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If you're struggling with panic disorder, health anxiety, OCD, GAD, or other anxiety issues you've may have encountered online content that references Stoicism, warrior philosophy, and Marcus Aurelius. The message: master your emotions, be tough, control your fear through discipline and suffering.

But that's not what Marcus Aurelius was actually writing about.

In this episode, I dig into what Marcus actually wrote in his Meditations—his personal diary that accidentally survived 2,500 years. When you read his actual words, you see a man repeatedly struggling with the same issues: getting out of bed, dealing with difficult people, managing anger. The repetition isn't proof of mastery. It's evidence of practice.

For people with anxiety disorders, the modern misinterpretation of Stoicism can be harmful. Panic disorder, OCD, health anxiety, and GAD are all fueled by attempts to control internal experiences. The therapeutic approaches that work—acceptance and commitment therapy, exposure therapy, mindfulness—work because they teach psychological flexibility, not control.

Real courage isn't "I don't feel fear." Real courage is "I feel afraid AND I'm doing this anyway."

Topics covered:
- What Marcus Aurelius actually wrote (specific passages from Meditations)
- Why the "warrior approach" doesn't work for anxiety disorders
- The masculine shame trap that keeps men stuck
- What Stoicism really teaches about control
- Why flexibility beats toughness in anxiety recovery

Resources mentioned: The Meditations by Marcus Aurelius (Modern Library translation)

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The Disordered Guide to Health Anxiety is here

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For full show notes on this episode:

https://theanxioustruth.com/333

Support The Anxious Truth: If you find the podcast helpful and want to support my work, you can buy me a coffee. Other ways to support my work like buying a book or signing up for a low cost workshop can be found on my website. None of this is never required, but always appreciated!

Interested in doing therapy with me? For more information on working with me directly to overcome your anxiety, follow this link.

Disclaimer: The Anxious Truth is not therapy or a replacement for therapy. Listening to The Anxious Truth does not create a therapeutic relationship between you and the host or guests of the podcast. Information here is provided for psychoeducational purposes. As always, when you have questions about your own well-being, please consult your mental health and/or medical care providers. If you are having a mental health crisis, always reach out immediately for in-person help.

Send in a question or comment via text.

Anxious people love coping skills and coping strategies. Everybody loves to cope. But today we're going to talk about how coping can go off the rails and become part of the problem instead of part of the solution.

When you're dealing with chronic anxiety or an anxiety disorder, coping strategies can actually backfire. Every time you frantically reach for your grounding techniques or breathing exercises because you desperately need to calm down, you might be reinforcing the belief that your internal state is dangerous and must be controlled at all costs. If you've been stuck in the trigger-cope-trigger-cope cycle for months or years and you're still terrified of the next episode, something isn't working.

This episode breaks down the difference between internally and externally generated anxiety, and why that matters when we talk about coping. We'll look at how coping can create conditional okayness that shrinks your life, and we'll explore what it might look like to use coping techniques as brave experiments instead of frightened control attempts.

This is a challenging topic, but if you've been wondering why all your coping skills don't seem to be moving you forward, this episode might help you understand what's actually happening.

For full show notes on this episode:

https://theanxioustruth.com/332

Support The Anxious Truth: If you find the podcast helpful and want to support my work, you can buy me a coffee. Other ways to support my work like buying a book or signing up for a low cost workshop can be found on my website. None of this is never required, but always appreciated!

Interested in doing therapy with me? For more information on working with me directly to overcome your anxiety, follow this link.

Disclaimer: The Anxious Truth is not therapy or a replacement for therapy. Listening to The Anxious Truth does not create a therapeutic relationship between you and the host or guests of the podcast. Information here is provided for psychoeducational purposes. As always, when you have questions about your own well-being, please consult your mental health and/or medical care providers. If you are having a mental health crisis, always reach out immediately for in-person help.

Send in a question or comment via text.

Children with OCD and anxiety disorders have the same diagnoses as adults, but their experience looks and feels different in important ways. In this episode, I sit down with child anxiety and OCD specialist Natasha Daniels to explore those differences and what they reveal about the fundamental nature of these disorders.

When you ask a young child why they're doing a ritual, they often can't tell you. They report vague discomfort or say "it just feels weird if I don't." Adult brains, on the other hand, build elaborate narratives about danger, responsibility, and catastrophic consequences. This difference isn't random—it reflects how our brains develop the capacity for abstract thinking and meaning-making as we mature. Children operate in the realm of concrete experience, while adults layer complex interpretations onto those same uncomfortable sensations and intrusive thoughts.

This developmental perspective reveals something crucial about anxiety recovery: the core problem isn't the thoughts and sensations themselves, but the meaning-making machinery of the adult brain that treats every uncomfortable internal experience as significant and predictive. If children can learn to overcome OCD by tolerating discomfort without an attached narrative, what does that tell us about the stories we tell ourselves as adults?

This episode isn't just for parents supporting anxious kids. If you're an adult struggling with OCD or anxiety and find yourself stuck because the perceived risk feels too real to challenge, this conversation may help you see your experience in a new light. The narrative feels compelling and true, but as Natasha and I discuss, that's just a function of how human brains develop—not evidence of actual danger.

Natasha Daniels is a childhood anxiety and OCD therapist with two decades of experience and specialized training in treating pediatric anxiety disorders. Find Natasha here:

https://atparentingcommunity.com/

Find full show notes and more links to Natasha's work at

https://theanxioustruth.com/331

Support The Anxious Truth: If you find the podcast helpful and want to support my work, you can buy me a coffee. Other ways to support my work like buying a book or signing up for a low cost workshop can be found on my website. None of this is never required, but always appreciated!

Interested in doing therapy with me? For more information on working with me directly to overcome your anxiety, follow this link.

Disclaimer: The Anxious Truth is not therapy or a replacement for therapy. Listening to The Anxious Truth does not create a therapeutic relationship between you and the host or guests of the podcast. Information here is provided for psychoeducational purposes. As always, when you have questions about your own well-being, please consult your mental health and/or medical care providers. If you are having a mental health crisis, always reach out immediately for in-person help.