Matt's Audio Letter of the Week

Hey, everyone — welcome to today’s Feel Better Letter, or FBL.

This is Matt.

I hope you’re having a great week.

Today’s topic is about how the longer you wait, the more difficult things often become. We know this to be a general principle with anything we face in life. If we avoid something over time, it gets increasingly more difficult to face or resolve. By putting it off, it doesn’t stay the same — it grows.

That could be our physical health. If we haven’t worked out and our body isn’t where we want it to be in, say, six months — and we put it off for another six years — getting back into shape is much harder than if we had just acted at the six-month mark.

Or take a conversation we need to have with someone. If we put it off because we’re afraid it’s going to be uncomfortable or difficult, the problem grows exponentially. People do this in relationships all the time.

It’s the same with our mental and emotional health. When you put something off hoping it’ll resolve itself, it tends to get worse — often exponentially so.

With OCD, anxiety, and fear specifically, one of the paradoxes I’ve seen is that the more intense or severe the situation is, the less aware the person is of how big the problem really is. I’ve seen this time and again in my career. As fear grows and your life becomes smaller, you often lose sight of what life was — or what life could be — without that fear. It becomes so ingrained in everything you do that you can’t even conceptualize life without it. It just feels like part of your routine, part of your day-to-day.

And the anticipatory anxiety — what you think it will take to overcome it — makes the fear feel even bigger. It’s not actually that big, but it appears that way. So just thinking about confronting it becomes overwhelming.

Another layer of this: the longer fear goes on, the more you unconsciously know that getting better will involve grieving the time lost to fear. And because you don’t want to confront that grief, you delay action even further.

Now, I know that for some people listening today — maybe you — this message might sting a bit. And it’s not my intention to make you uncomfortable, but it is important that you hear this, especially if it resonates with you.

Putting your mental and emotional well-being on the back burner — avoiding fear — doesn’t lead to healing. And to be clear, I’m not talking about managing or coping with symptoms. I’m not saying, “Oh, I’ve got it under control.” If fear is running your life in any capacity, it’s worth looking at and addressing. We don’t want fear in the background running the show.

The tipping point of recovery is courage. Courage is what allows for healing. And when it comes to fear and OCD-related anxiety, courage isn’t about confronting something external. It’s about learning to face the emotions within you. That’s where fear actually lives.

So when you do something that triggers you, like an exposure activity, you’re not really confronting the external situation — you’re confronting what that situation stirs up inside you.

Emotional mastery, healing, and recovery are about confronting the emotions you’ve been avoiding for so long. It’s that avoidance that’s been running the show. That’s how fear holds power: through your avoidance.

Recovery takes courage. It takes courage to look honestly at how fear has impacted your life, how it’s limited you, and to confront those facts. And putting it off any longer won’t resolve it.

So wherever you are, no matter how long it’s been — the best time to begin is now. Waiting longer will only make it harder. This isn’t something that just resolves itself one day.

It takes courage. It takes action. It takes a willingness to stop running, stop avoiding, stop putting off what you know you need to do — and to prioritize your well-being: mentally, emotionally, spiritually.

That’s the message I wanted to share today. I hope it’s helpful. I hope it sparks some reflection.

Wishing you all a great weekend — and I look forward to seeing you soon.