The Anxiety Break

The Anxiety Break Anxiety is a beast, let’s tame it!

01/01/2026

Happy New Year from Whitefish, Montana 🤍
Starting 2026 with fresh air, good company, and space to breathe.
Here’s to more presence, more honesty, and choosing what actually matters.

Montana winters have a way of slowing things down in the best way. Grateful for friendship, quiet moments, and new beginnings.

12/30/2025

2025 was not about thriving.
For a lot of people, it was about building resilience and capacity.

Resilience is not positivity or pushing through. It is the nervous system learning it can stay present under stress without shutting down.

Capacity is the ability to feel more without collapsing. To tolerate uncertainty. To stop abandoning yourself just to get relief.

Much of the work in 2025 was invisible. Learning how to sit with discomfort. Letting go of urgency. Choosing honesty over performance.

That kind of work does not always look productive. But it changes what becomes possible.

So as we step into 2026, the goal is not more effort.
It is using what was built.

Less survival.
More living.

12/25/2025

Christmas can hold joy and deep absence at the same time.
Some losses come from death.
Some from estrangement.
Some from relationships that could not continue.
Some from saying goodbye to a beloved pet.

Not all grief is visible, and not all grief is acknowledged.
If this season feels complicated, you’re not doing it wrong.
This space holds all of it.

12/24/2025

Rumination can be painful.

It can look like thinking, but it feels like being trapped inside your own head. The thoughts don’t move forward. They just cycle, trying to find certainty.



12/23/2025

When healing turns into deciding who was good or bad, something important can get lost.
Naming the impact matters. And understanding how behavior affected you matters.

But moralizing behavior often reinforces all-or-nothing thinking, creates distance from our own choices, and can keep shame quietly running the process.

Healing doesn’t require a moral verdict. It requires clarity, integration, and boundaries grounded in impact—not judgment.





12/22/2025

When uncertainty shows up, many people reach for control.

That can look like overthinking, reassurance-seeking, avoidance, perfectionism, or shutting down. These strategies often show up in OCD, trauma, and anxiety~ not because something is wrong, but because the nervous system is trying to feel safe.

The work isn’t eliminating uncertainty.
It’s learning how to sit with it and trust your ability to handle the outcome.

This is a core target in evidence-based treatment for OCD, anxiety disorders, and trauma-related patterns.





12/22/2025

I keep trying to pack my home and getting frustrated because I keep avoiding it.
And I realized I’m not avoiding the work. I’m avoiding the uncertainty.

Where things go.
What I’ll need later.
What I’ll regret packing or not packing.

So my brain reaches for control instead. Small decisions. Finished tasks. Clear outcomes.
That’s not laziness. It’s a nervous system strategy.

When avoidance shows up, it’s usually not about motivation.
It’s about uncertainty.

Sometimes the work isn’t doing it perfectly.
It’s practicing making decisions without certainty. One box at a time.

12/21/2025

If one moment makes you question who you are, pause.

That kind of identity collapse usually isn’t insight. It might be your response to discomfort.

Learning to separate discomfort from meaning is a core part of anxiety and OCD work.

12/20/2025

If everything feels all-or-nothing, anxiety may be driving the process~ not logic.

Black-and-white thinking is a cognitive pattern often linked to anxiety and OCD. It creates short-term relief by reducing uncertainty, but it keeps people stuck long-term.

Therapy focuses on learning how to live with uncertainty, not eliminate it.

12/19/2025

Your mind isn’t broken. It’s learning.

In OCD and anxiety, intrusive thoughts aren’t the problem. Thoughts show up automatically. They don’t mean anything about you.

What matters is what happens next.

Compulsions, reassurance, avoidance, and mental checking grow because they bring short-term relief. Your nervous system learns quickly. Whatever reduces discomfort gets reinforced, even when it creates more anxiety over time.

That’s why treatment isn’t about controlling thoughts or analyzing them for meaning. It’s about noticing your responses, allowing uncertainty, and choosing actions based on values instead of urgency.

You don’t control which thoughts appear.
You control what you engage with.
And what you water is what grows.

Small moments of resisting compulsions or sitting with doubt are how real change happens.

12/19/2025

Mind reading isn’t about being irrational. It’s a way your brain reduces uncertainty by filling in gaps when you don’t have enough information.

The problem isn’t the thought.
It’s what happens when you start behaving as if it’s already true.

12/18/2025

Before you act, pause and ask one question:
What’s the function of this?

Recovery often starts before the behavior.
In the moment where you feel the urge to act.

Example moments to pause:
• You want to text again after they haven’t replied
• You’re about to Google a symptom “just to be sure”
• You feel the urge to restrict, binge, or compensate
• You’re replaying a conversation trying to figure out what you did wrong
• You feel the impulse to shut down or disappear

Recovery isn’t about forcing the feeling to go away.
It’s about noticing what the behavior is trying to do
reduce anxiety, create certainty, avoid discomfort, or feel in control.

When you understand the function,
you create space to respond instead of react.

That space is where recovery lives.





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Kalispell, MT

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Tuesday 8am - 5pm
Wednesday 8am - 5pm
Thursday 8am - 5pm

Website

http://Theanxietybreak.com/

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