Hey guys. Welcome to Not Another Anxiety Show. I'm your host, Kelly Walker, and today

it'll be just me answering a listener's question. So here it is.

One listener writes,

Is it hard for you as a person who has overcome anxiety to be a coach and hear about other people's anxiety?

Or to continue learning about anxiety.

I've found that once I feel better, I want to avoid reading or hearing about anxiety at all.

Even when I see your emails come up, it's like I want to avoid them because if I read about anxiety, it may trigger me to start feeling anxious again.

So the short answer is, no, it's not hard for me, not now.

At one point, before I started my coaching business, I wanted to avoid talking or reading

about anxiety whenever I was feeling good. I didn't want to jinx this newfound feeling that was

free of fear and anxiety. But what I came to learn is that that's a very natural emotion, a very natural reaction.

Think about it.

When you eat something yummy and delicious like Chinese food and happen to get sick to your stomach a few hours later, you're going to blame the Chinese food.

There will be a natural aversion to Chinese food for quite a while, whether

or not the Chinese food was the cause of getting sick. Maybe you've felt anxious or on edge

while reading about anxiety, but that doesn't mean it's the cause of a quote-unquote setback.

You just feel a little averse to something that has caused a lot of struggling and suffering in the

past. Think about all the times you've eaten Chinese food and haven't gotten sick, or all the

times you've heard the word anxiety and didn't feel phased or concerned by it. This goes to show

that reading or talking about anxiety doesn't automatically equal a setback.

What can get us stuck or feeling like we're in a bit of a setback is when we resist or fight that initial wash of adrenaline that comes when we're kind of reading or hearing about anxiety.

Anxiety can't be perpetuated unless we're adding coals to the fire,

...