Anxiety Recovery: Worse Before Better - Part II (Episode 110)

2025-05-23

"Help! I started doing exposures and trying to accept my anxiety and its getting worse!"This is a very common experience in anxiety disorder recovery. Its been spoken about at great length in the community surrounding the Disordered podcast. This week we're tackling the "worse before better" issue.When you stop running, hiding, avoiding, escaping, distracting, and otherwise drowning out your anxious thoughts, fears, and sensations, you will find yourself in a situation where...

"Help! I started doing exposures and trying to accept my anxiety and its getting worse!"

This is a very common experience in anxiety disorder recovery. Its been spoken about at great length in the community surrounding the Disordered podcast. This week we're tackling the "worse before better" issue.

When you stop running, hiding, avoiding, escaping, distracting, and otherwise drowning out your anxious thoughts, fears, and sensations, you will find yourself in a situation where you feel them more fully. This is natural, normal, to be expected, and part of the recovery process as designed. However, it can be easy for many reasons to interpret this as things getting "worse".

Tune in to this episode as the guys are talking about how this interpretation is created, why feeling more does not equal getting worse, and how fully experiencing the things that disturb and bother us is a required part of the recovery equation.

If you're adopting acceptance, tolerance, or non-resistance and feel like this is "making you worse", this episode is for you.

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