WHAT ABOUT NOCTURNAL PANIC ATTACKS? HOW DO WE DEAL WITH THOSE? Nocturnal panic attacks are scary, disturbing, disruptive, and often feel like they are different from any other kind of panic attack. Anxious people will often insist that they are special, they can't possibly be approached with an attitude of tolerance or surrender, and that there must be special instructions or techniques for preventing them, stopping them, or getting over them. But nocturnal panic attacks, as difficult as they are to experience, are not special nor different. This week on Disordered Josh and Drew are digging ..read more

WHAT DOES "VALUES DRIVEN RECOVERY" MEAN? Anxiety recovery can be seen as one long journey away from fear driven behavior and toward behaviors that support the things we really value in life. This week Josh and Drew are talking about what values driven recovery mean and how your values - the things that matter to you and make you who you are and want to be - play a role in the recovery process. A few key points from this episode: Identifying and exploring your values is worthwhile because knowing WHY you are choosing to do scary, difficult things can support your recovery efforts. Not reall ..read more

BUT WHAT ABOUT WHEN YOU'RE TENSE AND SORE? HOW CAN YOU HANDLE THAT? This is one of those questions we get asked all the time. In this episode of Disordered, we're taking a look at how tension, soreness, twitches, and feelings of muscle weakness fit into the anxiety and recover picture. Anxious, scared bodies are going to anxious, scared body things. That's how we're designed. There's nothing wrong with being medically checked, and once you've been cleared your job becomes acknowledging that tension and related issues are going to be part of this equation. It's not the tension, the soreness ..read more

"I know I'm not supposed to focus inward or engage with my anxious or intrusive thoughts, but what am I supposed to think about?!" This week Josh and Drew answer an excellent question from a listener that hasn't really been asked before. What do you do when your anxious thoughts keep coming even when you don't want them to come, and when you insist that you MUST only focus outward because that's how recovery is done? Spoiler alert ... if you're in the business of trying to stop your thoughts or never hear or notice them so you can perfectly focus outward to recover, you can get out of that b ..read more

WHAT RECOVERY LENS ARE YOU LOOKING THROUGH? This week Drew and Josh take a bit of an unexpected turn to explore ways that CBT and exposure-based approaches to recovery can fall short. Recovery can't always be about facing, accepting, exposures, and Claire Weekes. While we might not look to other models to unearth deeply hidden root causes for an anxiety disorder, other theoretical frameworks can be quite useful - or even necessary - to conceptualize why one might encounter obstacles in the recovery process itself. In this episode, the guys so a little Transactional Analysis role play, drag t ..read more

MY NERVOUS SYSTEM IS DYSREGULATED! This week Drew and Josh get up close and personal with "nervous system dysregulation". This is a term that might have some benefit when dealing with issues like stress management or general wellness, but goes straight off the rails into the unhelpful zone when it comes to anxiety disorders. Declaring an anxious state to be a state of dysregulation might be defended from a semantics standpoint. Operationally however, when we insist that our internal states must be labeled as problems that must be fixed, this can and most times does backfire by activating the t ..read more

This week on Disordered we're taking a grand tour around the OCD loop! Josh and Drew talk about pure-O, somatic, and "traditional" obsessive compulsive disorder subtypes. While not every possible theme and subtype can be covered in a short podcast episode, the guys touched on some of the more common themes found in the community, taking care to address how regardless of the specific obsession, there are common characteristics that we can rely on when approaching recovery. Keep in mind that OCD subtypes and themes often morph and overlap, and that related anxiety disorders often look a whole ..read more

What Is Your Therapist Thinking While You're Talking? Therapists are people too. They have feelings, opinions, insecurities, fears, and personality quirks. And they - like you - sometimes have an inner dialogue. If you ever wanted to know what goes on inside the mind of an anxiety therapist, this week Josh and Drew dig into this a bit, including a few moments where the guys exercise their drama and acting skills. Absolutely Oscar-worthy, so tune in. As usual ... it's quite a scene. --- Interested in Josh's new book, “And How Does That Make You Feel?”  ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://geni.us/JoshFl ..read more

This is the one-year anniversary episode of Disordered! We've been at this now for a full year, and we cannot be more grateful for all the support you guys have provided along the way. What better way to mark a year of Disordered than with an episode dedicated entirely to celebrating the community surrounding this podcast? If you need some encouragement or inspiration in your recovery, listen in as we play and read "did it anyway" stories from our listeners and your peers. Thanks to everyone who shares their stories with us. We appreciate them, and we're happy to share them when we can. Now ..read more

What about all this "neuropathways" talk? What does it mean in anxiety recovery? Funny that you asked! This week on Disordered Josh and Drew are talking about neuropathways, anxious habits, and how the concept of "building new neuropathways" applies in the context of anxiety disorders and anxiety recovery. Let's start by acknowledging that even counterproductive anxious habits are built atop pathways in the brain designed to make things easier for us. We can learn good habits and develop responses and behaviors that almost feel automatic because that's metabolically efficient and frees our th ..read more