Can Anxiety Make You Feel Like You’re Losing Your Mind? | Ep. 516
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In this episode, I’m talking about why anxiety can make you feel like you’re losing your mind, why experiences like derealization, depersonalization, panic, and OCD can make that fear feel so convincing, and what you can do when it happens.
In this episode, I’ll cover:
- Why intense anxiety can create the terrifying feeling that something is seriously wrong or you’re losing control
- What derealization and depersonalization can feel like, including my own experience with these strange and unsettling sensations
- How panic and OCD can latch onto the fear of “going crazy” and keep you stuck in a cycle of checking and reassurance
- Why constantly checking whether you feel “normal” can pull you deeper into the self-monitoring trap
- How to practice non-judgment, allowing, and uncertainty instead of fighting or resisting uncomfortable sensations
- A simple attention skill I use to bring myself back to what matters, even when my brain is demanding that I monitor, analyze, or fix what I’m feeling
Can Anxiety Make You Feel Like You’re Losing Your Mind?
When we talk about anxiety, we often talk about the symptoms most people recognize: a tight chest, racing thoughts, sweaty palms, a sense of dread, or a mind that just won’t stop worrying.
But there is another experience of anxiety that we don’t talk about nearly enough.
It’s the terrifying feeling that you might be losing your mind.
Maybe the world suddenly doesn’t seem quite right. Things look strange or unfamiliar. You don’t feel like yourself. You feel disconnected from your body or your surroundings. Or maybe your anxiety becomes so intense that you start wondering:
Am I losing control? Am I going crazy? Is something seriously wrong with me?
If you’ve experienced this, I want to talk about why anxiety can create these sensations and, more importantly, how we can respond without making the fear even bigger.
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I’ve Experienced This Too
Early in my training to become a therapist, I was sitting across from a client when suddenly everything started to feel bizarre.
I couldn’t seem to focus my eyes properly. My client’s head looked strangely disproportionate to their body. My spatial awareness felt completely off.
I felt disconnected from the moment.
And for several minutes, I genuinely wondered, Am I losing my mind?
The strange sensations continued after the session. Even while driving home, the lines on the road seemed to move in and out, and everything around me felt unfamiliar.
Thankfully, I had already been trained to understand what I was experiencing.
But that didn’t mean it wasn’t scary.
Over the years, I’ve experienced this feeling many times, and I’ve also worked with many people who experience similar symptoms.
Understanding what anxiety is doing can help us change how we respond when these sensations show up.
Anxiety Is Designed to Look for Danger
One of the most important things to remember about anxiety is that your brain is constantly scanning for potential danger.
Could something go wrong?
Is there a threat here?
What if something terrible happens?
For people with anxiety, this threat-detection system can become incredibly active.
Once your brain detects a potential threat, your body prepares you to respond. Stress hormones like adrenaline and cortisol are released, and suddenly you may experience dizziness, nausea, changes in your breathing, changes in blood pressure, or a whole host of other uncomfortable sensations.
Your body is trying to protect you.
The problem is that when there isn’t an obvious external threat, these intense physical sensations can become the threat themselves.
You notice how strange you feel and think:
Why is this happening?
Why does everyone else seem fine?
What if I lose control?
And suddenly anxiety about the sensations creates even more anxiety.
Derealization Can Make the World Feel Unreal
Another experience that can happen alongside anxiety is derealization.
Derealization is when the world around you feels strange, distorted, dreamlike, muted, vivid, or somehow unreal.
You may look around and think:
Is this actually happening?
Is this real?
Why does everything look so strange?
For me, derealization has affected my vision and spatial awareness. Someone who is several feet away might suddenly feel incredibly close. Things can look distorted or unfamiliar.
And because the experience itself feels so unusual, your brain may immediately interpret it as evidence that something is terribly wrong.
That interpretation can create even more fear.
Depersonalization Can Make You Feel Disconnected From Yourself
Depersonalization is slightly different.
Instead of the world feeling unreal, you may feel unreal or disconnected from yourself.
Some people describe it as feeling like they are watching themselves in a movie. Others feel as though they are outside of their body looking down at themselves.
You might think:
I don’t feel like myself.
I don’t feel connected to my body.
Who even am I right now?
Understandably, these experiences can make someone wonder whether they are losing touch with reality.
But the sensations themselves are not the real problem.
What often creates the spiral is what we do next.
Panic Can Create the Feeling That You’re Losing Control
People who experience panic attacks may know this feeling very well.
You can go from feeling relatively calm to experiencing anxiety at an eight, nine, or ten out of ten incredibly quickly.
Your heart may race. Your breathing changes. Your thoughts speed up. Your body feels completely out of your control.
And when that happens, your brain may interpret the intensity as:
I’m losing control.
Something terrible is about to happen.
I can’t handle this.
When your body goes from zero to one hundred so quickly, it makes sense that your brain wants to figure out what is happening.
Unfortunately, desperately trying to regain control can sometimes keep the cycle going.
OCD Can Latch Onto the Fear of “Going Crazy”
I also see this fear frequently with OCD.
Someone may already be struggling with harm OCD, relationship OCD, sexual obsessions, religious obsessions, or another OCD theme when a secondary obsession appears:
What if I obsess about this so much that I actually lose my mind?
Or:
What if I become psychotic?
What if I lose touch with reality?
Once that fear appears, you may begin monitoring yourself.
You check how you feel.
You analyze whether something seems different.
You search your memories for evidence.
You ask other people for reassurance.
You avoid situations that trigger the feeling.
You mentally review your symptoms over and over again.
These compulsions are attempts to create certainty and make the fear disappear.
But compulsions tend to strengthen the obsession rather than resolve it.
The Self-Monitoring Trap
This brings me to what I call the self-monitoring trap.
When you’re afraid you might lose control or lose your mind, it makes sense that you would start watching yourself very closely.
Do I feel normal right now?
Does everything look normal?
Do I feel like myself?
Is the derealization getting better?
Is it getting worse?
But the more closely you monitor an experience, the stranger it can begin to feel.
Think about your own name.
If you stare at your name on a piece of paper for five minutes, eventually it starts to look weird.
Is that really how my name is spelled?
Why does that word suddenly look so strange?
Nothing about your name changed.
Your attention changed.
The same thing can happen when we intensely monitor our thoughts, sensations, emotions, and perception of reality.
So instead of continuing to monitor, analyze, and check, we want to practice responding differently.
Skill #1: Become an Observer
When the strange feeling appears, your first instinct may be to immediately make it stop.
Instead, I want you to experiment with observing it.
Okay. This feeling is here.
Notice the experience without immediately trying to change it.
This can take practice because your brain may have learned that the sensation itself means danger.
We are slowly teaching the brain something different.
Skill #2: Practice Non-Judgment
This one can be challenging.
Instead of immediately labeling the sensation as bad, dangerous, or a sign something is wrong, practice noticing it without giving it a judgment.
That does not mean pretending it feels good.
It might feel incredibly uncomfortable.
But uncomfortable and dangerous are not necessarily the same thing.
You can practice saying:
This is uncomfortable.
This feels strange.
And I don’t have to decide what it means right now.
When we stop treating every uncomfortable sensation like an emergency, we give our threat system less fuel.
Skill #3: Notice How Much You’re Resisting
Pay attention to what your body does when these sensations arrive.
Do you tense your shoulders?
Clench your jaw?
Squint?
Hold your breath?
Contract your entire body as if you can physically force the sensation away?
I want you to experiment with doing the opposite.
Soften.
Allow.
Let the sensation move through your body without demanding that it leave.
I sometimes describe this as becoming soft and soggy like a wet piece of spaghetti.
The goal isn’t to relax perfectly so that the sensation disappears.
The goal is to stop fighting it.
Skill #4: Practice Being Uncertain
Anxiety desperately wants answers.
How long will this last?
Will it get worse?
When will I feel normal again?
What if I actually lose control?
You may not be able to answer those questions with complete certainty.
And trying to find certainty can pull you straight back into checking and rumination.
Instead, practice allowing uncertainty.
Maybe the sensation will be here for a while.
Maybe your brain will continue throwing scary thoughts at you.
You don’t have to solve those questions before continuing with your day.
Skill #5: Choose Where Your Attention Goes
This is one of the most important skills I practice myself.
When I experience derealization while sitting with a client, my brain may start saying:
What if something is wrong?
What if this gets worse?
What if I lose control?
I notice those thoughts.
I let them be there.
And then I deliberately return my attention to my client.
What are they saying?
What is happening in the conversation?
What matters to me in this moment?
My brain may interrupt again thirty seconds later.
That’s okay.
I bring my attention back again.
And again.
And again.
The goal isn’t to make the sensation disappear. The goal is to keep choosing where I place my attention.
You don’t need to do this perfectly.
There is no score.
You are simply practicing bringing your attention back to what you choose instead of automatically giving it to whatever anxiety chooses.
You Don’t Have to Fight Your Brain
There’s one more piece of this that I think is incredibly important.
When people experience these frightening symptoms, they often become angry with themselves.
What is wrong with me?
Why does my brain do this?
I hate my brain.
But your brain is trying to protect you.
It may be detecting danger when there isn’t actually danger present, but it is still attempting to do its job.
So instead of fighting your brain, see if you can respond with self-compassion.
Okay, brain. I see what you’re doing.
You think we need protecting right now.
I’m going to let these feelings be here, and I’m going to keep living my life.
Stop Treating the Sensation Like an Emergency
I have worked with people who have spent decades fighting derealization, depersonalization, panic, intrusive thoughts, and the fear of losing control.
They’ve tried desperately to make the sensations disappear.
And sometimes one of the biggest shifts happens when we stop playing that game.
Instead of:
How do I get rid of this?
We practice:
How can I allow this to be here without letting it run my life?
That is a completely different relationship with anxiety.
And I have seen people experience incredible freedom when they stop gripping, fighting, checking, and monitoring every sensation their brain produces.
You Can Feel Strange and Still Keep Going
If you experience derealization, depersonalization, panic, OCD fears about losing control, or the terrifying sensation that you might be losing your mind, please be gentle with yourself.
These experiences can be incredibly uncomfortable.
But instead of fighting them, practice observing them.
Practice non-judgment.
Allow uncertainty.
Notice when you are self-monitoring.
Soften your resistance.
And then ask yourself:
Where do I want to put my attention right now?
Your brain may continue making noise in the background.
You don’t have to make it stop before you continue living your life.
And as I always say, today is a beautiful day to do hard things.
Transcription: Can Anxiety Make You Feel Like You’re Losing Your Mind?
You’ve probably been told that anxiety often will look like a tight chest, maybe racing thoughts, maybe it’s this feeling of dread in your body. Maybe it’s general worry or maybe it’s sweaty palms, but there is another version of anxiety that a lot of people experience that we don’t talk about enough.
It’s the terrifying feeling in your body or the thought that you might be losing your mind. Maybe the world doesn’t seem quite right. Maybe there’s this general feeling like you just don’t feel like you’re yourself anymore. Maybe everything feels strange or fragmented, or you really feel like it’s very unfamiliar, and you’re terrified that you’re gonna lose control.
And if you’ve experienced this, you probably know the pain of wondering, “Is something terribly wrong with me?” So today, we’re gonna get into it.
My name is Kimberly Quinlan. I’m an anxiety and OCD specialist, and I want us to explore this very hidden secret experience of anxiety and this terrifying feeling that something is terribly wrong. And what we want to do is address can anxiety make you feel like you’re losing your mind? Let me first start by telling you a personal story, and I’ve told it a couple of times here on the podcast.
But I remember when I was an intern early in my training to become a marriage and family therapist, I was sitting across from a client, and all of a sudden everything started to feel completely bizarre. My eyes, I could not get focus. Everything felt really strange. I was looking at my client sitting on the couch.
Their head looked so much bigger than their body. It looked like a caricature of themselves, and I just couldn’t get this feeling of, of being in the moment. I felt like I was just out of this moment. I felt like I was so strange. Everything felt so bizarre, and I for some minutes actually started to wonder, “Am I losing my mind?
Am I going crazy? Is this the moment where everything just goes, slips between my fingers and I completely detach and lose the experience of reality?” Well, thankfully, I had already been trained in this experience, and so I had the skills in the moment. But it took several days for that feeling to go away.
As I drove home from sessions that evening, I remember seeing the lines of the road go in and out, and everything felt weird. I questioned whether I was even safe to be driving my car. But what I knew and what I want to teach you today are there are certain experiences of anxieties that can make this feeling feel so much more prominent and scary, and I want to share those with you today so that you know how to handle them next time you’re experiencing this.
So point number one is that anxiety in general can make you feel like something is terribly wrong. Anxiety in and of itself does this to you. Don’t forget that your brain, the very deep part of your brain, its job is to detect danger. It’s constantly scanning for could this go wrong? Could that go wrong?
Where could- where’s the danger and what- how can I detect it early? How can I prevent it? And when you are someone whose part of that brain is very active, it’s going to constantly be finding the worst-case scenario or what we call catastrophic thinking. Now, what happens with this is if you’re having catastrophic thinking and then you start to respond from a place of, “Oh, my God, that could happen.
What would happen? What would I do?” Then you’re actually bringing your attention and putting your focus on all of the worst-case scenarios, which will then make you more anxious. Now, we know when we’re anxious, our body will dump out a bunch of anxiety or threat hormones, which are preparing us to run a very long distance.
This is a protective measure that has been in our body, in our DNA for thousands of years. And so the more we respond to anxiety, the more we have it, the more our body dumps cortisol, adrenaline, all of those stress hormones into our body, which creates sensations where we actually do feel like we’re out of control and we’re losing our mind.
It might be, again, as I said, you might have a really s- massive reduction in blood pressure or a massive increase in blood pressure, making you feel dizzy and queasy and weird. You might have an immediate feeling of nausea. That’s your body’s way of getting you to dump weight, whether it be you go to the bathroom, you throw up, you need to pee.
That’s your body’s way of dumping a lot of weight so you can run a long distance away from the wildebeest. Again, that immediate reaction in your body can make you feel very uncomfortable and feel like, “I’m out of control. Something really bad’s happening. My body’s, is completely… I’m losing m- I’m losing my mind.
I’m losing my reality.” This is very normal when you are in those eights, nines, and tens out of ten anxiety. Those stress hormones can create that feeling of like something is really wrong and, again, I’m losing touch with what’s really happening. Now, this is often common ’cause you’re looking around and you’re like, “No one else seems to be freaking out, but yet my body is telling me-” I might die.
Like often people will say with panic disorder or social anxiety is they’re looking around, everybody else is fine, but in my body, my body is responding as if this is life or death. And that experience in and of itself can make you feel like, again, you’re losing touch with reality. Now, there is a second experience that people have related to anxiety that makes it even worse, and this is called depersonalization Or derealization.
These are two dissociative states that often people who have anxiety go into. We’re not 100% sure why. The theory is that we go into dissociative states when our body detects that there is a lot of danger or a lot of feelings that are gonna be felt, and it has built a protective measure around you to dissociate from those feelings, to protect you from the pain.
But we don’t know exactly yet why somebody does that. Some people we have… know that comes from a tremendous degree of trauma and a tremendous degree of experiences that may have actually been threatening. But I’ve had so many clients who didn’t have any traumatic event, but they do tend to go into these dissociative states of depersonalization and derealization.
Now, I want to assure you here, this does not mean you have dissociative personality disorder. It does not mean that there’s something wrong with you. It’s just something your brain does, and it’s something that my brain does, and I wanna reinforce to you that it’s not dangerous. It doesn’t mean anything is wrong, but it is very scary.
That day, when I sat across from my client, I was experience derealization. I have experienced it on and off in the last, I’d say, 20 years. I have experienced this these dozens of times, but I want you to learn how to understand this experience so that you then don’t respond to it as if it’s dangerous and sort of set that spiral off going again.
Now, derealization is the experience that something is very unreal. The world around you feels distorted. Sometimes it’s really muted or vivid. It can feel like, um, you’re, you know, in this very distorted, weird, unreal experience. You feel detached from actual reality. And again, in my case, it really impacted my vision and my spatial awareness.
I felt like my client was, like, within arm’s reach, but yet they were probably six feet away from me on the other side of the room. So that is a common experience of derealization. When you experience derealization, you start to question this reality. You’re like, “Is my hand my hand? Is this real? Am… Is this experience I’m in, is this a real experience, or am I in a dream?”
Like, you’re, you’re really questioning the reality of this here-and-now experience. Whereas with depersonalization, depersonalization is this, again, very unreal, odd, unfamiliar feeling, but you feel like you’re outside of your body. Sometimes people will say, “I feel like I’m looking down at myself. I’m looking down on myself like I’m watching a video of myself or a movie of myself.”
Often people will say, “I feel very disconnected from my true being. I don’t feel like I’m in my body. I don’t feel this grounded feeling of I am Kimberly.” You feel completely disconnected from that, um, and like your human body is here, but your soul is not connected to it. It can target your sense of self.
You can feel like you don’t have an identity anymore, and this is very common feeling for folks with depersonalization. Now, as you can imagine, it’s going to make you question, “Am I losing my mind?” Because of this disconnect feeling, it… because things don’t feel like they’re reality. Now, the third experience here is very common for folks when they are at that nines and tens or maybe those eights, nines, and tens out of 10 of anxiety.
Often folks with panic disorder or panic attacks will say to me, in that moment, because your anxiety has gone up so high and your brain is just on full alert, sometimes that feeling makes you feel like you are going to lose control, like you’ve completely lost control of your body. You have no ability to manage it, regulate it, and so forth, and that can make you feel like you’re losing control or that your body has just kind of left the building ultimately.
And I’m laughing because I know that feeling. It’s not funny. But looking back, you… people who’ve had panic will sort of shake their head and be like, “I have no idea what just happened.” Like, “How did I go from being fully present and calm to being 10 out of 10, completely lost control over my body’s functions, my body’s ability to cope, my bu- body’s ability to breathe and think?”
This is a very common experience for people with panic disorder or having panic or anxiety attacks, and it can be terrifying, right? So what we’ve got here is we’ve already got these experiences where when anxiety does attack, you aren’t just noticing and observing anxiety. It’s sort of like zero to 100 miles per hour, and that in and of itself can cause you to act from a place of hypervigilance and panic and, “Oh my gosh, how can I make this stop?”
Now, the fourth example of this are for folks with OCD.
Now, as you know, I have a private practice. I have six amazing therapists in Calabasas, California. However, we do not take insurance. Now, if you are looking for insurance-covered OCD or BFRB treatment, I wanna let you know about NOCD. NOCD provides face-to-face live video sessions with specialized licensed OCD therapists.
Now, their therapists use exposure and response prevention. We know this is the gold standard for OCD, so you can be absolutely confirmed that you’re in the right place there, and they have a clinically proven app that helps you stay connected to your therapist and others who have OCD between sessions, so you’ll always feel supported.
Now, the cool thing is NOCD is available in all 50 US states and even internationally, and they accept most insurance plans, making it affordable and accessible. We love that. Now, if you think you might have OCD or you’re struggling to manage your symptoms, you can book a free call. Just click the link in the show notes at nocd.com.
I am honored to partner with NOCD. I want to remind you that recovery is possible. Please do not forget that. Now, big hugs, and let’s get back to the show Now, I often will treat clients with OCD. They may have any subtype, harm OCD, sexual obsessions, religious obsessions, relationship obsessions, like it could be literally any obsession.
But then comes along this secondary obsession, which is, what if I obsess about this so much that I do lose my mind? Or maybe the subtype of OCD they have is, what if I become psychotic? What if I do become someone who loses tact, who does lose contact with reality? These obsessions can make you become so hyper-focused on every little experience, and you start to check how you’re feeling, and that checking how you’re feeling makes you feel even more confused and more con- like, what is happening, and it can exacerbate the fear of losing your mind, increasing your anxiety.
These are common subtypes of OCD, or obsessions we call them, and then there are common compulsions that they do to try and reduce or remove that feeling or that uncertainty. That might involve checking, reassurance-seeking, avoiding. It might be a lot of mental rumination, and you’re doing that to try to get that thought, “What if I lose my mind?
What if I’m going crazy?” Trying to get that thought to go away, but the compulsions actually fuel that obsession even more. These last four symptoms all come and join to meet this last main point, which is what I call the self-monitoring trap. When you have any of these symptoms, the more you monitor yourself to see if you’re losing your mind or monitor to see if you’re starting to notice an increase or decrease of these sensations of depersonalization, derealization, obsessions about will I lose my mind or panic symptoms, the more you are checking and observing and hypervigilant to them, the more distorted things become.
Often with clients, I will say, “What happens when you give it so much attention?” And they’re like, “It gets so much worse, and I start to monitor things so… in such a magnified way that I become confused about what’s reality and what’s not.” This is not you becoming… A- again, it’s not you going into psychosis or having a hallucination or becoming delusional.
It’s the fact that, as I say often to clients, I’ll point to my whiteboard, and I’ll say, “Let’s write your name on my whiteboard, and let’s look at it” for a very long time, three, five minutes, and I’ll say, “What happens after you looked at it for five minutes?” And they’ll say, “My name starts to look really weird,” like that’s a weird name.
When you look at your name and you stare at it, you could do this as an ex- as an experiment, it does start to look weird. You start to think, “Wow, is that even my name? Is that how it’s really spelt?” And that happens when you are self-monitoring your symptoms. Now, what I want you guys to do instead, when you’re experiencing any of these five experiences, I want you to work backwards, which is, number one, if you’ve observed this feeling, we wanna practice allowing for it.
We wanna practice observing it, but not trying to change it, not trying to make it go away. Instead, what we wanna do is we want to be able to become an observer to this very strange feeling. Now, this is going to take some time because your brain has probably learnt to set off the fire alarm in your brain every time these feelings arise.
We’re gonna work backwards from that by becoming an observer and practicing the skill of non-judgment. The feeling of depersonalization or derealization is neither good nor bad. It’s just- energy or sensations in your body. Now, I know your first response is probably like, “Kimberly, come on. This is literally my worst fear coming true.
Of all the core fears, this is my core fear, and this idea that it’s neither good nor bad is BS.” Well, I wanna say, yes, I get that suffering point, but your continuing to judge it that way is only going to make your body respond with more detection of threat, and is going to cause you to want to self-monitor and be stuck in that self-monitoring trap.
So if you can do yourself one big gift, it’s practice the skill of non-judgment. Practice that this is neither good nor bad. It’s uncomfortable. We’re not here to diminish your discomfort, but we’re not going to file it as good or bad. The next thing is, how am I resisting to it? When I have that feeling, do I squint?
Do I wince? Do I kind of like, “Ah,” get it to go away? Do I, like, sh- shrink up my shoulders and become really resistance and I… Do I really grasp and c- contract every muscle in my body? Or do I practice allowing that feeling to th- flow through me, not trying to make it go away? That’s going to be key. When I was sitting in front of my client that day, in my very early days of becoming a therapist, the more I tried to, like, “Ugh, get rid of it,” the more weird I felt, the more panicked I felt, and the less I was able to just be with that client.
This has happened, believe it or not, so many times to me while I’m in therapy. I actually don’t know why it happens, um, because I’m not stressed about therapy. I’m not particularly, like, having anxiety about seeing this therapist. So for reasons I don’t really know, it does tend to happen, and my job is just to be like, shrug, “Okay, it’s here.
I’m going to allow it.” Now, that next piece is your brain is going to want to know, with certainty, how long it’s gonna last, will it go away, and, you know, how’s this gonna look? How’s this gonna end? Am I gonna be on the news tomorrow running down the street? naked, you know? Like, that’s what our brain wants to know, and we’re going to practice being uncertain.
I’m gonna practice in that moment shrugging and being like, “All right, looks like we’re doing this one in, in derealization, and I’m not here to try and figure out how long it’s gonna last. I’m just gonna let it be there, and I’m going to put my attention on my client.” This is what we teach students in the Rumination Reset.
We teach them how to have an attention on the thing they choose, not on the thing that anxiety chooses, but you in that moment pick, what is my focal point? And for me, it’s my client, their face, their mouth, what they’re saying, right? And I’m going to put my attention on that. Now, naturally, my brain is gonna be like, “But what about this, and what about that, and am I losing my mind, and am I going out of control,” and all the things.
And I’m gonna go, “I notice you. I’m gonna let you be there. I’m not gonna try and make you go away. I’m just going to bring my attention back to my client.” Then your brain is gonna go, “But Kimberly, this is dangerous. This is bad. What if you lose your mind in front of your client? What if you take your clothes off in front of your client?”
And I’m going to say, “Okay, thank you, brain, for that.” But we’re not gonna solve this right now. Right now I’m giving my attention to my client, and we are gonna do this over and over and over and over again until the session is over. And again, the goal isn’t to get that feeling to go away. The goal is to put my attention back on my client as many times as I can.
I don’t need to be perfect. This is not, um, like a, uh, something we need to score. It’s just, how many times can I bring my attention back? If it’s happening while I’m driving, whether I’m having obsessions or I’m having the derealization or depersonalization or panic, I’m gonna go, “Okay, I’m noticing these sensations.
I’m noticing this experience. I’m gonna put my attention onto driving.” Now let’s say my brain goes, “But Kimberley, what if you lose control and you run into the car next to you on the highway going 80 miles an hour?” And I’m gonna say, “I’m gonna allow that fear to be there. I’m gonna practice being uncertain, and I’m gonna bring my attention back to just staying between the lines on this road, even if the lines are going in and out and in and out and acting all warped.”
That’s how we practice attention control. Again, if you want to learn piece by piece how I do this, head over to cbtschool.com/reset, and I will teach you this one specific skill so that you, again, can choose what you put your attention on. That’s all we’re here to do. Now, one thing I didn’t mention along the way is when you’re having the fear that you’re losing your mind and when you’re having anxiety, it’s very easy to beat yourself up.
“What’s wrong with you? You’re so weird. Why does your brain do this? I hate my brain.” And I want you to practice not hating your brain. Your brain is just doing its best to protect you. Again, I’ll never know why my brain thinks it needs to protect me, because I’m in a session with a lovely, gorgeous, amazing human being.
There’s no danger. I know that cognitively and logically. But something deep in my brain has detected that, I don’t know, something’s dangerous, and it often will send it into this place. But it’s not a problem. I want to reinforce to you, this is not a problem, and I want you to stop treating it like it’s a problem.
And when you can do that, everything changes. I often have clients who have resisted derealization, depersonalization, the thoughts about losing their mind, their panic, and that feeling of losing control for decades. They have spent decades trying to control it, trying to make it go away, and when we play this paradoxical game where we’re like, “We’re actually not going to.
We’re just gonna let it be there. We’re gonna go soft and soggy like a wet piece of spaghetti when it comes, and we’re just gonna focus on the moment,” you will be… It’s, it’s almost re- I never want to sell here that this is, like, miracle work. I, I n- I hate that idea of people when they’re like, “I have the one cure for you for anxiety.”
Like, I think that that’s really, really dangerous language, and I don’t like to engage in that. But I will say that it is shocking to me how much a client’s or a student’s life I’ve seen change when they stop fighting their anxiety, when they stop fighting the sensations that they experience. That is really where it’s at, and that’s where I can see someone who has spent their life grasping and gripping and panicked to someone who is really quite free and has freedom and has a sense of mastery over this, okay?
Please, please be gentle with yourself. This is no fun. This is hard. This is really, really hard, you guys. I want to sort of really reinforce this is no fun. I’m just sending you so much love because it sucks. It really, really does. But I do want you to remember that, as always, I say it in every episode, today is a beautiful day to do this hard thing, to do this hard work, to do the freaking hard things, and I really want to remind you that avoidance and resistance is keeping you stuck, okay?
I love you guys. Thank you so much for being here. I know how valuable your time is. I know how much information is on the internet, and just the fact that you’ve chosen and trusted me with you and your beautiful brain makes me so, so grateful. Please do share this with anyone you think can benefit. I’m here to help you manage your anxiety better and have a better relationship with anxiety, and if we can achieve that together, it’ll make me so happy.
All right. As always, have a great day. I’ll see you in the next episode.
Please note that this podcast or any other resources from cbtschool.com should not replace professional mental health care. If you feel you would benefit, please reach out to a provider in your area. Have a wonderful day, and thank you for supporting cbtschool.com.
