Healing From Anxiety? (Ep 296)

Everyone wants to heal from anxiety.  Really, everyone wants to feel better, which is totally fine. I would like everyone to feel better too. So when we talk about recovery, or overcoming our struggles with chronic or disordered anxiety often the word healing enters the picture.

• “How can I heal from this?”
• “Will my nervous system ever totally heal?”
• “I’m in a very stressful situation. Can I still heal from anxiety?”
• “How did you heal yourself, Drew?”

Disclaimer. If you love the word heal because it strikes a chord or feels like it really applies in your situation, then I am here to support you on that. Keep using it. Heal all day long.  Heal like nobody’s business. Go for it. Everyone gets to use whatever language they want to use, and we all get to respect those choices. 

But that being said, if you have been working like a dog to heal from anxiety and can’t seem to get anywhere with any kind of consistency, then maybe we need to take a look at that healing target. The words we use create the rules we feel we must follow. Our words create our internal algorithms and those algorithms do influence how we see ourselves, and the world, and they do influence how we behave. Since behavior change is really the tip of the spear when overcoming an anxiety disorder, we should probably look at this.

We all want to heal when injured or wounded.  That’s not even a question. But when we are working on overcoming chronic or disordered anxiety, is healing what we’re trying to do?  There are three primary issues with the word heal that I want to throw out there today for you to chew on.  

Healing As A Descriptor

Healing is a word we use to describe the repair of something that is broken or damaged. If you break a bone, you wear a cast and wait for it to heal. It gets repaired. If you accidentally cut your leg and need stitches, you wait for your leg to heal. The cut goes away. If you experience the end of a long-term romantic relationship, you experience emotional pain. The metaphorical broken heart. You wait for time to heal that wound. Healing implies a break or damage of some kind. 

If you unlucky enough to have a physiological issue that creates the physical state that we identify as anxiety – maybe a hormonal or neurological issue – then we have to acknowledge this and work with that. In this situation, healing might be an excellent word to apply as a descriptor.

When we look at a cognitive behavioral model of anxiety disorders – especially if we look at well studied theories that identify the role of language and cognition on the development and perpetuation of these disorders – it would be hard to find the broken or damaged thing in this equation.  Someone with GAD that has decided that worry and rumination are good ways to spend their time because thinking is seen as a way to find and solve every possible problem, what’s broken and in need of healing in this scenario? I’d ask the same for health anxiety or social anxiety.  Where is the break or damage or defect that needs repairing – healing – in these situations?

If we operate from the assertion that all humans experience anxiety and acknowledge the fact that many many human even have panic attacks without developing anxiety disorders, then how should we describe a situation in which any one person fears the experience of anxiety and therefore makes drastic lifestyle modifications in an attempt to avoid or control that experience?  Where’s the break?  Is something broken and in need of repair in our bodies because we experience anxiety?  

I might even go so far as to argue that if painful memories of very difficult events trigger anxiety, is that something broken? Would we not expect memories of scary events to create responses in our bodies?  Would your nervous system not be operating as designed when it reacts the way it does to things you fear regardless of the timeframe in question?

Is “healing” an accurate descriptor for the process of discovering that you do not have to fear your own thoughts, emotions, or bodily functions?  Are you broken?  Does something need to be repaired inside of you before you can function properly?  Must you heal, or must you experiment, learn, and grow from that?

Healing As A Goal

I mentioned earlier that everyone wants to feel better. I do not find any fault in this at all. Why would an anxious person NOT want to feel anxious? It’s OK to want to feel better. That’s just wired into us. We like feeling good. We hate feeling bad. None of that is news, nor is this a problem.

When we are working with anxiety disorders, if you’ve been listening or reading here long enough, you begin to recognize the paradox that comes with efforts to feel better, or even feel different.  When we rely primarily on control strategies to manage triggers, manage or alleviate symptoms, wrestle with thoughts, stomp out emotions that we think we can’t handle, and generally try to stay far away from internal experiences that we insist we should not allow ourselves to have, we wind up in a fragile recovery state. 

Control strategies are pointed at feeling better as the primary target. You might want to feel better right away but when we operate from the control point of view we run a much greater risk of experiencing slow or no progress, setback, or even relapse. There is a reason why one valid criticism of control based CBT methods (second wave, if you will) was that relapse was a real problem in a significant number of cases.

Work hard to feel better, run the risk of either not feeling better or feeling better temporarily then winding up bruised, battered, and confused when that never seems to last.

Acceptance based strategies for treatment and recovery have a far better track record. There is a reason you hear me talk about acceptance, tolerance, surrender, and learning that you can be OK even if you are anxious and rarely hear me talk about ways to instantly feel better.  If you’re reading or listening to my words you’re hearing my particular theoretical orientation which tells me that feeling better has to be accepted as a happy secondary outcome when we stop insisting that we must feel better or retreat from the world. 

What happens when we heal?  We feel better.  When injuries or physical damage heals, we feel better. Less pain. Less discomfort. No more fever. Maybe we literally breathe easier or can walk around without discomfort once that broken leg is on the mend. When emotional pain heals, we feel less distress and emotional discomfort.  Healing is a feeling better thing. That’s awesome because sometimes we really are working toward feeling better.

But if control strategies designed specifically to feel better are paradoxical landmines in anxiety recovery … should we be insisting that we must heal our anxiety?  Is that a coded demand to feel better as a direct, primary goal?

Healing As An Attention Grabber

Let’s look at the word “healing” as an attention getting device, because in a time when anxious people are going to immerse themselves in endless scrolls hoping to find recovery information, advice, and techniques, getting the attention of those anxious people is really important for people who choose “content creator” as a profession.

Ask yourself what is more attractive for an anxious person scrolling through Instagram on any given day?  A reel about healing (feeling better) or a reel about learning how to move through the experiences they have been trying so hard to never have? The math is not hard in this situation. If I start talking about healing, using that word liberally, and shift the content I make toward trying to show you ways to instantly and directly feel better … my social media influence will grow. I will get more attention and my social metrics will improve.

But if we go back to the data that shows us that acceptance based strategies provide consistently better outcomes than old-school control based strategies, telling you how to heal all the time would be like selling you a VCR in 2024. Yes, you can watch movies on a VCR but if you are a movie fan is that really the best choice?

I know I spend a fair amount of time pushing back against social media trends and social media platforms. I don’t need to get into a full rant on this, but consider that the word “heal” might not be the most accurate or helpful word for an anxious person to glue themselves to, but that it IS an attention grabbing word. The word “heal” carries emotional appeal for someone who is struggling or even suffering. You know that thing where some anxiety guru is trying to sell you a $5000 mentoring package using phrases like “break free”, “end anxiety forever”, and “never be anxious again”?  Is it possible that the word “healing” might fall into the same category?

Again, everyone gets to decide what language works for them and applies to their situation. I’m OK with that. I’m only pointing out that sometimes the word “healing” is misapplied in the anxiety context and used to get your attention, which is – sadly – often not the same thing as actually helping or supporting you.  Just something to consider.

I’m not going to start a global campaign to cancel the word “heal”, but it is worth taking a few minutes to at least consider the impact of that word and how it might be working or not working for you. Sometimes taking a step toward recovery means dropping some of the language that serves only to soothe us without actually changing anything. If you think the word “heal” might fall into this category for you, it’s OK to drop it on the floor and try something else. I promise, you don’t have to cling to “healing” to get better.

Links Of Interest

• My Panic Attacks Explained Workshop
• My Agoraphobia Explained Workshop
• My Panic and Agoraphobia Recovery Guidebook
• Follow me on Instagram
• My YouTube Channel
• Disordered – With Josh Fletcher

 

Disclaimer: The Anxious Truth is not therapy or a replacement for therapy. Listening to The Anxious Truth does not create a therapeutic relationship between you and the host or guests of the podcast. Information here is provided for psychoeducational purposes. As always, when you have questions about your own well-being, please consult your mental health and/or medical care providers. If you are having a mental health crisis, always reach out immediately for in-person help.