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What 15 Years of Anxiety Taught Me - That Therapy Didn't · Bye Bye Panic

0:00
[SPEAKER_00]: I had anxiety for years.
0:01
[SPEAKER_00]: I tried therapy, read all the books, talked about my childhood, my triggers, my thought patterns, and that was still anxious.
0:08
[SPEAKER_00]: It wasn't until I stopped treating anxiety like a mental disorder and treated it from what it actually was, a nervous system issue, that I managed to heal my chronic symptoms and anxiety.
0:19
[SPEAKER_00]: For the last 15 years I've recovered from my own anxiety disorder and helped over a thousand people around the world heal theirs, including many doctors and therapists.
0:29
[SPEAKER_00]: So here are the seven things that heal anxiety that no therapist ever told me.
0:33
[SPEAKER_00]: Number one, anxiety isn't just an emotion.
0:37
[SPEAKER_00]: There are two completely different things we call anxiety and most therapists only talk about one of them.
0:43
[SPEAKER_00]: The first type is anxiety as an emotion.
0:46
[SPEAKER_00]: This is normal anxiety every human experiences, just like feeling sad, happy, joy.
0:52
[SPEAKER_00]: It's hard-wired into us being human beings.
0:56
[SPEAKER_00]: This is just an emotion, it's just energy and emotion.
1:00
[SPEAKER_00]: You have to go through it.
1:01
[SPEAKER_00]: When you ask a therapist, can you heal from anxiety?
1:05
[SPEAKER_00]: They're referring to anxiety as an emotion.
1:08
[SPEAKER_00]: But there's a second type of anxiety.
1:11
[SPEAKER_00]: The type of anxiety that you might be struggling with.
1:14
[SPEAKER_00]: This is where your nervous system has learned to treat normal sensations and feelings as dangerous as threats.
1:23
[SPEAKER_00]: This is anxiety as a state.
1:25
[SPEAKER_00]: Many people who get stuck in this state can get diagnosed with things like panic disorder, fiber myalgia,
1:31
[SPEAKER_00]: this autonomia, these aren't different diseases, these are different manifestations of a nervous system stuck in protection mode.
1:39
[SPEAKER_00]: And here's what matters.
1:41
[SPEAKER_00]: Emotions can't be healed because feeling emotions isn't wrong, but a state can absolutely be changed.
1:47
[SPEAKER_00]: Your nervous system can calm on its own and feel safe again.
1:51
[SPEAKER_00]: the chronic symptoms can disappear, and the system comes back to baseline, but only if you understand you're dealing with the state problem, non-emotion problem.
2:01
[SPEAKER_00]: This leads me to point two, which is anxiety isn't just a mental issue.
2:06
[SPEAKER_00]: Here's how the cycle often starts.
2:08
[SPEAKER_00]: You start experiencing bizarre symptoms and sensations.
2:11
[SPEAKER_00]: You go to your doctor with a racing heart, tight chest, dizziness, deep personalization, and they run tests, everything comes back normal.
2:19
[SPEAKER_00]: And then there's two options the doctor gives you.
2:21
[SPEAKER_00]: They can give you anxiety medication, or they can have you speak to a therapist.
2:25
[SPEAKER_00]: The problem with this model is that it views the mind and the body as distinctly separate.
2:31
[SPEAKER_00]: But when you're dealing with a nervous system issue, that stuck on protection mode, it's not a mind issue and it's not a body issue.
2:38
[SPEAKER_00]: It's kind of in between, and that's why people fall through the cracks when it comes to conventional medicine.
2:44
[SPEAKER_00]: Most people are never given an explanation for why they're experiencing symptoms and sensations in the first place.
2:51
[SPEAKER_00]: They get diagnosed with things like anxiety or pacts or chronic pain.
2:55
[SPEAKER_00]: And they're just told that they can just cope or manage with it.
2:58
[SPEAKER_00]: But if you can understand that what's happened is that your nervous system has become sensitized, that it's hit a stress threshold.
3:07
[SPEAKER_00]: And that, because your nervous system is sensitized, it overreacts to small stressors, well, then you start recognizing that your body isn't broken.
3:17
[SPEAKER_00]: It just needs to be recalibrated.
3:19
[SPEAKER_00]: By the way, if you want to know how I was able to overcome this in more detail, check out my free ebook down below.
3:26
[SPEAKER_00]: It's in the description box.
3:27
[SPEAKER_00]: Now, as you recognize that what you're dealing with isn't anxiety that's in your head or as an emotion, but anxiety that's coming from a nervous system perspective that's coming from a state perspective, well, this leads me to number three, which is your coping skills is what's keeping you stuck.
3:45
[SPEAKER_00]: When you go to therapy, foreign anxiety, what are the first things they will teach you are coping skills?
3:50
[SPEAKER_00]: Breathing exercises, grounding techniques, positive self-affirmations, progressive muscle relaxation, and while there's nothing wrong with these tools, what happens to many people is that they turn them into a compulsion.
4:03
[SPEAKER_00]: Instead of using them to regulate moments of high stress, you're using them as a shield to feel any sort of symptom or discomfort.
4:10
[SPEAKER_00]: When you're not given an explanation for why you're experiencing this,
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[SPEAKER_00]: You're going to be using the only tools you know, which are coping skills.
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[SPEAKER_00]: But think about what kind of message this sends your nervous system.
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[SPEAKER_00]: You're sending the message that there is something dangerous here and that I need to protect myself.
4:28
[SPEAKER_00]: I need to fix this feeling right now.
4:30
[SPEAKER_00]: You're reinforcing to your body that the symptom is a threat.
4:33
[SPEAKER_00]: Managing anxiety and healing anxiety are two different approaches.
4:38
[SPEAKER_00]: It's allowing the symptoms and sensations to be there that heals it.
4:42
[SPEAKER_00]: not fighting them, not trying to make them go away, not needing them to calm down, just letting them exist while you continue doing what you're doing.
4:51
[SPEAKER_00]: This isn't about suffering through this or white knuckling as about showing your body through your behaviors that these sensations aren't dangerous, that you don't need to be rescued by them.
5:03
[SPEAKER_00]: Think of all the coping skills you've been trying to use to feel comfortable.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Think about how much it's limiting your life.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Healing isn't about staying within those limits.
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[SPEAKER_00]: It's about expanding those limits to build what you recall a window of tolerance, to increase your capacity to feel uncomfortable sensations, without needing to do anything about them.
5:25
[SPEAKER_00]: This is how you build nervous system resiliency.
5:28
[SPEAKER_00]: Not by getting better at managing symptoms, but by teaching your body, it doesn't need to produce them in the first place.
5:36
[SPEAKER_00]: Your nervous system learns through exposure and response.
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[SPEAKER_00]: When you allow symptoms without reacting, you're literally retraining it to stop treating normal life as an emergency.
5:46
[SPEAKER_00]: And look, I'm not saying you can never use a breathing technique.
5:50
[SPEAKER_00]: If you're in a genuine acute stress, regulate yourself.
5:54
[SPEAKER_00]: But if you're using coping skills compulsively every time you feel a symptom or sensation, you're maintaining the problem not solving it.
6:03
[SPEAKER_00]: So if allowing is the answer, what does that actually look like in practice?
6:08
[SPEAKER_00]: This leads me to point four, which is recovery happens while living, not while waiting.
6:15
[SPEAKER_00]: When you get a cold or the flu, you naturally sit at home, rest, wait to feel better, and then go back to living.
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[SPEAKER_00]: That's logical, that's intuitive, and that makes sense.
6:24
[SPEAKER_00]: But most people use the same logic with anxiety.
6:28
[SPEAKER_00]: They think, once I heal, once I feel better, once these symptoms go away, then I'll go back to the grocery store, then I'll see my friends, then I'll pursue my goals.
6:38
[SPEAKER_00]: They're waiting for recovery to happen so that they can start living.
6:42
[SPEAKER_00]: But healing works the opposite way.
6:44
[SPEAKER_00]: you don't need to heal and then live your life, you heal by living your life.
6:49
[SPEAKER_00]: Your nervous system doesn't desensitize from theory or just understanding alone.
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[SPEAKER_00]: It needs real world evidence.
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[SPEAKER_00]: It needs experience that going to the grocery store with the racing heart,
7:00
[SPEAKER_00]: and nothing bad happening or going to work with depersonalization and feeling okay, having dinner while feeling the waves of anxiety, that is all okay.
7:13
[SPEAKER_00]: Every time you do a normal life activity while allowing the symptoms to be there,
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[SPEAKER_00]: You're giving your nervous system new data.
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[SPEAKER_00]: You're saying to it, look, we went to that place.
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[SPEAKER_00]: You thought was dangerous.
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[SPEAKER_00]: We felt those sensations.
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[SPEAKER_00]: You thought they were threats and we were fine.
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[SPEAKER_00]: We were safe.
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[SPEAKER_00]: That's how desensitization works.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Not through understanding, not through coping, but through lived experiences that contradict what your nervous system believes is dangerous.
7:41
[SPEAKER_00]: So if you've been waiting to feel better before you start living again, you've got it backwards.
7:46
[SPEAKER_00]: living your life isn't what you do after recovery.
7:50
[SPEAKER_00]: Living your life is recovery.
7:53
[SPEAKER_00]: Those grocery store trips, the social events, the work meetings, the errands, all while feeling symptoms, that's not just you pushing through, that's you actively healing.
8:04
[SPEAKER_00]: You're not waiting for your nervous system to calm down so that you can live your living so that your nervous system can calm down.
8:11
[SPEAKER_00]: And yes, this means doing uncomfortable things,
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[SPEAKER_00]: It means going places while your heart is racing, it means having conversations while you're feeling depersonalized, but here's what nobody tells you.
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[SPEAKER_00]: The discomfort doesn't mean you're doing anything wrong.
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[SPEAKER_00]: The discomfort just means that your nervous system is getting the exact experience it needs to learn that the situations are safe, that they're okay.
8:35
[SPEAKER_00]: But there's something that happens during this process that freaks most people out that makes them think that they're getting worse, not better.
8:42
[SPEAKER_00]: And that leads me to point five, which is your recovery can feel worse, especially in the beginning.
8:49
[SPEAKER_00]: So when you start doing what I'm describing, allowing the symptoms, living your life, not fighting or managing compulsively, then something starts to happen that can kind of scare people.
9:00
[SPEAKER_00]: The symptoms get worse.
9:02
[SPEAKER_00]: You'll notice the anxiety spikes.
9:04
[SPEAKER_00]: You might even have more panic attacks.
9:06
[SPEAKER_00]: more symptoms, more intrusive thoughts, symptoms that you may have not even had for a while will show back up.
9:11
[SPEAKER_00]: And you immediately think to yourself, okay, this isn't working.
9:15
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm definitely getting worse.
9:16
[SPEAKER_00]: I need to go back to doing what I was doing before.
9:19
[SPEAKER_00]: This is the moment where most people quit.
9:21
[SPEAKER_00]: Many times people feel like recovery should be an upward climb.
9:24
[SPEAKER_00]: It's like breaking a bone.
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[SPEAKER_00]: A bone just heals linearly.
9:28
[SPEAKER_00]: Many people think recovery should be the same way.
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[SPEAKER_00]: It should just be getting better and better and better.
9:32
[SPEAKER_00]: But what you'll often find is recovery doesn't feel like that.
9:35
[SPEAKER_00]: It can feel like you're going three steps forward and then two steps back and then four steps forward and then seven steps back.
9:42
[SPEAKER_00]: But here's what's really going on.
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[SPEAKER_00]: For months, maybe even years, you've been in this fighter flight mode and your body has just been producing adrenaline, stress hormones, keeping you in this constant state of alert mode.
9:55
[SPEAKER_00]: and you've been managing coping, resisting, which keep your stress levels somewhat contained, but never fully released.
10:02
[SPEAKER_00]: So when you finally stop fighting, when you stop treating your body like it's in danger, when you start allowing and living normally, your nervous system finally has permission to process and release all that stress.
10:17
[SPEAKER_00]: It's like you've been holding a beach ball underwater, and the moment you let go, it shoots up to the surface.
10:24
[SPEAKER_00]: Think of it like cleaning out an infected wound.
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[SPEAKER_00]: It gets inflamed and painful before it starts to heal.
10:29
[SPEAKER_00]: The intensive occasion is evidence that your nervous system is finally processing what it's been holding onto.
10:35
[SPEAKER_00]: And here's the critical thing.
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[SPEAKER_00]: This phase is temporary.
10:39
[SPEAKER_00]: If you keep living your life, if you're not feeding the fear cycle, your body completes the process.
10:47
[SPEAKER_00]: The symptoms peak and then they start to fade.
10:50
[SPEAKER_00]: But only if you don't interpret the spike is dangerous or going back into fighting.
10:55
[SPEAKER_00]: So if you're in this phase right now and it feels like everything is falling apart, that might actually be the best sign you've had in months.
11:05
[SPEAKER_00]: Your job is just to stay out of its way, keep living your life, and just moving forward.
11:12
[SPEAKER_00]: But there's one thing that keeps people stuck even when they understand all this.
11:17
[SPEAKER_00]: And it's the thing that most people don't want to hear, and that leads me to point six, which is recovery can't be rushed.
11:24
[SPEAKER_00]: Here's the question I get asked more than any other.
11:27
[SPEAKER_00]: How long is this going to take?
11:29
[SPEAKER_00]: People want a timeline.
11:31
[SPEAKER_00]: If I do everything right, if I allow perfectly, if I live my life normally, when will I feel better?
11:37
[SPEAKER_00]: Two months, six months a year, and I get it.
11:40
[SPEAKER_00]: When you're suffering, you want to know exactly when this ends.
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[SPEAKER_00]: You want to see the finish line, it's completely human, it's completely normal.
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[SPEAKER_00]: But here's the thing that nobody wants to hear.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Your nervous system doesn't work on your timeline.
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[SPEAKER_00]: You can't rush this.
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[SPEAKER_00]: You can't force this.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And every time you check it on the progress, every time you ask and my battery yet, every time you're frustrated with the pace,
12:04
[SPEAKER_00]: you're maintaining the problem, because what you're doing when you're constantly checking, when you're impatient with your recovery, you're treating it like an emergency, like something you just want to get it over with.
12:16
[SPEAKER_00]: And your nervous system reacts to that urgency.
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[SPEAKER_00]: It says, oh, we're still in danger.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, we're still in threat.
12:22
[SPEAKER_00]: We need to stay vigilant.
12:23
[SPEAKER_00]: Think about it.
12:24
[SPEAKER_00]: If you were safe, would you be frantically checking in on your symptoms every day?
12:28
[SPEAKER_00]: If you broke your leg and you know it's healing, would you open the bandage every day and just see how much it's healing?
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[SPEAKER_00]: Just let it go.
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[SPEAKER_00]: You just let it be there and you focus on other things.
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[SPEAKER_00]: You focus on living.
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[SPEAKER_00]: recovering from this is the exact same.
12:43
[SPEAKER_00]: The irony in all this is that the more you try to speed up recovery, the longer it often takes.
12:48
[SPEAKER_00]: The more you keep your nervous system engaged with the symptoms and how you feel, the more you research and analyze and try to optimize the process, the more you signal that there's something to figure out.
12:59
[SPEAKER_00]: We're still signal that there's something wrong.
13:01
[SPEAKER_00]: Recovery happens when you stop treating recovery like a project to complete.
13:05
[SPEAKER_00]: Real recovery isn't measured by day to day.
13:08
[SPEAKER_00]: It's not a linear upward climb where you feel 5% that are each day.
13:13
[SPEAKER_00]: Some days you're gonna feel worse.
13:16
[SPEAKER_00]: Other days you're gonna feel great.
13:18
[SPEAKER_00]: Some weeks you'll feel like you're back to square one.
13:21
[SPEAKER_00]: That doesn't mean you're not healing.
13:23
[SPEAKER_00]: Progress is measured in how you respond to symptoms over time.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Not whether you have them, but whether you're living your life despite them.
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[SPEAKER_00]: whether you're less scared of them, whether you're able to let them be there without needing to fix them.
13:38
[SPEAKER_00]: So if you're watching this wanting me to tell you when you'll be healed, if it's three months, I can't give you that.
13:44
[SPEAKER_00]: But what I can tell you is that your nervous system knows how to heal itself and that it'll heal on its own timeline.
13:51
[SPEAKER_00]: And it will return to its baseline once you show it enough, that it's safe, you show it based on your responses,
14:01
[SPEAKER_00]: and look, letting go of a timeline is one of the hardest parts of this process.
14:06
[SPEAKER_00]: Because it requires trust, it requires patience, it requires doing things even when you don't see immediate results.
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[SPEAKER_00]: But that's surrender, that's when healing begins.
14:17
[SPEAKER_00]: A great exercise I tell my clients is don't make recovery of finish line.
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[SPEAKER_00]: You can be recovering in the background while living your life fully.
14:27
[SPEAKER_00]: Focus on other things you want in your life.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Just ask yourself, what would you do if this problem was fixed?
14:33
[SPEAKER_00]: Whatever you were planning on doing, whether that's getting that new job, whether that's getting married, whether that's going back to school, whether that's spending more time with your kids.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Start that now.
14:42
[SPEAKER_00]: You don't need to wait till you heal.
14:44
[SPEAKER_00]: It's not like you're healing and then you've been healed.
14:48
[SPEAKER_00]: You will see over time that life gets better on its own.
14:51
[SPEAKER_00]: You don't have to wait for symptoms to be a hundred percent gone.
14:54
[SPEAKER_00]: Now this brings me to the final point.
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[SPEAKER_00]: The goal of recovery isn't to feel better, it's to feel okay with not feeling better.
15:01
[SPEAKER_00]: And I know that sounds depressing at first, like I'm telling you just to accept your suffering, but that's not what I'm saying.
15:08
[SPEAKER_00]: What I'm actually telling you might be the most liberating thing you'll hear.
15:12
[SPEAKER_00]: Think about what you've been doing this whole time.
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[SPEAKER_00]: You've been waking up every morning, checking in, how do I feel today?
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[SPEAKER_00]: Am I anxious?
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[SPEAKER_00]: Are my symptoms there?
15:20
[SPEAKER_00]: You go through your day needing to feel calm,
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[SPEAKER_00]: needing the sensations to go away, needing to be okay before you can really live.
15:28
[SPEAKER_00]: And what is that?
15:30
[SPEAKER_00]: That's treating how you feel as dangerous.
15:33
[SPEAKER_00]: That's your nervous system interpreting your desperate need to feel better as evidence that not feeling better is a threat.
15:41
[SPEAKER_00]: You're stuck in a loop and you need to feel better to prove that you're safe.
15:45
[SPEAKER_00]: But that needed self is what's maintaining the threat signal.
15:49
[SPEAKER_00]: Real recovery happens when you genuinely don't care whether you feel anxious or not.
15:55
[SPEAKER_00]: When you can wake up with symptoms and think, okay, this is here today.
15:59
[SPEAKER_00]: Whatever I got to do, I got to do.
16:01
[SPEAKER_00]: If I have to go to the grocery store with the racing heart, that's not a big deal anymore.
16:05
[SPEAKER_00]: Not because you've mastered some technique to calm down.
16:08
[SPEAKER_00]: Not because you've figured out how to control it, but because you fundamentally have changed your relationship with it.
16:15
[SPEAKER_00]: It's no longer the enemy.
16:18
[SPEAKER_00]: It's no longer something that needs to be fixed.
16:21
[SPEAKER_00]: It's just sensations.
16:22
[SPEAKER_00]: They're just feelings.
16:24
[SPEAKER_00]: They can be there or not be there.
16:25
[SPEAKER_00]: And either way, you're living your life.
16:28
[SPEAKER_00]: And here's what happens when people reach that state of genuine indifference.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Your nervous system has nothing left to protect you from.
16:37
[SPEAKER_00]: Remember, your nervous system is always trying to save you.
16:41
[SPEAKER_00]: It's always on your side and it will protect you from what it believes is dangerous.
16:45
[SPEAKER_00]: When you desperately need a symptom to go away, you're confirming that those symptoms are dangerous.
16:51
[SPEAKER_00]: But when you genuinely don't need them to go away, when you're truly okay with feeling that anxiety, those symptoms, that intrusive thought, it's no longer a threat.
17:02
[SPEAKER_00]: There's nothing to be rescued from.
17:04
[SPEAKER_00]: and your nervous system calms down on its own.
17:08
[SPEAKER_00]: Now, this isn't the same as resigning to your suffering or anything like that.
17:13
[SPEAKER_00]: This is just genuine acceptance.
17:15
[SPEAKER_00]: This isn't forced, this isn't fake positivity.
17:18
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm not telling you to pretend you're okay when you're not.
17:21
[SPEAKER_00]: It's just arriving to a place where the symptoms just matter less.
17:25
[SPEAKER_00]: They're not running your life, they're not determining what you can and can't do.
17:29
[SPEAKER_00]: They're just there and you're okay with that.
17:31
[SPEAKER_00]: And look,
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[SPEAKER_00]: Getting this piece of advice isn't easy.
17:35
[SPEAKER_00]: Many people can think, oh, you're just telling me I need to live with these symptoms.
17:39
[SPEAKER_00]: That's not what I'm saying.
17:41
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm saying allowing the symptoms to be there is what makes it go way over time.
17:46
[SPEAKER_00]: But if you're measuring it based on a timeline or you're using what I'm showing you as a sophisticated form to make the symptoms go away, well, then it doesn't work.
17:56
[SPEAKER_00]: Because your brain is gonna fight you on it.
17:58
[SPEAKER_00]: It's gonna say, but I need to feel better.
18:02
[SPEAKER_00]: and you have to gently prove to yourself every day that you actually can, that you can't have these racing thoughts, these feelings of deep personalization, that you can have a full life while feeling anxious, not forever, you're not resigning yourself to a permanent suffering, but for right now, in this moment, you can be okay, however you feel.
18:24
[SPEAKER_00]: And that willingness, that's what opens the door to healing.
18:29
[SPEAKER_00]: When you get this right,
18:31
[SPEAKER_00]: It's not going to happen overnight, but gradually, you'll notice one day you didn't check on your symptoms.
18:37
[SPEAKER_00]: That you went somewhere that used to genuinely terrify you and now you barely think about it.
18:42
[SPEAKER_00]: That once sensation might still be there sometimes, but it's just quieter.
18:47
[SPEAKER_00]: Less important.
18:48
[SPEAKER_00]: And eventually you realize you've had days, weeks without even thinking about anxiety, without even thinking about your symptoms.
18:56
[SPEAKER_00]: not because you've conquered through sheer will, but because you stopped giving it the one thing that it needed to survive, you're fear of it.
19:05
[SPEAKER_00]: So these are seven things that I have learned through the 15 years of recovery, both from my own recovery journey and working with thousands of people around the world, things that note their epist unfortunately ever told me, but it completely
19:22
[SPEAKER_00]: If you want to dive deeper into this approach, I have a free guide that walks you through the entire recovery process.
19:28
[SPEAKER_00]: It explains nervous system sensitization, helps you understand the mechanics and gives you that framework.
19:33
[SPEAKER_00]: The link is in the description box.
19:35
[SPEAKER_00]: Thanks for watching.