Welcome to That Anxiety Guy, episode 15, do the opposite. Hey everybody Drew here that anxiety guy dot com or

Facebook dot com slash that anxiety guy.

Thanks as always for stopping by to listen I do appreciate it.

Today we have what I think is an

interesting topic it's something that I call the opposite strategy now this is

nothing new a lot of people online have talked about this but I thought it was

worth dedicating an episode of the podcast too.

So if you're dealing with an anxiety disorder, and in my case I'm usually talking about things like

panic attacks, agoraphobia and generalized anxiety disorder, your natural tendency is going to be to do whatever

you can to avoid feeling anxious or afraid.

This is pretty normal.

Human beings come wired for the factory with kind of an inborn drive to seek safety and comfort.

So we expect this to be the case.

Natural though it may be, however, the approach of avoiding feeling anxious or afraid at all costs is really not helpful anyway.

So in fact, when you're dealing with anxiety disorders,

retreating and avoiding your anxiety really only makes things worse on the long term because it ingrains that avoidance behavior and it reinforces

with the underlying mistaken belief that there's something to be feared or avoided to keep you safe and that's not true.

So in reality the path to success when you're dealing with anxiety disorders usually involves doing

the exact opposite of what you want to do, which is

really weird and it doesn't make it difficult because it really means you have to

summon the courage to face your fear and above all it means completely

ignoring and going 180 degrees against your built-in sort of survival and safety instincts.

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