When anxiety and its relentless inner critic take hold, one of the most profound losses is the belief and trust in your own capability. In this episode, Drew and Josh explore how to rebuild self-trust after anxiety disorders erode your confidence in handling life's challenges.
The conversation centers on stories from listeners who confronted their worst-case scenarios—from emergency medical situations while struggling with agoraphobia and panic disorder, to managing health anxiety during actual illness, to facing feared social situations despite OCD. Each story illustrates a crucial truth: the anticipation is almost always worse than the actual experience, and we're far more capable than anxiety tells us we are.
The guys discuss why simply deciding to believe in yourself doesn't work, and what actually does: the unglamorous, minute-by-minute work of doing the scary things anyway. They examine how anxiety functions like a conspiracy theory about yourself, predicting catastrophic outcomes that rarely materialize. The hosts also explore how well-meaning but misguided advice to avoid difficult situations or regulate away uncomfortable feelings can actually undermine self-belief rather than restore it.
This episode emphasizes that rebuilding confidence isn't about making anxiety disappear—it's about discovering through lived experience that you can handle difficult emotions, uncomfortable sensations, and challenging situations. The path back to self-belief requires compassion, patience, and a willingness to challenge the loud but ultimately unreliable predictions of fear and doubt.
Grounded in acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT) and mindfulness-based approaches, this conversation offers a realistic, evidence-based perspective on recovery that honors both the difficulty of the journey and the resilience we all possess.
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Struggling with worry and rumination that you feel you can't stop or control? Check out Worry and Rumination Explained, a two hour pre-recorded workshop produced by Josh and Drew. The workshop takes a deep dive into the mechanics of worrying and ruminating, offering some helpful ways to approach the seemingly unsolvable problem of trying to solve seemingly unsolvable problems.
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Want to ask us questions, share your wins, or get more information about Josh, Drew, and the Disordered podcast? Send us an email or leave a voicemail on our website.
