Learning to master generalized anxiety through personal stories

In the Anxiety Guy’s podcast episodes, he tackles not just anxiety, but health anxiety (also known as “hypochondria”, though many consider this term to be outdated).  For a lot of people, worry leads to anxious and obsessive thought patterns, which etch their way into our brains so that they become automatic. What happens then is that the anxiety makes us physically ill because we’re not meant to be in fight or flight mode seven days a week like that. To make matters worse, then we start indulging in catastrophic anxiety fantasies about our health. We don’t want anything to be wrong, of course, but it’s hard not to think that way when we feel so awful. 

The Anxiety Guy is a CBT practitioner but he has personal experience and shares his story of how anxiety consumed his life, and teaches us life changing habits to stop those anxious patterns. It takes time and practice, but it is possible to challenge our own negative thought patterns. Thoughts are programs and we don’t even realize the triggers sometimes, they just run off and we believe ourselves to be victims to them. But obsessive thinking, hopeless thoughts, worried and shameful inner voices, are like software that get booted without our consent. The trick is awareness–once you know the trigger and can become aware of when you spiral into ruminations, you have the power to realize you are the one hearing the thoughts, not the one having them. So you can work to brush them off. Saying it that way is a little misleading, it takes work, but anyone who is struggling needs to know that it is possible.

I also really appreciate that he addresses whether or not anxiety runs in the family and how that can manifest in abusive behavior–because anxiety makes us feel threatened, we can try to control situations in destructive ways that harm others. Talking about this issue is the first step to rehabilitation and healing.

Listen to Breaking Anxious Thought Patterns and more self improvement audio programs on Audiojoy — download free on iOS or Android.

Also published on Medium.