 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. Anxiety will make itself the single most important thing in the universe at all times. It will kick and scream and make a scene and demand that you make every decision and take every action based solely on how it will make you feel. No matter the event, anxiety will invariably demand that you evaluate it based on how it affects you. How does this make me feel? Is this making me anxious? If I do this, will I get more anxious? Sound familiar? Here's the most insidious variant on that theme. Did I feel right when I did that? Was it supposed to feel that way? This one really grinds my gears. Anxiety will demand that you ask this question after you face a challenge, complete an exposure, or do something that you knew would be difficult. You did it. You accomplished the task, but anxiety will twist things so that you only care about how you felt while you were doing it. This most often expresses as a sense of failure because you were afraid during an exposure or because you experienced panic. You felt a certain way, so only how you felt seems to matter, which you actually did goes right out the window and gets thrown away. This is also seen as a demand to feel a certain way. This is most prevalent when an anxious person can't conjure instant feelings of nirvana, unbounded love and intense joy when interacting with a child or someone else they love. I was at the playground with my son, but only felt fear. I did not feel love and joy, so not only am I sick with anxiety, but it has turned me into a bad mother. That's heartbreaking to see, primarily because it is so tragically wrong. How you feel is not the only thing that matters in the universe. It is not the ultimate measure of success, failure or correctness. Judging recovery progress and measuring yourself against idealized feelings that you demand to have is a huge mistake. Sometimes we will feel one way, sometimes we will feel another. It's all allowed and it's all okay. Anxiety will demand evaluation based on how you feel, and many anxious people get caught in this trap, so if this email can offer one bit of advice it would be this. At least consider for a moment the possibility that how you feel, especially while in an anxious state is simply not the most important thing and not reflective of anything in particular. This may sound ridiculous to you, but even if it does, just try to imagine what your recovery might look like if this assertion turns out to be true. Just a little something to think about on a Tuesday morning. Tomorrow we'll start a little three-part mini-series focusing on the topic of hope and hoping for better days. 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 theanxiousmorning.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 theanxioustruth.com slash support. Thanks so much.