Negotiating With Anxiety and OCD Comes At A Cost (Podcast Episode 352)

Anxiety and OCD will suggest course changes, avoidances, safety behaviors, and rituals to help you feel safer and more in control of things in any given anxious moment. Now, alone, each of those little accommodations feels reasonable, like it's no big deal, right? You're just being cautious, just being safe, and what's the harm? But when we add all of this up over time, life quickly becomes highly restricted and almost unrecognizable, and then you have a real problem. So, let's talk about that now. Hello everybody. Welcome back to The Anxious Truth. This is episode 352 of the podcast we are recording in September of 2026. In case you're listening from the future, I'm Drew Linselada, creator and host of The Anxious Truth. I'm a therapist that specializes in the treatment of OCD and anxiety disorders practicing in New York. I'm a former sufferer of the very things we talk about on this podcast. uh an author, podcaster, clearly social media guy, and this is something I love doing every two weeks, episodes of The Anxious Truth. So, if you're new here and you've just stumbled upon the podcast, welcome. I hope you find what we're doing helpful here. And of course, if you're a returning listener, welcome back. I hope you find today's episode helpful, and thank you for supporting my work. So this week I want to talk about how just being cautious just in case sort of uh engaging in your rituals or your avoidances in any given moment might feel like the right thing to do and how it's no big deal. But it is a big deal because if we add up each one of those little individual things over time we see a really big impact. Before we get into that just a really quick reminder that the anxious truth is more than just this podcast episode. There are way more resources linked on my website at the anxioustruth.com including links over to my newsletter which comes out hopefully once a month that's free. The books that I've written, the short workshops that I've produced, uh disordered, which is the podcast I do with Josh Fletcher every uh every Friday. That's at disordered.fm, but I'll link it on my website. Uh and the disorder community, which is where Josh and I spend our time. I'm kind of hanging out there. So, if you want to interact with me or Josh or other people that are sharing the experience that you're sharing, you could check me out over there as well. Of course, none of those resources are required. You can just listen to this episode and leave if you want. Hell, you can leave in the middle of the episode if you want. Uh, but if you're finding this work helpful and you want more, head on over to the anxioustruth.com. So, let's get into this week's topic. Uh, because I don't want to go too long. Let's talk about the neverending cycle of OCD and anxiety. People with anxiety disorders and OCD. And yes, I know they are not exactly the same, but they are adjacent in the book, and we're going to treat them as very similar. Uh, people with anxiety disorders and OCD are driven to perform escape behaviors, rituals. They're driven to to avoid things. They are driven to perform, uh, compulsions and rituals, uh, and generally do anything they can to feel safer from intense feelings of discomfort or fear or anxiety or uncertainty or doubt or overwhelm. Sometimes the things that an anxious person or someone with OCD does to feel better in the moment are behavioral, but sometimes they're mental or both. Uh, some you can see, some are kind of hidden from the rest of the world because they're almost entirely inside your own head. Now, we've talked about this thing over and over in this podcast. So, you can go back and listen to any number of the previous 351 episodes or listen to the disordered podcast and you're going to learn about avoidance, control strategies gone wrong, safety behaviors, compulsions, rituals. Go back and listen to all the other stuff and you'll learn more. The summary for today is you feel terrible right now. You act now in a avoidant or compulsive way. You feel a little better now. And then you repeat that cycle forever and wonder why it never ends. So in the heat of the moment, when you're in a triggered moment, when a giant wave of anxiety or uncertainty or doubt crashes over your head and you feel like it's drowning you and taking you under, all of those avoidances and escapes and compulsions and rituals kind of feel like the right thing to do, don't they? I mean, I get that. I I was where you were, too. It felt correct in that moment. And they tend to lead to sort of temporary relief from the terrible feelings, which makes them feel even more correct. This is part of the cycle. The part where if you're a longtime listener to this podcast or disordered and you say, "Well, I get what you're always saying. I get what you guys say on these podcasts, but when I'm triggered, it all goes out the window, right? Because you can hear me talk about this stuff all the time, but in the heat of the moment, it sure feels like the right idea to escape or avoid or compulse or ritualize, but afterward you haven't achieved your goal, right? You've you've ritualized simple tasks or spent hours on compulsions or once again retreated from your life and followed the fear, the anxiety, the OCD, and at some point you hate that you did it. So, in the heat of the moment, it felt like the right thing to do and it felt like no big deal, but you keep doing it and you don't understand why and why can't I figure this out? I don't get it. I think there's a second sort of gotcha, right? So, in the heat of the moment, you are scared 100%. There's no doubt about that. But once the emergency passes, when cooler heads prevail, you may try to find the resolve to not let not let that happen again. So, next time you're going to promise yourself, I won't be fooled. I'm not going to be tricked. This time, I'm going to face the fear. I'm going to do acceptance and floating and allowing. I'm doing willful tolerance. I'm not going to compulsor ritualize. I'm no more. That's the last time. It's not going to get me again. And listen, I I get that. I used to do that, too. And that's really admirable. But then that huge spike of discomfort the next time makes it difficult to access that courage, that resolve, that anger, that defiance in the heat of the moment. And you repeat the cycle already. But there's a second gotcha that tends to poison or sort of wreck or taint what feels like an otherwise decent plant. This is the part where not only does the individual compulsion or avoidance or control attempt feel reasonable and correct because it works and you feel better. It actually feels like no big deal. It's just one small thing, one skipped event that you didn't even really want to go to, right? It's just a few minutes of extra shoe tying or counter wiping or reciting specific prayers or song lyrics or tapping or ice packs. It's just one lunch thing that I don't go to. It's just one social event. It's just a I just need a me day. I'm going to go back to the sofa again because I need a mi day. It feels no big deal, right? It makes you feel safer and it feels like that individual avoidance or that individual ritual or compulsion doesn't seem to have that much impact. What's the big deal? It's just one little thing. So, what's the harm? The thing is, that's not wrong. Each individual fear and control-driven response to an anxiety or OCD episode seems reasonable, even when calm. It made me feel better. And none by itself totally ruins or changes your life on its own. No one little ritual, compulsion, no one little avoidance behavior, safety behavior, escape behavior, no one little saving behavior on its own totally changes your life. they each individual one tends to be kind of small and at face value given how little impact each appear to have if you examine them sort of in a vacuum it starts to feel like giving in and doing that one thing because anxiety or OCD tells you you should is just being smart or cautious or even efficient. The second gotcha here right tends to lead to statements like I'll just do this one thing so I could feel better and move on because if I don't do this one thing then I'll be stuck or something bad will happen. It might sound like, "Wouldn't anybody want to make sure they aren't having harm thoughts? I mean, it's it's no biggie. It's just being cautious, right?" Or you might say to yourself, "It just feels so risky to give up my calming or fixing things, so I'll just do them a little. That'll be fine. Just a little. Does Does any of this sound familiar?" And again, I get it because I used to do that, too. So, I want to talk about how giving in and rationalizing to a certain extent by saying, "Oh, it makes me feel better. It feels safer. and it's no big deal. What's the impact? That's like negotiating with terrorists, if you will. We can look at OCD and anxiety almost like terrorists. One of my favorite all-time silly scenes in any movie is Tom Cru Tom Cruz in um uh the movie Tropic Thunder. It's a silly little movie. I don't know how you know how old it is. It's a goofy. It's not going to change anybody's life. But Tom Cruz plays Les Gman, this way over the top movie producer, and he does this crazy like monologue. He's yelling at the the flaming dragon guys. is they're kidnappers and terrorists. Uh, and he's screaming at them. All right. Uh, it's just a goofy movie. But after Les Gman finishes one of his tirades at Flaming Dragon, they call back later to increase their extortion and ransom demands. They've kidnapped one of the movie stars. And Les totally disrespects them and winds up literally hanging up on them. Like, he dumps all over them on the phone and he hangs up on the phone. Hangs up on them. And he declares to the people in his office, "We don't negotiate with terrorists." And it kills me every time. It's it's just funny. It's a funny scene. It's over the top. It's a silly comedy, but Les Gman has a point in Tropic Thunder, right? We don't negotiate with terrorists because when we give them anything, then they know they have us and they never actually go away. And the same applies here. When you start to rationalize things like escape or control or avoidance or ritualization or compulsion as reasonable or frame it as just in case or just to be safe, then you are negotiating with your anxiety or your OCD and they are for all intents and purposes terrorists, right? They insist that you do things that you don't want to do to satisfy them and then once you do them, you have to keep doing them. They never actually go away. They they don't hold up their end of the bargain at all. It's not a bargain. It's control. They will always push for more. They are not reasonable. Anxiety and OCD are not logical. They don't know how to bargain. They'll just keep taking more and more and more. And in the moment, which makes it so hard in a in a triggered moment to to not do these things in that moment, they only want what they want. They will not listen to alternatives. They do not care. And when you give it to them, then you have a bigger problem than you already had because now they're going to start harassing you in all kinds of different areas of your life and looking for all kinds of different vulnerabilities to exploit and rituals to add and parts of your life to take away from you. So if you are thinking, well, it it feels like the right thing to do because it makes me feel better and what's the big deal? It's only one little thing. You're negotiating with a terrorist. Anxiety and OCD is like a terrorist. They're never going to go away. Now they know they got you, right? So I have to be careful and if you have started with one little ritual say with OCD and noticed how over time it has grown and gotten bigger and bigger and morphs different themes different rituals or even anxiety like what started as two panic attacks turned into full-blown can't leave the sofa agorophobia you get this like when you give in and rationalize each each individual escape or safety behavior it never goes away it actually starts to grow. So if we add it all up right, the major takeaway from today is that it is true that in most cases any individual ritual, compulsion, safety behavior, being saved, tapping, ice packs, whatever, avoidance, I'm not going to go to the birthday party, I'm not going to go to the park because what if I can't handle it? What if I panic? What if I need help? Each one of those individual things seems like it might be reasonable, makes me feel better, I feel safer just in case, right? Who wants to take a choice? It feels warranted. I mean, my my anxiety was just so powerful that the sensations in my body were just so powerful. The scary thoughts just felt so real. It seems warranted to do the avoidance or the escape or the ritual. And it feels that one individual thing like no big deal. Let me just negotiate. I'll ask OCD if I could just ritualize a little bit here. See if it lets me off the hook and then we'll we'll we'll be good. No, we're never good. It's going to take more. When you add up all of your rituals, your avoidances, your control strategies, your regulating tools, your, you know, acronyms that you have to follow to calm down in a panic attack. All of those safety behaviors, if you add them all up, suddenly you start to see that the terrorists are everywhere and you have to ask their permission to do anything. Like, they just start to run the whole ship. Your life gets smaller and smaller and it gets harder and harder. Your ability to function on a daily basis starts to degrade. Restrictions mount. Anxiety and OCD keep adding more rules and guidelines. The goalposts keep moving. You give them what they want, but then we want more. A little more. You've never actually ever satisfied it, right? Like if you're listening to this podcast, I'm guessing that you you understand this because no matter what you do, to appease, to do what it tells you, to follow the just in case, to feel safer in the moment, to just just be smart and don't take that kind of risk, then okay, cool. I figured that out. Nope. The goalposts move and it just wants more. It'll just keep telling you to do more and more and more and more. All right. Um, so there's no appeasement, there's no bargaining, and there's no being reasonable with this sort of thing. It doesn't matter that one OCD or anxiety accommodation in the heat of the moment is no big deal. What happens if you look at the functional impact of all of those accommodations, all of those escape and safety behaviors that you've built into your life? What does it look like when you add them all up? What's the total cost of that strategy? What's what's the total impact on your ability to function and be who you truly want to be and live according to your values and engage with the life you want? We care. I care as a therapist, right, that specialize in this area. I care about the total impact and the cumulative cost. If you sit in my office as a therapy client and say, "Oh, what's the big deal? I only just wiped my kitchen counter for five more minutes." I would say, "Sure, if you got five minutes to kill, no worries. You're right. In that moment, do what you want to do." I'm going to ask you, "Yeah, but can you stop doing that? And what else do you do?" Like, or was it only one minute, now it's by? Was there only one compulsion and now there's 10? Do you used to only avoid one thing? For me, I I just have to avoid driving on the highway. And the more and more I gave in and negotiated with that, the smaller and smaller my life get where I couldn't even walk out the door in most cases, right? So, I care about the total impact, the cumulative cost. How is that impacting your functioning? Is your functioning degrading over time? That's what I care about. We never as a therapist and even in this situation where clearly a podcast or a video is not therapy. But in this context, I still never care about the one ritual, the one avoidance, the one superstition. Like I don't care about each one of the things by themselves. They're almost irrelevant. I care about what happens when we add them all up. And I want you to to really look at that, too. So, as usual, we're going to say, "Okay, great. Thanks, Drew. That's 15 minutes of my life. I'm not getting back. So, what do I do with that?" Well, I sound like a broken record sometimes, but the reason why we use mindfulness as part of this is that awareness is part is a big part of this as usual, right? No surprise there. I talk about this all the time. One of the reasons why we use principles of mindfulness in this approach to anxiety and OCD is that mindfulness is just increase increased awareness. Remaining aware of this trap, right? This is a trap. Oh, look, there it is. There's the urge to rationalize and negotiate in this in this heat of the moment. Oh, look at that. It's happening again. That process is playing out. That awareness is the most important part. Now, why? Because in a trigger moment, if we're going to rely on things like the ACT trilex, and I'll I'll try to link past episodes in the description that talk about we talk about the three part points of the trilex about a year or two ago. If we try to use the act trilex to keep us out of the avoidance and control strategy trap, we kind of want to be able to accurately and objectively describe that moment without telling stories or making predictions from what we feel. Right? So, we have to be aware of the process. We don't have to get we don't want to get caught up in the stories and the interpretations and the content. Otherwise, we get trapped and we start to negotiate and we rationalize and it's no big deal. I'll just do this one thing and I'll be fine. It looks sort of like I've just been triggered and now I'm afraid and that makes me want to insert whatever you feel the urge to do so that I can feel better. I got to go get away from this feeling that feels like a good move and like no big deal. But doing this one thing makes my life worse. So it is a big deal. You see how like this statement that I just made, you know, I've been triggered. I'm afraid. It makes me want to do the safety thing. feels like a good move, but it's making my life worse. You could apply that to almost any. I don't care what your OCD theme is. I don't care what health threat your health anxiety is attached to. I don't care if you have sleep anxiety. I don't care if you have panic disorder. I don't care if you have GAD and you ruminate to try to feel better. You can apply that sentence I just gave you. That's a sentence of objective awareness of what's actually happening across all of those contexts. The specific symptom, the specific thought, the content, doesn't matter. Right? If you can see that process unfolding that way and identify it well then you kind of won half the war already because the second part once of the trilex once you do that is once that once that has been you know this is what's actually happening I'm in a triggered moment one option in the triggered moment would be to do the usual save yourself negotiate give in okay I'll just do this one thing if you let me off the hook that's one option I'll I'll give in and I'll negotiate with anxiety and OCD the air quotes terrorists I'll give in to that one demand because it does seem to solve a problem at the moment that feels like a real problem. What's the big deal? It's just this one thing. But the better option is to not do it. Like I have to not do that. I have to experiment here. I have to explore my capability and my capacity to handle this distress and this discomfort. What if I can accept that like discomfort doesn't automatically mean danger? The feeling isn't confirmation of the problem. The feeling is the problem. If I can accept that and start to experiment with my ability to tolerate that and watch it ebb and flow on its own, then there's no negotiation in there that there's no, oh, just this one thing. There's no just in case. There's no, oh, it's it's no big deal. There's no, oh, this feels like a good move. Oh, that was too risky. There's no more negotiation. It's okay to acknowledge that the fear makes you want to rationalize and negotiate and give in, but ultimately we have to make a brave choice to not do that anymore. And that's why we need the awareness of this process. You get triggered, you feel afraid, and now you feel the urge to save yourself from that or fix things. And that makes you want to give in and negotiate with your OCD and your anxiety and rationalize that ah I just feel so bad. I got to do this this one time. But that never happens that way. So in the end, it really is sort of a little by little process, right? I know there's a lot in this episode. I feel like there's a lot in all these episodes at Psycho Education for you on the internet, right? But like I'm going to try to wrap this up with a reminder that nobody instantly eliminates all the rationalization, negotiation, and compulsions or safety behaviors. Nobody. Nobody's going to listen to episode 352 of The Anxious Truth and instantly have their OCD just collapse and they just never ritualize or compulse ever again. No agorophobic will listen to this episode of the podcast and say, "Oh, I can't negotiate with the terrorist in my head." And suddenly they're out on a world cruise and love and life. It doesn't happen that way. That's not a thing. And never never let social media, the internet coaches, wellness gurus, unethical people promise you that. That is not a thing. You might want to do that and I would love it if you could do that. Hell, I'd love to be able to do this one podcast episode and then like just retire and lay on a beach because everybody will get better. But it doesn't work that way. You may want that. I want that for everybody, but it doesn't work that way. Maybe hearing this episode will get you feeling all maybe jazzed up and inspired. And now that you can see, oh, I'm negotiating with a terrorist. Now you're feeling like you can re that's it. I got this now. I can really hold my ground the next time. I'm going to change everything because now I know what this is. But the odds of that happening are kind of slim. And that's okay. If I were your therapist, I would never expect that sort of like instant change, instant outcome. What I would work with you on is sort of chipping away at that old framework and that old strategy bit by bit. I took a walk around the block and I really felt like I wanted to run, but I finished the walk. I did the extra two minutes around the entire block. I was driving and practicing my driving exposure and I really wanted to slam on the brakes and pull over and call my partner to talk me down, but I didn't. I got through those two or three minutes. I finished my drive. That doesn't feel like a big deal, but that is a big deal, right? The pulling over, the calling for help, the saving yourself once again from a panic attack or feelings of anxiety. That's the thing that in the moment feels like the right thing and no big deal. But that is a big deal. That is a big deal for the wrong reasons. If you choose not to do that and you make it one small little move forward by continuing your exposure or putting down the rag and stopping the wiping or whatever it is your OCD is telling you to do, I don't care how small that change is. That counts. That's a win. I would I want you to do that little by little, bit by bit. Just remember that every time you make a little change and learn a little something about your anxiety, your OCD, and yourself as part of that process, that is a win. That's a giant win. Even though it comes incrementally and sort of systematically, you got to be consistent. You're going to fail sometimes. You're not going to be brave some days. I went through it, too. That's the way it works for everybody. This episode, understanding that like, oh, it is a big deal if I avoid right now. That's going to add up. Cool. maintain that awareness, but it doesn't mean everything's going to change overnight, right? So, just like each specific I think this is maybe the biggest thing that I want you to take out of this as we kind of wrap up the episode. Just like each specific moment of compulsion or ritualization or avoidance can't ruin your life by itself, no individual exposure or act of tolerance or floating or flash of insight can fix your life all by itself. So one uh one bad exposure cannot ruin your whole life. One avoidance or escape or ritualization cannot ruin your whole life by itself. And no individual winning exposure, successful exposure, episode of willful tolerance will fix your life all by itself. Keep that in mind. Otherwise, you could get stuck in a trap. You don't want to do that thing where it's like, "Okay, I got this now." And then, "Oh, I don't got it." Like, be nice to yourself. Be patient. And keep in mind so you don't wind up being disappointed in declaring yourself a failure that this is the way it works for everybody if it all goes out the window again and you wind up giving in rationalizing or negotiating. It happened to me. It happens to everybody. It's okay. It's part of the process, right? So I guess that's it. That's episode 352 in the books. 22 minutes. Not too bad. Usually I ramble much longer than I wanted to, but I think I did okay this week. Hopefully you guys hung out till the end and got something out of this. Uh, just a favor. If you're listening to this on Apple Podcast or Spotify or some podcast platform that lets you rate or review podcast and you think The Anxious Truth Deserves it, leave a fivestar rating because it helps the podcast. If you really really like it, maybe write a quick review and tell people why you like the podcast if you're so inclined because then that really helps more people find the podcast and get more help. And that's why I do this to begin with. So, uh, yeah, I'll come back again in two weeks with another topic. Might have a guest in two weeks. I'm not sure if we can arrange that or not, but I'll be here. I'm not sure what I'm going to talk about, but uh uh but I will be back. Thanks for listening. Thanks for hanging out. Thanks for supporting the work that I do behind this crazy microphone. Uh look at the the description of the podcast episode. I'll link those other episodes for you on the ACT trilex. You can click on the link in the podcast description and send me a text. Believe it or not, I won't see your number, but if you want to send a question, you can do that. If you want to interact with [music] me a little bit more, you can head over to Disorder.fm and check out the community over there. And of course, [music] if you want more, you can listen to Disordered every Friday because that comes out weekly. Thanks for hanging out, guys. I'll see you in 2 weeks. We are out.