🎙️ Episode 2: My Anxiety is a Liar: How to Catch Your Brain in the Act

Published: 4.10.25
Duration: 5 Minutes
Category: Mental Health, Anxiety, Cognitive Distortions

🎧 Listen Now

📝 Episode Summary

Anxiety is convincing—but not truthful. In this episode, we break down how anxious thoughts show up disguised as “logic” and what to do when your brain starts screaming disaster. You'll learn how to recognize distorted thinking patterns like catastrophizing, mind-reading, and fortune-telling—and how to challenge them with clarity and compassion.

✨ You’ll Learn:

• What cognitive distortions are and why anxiety loves them

• How to spot your most common anxious thinking traps

• Simple strategies to interrupt spirals before they take over

🧠 Try This After You Listen:

Write down your last anxious spiral. Can you find the distortion? Label it (like "catastrophizing" or "mind-reading"), then write a more grounded version of the story.

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• Transcript

  today we’re talking about one of my favorite truths: anxiety is a liar. It doesn’t mean your anxiety isn’t real—it is. But it’s also often inaccurate. Your anxiety brain loves to yell made-up worst-case scenarios at you like it’s breaking news. And today, we’re going to learn how to spot those lies and challenge them without starting a whole internal courtroom battle.

  So let’s talk about what anxiety does when it gets loud. It doesn’t say, “Hey, this is slightly concerning, maybe pay attention.” No. It says, “This is DEFINITELY going to ruin everything and you’re going to die alone, unemployed, and embarrassed.” Anxiety speaks in extremes. It jumps to conclusions, makes assumptions, and turns discomfort into doom. And most of the time? It’s not even based on facts. It’s based on your nervous system trying to predict pain and avoid it before it even happens.

  Here’s where things get interesting: anxiety doesn’t want accuracy—it wants certainty. And since we can’t control the future, it tries to manufacture certainty by convincing us of the worst possible outcome. Like, “If I assume this will go terribly, then I’ll be prepared.” Sound familiar? That’s called catastrophizing, and it’s one of anxiety’s go-to party tricks.

  But that’s not all. There’s also mind-reading: “They’re mad at me, I can just tell.” Or fortune-telling: “There’s no way this will work out.” Or emotional reasoning: “I feel anxious, so something must be wrong.” These are all cognitive distortions—ways your brain misinterprets information to fit the anxiety narrative. And once you learn to spot them? You can stop the spiral before it gets out of control.

  Let’s walk through an example. Say you text a friend, and they don’t respond. Your anxiety might go, “They hate me. I did something wrong. They’re ghosting me. I’ve ruined everything.” But what’s actually true? Maybe they’re busy. Maybe they didn’t see it. Maybe they started a reply and forgot to hit send. All of those are more likely than the dramatic disaster story your brain just spun.

  So what do we do when anxiety starts lying to us?

  Step one: Name the distortion. When you catch yourself going down the spiral, pause and ask, “What story is my brain telling right now?” Try to identify if it’s catastrophizing, mind-reading, fortune-telling, etc.

  Step two: Reality check it. What’s the actual evidence? Are there facts that support this thought, or is it just a feeling? Remember: feelings are valid—but they’re not always facts.

  Step three: Offer a balanced alternative. This doesn’t mean pretending everything’s great. It means saying something like, “I don’t know how this will go, but I can handle it.” Or, “This is uncomfortable, but not dangerous.”

  And hey, I get it—when you’re in it, this stuff is hard to remember. So here’s a cheat: write down your most common anxious thoughts. Then next to each one, write the name of the distortion and a more grounded version of the thought. Keep it somewhere you can actually find when your brain goes off the rails.

  This is one of those skills that takes time. You’re literally rewiring the way your brain responds to uncertainty. And yes, it can feel weird at first—like you’re gaslighting your anxiety. But you’re not. You’re separating fear from fact, and that’s how you take your power back.

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