How to Be a Rebel with Dr. Reid Wilson

Today on Beauty in the Break, Foster and Cesar sit down with Foster’s father, renowned clinical psychologist Dr. Reid Wilson, PhD, an internationally recognized expert on anxiety disorders, panic attacks, and OCD, to explore how he turned his urge to be a troublemaker into a force for good. From adolescent trauma and rebellion to pioneering practical self-help approaches for anxiety, Reid shares how urgency, compassion, and action shaped his unconventional path.

This episode is for anyone who feels called to challenge broken systems, take meaningful action, and create change from the inside out.

In this episode they explore: 

• What trauma, anxiety, and aggression have in common
• Why Reid chose disruption over academic approval
• The hidden cost of being an outlier in mental health
• Why self-help reaches people therapy can’t
• How to tap into your own confidence

To connect with Reid, visit www.anxieties.com. Also mentioned:

• Don’t Panic: Taking Control of Anxiety Attacks
• Quiet Your OCD Brain (releases: 6.1.26)
• OCD & the Six Moment Game 
• The Eating Habits We Didn’t Choose 
• How to Spot a Gatekeeper

See Reid in the 70s on Instagram!

Let's connect! beautyinthebreakpod@gmail.com   

Cesar Cardona:

• Receive his monthly newsletter Insights That Matter
• Get guided meditation from Cesar on his website 
• Listen to music from Cesar + The Clew on Apple Music and Spotify

Foster Wilson:

• Buy her poetry book Afternoon Abundance
• Learn about her postpartum services
• Receive her monthly newsletter Foster’s Village

Created & Hosted by: Cesar Cardona and Foster Wilson

Executive Producer: Glenn Milley

Transcript

And so you were up against this great system of a very powerful university.

You were on their radar, weren't you?

Yeah.

You don't have to have confidence, I know this is going to work out.

You have confidence that you can persist in the face of adversity.

I got a little choked up thinking about it.

It was like, it was incredibly successful.

You know, at that point, I was on fire.

Hello and welcome to Beauty in the Break.

I'm Foster.

And I'm Cesar.

This is the podcast where we explore the moments that break us open and how we find beauty on the other side.

So whatever you're carrying today, you don't have to carry it alone.

We are here with you.

Thanks for being here and enjoy the show.

Hello, beloved.

Welcome.

This is Beauty in the Break.

Hello, hello.

And wherever you are in the world, I am glad you are here with us.

It is a special day because today I have my father on the show.

This is the first time we've had a parent on our show.

So it's going to be really fun and special and unique.

I feel honored that I get to have my father on the show.

He's kind of had his own mini introduction in past episodes because we've brought him up so much.

And we've talked about him a lot.

And when I think about how to introduce you here on the show, I first think about, like, do I talk about what you've done in your life and in your career?

Like, you're a clinical psychologist.

You specialize in anxiety disorders and OCD.

You've written seven books, including the bestseller, Don't Panic.

You've been on Oprah.

You've helped millions of people through your free self-help website, anxieties.com.

Okay, that's a whole list right there.

But then I also think, do I introduce you based on who you are as a person, which is someone who is deeply curious about the world, interested in growth at every stage in your life, a lifelong learner, loves everyone deeply, and is quite funny.

I think a lot of people who know you know all of this.

And they would agree with all of those things.

But here's what I see that not everyone sees.

And this is why I wanted you to be on the show.

I think you are an unassuming rebel.

You innovate within your field.

And to do that, you have to completely disrupt the system that you're in.

See, I think this is so key and so important for everyone who listens to our show.

And the reason I think this is important is because we're in a time in our world right now where a lot of us are not super thrilled about some things that are happening.

And even if we don't necessarily have the same drive and that same internal system that you have, we still want to disrupt things somehow.

We want to be a bit rebellious.

And I personally am like such a rule follower that I don't really know how to do that.

So we have to learn how to go against the grain and not be a follower of the herd.

There's also the fact that everybody has within them the ability to take action whenever they see something is not being done the best way.

That can appeal and affect and help the most people.

I want to be someone who stands up for injustice and who advocates for people.

And I want to have the guts and the grit to do that.

And I think you are the perfect person to teach us how to do this.

Well, so tell us a little bit about the first time you felt you ever disrupted something.

Oh, dear.

Well, I will go back to when I was 15.

I put together a, and this is ironic, my dad was in the tobacco industry in manufacturing.

But I created a program to go into the junior high and introduce those kids around the problems with smoking.

And I went and got from the American Heart Association a lung, a damaged lung from smoking.

I didn't know the story.

So that was a disruption.

So I hadn't really thought about that in a long time until just this moment.

What was the year, roughly, when you did that?

66.

Okay.

1966.

And was there a conversation at the time about the damages of smoking?

Well, there were, but not to young people.

Not to young people.

It was all advertised to the cool guy.

Young people don't watch that.

Uh-huh.

The fact that the cool people did it, the older people did it.

They grew up seeing James Dean or whoever, Marlon Brando, smoking a cigarette.

And that's the advertisement right there.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Why did you do that at such a young age?

What was the hook that was like, oh, I have to teach them about this?

I assume we will talk about it.

It's like, I don't want you guys to go forward and make mistakes based on lack of information,

lack of knowledge.

So I think that was probably my driver because it was my driver forever after that.

You have so many accolades after your name.

You're a doctor.

You have an adjunct professor at the University of North Carolina.

But when you were a kid, you described yourself as having some like juvenile delinquent behaviors.

Well, tell us about that.

Yeah.

You know, I have a lot of positive memories in my childhood.

Really good stuff.

But I also had a tremendous amount of trauma to me and my family.

Both verbal abuse, physical aggression, and neglect.

No one talked to me.

No one knew outside of the family what was going on.

I was lost and confused.

And I think I began to channel some of that energy into juvenile delinquency, which started

probably when I was 16.

So my friend and I would sneak out middle of the night pretty much every weekend.

We were aggressive, stealing things.

We were, now I'm realizing there's some things we did even in the daytime.

And something was getting expressed with all of that.

And that went on all the way until my freshman year of college, wanting to get back to it with

my buddy.

And he didn't want to do it anymore.

That intrigued me in a couple of ways because my teenage years were similar where I was committing

crimes.

I was in a gang.

I got arrested.

There was a lot of aggressive output.

And I also felt that isolation and aloneness as a kid.

From a psychological standpoint, why does it transpire to going out into the world and being aggressive?

Yeah.

I think there's two choices.

We either go internal or we do external.

And people who go internal, now we've got some psychological disorders that run from depression

to anxiety to generalized anxiety and worry.

And then there's who express all of this stuff outwardly.

It was going to get expressed.

It's just...

Which way?

All this stuff was coming in to you and I in that way.

And it has to come out.

And so I think, simply put, there's these two choices that the unconscious gets us to do.

We've got some genetic predisposition for people who are internal.

So they will take that path.

And the others of us are going to go.

I mean, I was activated about that.

Yeah.

I was thrilled about some of that kind of stuff.

And, you know, no one can do anything to me.

You know, so I felt like that dark world where no one was up, I was alive.

I was expressing myself.

There's a control there of some sort.

You can take control of things you didn't have your hands around in your daylight, in your waking life.

Yeah.

Right.

And we were, I personally was actively designing what it was that we were going to do.

And we were clever.

I'm not going to tell you more about that.

But that was beginning right inside me.

Right.

When you were 16 or so, you had a big breaking moment that led to a lot of stuff in your life.

Can you talk a little bit about what happened in your teenage years?

Sure.

Well, I started being sexually active at 16.

I'll backtrack for a minute to say that I was very close to my priest.

My girlfriend did get pregnant.

And again, this was way back.

And of course, I'm terrified about all of this.

And the first person I told was my priest.

And I, today, can vividly see that event.

I mean, I know you're walking diagonally across the parking lot going to the rectory.

And I conveyed that.

And his expression does not change.

Doesn't move.

And for me, that was such a relief.

He is not judging me.

Hmm.

You know, because I was feeling so ashamed.

And I also knew what was coming.

He could not give me any guidance because the church didn't allow him to do that for me.

He put me in touch with a minister in town.

And we connected to him.

And my dad and her dad worked out for her dad to fly with her to London and terminated the pregnancy in London.

There were no choices in the United States at that point.

1967.

Right.

So this was the primary driver for me with the message of, I don't want anyone else to go through this because of lack of knowledge.

I did not understand pregnancy in that way.

I had some of those old stories about what caused it and what you could do to keep it from happening.

So, you know, at that point, I was on fire.

I just, you know, certainly at 16 and by 17, I was starting to collect things.

And, you know, I worked in the church and we, I created an alternative mass up in the gym gymnasium.

I would play recorded music of Dion Warwick and so forth.

We had folk guitars coming in, the things that some churches do pretty consistently now.

Yeah.

That was not done.

I want to talk about that.

I think it's such an interesting, like, you, you had come from such a place of privilege to be able to have gotten the abortion that you needed.

So many people at that time, that was not their story.

To fly to London in the 60s, that's privilege and also privilege of information.

So then you took that, and I love the story so much, you took that information and that fire and that drive into college.

And tell us what you did.

Yeah.

There were a few things I did just to get my sea legs under me.

But it transitioned very quickly.

I was a freshman year of my freshman year, an OB-GYN doctor who was creating a course, which we later called Topics of Human Sexuality,

for undergraduates to educate them and work on their attitudes and so forth.

And what I joined him to do was to do all the administrative stuff of all that, which is a number of circumstances.

How I learned something new is that I would step into a role that allowed me to be present to someone.

But we couldn't get the College of Arts and Sciences, the undergraduate school, to accept the course.

So we jumped to the School of Public Health and went to health education, and they allowed us to do it.

These undergraduates were getting a graduate school credit.

But we had 250 students per class.

Wow.

This is the crazy part, too, I think.

So I'm 18.

Yeah.

And I'm organizing.

Because we would do a lecture, and then all the students would break into small groups with graduate students as leaders.

And I was coordinating the graduate students to get them on board and training and so forth.

It's like, you know, nuts.

But somehow I was able to do that.

And I would just say, the university didn't want you to do it, because why?

Well, they don't want to talk about that.

They don't want to talk about sex, right?

They don't want to talk about the problem.

They're going to get in trouble, because I'm not going to stand for that.

Yeah.

And you were teaching about sexuality, human sexuality.

You were teaching about contraceptives.

You were teaching about abortions at that time.

All of those things.

Homosexuality.

It works.

And so you were up against this great system of a very powerful university.

You were on their radar, weren't you?

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah, it started.

Do you want me to tell you what happens after that?

Please do.

So that was that freshman, sophomore year.

I think the spring of my sophomore year, I decided to create a counseling service for students around sexuality.

And so I called it the Human Sexuality Information and Counseling Service.

And we trained.

I sent out a notice to the local newspaper and so forth.

So we trained students and community people.

And we offered this service to students and community people.

But primarily our focus was on the students.

So ours was the first one that did that broad cover of everything.

And it was, I get a little choked up thinking about it.

It was like, it was incredibly successful in terms of doing what was missing for students.

Because again, no one was being educated.

No one was talking about it.

And we were seeing either on the phone or in person 1,600 cases that first year, which is a lot.

Yeah.

And simultaneously, we're having to confront the administration because the Student Health Service shamed co-eds coming in looking for contraception.

Young women.

Young collegiate women.

Young women.

And the policy at the university, listen to this, if you got pregnant, you were expelled from the university.

And you could not come back to school unless your department chair allowed you to come back in.

And so I was fighting mad.

I mean, I wasn't aggressive in terms of confrontations.

But it was like, again, I'll use that expression, I was on fire about doing this.

One resource I have is I'm an introvert.

And so I had a girlfriend who I loved.

And she was my face in that world.

She was social for me.

And so, and I just had my head to the ground.

Just what next?

And you were 18, 19 years old training other students to be able to counsel other students about how to get contraceptives, where to go for an abortion, things like that.

It was all done grassroots and on the ground level.

But of course, we were bringing in experts to teach them around, you know, bringing the physicians in and so forth, counselors in.

The fact that you were doing, you were doing it.

The fact that you were the one doing it, not the teachers, not the professors.

That's the different part.

What strikes me the absolute most is the deep amount of wisdom it takes for an 18-year-old to have.

To recognize, one, the situation that I'm in.

Two, how does this feel for me?

And three, how can I turn it around and help other people?

That takes, that's a three-pronged step of deep wisdom that I don't know most of us have at 18.

Yeah, and I wasn't aware of what you're saying.

Yeah, yeah.

I just, I was.

You're just doing it.

Here's the next thing that needs to be done.

Yeah.

The story, as I understand it, is you were in the student union because they would let you be there and have a space there.

And you had colleagues that were manning the booth or the table on the phone, answering phone calls and taking people in with a curtain that you just hung up, a blanket or something.

You've seen that picture.

I've seen the picture.

Me with my long hair and my beard and.

Maybe we'll post that on socials for you.

Yeah.

You were open all kinds of hours, really long hours, right?

You took a lot of different people to work there.

Yeah.

It's quite an effort.

Yeah, and by the end of my senior year, I pulled together.

I apologize for using the word I.

You know, I pulled together.

I pulled together.

I organized what I called the North Carolina Workshop for Problem Pregancy Counseling.

And I got six statewide organizations to co-sponsor with us.

Man.

The North Carolina Health Department, North Carolina Department of Social Services.

And we did a two-day conference.

There were attendees, counselors, nurses, social workers from 100% of the 100 counties there in order to learn this stuff.

We had probably 15 abortion clinics from Washington, D.C. and New York City coming down and displaying.

We had a highly articulate representative of the anti-abortion movement, who was really good at what he did.

In fact, we had an evening debate between Dr. Crist, who started the course with me, and Wilkie.

And Dr. Christ didn't hold a candle to him.

He was so, you know, and then you're showing the photographs of the, you know, all of that.

Appeal to the emotion.

And then we put together, I edited a book regarding problem pregnancy counseling that we distributed to everybody there.

And then I think the next year it was picked up by a publisher and was published nationally.

So that was a pretty, I mean, some of the things we did, we could not do it today.

Today's society would not allow it.

Back then we got, we did it.

You really were a community organizer.

Yeah.

And there was a significant change in students' sexual behavior in four years.

What they had predicted would take 10 years.

It took four years.

Wow.

And so that turned out to be my first publication in a journal of obstetrics and gynecology.

So that was just, you know, things were accelerating.

Absolutely.

How long did it continue?

The human sexuality information and counseling service went, to my surprise, another 40 years.

Yeah.

You think about how many lives you helped from what happened to you.

How many lives you've changed.

They're walking and living this life now a little more secure, a little more free because they made a better choice from what they learned.

That says so much.

Those people that are walking around this world right now have no idea or no clue where you are, who you are.

Some do, some don't.

But they have that freedom right now.

Yeah.

Knowledge.

And of course, there are so many people like me who do this exact same kind of finding my drive and acting on my drive into the world.

I'm not alone here.

Can you tell us about the moment that really like lit the fire even deeper for you?

You mean, without starting to cry?

You mean, without starting to cry?

Well, you can cry.

Yeah.

There was a girl in college who was pregnant and then died out of that event.

Our newspaper, the Daily Tar Heel, the front page was totally black because, and I think you, Foster, have seen the exact words on the cover and I don't really recall what it is.

Do you recall what it said?

I do.

So it says there will be no column of elephants and butterflies today in honor of a co-ed who lost her life to an abortion.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So that touched a whole lot of people.

Yeah.

And it really, you have, the way you've described it to me is you felt like this was war.

Yeah.

And it felt like life or death really and truly right here with the people around me.

And I do think a lot of people who listen to this show and who exist in the world today could feel the same way about a lot of things that are happening.

That this is life or death and that this is war.

And what we're fighting.

And what happened, it coalesced people.

Mm-hmm.

And that's important to get to that kind of critical mass and then all of a sudden.

And then what you did was not look down, get sad, feel bitter about it.

Or paralyzed.

Or paralyzed, right?

Because it's so overwhelming.

And instead you took action and you were scrappy, I think, with it.

Yeah.

You know?

What do we got?

What do we have?

What do we have around us?

Who's around it?

Well, okay, I'll let the students teach it if I don't have enough, you know, professors who are going to teach us.

We just got to do it and then get better as we do it.

There wasn't time to make it perfect.

And the administration tested me.

I had to get a lot of feelings.

They, you know, the chairman of my department of sociology told me, you'll never make it.

I mean, it was, there was aggression coming at me.

And that fire pushed me forward anyway.

So.

Yeah.

There's a constant trope that happens in the story of a rebel or a disruptor that they get this, these people, these people, quote unquote, beyond them, above them, higher than them, telling them that they can't do this thing.

How many no's do you get until you just need one yes?

Yeah.

Him telling you that is, it's such a story that is told over and over again by people when they try to find their own path and when they try to find their own path to help other people.

He's almost a gatekeeper.

And I specifically asked that question in the very beginning, what it was about you feeling lonely.

How did it turn, how did it transpire into your output of crime, of doing illegal things?

It's the same fire.

It's the same exact fire.

It's the same.

You learned how to harness it.

It didn't burn your house down anymore.

It cooked you a meal.

Yeah.

Does it sound familiar to you?

It sounds wholeheartedly familiar to me because it goes, it's in every day of my life.

I feel sometimes like, am I, maybe I'm not a Buddhist because I still feel so, so ready for, to have an edge.

And I realize, oh, no, no, this is just the manner in which I am.

And it's used in the best way possible.

That fire was still there for you.

Instead of turning around and saying, let me go break into this guy's house or steal his car.

It's like, I'm going to best him in the most healthiest manner.

Yeah.

But, you know, when we use this word rebel, and I want to be clear, it was not any kind of active, aggressive attack rebel.

It was, again, I'll just say, my head was to the grindstone.

This is where I'm going.

I'm pushing forward.

This is the next thing to do.

So it was not a grandstanding kind of thing, that form of aggression.

Yeah.

But I'm not stopping based on what you just gave me.

I'm moving on.

Agreed.

Agreed.

Are there some other ways in your life going forward that you would see yourself as maybe a rebel or a disruptor?

Can I use that sound like...

Absolutely.

I'll give it to you again if you want it.

How are there not?

I mean, that's really how I have been.

You know, we'd go into what we then called institutions for the mentally retarded and do a training for trainers where we educated the staff around sexuality.

And then we would break into small groups.

And I had trained facilitators who were buddies of mine.

They were like, you know, we were long-haired hippie freaks in many ways, but very competent.

And we would...

And we would...

They would watch explicit films and then have group discussions.

I mean, that was, again, unheard of.

But attitudes were being changed because in institutions for the mentally retarded, they abused those children in that way.

There were no doors on the bathroom stalls.

Anyone who was caught with any kind of sexual activity was punished.

So all of that, we went in and started to disrupt.

I left sexuality and ended up working in a chronic pain unit.

And again, this was a therapeutic community.

And those was like the only one that I knew of in the world.

Patients came in with chronic pain.

They lived as a community.

They got up and made their own bed every day.

And they had, you know, yoga classes and meditation and so forth.

And all of that stuff.

Again, my dissertation came out of all of that.

And it really broke something through for me regarding this whole topic we're talking about, which is I looked at people who just went through the program versus people who asked for a service, more service.

Like, could I have another session with my counselor?

Could I work on meditation with someone?

And again, significant difference with this kind of asking behavior, which I think has to do with a sense of ownership regarding the change process.

And although pretty much everybody in the study was 100% off medications when they walked out the door.

These folks were sustaining themselves longer.

So, you know, all of that went through that disruptive process.

And when I left there and I was now working with a psychiatrist in his practice at Mount Auburn Hospital, the media started talking about panic disorder, which, you know, back then we talked more about agoraphobia.

Women, basically, who were trapped in their homes.

And none of us were trained.

All we got was how do you treat a specific phobia.

And yet, because of my work in pain, I knew meditation.

I knew relaxation.

I knew some of these general skills.

And they just started coming through everybody's door.

Everybody.

And so I had a leg up and started seeing more clients at that point, patients at that point.

And then this was this next transition, which is I don't have enough knowledge to do this work.

The skills we're giving people.

The skills we're giving people are general and not specific to the moment.

And this is where that kind of work around the moment matters.

That I think both of you can kind of relate to in your lives.

It's like, so I then, again, this young Turk, I said, well, I'll just write a book on this to teach people how to do this.

Because really, every book I've written takes about three years.

Because I decide to write it without knowing how to do it yet.

And using the book design, drafting, and so forth to develop that protocol.

And all my books are self-help books.

It's no book.

You know, my protocol can be used by therapists, but it's written, you know, this is the help.

So I'll be quiet now, but you asked me, did it come out any other places?

I just want to say, first of all, using the book to develop the treatment program is actually mind-blowing.

Because I think a lot of people, I talk to a lot of people who are like, I'd like to write a book.

I actually think I have a book in me.

And someday I'll write that book.

But wow, to give, I just want to give everybody permission if that's been on your mind.

The person listening who has been wanting to write a book.

Some people in this room, you know, let's, here's your permission to start, just start writing.

And figuring it out.

And figuring out what the extra questions are along the way.

Yeah, it's, here it is, right here.

And now you've written seven, I think, and you have a book coming out next year.

Yeah.

And I would just say, you know, it takes some courage to do that.

But it also takes confidence that comes across a little bit almost like arrogance.

Like, who are you to do this?

But confidence is, I will stay with this until I do this.

And I can get there.

You don't have to have confidence.

I know this is going to work out.

I would use that word, driving.

And you have confidence that you can persist in the face of adversity.

It's like, you know, what next?

It's a confidence in the action rather than the confidence in the consequence.

Yeah.

And my ability to, I guess in the way I'm describing here, my ability to sustain.

Show up.

My energy to go at it.

Because I want to figure this out.

And I've had so much varied training in my life.

Much different than today.

People in my field get trained in a package that you, this is how you treat it.

But I was trained in gestalt therapy and transactional analysis and transcendental meditation.

And I mean, I had just an array of experience, you know, family therapy training that coalesced in this book.

So that was great for me.

And by the way, the book is called Don't Panic.

You mentioned it earlier, but the book is in-

Taking Control of Anxiety Attacks.

Don't Panic, which is still available everywhere.

And it's third edition.

Third edition.

I still, by the way, my friend, I still pick up that same sort of confident action that you have.

It was a few months ago you called me about something.

We had a conversation.

You needed to know some information.

And then quickly you were like, all right, I got to go.

I got to go finish this book here.

Which I was like, oh, fantastic, fantastic.

So it seems that minimal has changed in your desire to be driven.

Still on fire.

Still on fire.

When you talk about all the variety of trainings you had, talk about what you did personally to get your own experience.

You did some things for yourself.

Yeah, and it's also very interesting, that to me at least, because I started treatment.

So I graduated from college, fasted for five days until my tongue turned green and I got scared and started eating again.

And went into training around meditation.

And doing all of that in one fail swoop.

And then simultaneously beginning treatment for myself individually.

A cumulative, I have 35 years where I was in treatment.

Whether it was individually or group or intensive group or whatever it was.

But the combination of working on myself.

And I worked.

Working on myself and trying to get what was going, you know.

I hate to say what was wrong with me.

But, you know, just figuring that stuff out and simultaneously figuring out things with my clients.

I mean, that too.

I'm always surprised.

I'm not surprised anymore.

But it seems surprising how many therapists are never in treatment for themselves.

It's just kind of mind-blowing to some degree to not have that experience.

So that was a tremendous gift.

And I worked with some therapists who are, you know, top in the field.

I just went and found them and worked with them.

And so to, you know, here I go again.

Getting choked up around how you use the word privilege.

But even though I chase them down.

It's like to have the privilege of directly working with these people who are stars in their field.

It's like what a blessing to me.

What are the costs of being a rebel?

How many of these questions bring up emotion for me?

It's impressive.

Well, I can just at least start with my field right now.

I am a rebel in the protocols I use to treat my clients and the self-help that I propose.

There is a system that, again, back to socialization, that everyone is trained in.

And then there's me.

And the drawback of then there's me is there's ways I don't get invited to do particular presentations because I'm an outlier.

It's just how it is.

I know it.

I get envious and jealous of my, I mean, most of the people in my field who've been around for a long time, I know.

And our friends of, you know, colleague friends of mine that I've been working with for 30 plus years.

So to see things happening with them that are not happening to me, it's like, and I'm okay with jealousy.

I, it's just a feeling.

But there is that.

I'm an outlier.

The good news is I do know how to present my material in a way that is attractive.

I put this out.

I put that out.

I do this training by myself.

So there's still a lot of by myself work.

And that is a price that I pay.

And I don't have any choice about it.

I can lament that.

I have a strong, don't mean to say this in an ego way.

If it comes across like that, okay, so be it.

That's not how I feel.

I have a need to establish my legacy that continues after me.

The stuff that I'm doing now, the reason I want that is because it, there is a gift in some of the work that I do.

And I want people to receive it.

I remember starting my website, which is anxieties.com.

And it basically has been a free website for self-help in the anxiety disorders.

I remember my dad talking way back then around, why are you giving away your information?

Why are you not, he didn't use the term monetize, but that was essentially what he was saying, his concerns about doing that.

And my response to him was, again, we'll be surprised to hear this.

Like, I don't know.

This is what I need to do.

This is what I want to do.

It was a sense of, in the long term, it will come back to me.

And so there has been a way, by being an outlier, it just pushes me even more.

Well, there's a trend here, isn't there?

That's interesting.

Yes, we have noticed.

Absolutely.

Yeah, I think that as your daughter, having watched you through all of this,

one of the things I've heard you say often in your field is that because all of these people that are following the status quo,

they have money, they put money behind research.

For my work to get into the hands of the researchers and to have these long-term studies, it takes decades and it takes so much money.

And just like the counseling service and the abortion situation in the late 60s, early 70s, it's more urgent than that.

People are suffering right now.

Thank you.

Yeah.

And so you don't have time to do that.

And then what the beautiful thing that has occurred in my lifetime has been these decades that you've been doing the work and doing the work and putting it out anyway and putting it out yourself and doing it all by yourself.

Then there get to be these moments where an institution does recognize you and you will send an email or a text to me and my brother and you will say,

I'm just really glad to be recognized because it feels like it's like for once.

After all this time and all these people I've been helping, it's nice to every once in a while be recognized, but it's a very lonely path.

Yeah.

I see your emotion right now.

Yeah.

And I feel the same kind of emotion when you start talking about that.

It's like, it's nice.

It doesn't drive me.

Right.

But it's nice.

I can, you know, I can do something for three years and then, well, what's happening now?

You know, my next, my next book is saying why I put in an enormous amount of time and there's a delayed gratification and fine, fine.

And also I'm doing everything I can to ensure that it sticks around while I'm gone.

So there is, you know, the website and I've got an app and, you know, my presentations and the recordings and all the writing and so forth.

Just finding as many delivery systems as I can to give as many choices for learning for people.

And I think that part of why that has happened is what we're talking about now is like I've got to have as many options as I can for people to learn.

I don't think in particular is anything egotistical about wanting to leave a legacy.

Everybody does in some capacity, whether it's just their kids, their creative work, whatever it is.

You have a beautiful brain, a beautiful mind and a beautiful heart.

And it makes you go into the world open.

So you take things a certain way and because it's open, you also allow it to pass to the rest of the world as well.

Yeah, I would just add around that is because I don't have that money, I'm not publishing that research and so forth.

I'm in it for the long game.

Wow.

Yeah, for sure.

And even it's there's a bit of a cosmic irony there that you started doing this because of that feeling of loneliness and you consistently keep doing this.

And even as an outlier with it comes loneliness as well.

There's sort of a bodhisattva vow about this of like let me keep serving, keep moving.

I want to be clear that I don't do all of this altruistically.

I love what I do.

I love studying.

I sit in my office by myself and think.

And this is why it takes so long to write some of this.

And just the process.

You know, my dad was an engineer who was also an inventor.

For a couple or more decades, I always felt like, gosh, both my siblings worked for my dad.

And I'm in the family an outlier.

No surprise.

But, you know, eventually I went, oh, I'm also inventing like he did.

I really liked discovering that.

It was like, okay, there's some genetic stuff here too.

Why have you in your career been so focused on self-help?

I want to go directly to the person who's hurting.

This is a collaborative process.

And I just love that.

And I do feel like I have a gift of understanding, having an affinity for people who suffer in the disorders that I work with.

When I work with somebody, I just hit the ground running.

What are you doing now to contribute to maintaining this problem?

And I think, you know, for us as human beings in general, we need to look at that.

And, you know, some of the skills that both of you have around in those moments.

I want to learn to take a breath, step back, and be able to go, oh, it's happening again.

Oh, I'm doing it again.

But you have to be in the present moment.

Slow down.

Step back.

Develop that observer.

Because if you can develop a mental observer, you have now brought awareness into this moment.

And now you've got two where there was just one.

You were just activated.

If we can get you to also have that awareness, now you have a choice.

Yeah.

But you're not going to, you have to create a kind of fertile void of going, oh my God, I'm doing this.

I don't know what to do next.

That kind of confusion in order to change.

And this is like what you talk about all the time where you're just putting a slice of space, of awareness in between you and the thoughts you're having, in between you and the voice.

We were talking about this yesterday with eating disorders and me being so blended with my eating disorder that I didn't recognize that I had one for so long, which we unpack in a whole episode here.

But what you're talking about is this present moment where we are literally looking at this very present moment and putting a little bit of space in between it.

And then what I also heard you say is that there is a level of urgency yet again.

You need to be in the self-help world to be able to reach the people who have a great level of urgency.

We hear so much about talk therapy.

That's a beautiful thing.

And also, that's not what you're doing.

You're not sitting here unpacking, why did we get to this place that you're in?

We're looking at right here, right now.

You are suffering greatly with your anxiety disorder, your fear, your OCD, whatever the disorder is that they have a hold, has a hold on this person.

And you're saying, right here, right now, something needs to change.

We're just going to focus on what we can do right in this moment.

And it's actually, that feels like a weight lifted off that I don't have to sit here necessarily and unpack my whole history to be able to take action and make change and get better.

Yeah, but the other thing that I try to convey to people too is I have to get big because I am going up against this disorder that is very big.

Right.

And so there is a, you know, upper hand, the top dog position I take.

And then I move to an underdog regarding, I know this work like the back of my hand.

I don't know you.

Right.

Carl Jung has this line, learn all the studies, learn all the theories.

But when you're with a human, just be another human.

Yeah.

And that is, that's very precious.

That's very beautiful.

It's very hard to do, I'm sure, because it, it makes sense why this society, why higher education has this.

Well, this is the way.

This is what we have.

Because once they got it, why would you want to go back into the unknown with every single individual that could bring about some unknown situation that you can't deal with.

Yeah.

Do you think there's a dogmatism in the scientific world?

The higher ed world?

Oh, absolutely.

Yeah.

Yeah.

We're built to do that.

One is you learn all those kinds of things.

Then the innovators come in and they try to figure out here's another way to think about it.

And then it gets institutionalized.

Yeah.

And concretized.

And, and manualized.

You know, the, what I go up against is what everybody calls the gold standard.

Mm-hmm.

And that's what you're bumping up against.

So that is one other benefit of going right to the clients.

Yeah.

And I think it's so interesting.

You got to, you got to where you are today in all of your higher education that you had to get to be able to practice.

And you have a PhD, right?

But on that higher education path, you were constantly, let me into that program young, three years too young.

Let me publish this early.

Like you really went up against them in that way as well.

Yeah.

And I was not going to go into a professional program and do it the traditional way.

I was not going to sit still for it.

So.

You, you mentioned earlier about being an introvert.

Would you say socially insecure at some capacity?

Oh, a hundred percent.

Yeah.

Okay.

Okay.

How do you still participate in a life working with people while having that introvertism?

Oh, well, there, I have successes and failures around all of that.

Of course.

When you're socially anxious, or at least when I'm socially anxious, if I'm in a role, that's in some ways not me.

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

So in my role, I feel confident.

Strip that away.

And if it's just me rawly standing, sitting in front of you, then I get, I'm really antsy.

I mean, we, I can go to the grocery store with my partner and we come across people who know us and we're about to have an interaction.

Before I know it, I'm 12 steps away going to get the cereal without even stopping to engage with them.

So sometimes I've literally, in those situations, I have turned back around and gone back to talk.

I feel it's just so hard socially.

And it has a lot to do with they don't want to be talking to me.

Mm-hmm.

And I need to get out of this situation before they get to that place.

So I leave first.

Okay.

To avoid that judgment of others.

If I were to guess, one of the contributions of that was to be in a family where we looked totally normal to them, but chaotic inside ourselves.

I'm flashing on a dream I had that was so profound for me.

So it's all my family and friends are down on the ground level looking at me and I'm on a Ferris wheel by myself.

And I'm smiling and waving at them.

Simultaneously, the Ferris wheel is complete water of unknown depth.

And I am flailing.

My legs are flailing to stay afloat while I'm not letting anybody see that.

Right.

And I think that is part of...

I mean, that was a profound dream for me to go, oh, that's what I'm doing.

I didn't have great answers about what to do, except for another 10 years of treatment or something.

But long answer to your question is that there is that distinction.

If I'm in a role, I'm fine.

I mean, I can get insecure and afraid about people's judgment, but it's not going to stop me.

Just don't put me there socially.

Okay.

I'm an introvert as well.

And when I work with people, there's a feeling of that.

Like, no, no, this is not who they're...

Who you see here is not who they're getting.

They're getting the trainer.

They're getting the meditation person, the speaker, whatever.

I can do this behavior.

Yeah.

Uh-huh.

I can do that role better because I know there's a separation.

There's sort of a...

I can throw it far.

I can talk really loud because we're so far.

But if I yell at you here, it's like, whoa, way too much, right?

For me, once that rolls over and I come here, I'm wiped.

Do you have that same thing?

Absolutely.

If I do a day-long training, I go up in my hotel room and take another nap.

So just to recuperate.

It is draining, even though it doesn't feel draining at the moment.

When it's over, there's a real exhaustion.

Right.

There's a Clark Kent, Superman kind of hero, not hero, but dual character where you're out into the world doing the work and then you come back and no one knows that other side because you keep those two separate.

Hmm.

And we've, you know, again, we know this structure.

We've constructed this and then we're delivering it.

So I'm delivering what I've constructed.

It's a knowing about what's coming next.

Yeah.

And then personally, it's not there.

Truly.

Don't know what's coming next.

And I leap to something negative coming next.

Okay.

I see.

I want to get the heck out.

I see.

For the person listening who is interested in maybe disrupting the system, but they don't have the personality that you have, how would you help them get to a place where they can do that?

Well, you know, no one's ever asked me that question before.

So let me do the best I can.

My guess is that they don't yet feel like, oh, it's possible that I can do this.

But they're, you know, what we want to look for is what's bumping up inside me that I feel strongly about.

And then we've got to, I think they have to step back and grow awareness for that side.

And for me, as maybe we're catching on, you need to kind of be in some form of cocoon that is safe for you so that you can allow this to come up.

And lock into it because the resistance of, you know, whatever people's judgments or how much work it would take, all that kind of stuff does not allow this to grow.

So I would start there.

Yeah, I love that.

Okay.

A couple of personal questions real quick before we wrap here.

What is one thing you want your grandchildren to know about how they should live their lives?

Oh, dear.

These are things that might end up on the cutting room floor.

But I currently have a grandchild who's climbing.

And I was really, this morning at breakfast, complimenting them on what that experience was like.

And then ask them the question of, what were you feeling when you were doing that?

It's kind of beginning that process.

So that is an example of, I want them to lock in to, you know, whatever they're doing to really feel a sense of, I like this.

I want to do, I want more of this.

This is hard and, right?

So I think I would go with that.

Yeah.

What do you want them to take from your legacy?

Oh, dear.

Well, you know, there was a real delay for me around matching up what I'm doing with what my dad did.

So I would like them to be able to look back to the work I've done, for instance, and be going, that's in me.

I've got something there already.

How can I nurture that and move it forward?

I think that would be nice.

Yeah.

Their own version of it.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Whatever it is.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I already want them to feel, you know, my other granddaughter doing her work in dance and just beginning for her.

But it's like, well, because just two years ago she was going, I'm not good at anything, sports-wise, athletic-wise.

And now she's got this little thing.

And I'm like, okay, this is great.

What can I do to contribute?

Is there anything else I can do now to help contribute to the possibility of her finding some of those things for herself?

Where can people find you if they want to connect with you and learn more about you?

I absolutely think people should simply go to my website.

It's called anxieties.com.

And they'll see everything that I have to offer them.

This site is huge.

I mean, it's like 280 pages or something.

So that is a rich way to just use what I've done to help themselves.

Yeah.

You have so much information on the site.

And it's just free for the taking.

It's an absolute wealth of information.

And you have a book coming out?

I do.

It comes out June 1, 2026.

It's called Quiet Your OCD Brain.

And this will be the third book that I've written where I said to my wife, if I ever say, I'm going to write another book, do damage to me to keep me from doing that.

So this is hopefully the last book.

This is a workbook for those with OCD.

And it really goes through how I approach OCD.

Foster helped create a course for me called OCD in the Six Moment Game.

And that's like a four-hour course.

And this comes out of that in a written form that's more concise.

I'm happy with how it went.

I love the publisher I'm working with.

That's exciting.

Okay.

So we'll put all those links in the show notes.

And I just want to thank you so much for being here today.

My pleasure.

Thank you, Reid.

You are a beautiful, beautiful man.

Thank you, sir.

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Beauty in the Break is created and hosted by Foster Wilson and Cesar Cardona.

Our executive producer is Glenn Milley.

Original music by Cesar & the Clew.