious Morning, where each weekday morning we take a look at ideas, concepts, and lessons designed to help you understand and overcome your anxiety. For more information, visit us at theanxiousmorning.com On the last day of every month, I ask one of my friends or collaborators to guest post on the Anxious Morning. This month we have a guest post from Joshua Fletcher, a.k.a. Anxiety Josh. Josh is one of the people I collaborate with most often. He's a qualified anxiety therapist in the UK and a friend of mine. Josh did a great job of addressing what happens when anxiety comes back, so let's hear what he has to say. So the title of the short article is called It's Come Back. I speak to many people, many clients, many Instagram community readers of the book, whatever. I speak to them a lot, and one of the common phrases I hear is, it's come back. I was having a great week, but it's come back, and obviously what they mean is anxiety. My anxiety has come back. What I'd like to communicate to people is that it's really important not to anthropomorphise your anxiety. It is not a gremlin that crawls through your window to annoy you when you're having a nice time. If anything, it's a very overprotective mechanism that thinks it's doing you a favour when you're super stressed or there's a potential threat. Now, a very important reframe is this. If you're one of these people that says, ah, my anxiety, it's come back, and it's followed by disappointment, annoyance, a fear of failure, a frustration, a feeling like you're back at square one. Instead, reframe that as, here's a chance for me to willfully tolerate my anxiety, because that is recovery. Recovery isn't the occurrence of anxiety. Recovery is your willingness to experience it. I, still now as a psychotherapist, struggle with anxiety now and then, but actually I don't struggle with it. I always see it as a chance for me to tolerate it. My skill and all the skills of my clients and what I propagate is I'm good at tolerating this. My initial reaction if I get anxious is of intrigue, alright, okay, well, okay, I'm going to see how well I can do at tolerating this. Whereas many years I spent many years going, oh no, it's back. I certainly, this is awful. I've lost. I wave the white flag, go back to square one, start doing rumination and safety behaviors. Now, here is a chance for me to perfect this skill, to start a skill and see the willful tolerance of anxiety as the same as learning guitar, practicing karate, learning a new language. You start off. It's tricky. It's difficult. But the more you practice it, the more proficient you get. So go away and willfully tolerate your anxiety and stop beating yourself up or getting sad or saying you're back to square one because anxiety has arisen. It hasn't. You are safe. You are normal. You're okay. It's time to tolerate that anxiety. Well, thank you, Josh. Very important message, very germane in the discussion we have in this community. And I thank you for taking the time to deliver it. Just a little bit of background. Joshua Fletcher is a psychotherapist who specializes in working with anxiety and panic disorder. He is best known as Anxiety Josh across social media and has quickly become a renowned and reputable figure in the industry. You can find Josh and all of his stuff online at schoolofanxiety.com. If you're enjoying the anxious morning and you'd like to get a copy of the podcast delivered into your email inbox every morning, visit the anxious morning dot email and subscribe to the newsletter. If you're listening on Apple or iTunes, take a second and leave a five-star rating. Maybe write a small review. It really helps me out. And finally, if you find my work useful and you'd like to help keep it free of advertising and sponsorships, you can see all the ways to support the work at the anxioustruth.com slash support. Thanks so much.