Anxiety and OCD: The Strategy Mismatch Problem – Ep 351

What the “Problems” Look Like

The things that seem to need solving tend to fall into a few recognizable categories.

There are the uncomfortable, disturbing thoughts. Harm thoughts. Moral failure thoughts. Existential questions about death, identity, and meaning. Doubts about relationships. These feel urgent and important, like they demand a response.

There are the real-life things you can’t fully control, no matter how hard you try. Your health or the health of people you love. Safety and security. What other people think of you or how they behave. The unpredictability of life. The absence of certainty or guarantees.

And there are the physical sensations. Racing heart, dizziness, nausea, muscle tension, chest tightness, air hunger, dissociation. Each one seems to be telling you that something is wrong and needs to be addressed immediately.

But These Aren’t Actually the Problem

Here’s where the mismatch comes in. Anxiety disorders and OCD are not about solving real problems. They are about repeated attempts to soothe anxiety, fear, and discomfort. The thing you’re actually trying to “solve” is not your heartbeat or your relationship or your health. It’s the fact that you feel anxious, afraid, uncertain, and like you can’t handle what’s happening inside you.

All the responses your brain is offering you look like they’re targeting real-world problems. But they’re not. You can tell because when you escape, avoid, seek reassurance, or perform a compulsion, and you feel better for a little while… has the problem actually been solved? Or have you just bought yourself a brief window of relief before you have to do the whole thing again?

An anxious mind will generate and drive strategies to solve problems that are not real problems. The actual problem is the fear and discomfort itself. So when your mind suggests more avoidance, more rumination, more worry, more checking, more reassurance seeking, it’s offering you a strategy that doesn’t match what’s actually in front of you. That’s the mismatch.

Wait. My Heart Isn’t a Problem?

I know. If you’re new to this framework, you’re probably pushing back right now, because of course your health matters. Of course your kids matter. Of course your relationships and your integrity as a person matter. I’m not saying they don’t.

What I’m saying is this: when a person without an anxiety disorder has a fleeting disturbing thought, they might feel a brief jolt of discomfort, and then they move on. Does that happen for you? Or does the discomfort confirm for you that something is genuinely wrong and requires immediate action? How long have you been trying to solve these problems and move on, and found that you can’t?

Discomfort, fear, and anxiety do not confirm that a problem exists. They only confirm what you care about and what you fear. That’s all they do.

So What Should the Strategy Be?

Given that you’re actually trying to fix discomfort rather than real-world problems, the strategy that gives you the best chance of moving forward is to stop trying to solve things that are not problems. That means stopping the pursuit of absolute certainty, the elimination of all doubt, the fixing of symptoms, and the proving that your fears are unfounded.

Instead, the work is to get better at handling the discomfort that your worries and fears produce. That’s a very different goal than the one your anxious mind keeps setting for you.

Here’s what makes this hard: anxiety will create the fear before any actual threat exists. It generates a problem (discomfort), offers a catastrophic story to explain it (you’re a terrible parent, you’re losing your mind, something is medically wrong), and then suggests a fix that never fully works and has to be repeated endlessly. Once you can see that process clearly, you can start to work with it instead of getting dragged along by it.

How Do You Actually Do That?

Fair question, and I want to be honest about what I can and can’t give you here. No podcast episode or social media account can tell you exactly what to do in your specific situation. The best I can offer is the broad framework, and then you have to apply it in your own life. A qualified anxiety or OCD therapist can help with the specifics if you can access one.

But at the broad level: start by noticing that the only thing confirming your “problem” is the feeling that gets triggered inside you. Then notice all the things you’re doing to try to fix that feeling. Ask yourself honestly whether you’ve ever actually solved the problem, or whether you’ve just temporarily talked yourself off the ledge. Notice how the cycle repeats even as the specific worries shift and change over time. And then start thinking about what might happen if you stopped all the fixing and let the discomfort rise and fall on its own. It was always going to do that anyway.

This Is Actually Good News

It’s genuinely good news that you don’t have to solve your heartbeat, or the opinions of other people, or the fundamental uncertainty of being alive. Trying to solve those things is exhausting, and it was never going to work. You may as well stop.

Accepting fear without immediately fixing it is difficult, especially at first. If being brave sounds like a ridiculous answer to “how do I get better,” I understand that reaction completely. But tolerating discomfort is hard in the short term and gets easier over time. Fighting every thought, emotion, and sensation that scares you is hard in the short term and stays hard, because it never actually solves anything. The strategy mismatch is the problem. Correcting it is the work.

Links Of Interest

• Want to discuss this episode with me and others that share your experiences?
• Disordered – With Josh Fletcher
• My Substack
• Find my “Practical Mindfulness for Anxiety Recovery” Groups
• Low cost anxiety/recovery educational workshops
• The Books I’ve Written on Anxiety and Recovery
• Follow me on Instagram
• My YouTube Channel

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.