Why 'Fixing Anxiety' Doesn't Work (And What To Do Instead)

Let me ask you something. What if the very effort you're putting into fixing your anxiety is the reason it keeps coming back? Think about it, my friends, day after day. You try, you search, you fight, you chase the next solution, and yet the cycle repeats. What if the real path forward doesn't look like what you've been taught at all? What if it feels like less control and more like something else entirely? Welcome to the Anxiety Guy Podcast where we delve deep into the heart of anxiety, providing you with the tools, insights, and inspiration to reclaim your life from the grips of fear and uncertainty. I'm your host Dennis Simsek, a former anxiety sufferer turned anxiety healer, and each week we will explore proven strategies, share personal stories, and create more than anxiety moments towards inner peace and empowerment. Get ready to break free from the chains of anxiety and step into a life filled with purpose, joy, and unshakable confidence. This is the Anxiety Guy Podcast and your path to liberation starts now. Before we dive deep into this important podcast episode, I want to remind you that if you're dealing with health anxiety and you are ready for step-by-step guidance, my number one rated health anxiety recovery program is available at anxietyguyprograms.com or through the link in the description. It's everything you need in one place, daily guidance, tools, and proven strategies to finally break the cycle. As worldwide have already gone through it, my friends, and you can too, again, that's anxietyguyprograms.com or just click the link in the description. Today we are focusing on living more than looking to fix parts of your anxiety. My friends, this topic is something that is a little bit confusing, and I want to share this topic from the perspective of someone who is deep in the anxiety patterns. Now when you tell someone to focus on living more, they're going, well, duh, of course I want to focus on living more. Do you think I actually want to be suffering with these thought patterns, these symptoms, these pain? No, of course not. Now that's a small part of us, that is the conscious side, but there's also that massive iceberg below what you can see, the subconscious mind body, who has trained itself so very well to stay in survival mode, not focus on living but focus on things that promote more perceived safety. Now I want to dive deep into some important points. I want to make sure that today you are clear on what it is you're going to focus on this week for your anxiety healing. The first thing to understand is that the brain is always looking to see if it needs to maintain its old associations and connections or change it based on repetition and feelings. Now this is an interesting one because what happens with anxiety is that we get a little bit excited when something goes well, right? Oh, I'm not thinking as catastrophically. My symptoms are not as strong, oh, what I'm starting could be that very thing that takes me to a place of deep healing and recovery, right? We get that initial feeling, but then two, three days later, the symptoms come back. The thought hits us even harder and we go, oh, what I was doing doesn't really work, therefore I have to keep searching for the answer. Now if you fall into the trap of thinking that you have to go back to the drawing board and start all over again, then you are living by the guidance and directives of your inner protector, your lower self instead, instead. If you go forward with what you know in your soul is going to work and you are hit with thought patterns, symptoms that tend to show up out of nowhere and you're going, why is this the case? I'm doing everything right. And you approach it with the idea of the inner protector will create defenses if I start to change things. It will. If you come at it with this anticipation, then you can see those defense mechanisms for what they really are, the fear of change. So you don't get caught up in the symptom. You don't get caught up in the thought. You remind yourself that the inner protector will, will come up with interesting, creative ways to try to pull you back into the addiction to suffering, right? This is key because too many of us are looking for what's going to work and not enough of us are coming at this with the proper mindset, the mindset that says if I'm going to approach something and I'm going to create new associations in my brain and I'm going to become a different person, then soon enough there will be defense mechanisms. There will be walls showing up. That's okay. That's part of the journey, right? Now secondly, fixing, fixing confirms that something is wrong to the brain, which keeps the fear, adrenaline, symptom cycle going, right? This was huge for me, guys, and I know it's big for you. You wake up in the morning, "Ooh, what do I need to fix?" "Oh, those thoughts, I don't, I don't want those thoughts. I need to get rid of them. Ooh, that symptom is still there. I'm back into fixing and getting rid of mode. Can you relate?" So we don't, we do not want to approach this healing process from the perspective of, "I need to fix." Because if you do, then the fixing never ends, and number two, you're always signaling to the brain that something is wrong, and if you're always signaling to the brain that something is wrong, it will maintain the adrenaline, it will maintain those stress hormones, it will maintain your symptoms, it will maintain your pain, physical pain, literally. So we leave that place of "I need to fix," and we move into the place of "I need to teach." You see the difference. There's the symptom, there's the thought. What kind of a safety signal can I send right now to start teaching my mind, teaching my body that this particular experience that I'm in right now waking up with my eyes open, it's safe, it's safe to wake up. Literally that's where we start, right? Because for a lot of people the moment they wake up, here we go, right? Anxiety, anxiety. So fixing, fixing confirms that something is wrong to the brain. This keeps the cycle going. Are you in fixing mode right now? Are you looking to fix every little thing, trying to micromanage every little aspect of your anxiety? Now this point's very important. Living feels vulnerable, my friends. Living feels vulnerable, I know. Since we have conditioned ourselves to believe that we must always be absorbing new information around healing and focusing on doing something for our suffering. But that vulnerable feeling is where growth happens. It's where the true healing happens. Because you already know what kind of inner results you will get if you continue to do what you have always done. You know what you're going to feel like. You know what you're going to think like. You know how your external results are going to go. It's the same feeling, the same results. But finding a certain degree of ease and trust in vulnerability will then give you new results. It's that the inner protector feels is way too different than what has been familiar. But my friends, those new results are exactly what you want. It's what you deserve. You know, when I share this approach with a lot of people, focusing on living more than looking to fix parts of your anxiety. It usually feels like a massive leap for a lot of people. Because they're trying to go from where they are to the end result within a few minutes. That's not the case. I'm literally talking about taking your shoes off, your socks off, going out to your backyard, eating some grass and walking for like a minute. That's the kind of living that I'm talking about. I'm not talking about taking a plane around the world. No, I'm not talking about that kind of living. I'm talking about teaching the brain. That's teaching the brain. 30 seconds here is teaching the brain. One minute here is teaching the brain. One minute 30 seconds over there is teaching the brain. It's these little moments throughout the day that rewire the brain back into safety. And yes, it may take a very long time before those symptoms subside, but you are not focused on how long it takes. You are focused on how you can send that safety signal and feel a sense of ease within vulnerability in the next 30 seconds. That's it, my friends, that's it. And the inner protector wants you to get caught up in results. It says it's not good enough. It's never going to be good enough. But your job is to realize that pretty much every unconscious thought you have is BS, literally. It is not something to follow or take seriously. It is literally noise. And when you get to the point where you realize that these ideas that are just coming in of my head are just noise, you start to see them from another perspective. They are not you, nor are they true. So what's the key? The key is to stop looking into ways you can consistently protect from the worst from happening and instead move in a direction that initially feels like it's too big of a leap. The inner protector will try to convince you that you aren't capable nor deserving of inner peace and new results in your life. This my friends is simply due to repetition and programming. So I want to say that no matter where you are right now, no matter where you live on the inside, a part of you can adopt this idea of focusing on living more than looking to fix parts of your anxiety. Stay with this today. Let it guide you and slowly, gently allow it to be your new attitude and mindset and approach to your life because you are going to get different results, they are going to be the kind of results that you always wanted. And I promise you again that you are deserving of this my friends. If this podcast episode spoke to you in any way, do me a favor. Please leave a positive rate and review specifically on apple podcast. It would help me so much to reach more people. And if you want to learn more about the health anxiety recovery program, if this is personally what you're dealing with right now, I have the solution for you at anxietyguideprograms.com. Head over there. The link is in the description and my friends remember that you are more than anxiety. Let's move forward. Let's do this together. We can and we are. Have a wonderful day. Bye-bye. The most powerful anxiety guide books on true anxiety recovery are now available on Amazon. Click up beyond anxiety and eth coping start healing and supercharge your healing journey today. Also visit www.thegenxietyguide.com to connect with Dennis and find the right online program for you. Remember, you are more than anxiety. See you in the next podcast episode.