What if your anxiety is feeling so overwhelming to you that you're not even sure that you can or should continue to go to work or school? You might wake up every morning filled with fear and anxiety and apprehension and anticipation and you may be wondering is it time for me to take an extended period of time off so I can heal or recover? Well, if that's you, then today, on the Anxious Truth, that's a question we're going to address. Should I take time off from my work or my school to recover from my anxiety disorder? What I'm going to try to do here is help you understand that question, maybe find an answer that works for you. But, more important, I want you to sort of understand that asking the question isn't failure and there isn't always a right answer. Sometimes we're going to get it wrong, and that's okay. Hello everybody, drew here, welcome back to the Anxious Truth.
Speaker 1:This is episode 308 of the podcast. We are recording December 31st, 2024, last day of the year, in case you're listening from the future, if you're not, happy new year. So today we're going to talk about the idea that taking time off from work or school, especially an extended leave of absence, is a good idea when you're trying to recover from an anxiety disorder. I want to talk about why you might think that's a good idea, why it might be a good idea, why it might not be a good idea, what can go wrong and why it's okay to not really know the answer to this question, and I want to sort of use three examples to help us illustrate where you might be right now and why you might be struggling with this question that feels at the same time urgent I got to know the answer to this, should I take off from work or school and also unanswerable. I don't actually know if I'm doing the right thing if I do that. So I want to use three examples and I'll give you a little bit of an example from my own life that might help.
Speaker 1:Let's look at somebody who has developed recurring panic attacks in their place of work. We'll call this person, say Sarah, this is not real people, these are not therapy clients, these are not actual members of our community. They're just examples to help illustrate why you might find yourself in a situation where you feel overwhelmed, like you can't cope with this anxiety and you think you need to take time off in order to do that. So if Sarah maybe started having panic attacks at work. Maybe it started with one panic attack in a meeting, maybe three or four months ago, but then another one happened, and another one happened and now she's having panic attacks every single day at work and now she's afraid to go to work. She might be spending time driving there terrified the whole time and then sitting in the parking lot hemming and hawing as to whether or not she even wants to go in. She wants to go home, where she feels better, where the panic won't happen and where she feels safe. And this may lead her to believe that work is the problem, work is making her worse and maybe she needs to take an extended leave of absence so that she can get over her anxiety. And maybe she needs to take an extended leave of absence so that she can get over her anxiety.
Speaker 1:Or maybe we can say we have a friend named Mike and he has generalized anxiety disorder and, of course, like all gad brains, mike's brain is in constant problem-solving, question-answering overdrive and he finds himself anxious and worked up all day long and he can't seem to get a handle on that. And it's happening while he's at work and work seems to be exacerbating that. Maybe he has a lot of responsibilities, maybe he has a lot of projects going on, maybe there's just politics at work that are stressful and would be for anybody. So he starts to form the conclusion when I go to work, my mind gets even louder, everything feels like a disaster and everything feels unhandleable. So I really need a break from all this because clearly it's the work that's causing this and making me worse. And if I could just take time off and rest, then my brain will settle down. It will not be like this anymore.
Speaker 1:Or for somebody with OCD, for instance, they may find that let's say they're a college student and they're having a really hard time in class, in their lectures or doing their projects or studying, because their brain is just constantly firing scary, intrusive, unwanted, triggering thoughts at them and then they're fighting with that because they don't like those thoughts and they're really afraid and they're anxious and they're panicking. And then they have to start to engage in physical or mental compulsions to try to calm themselves down in the moment. And it's getting really, really difficult to be a college student. That person may feel like, well, I have so many classes, so many credits, my professors are difficult, I have so much writing on this. My future is uncertain. Clearly it's being at school is making it even worse, so maybe I should take an extended leave of absence or an entire semester or a year off so that I can calm down and get my thoughts under control before I go back and resume.
Speaker 1:These might sound familiar to you and from my own personal experience I can talk about honestly. The Christmas breaks were a really good illustration of the idea of taking a break and trying to use that as part of recovery. So we're at the end of the holiday break in 2024. And for me, I used to look forward to the holiday break when I was at my worst, because it was a time where I would get a week, or sometimes two full weeks where I could literally hibernate and not leave the house and nobody would care because nobody was expecting me to leave the house. And I thought that would be a great opportunity for me to kind of get my oomph back and sort of get my mojo back and rest and get away from this constant anxiety. And I'd be feeling much better by January 2nd. And, as it turns out, I wasn't. So while it seemed like a good idea to do that, it would tend to backfire and I would have a really hard time being forced to go back after the holiday break January 2nd always traditionally one of the hardest times of the year for me because of the avoidance that came in with the idea that I should be taking an extended break to get better. So some of those things might resonate with you and it's really common.
Speaker 1:If you find yourself in a situation where you feel overwhelmed and you are seriously considering taking an extended leave of absence from work because you feel that you are genuinely like just exhausted mentally, emotionally, physically by this, I get you. It makes perfect sense for your brain to decide like this is all too much. We got to get away from this so that we can be better or at least feel better. That wouldn't make you wrong or weak or defective. It would make you human. In fact, if you didn't experience at least some drive to get away from bad experiences, something would be weird about that, right? Remember the stuff we talk about around here especially if you've been around the podcast or the YouTube channel long enough is quite paradoxical, you know. It makes sense that we would want to avoid these things and escape from them, but in the end, what our brain thinks is right for us in any given moment isn't always what's right for us on the long term.
Speaker 1:So it's normal to find yourself in a situation where you're thinking that you might want to take an extended period of time off and you're thinking that the extended rest and quiet will somehow help you get over this. Or you might be thinking that I need to take time off so that I can do recovery as a full-time job. I'm going to go all in, I'm just going to spend all day long doing exposures. In all of these cases you might be kind of aiming at the wrong target or at least going on some wrong information. So I just sort of want to talk about that.
Speaker 1:In a situation where you take time off because you actually do need the time off, there's nothing wrong with that. Everybody needs time off. And if you're really tired and you're exhausted because an anxiety disorder is an exhausting kind of thing I get that and it's okay to take time to rest and recharge and take care of yourself there's nothing inherently wrong about that and that doesn't mean that you're not recovering. But sometimes we have to really ask is that why we're really doing it, or are we doing it because I just can't even bear the idea of getting up in the morning and going back to school because I'm struggling, feeling anxious all day long. It feels overwhelming and unhandleable and I feel much better if I just retreat back to my safe or my quiet zone. I get that. But if you're doing it primarily because of avoidance and the need to get away from these experiences that you feel like you can't control, can't get a handle on and are too scary for you, then we sort of have to rethink that a little bit.
Speaker 1:Or the idea that you're going to take time off and just go all in in full-time recovery and just every day you're going to go at it like the hammers of hell and you're just going to recover faster and better because you've dedicated your whole life to that. Often that doesn't really work either, because there's no such thing as full-time, every working moment, recovery. That can lead to even more burnout and it can even lead to being a little bit obsessed about recovery and making bad decisions and winding up on a treadmill where you're running and running and running but not actually moving forward all that well. So to try to answer the question should I take time off, an extended period of time off from work or school in order to focus on recovery or to recover. You've got to really be honest with yourself. What is my motivation? Am I truly burnt? Do I really need this time off? In which case, sure, take it.
Speaker 1:But also, you have to really really look at this and say am I just trying to get away from it? I just need to get away from it, and that's not a good primary motivator to take extended periods of time off. Everybody is allowed to get away from the struggle now and then. It's a good idea. We all need to do that sometimes. Just be careful. If your primary motivation is, I think that if I could get away from this for two months, that I'll just somehow magically get better because I'm quieter and not being triggered, and somehow it'll fade into the background because my anxiety, immune and recharge response will kick in and fix it. For me it doesn't do that. So be careful about that.
Speaker 1:But if you do choose to take time off because it's the right thing for you, I would fully endorse that. But you also have to ask yourself how am I going to use that time? What am I going to do with that time? You don't want to just be passive. You don't want to sit there and hope that something kicks in to make you better, like might happen if you had the flu or if you broke a bone and you had to, like, sit on your sofa with your foot in a cast for six weeks while your bone healed. It just doesn't work that way.
Speaker 1:This is not how anxiety disorder recovery works. It's not a passive healing and resting process like when you have a sinus infection. It's an active process where we choose to stay connected to and engaged with our experiences, even the ones we hate and fear and are trying to get away from. So even if you do decide I'm going to take extended amounts of time off from work or school to take care of myself there's nothing wrong with that. But please be careful about deciding I'm just going to rest for three months, because rest alone isn't going to really help you and sometimes it even backfires and makes things worse, because we create that avoidance loop that says, if I get away from this, I feel great, but then, if I go back to life, I feel bad again. So life is dangerous and unhandleable and I can't ever go back to life. You don't want to wind up there. So why am I taking the time off? Do I need it to rest and recharge? Cool, am I just trying to get away from this? Probably not so cool, but maybe it's both of those things, because more than one thing can be true at a time, and sometimes our motivations are mixed and our motivation is unclear and our motives are unclear to ourselves. Welcome to being human. This is the way people work. It's how the world works and how the universe works.
Speaker 1:Often there's no certainty, so there could be conflicting things or multiple reasons why you feel like you want to take time off. So take the time off if you need some rest. Nothing wrong with that. Experiment with it a little bit, but also make sure you don't decide that you're going to just passively take time off. You're going to have to decide how am I going to spend this extended time where I can work more on my recovery? It can't be just resting. It cannot be just not being anxious because I'm in my safe place. What can I do? What steps can I take while I have this time off to also incorporate active recovery?
Speaker 1:Now, if you're exhausted, it doesn't mean you're going to go out there and just do crazy big giant heavy exposures every single day to get better. You're not going to be involved in crazy big giant ERP exercises every single day if you're just exhausted and have no ability to be flexible or resilient. That's not going to work for you either. We may have to scale it way back, but we do want to make sure that we incorporate consistent, systematic, repetitive recovery, active recovery, into our extended time off. So you have rest time, you have recharge time, you have you time, you have self-care time and you also have active recovery time built into that.
Speaker 1:So is my motivation in the right place? If I'm not really sure, I might have to make the best decision that I can. But either way, I'm going to have to make sure that I don't make the mistake of just passively sitting and retreating from those anxious feelings for months on end and hoping that things will be different when it's time to go back, because often they won't be, and then you start to draw those incorrect conclusions about being hopeless or broken or not being able to ever get better Right. So those are the main things, and one of the things that I really wanna talk about is the idea that there's no right answer, because I think that makes things even harder for anxious people. In the absence of absolute certainty and knowing, yes, this is the correct choice that will help make me better, because I get it, you want to be better. You do not want to feel the way you feel anymore. I understand that.
Speaker 1:But sometimes the need to make the perfect, right recovery decision becomes almost compulsive or it becomes a little bit obsessive and you start to really worry like what if I make the bad choice? Am I going to not recover? Am I going to ruin my recover? Am I going to go backwards in my recovery? These are very common things that happen to anxious people. They can get paralyzed in this very decision because they're terrified to make the wrong choice. But one of the things that I talk about a lot around here is the concept of psychological flexibility. Psychological flexibility is one of the foundations upon which recovery from an anxiety disorder is built, and psychological flexibility means that I can be with all of my experiences, regardless of what they are, and I could be with them for what they are, without resisting them or fighting them or forcing specific outcomes or demanding that things be different, and that sometimes means oof.
Speaker 1:I think I might have made the wrong choice here because this time off isn't helping me. I'm feeling like a lump. I'm starting to get depressed. I don't like being isolated and home by myself all the time. I need to change gears. It's okay to do that. It's okay to do that.
Speaker 1:You might make what you think was the wrong decision and then you may have to reevaluate and shift. A common pitfall for anxious people would be to take that situation and declare failure and declare disaster like I did it wrong. I blew it. I don't know what I'm doing. I don't know what I was thinking. Clearly, this isn't working for me. I'm never going to get better. There's no hope. You start to frantically look for people who made the same mistake as you to see if it turned out okay. It's okay if you have to shift.
Speaker 1:Sometimes, and especially with this particular question, should I take an extended amount of time off from work or school to recover or so I can recover? There is no right answer, there's no wrong answer, and the difference between right or wrong may really be a moving target, even sometimes from day to day or week to week. So be flexible, be patient, be kind to yourself. You may have to adjust on the fly as you go. You may decide I actually don't like being completely off from work. It was better for me to go to work and struggle through the day than it is for me to isolate completely and take this extended amount of time off. Or you may discover I'm glad that I took the time off, but I need to start to use it a little bit more productively, because I'm just sitting around all day long and, yes, this is comfortable, but I don't like where it's headed. So there's nuance, there's subtlety and, honestly, if you were working with me as your therapist, it would take us some time to sort that all out. It would take you some time to really kind of discover what's working for you, what's right for you, what gives you the best opportunity to move forward and really how you can learn from whatever experiences you're having.
Speaker 1:So I know that the object of the game here in this podcast episode or this YouTube video is to try to answer the question should I take time off to recover? But the point of this is maybe or maybe not, or maybe yes and no at the same time. There's just some basic principles that you want to look for, which I've talked about earlier. What's your motivation? Is there mixed motivation? And how are you going to use that time more than just passively resting and hoping to heal without doing anything and then, after that kind of making it up as you go along and learning as you go through those experiences, while you remain connected to and engage with the experiences that you think you need to escape from? What is that teaching you and how are you going to adjust, going forward?
Speaker 1:I'm sorry, I keep hitting my microphone, so that's what I have to say. Where am I? I'm about 60 minutes into this. That's kind of what I have to say about this question. There's no right or wrong answer, and it's okay if you're not sure. It's okay if you're even asking the question to begin with. If you're one of those people that declares I shouldn't have to take time off from work, I shouldn't even be answering this question. This means I'm weak, this means I'm broken. You could stop doing that.
Speaker 1:Everybody starts to ask questions like this at some point in this process, and if you're really unsure or you've already made this decision and you feel like this isn't working out the way I thought, it's also okay to change your mind and shift gears. Show some flexibility, show some resiliency, because the ability to change gears, learn, adjust and be okay with not feeling so good about your initial decision it's part and parcel of the recovery process. So you can't really get this wrong. Maybe from a practical level and from a logistical and scheduling level there certainly would be implications. I'm not trying to say that everybody lives in a perfect world where you could just come and go out of work and school as you see fit. Clearly there are going to be practical things to consider, but in the end, as far as the anxiety disorder itself goes and your relationship with anxiety and fear and triggers and uncertainty, and your own thoughts and feelings and your thoughts and feelings about your thoughts and feelings, that's a fluid situation and you got to be willing to sort of dance around a little bit and see what's working out for you as you go, and that's it.
Speaker 1:I don't really have anything else to add so much to that other than, yeah, to remind you that if you have any questions about this and you're listening to this podcast episode as, in fact, a podcast episode, then one of the things you can do is to click the link that's right at the top of the podcast show notes and allows you to send me questions or comments about this episode by a text. I'm not gonna see your number, I can't text you back, but you can send in a question or a comment and I think next episode I'm going to do viewer questions and answers and I'm probably going to start to do those a little bit more frequently, every few months, so send them in. That's fine, of course, if you're listening or watching on YouTube and you want to ask a question there. I know I've been promising to get back into the comments in the new year I'm going have time to actually do that, but if you're really struggling with the situation and you want to use the YouTube comment section to talk about it, your experience might help someone else if you're willing to share. So if you figured out what to do in this situation and you want to talk about what you did, cool. If you're still not sure what to do and you want to ask a question about it, maybe somebody else will even volunteer their you know their experience and that might help you, so feel free to reach out that way as well.
Speaker 1:Taking time off or not taking time off, it isn't that simple. Everything is nuanced, everything is complicated. It is what it is. This is what we got. This is the reality we have in terms of anxiety disorders. But that's all okay. I promise it might feel overwhelming. I don't really know what to do with this. I'm looking for some sort of expert advice. I don't know what to do next. It's okay, everybody finds themselves there at some point. Some aspect of recovery. It's really okay. So that's it. I'm going to wrap it up here.
Speaker 1:Of course, the other thing I always ask you guys to do if you're listening on Apple Podcasts or Spotify is to maybe leave a five-star review if you really dig the podcast, or maybe even write a review as opposed to just leaving stars, because it helps more people find the podcast and the more people get help.
Speaker 1:And, of course, if you're watching on YouTube, you want to like the video, subscribe to the channel, maybe hit the notification bell so you know when I upload new stuff.
Speaker 1:That would be super cool and I think that's it.
Speaker 1:Remember, I always try and remind you of something at the end of every episode, and this is no exception. Remember that recovery isn't about eliminating anxiety and it's definitely not about like just taking a long amount of time off from work or school so that the anxiety goes away and then you can call yourself better and then you can go back to life. It doesn't work that way. Recovery is about learning to be engaged in life and living the best way you can, even when anxiety is present. Like every small step that you can take toward doing that and away from anxious, fearful, avoidant responses counts, even though it might feel like a tiny step and it doesn't feel like it counts in the moment, it does.
Speaker 1:I promise. Give yourself some time and space to explore and experiment and learn from each thing that you do, no matter how small it is. It will get you there. Take your time. You're allowed to take your time. I'll be back in two weeks, probably with some questions and answers, or maybe with another topic, I don't know. Thanks for hanging out this week. I appreciate you guys. We're out. We'll see you next time.