The Mel Robbins Podcast
The Truth About Anxiety & ADHD: Life-Changing Tools From a Renowned Psychiatrist
Thu, 10 Apr 2025
If you’re anxious, overwhelmed, uncertain, or find yourself wondering “what is wrong with me?” then this episode is for you. Today, world-renowned psychiatrist Dr. Tracey Marks, MD is here to deliver the truth about what’s really going on in your brain, body, and most importantly: what you can do about it. If you deal with anxiety, ADHD symptoms, trouble focusing, procrastination, stomach problems, skin picking, and always running late… you need to hear today’s episode. You are not broken. You don’t need fixing. You just need the right tools. And today, you’re going to get them. With over 25 years of clinical experience and more than 2 million followers on YouTube, Dr. Marks is known for making complex mental health topics clear, relatable, and actionable.In this powerful conversation, she breaks down the surprising science behind anxiety and ADHD and gives you the exact tools she shares with her patients to stop spiraling and start feeling more in control. You’ll learn:- Why you fidget, overthink, or shut down under pressure - The hidden links between anxiety, ADHD, stomach issues, skin picking, and always running late - The #1 tool to interrupt anxiety in the moment - Why labeling yourself “an anxious person” might be making things worse for you or your loved ones - Small but powerful habits that rewire your brain for calm, focus, and confidence This episode is your science-backed, therapist-approved toolkit for mental clarity, emotional balance, and real relief. For more resources, click here for the podcast episode. If you liked this episode, and want to know more about ADHD and what you can do today to focus and feel better, listen to this episode next: 6 Surprising Signs of Adult ADHDConnect with Mel: Get Mel’s #1 bestselling book, The Let Them TheoryWatch the episodes on YouTubeFollow Mel on Instagram The Mel Robbins Podcast InstagramMel's TikTok Sign up for Mel’s personal letter Subscribe to SiriusXM Podcasts+ to listen to new episodes ad-freeDisclaimer
Chapter 1: Why is anxiety and ADHD more connected than we think?
Because I honestly had no idea how deeply connected ADHD and anxiety actually are. And even more surprising, some of the habits that my kids and I have that I thought were just like these weird little quirks, turns out, nope. Not weird at all. They were actually textbook anxiety and ADHD symptoms.
Nail biting, skin picking, constantly fidgeting, procrastinating all the time, overthinking, feeling paralyzed by your own brain, frustrated that you want to change, but you just can't seem to. If any of this sounds familiar, you need to hear this conversation today. And if you're not dealing with anxiety or ADHD, I guarantee you someone that you love is.
So today what I've done is I've pulled some serious strings to bring in one of the top psychiatrists with over 25 years of clinical experience specializing in ADHD and anxiety. She's so busy, you'd never be able to even book an appointment with her. And she also happens to have 2 million YouTube subscribers, making her one of the biggest mental health and wellness channels online today.
She took a break from her busy schedule to hop on a plane and fly to our Boston studios today for one reason. She is here for you. And let me just tell you, the things that she is going to teach you today will not only blow your mind, they will actually change it for the better. So let's get into it. Hey, it's your friend Mel, and welcome to the Mel Robbins Podcast.
I am so excited to be here with you. It is always such an honor to spend time together, to be together, but today in particular, I am fired up for this conversation because it has deeply personal meaning for me. And so I'm glad to be learning together with you. And if you're a new listener, I just want to take a moment and personally welcome you to the Mel Robbins Podcast family.
Thrilled that you're here. And because you hit play and found the time to listen to this particular episode, here's what I know about you. You love to learn, you love feeling inspired, and you also want to understand yourself better. And that's exactly what this amazing conversation is going to help you do today.
And if somebody sent this to you, let me just point out that that's really cool because it means you have people in your life that deeply care about you. And they wanted you to hear something that could potentially make your life better. And that's awesome. And today, the conversation, it's not going to just blow your mind.
It's going to change your mind because we're going to dig into the surprising connection between anxiety ADHD, and symptoms that people with these two conditions experience that you may not be aware of. I certainly wasn't. And more importantly, you're going to get a lot of tools on exactly what to do if this is how you feel or if it's impacting somebody that you care about.
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Chapter 2: Who is Dr. Tracey Marks and what insights does she bring?
So let me introduce you to the amazing Dr. Tracy Marks, who is an absolute powerhouse. Dr. Marks graduated from Duke and then got her medical degree from the University of Florida College of Medicine. She did a residency in psychiatry at New York Presbyterian Hospital. She has been a practicing clinical psychiatrist for over 25 years, specializing in anxiety, ADHD, and mood disorders.
She's also the author of three bestselling books on mental health, including the one I'm holding right now, Why Am I So Anxious? She also has 2 million subscribers on YouTube, making her channel one of the biggest mental health and wellness channels online today.
Her YouTube videos break down complicated topics like ADHD and anxiety into simple, relatable strategies that help people like you and me who are struggling with ADHD and anxiety learn how to thrive. So without further ado, please help me welcome Dr. Tracy Marks to the Mel Robbins Podcast. Dr. Tracy Marks, welcome to the Mel Robbins Podcast. Thanks for having me here. I am so excited.
I am so excited to sit down and talk with you. Why am I so anxious? This is a fantastic book. But more importantly, you know what it is? It is a resource. When I was flipping through this, I cannot believe how many tools, how much research, how many different... just strategies that you put together for people.
So thank you, thank you, thank you for writing such a fantastic book that I'm sure is helping millions of people.
Wonderful. That was the intent is to give people a resource. I mean, it kind of reads like an encyclopedia a little bit. Well, you're very smart. So yes, it does.
But it made me smarter about anxiety for sure. Excellent. Goal achieved.
So I would love to start by having you speak directly to the person that is listening, that's spending time together with us right now, and just explain what might be different about their life or the life of somebody that they care about if they take everything that you're about to share with us today to heart and they apply it to their life.
Sure. I think the biggest thing that someone can take away if they listen and understand what we're talking about today is the fact that your brain is changeable. And regardless of what condition you may have, you can improve the quality of your life with simple behaviors and habits. You have control over this and you have agency over your mental health.
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Chapter 3: How does anxiety manifest physically and how can we manage it?
What are you seeing in your practice and with the millions of people that follow you online? What are you seeing in terms of the type of anxiety that people are struggling with? And what do you think we should know?
So anxiety, there's been a huge uptick in anxiety. I mean, anxiety, first of all, it's a very big topic because there's lots of different types of anxiety. Probably the most common ones are social anxiety and generalized anxiety disorder. But that said... It all started with a pandemic. So the World Health Organization reported a 25% increase in anxiety globally, starting with the pandemic.
And sadly, it's still continuing to rise. It's not like it got better after things settled down. We're still having increases in incidence of anxiety. Now, why do you think that is? I think it has to do with our digital world this day where we're always on 24-hour news cycles, social media with constant comparisons and access to bad news at any time of day.
And also, our brains can be overloaded with information that then can create anxiety. So we have information overload, lots of hard working. I mean, there's just lots of societal factors.
Well, it's interesting because at the very beginning, you said that one of the things that could change about your life is your brain. Because your brain is malleable, you are able to reprogram it. And if I think about what you just shared with us, which is anxieties on the uptick,
Which I just want to say to you as you're listening, if you're experiencing an uptick in anxiety or if people that you care about are experiencing anxiety for the first time, that I think it's important to hear that this is actually kind of normal right now, that Dr. Marks is seeing it.
What's also interesting to me about the list that you just gave us in terms of social media, constant comparison, things constantly changing, the headlines, the news cycle that's so negative, like all of it.
is that those factors have changed your brain in terms of you feeling anxious, which means if there are outside factors that can change your brain and make you anxious, I would imagine, Dr. Marks, there are also factors that you're going to teach us today that can help you get your anxiety under control.
That's absolutely right. So just as our brains can change in a negative way, our brains can change in a positive way. And we have the ability to make those changes ourselves.
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Chapter 4: What are effective tools to interrupt the cycle of anxiety?
I am feeling anxious. Why are you? What does that mean? For me, because it's probably a performance anxiety and I have to check myself because my natural tendency is to just kind of want to unload all this information and not keep it I have to work to make information accessible to people and not go down rabbit holes and things like that.
Or I get, I overthink making sure I don't say the wrong thing and all of that. So that's where I am.
That is so relatable, Dr. Marks. So to have you be a world renowned expert with millions of followers and in real time Tell me and the person that is making time to learn from you that you're actually experiencing a little bit of performance anxiety, which is just wanting to do well, wanting to meet the moment. And I think that that is so helpful because
What do you experience in your body when you are in a moment where you feel anxious about wanting to do well? And, you know, we've all been there, whether it's on a date or an interview. This is a very normal thing, and it's a sign that you're actually functioning the way that you should because you care about how you're going to do, right?
That's right. Yeah. So it kind of, this ties into your question about what really is anxiety. And it's a full body experience. It's not just in your head and it's not just in your body, it's both. So for me, going back to your question, my mouth gets dry, which then my lips could stick if I'm like trying to smile and I'm like, am I looking ridiculous?
So, and then I get in my head about how do I look, how do I sound and all of that. So that's kind of how I experience anxiety. worrying about what the other person's thinking. But so going back to the usual experience of anxiety, which I shouldn't even say usual, it's an individual experience.
So you can have the head symptoms would be like worrying in your head, fear, over-concern about what people are thinking, like I was just talking about. Yeah. In your body, we get a sympathetic response, which historically or biologically was designed to give us the ability to fight or flee some perceived threats. But that response turns on even for threats that are real or imagined.
So if I'm imagining that I'm gonna look ridiculous because of something I say, then I can start having my heart racing I can start feeling other gastrointestinal things. Some people can feel like they're going to have the runs and, uh-oh, what's that going to mean?
You can have the sense of just tension in your body and not even realize that you're tensing your shoulders and things and then get to the end of the day and you're exhausted. And you're like, all I did was sit all day. Why am I tired? because you can get a lot of muscle tension. So those are some of the physical signs.
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Chapter 5: How can interoceptive exposure help with anxiety symptoms?
And I would love to play a video for you because I was so excited when you were coming on and you have a son who's around the same age as our son. So my son's name is Oakley. And this morning when I knew you were coming in, I'm like, you know, he has struggled with anxiety his whole life. And so I am going to ask him because I don't know what to do.
I know a lot about anxiety, but the way that his manifests is very challenging. And I figured, why not wake him up in his college dorm room and tell him that you're going to be here and ask him if he would like to ask you a question about the issue that he's struggling with. And so we made a video and I would love to play it for you.
Okay. Okay.
Here's Oakley.
Uh, I don't know if it's morning for you, but it's sure morning for me. Nine o'clock for a college student. I just got out of bed like literally 30 seconds ago. Um, I hope you're well, my name's Oakley by the way. I shouldn't forget saying that. I'm my mom's son, Mel Robbins son. I'm not just like some random kid that they're getting a video from. Um, I,
I have two questions for you and I'm going to keep them super short because you're busy and I don't want to waste your time, but we're already at 30 seconds, so let me get this going. And they're both anxiety. Okay. My first question, basically what happens normally when I get anxious is before I'm even anxious in the first place,
In my head, I'll start to get this like spinning sensation where it's basically a feeling of nausea. Like I start to get a feeling of nausea. And then from the nausea, I become anxious. And then I'm just like in this state of anxiety and it doesn't go away until I'm not nauseous anymore. But the anxiety I feel like makes it worse. And I'm like, oh, I'm anxious. I'm anxious because I'm nauseous.
And then it like gets worse. And so I was curious what you might think about that. Thank you.
That's a perfect example, which is pretty typical that people with anxiety can be very sensitive to body sensations. And those body sensations then trip off. anxiety in their head. So sometimes, especially if they don't associate it with anxiety.
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Chapter 6: What are cognitive behavioral tools for managing anxiety?
What about anxiety that feels like a pit in your stomach? Because I think that's sort of the classic thing that people feel. And I love that we're talking about physical sensations because for most of my anxiety and most of the anxiety that I've experienced with all three of our children, it always does seem to start with something physical in their body, this sense.
So let's talk about the pit in the stomach. What can you do if you have a pit in the stomach every time you walk into work in the morning? A lot of people have that.
That's right. So when you get anxious, you get slowed digestion. So you get less movement of your gut. And so, yeah, that's how you can get a stomach ache from eating when you're anxious or even completely lose your appetite to eat when you're anxious. But anyway, the pit in the stomach, yeah, it's related to gastrointestinal slowing and changes because of the increased fat.
cortisol and stress hormones. So what can you do about that? Well, the first step is what you've already said is recognizing that that's part of how you are manifesting anxiety and then address the anxiety with the tools that work for you. Not everything works for everyone. An example of something could be breath work.
changing your breathing pattern just to do a reset to then relieve some of the anxieties. Because that's what we're trying to do here. We're saying, I got this pit in my stomach. I'm probably anxious or tense about walking in. Because you might not always be conscious or consciously aware that I'm anxious walking into work. It's more like I'm doing this thing. Oh, here's the pit.
okay, I hate my life, dah, dah, dah, and you just kind of keep working. Yes. But if you can separate out, okay, I've got this pit in my stomach, it's anxiety, I am going to do something to calm myself.
Like if we talk about, because I think it would be super helpful for the person listening, to have you describe anxiety in terms of when you're in a calm, resting state, you're okay space. You're not in the what if loop going, what if this happens? What if that happens?
And then the pit in the stomach and then all of a sudden you think you're going to throw up and then you can't sleep and then you're staring at the ceiling. Yes, I've experienced all of this. Something just happened in your body when that switch flipped. So could you just describe for us what's happening either in your nervous system or digestive tract and why that's happening?
So we have two competing systems. We have the amygdala, which is a... structure in your brain that is responsible for threat detection. So it detects threats and it prepares your body to be able to either fight or flee. So by increasing the sympathetic response in your body so that you get increases in epinephrine and things to stimulate you to be able to defend yourself.
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