Ep 20 - How Long Does Anxiety Recovery Take

In this episode, Megan Devito tackles the question "How long does anxiety recovery take?" 

She shares her personal experience with overcoming generalized anxiety disorder and offers practical advice for listeners to help them feel confident and calm

Key Takeaways:

• Recovery is a process, not a destination. It takes time and consistent effort.
• There will be ups and downs, but these are normal and part of the growth process.
• You are capable of recovering, no matter how long you've struggled with anxiety.
• Recovery is personal, different for everyone and achievable!

Here are some specific points listeners will learn:

• How to develop beliefs and self-confidence for recovery.
• Why anxiety recovery is like a stock market graph, not a steady decline.
• The importance of becoming familiar with your anxiety symptoms.
• How to use your anxiety as a notification system for taking action.
• The power of finding support during recovery.

Thanks for listening!

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Transcript

Welcome to the More Than Anxiety Podcast. I'm Megan Devito, and I am the Life Coach for women and teenagers living with anxiety, who want more out of life. I'm here to help you create a life you love to live, where anxiety isn't holding you back. Get ready for a light hearted approach to managing anxiety through actionable steps, a lot of truth talk and inspiration to take action so you walk away feeling confident in your ability to live a life that sets your heart on fire. Let's do This. 
Welcome to Episode 20 Of the More Than Anxiety Podcast. I'm recording this episode in early January of 2023, after I've had entirely too much coffee and I didn't realize that until I sat down to record this so if I talk faster than normal, I'm just gonna go ahead and apologize now. I tend to talk pretty fast anyway. But I've had a lot of coffee, I'm feeling good and I feel focused, which is probably a bonus for you in this episode. I wanted to tell you about a post that just popped up on my Facebook memories of a trip that I took 14 years ago to the Dominican Republic. We went on an adult's only trip over Christmas and New Years. And I remember so clearly how my life was going at this point. I was in the middle of really serious postpartum anxiety after the birth of our youngest daughter, who was about three and a half months old then; she's 14, now. I was a mess and it was just so strange to look back at the picture of this gorgeous beach and to remember how paralyzed and hopeless I felt by anxiety at that point, but also to look at the picture and remember how much I loved the Dominican people and the trip at the very same time, I shared my story on Facebook, and someone had commented about coming full circle, and it is so incredibly true. My anxiety story is really long and complicated mess and maybe yours is as well. What I can tell you from January 2023 Is that I am not that person anymore. My thoughts have changed, my beliefs about who I am and what I am have changed. My very DNA has changed and it did not take 14 years. In this episode, I'm going to do my best to answer the question, 'how long does recovery take' based off of my own journey with health anxiety, and off of the journeys of the people who I coach or have coached in the past. I think you'll be really surprised at what you learn. So let's go ahead and dive in. 
So the problem is, when we're talking about how long anxiety recovery will take, things like 'I've been trying so hard for so long, and it's just getting worse.' Or maybe you absolutely know all of the things that work and you try them here and there, but you still feel anxious. Or maybe you've been to therapy and your therapist has said, 'This is what you need to do,' and you try it for a couple of days and give up. Maybe you've seen tons of great advice on social media, or you've actually Googled something that has sounded helpful and not scared you and you try it for however many days, but it's not fast enough for you, so you stop. Maybe you fight off the feelings and you're trying to out think your anxiety, but anxiety it isn't rational. It's about how you feel, and irrational thoughts about how you feel, and that's not working. Maybe you're inconsistent with your plan, or you're really too scared to go all in, because what if it doesn't work? If recovery isn't fast enough for you to see the results right away, and you give up, no wonder you're not getting anywhere. Recovery, even though it can happen in an instant, is a process. So what needs to happen instead is for you to develop the beliefs and the belief in yourself that you can recover. You have to believe it first without putting a timeline on how long it will take compared to what somebody on the internet says, or compared to what I say, or compared to what your brain is telling you should happen. You also have to let go of what recovery looks like, because it's going to be different for you than it is for someone else, but it is going to happen! 
Recovery, if you can imagine this... I think a lot of people want to see some like beautiful downhill ski slope for example. Let's say, I want to slide out of this and I just want it to be this like graceful dive to the bottom of the hill. But it's really more like the stock market. Imagine the stock market graph you see it goes up and down, and up and down. It's very jagged and that change with the stock market happens over time. If you look at a one day sale snippet of what happened on the stock market, you might think, 'oh my gosh, we're in so much trouble,' but if you expand that graph out over the course of a year or two years, suddenly you notice that, oh, well, that's not that's pretty normal. That looks normal. It's always going up. It's just has its ups and downs throughout the day. You can feel incredible for a month, then rotten for a couple of days. That's Okay. Life is 50/50. And having a bad day, or feeling stressed or anxious is not a problem. It's another chance to practice your resilience, to grow your confidence in your ability to move forward when you feel anxious or stressed. Because as I've said before in past episodes, anxiety and stress are part of life; it is very normal. The fact that you feel anxious means that your brain and your body are working just a little too well. When we talk about a bad day, a bad day is really only bad. Because of what you think about your day. Someone else could have the exact same day and call it good. So if you are feeling particularly low, because you got a flat tire on the way to work, and you forgot your lunch, I want to offer a mindset flipped here. What if that flat tire kept you from being in a wreck? What if that flat tire was better than the tire blowing out on the freeway? What if you forgot your lunch, and you ended up with something better at work? It's all in how you look at it and this can go for silly things like I forgot my lunch, to much bigger things like, people who get scary diagnoses that are like, 'Oh, Okay, well, that's fine. I'll just work through that." That thought can blow my mind. So if what you're looking at as, 'this is a catastrophe', 'this day is ruined', 'this week is ruined', 'everything goes badly for me,' that's what your brain latches on to. When you redirect your brain to what is working, what I have to believe instead, you are giving your brain some exercises in not only creating what you want to see, but also in finding ways to feel good about what is actually happening in your life. 
And This goes for recovery as well. You start to notice more days and fewer anxious days, really in as little as just a few weeks for some people. And as soon as you learn one key piece of information that just hadn't clicked yet in your brain, it's almost like your brain flips a switch, and then it just all comes together. That moment doesn't come from more information, though. It comes from knowing yourself better. And the best way you can get to know yourself better is to start telling yourself that you are capable, and that you are learning. Think of recovery as a practice much like forgiveness. Forgiveness happens in an instant, recovery happens in an instant. It's a choice. It's a decision you make. But it's also a decision that you make over and over and over. I would love to say that forgiveness is a one and done thing: I forgive you, it's over. But you have to make that choice again and again, because the next time you see that person, you might think I still am mad, but I forgive you.  have to forgive you again. The same is true for recovery. I still feel anxious today. But I am recovering. I'm choosing differently. You can choose to feel anxious and not go back to your normal routines. You can choose to practice the new skills, or what you know works and teach your brain new ways of thinking but this takes time, doesn't it? 21 days is actually a really good start. In 21 days, your brain is already creating new neural pathways that are starting to become familiar and they're starting to be like, 'Oh, okay, this is what I do. 63 days is incredible progress! 63 days is too little over two months. But in six months, this is what happens. After six months, you're going to be wondering, what happened in my life? When did This happen? And when did I start feeling so good? I don't have any idea when I started doing these things! I don't have any idea what changed! You start feeling like you're a new person and because your brain can literally change your DNA with new habits and new neural growth, you actually are kind of a new person. This is how I've seen it happen in my own life and this is how the people I've worked with have seen it roll out in their lives as well. When it comes to recovery, the time is irrelevant, because the change Isn't a pinpoint moment. It's a process of growth and understanding. Keep this idea that it's a process in your head. 
This is what that process looks like. The first step in this process is becoming committed to change just like we talked about with forgiveness. You make that decision over and over again. Anxiety is very biologically based, but it is also a habit and breaking habits takes time. Your brain will run autopilot all day long if you don't check it. It wants that familiarity and it wants the routines, and it will absolutely default to the things that keep you stuck, even when you want to change your habits. Creating these new habits and these new little connections inside your brain, those new neural pathways takes time, but you can still see growth before those habits are 100% locked in. You have to be intentional for awhile and you have to be willing to do things that feel scary or bad. I wish I could tell you that you could recover without doing the things that scare you but that's just not the way it works. If you avoid those things that scare you, you're never going to tackle them. They're always going to be there hanging over you. 'That's still scary.'  'I've still never done that.' This is super simple. It's also really powerful, and uncomfortable. But that's okay; you can be uncomfortable. 
Think of it like quitting smoking, or training to run a marathon, or quitting sugar; whatever it is that you would have to change. Some habit that you would have to change. You decide every time you have the urge to smoke a cigarette, to skip a workout, to eat a doughnut. Instead, though, you're just having to resist the urge to check; whether it's checking Google or checking a spot. You have to resist the urge to ask for reassurance. Or you have to be willing to believe thoughts that make your feelings mean something bigger than what is actually true. You would have to be willing to believe that people weren't looking at you, that people didn't care if you embarrassed yourself; you have to be willing to be embarrassed. You have to go back to what you are learning and to what works. And the part that is really sticky for some people is letting go of the idea that it has to be perfect. Perfection is not part of this process at all. Recovery is messy. You have to commit to change. 
The next step is to get familiar with how anxiety feels inside your body. One of the ways that you can do this is to keep a journal of your symptoms on a calendar. This has helped me a ton with my health anxiety but I know it helps other people with their social anxiety, or however it presents in your life. Pay attention to the symptoms that you write down over and over again. 'I feel dizzy,' 'my heart goes too fast,' 'I can't swallow,'  'my arms fell weak.' Describe how they feel, where you feel them, and the thoughts that they make you believe. Maybe you believe that you're too scatterbrained to go someplace by yourself. Maybe you believe that you've developed some disease. Maybe you believe that nobody really likes you. Describe how that feels inside your body, and what those thoughts are. So for example, I noticed I would write really similar feelings that I had in my arms or in my throat and then whatever my different self-diagnosis was. I also noticed that I would fear some particular disease and feel it in different ways, so I was able to notice symptoms would come and go and what I made them mean would change over time. I could see that if I had a blood clot, for example, I wouldn't be alive three weeks later, not feeling it anymore. It didn't just magically disappear because it was never a thing. It was just a thought that I had. I could just prove myself wrong by seeing patterns and seeing 'Oh, I thought this in the past and it went away. That's so weird. Because the last time I felt this way, I thought this other thing.'  Knowing how anxiety feels helps you label it and see those patterns. 
Remember, this. It is super important! You have felt anxious before, and you are still alive. You're listening to this podcast right now. You are your own best example of the lies and how powerful you actually are because you have won against anxiety every single time you've gone head to head with it. You've already got this! Use those feelings of anxiety as a notification just like the notifications on your phone. When your phone dings, you check your messages and you see what's up. Do the same thing when your anxiety alarm goes off. Feel it, which means, 'Okay, there's the alarm.. I feel it in my body. I'm gonna respond to it by doing nothing.' Or by choosing a response that moves you forward without reinforcing the fears. I spend a lot of time asking people what their anxiety is saying to them. For example, if somebody says, 'I just feel so anxious every time one of my kids gets sick.' Yeah, you're a mom; that happens. We all have Mom Brain: that Mama Bear syndrome is a real thing! But what is it saying to you? And they might say I don't know. 'What does it mean that I'm anxious about my kids being sick?'  'Well,  I would be horrified if something happened to them!' Yeah, yeah. Tell me more. This is what I do. I ask a lot of...  I ask why a lot. I ask, tell me more a lot. I ask you to really get deeper into what those feelings are saying. It reminds me of untying knots. It's really super easy to say, 'I don't know'. Those are your knots. There's, there's a story in there, there's a feeling in there, there's a fear in there though. Your brain likes to keep those things away because it's a little too raw or a little too real but when you get quiet, when you feel the anxiety and listening to what it's saying, those knots start to loosen up, and we can start picking them apart. Your brain lets go of your story, your body lets go of your story. And you start doing things automatically without even thinking about it. Things that used to scare the crap out of you, suddenly, you're like, 'Oh, I never even thought about it when I went to the grocery by myself,.' 'I never even thought about it when my kid had an ear infection.' It just becomes a non issue. Choosing to do nothing, which is super powerful... choosing to do nothing means I feel anxious and my brain is on fire right now I'm just going to stay here and feel it.
That might sound really impossible and I get it. When you're anxious. You choose to let the feelings be there and roll your eyes at the anxious stories and move on in your day. That's how you do nothing. This is a really simplified way of addressing anxiet and for some of you, you might think I'm nuts, and that might sound like a really big ask right now. Because the urge to continue whatever that normal thought spiral and whatever your normal responses is going to come back. It's programmed into your body and into your brain right now. It's a habit. It's a feeling. It's an urge. It's a compulsion, it is overwhelmingly strong at times. It's not going to go away overnight. Even years into my recovery, where I am today, compared to where I was 14 years ago in the Dominican, my brain still wants me to follow my old habits. It will still say, oh, remember, you're supposed to call and make sure you're okay. And I'll admit, there have been times when I have asked my parents if they think I'm okay. But then I let it go. My recovery is in progress. We are all works in progress. The difference is I might ask them once and never think about it again, whereas 14 years ago, I may have asked them 100 times a day. How they managed to live with me is actually beyond my understanding at this point, because it was pretty bad. And it's not that anymore! It's so momentary. Again, let's go back to This idea of quitting smoking, the urge for that cigarette might still pop up here and there, maybe even 10 years down the road, 15 years down the road, 22 years down the road! You get stressed out or you're in a situation where in the past, you would choose to smoke a cigarette and out of the blue, you're like, 'That's so weird. I just thought I need a cigarette. I haven't smoked in 20 years.' Yeah, because your body knows that it's still in there. It's just that you have a better reaction at this point, so maybe you grab a mint or a piece of gum instead because that's your replacement habit. The more you practice, letting the feelings be there and letting them go away, the faster they're going to go away. 
You're just teaching your brain how to do it. The more you learn to ignore the thoughts, and find truth in your own body and what you already know, the less intense and the less frequently that you'll have the thoughts. And even when you do have them, they become so unimportant, that you've noticed them, you kind of get annoyed, and you move on in minutes instead of hours or days or weeks, or however long your anxious cycle lasts.
Finally, find support. Find support, because the truth is, you have every bit of information you could ever possibly need to do this right now, but having someone to support you, when things feel a little too big, and a little too real is critical. You can Google anything. You could type into the Google bar, 'What are the best ways to recover from anxiety' and have that information in two seconds. You've probably done it before. But why is the information not enough? Because it feels big, it feels scary. It feels undoable. It almost feels like a lie sometimes, doesn't it? So wherever you find support, whether it's from a coach like me or a therapist... what can happen when you have support is that when things feel too big or too unsure, or you just don't know what the next right step is, you've got somebody there who's willing to take you through it. 
What I do when I work with someone as their coach is walk them through these ups and downs. I help them come up with steps that feel challenging, but doable. And as we work together, we start creating truthful and forward focused thoughts that give you the hopeful and excited feelings that you need to be able to do the things that scare you. And when things start to feel too big, and too hard, and too scary, I help you redirect your intentions to why you were doing that hard stuff to begin with. And then of course, I always get to celebrate with you, which is always the best part! It is so normal to have these ups and downs. There are going to be days where you fall back into an old habit, and there will be days when you just kill it. That is progress. Support helps you when your lows are there, not get quite so low. And it helps you when your highs come, to help them get a little bit stronger and lasts a little bit longer. You'll have the opportunity to look at what made you feel low? What changed? What were your thoughts? How did you feel? And on the flip side, you get to look at what felt great today and what worked so that you can repeat that pattern of moving forward. That is what coaching is, and it is incredibly powerful. What we do is we take that stock market graph, and we squish those spikes in those dips together. We just make it a little less jagged. Does that make sense? 
Okay, why should you do all this work? Why should you be willing to sit in it? Why should you be willing just to think the thoughts and let your body feel terrible? Why should you find support? Here's why. The more consistent you are, and sticking with your decision to go through the process of recovery means you're allowing yourself to feel anxious, and you're allowing yourself to change your brain and change your response. When you change your response. You change your entire body and you change your reality. The reality is you go from feeling anxious to feeling first less anxious or more in control. And when you feel that way, you start doing things that you haven't been able to do. Those things that have been like nagging over you like 'Why can't I just go to work and not feel like I'm gonna throw up?'  'Why can't I just go hang out with people and not feel so self conscious.'  Those are really good reasons! You learn to trust yourself, when you feel anxious, and you learn to choose to do the things that make you feel anxious, because it almost starts to turn into a power trip. That's gonna sound crazy right now, but when you realize that "I used to, to hide from this thing, and it still makes me anxious, but now I'm just like, Whatever, and I do it anyway', that's pretty powerful! You're showing your brain who's boss. And when you seek support to help you create these habits with what works best for you, that gets you excited about doing the scary stuff, the sooner you notice results. The sooner you're willing to go big and do the things that scare you, the faster you will feel results, because you start having actual evidence in your life, that you are capable, and that you will survive. And then it's just a feeling! But here's the best part, you don't only notice that you're less afraid to do the things that trigger you right now, you also start to see changes in how you relate to your family, or your friends or your spouse, you start figuring out, like, 'I'm actually having a lot more fun!' ' I'm sleeping better.' ' I am choosing to do things that are new and exciting.'  Anxiety doesn't just take over one part of your life, it sneaks into the nooks and crannies, and when you start pulling it out of the big things and start untying those knots, you create space for all kinds of new things in your life. That's a really cool part about coaching is that when someone comes to me, and they say, 'I'm so anxious about driving,' and we start to talk about driving, but maybe the next week, they're like, You know what I want to talk about driving but first, can we talk about 'I felt this way this week.' Or 'I'm really struggling with this part of my life right now.' Anxiety finds its ways into all of these little crevices and we get to pull all of that out together and things start flying wide open. It is incredible! I've noticed this with my own coach as well, that the more I've worked with her, I have a better relationship with my husband. I am making better choices in parenting my kids. I'm doing things like intentionally - going out to have fun where I wasn't doing those things before. It's crazy the stuff that comes unknotted when you start picking away at the things that are keeping you stuck in life. And I guarantee absolutely that one day, you will wake up and wonder when you recovered, and how the heck you got to where you are. 
It won't happen overnight, but it absolutely could too. It might take you three months or six months. But creating the change in your brain that allows you to feel really good is already progress and recovery is not a location. It's not a place you get to, it's a process that happens over and over until it's a habit and you just don't think about it anymore. It's magic. 
To learn more about how I can help you learn to trust yourself, to see how capable you already are in releasing anxiety and starting to feel really confident in every single part of your life, all you have to do is go to megandevito.com/workwithme and schedule a free phone call. You can do that right now and talk with me this week. So before I go, I want you to know that recovery is 100% possible for you. No matter how long you've been anxious, you can feel better. And you can start doing the things that trigger you right now, even before we talk, and I can help you. Keep taking steps forward. I'll be back next week. Make it a good one. 
I hope you've enjoyed This episode of The More Than Anxiety podcast. Be sure to subscribe and leave a review so others can easily find this resource as well. And of course, when you're ready to explore coaching with me, jump to the show notes, click the link and schedule time for us to talk. See you soon.