Anxiety feels bad. Nobody's arguing that.

Chronic and disordered forms of anxiety tend to feel even worse, and we're not arguing that either.

So in the end, anxious people tend to feel bad.

But as it turns out, there's an entire subgenre of wellness and mental health culture online

that has evolved to help you feel good about feeling bad.

This is the digital validation and soothing machine,

and we need to talk about it now. Hello, everybody. Welcome back to The Anxious Truth. This is

episode 325 of the podcast recording in September of 2025 in case you're listening

in the future.

I'm Drew Linzalata, creator and host of The Anxious Truth.

I'm a therapist practicing in New York, specializing in anxiety and anxiety disorders.

I'm a former sufferer of the problems we talk about in this podcast.

I'm also a three-time author on the topic.

Also co-host of the Disordered Podcast, which you'll find at Disordered.fm, social media guy, psychoeducator, advocate, all the things, and we're here to talk about anxiety and anxiety recovery and the anxious truth. If this is your first time here, you just stumbled upon the podcast or the YouTube channel. First of all, on YouTube, sorry, no video this week. But if you've just stumbled upon the anxious truth today, welcome. I hope you find what we talk about today applicable or helpful in some way. And of course, if you're a returning listener or viewer, welcome back. Thanks for hanging out with me. Today we're going to talk about how validation of your feelings and your experiences is important, and it has

its place in mental health. However, the endless cycle of anxiety feels like this, panic feels like

that, nobody understands. This is a symptom of XYZ anxiety. The endless cycle of that sort of

stuff might be very validating and it might help you feel less

alone, but it could accidentally be keeping you stuck if you take it too far.

Now, before we get into it, this isn't about shaming anybody who consumes that content.

It's totally understandable to crave that because human beings kind of want to not

feel alone in their experiences.

There's nothing wrong with that.

...