Anxiety that you cannot control, that keeps coming back, that you don't understand and are terrified

of, will trick you into believing that something is really wrong, that something terrible is about

to happen, and that you have to take protective or evasive action based on how you feel.

Well, this week on The Anxious Truth, we're talking with Dr. Lisa Feldman-Barrett about how

the internal experience of anxiety and fear is constructed by your

brain. And we're going to talk about how it's based on a prediction that isn't so real, even though

the experience itself is in fact real. You are genuinely afraid. It's not just in your head.

Let's get to that right now.

Hello, everybody.

Welcome back to The Anxious Truth.

This is episode 327 of the podcast recorded in October of 2025 in case you are listening in the future. I am Drew Linzalata, creator and host of The Anxious Truth. I'm a therapist specializing in anxiety and anxiety disorders on Long Island, New York, also a former sufferer of the things we talk about, the anxious truth, but fully recovered for many years now. Thank you very much. Also a three-time author on the topic, psychoeducator, advocate, guy with too many expensive microphones, and also co-host of the Disordered podcast that comes out every

Friday with my buddy Josh Fletcher. You can find that at disordered.fm. Today we have a very special

guest on Dr. Lisa Feldman-Barritt. She wrote how emotions are made. She is one of the key names

behind the theory of constructed emotions,

and she was generous enough to take about a half hour to talk to me today about the mechanism

that creates and constructs the internal experience of anxiety and fear and discomfort inside of us,

like it does with any internal experience or any emotion. And a special note today is the

fact that Dr. Barrett is talking about how the internal experience is very real. Don't let

anybody tell you that it's just in your head, but it is based on a predictive model that your

brain is using where the prediction is actually not true, which has huge implications for how we would

approach the recovery process in overcoming chronic and disorder anxiety. Now, before we get to the

interview with Dr. Barrett, just a quick reminder that there's more than just this podcast

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