When Your Mind Becomes Its Own Worst Enemy | EP 321

This week on The Anxious Truth, we're talking about what happens when a problem solving mind sees itself as a problem to solve.

Your mind is an incredible problem-solving machine - it's what sets humans apart and has helped us thrive for thousands of years. But when that same problem-solving ability turns inward and starts trying to "fix" your own thoughts, emotions, and internal experiences, things can go very wrong very quickly.

If you're stuck in cycles of overthinking, constantly trying to figure out your anxiety, or exhausting yourself attempting to solve feelings that aren't meant to be solved, this episode is for you. We'll explore how the same mental abilities that help us navigate the world can trap us when they're aimed at our own internal experiences.

TIMESTAMPS:
00:00 Introduction - When problem solving becomes the problem
01:54 How the mind forms relationships and connections between experiences
03:09 When problem solving leads to anxiety, overthinking, and control issues
04:26 What happens when problem solving turns inward on our feelings
06:47 The spectacular failure of trying to solve internal experiences
09:02 Understanding the Cognitive Attentional Syndrome (CAS)
10:42 Experiential avoidance and the cost of feeling better now
12:58 How fear generalizes through mental connections
14:58 Shifting from content focus to process awareness
16:09 Real examples: panic responses vs. healthier approaches to triggers
18:03 Practical principles for recognizing when problem solving goes wrong
19:29 Moving toward values while feeling uncomfortable - psychological flexibility

Key takeaway: Your thoughts and emotions are experiences to have, not problems to solve.

Whether you're dealing with panic disorder, agoraphobia, OCD, health anxiety, or generalized anxiety, learning to recognize when your problem-solving mind is making things worse can be a crucial step in your recovery journey.

This episode explores evidence-based concepts from Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) and Metacognitive Therapy in accessible, practical terms. Remember: recovery isn't about finding quick fixes or magical solutions - it's about learning to relate differently to your internal experiences.

Resources mentioned:

• My Substack
• Full Show Notes For This Episode

If you found this episode helpful, please leave a rating and review - it helps other people find the podcast and get the help they need.

Support The Anxious Truth: If you find the podcast helpful and want to support my work, you can buy me a coffee.   Other ways to support my work like buying a book or signing up for a low cost workshop can be found on my website.  None of this is never required, but always appreciated!

Interested in doing therapy with me? For more information on working with me directly to overcome your anxiety, follow this link.

Disclaimer: The Anxious Truth  is not therapy or a replacement for therapy. Listening to The Anxious Truth does not create a therapeutic relationship between you and the host or guests of the podcast. Information here is provided for psychoeducational purposes. As always, when you have questions about your own well-being, please consult your mental health and/or medical care providers. If you are having a mental health crisis, always reach out immediately for in-person help.

Transcript

Problem-Solving Minds and Anxiety

Speaker 1 0:01

This week on the Anxious Truth, we're talking about what happens when a problem-solving mind sees itself as a problem to solve. So let's get at it. Hello everybody, welcome back to the Anxious Truth. This is episode 321 of the podcast we're recording in July of 2025. If you're listening in the future, this is the quick and dirty edition of the Anxious Truth, because I have jury duty this week and no time to edit. So this week we're talking about what happens specifically the struggle, the bad things that happen when an anxious mind that's also a problem-solving mind turns on itself and sees itself as a problem to solve. Before we do that, just a quick introduction. If you're new to the Anxious Truth your first time here I hope you find it helpful. I'm Drew Linsalata, the creator and host of this podcast. I'm a therapist specializing in the treatment of anxiety and anxiety disorders, practicing in New York. I'm also a former sufferer of the very problems that I talk about on this podcast, but much better now Three-time author on this topic. Clearly, a podcaster got with an expensive microphone, social media dude, advocate, psychoeducator, all of the things, and I'm glad that you're here. I hope you find this episode helpful and, if you do, maybe check out other episodes of the podcast. You might find them helpful too if you're struggling with anxiety issues. Of course, if you're a returning listener, welcome back. I appreciate you being here Today.

Speaker 1 1:19

We are going to talk about what happens when a problem-solving mind which is all human minds gets into an anxious state, then turns on itself and starts trying to solve itself, or your own internal experiences, which lies at the heart of most every anxiety disorder. Before we get into that, just a quick reminder that the Anxious Truth is more than just this podcast episode. There are a ton of excellent resources, many of which are free on my website at theanxioustruthcom. So if you get a chance, go check that out. Avail yourself of all the goodies. Everybody seems to enjoy them and find them helpful. Hopefully you will too. So check it out at theanxioustruthcom.

Speaker 1 1:51

So let's get into today's topic. Okay, we need to talk about a thing. We need to talk about how one of the coolest things about a human mind is its ability to form relationships and make connections between anything and anything else in any possible way. It's insane. It's really good at that and that's a really useful thing. We can form relationships and connections between any part of our experience external and internal and any other part of our experience, internal and external, in any way, shape or form. It's practically an infinite number of combinations and it's what sets us apart from everything else walking the planet or swimming in the oceans or flying above our heads. This relation connection-making machine is active all the time, whenever we're awake. It's probably active when we're not awake I'd have to look into that and it has proven to be super useful to human beings over time. It's the only reason why you can understand the words that I'm saying to you right now or have a conversation with your best friend or play your role in humans dominating and changing the planet the way we do and have been for thousands of years since we developed this ability, which is kind of symbolic and relational thinking that led to language and all kinds of other things. This serves us very well. Until it doesn't, it's super cool, until it's not.

Speaker 1 3:15

This relation-making, connection-making ability leads to problem-solving ability because we have the ability to decide whether things are good or bad, or we like them or don't like them, or want them or don't want them. We can compare different states. We can compare the don't want them. We can compare different states. We can compare the past and the present. We can compare the past and the future. We can compare the present and the future. We can do this all day long and this becomes a problem because it leads to problem solving.

Speaker 1 3:37

You know that the problem solving mechanism has itself become a problem. When you start to hear somebody use words and phrases like anxious or overthinking or obsessed or the ever-popular control freak, when you hear somebody tell you that they are a control freak or that they must know and they can't tolerate uncertainty, you are watching the problem-solving, relation-making, connection-making machine in overdrive and jumping off the rails. If you are feeling perpetually anxious, if you feel like you're falling victim to overthinking, if you feel that you're perpetually hyper fixated on problems that probably aren't really even problems and solutions that are nowhere to be found, and you're starting to feel frustrated or disheartened or exhausted as a result, there's a really good chance that your relation-making, connection-making, problem-solving machine has now become a problem. And I'll tell you why making problem solving machine has now become a problem and I'll tell you why. This machinery that we have between our ears is able to judge and compare and evaluate and decide and then fix.

Speaker 1 4:33

Fixing is a really broad term. It shows up in various ways, cognitively and behaviorally. But for today let's just sort of stick with the basics and a simplistic explanation. Humans love to figure out and then fix or control anything they deem not appealing. That's a good place to start, because that gets us into trouble. Hell, we even problem solve the good stuff. This is why we have phrases in our language like if it ain't broke, don't fix it, because sometimes we have to remind ourselves that things are good and we make them worse when we try to make them gooder. That comparison and relation building mechanism in our minds lets us take something that's good or even great and try to figure out ways to make it even better. We don't know how to stay in a good moment. We only know how to try to get more good moments or make a good moment even better, and we often wind up ruining it as a result. So in that way, that problem-solving, relation-making, connection-making, comparison machine really gets us into trouble. But that is a story for another podcast episode.

Speaker 1 5:31

For now let's return to what happens when the problem-solving is turned inward. So, by way of reference, last week on my Substack, I wrote a lengthy article about our desire to control things that we really can't control and how we work even harder to control them when we discover that that's impossible. If you want to check out that article, that's on my sub stack. I'll put a link on the screen, or the video description or the podcast description. You can go check that out.

When Our Minds Become The Problem

Speaker 1 5:55

In a nutshell, we wind up trying really hard to know what we cannot know, be certain about what is uncertain, solve what cannot be solved and control what is absolutely uncontrollable. And even when we recognize that there's no point in trying those things, we often double down and try even harder and it really gets us into trouble. We try to control and fix and know and be certain and figure out and then we can't and we are left feeling bad. We do not like feeling bad and we are left feeling bad. We do not like feeling bad. And when our problem-solving minds grow tired of trying to fix or control things outside of us that they're unable to do, they will often turn their attention inward and then see those resulting bad feelings as problems to begin to try to figure out and solve. And that's where things go really south.

Speaker 1 6:42

When this happens, all of that meaning-making, connection-making, relation-building, problem-solving machinery gets brought to bear on your own thoughts and ideas and emotions and the bodily sensations that you experience when you have disturbing thoughts and emotions. Remember, bodily sensations are supposed to come with disturbing thoughts and emotions, but we don't like that. And what do our minds do with things that we don't like or find appealing? They try to figure them out and fix them. So when you're confronted with things that we ultimately know that we cannot control or know or solve or fix or avoid things outside of our own skin, then we are left with bad feelings and the problem solving mechanism gets turned on those bad feelings and we try to figure those out and solve those. Now that attempt at problem solving also fails, and it fails in a spectacular way, and by spectacular I literally mean in a spectacular way. It is quite a spectacle.

Speaker 1 7:34

People will spend all night long, all day long, for days on end, furiously reading and researching and resource gathering to try to find certainty or assurance about things that there is no certainty or assurance about. They will try to know the unknowable. They will spend a ton of time discussing these problems with other people who are trapped in the same sort of futile, exhausting, counterproductive problem solving in things like anxiety forums or support groups. They'll talk about how bad it feels to feel bad. They'll go for constant reassurance, seeking from their friends or their families or people that they consider experts or helpers that they think will give them the magic answers that will fix the feelings inside of them. They will often turn to things like dietary changes. They will spend a ton of money on things like supplements or herbs. They will try specific techniques or behaviors that are often sort of presented to them or worse, sold to them as being able to squash bad feelings or create good feelings Like. The list goes on and on and on.

Speaker 1 8:30

But in the end, the worst part, at least in my opinion, is when a problem-solving mind tries to solve itself and its own internal experiences, fails, keeps trying and drives you into a state of exhaustion, disheartenment and loss of hope. That's not good, but that happens to a lot of people. A problem-solving mind that doesn't understand or refuses to understand that it cannot solve itself creates more problems. The struggle and the paradox are real. Now, without getting too nerdy here, let's take a look at what that looks like.

Trying To Control The Uncontrollable

Speaker 1 9:05

In metacognitive therapy, we have a thing called the CAS, c-a-s Cognitive Attentional Syndrome. Pay attention to the word attention, because it kind of matters here. The CAS is what we call it. When you have feelings and thoughts about things that you can't really fix outside your skin and then you have feelings and thoughts inside your skin and then you have really and thoughts inside your skin and then you have really strong feelings and thoughts about the feelings and thoughts that you are having about the things outside your skin and inside your skin. See where this is going. We call it the cognitive attentional syndrome because when the CAS is activated, it demands that all of your attention be given to your internal experiences. You are having thoughts that you don't like, you are having emotions that you don't like. You may be experiencing corresponding physical sensations that you don't like or find distasteful or distressful or terrifying, and the CAS tells you to pay very close attention to them all the time, to figure them out, to find a way away from them, to find a way to crush them. The CAS will drive you into areas that are unsustainable. It's a really good example of a problem-solving mind run amok that doesn't seem to understand when it's making things worse.

Speaker 1 10:11

In ACT, acceptance and Commitment Therapy which is something you hear me talk about all the time around here, we have a concept called experiential avoidance. This is a central concept in ACT. Experiential avoidance is what we call it when we go to great lengths to get away from, avoid or escape internal experiences. Those tend to be thoughts and emotions, and I also like to include bodily sensations, although that's kind of a secondary thing, because the bodily sensations are triggered by the thoughts and the emotions. These are things we do not like. We find them distasteful or terrifying or scary or disturbing, so we try to avoid them, either by escaping, controlling or preventing Seems like a good idea, but keep in mind that avoidance is an in-the-moment strategy.

Speaker 1 10:51

Avoidance is about feeling better now, and while you might be able to do that, it comes at a high cost. That cost is restricted, shrinking, highly controlled, very rigidly lived lives. That avoidance causes problems in relationships, in your school, in your careers, in your friendships, in just about everything. We wind up feeling that there are so many things that we can't or shouldn't do, or can only do under a very specific set of circumstances, where we know we won't be triggered, or we lower our probability of being triggered into internal experiences that we hate or fear. Sometimes that doesn't work and we do wind up being triggered, which is going to happen. And then we have to do all the things and that list is very long to make sure that we squash that trigger and get rid of the feelings and escape from them and soothe them right away. And between the avoidance and the trying to get away from the feelings, when they are triggered against our will, what time is there left for actual living?

Speaker 1 11:44

And if we look at the ability of your mind to form relations between one thing and any other thing in any way, shape or form at any given time, we can also see that this leads to fear being generalized. One good example is how an anxious person may have a problem with one particular very triggering co-worker that I have a hard time getting along with. Initially being at work is difficult when they come in contact with that one troubling co-worker. But very quickly our minds can make relationships between that work thing and all the work things. And next thing, you know you're just genuinely anxious at work and then generally anxious when you think about work and then generally anxious when you even consider that you have to go to work on Monday morning. This is where relationship making and connection making is a really great thing that our minds do, but also a really bad thing because it leads to generalizing of experiences. Now in the recovery process, that works to our advantage, but when we are sliding kind of down into the rabbit hole, it definitely works against us. I think we could probably call that good machinery used in a really bad way.

The Trap of Experiential Avoidance

Speaker 1 12:47

So when a problem-solving mind tries to solve itself and its own internal experiences and can't manage to do that and makes things turn quickly south and go off the rails into a dark place, what can we do about that? Well, I can't solve your anxiety problem or cure you in a podcast or a video, of course, but we can look at some basic principles here, and those principles start with words that you hear around here all the time, like mindfulness or tolerance or willful tolerance, or surrender or acceptance or floating, or pick your words. They all kind of mean the same thing. We start by paying attention. You might think, for example, that you need to somehow find a way to solve death or at a minimum to turn off your fear of death. But that's not really true and if I was your therapist, I wouldn't be terribly interested in death at all, even though that would be your presenting concern. I would be more interested in the process of thinking and feeling and attempted problem solving that at the moment just happens to be focused on death. I would be process focused, you would be content focused and that's one of those things that we would try to shift.

Speaker 1 13:48

So when we start by recognizing the process, problem solving run amok, refusal to accept the unknowable or the unsolvable or the fixable run amok then we can start to make some adjustments with how we react to those things and how we interact with those things. I'll give you a couple of examples. The initial state for an anxious person might be an exasperated statement like how am I ever supposed to be okay with the idea of death? They might think that's absolutely impossible and bristle at the idea that it could be anything but that. But the adjustment that we'd be looking for, that comes over time and a lot of hard work, might be a statement that looks like I guess death really is an unsolvable problem but it is for all of us and right now I'm having a lot of really powerful thoughts and feelings about that. That's always going to be followed by an acknowledgement that it's okay to have that internal experience, see the shift, that once we can start to make that shift and focus a little bit more on recognizing the process instead of being fixated on the content that seems so very important in the moment, we can start to make changes in the way we respond from a behavioral point of view. We can start to make more informed or values-based decisions when we do wind up triggered, which we invariably will. So at first those movements might sort of look like this Initially a person might get triggered into the fear of death and all the corresponding internal experiences that come along with that, and they may respond instantly by frantically trying to remember what podcast it was where that doctor said that he had figured out that we are basically immortal if we could just unlock the biological secrets that he thinks he's on track of.

Speaker 1 15:21

And he talked about supplements or some sort of routines that he's supposed to follow. And I just have to remember that. What podcast was that on? What did he say to do? Is that true? Is it really true? Can I solve the problem of death? And they will be frantic and they will be trying to actually operate on the content. In this case that would be death, and anybody who's ever listened to that guy I'm not going to say his name knows what I'm talking about. I've got those questions in my DMs and my email all the time, every week. Hey, did you see Dr So-and-so on such-and-such podcast? Why does he say that we can maybe live forever if we can unlock those secrets? Do you think that's true? Do you think I'd be able to do it?

Speaker 1 16:03

That person is terrified and trying to solve the problem of their internal experience, the terror, by coming to grips with the actual content of death and immortality. But again, after some hard work and some repetition and some consistency and some self-compassion and kindness in the process, that might change. A person might wind up in a triggered state where their fear of death has been highly activated and they feel really bad, but they may be able to respond in a slightly different way. I'm in the same situation right now highly triggered, highly uncomfortable that every other human being before me and after me is going to experience. I guess it's okay to feel this, because we all do. It's a shared experience. What else can I do? Because when I try to solve this problem, it brings me into bad places and dark places and I wind up feeling worse. So what are my options here? Can you see the shift? Can you see the change over time.

Shifting From Content To Process

Speaker 1 16:49

You may think that you have to take action to solve the problem of death in this circumstance, or heart attacks, or unknowability or possible harm that your OCD tells you you may do to people that you love that you're absolutely not going to do to people that you love. You may feel like you need to solve those problems because those are inside problems thoughts, emotions, beliefs, images, bodily sensations but in the end, what you really want to be able to do is cultivate the ability to see that problem-solving process run amok because it's leading you into places that it doesn't belong and isn't going to help you. So we're trying to cultivate and support kind observation of that process in action and then, once we do, we can sort of shift into that values-driven mode that we talk about all the time on this podcast hey, wait a minute. Acting in ways that align with what you truly value, even though you're afraid and uncomfortable. That sounds a lot like psychological flexibility, doesn't it? So there's really so much more that I could say about this. I could be here for hours and hours. I could probably be here for days talking about this, and if you're one of the people who sits with me every week for an hour and works on these kind of problems together with me, then we do get to talk quite a bit about it, but in a podcast or video environment.

Speaker 1 18:01

The best I could do is try to sum things up with a general principle that you might be able to start with and lean on the next time you find yourself in a highly triggered, highly agitated, frustrated, anxious, frantic, terrified state. Recognize the process, if you can. This may be the result of your mind turning its problem-solving mechanisms onto itself and trying to solve your own internal experiences, which it will be unable to do. Recognize that, while this mechanism seems to make sense, it isn't always useful and doesn't belong here. Acknowledge that life is triggering and difficult enough, without making it even harder by trying to solve things that are not meant to be solved. Your thoughts and your emotions, internal experiences, emotions, thoughts, ideas, bodily sensations are experiences to have. They are not things to figure out or problems to solve, which is something I say all the time and I will continue to say all the time, because it's really important If you can look at this process in action, watching that machine work, watching those problem-solving gears turn at high speed even though you know they're not going to go anywhere.

Speaker 1 19:07

Then you might have the opportunity to take a slightly different tact and respond in a different way. Maybe you might take a second to stop and deflate that balloon and relax your body a little bit, even though you don't want to. Maybe take a second and thank your mind for trying to protect you it's doing the best that it can with the resources that it has. Then decide what makes more sense for you Continuing to feed into that cycle, to try to solve things inside of you that have proven to be unsolvable, or taking action toward things that would actually make your life a little bit more meaningful, while you still feel afraid, uncomfortable and triggered. This is a really difficult path to go down, but there are benefits If you decide to try this and lean on this principle and start to work in this direction, which, again, is a very broad brush but might get you started in the right direction. Be nice to yourself, be kind, be patient. This is a big shift and it's gonna take some time.

Episode Wrap-up and Key Takeaways

Speaker 1 20:01

So that's episode 321 of the Anxious Truth in the books, a little longer than I thought it would be. Thanks for hanging in there with me. I hope you got something out of this, primarily an understanding of what happens when your problem-solving mechanism turns on itself and drives things into ridiculous, uncomfortable, untenable places. Take what you can from the podcast episode. Try to use it as best you can Remember. If you take anything out of this episode and just make one small change, like I maybe suggested toward the end here, and you can move a little bit closer to that direction and a little bit away from perpetuating the fruitless, exhausting, pointless problem solving, then you're winning, like every little change you make counts, they add up, they matter, they will get you to where you want to be. So I'll end the episode by asking the same favors that I always do.

Speaker 1 20:47

If you're listening on Apple Podcasts or Spotify, those are places that let you leave ratings and reviews on podcasts.

Speaker 1 20:53

So if you dig the Anxious Truth, leave a five-star rating and if you really like the Anxious Truth, maybe take a minute or two and write a review on one of those platforms saying why you like the podcast, because that helps people understand that it's useful and more people can find the podcast, and then more people can get some help, and that's why I do this to begin with. It would really be helping me out and I appreciate that. Anybody who's ever left a review or a rating on the podcast, thank you, I do appreciate that. So I will be back next week with another episode. Actually, I'll be back in two weeks with another episode. I don't know what that's going to be, but I will be here. Take what you can out of this one. Do the best you can. I know you can get there. Be nice to yourself, be patient, be consistent in the work and I promise change can happen. Take care of yourself and I'll see you next time.