Let's talk about anxiety triggered by bad weather. Where I live on Long Island, we just had about 12 inches of snow, and it reminded me of when that sort of thing would make me really, really anxious. I get agitated. I get hypervigilant. I get super fixated on how I felt all the time, and it would last from the minute I knew that weather was coming until the minute it was kind of over and we were back out of the house. So this week on

the anxious truth, we're going to talk about anxiety and the bad weather trap. Let's get to that

right now. Hello, everybody. Welcome back to the anxious truth. This is episode 336 of the podcast. We're recording in January of 2026 in case you're listening or watching in the future. I am Drew Linzalda, creator and host of The Anxious Truth. I'm a therapist that specializes in the treatment of anxiety and anxiety disorders. Practicing in New York, I'm a former sufferer of the very things we talk about here on The Anxious Truth. I'm a four-time author on the topic. Clearly a podcaster, YouTube guy, social media guy, psychoeducator, advocate. And I just spend my time talking about anxiety, anxiety disorders, and trying to help as much as I can. So if you are new to the anxious truth, you just stumbled into the podcast today for the first time.

Welcome.

I hope you find this episode helpful in some way.

And of course, if you're a returning listener, welcome back.

Thanks for hanging out.

And I hope you get something out of today's episode.

Today we're going to talk about that thing where your anxiety, which is already pretty bad, is triggered and gets even worse when there's a big weather event, like a blizzard or a hurricane or a big weather event that might disrupt services or flood the roads or make it

hard to get out of your house. Maybe the power is going to go out. Very, very common for people

who are struggling with anxiety disorders or other chronic states of anxiety to be extra triggered

by that and go on high alert.

From the beginning, they know that's coming to when the weather event finally ends and life sort of goes back to normal.

Now, before we get to that, just a quick reminder, The Anxious Truth is more than just this podcast episode.

There's way more resources on my website at the Anxioustruth.com, all of the social media content,

all of the previous podcast episodes, the books that I've written, very low-cost workshops. There's also the disordered podcast that I do with Josh Fletcher every Friday. You could find that at disordered.fm. So take advantage of the resources. Go to theanxioustruth.com. Go to disorder.com. Check it out. I hope you find it helpful. Let's get into today's

topic. I am calling this the bad weather trap, anxiety and the bad weather trap. Why am I using

the word trap? Well, I'll tell you, it is not the snow or the rain or the lightning or the

power outage or the roads that you can't drive on or the bridge that may wash out. It's none of those things. You think that that is what you are afraid of. Anxious people will say the snow makes my anxiety go through the roof. The rain makes my anxiety go through the roof. When is a thunderstorm coming and we might lose power, I get really anxious. I'm so afraid of that. But really, it's not the actual weather. It's

not the forecast. In my case, there's a lot of snow on the ground here on Long Island today.

It was never the snow, although I would wind up in a highly anxious, hyper-vigilant, internally

focused, very agitated, elevated state of arousal from the time that I knew that that weather was coming

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