Anxiety Recovery Is An Active Process

There is no automatic immune response that fixes an anxiety disorder while we retreat, rest, wait, and hope. Anxiety recovery is an active process that requires that you do more than just hope and wait.

This week we’re trying a little experiment! I’m re-visiting episode 11 of the podcast from way back in 2015 to give it a little update, add some detail, clarify a few things, and make some much needed corrections. I hope you find this helpful in some way.

Feedback – as always – is welcomed. ⁠

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Almost everyone will start the recovery journey by retreating from anxiety and all the symptoms and thoughts that come with it. We retreat, rest, treat ourselves as of we are broken or fragile, wait, and hope that something will change and that we will feel better. But that doesn’t really work. As much as this approach is understandable and as much as nobody can be blamed for trying this at first, anxiety recovery is an active process. The natural desire to retreat and rest and hope to get better might bring some immediate relief, but this comes at the cost of normalizing and cementing avoidance and escape. This makes the recovery journey harder than it already is!

While you might want to retreat, rest, wait, and hope, you will have to get active in your recovery at some point. This is a doing thing where actions and behavioral change lead the way. There is no recovery if we do not get active and start meeting challenges, no matter how long we wait, how much we rest, or how hard we hope for something to change.

The good news here is that you can start to act even before you believe in yourself. You can start to act in small steps. You can become active in your recovery in small chunks that will help to show you that you ARE capable of getting better once you start moving toward recovery rather than just hoping for recovery. It’s OK to doubt yourself. It is normal to be scared. It’s OK to be unsure that any of this will work. All of that is fine. The only thing that isn’t really OK in recovery is trying to do it in a passive way.

Anxiety recovery is an active process, even when we hate that this is true.