Anxiety can feel overwhelming, consuming, and downright exhausting. But what’s the worst thing about it? In this episode of Ask Dr. Jodi, I’m breaking down why anxiety feels so overwhelming, the patterns that keep it going, and how you can stop it from taking over your life. We’ll explore how anxiety traps you in a cycle of fear and frustration, why it thrives on keeping you “bothered,” and the lies it tells to grab your attention. If you’ve ever felt stuck, powerless, or disconnected from your goals because of anxiety, this episode is for you. Let’s work together to demystify anxiety and take back control of your mind and body.
In this episode, we’re diving deep into the biology of anxiety, the lies it tells, and practical ways to reclaim your calm.
You’ll learn:
This episode is packed with actionable insights, relatable examples, and simple strategies to help you break free from anxiety and start living the calm, purposeful life you deserve.
✔ Understand Anxiety: Learn why anxiety feels so overwhelming and how it keeps you stuck.
✔ Break the Cycle: Discover tools to calm your nervous system and regain clarity.
✔ Empower Yourself: Shift from fear to grounded action with effective strategies.
✔ Be Kind to Yourself: Self-compassion is key to reducing anxiety and building trust in yourself.
✔ Take Back Control: Every moment is a new opportunity to choose calm over chaos.
Thank you so much for listening to Ask Dr. Jodi! If you enjoyed today’s episode, please take a moment to leave a five-star review on Apple Podcasts and share it with someone who needs inspiration or help to heal!
Biology of Anxiety Videos:
Understanding High Functioning Anxiety
Understanding Anxiety, The Biology of Fear Ep. 1:4 of Teen Anxiety Podcast
Overactive Amygdala? Understanding and Resetting Your Brain’s Anxiety System
Solving the Youth Mental Health Crisis: Teen Anxiety and Depression Help
Thank you so much for listening to Ask Dr. Jodi! If you enjoyed today’s episode, please take a moment to leave a five-star review on Apple Podcasts and share it with someone who needs inspiration or help to heal!
[00:00:00] Dr. Jodi Aman: Welcome, welcome. The worst thing about anxiety is what we're going to talk about in this episode of Ask Dr. Jodi. I am live every Monday at 8:00 PM and you could be on the show. You could sign up to be a guest, and that means that I could coach you live right on the show. You've seen some of my episodes, perhaps on my YouTube channel, or you've heard them on my podcast where I coach someone live, and you could be [00:00:30] anonymous.
[00:00:30] Dr. Jodi Aman: It could just be your voice on here. You could turn off your camera and we could talk about whatever's going on in your life. If you are on YouTube. You can ask me a question on YouTube. I think that I could get it. I don't have a producer on live with me. I'm on here by myself now. So I am going to try, but it should come through.
[00:00:51] Dr. Jodi Aman: you could ask me a question, but in the meantime, I'm just going to talk about some of the questions I've already gotten on YouTube in the [00:01:00] last couple months. So many questions, especially about anxiety because we are all feeling anxiety, and anxiety is the worst. Okay? So the worst thing about anxiety is the anxiety because it feels so awful.
[00:01:17] Dr. Jodi Aman: It feels so awful. When I was prepping for this video and I was thinking of all the, the worst thing about the, the th like the worth, worst thing about anxiety, I [00:01:30] kept wanting to make a list. So this is more like the worst, the worst. Things about anxiety, right? Plural. The worst things about anxiety instead of the worst.
[00:01:42] Dr. Jodi Aman: The worst thing about anxiety, because anxiety itself keeps you trapped. Anxiety wants you to suffer, and you do. When you have anxiety, you suffer. So probably the worst thing about anxiety is the feelings that you feel. [00:02:00] And it's a shame. It's such a shame because the feelings that you feel when you have anxiety perpetuates the anxiety.
[00:02:08] Dr. Jodi Aman: I know that sounds obvious, but if you watch by other videos about the biology of anxiety or unrigging your amygdala, those episodes will really explain the biology. Of what's going on because it, you have to demystify it. You have to understand anxiety so that it doesn't have the mystery.
[00:02:25] Dr. Jodi Aman: Because when anxiety has a mystery, you feel more [00:02:30] powerless. When anxiety is like a mystery, it's like, why do I have it? What did, where did it come from? Why do I have it right now? And those questions make us feel more out of control, which perpetuates the anxiety. They upset us. They upset us because we feel powerless.
[00:02:50] Dr. Jodi Aman: We don't know something. It feels out of control to us. There's no order. It's chaotic, and so we wanna get orders, so we're trying to figure out why we have anxiety, but [00:03:00]that is a total distraction for helping us get better. Not only that, it is it a distraction, but it is also perpetuated anxiety because this is.
[00:03:10] Dr. Jodi Aman: This is probably the top, the top of the worst things about anxiety is this. It needs you to be bothered and it is so bothersome, right? Anxiety needs you to be bothered. I used to say that anxiety needs you to be scared because it needs you to be afraid to perpetuate the amygdala, to keep [00:03:30] pumping those hormones out with that adrenaline and norepinephrine and.
[00:03:35] Dr. Jodi Aman: It needs you to be upset, so it knows it's gotta protect you. It needs you to feel like something's outta control. Then it will keep pumping those hormones out. I used to say it needs you to, it needs you to be scared, but really it needs you to be bothered because. You could be frustrated, you could be mad at it.
[00:03:59] Dr. Jodi Aman: You could be [00:04:00] frustrated with yourself. You could be embarrassed, you could be mad. You're ruining everybody's time. There's so many upsetness that anxiety brings with it, and all of those things create more adrenaline. Create your, tell your brain to release more adrenaline because this is the thing. If you're frustrated, if you're confused, if things are weird, if you feel uncomfortable, if you are frustrated or mad or angry, guess [00:04:30] what?
[00:04:30] Dr. Jodi Aman: All adrenaline, all of those things are adrenaline, and so if you feel any of those things, sometimes you don't have anxiety when you're feeling anger because it's going out in the anger. We feel empowered by the anger in some way, so we don't feel that powerlessness and that confusion that anxiety brings.
[00:04:50] Dr. Jodi Aman: So same hormone, different meaning. Also thrill is adrenaline too, right? If you go fast or some people like to do extreme sports because I [00:05:00] love that feeling of adrenaline. Same people might have anxiety in different contexts, same adrenaline, but they. Think about it differently. 'cause one, they know why and they're doing it on purpose and it feels great.
[00:05:15] Dr. Jodi Aman: And the other one, they don't know why and they feel outta control and they feel like something's wrong. And then they get really worried because they can't figure out what's wrong. 'cause it's anxiety. It's just hormones when you're, when they're not, when they're totally safe. So the worst thing about anxiety, [00:05:30] the worst thing is that it needs you to be bothered.
[00:05:33] Dr. Jodi Aman: And it is so bothersome. It needs you to be bothered, and it is so bothersome. Think about that. Think about what then you could do to get rid of anxiety. Yeah, you're working with me here. Don't be bothered. Now, that's really hard. Like I said, it's really hard because anxiety's so bothersome that it's hard not to be bothered by it because.
[00:05:59] Dr. Jodi Aman: It [00:06:00] bothers the heck outta you. It is so upsetting and it feels so awful. But if we think about it differently and we take the mystery out and we say, oh, I know why my adrenaline went off. This makes sense. I feel it in my body. Okay. Let me just do this while, while my adrenaline's going down, that would, you'd have a completely different experience of anxiety if you thought that way when you felt your adrenaline symptoms.
[00:06:24] Dr. Jodi Aman: And when I say adrenaline symptoms, we call that anxiety. We call all of those feelings, all of [00:06:30] those symptoms of the adrenaline, more adrenaline in our blood. You could have a little adrenaline in your blood or you could have a lot of adrenaline in your blood stream and that means you're like a little bit anxious or like a lot.
[00:06:41] Dr. Jodi Aman: And in def con five panic mode. There's all kinds of ways in between, and people call all of those things, different things to them. They have different words for those. Some is, sometimes it's nervousness. That's like the basic, that's not too bad. Maybe your stomach's a little bit upset. And then [00:07:00] when they're, when they're like crying and can't breathe, that's a all huge panic attack, right?
[00:07:08] Dr. Jodi Aman: And anything in between. And when you have adrenaline. Yes, your heart rate goes up, your breathing goes up 'cause it's trying to get oxygen to the large muscles. You are get really focused. Your brain starts trying to solve problems. If there is no problems, it's going over and over and over the non-pro trying to figure it out and, and like the what [00:07:30] if and, but maybe why am I thinking this?
[00:07:32] Dr. Jodi Aman: I must be thinking this for some reason. Making up. A problem that it has to solve because it's trying to solve a problem to keep you safe. It's I don't find a problem. I better find one quick to keep Jodi safe. That's what my brain would do, and that's what your brain would do. Put your name in there, obviously.
[00:07:50] Dr. Jodi Aman: Okay, so here we go. Here we go. What other worse things about anxiety are there? It's a big fat liar. [00:08:00] Anxiety is a big fat liar. It needs to get your attention. And so to get your attention, it uses lies and mostly lies about something that you care about or it won't work. It wouldn't grab your attention if it was lying about something you didn't care about.
[00:08:18] Dr. Jodi Aman: If it was like that leaf is going to come and slap you in the face, like you don't care about that, so it's not going to work. Wouldn't, that wouldn't be something that you would perseverate about or get hooked on [00:08:30] or think about or worry about. But if it was like someone you love is going to have cancer, that is upsetting.
[00:08:38] Dr. Jodi Aman: That's something that you would worry about. That you would care about. And so anxiety could get in there about that. So it lies to get your attention. And it sounds a little bit like. It could be true someday. It could happen. And so we, we logically think no, it's not the truth now, but it's a [00:09:00] possibility.
[00:09:01] Dr. Jodi Aman: And because it's a possibility, we think that justifies being anxious about it, but it's still alive anxiety. 'cause it's not on right, not right now. That's not going on right now. You have a fear about something that might be happening in the future, but there's a million different opportunity different.
[00:09:18] Dr. Jodi Aman: Scenarios that could possibly happen in your future. And you're not thinking about all of them. A lot of them are very scary, but you're thinking about that one. And that's how you know anxiety's lying. Because if it told you [00:09:30] everything and it couldn't, you just don't have enough time in a day for anxiety to make you afraid of anything that could happen in your future, anything at all.
[00:09:40] Dr. Jodi Aman: And you, you would be upset about it. There's too many things. You can't, and so usually it just works with one and it works, and so it doesn't have to worry about it and doesn't have to add to it, and just keeps going over and over and over and over and over. It lies to get your attention even about something that's a [00:10:00] possibility.
[00:10:00] Dr. Jodi Aman: It's a lie because it's not happening. Now, you're trying to solve what you do if that happened or how to prevent it, but it's not a problem. You see how you're trying to solve a unsolvable problem. Because you can't check it and see if it worked or not. You're going to keep going over it and over and over it, it's not solved yet.
[00:10:19] Dr. Jodi Aman: Even if you come up with a plan, then you have to make another plan, then you to look at the plan again, because it's not solvable, because it's not there to check it and see if it works. You know what I [00:10:30] mean? So that's what happens to us. It's not, when I say you, you make up problems. I'm not saying, oh, you're making this up.
[00:10:39] Dr. Jodi Aman: Our brain does that, and they're, they're problems that we care about, and so they hook us. That's what our minds do. So it's not like you did it because there's something wrong with you, or you're weak, or you, you're negative, or No. This is what our minds do. We evolved to solve problems to keep ourself [00:11:00] safe.
[00:11:01] Dr. Jodi Aman: So when your adrenaline goes off. Your nervous system goes off, your, your sympathetic nervous system goes off and your adrenaline floods your body. Your body's okay, are we in danger? And your mind, your prefrontal cortex is I don't see any danger, but I gotta figure out where it is. 'cause I feel it.
[00:11:19] Dr. Jodi Aman: So it's going to find it. It just finds it. It's not you or you're weak. It could happen to anybody. It's not only weak people or some people are wired this way. They have anxiety. [00:11:30] We all have a sympathetic nervous system, but it's the meaning that we make. So it really depends on the rest of our context of our life in that moment and in our history, whether that sympathetic nervous system.
[00:11:45] Dr. Jodi Aman: Trigger, which we all have, if that turns into anxiety, not or not. And when I say anxiety, anxiety is the leftover adrenaline symptoms when you're not in danger. So I define anxiety as the [00:12:00] leftover adrenaline symptoms, like the feelings of adrenaline and what it does to your body when you're not in danger, including that negative rumination about some problem.
[00:12:12] Dr. Jodi Aman: I define anxiety that way because I want it to be totalized as something that you do not need, because we get confused. We think that, oh it helps me sometimes. It's protecting me. It's making me vigilant, so if something bad happened, I would be prepared. No, anxiety does [00:12:30]not protect you, not the way I'm defining it.
[00:12:32] Dr. Jodi Aman: It does not protect you. Common sense makes you wear a helmet. Wear a seatbelt. That's not anxiety. That's common sense. That's knowing, that's protecting yourself. Those are skills, those are not, that's not anxiety. Anxiety's not a skill. Anxiety is the leftover fear response symptoms, like the leftover adrenaline symptoms on your body, the physical ones and the emotional ones and the mental ones.
[00:12:58] Dr. Jodi Aman: When you're not in danger, [00:13:00] you could definitely get rid of it. It's not helping you. This is one of the biggest lies of anxiety is that I'm protecting you. Why would you get rid of something that's protecting you? We're not going to get rid of our sympathetic nervous system because if we were in danger, we need that stuff.
[00:13:15] Dr. Jodi Aman: We need to be super human and, and. Pull a car off somebody. It's really an amazing system that we have that could do that. But we want to be able to stop it when we [00:13:30]don't need it, which is like 98% of the time our nervous system goes off. For some of us who, who experience a lot of anxiety, it's more often, but 98% of the time.
[00:13:43] Dr. Jodi Aman: You don't need it. You don't need that fear. I yeah, I have a friend who used to tell me that 98% of the time, so just thinking about her. Okay, so what else is one of the worst things about anxiety? I. It's consuming, it consumes you, [00:14:00] right? So it's taking you away from your goals and the things that you want for your life.
[00:14:05] Dr. Jodi Aman: It takes you away because it consumes you. It takes all of your attention with those lies that it tells. And, we we're, we're so busy asking ourself, is this real? Is this something I have to worry about? What if though, what if it, it mu It could, it could, right? It's so consuming. It's like a beacon for our attention.
[00:14:23] Dr. Jodi Aman: And so there's nothing wrong with you. Because you pay attention to anxiety and you're like, everyone's fine. But me, I'm the only [00:14:30] one, first of all, no. So many people are experiencing this and, and are really overwhelmed and upset by it. But this is the difference. When, I remember when I was really in my, I've written some books about anxiety.
[00:14:44] Dr. Jodi Aman: I write about my own story and you could actually look up. My story, my anxiety story on my YouTube channel, and you could find it, but I tell my story in both of my books here. You want anxiety Zero and then anxiety. I'm so done with you. These books are, this is [00:15:00]for adults. I wrote it first and then this is for teens.
[00:15:03] Dr. Jodi Aman: But parents and educators and counselors are reading both of these books because it really helps them help the people that they love. I tell my story and when I was really in the throes of anxiety and it was so bad, I, I was in restaurants, I couldn't even go to restaurants. I had to leave and I wouldn't go most of the time 'cause my anxiety came really bad in the evening.
[00:15:23] Dr. Jodi Aman: But I was looking around and I was like, how could people like be here? Aren't they [00:15:30] afraid of dying? Like I aren't they afraid of dying? And I realized, yeah, if they thought about it. They're just not thinking about it. And I was just thinking about it all the time. That's all I thought about. It was so consuming.
[00:15:44] Dr. Jodi Aman: And other people, they would, if they thought about it or was imminent or something like that, they would be in panic too. That's what our bodies do. But I was thinking about it all the time. There's this one saying, and I, I am not going to get it because I don't [00:16:00] know, and I don't know who said it, but it was, it was like, this is the meaning of it anyway. I don't know what the saying is, but if you have anxiety, like you die again and again, and again, and again and again. And if you're not afraid, you only die once. I was like, that sounds a lot better than what I'm doing. And so I, I aimed to get there and I figured it out and, and then.
[00:16:23] Dr. Jodi Aman: For the last couple decades, I've been helping all of my clients and all of my viewers and my [00:16:30] listeners to get rid of their anxiety because anxiety is not a life sentence. You do not have to stay there. You can get rid of it as long as you understand it. And I know I'm not going too much into the biology here.
[00:16:40] Dr. Jodi Aman: So if you wanna look up some of my other videos, I will put the cards up in the, up in the corner. You could see some titles to my other videos, and I'll attach the ones on the biology. To this video for you. So one of the other worst things about anxiety, last one, and then I'll tell you a couple little tips.
[00:16:59] Dr. Jodi Aman: One of my, some of my [00:17:00] favorite tips, but I think you're getting some tips here and you will from those other biology videos as well. Okay. So it makes you think that you're losing your mind. This is so often a question. It's like I'm, that people give me, it's they feel like they're going off some insanity cliff, and they're so afraid they're holding on so tight to whatever.
[00:17:22] Dr. Jodi Aman: Understanding the chaos or, or solving those unsolvable problems, they're just holding onto that because they feel if I don't go [00:17:30] there, I'm going to fall off this insanity cliff and never be myself again. That's what anxiety feels like. It feels like you're going to fall off that insanity cliff. You're just going to lose your mind.
[00:17:39] Dr. Jodi Aman: You're going to be insane, and that is a very scary idea. So of course, it bothers you and it's going to perpetuate the anxiety. Nobody loses their mind from a panic attack. Even if even if someone has so much, so much anxiety that they feel a [00:18:00] little bit like disorganized or loser concentration that comes back when adrenaline is so high.
[00:18:08] Dr. Jodi Aman: And sometimes for some people this happens. I, I've seen it very, very, very, very rarely is, they get a little bit, little bit confused short term if they're in a really stressful situation and their anxiety's really high, and then I've seen them recover and get back to normal. But even during that time, their [00:18:30] rational, they can understand, they know what's going on.
[00:18:33] Dr. Jodi Aman: They could function. People function. They could function. You could function. So you're not going to lose your mind. You might a little bit be like, wait, is that real? Am I doing this? Okay. There there's like a lot of self-doubt. So much self-doubt is preoccupying, but you're still there. You're not losing yourself at all. That's what I mean. I don't mean to scare anybody with that idea. It's so rare and they're still there. If I'm talking to the person, [00:19:00] they're still rational and they can still understand. What's going on and our functioning like could drive themselves to my office.
[00:19:07] Dr. Jodi Aman: So it's not something that you have to worry about. All right? So what you wanna do to get better is we wanna take the mystery out. So definitely learn the biology of anxiety from my other videos. Definitely really understand what's going on so that you could do these two things to feel better. One is not be [00:19:30] bothered.
[00:19:30] Dr. Jodi Aman: Not be bothered. You have to somehow, at least if you fake it to your make, be like, okay, there's the anxiety. I, I knew you'd come back. I could feel you. Yeah. There you are. My, I could feel you under my skin. All right. I understand. I'm hungry. It's hot. I, I almost get hit by a car. I'm totally fine.
[00:19:48] Dr. Jodi Aman: Thank you so much, amygdala. If I needed you, that would be great, but I don't need you right now. Have a seat. I'm busy. Number one is not be bothered. If you can do that, if you could practice that, it gets better and better and [00:20:00] better. It gets easier and easier and easier. But if you demystify anxiety and understand anxiety, that gets really easy to do, to not be bothered by it Next.
[00:20:10] Dr. Jodi Aman: You want to take your mind off it. It wants to consume you. It wants to take all of your attention. It wants you to focus, focus, focus on the anxiety, and we need you to engage your brain in something else. It's hard to get something out. You need to replace it with something. You need to [00:20:30] switch your attention onto something really engaging, really interesting.
[00:20:35] Dr. Jodi Aman: So have some projects going, have some fictional books going, especially if you're in a really huge state of anxiety. Like sometimes we have an episode where anxiety's it takes up a lot of the day in that kind of episode. If you're having an anxiety episode like that, they do not last, but the quickest way to get out of there is to get [00:21:00] some really engaging projects going on.
[00:21:02] Dr. Jodi Aman: What happens when people are in those episodes? They pull back. From life. They take off work, they stop doing stuff, they stop going out, they stop going to social things because they're like, I gotta figure out my anxiety. And they stay home. All of their attention is going to the anxiety that's just makes it worse.
[00:21:21] Dr. Jodi Aman: Just makes it worse. You want to engage in something and when somebody's in a really big state and their mind's hooked and they just [00:21:30] are having trouble getting out of it, I'm like, four projects. I want you to do two things at once. Listen to a book, clean out a closet, same time a really engaging fictional story.
[00:21:40] Dr. Jodi Aman: Get out of your mind to get into somebody else's story. Clean your closet out. And we don't wanna do that. We don't have the attention span to do that. We don't care. The anxiety takes our full priority, and so you just have to try with little stuff to engage your mind. So you might have to [00:22:00] start getting into a book.
[00:22:01] Dr. Jodi Aman: Sometimes books take a little bit to get into, so it's really hard if you have anxiety. So take a walk while you're starting the book. Take a walk with somebody or something. Take a walk and talk to somebody. Be doing something really easy. Clean up one drawer instead of a whole closet. Maybe it's just one drawer.
[00:22:19] Dr. Jodi Aman: Clean off the counters. Something little that you could do while you're starting the book, just to get yourself engaged in something else. And then it [00:22:30] starts to get easier and easier and easier. The less time you're giving anxiety, the more time you're there building confidence back up. You're back to yourself again.
[00:22:38] Dr. Jodi Aman: You feel like yourself again, and that confidence is going to help you engage in other things and more things and concentrate again, and the anxiety's going to go down that's what I want you to do. So the worst thing about anxiety is taking all of your attention and it's keeping you from doing things that you wanna do in your life.
[00:22:57] Dr. Jodi Aman: I have a lot for you. I have my books. You [00:23:00] could get, I also have an online anxiety program. It's called Anxiety Free Me. I'm going to link to that also up there, so you could get that if you want to. But I'm here for you. I also have my Accelerate Group. I meet every other Tuesday. I have a little bit of space in that group for the next couple people that wanna sign up.
[00:23:18] Dr. Jodi Aman: And I would love to assist you in being that person that you wanna be. And being open and free and happy and joyful. But you could also come on my show for live coaching [00:23:30] or work with me privately. That is also an option I would love to help. Come on over to my website, jody amen.com or jody amen.com/live if you wanna see.
[00:23:42] Dr. Jodi Aman: If you wanna sign up for updates about the show and get the topic ahead of time, or if you wanna sign up to be coached live, I am live every Monday at 8:00 PM on YouTube. So if you're listening to this on the podcast, you could come on YouTube and watch me live and participate in the [00:24:00] show. I would love to have you.
[00:24:02] Dr. Jodi Aman: All right, everyone. I will see you next week.