Stop Letting Anxiety Get in the Way

What I’ve learned from 20 years of helping people 

My interest in anxiety started with my own experiences with it. Then I became a psychologist and began helping other people, which drove me to try to understand anxiety at a much deeper level.

I’ve always been a bit of a detective about this stuff. I’ll learn something, try it on myself, use it with other people, and try to understand why it helps — or why sometimes it doesn’t. And if something doesn’t quite fit, I keep looking.

Over 20 years of doing this, I’ve collected a series of insights that have changed how I understand anxiety, how I respond to it, and even how I live my life.

But I also noticed something else. A lot of what people are struggling with looks on the surface like a simple skill or knowledge problem — like if they could just perform better, everything would be great.

But I found that often, when you dig deeper, anxiety is what’s actually getting in the way.

People often don’t realize how much anxiety has been shaping the choices they make, the opportunities they pass up, or how well they’re able to perform when the pressure is on.

Sometimes you don’t see how much it was holding you back until it starts to loosen its grip. And suddenly, things that used to require all this effort become much easier. You can think more clearly, connect more easily, and show up more like the person you actually are.

The more I saw that, the more important it seemed to me to help people understand and deal with their anxiety — because it was often at the root of what was holding them back.

So one day, I gave myself a challenge: if I had to take everything I’d learned and condense it into just a few minutes, what would make the list?

That became 20 Years of Anxiety Treatment in 15 Minutes.

I honestly didn’t know if people would find it useful. I’d packed each idea into such a short amount of time that I could barely do more than give you the insight wrapped in a metaphor and move on.

But then people started telling me they were watching it again and again. Some were taking notes, saving particular ideas to come back to, and actually trying them in their lives. One person told me they’d spent two hours with that 15-minute video, pausing it to take notes and reflect.

That response, along with what I’d been seeing across the rest of the channel, made me want to put what I’ve learned together in a more structured and practical way.

So that’s what this is.

I want to take you through the ideas that have completely changed how I understand anxiety, and break them down in a way that actually makes sense.

Then I want to get into what I actually do with all of that knowledge and insight. I’m condensing it down to the things I think are going to be most helpful and useful — including when each idea is most useful, when you might reach for it, and how understanding anxiety differently can change the way you respond when it shows up.

And ultimately, how you can use these ideas to move closer to what you want in life.