Anxiety Disorders: Shock, Attention, and Resistance (Episode 78)
Disordered: Anxiety Help
Josh Fletcher and Drew Linsalata
4.9 • 665 Ratings
🗓️ 20 September 2024
⏱️ 43 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Three things start and drive disordered states of anxiety:
Shock, Attention, and Resistance
- Shock is what we experience when anxiety levels skyrocket for what seems like no reason. We experience scary and disturbing physical sensations, thoughts, and emotions all at the same time. It is ... shocking!
- Attention drives disordered anxiety when our internal states become the most important and interesting thing in the room all the time. We focus all our attention on how we feel all the time and cannot even imagine doing otherwise.
- Resistance drives disordered anxiety when we fight our reality. We are anxious. We have symptoms. We have scary thoughts. We feel emotions. This is our reality in any given moment. We wear ourselves down, increase our sense of powerlessness and hopelessness, get more and more confused, and feel more and more lost and out of control when we resist this reality and try to control it rather than working WITH it.
This week on Disordered we're looking at the Shock / Attention / Resistance cycle that ignites and maintains a disordered state of anxiety.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | And tension and resistance is really what starts and drives a disordered state of anxiety. |
| 0:07.4 | I think the formula is shock, attention, resistant. I don't like that symptom. I don't like that |
| 0:13.9 | thought. I don't like this feeling. It always comes with shock. There's a shock that starts this |
| 0:18.5 | process, the first panic attack, the first time you have OCD thought thought. But then the shocks become variable and the attention and resistance make the future shocks. Don't like to feel shocked. Yes, and so the fact that I'm looking for a shock, boom, makes another shock. It's like a variable schedule, like a slot machine. To get out of any anxiety disorder, it's what we do after the |
| 0:38.6 | shot. Oh, I'm anxious. Okay, well, I don't need to call upon my biceps named attention |
| 0:43.7 | and resistance and start fighting them. We're trying to resist things that we do not control. |
| 0:52.4 | Welcome to Disordered. This is episode 78 entitled Attention and Resistance. |
| 1:00.4 | My name's Joshua Fletcher, also known as Anxiety Josh, and I'm a psychotherapist who specializes in anxiety and anxiety disorders. |
| 1:08.7 | I'm based in Manchester, in the UK UK and I prance around on social media under |
| 1:13.7 | the title at Anxiety Josh. I love doing this podcast with my co-host or we talk about all things |
| 1:19.9 | anxiety to help you, to educate you and get you to a good place. And over to my co-host. Good morning. |
| 1:26.8 | I'm Drew Lin Salata. I am also known on social media |
| 1:29.8 | as the anxious truth or the dot-anxious. truth. I am a therapist practicing under supervision |
| 1:34.2 | in New York, specializing also in the treatment of anxiety and anxiety disorders. I had these |
| 1:39.3 | problems for many years of my life, anxiety disorders and depression and that sort of stuff, OCD, |
| 1:43.8 | but better now. |
| 1:44.8 | And I'm also an author three times, social media dude. I don't prance as much as Josh, but I'm out |
| 1:49.9 | there prancing a little bit. And yeah, one of the co-hosts of Disordered. Happy to be here. |
| 1:54.6 | What are we talking about today? Attention and resistance. It was something that you suggested, |
| 2:00.7 | I think it's a really good topic. |
| 2:02.4 | I did. I suggested and then asked you what we were talking about. How ridiculous is that. |
| 2:07.2 | This is top flight prep that we got going on on a disordered. I actually got the idea from I, |
... |
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