Anxiety Disorders - Primary vs Secondary Fear (Episode 83)
Disordered: Anxiety Help
Josh Fletcher and Drew Linsalata
4.9 • 665 Ratings
🗓️ 25 October 2024
⏱️ 40 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
This week Drew and Josh are talking about secondary fear.
When triggered into an anxious state by thoughts, sensations, or anything else, we ALL experience a jolt of fear or discomfort. This is primary fear and its simply part of being human. Overcoming an anxiety disorder is not about removing this natural, healthy response to possible threats. People struggling with anxiety disorders will often make the mistake of trying to turn off the primary fear response to feel better.
But if you want to overcome disordered and chronic states of anxiety, you want to work on turning down the secondary fear response. This is the response that makes you afraid ... or being afraid. Secondary fear is what we call it when you misinterpret primary fear as itself dangerous and begin to take evasive action to get away from, manage, stop, or prevent this internal experience. Secondary fear - and acting to keep secondary fear alive - is what really drives the disordered state.
Tune in to hear a discussion about how to play charades with your amygdala and how to respond to its "call to perform" in a way that lets you slowly turn down that secondary fear response bit by bit over time. As usual, we're adding some humor and a dose of patience and kindness as is needed in any process that involves doing scary, difficult things on purpose.
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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 | And they have the initial fear, that initial, like, shock or whatever, startle, whatever you want to call it. |
| 0:06.4 | And then they think that's a problem. |
| 0:08.5 | You're allowed the, that's not something we fix. |
| 0:11.0 | We need that. |
| 0:12.1 | But it's the subsequent behaviors and feelings towards it. |
| 0:16.3 | Really, it was the expression of the secondary fear that mattered. |
| 0:19.8 | What did I do when I was afraid that |
| 0:22.3 | I was disintegrating because I was depersonalized? You can't speak to it. It is not wired that way. |
| 0:27.4 | It's only wired one way. So like I'm expecting frantic action and movement and escapes, |
| 0:32.6 | but I'm getting stillness. What you can do is play charades with it and be like, |
| 0:37.7 | okay, well, you can say and send me all these signals, |
| 0:40.9 | but this is what I'm gonna send back to you. |
| 0:43.5 | Yeah. |
| 0:44.1 | Which is... |
| 0:47.1 | Nothing. |
| 0:53.0 | Welcome to Disordered. This is episode 83 of the podcast. Today we're talking about secondary fear, specifically primary fear and anxiety disorders versus secondary fear and anxiety disorders. It's going to be good. I'm Drew Linzalata. I am a therapist practicing under supervision in the state of New York specializing the treatment of anxiety and anxiety disorders. |
| 1:15.2 | I'm a three-time author on this topic. I'm a social media dude, an advocate, and educator, |
| 1:19.3 | a former sufferer of anxiety disorders, depression, and OCD for many years on and off, |
| 1:24.9 | but doing better now. And I am joined by my esteemed co-host from the UK. Introduce yourself, |
| 1:28.4 | Josh, if you could stop bouncing on your Bosu ball long enough. |
| 1:29.8 | Yeah, hi, I'm Josh. |
| 1:34.8 | Josh is bouncing around on his exercise ball as we record and I'm loving every minute. |
... |
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