Help! I'm In An Anxiety Spiral! (Episode 90)
Disordered: Anxiety Help
Josh Fletcher and Drew Linsalata
4.9 • 665 Ratings
🗓️ 13 December 2024
⏱️ 40 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
"Spiraling" is one of the terms heard quite often in the community of people struggling with anxiety disorders.
There's a trigger like a thought or a sensation, then in short order you feel completely out of control, being dragged down into the pit of fear where you thrash about trying to make it stop but failing and just feeling worse and worse.
This week on Disordered we're taking a closer look at what it really means to spiral. Is it a spiral, or an endless loop? Are you really out of control? What makes it feel that way? How do our old friends shock, attention, and resistance factor in here?
If you find yourself often triggered into "spiraling", this might be the episode for you. Check it out!
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https://bit.ly/worryrumination
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Anxiety has all my attention. It feels very overwhelming. It feels like I'm spiraling. |
| 0:07.0 | Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God. And I was really digging in to the thoughts and the sensations and trying to make sure that it was okay and figure out what they meant. |
| 0:15.0 | Oh my God, it's still here. And then the scary what ifs come in. That can easily and understandably be conceptualized as I'm spiraling. |
| 0:22.6 | The key aspect of the idea that I'm spiraling is that I am now out of control. |
| 0:27.0 | And the spiral is at negative connotation of being dragged down into like a hole, a pit. |
| 0:31.4 | The anxiety isn't the spiral trigger. |
| 0:33.8 | The spiral trigger is like the third or fourth. |
| 0:36.3 | Oh my God. |
| 0:37.2 | I think very passionately, |
| 0:38.9 | you're not spiraling. You just go around in a circle. Does a hamster wheel go round, around, |
| 0:43.5 | around, around, and you go in nowhere? Yes. Can you step off the hamster wheel? Also yes. |
| 0:52.8 | Welcome to Disordered. This is episode 90 entitled Help. I'm spiraling. |
| 0:59.5 | I'm Joshua Fletcher, also known as Anxiety Josh, and I'm a psychotherapist who specializes in anxiety |
| 1:04.7 | and anxiety disorders based in the UK in Manchester, where my practice is called the School of Anxiety, author, |
| 1:14.3 | podcaster, social media, pontificator, and yeah, recently had a haircut. |
| 1:23.1 | Oh, that's impressive. That's really exciting, actually. I am Drew Linsalata. I am a therapist practicing |
| 1:28.6 | under supervision, obligated to say in New York, also specializing the treatment of anxiety and anxiety |
| 1:33.2 | disorders. I'm going to say I'm a social media prancer around her since you abdicated and got |
| 1:39.0 | rid of that. Also an author three times, former sufferer, psychoeducator, advocate, the whole night guard. So if you want to know more, listen to the other 89 episodes. We, we introduce ourselves every single time. And today I'm not spiraling. So that's something. I got that going for me, which is nice. Yeah, hear that a lot, don't we? I'm spiraling. Something I can resonate with. It's the kind of semantics |
| 2:01.8 | you use when you feel a bit hopeless and a bit anxious. Maybe it's with people with gad or |
| 2:07.9 | panic disorder or basically for sensitized people. Anxiety has all my attention. It feels very overwhelming |
| 2:14.1 | and it feels like I'm spiraling. Can you relate to that, Drew? I can relate to that. |
... |
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