Shaan Kassam

Why you can't stop monitoring how you feel:

Most people with anxiety and chronic symptoms think monitoring is the symptom.
It's not. It's the engine.

So I want to share why it's so hard for you to stop monitoring your sensations.

At some point, your nervous system had an intense experience - a panic attack, a health scare, a period of prolonged stress -- and it made a decision.

It catalogued the sensations that were present in that moment: the racing heart, the dizziness, the tight chest, the foggy head. And it filed them under "danger."

Now every time those sensations show up — even faintly, even for completely normal reasons like caffeine, a bad night's sleep, or a stressful day — your nervous system recognizes them.

And it responds the same way it would to an actual threat. More adrenaline. More alertness. More monitoring.

he sensations were never actually dangerous. But your nervous system doesn't know that. It learned a pattern, and it's doing its job.

Combine that with the fact that you didn't know these sensations weren't dangerous and now you've developed a habit. An automatic feedback loop.

And this is where most anxiety advice gets it completely backwards.

"Just relax." "Just breathe." "Just distract yourself."

None of that removes the threat. It just asks you to look away from it — which is why the monitoring always comes back.

What removes the threat is understanding what you're actually looking at.

Once you understand that the sensation isn't a threat, does the monitoring go away?

No, not right away. Because you've developed a habit. An engine that works on autopilot.

The goal (once you recognize you're safe) is to reorient outward. Go live.

Anxiety thrives on inward hyperfocus. You trying to solve it by going inward only reinforces the cycle.

As you continue to live, your anxiety is going to try to get your attention. A new symptom, a new sensation, a new trigger. Your nervous system is updating it's threat assessment.

Once you understand whats going on and continue to live. Choosing to respond instead of becoming hypefocused, the alarm system calms down on it's own.

This isn't a mystery. It's mechanics.

This is how we help people around the world recover. Not because we have some secret. Not because we have a special technique. But because we understand the mechanics.

Healing is about regaining agency over your life. Comfort comes back on it's own.

22 hours ago | [YT] | 273

Shaan Kassam

Recovery isn’t what you think it is.

It’s not the absence of bad days. It’s not feeling calm all the time. And it’s definitely not some finish line you cross.

I have a bunch of great resources on the healing journey on Instagram. It's also the easiest way for me to connect with you.

Send me a follow:
www.instagram.com/shaan_kassam/

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1 week ago | [YT] | 605

Shaan Kassam

The hardest part of recovery isn’t the bad days.
It’s the days you can’t tell if you’re healing or falling apart.

These 8 signs would have saved me years of doubt.

I have a bunch of great resources on the healing journey on Instagram. It's also the easiest way for me to connect with you.

Send me a follow:
www.instagram.com/shaan_kassam/

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1 week ago | [YT] | 708

Shaan Kassam

The weird new symptom that's freaking you out:

You were dealing with chest tightness. You understood it. You stopped fearing it.
And then one morning you woke up with ringing in your ears.

Or sudden dizziness out of nowhere. Or a weird urge you can't stop noticing — like swallowing too much. Or random images from old dreams showing up for no reason. 
Or your anxiety spiking every time you eat.

And now the thought creeps in: "This is something different. This isn't anxiety. Something is actually wrong with me."

I hear this almost every single day. So let me explain what's actually happening.
When you stop fearing a symptom — let's say the chest tightness — your nervous system loses its leverage. That symptom no longer produces the fear response it needs to keep the cycle going. So it finds a new channel.

Dizziness. Tinnitus. Adrenaline surges. Strange sensations that shift around your body. Even people becoming triggers — your sister, your partner, someone who was never a problem before.

It's not a sign that things are getting worse. It's your nervous system scrambling because the old alarm stopped working.

Think of it like a fire alarm that keeps going off in your kitchen. You finally learn to ignore it. So the system installs a new alarm in your bedroom. Then your bathroom. Then your car. Not because there are more fires — but because the system is desperate to get your attention.

The mistake is treating each new symptom as a brand new problem. Googling the dizziness. Getting an MRI for the tinnitus. Monitoring the swallowing. Every time you do that, you're telling your nervous system: "Yes, this one is worth being afraid of."

Which is exactly what keeps the cycle alive.

So what do you actually do when a new symptom shows up?

The same thing you did with the last one. You throw it under the anxiety umbrella. You don't give it special treatment. You don't research it. You don't isolate it from everything else you've been experiencing.

You recognize it for what it is — your nervous system trying a new door because you locked the last one.

And then you respond the same way. Allow it. Don't add second fear. Keep living. The symptom doesn't need to leave for you to move forward. It needs to stop mattering. And the moment it stops mattering to you, it stops serving a purpose for your nervous system.

That's the part people miss. You don't need a new strategy for every new symptom. You need the same strategy applied with the same calm, boring consistency — no matter what shows up.

Dizziness gets the same response as chest tightness. Tinnitus gets the same response as a racing heart. That strange sensation after eating gets the same response as the panic you had six months ago.

Because it was never about the symptom. It was always about how your nervous system interpreted it.

And here's what I actually want you to take away from this: when symptom switching happens, it's encouraging. It means the old fears are losing their grip. Your nervous system is running out of moves.

And a nervous system that's running out of moves is getting closer to standing down.

1 week ago | [YT] | 523

Shaan Kassam

Why I'm done talking about recovery on this channel:

There are two extremes in the anxiety space.

There's the clinical world that says anxiety is a condition. Something you manage. Maybe medication helps, maybe therapy gives you tools — but the implicit message is "this is part of you now. Learn to live with it."

Then there's the recovery world — which I helped build — that says no. You can fully heal. You're not broken. Your nervous system is sensitized and it can desensitize. You can get your whole life back.

And that's true. I stand by it. I recovered from my symptoms. I've watched over a thousand people do the same. That message gave hope where the clinical model offered none.

But there's a blind spot in the recovery model. A narrative I may have pushed indirectly.

Recovery still frames the whole thing as a problem to solve. You were living your life. Anxiety interrupted it. Now you fix the anxiety and go back to living your life. The goal is restoration. Get back to where you were.

But where you were is what created the conditions for sensitization in the first place.

Maybe you weren't aware of how sensitization works and that's why you fell into the cycle. True.

But it's also the way you handled stress.
The way you powered through everything without ever stopping to ask why you were wired the way you were.
The way you said yes when you meant no until your body started saying no for you. The way you carried everyone else's emotions and ignored your own.

None of that is anxiety. All of it created the conditions for it.

So when someone "recovers" — when the panic stops and life opens back up — they now understand their nervous system.

But if they never go deeper than the mechanics — if they never look at the patterns underneath — then they've learned how to swim, but they've moved back to the same water.

They'll stay afloat in calm conditions. But when a real storm comes — loss, heartbreak, a life that stops making sense — the mechanics alone aren't enough. Not because recovery failed. But because recovery was only ever meant to be the beginning.

This is the part nobody in this space talks about.

Recovery addresses the nervous system. But it doesn't touch what happens after.

Your relationship with uncertainty. Not just with sensations -- but with life.
Your inability to trust that you can handle what you don't see coming.
Your relationship with yourself.

Recovery quiets the alarm. But it doesn't address what the alarm was trying to tell you.

I don't see this journey as recovery. That's what I say to relate to you. I see it as evolution.

Recovery is backward-facing. It asks — am I back to normal yet? Evolution is forward-facing. It asks — now that I'm awake, who am I becoming?

The person who recovers goes back to their life. The same patterns. The same relationship with uncertainty. The same stranger in the mirror. They just do it without panic attacks.

The person who evolves doesn't go back. They can't. Because once you've actually seen how you were living — once you've felt what it's like to be honest with yourself for the first time — you can't unsee it. You don't want the old life back. You want a life that doesn't require you to abandon yourself to maintain.

That's not extra work on top of recovery. That's the whole point of what recovery was trying to show you.

So yes — you can heal. Believe that. But don't make healing the destination.

Recovery is the door. What's on the other side is the reason you went through it.

In the meantime, this channel is evolving. I'll still talk about recovery — but I'm done stopping there. Expect conversations about the deeper stuff. The stuff that actually changes how you live.

The stuff that helps you Thrive.

1 week ago (edited) | [YT] | 690

Shaan Kassam

No one teaches you how to respond to fear.

So you do what feels natural — you fight it, run from it, or freeze and wait for it to pass. But fear doesn’t need to be defeated. It needs to be answered.

The way you talk to yourself in those moments matters more than any technique.

I have a bunch of great resources on the healing journey on Instagram. It's also the easiest way for me to connect with you.

Send me a follow:
www.instagram.com/shaan_kassam/

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2 weeks ago | [YT] | 594

Shaan Kassam

The Belief That The Right Thing Will Fix You:

I call this the rescue fantasy.

The therapist who finally got it. 
The book that explained everything. 
The technique that actually seemed to help.

Every time, a little hope. Every time, you think: "Maybe this is the one."

And then it fades. Or it helps a little but not enough. Or it works for a while and then stops.

So you go back to searching.

Not because you're not trying. 
You're trying constantly. 
You're exhausted from trying.

But somewhere underneath all of it, there's this belief:

"The right thing is out there. I just haven't found it yet."

The right person who finally gets it. The right explanation that makes it click. The right program that actually works for someone like you.

And so you keep looking. You keep hoping. You read another post, try another technique, wonder if maybe you missed something.

It's not laziness. It's the opposite. You're working so hard to find the thing that's going to help you.

And honestly? That hope is what keeps you going some days.

But I want to gently point to something.

Not to take that hope away. But because I think you already sense it and haven't had anyone say it out loud:

The searching itself has become part of the loop.

Not because you're doing something wrong. 
But because of what's underneath it.

When you're scanning for the thing that will finally save you — the right person, the right answer, the right moment where it all clicks — there's a message running in the background:

"I'm broken and need something external to fix me."

You're not thinking that consciously. But your nervous system is reading it. And it doesn't register "trying hard" or "being proactive." It registers posture.

And that posture — the waiting, the hoping, the quiet desperation underneath the search — that's not a healing state.

That's a threat state.

Helpless. Dependent. Bracing for the next disappointment.

So even when you find good help — even when the information is right — you're receiving it from a place that can't fully use it.

Not because you're not smart enough. Not because you're not trying hard enough.

Because you're still oriented around being rescued.

Here's what I've seen after working with thousands of people:

The same tools work differently when you're not waiting to be saved by them.

Same book. Same principles. Same support.

But when you're the one moving — not being carried, not hoping to be fixed, but actually walking — your system gets a completely different signal.

"I'm capable of forward."
"I can do this."

The shift isn't finding better help.

It's realizing you've had legs this whole time.

You were never waiting for the right answer.

You were waiting for permission to stop searching and start moving.

And just to be clear — this doesn't mean you have to do it alone.

Getting help isn't rescue. They're completely different postures.

Rescue is passive. It's "fix me." It's handing over the wheel and hoping someone else knows where to go.

Getting help is you deciding to move — and finding support so you stop walking in circles.

One keeps you in threat. The other accelerates your way out.

The difference isn't whether you get help. It's whether you're the one walking.

2 weeks ago (edited) | [YT] | 339

Shaan Kassam

The people who actually recover aren’t the ones who master allowing.

They’re the ones who catch themselves monitoring, shrug, and do the thing anyway.

That’s the skill.

You don’t heal by perfecting the technique.

You heal by getting bored of checking whether you’re doing it right.

I have a bunch of great resources on the healing journey on Instagram. It's also the easiest way for me to connect with you.

Send me a follow:
www.instagram.com/shaan_kassam/

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3 weeks ago | [YT] | 393

Shaan Kassam

You're Allowed to Not Be at Your Best Right Now

Your brain won't cooperate at work.

Tasks take twice as long. 
You reread emails five times. 
You lose your train of thought mid-meeting.

And every day you think: "My anxiety is going to cost me my job."

Here's what's actually happening:
The feeling of incompetence ≠ actual incompetence.

When your nervous system is sensitized, you become hyperfocused on your internal experience.

Every racing thought feels catastrophic.

Every moment of brain fog feels like evidence you're falling apart.

You're so tuned into what's happening INSIDE that you assume it's showing up OUTSIDE.

But here's the brutal irony:
A lot of people in recovery are doing their BEST work.

You're checking everything three times.
Over-preparing for meetings.
Being extra careful with details.
You feel like you're barely holding it together...

While simultaneously excelling.

The gap between what you FEEL and what's ACTUALLY happening is massive.
The real problem isn't that you can't perform while anxious.
The problem is you're doing TWO jobs:

Your actual job
Constantly monitoring whether you're doing it well enough

That second job is what's exhausting you.

Here is the shift:
You don't need to feel capable to BE capable.
You feel foggy → contribute to the meeting anyway
You feel incompetent → give the presentation anyway
You feel like you're failing → send the email anyway

Not because you're confident.

Because you're done letting the FEELING of incompetence stop you.

And then you get data: "I felt terrible AND did the thing AND it turned out fine."

That's what breaks the cycle.

You are not as incompetent as you feel.

The anxiety is loud, but it's not accurate.


You're going through one of the hardest experiences a person can face, and you're still showing up. That alone says everything about your capability.

You're not broken. You're not failing. You're recalibrating.

And you're going to be okay.

3 weeks ago | [YT] | 428

Shaan Kassam

Most people push away their emotions becaue they don't know what they mean, or they judge themselves for having them.

But emotions are not the problem. They're simply signals. Once you understand what they're saying -- everything changes.

I have a bunch of great resources on the healing journey on Instagram. It's also the easiest way for me to connect with you.

Send me a follow:
www.instagram.com/shaan_kassam/

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3 weeks ago | [YT] | 296