How To Get Rid Of Anxiety | Spoiler Alert: Don’t | Emetophobia Recovery

Added: 2026-05-05

[00:00:00]You know what's so crazy to me is that I did talk therapy for 10 years and I feel like the focus was constantly on let's get rid of anxiety. You feel bad from anxiety, let's get rid of it. Okay, what can we remove from your life so that you don't feel anxiety? It was like a non-stop escape from experiencing the discomfort of anxiety. Well, I don't like public speaking, so I'm just not going to do it then because I don't want to experience the anxiety. Well, certain social situations really bother me and I just don't want to deal with the anxiety, so I'm just not going to do it.

[00:00:28]Having that conversation is going to bring me anxiety. So, I'll just not do it. Taking that trip with my kids is going to be super hard and bring so much anxiety. So, let's just not take a trip with the kids. It's not worth it. It's not worth experiencing the discomfort of the anxiety. You're experiencing so much anxiety. Let's just give you some ashwagandha. Have you tried taking an oatl? Well, let's try another SSRI. Have you tried yoga? Make sure you're exercising every single day. Ooh, you're not getting enough sleep. You should start sleeping more. And I'm not saying that all of these things are totally bad, but my focus was to escape from the anxiety. I watched my world get smaller and smaller because I kept removing things from my life that caused me to feel anxiety. I also watched myself become more of a baby. I couldn't tolerate life anymore. Everything triggered me, so I would just escape it.

[00:01:11]Sorry, that makes me uncomfortable, so we're not going to do that. I don't really like what you just said, so I don't want to have this conversation. I just need to remove everything toxic from my life. I became less and less able to tolerate anxiety. And the less and less able I was to tolerate anxiety, the stronger and stronger the anxiety became. I became debilitated by it. And I was removing situations that gave it to me. So that's really interesting. It wasn't until I shifted my goal that I started to be able to live my life again. I started realizing that anxiety is not that dangerous. It doesn't have to be. I don't have to let it shrink my life. I don't have to let it dictate my decisions. I don't have to think that it's the worst feeling in the world.

[00:01:53]When I stopped resisting it, it stopped persisting. When I just let it be there and lived anyway, I really started living. We spend so much time and effort and money to try to get rid of anxiety.

[00:02:05]You notice it's still there. Anxiety is a way for our bodies to know that when there is a bear chasing us, we need to effing run. But there's not always a bear chasing us. We've trained it the wrong way. We need to reframe how we see anxiety. And once you do that, you can see that you can get back to living.

[00:02:21]You'll be tougher. You'll be happier and you'll feel like you can handle life.

[00:02:24]You don't need to get rid of anxiety.