What if your anxiety is feeling so overwhelming to you that you're not even sure that you can or should continue to go to work or school?

You might wake up every morning filled with fear and anxiety and apprehension and anticipation, and you may be wondering,

is it time for me to take an extended period of time off so I can heal or recover?

Well, if that's you, then today on The Anxious Truth,

that's a question we're going to address. Should I take time off for my work or my school

to recover from my anxiety disorder? What I'm going to try to do here is help you understand

that question, maybe find an answer that works for you, but more important, I want you to sort of

understand that

asking the question isn't failure, and there isn't always a right answer. Sometimes we're

going to get it wrong. That's okay.

Hello, everybody. Drew here. Welcome back to The Anxious Truth. This is episode 308 of the podcast. We are recording December 31st, 24, last day of the year. In case you're listening from the future, if you're not, happy new year. So today we're going to talk about the idea that taking time off from work or school, especially an extended leave of absence,

is a good idea when you're trying to recover

from an anxiety disorder.

I want to talk about why you might think that's a good idea,

why it might be a good idea,

why it might not be a good idea,

what can go wrong, and why it's okay

to not really know the answer to this question.

And I wanna sort of use three examples

to help us illustrate where you might be right now and why you might be struggling with this

question that feels at the same time urgent. I got to know the answer to this. Should I take

off from work or school? And also unanswerable, I don't actually know if I'm doing the right thing

...