Anxiety, ACT, and The Happiness Trap w/ Dr Russ Harris (Episode 88)
Disordered: Anxiety Help
Josh Fletcher and Drew Linsalata
4.9 • 665 Ratings
🗓️ 29 November 2024
⏱️ 47 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
The struggle in an anxiety disorder is seen in two almost automatic responses to anxiety - we either obey it and do what it tells us we must do, or we resist it by trying to fight it, argue with it, and wish it away over and over.
This week on Disordered Dr. Russ Harris - one of the world's leading advocates for Acceptance and Committment Therapy (ACT) - is here to chat about the principles of ACT, how we get hooked by anxiety, fear, and anxious thoughts, and how this can lead to a smaller and smaller life over time.
We're even using some of Josh's personal experiences with anxiety as a mini case-study viewed the the ACT lens. And as usual, the episode is sprinkled with healthy doses of light-hearted humor and kind acknowledgement of what is an almost universal struggle for humans around the world.
Thank you to Russ Harris for making time for us! To find out more about Russ and ACT:
If you are a therapist or clinician interested in being trained in ACT:
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Disordered Roundtables are here. Think of it as "Disordered Live", a way for members of our audience to spend time with us in an intimate virtual setting (attendance is limited) to engage in real time sharing and discussion on specific anxiety disorder and recovery topics. To be notified when new Disordered Roundtable sessions are scheduled, visit our homepage and get on our mailing list.
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Struggling with worry and rumination that you feel you can't stop or control? Check out Worry and Rumination Explained, a two hour pre-recorded workshop produced by Josh and Drew. The workshop takes a deep dive into the mechanics of worrying and ruminating, offering some helpful ways to approach the seemingly unsolvable problem of trying to solve seemingly unsolveable problems.
https://bit.ly/worryrumination
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Anxiety is a normal human emotion that everyone experiences, but when we start responding to anxiety in unhelpful ways, it magnifies, it gets bigger, it gets more and more power, more and more control. |
| 0:16.1 | And we either go into obey mode where we just obey our anxiety and do whatever it tells us to do, or we go into |
| 0:21.7 | resist mode where we do anything we can to kind of, you know, fight with or run away from our anxiety. |
| 0:26.7 | The fact that your anxiety is kind of spiraling out of control here is completely understandable. |
| 0:32.1 | Almost everybody struggles with anxiety and almost everybody gets jerked around by it and held back in life. |
| 0:37.8 | It really is in cultures all around the world, we're just not taught how to deal with anxiety. |
| 0:42.6 | And almost always we find that when people in the grip of anxiety disorder, |
| 0:46.0 | they start dropping out of large areas of life. |
| 0:48.3 | The life rapidly gets very small. |
| 0:53.1 | Welcome to Disordid. This is episode 88. I really got a good one lined up today. |
| 0:59.4 | This episode is entitled Acceptance and Commitment Therapy with our special guest, Russ Harris, and we're so delighted to have him. |
| 1:07.7 | I'm Joshua Fletcher, also known as Anxiety Josh, psychotherapist and author based in |
| 1:13.3 | Manchester in the UK, specializing anxiety and anxiety disorders, a prance around on social media, |
| 1:21.1 | and today I haven't brushed my hair. We hadn't noticed. I'm Drew Linzalata, the other co-host |
| 1:27.1 | of Disordered. |
| 1:27.8 | I am a therapist still practicing under supervision in New York, also specializing the |
| 1:31.9 | treatment of anxiety and anxiety disorders. |
| 1:34.3 | An author on the topic, also a social media dude, advocate, educator, former sufferer of these |
| 1:39.9 | type of problems for many years, but doing much better now. |
| 1:42.3 | And I am up at 5.30 in the morning to record this episode because Dr. Russ is in Australia. |
| 1:48.5 | Russ Harris, introduce yourself. |
| 1:50.3 | I know people know you, but tell us a little about you. |
... |
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