 The Anxiety Spiral, or more accurately, the Storm of Anxiety. I was asked, how am I supposed to accept and allow anxiety to get better and not spiral? So today on episode 263 of The Anxious Truth, we're gonna dissect the anxiety spiral, we're gonna turn it into an anxiety storm, and hopefully we'll give you a different way to approach that that makes things just a little easier and gets you on the path to recovery. Hello everybody, welcome back to The Anxious Truth. This is podcast episode 263. I am Drew Linsalata, creator and host of The Anxious Truth. If this is your first time stumbling on to the YouTube channel or the podcast, welcome. I'm glad you're here and I hope you find this all helpful in some way. Of course, if you're a returning viewer on YouTube or returning listener to the podcast, welcome back. I'm glad you're here, as always. Today, I'm gonna answer a question from the community surrounding this podcast and this channel. I was asked about two weeks ago, how am I supposed to accept and allow anxiety without spiraling? That's a good question. I understand why it's asked. We use the word spiral all the time in this community. So today we're gonna sort of dismantle that and look at it in a different way. But before we get to that, just a very quick reminder that The Anxious Truth is more than just this YouTube video or this podcast episode. On my website at theanxistruth.com, you will find all of the resources that I have made available on anxiety, anxiety disorders and anxiety recovery, including a ton of other podcast episodes, a ton of free social media content, other videos, books that I've written, courses and workshops. It's all there on my website at theanxistruth.com as are ways to support this work in a more formal way if you're finding it useful and you're using it in your recovery. So take a moment. If you're not familiar with my website, head on over there, theanxistruth.com. Check out everything that I'm putting out because it's out there for a reason. I think it's helpful. Much of it is free. Most of it is free, to be honest with you. So take advantage. Let's get into the whole idea of the anxiety spiral. The question that prompted this podcast episode in this video was how can I accept or feel anxiety without spiraling? So let's preface that with a very quick recap because if you're new to this, you might not understand why we're talking about accepting and allowing anxiety. In the recovery process, as we conceptualize it here on this podcast, on this channel, in this community, we don't fight anxiety. We learn to accept it, allow it, float through it, surrender to it, willfully tolerate it. There's a million different words that we use for this and everybody resonates or everybody finds resonance in a different way to conceptualize it. I like the word surrender. We learn to surrender to anxiety, yes, even panic and the most intense anxiety in order to learn that we don't have to be afraid of it anymore and that is the basic principle of recovery from an anxiety disorder. If you're not familiar with all this, you might want to go back and start with episode one of this podcast or read one of my books or get a little bit more involved in the topic so you understand what we're talking about but the basic principle today is that we have to learn not to fight anxiety, drop the resistance, surrender to it, willfully tolerate it, float through it, accept it, whatever word you want to use. We're all, we're basing everything on this and we're also basing everything on the critical principle in recovery from an anxiety disorder the way I conceptualize it in this theoretical orientation that tells us that what we are doing here is very difficult and often very scary but never actually dangerous. So you have to keep those two things in mind. We're not fighting, we're not fighting a war against anxiety, we're learning to allow it and navigate through it so they can learn not to be afraid of it and even though we are afraid and challenged when we do that, we are not doing dangerous things. So as we go into this episode a little bit more, please keep those two things in mind. So the person who prompted this asked me, how can I accept anxiety? How can I feel it in order to get better without spiraling? So let's talk about the word spiral. It's a thing we use all the time, especially the sort of the online mental health community. People use the word spiraling all the time. I go into a spiral. I tried to get through this panic attack but I spiraled. It just spiraled out of control. And what I want to do today is sort of dismantle that. Now, if we talk about the way you feel when you are anxious and you are perceived, remember none of this is dangerous, just scary and difficult, your perceived sense of safety or security or certainty or well-being does spiral downward. So most people, when they talk about spiral, they're thinking about a downward spiral where you get dragged down. And it's true that your overall sense of well-being when you're in a highly anxious state, when you're triggered, you're panicking, you're having a storm of intrusive thoughts, your OCD is kicking up, your health anxieties and high gear, your perceived sense of overall well-being goes into a downward spiral. That's true. But let's put that on the back burner because when people talk about an anxiety spiral, that's not a downward spiral, that's an upward spiral. So think about a hurricane. When a hurricane or you might call it a typhoon depending on where in the world you are, when a hurricane is out over the open water and it encounters warm air and warm moist air, it gets a shot of energy and it spins faster and the pressure in the center drops and it gets stronger, it becomes a bigger storm, it lasts longer, it becomes more intense. We don't want that to happen. We want hurricanes to be starved of our typhoons. We want hurricanes or typhoons to be starved of energy so that they spin out into the ocean and they fall apart and they run their natural course and then it's over. But when they do encounter additional sources of energy as can happen, those storms get bigger and stronger and more intense and they last longer. That's the anxiety spiral. So the anxiety spiral might be a downward spiral of how you feel, but the situation that's causing that downward spiral and how you feel is an upward spiral. And that upward spiral, the anxiety spiral itself, the spiral of anxiety is in an upward direction and the energy that is added to that storm, because we're gonna start calling it an anxiety storm, not a spiral, we are adding energy to that storm in the form of resistance. So when you encounter a strong feeling of anxiety or you have one of your anxiety symptoms kicks in or you have a really scary thought or whatever way you are triggered and you experience that first wave, that whoosh, that white hot sort of flash of fear and panic and anxiety and uncertainty and it feels like doom and something terrible is gonna happen or death or insanity or whatever it happens to be for you that scares the heck out of you, your sense of wellbeing will begin to spiral downward and then you will fight like crazy to try and stay above the surface so that your sense of wellbeing, the way you feel doesn't get dragged down. But it is the actual fighting to stay on the surface. I can't get dragged down, I can't get dragged down. I don't wanna feel unsafe, I have to fight this. That is adding energy to the anxiety storm. So you are fueling the upward spiral, you are fueling the hurricane of anxiety when you resist the downward trend in how you feel. So things get really paradoxical around here quite often and what we really want to do, instead of looking at the spiral as something that is completely and utterly out of your control, if you conceptualize the anxiety spiral as an anxiety storm and you think to yourself, do I want to add energy to this storm or do I want to starve it of energy so that it spins up and it does what it does and then it peters out and it ends naturally? Which one do I want here? So let's forget a spiral that you think you can't control. I tried to get through this panic attack and then I just spiraled and people talk about that as if it's something that happens that is completely beyond their control. But if you forget the part about how you feel, which I know is a very big ask here. And by the way, I'm not trying to invalidate how you feel. I understand you are legitimately scared in those moments. So let's not discount that, but if we forget conceptualizing this based on I need to control how I feel and we instead say, well, what can I do with this storm of anxiety? Because it's here, it's here, I can't do anything about it, it's already here. So what do I want to do with that storm? If anxiety is a hurricane or a typhoon swirling in the open water, do we want to add energy to it so that it gets bigger and it decimates a tropical island somewhere? That would be you. Or do we want to starve it of energy so that it runs its course and naturally peters out? Which one is better? So if you can reconceptualize the anxiety spiral as the storm of anxiety and give yourself a chance to decide whether you want to add energy to that storm or starve it of energy, now you can start to see where you do begin to have a choice. You have some influence, you have agency in that. I cannot stop this storm dead in its tracks, which is probably what you're trying to do. I don't want to feel badly. I don't want my sense of wellbeing to sag or spiral downward. So I must fight against this or I will spiral, meaning I will feel worse and I cannot allow myself to feel worse. But the paradox of all of this is that all of that fighting to try not to feel bad is what is adding energy to the anxiety storm and making you feel bad. So let that sink in for just a second. If you've been around here for a while, listen to this podcast or read my books or are familiar with this topic, I'm not telling you anything you don't already know, but I'm trying to give you a way to really look at that spiraling concept in a different way and say, oh, okay. Well, the spiral that I'm talking about is I don't want my sense of wellbeing to spiral downward. I cannot allow myself to feel scared. I cannot allow myself to feel that sense of doom that comes with anxiety or panic. I cannot allow myself to feel these scary thoughts that suggest that I might do something horrible or that I'm a horrible person. I cannot allow these scary thoughts about some horrible health problem that I think I might have that I have no evidence of having. All of those things, I cannot allow that. So therefore I want to fight that and not allow myself to feel badly, but I also want to learn how to accept anxiety and surrender to it and tolerate it and float through it so that I can get better. And those are two things that wind up like this and we cannot resolve those two demands. So consider that when you are asking how can I allow and accept and fully feel the anxiety with that spiraling, which you're probably asking is how can I get better but also never feel too afraid or never feel too unsafe or never feel too challenged. Then we can't really have both of those things. So we're going to have to rob or starve the anxiety storm of energy. We can't add more energy to it. And the only way that we can starve it of energy is to stop flailing and fighting and trying so hard to not spiral. Now, I'm not telling you that you must willingly die or willingly go crazy or have a psychotic break or act on your intrusive thoughts, but you have to be willing to roll the dice that that might happen to learn that that horrible thing that you think is going to happen never actually does. And if the panic itself is the horrible thing, even when it does happen, you can get through that because you've got through every period of high anxiety in your life, you've ever encountered, you've gotten through every one of them. If you are listening to me or watching me now, you have literally gotten through even the worst storm of intrusive thoughts, even the worst OCD flare-up, even the worst health anxiety crisis, even the worst undulating rolling panic attacks you have gotten through all of those things. So if the panic or the thoughts or the fear itself is the disaster you can't allow, well, too late, they're already happening and you have gotten through them. So consider that if we're going to try to rob the anxiety storm of its fuel, its energy, we're gonna have to change the way we conceptualize this and say, I'm gonna have to stop fighting so much. And if you think you are fighting because it keeps you alive, it keeps you from going crazy, it keeps you from doing something that you don't wanna do, you're gonna have to roll the dice and sort of take a risk that those things might actually happen and that will feel like a real terrifying risk to learn that they actually don't. That's never been a thing. You've never saved yourself because you've never had to save yourself. So if we conceptualize the spiral in terms of, well, the spiral is really how I feel, that's the downward spiral, but the anxiety spiral is an upward spiral, that's a storm that I add energy to and then it gets bigger, what can I do here? Well, I can starve the storm by not trying so hard to not spiral downward in how I feel. I must allow myself to feel the fear, the uncertainty, the questions, the what if, the dread, the doom and navigate through that to learn that I can and I always have and I'm capable of doing that. So sadly, the answer to how do I allow anxiety without spiraling is you kinda don't. You allow anxiety and you will feel that full force, but if you can allow yourself to feel it without the fighting, stop trying so hard to not spiral, then you rob the upward spiral of anxiety, which is the thing that's making you feel worse. You rob it of its fuel, you rob it of energy. The storm happens, it reaches its peak, it peters out. There might be another storm later, but you'd have to ride through that one too and over time, things change and those storms get a little smaller. They are bigger intervals between them. They don't really matter so much when they pop up. You don't care as much anymore. So how can I accept and allow without fueling the spiral or without spiraling is you're gonna have to accept that your sense of wellbeing, your perceived sense of wellbeing, how you feel is probably going to go downward to a certain extent. Stop trying to prevent that. You cannot accept and allow and also refuse to have a change in how you feel. You are unfortunately going to feel bad while that's at its peak, but if you stop trying so hard to not feel bad and I know this starts to sound like double-speak and makes you crazy, I understand that, but if you stop trying so hard to control how you feel, you stop fueling the upward spiral of anxiety that is ultimately fueling the downward spiral and how you feel. That probably makes no sense and you're thinking I've wasted 14 minutes of my life on this guy at this point. But if you stop and think about it for a second and take the anxiety spiral and break it into, well, there's the spiral in how I feel and then there's the anxiety part, which is actually not a spiral but a storm and I want to rob the storm of its fuel, which is additional energy. How can I do that by allowing the downward spiral and how I feel and learning to navigate through that to come out the other side? In a nutshell, that's what we're talking about here. And again, it doesn't make common sense. It's the opposite of what anybody wants to do. I do not blame any human being on this planet for trying to control bad feelings, but we learn pretty quickly in this recovery thing that trying so hard to never feel badly because we declare that unhandleable is part of what keeps shoveling fuel into the heart of the anxiety storm and keeps it rolling and keeps it coming back and keeps it as a looming threat on your horizon all the time. So you can't really accept without spiraling, but you can accept and understand what the spiral really is, understand what your goal is in navigating through that spiral and disconnect the anxiety part from the how you feel part. This is a storm that's happening that makes me feel bad. And if I can allow myself to feel bad and not fight so hard against that, I will rob the storm of its fuel and it will pass sooner and it will not become this giant monster storm that I fear so much and I fight for hours and hours or days and days against. So that is a different way to conceptualize the spiral when it comes to anxiety and panic and that OCD storm, if you will, that storm of intrusive thoughts, that health anxiety flare up. If we talk about the spiral in that context, this is a way to reconceptualize that spiral and it may be a way to approach it that gives you a little bit more agency, a little bit more power, a little bit more influence and lets you recognize that I kind of do have a choice here. My choice, even though it's a hard choice, it's still a choice. My choice is, let me allow myself to feel these things because if I don't, then I'm fueling the very thing I'm asking to stop. Like if I don't allow myself to feel these things, I'm fueling that spiral that I'm asking Drew how to stop. So I'm gonna have to allow my choices, difficult choice, difficult, scary, hard, challenging choice is let me allow this spiral so that I can learn that if I allow it, it isn't as bad and as big and as hard that storm that fuels my downward spiral is not as intense as it otherwise would be. And over time, that changes the relationship with the storm, changes the relationship with anxiety, changes your relationship with fear. So I'm gonna stop here before I get even more confusing than I already am because believe me, even for me sometimes, trying to find ways to productively describe these counterintuitive paradoxical things is a challenge and I understand trying hard to not overwhelm you with this. I'm trying hard to not confuse you with this. I'm trying hard to not blame you for feeling the way you feel. I'm trying to acknowledge that if the fear is real, it's understandable that you'd want to fight against it. But in the end, we are left with a conclusion that I participate in creating that spiral. I participate in fueling the anxiety storm which then pushes my well-being spiral into the downward funnel that I want so desperately to never happen. But it's here, I can't change it. So since it's already here, the storm is already here, it's already spinning in the open water above me, what can I do with this storm? Do I wanna give it more fuel or do I wanna rob it of fuel and ride through it as best I can without fighting it as if I can make it go away? Because sadly, you can't make it go away on demand. The only way you can make it go away is slowly over time when you're basically cooling the waters. So if you are an ocean, every time you do this, you are basically lowering the temperature of you, the ocean, if you will. And that makes it harder and harder for those massive destructive hurricanes to even form to begin with. There you go, just came up with yet another analogy. Recognize your agency, recognize your choice, exercise that choice, exercise that power, put some of your own influence into that process, disconnect your, how you feel from the anxiety itself, how you feel, downward spiral, anxiety, storm, upward spiral, rob it of energy. I feel like I'm doing a Dana Carvey George Bush impression now for those of you who even remember who that is, first George Bush by the way. But yeah, give that a shot, see how it works out for you. I'm always interested in comments and questions on these things. So if in fact you are watching on YouTube, you are certainly free to leave a comment or ask a question and I will circle back and answer that. I circle back to my YouTube comments at least twice a week to make sure I try and get everybody and answer the questions that I can. And yeah, hopefully this has been really helpful. There's no music at the end here. I'm not sure that I'm gonna continue to do that. I'm just trying to make the episodes a little easier to edit and produce these days. So all I'm gonna do is leave you with the same requests that I always do, which is if you are watching on YouTube, like the video, subscribe to the channel, hit the notification bell so that you know when I upload new episodes and new content, if you're listening to the podcast on Apple Podcast or Spotify or someplace where you can leave a rating and a review, leave a five star rating if you dig the podcast, maybe take a second and write a nice review, because it helps more people find the podcast and then we get to help more people, which is why we do this. So I'll be back with another podcast episode next week as I am on most weeks. I don't exactly know what I'm gonna be talking about, but I'll talk about something, anxiety and recovery related. Thank you for hanging out today. And remember that no matter what you do today, any small step that you take in the direction of recovery, facing your fear and learning that you are capable of doing that, no matter how small that step is, it counts. They all add up and they all get you to where you wanna be in the end. I'll see you next week.