 Hey, I'm Drew, and you are definitely listening to, because there's no video this episode, The Anxious Truth. The Anxious Truth is the podcast that talks about all things anxiety, anxiety disorders, and anxiety recovery. So if you're struggling with things like panic disorder, agoraphobia, health anxiety, or OCD, this is the place for you. After 236 podcast episodes in eight years, I'm finally going to talk about anxiety symptoms. It's true. Let's go. Hello, everybody. Welcome back to The Anxious Truth. This is podcast episode number 237. We are recording in December of 2022. If you happen to be listening in the future, I am Drew Lincellata, creator and host of The Anxious Truth. Thanks for coming by. I appreciate that you are here and spending some time today. As I mentioned in the cold open today, it's true. Hell is freezing over. We're going to talk about anxiety symptoms that you might be giggling right now, because if you followed the podcast for any length of time, or you followed me on social media, or if you're reading any of my books, which by the way, you can find all of the good stuff at TheAnxiousTruth.com, go check it out. So if you followed along for any amount of time, you know that I never talk about anxiety symptoms. I get asked about anxiety symptoms all the time, every day. These are the most common questions. But what about insert symptom here? How do you deal with insert symptom here? It is the most common set of questions I get asked every single day and all the time that I've been doing this thing that I do. So I thought it was high time that I oblige you guys and talk about symptoms a little bit, because clearly it is an important topic near and dear to your hearts. And that's fine. I'm sorry that it's taken me this long. But more than anything else, I kind of might make a point about symptoms, because why don't I talk about them? If this is your first time listening to this podcast, or you're kind of new to this, then this might be a little weird to you. Like I don't understand why this guy doesn't let me talk about my racing heart. Clearly it's going to kill me. And clearly that's the problem. Clearly this nausea is the problem. I have to fix that. Clearly this dizziness or sense of unreality is the problem. I have to fix that, Drew. Why don't you talk about that stuff? Well, because the basic assertion we are working from here is that it is not the symptom that is the problem. It is your interpretation of that symptom as being a danger, a threat and a catastrophe. That is the problem. When you learn to be afraid of your own body, when it's acting naturally and normally, we will talk about that shortly. That is the problem. So I don't talk about symptoms because it's simply not productive. If you've ever been in an online support forum from Anxiety, you probably know that a huge amount of time is spent talking about symptoms and comparing symptoms. Does anybody else get? I hate it when it feels like. And there are big, long discussions and threads that go on and on and on and get repeated again and again and again. And nothing ever really gets solved because all we get is, oh, yes, I hate that I have that too. Now there's some value when I have that too. And we're going to talk about that today. That's important. I'm all for I have that too because understanding that you're living a common experience with other people is really helpful. So I do want to get that out today. But ultimately, if you are trying to approach your anxiety disorder and your recovery by treating the symptoms or finding hacks, tips or tricks to make them stop or go away, because you are convinced that they are the problem, I will tell you that you're probably going in the wrong direction. What we care about is not doing that. We care about learning to work with the symptoms so that we learn that they are not actually dangerous, even though we mistakenly decided that they are. So in the end, what we care about today and the reason why I'm going to go over symptoms today is so that you can get an idea of number one, you're not alone in this. It is true. And number two, that your symptoms are following a very predictable pattern that you're going to see repeated over a large number of people. And number three, that in the end, this is a normal and natural thing that your body is doing that it is just doing at the wrong time. So those are the three reasons why I want to talk about symptoms today to kind of illustrate those three points. And I'm going to do it by going through a little thing I have going on in my Facebook group right now. I don't know if you guys are in the group. There's about 9500 people in the group and we've never had a symptom thread, never, not ever in this group. So for the first time ever, I broke the mold and I told everybody, hey, tell me your anxiety symptoms. And that post is now about two hours old and there are over 100 comments on it already. So as you could see, if you tell if you ask anxious people to tell you what they feel physically, they are very happy to tell you. So I'm going to pretty much go through that thread so that you can start to see how common your symptoms really are. And so that you could start to see the patterns and that you could start to understand like, oh, wow, I'm not special. This happens to a lot of different people. And yeah, this seems pretty predictable. So if it's happening to all of these people, how could it be special in my case? This is important. I want to talk about two things. Number one is a little bit of a disclaimer. I am always speaking into this microphone writing books and talking on social media based on the assumption that you are advocating for your own well being and your own health and that you have engaged qualified medical care. Either you're doing that now, or you've been doing that. And those qualified medical professionals because I'm not one of them have told you that you are okay and that you are dealing with an anxiety problem. I'm always assuming that. So if your first stop is a podcast like this one and you have not seen a doctor, please do that. Like, you should advocate for your own physical health also. That is usually the first stop for people who start to have anxiety problems would be their medical doctor and that's perfectly okay. It is a perfectly fine place to start. Get checked out. My guess is that you may have already been checked out if you're listening to this probably many, many times and that you have been told there is nothing wrong with you. You are dealing with an anxiety problem. All right. So if you haven't done that, I am assuming that you are going to go do that. So please all of the discussion is based on you having been given clearance from a qualified medical professional or a team of medical professionals. Please keep that in mind. I am not a doctor. I cannot diagnose your body over the internet. The second thing that I want you to think about before we get into this is the concept of productive assurance and understanding that you're not alone and that this is a shared experience. Those are good things versus the concept of repetitive constant reassurance seeking. So if you have in fact been told by a doctor or doctors 10, 15, 20 times, I know that's not unusual in this community that there is nothing wrong with you. I don't want to give you more tests because you don't need them. You have an anxiety problem and you just don't believe them and your anxiety keeps telling you, ask again, ask again. And since the doctor won't tell me again, I'll go on the internet and get people to tell me again. If you are in that loop, I am not going to try to perpetuate that loop today. So I'm going to ask you to use this podcast as a way to understand that you are living a common experience that many, many people share and to get that sort of one final bit of like, yeah, here's another guy telling me that I have to stop asking and I have to start trusting that it is highly likely that I am healthy and that is just anxiety. Please do not come back to this podcast again and again and again when your heart is racing and you just want to hear my voice tell you that you're okay. That would be not a good thing and this is why I don't necessarily want to talk about this stuff and I resisted this episode for a long time. Please do me a favor and try to promise me as best you can that you will not keep returning to the favorite parts of this episode to soothe you when your brain says again, but what if the doctor was wrong? Let's try not to use it that way. All right, so let's try to use this podcast as a sense, as a way to help you understand that you are living a shared experience that your body is doing normal things that human bodies do when afraid and that you are living an experience that many, many people are also living, which can be really useful to know. Really useful. I'm not discounting that at all. So we're going to go through some of the responses on the thread that I posted in my Facebook group because I want you to see just how frantic, urgent and voluminous the answers to what is your anxiety symptoms look like really is. You're going to see patterns. I'm going to go through them. It's going to get kind of comical, but you're going to see the patterns develop. Before I do that, let's take about 90 seconds to pay a bill and I'll be right back. This week's episode of the anxious truth has a real life sponsor for the very first time in the history of this podcast. The coolest thing is it has nothing to do with anxiety, recovery or mental health. So it's not some sort of crackpot cure because I would never do that to you guys. Today's episode of the podcast is sponsored by my life in a book.com. It's just a cool thoughtful service that I thought was useful and I thought you might too. This might be the most thoughtful gift I've ever seen for parents and grandparents, older members of our family, especially as the winter holidays approach and we get together to celebrate. It's a really powerful way to connect an emotional level with the older members of our family and to start to preserve their most precious memories. Show them that we really care. Best of all, it's an instantaneous gift. I've tried it with my mom. She's really digging it. She's having a good time with it. And every week, my life in a book.com lets us choose from a list of really thought provoking questions or we can write our own. Those get emailed to our relatives. They can answer those questions and they can even attach meaningful pictures and images to their answers. This happens once a week and at the end of one year, those stories are compiled and combined into a really high quality, beautiful keepset book that can preserve and store our relatives memories and be passed down from generation to generation. You can request as many copies of the book as you would like. You can even get the book in audio format, which I think is a really cool feature. And with my life in a book.com, you can give those you love a really most precious gift that lets them know that they're meaningful not only to you, but the generations that come after you. To save $10 off your first purchase, use discount code TAT22. That's TAT22. To get $10 off at my life in a book.com. And thank you to my life in a book.com for sponsoring The Anxious Truth, being our first sponsor and supporting the work that we do here. Okay, we are back. Thank you so much for allowing me to do that. I appreciate you guys. So here's what we're going to do. We're about 10 minutes into the episode and for the next five full minutes, and this is going to get almost comical because I want it to be, I'm going to go through this thread in my Facebook group. There's 9,500 people in this group, all of which share the same problems that you have if you're listening to this podcast in one way or the other. And here's what I asked. I said, from the hell freezes over file because nobody's going to believe that I asked this. Tell me your anxiety symptoms in the comments. Then I had to qualify it by saying this was not a trap, which everybody thought was funny. And here is what I got. Two and a half hours since the posting, I'm now up to 119 comments and there are people typing even as I read. I'm not going to read you all of them, but I am going to go for about four or five minutes and I'm going to show you all of these symptoms and I want you to notice what happens when I say them all. Ready? Here we go. Hot and cold flushes, racing thoughts, diarrhea, heart palpitations, derealization, depersonalization, brain fog, sudden feelings of doom, unmotivated, feeling trapped in my own body, chest pain, skipped beats, arm pain, sweating, depersonalization, dizzy, lightheaded, losing control, emotional, angry, blurred vision, fast pulse, feeling like I need to eat something sweet. Jelly legs can't walk in a straight line. Tingliness in fingers and toes, racing heart, feeling hot or flushed, shakiness, racing heart, numbness in my hands or fingers, dizziness, dpdr, racing thoughts, an impending sense of doom, cold, shallow breathing, heart racing, numbness in hands, shaking and tremors, lightheaded, dizziness, palpitations, body zaps, blurred vision, nausea and vomiting, burning sensations in my body, tension in chest and stomach, feelings of unreality, the urge to run or take cover, heart racing, can't swallow, burning sensation in body, feeling of doom, palpitations, racing heart, tight and heavy chest, shortness of breath, hot flashes, muscle spasms and tremors, IBS, nausea, dissociation, let's keep going, fidgeting, OCD rituals, racing thoughts, dizzy, sweating, shaking, racing heart, shallow breathing, feeling trapped, dizzy, intense need to run, derealization, lightheaded, nausea, fatigue, irrational overthinking, feeling of impending doom, feeling fearful and wanting to run away from the feeling, thoughts and sensations, swallowing too much, holding breath, clearing throat, feeling dizzy, nausea, dream world, heavy chest, worrying that my heart will stop or I will quit breathing, rapid heartbeat, lightheadedness, dpdr, racing heart, dizzy, fainting, upset stomach, urge to go to the bathroom, bad allergy like congestion in my head, shaking, tremors, nausea, dizziness, racing thought, dissociation, tingling, hot flushes, cold flashes, extreme fear, urge to run, inability to move or speak, racing heart, hyperventilation, jelly legs, intense feeling like I'm going to pass out, tearfulness, needing to cry, intrusive thoughts, dpdr, increased heart rate, feeling like I can't catch my breath, feeling like I need to run or grasp some sort of control, nausea, chills, shaking, dissociation, urge for something to make it stop, diarrhea, extreme fight, flight and freeze, nausea, tingling in my feet, dizziness, short of breath, heart flutters, stomach flutters, extreme hot or cold, racing thoughts, obsessive thinking, an urge to cry, an urge to find safe space and people, blurry vision, overwhelming fear that I will lose control, desperation to escape, wanting to jump out of my body, heartbeat, lightheadedness, dpdr, scared of my own shadow, feelings of doom, allergies, cluster headaches, IBS, racing heart, waves of doom, that instant stick to the stomach, I am seconds from dying feeling, adrenaline surges, pvcs, pacs, doom feeling, nausea, not in stomach, not in throat, shaky legs, ringing ears, loud and distorted thoughts, impending doom, vertigo, high adrenaline, low blood sugar, feeling me making me feel like I'm going to pass out, dissociation, body changes from hot to cold and back again, the great need to escape or go home, tinnitus, palpitations, feeling very warm, a need to escape, feeling like I can't swallow, complete lack of appetite, feeling like I want to crawl out of my skin, oh no, dizzy, I'm going to pass out while driving, hot flashes, vertigo, blurry vision, easily startled, racing heart, dizzy, trembling, short of breath, chest pain, nauseous, IBS, crying, feeling of passing out, lightheaded, dream light state, clearing my throat, burning and electric feeling shoots through my body, always feeling like I am dying, existential dread, fatigue, dpdr, hot heart pounding, intense fear, nauseous, short of breath, chest is heavy, vertigo, tingling all over, heart pounding, feeling of doom, lump in throat, blurry vision, heart palpitation, impending doom, dissociation, derealization, trembling, irritability, crying, shortness of breath, I'll do a few more, intense head pressure and burning in my eye, vision changes, tingling and numbness in my face, intense feelings of dread, numbness in my lips, tightness in my head in my jaw, skipped heartbeats, dizzy heart, pounding heart, feeling of doom, wanting to escape, let's do two more, brain zaps, body jerks, racing heart, feeling of endless doom, no escape feeling, lump in throat, elephant sitting on my chest, dizzy, hot, shaking throat closing, feeling faint, blackout, irritable. So what does this tell us? That was in almost five full minutes of an entire podcast episode just reading anxiety symptoms, which is really kind of an insane thing to do from a podcasting or broadcasting perspective because probably lost 30% of the listeners halfway through that. Maybe because you were being triggered, maybe because it just got really boring and monotonous and I don't blame you. The boring and monotonous part is the part that I care about. That's kind of where I was going with this. So when you hear me read responses on that thread. And by the way, as I was reading that, we are now up to, we were at 119 comments, 118 comments, we are now up to 136 comments. Okay. And I can tell you that if I look at the bottom comments, they're just repeats of the ones I already read. And what I read you was only from about 60 of those 119 comments at the time. So they continue to come by and they are literally all the same. These are the same 15 or 20 symptoms repeated again and again and again. As I scroll through the thread, I see people beginning to chime in here. Wow. Here's one person who says I was going to post mine, but clearly I have nothing new to add. So what does this tell us? The reason why I wanted to go through this again to recap is to let you know that what you are experiencing in your body is so normal and so natural, although timed poorly and inappropriate, that in a group of 9500 people when asked 130 something of them within a couple of hours will repeat the same pattern of the same symptoms again and again and again. You are not alone in this. This is a common shared experience among people who are struggling with various forms of anxiety disorders. And your body, although you are seeing it as dangerous and in need of special attention is literally just doing what it has been designed to do when you are afraid. That is why I spent five minutes of my Saturday morning and wasted five minutes of your valuable time in your life simply reading lists of symptoms posted by anxious people. This matters. Look at what symptoms look like when you take yourself out of the center of the universe and instead insert yourself into a large group of people that are sharing your same struggle. You see how it starts to look different? Can you feel a little bit different about your special symptom now after hearing five minutes of me drone on and repeat the same things again and again and again? Now I am not trying to belittle or invalidate your experience. Please remember that once upon a time I was you too and I thought that my symptoms were the most important thing in the universe. Every single person starts there. Everybody starts there. It is okay to start there. It is the natural first stop on the anxiety train if you will. The first station you pull into is symptom station. It is okay. You are not doing anything wrong. But you are also not in danger. If you have been told again and again and again that yes anxiety can do this to you and that is what it is doing to you then take heart in hearing it from more than just your doctor possibly right plural doctors and more than just some dude in New York with a microphone and a podcast. Listen to a group of your peers pile in and build a mountain of symptoms that look the same. They are all the same. So when I glibly say all symptoms are the same and none are special here is why. You are okay. Your body is doing things that it is designed to do when you are afraid. You have just learned to be afraid of them at the wrong time for the wrong reason. I know I have to wrap it up this way because I wouldn't be doing the right service if I didn't do this. But the next logical question especially if this is the very first podcast episode or video you have ever watched from me is well then what the hell do I do about that? Well what we do about that is we start from this premise. My body is does not have anything wrong with it. I am just afraid of my own body. So now I must learn to stop treating my body like it's an emergency. That is going to be the key. That is not easy. That is a huge change of direction. It is a huge shift. And if you have been trying to manage your body and manage your symptoms and micromanage them and knock them down and medicate or herbalize or whatever them all individually so they go away and you are frustrated I hear you and I see you. And what I am telling you here is that yes in my theoretical view of anxiety disorders and you are free to disagree and hit the eject button now that would be okay. It won't hurt my feelings. The way to go forward now is to take the information you have here and say I am going to have to take a leap of faith. That I am in fact safe. I have just learned to believe by mistake that I am in danger. And the way forward from there is I am going to go at those symptoms now. I am going to let them happen. I am not going to stop them. I am not going to try to prevent them. I am not going to try to soothe them. I am not going to do body hacks. I am not going to worry about my gut health. I am not going to worry about my diet. I am not going to try and find ways to make my heart slow down. It is just trying to take care of me. So I am going to have to let my body do what it does and I am going to have to let it do that without resistance. So I can see through experience that when I do nothing about this it always ends. I come back in an hour because I am really afraid that it is going to so it will. But every time I do that and I discover that even if I don't try to fix my body it fixes itself because it just finishes the routine and goes back to a baseline. Every time I see that I learn something else and I feed my brain the experience that it needs to start to change its opinion over time. This is I cannot give you all of recovery in three minutes at the end of one podcast episode. I can't do that. But in general if this is the first time you have wandered into the anxious truth and you listened this far and thought okay what is the next step and this is the next step. This is sort of an outline. This is the foundation of where you go with this information. After that there is another 236 podcast episodes that precede this one and if you are listening in the future there is quite a few after this one. There is three books. There is all kinds of stuff that I do that talk about this. There are qualified therapists. There are people like me online. There are places to go to learn how to do this and learn the particulars, the nuances, the details and to learn how to apply it specifically in your case. So that is it. That is 23 minutes and a ridiculous amount of anxiety symptoms in one podcast episode that it is taking me eight years to make. Maybe not what you were expecting today because as you can see I did not address your specific symptom. I only listed it and only to illustrate the point that I am trying to make because hopefully that helps inform a new direction for you and a new sense of understanding. We call this psycho education. It is meant to educate. It is meant to enlighten. It is meant to encourage. It is meant to inspire. It is meant to inform changes in action and hopefully I have been able to do that with you. So that is it. That is episode 237 of The Anxious Truth, drawing to a close. You know it is over because music that is as always at the end of every podcast episode and the beginning of most of them for the last several years. That is afterglow written and performed by my friend Ben Drake in the UK. You can find more about Ben and his music at bendrakemusic.com. Go check them out and tell them I said hello. If you are listening to The Anxious Truth on Spotify or Apple Podcasts or any place where you can rate and review this podcast, leave us a five star rating. Leave me a five star rating. And if you are digging the podcast that is helping you, maybe take a second and write a review because it helps other people find the podcast. Then we can help as many people as we can together. I appreciate your help with that. If you are watching or listening on YouTube, subscribe to the channel if you will. It is just a click for you but it means a lot to me. Like the video, leave a comment, you know what to do. Turn on the notification bell so you know when I upload new episodes and that is it. Hopefully this has helped in some small way. I appreciate you coming by and spending your time with me. I will be back next week for episode 238. I do not know what I'm going to talk about but I will be here. And remember as always, this is the way.