When it comes to mental health conditions such as anxiety, depression, bipolar or OCD, there's no discrimination—anybody can be impacted, including those who work in the psychology field themselves. Now, a therapist who is popular on both Instagram and TikTok, Dr. Courtney Tracy (also known as The Truth Doctor), has opened up about how she copes with her own physical anxiety during the working day.
Explaining in the comments that she has also addressed the cognitive side of her anxiety, writing, "I've handled my emotional and cognitive anxiety symptoms. My body is the last part of myself I'm trying to teach that it doesn't need to be so anxious."
In the video itself—which is captioned, "If the anxiety is in your body, use your body as a way to calm it. Nutrition and water helps teach your body it is safe and secure"—Dr. Tracy then runs through the foods that help her. She kicks things off with, "Hi, I'm a therapist and I'm going to show you how I manage my own anxiety on a daily basis."
She continues, "I have really severe anxiety. It's really f*cking severe and I'm really not good at taking care of it—often I can work my entire day and not eat or drink anything, and yes, me working gives my anxiety a place to go but it also doesn't help my anxiety go away."
Dr. Tracy, who specializes in pain, trauma, and addiction, then explains that she's taking a 15-minute break and is going to try and drink a bottle of water during that time. "Hopefully I can, I've been conditioned into thinking water tastes bad," she observes. "I know that it doesn't and I need to drink it!" Next up is a smoothie, which she says, "I'm going to try and drink because like I said, I eat f*cking terribly! So I'm going to try and drink this in 15 minutes."
Then, Dr. Tracy shows the camera a plate of scrambled eggs, explaining that her husband made them for her. "It's something that's easy for my stomach to digest and doesn't cause me to get too full, or bloated, which might give me anxiety as well."
She ends the video by saying, "So, if you need a break and you're having severe anxiety, give yourself five to 15 minutes, put something healthy in your body, and breathe." We're really into how honest Dr. Tracy is about her own experiences and definitely appreciate the reminder that good nutrition can be super powerful for a myriad of reasons.
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This article originally appeared on Cosmopolitan.com/uk. Minor edits have been made by the Cosmo.ph editors.