Anxiety Recovery ... When You're Calm (Episode 158)
From Disordered: Anxiety Help by Josh Fletcher and Drew Linsalata
June 5, 2026 · 37 min
About this episode
The episode discusses the challenges of maintaining anxiety recovery during calm periods and the importance of living fully rather than monitoring for anxiety's return.
What do you do when your anxiety finally quietens down for a few days? For many of us, a calm day triggers a completely new set of anxious habits. We treat the absence of panic as a fragile victory, freezing in place so we do not ruin it, or constantly checking around the corner to see if the fear is returning. -- Want to ask questions about this episode? We're hanging out in the Disordered Community Space: https://disordered.fm/community --- In this episode, we address why the work of anxiety recovery continues even when you are feeling calm. When we spend our quiet days monitoring our internal state or scanning for threats, we signal to the brain that anxiety is still an active danger. True desensitization and psychological flexibility require us to drop the checking behaviors, turn off the comparison engine, and actually live our lives on the days we feel good. We also share some fantastic "Did It Anyway" stories from our community, including a listener who navigated relationship OCD (ROCD) all the way to her wedding day, and another who broke a cycle of winter avoidance to go out for tacos. The Comparison Engine: Why constantly evaluating whether today is better or…
People in this episode
Hosts: Josh Fletcher, Drew Linsalata
Topics covered
- anxiety recovery
- calmness
- psychological flexibility
- checking behaviors
- desensitization
- relationship OCD
- avoidance
Keywords
- anxiety
- recovery
- calm
- checking behaviors
- psychological flexibility
- relationship OCD
- avoidance
Mentioned in this episode
Organizations: Disordered Community Space
More episodes of Disordered: Anxiety Help
- Improving .... Or Optimizing Your Health and Wellness (Episode 159) · June 12, 2026 · 38 min
- Is Distraction a Compulsion In Anxiety Recovery? (Episode 157) · May 29, 2026 · 40 min
- Asking For Anxiety Help (Episode 156) · May 22, 2026 · 39 min
- Taboo OCD Themes (Episode 155) · May 15, 2026 · 47 min
- Anxiety Recovery: When You're Trying To "Win" (Episode 154) · May 1, 2026 · 42 min
- Let Me Tell You How I Feel (Episode 153) · April 24, 2026 · 40 min
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