Responding to Anxiety the Right Way Changes Everything

[00:00:12]Anxiety is not a single phenomenon.

[00:00:13]Sometimes it is a true alarm. Obviously, an authentic signal from the body that something needs our urgent attention.

[00:00:21]And sometimes it's a loop.

[00:00:23]An echo from the past that no longer points to the present moment, but an unintegrated experience still waiting to complete.

[00:00:32]The difference changes everything. If we treat every alarm as a loop, we ignore the needs for action. And if we treat every loop as an alarm, we stay trapped in vigilance.

[00:00:42]We need to recognize which is which and how to respond to both without suppression or control.

[00:00:49]So, when's anxiety an alarm?

[00:00:53]Anxiety as an alarm is the body's intelligent way of saying, "Something here matters." It may be a real situation in front of you that requires attention, an unhealthy relationship, a boundary being required crossed, a neglected need, an environment that feels unsafe.

[00:01:09]And in these moments, anxiety is functioning as exactly as it should be.

[00:01:13]A prompt, a messenger of integrity warning us that something in our external or internal life is misaligned.

[00:01:19]It's classically, you know, you need to be have your wits about you because you're doing the new job. It's you're you're giving a speech. You're doing something which requires vigilance.

[00:01:31]And the nervous system evolved for this.

[00:01:33]The amygdala and the interoceptive networks and the insula continuously scan for threat, imbalance, and of course our unmet needs.

[00:01:42]When something registers as dangerous or false, not true for us, the body mobilizes energy to act. The heart quickens, the breath shallows, the muscles prime.

[00:01:54]This is normal. This This disorder. It is the biological poetry of self-protection and it's natural.

[00:02:01]>> [snorts] >> So, the task is to listen to the message without collapsing into the messenger.

[00:02:08]We have to pause and think.

[00:02:10]What is this anxiety asking me to notice now?

[00:02:14]Is it something from the past? Either way, we have to notice it. Always there's something you automatically have to attend to. Is there something I need to change, say, or end in this moment?

[00:02:26]Is this an authentic warning in the present or a familiar fear?

[00:02:32]And when the alarm is valid, it's kind of obvious cuz it feels appropriate for what's there, and we take aligned action.

[00:02:39]Anxiety will just settle on its own.

[00:02:41]It's acute rather than chronic, and the energy of activation has done its job and is released through movement, decision, action, or communication.

[00:02:52]But, for most of us, it's about a loop. If you're here listening to this, chronic anxiety.

[00:03:00]Because this anxious signal continues long after the original trigger has part trigger has passed for so many people or without any obvious trigger at all.

[00:03:10]The body remains constantly charged even in apparent safety.

[00:03:15]This is the looping anxiety, a protective pattern established long ago when the child's alarm could not result in completion, and it keeps coming round trying to finish.

[00:03:28]Imagine a child who felt afraid, angry, or unseen, but had no safe adult to witness those feelings.

[00:03:34]The body's protective energy could not be released to the normal channels of of of movement, crying, or comfort, so it just turned inwards waiting for a time when this could be so.

[00:03:47]The alarm stayed stuck on in the on position. Like all of these these these actions we talk about, the fre- the phrase was fre- the the frame was freeze. And now years later, the adult is carrying this unfinished charge around with us.

[00:04:04]Can you can feel it? It's the energy of survival, of action.

[00:04:10]A neuroscience that shows us uh this is implicit memory stored in subcortical circuits. These old survival programs will play automatically regardless of circumstance. The body is still trying to finish what it could not complete.

[00:04:25]And in this state, anxiety no longer points to the present danger. It points to unmet past emotion.

[00:04:33]The loop is the nervous system memory calling for integration.

[00:04:37]Not an alarm demanding your escape.

[00:04:42]How to tell the difference? Well, a simple way to discern is alarm anxiety feels clear, purposeful, specific, and appropriate. It resolves once the situation changes or is addressed. Oh my god, it passes, you know. Activated, switched on, gone.

[00:04:57]And this looping anxiety feels diffuse, endless, repetitive. It stays when even things are objectively completely fine.

[00:05:06]Alarm say, "Do something." Loops say, "Feel something." And that's key.

[00:05:13]Because if you're unsure what you're experiencing, you always start with allowing everything, obviously. Awareness through feeling, not through analysis.

[00:05:24]So, let's look at the loop because that's what we're really talking about here. At the heart of this loop is a younger part of you, an emotional fragment still frozen in the moment of lost safety when they couldn't feel what they were authentically being asked to feel in that moment then, chosen for them, got interrupted, frozen, held.

[00:05:42]And this part may have learned therefore that this feeling was dangerous, this emotion that they were authentically being given at that time.

[00:05:51]Or the expressing that emotion might risk disconnection, ridicule, invalidation, etc. So, anxiety became its strategy to keep you safe, constant vigilance, but to avoid also ever feeling that same pain again.

[00:06:11]Every time you felt it, it's like, "No, we've got to keep that down. That was too much then. You must never ever feel that again." So, what do you get instead? Anxiety. That's where the charge charge is activated.

[00:06:24]And when anxiety loops, it's often this younger self trying to say, "Please, don't forget me."

[00:06:30]The task therefore is not to get rid of anxiety, not to soothe it, to to to to try and destroy it anyway. It's just energy after all. You can't destroy energy. It will only transform. But, we need to meet the part in a way it wanted to be met then, to let it know that I'm here now for you, that you no longer have to guard the gates alone. It's now okay to express yourself.

[00:06:54]Many anxiety teachings emphasize breathing through anxiety to get rid of it, to soothe it, to calm it, to tap it away, to do these exercises.

[00:07:05]But, true healing isn't that. You do the opposite.

[00:07:09]We breathe to the anxiety. We meet it, not to dissolve it, but to meet it exactly where it lives. And when you bring the breath gently to the chest, or wherever you can feel that charge, tell me wherever it might be. And there's an exercise, um, let the breath breathe you, which will guide you through this, um, to make it clearer. Or it might even just be the throat. It might just be a sip of breath. Tiny tiny tiny breath to do it.

[00:07:40]Where you can feel that energy, you'll breathe to to where there's resistance.

[00:07:43]You're saying to that part, I see you.

[00:07:46]You can exist.

[00:07:48]I'm here. I'm listening. Show me.

[00:07:51]Show me what's underneath. And this reestablishes connection with the body.

[00:07:55]Empathy inside the body. It signals safety. It tells the nervous system what was once forbidden is now safe to be felt.

[00:08:05]Breath here is not a tool of control, but of communion.

[00:08:11]Each breath says, I'm here. I'm meeting you. I'm back in the body. It's That's all the anxiety is doing is calling you because it's desperately waiting to outlet, and your breath signals it. You connect, and it says, you're safe now. And if you stay with this felt sense of anxiety, you'll notice something amazing.

[00:08:33]After a while, suddenly, you'll find tingling, heat, vibration, naturally releasing.

[00:08:42]The energy will naturally move because you stayed.

[00:08:48]That stay with that part of yourself, stayed in the body, and said, it's now safe to confi- finish the second part of its journey.

[00:08:55]Shake, tremble, release, warmth, tears, whatever. Doesn't matter.

[00:09:00]It's just the energy moving, and you'll feel it. This is the body's intelligence completing what was held as incomplete and >> [clears throat] >> being protected behind that anxiety.

[00:09:12]The polyvagal system shifts from defensive activation back to regulation over time. The charge discharges.

[00:09:21]Young would describe this as the shadow being integrated. Obviously, this is the update. This is clearing the backlog.

[00:09:28]The unlived energy returning to consciousness to complete and reenter the system as it's naturally meant to do. Emotions just meant to flow all the time over a minute a half, constantly, constantly, constantly. And they just keep getting stuck and put in the shadow, held in the body, held in the nervous system until it can take it no longer.

[00:09:46]And obviously that's for for many of us when we have huge panic attacks as well, massive discharge of this survival energy trying to help us actually unblock.

[00:09:57]Doesn't feel very good though, that's for sure.

[00:10:00]So, this is you know, this alarm that's been endlessly looping and ringing finally gets the answer because we go there.

[00:10:12]It's been asking for attention. Go to it. Breathe to it. Be with it.

[00:10:20]And it will express.

[00:10:22]So, both forms of anxiety serve our wholeness. The alarm draws attention to something real that requires change in our lives. Change or activated requires some sort of action. Okay, that's acute normal healthy anxiety. And I've done a separate video on other separate videos on on on this as well. Um And the loop draws the attention to something old held in the body that's trying to update now.

[00:10:49]And requires our attention.

[00:10:53]Requires our presence. Requires our love, if you like.

[00:10:56]Neither are wrong. Both are energy seeking coherence seeking movement.

[00:11:02]So, the question is never how do I get rid of anxiety. The question is what is this energy asking for? Action or compassion? And by the way, you'll know. You don't have to think about it because you'll know in a heartbeat whether it's action because it'll be standing in front of you. And guess what?

[00:11:21]It just gets given to you. The thought will appear to you from the self if you're living in presence in that way.

[00:11:27]>> [snorts] >> So, when we respond correctly, anxiety transforms into clarity, movement and ultimately moments of deep peace as it goes round and empties bit by bit by bit.

[00:11:38]We begin to live not as the one trapped inside the alarm, but the one who hears it.

[00:11:45]The awareness, the witness, who can hold both the storm and the sky.