The Anxiety Equation (Part 3): Why You Underestimate Your Ability to Cope

Episode 130: Spotify | Apple Podcasts | YouTube
View transcript on Buzzsprout

Think about the last time anxiety really took hold. Your heart was racing, your mind was spinning, and your body was braced for impact. In that moment, did you feel capable? Resourceful? Ready for whatever came next?

For most of us, the answer is no. Anxiety makes us feel small, like a younger version of ourselves who didn’t have the tools to handle big things yet. Every piece of evidence that we’re competent seems to disappear right when we need it most.

This is the final post in our three part series on The Anxiety Equation:

Anxiety = Overestimation of Threat + Underestimation of Capacity

In Part 1, we introduced the formula. In Part 2, we looked at why your brain overestimates threat. Now we’re turning to the other side of the equation, and in many ways the most empowering one: why we underestimate our ability to cope, and how to reconnect with the capacity that’s been there all along.

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What We Cover in This Episode

• Why anxiety makes you shrink and feel like a younger, less powerful version of yourself
• How stress hormones can temporarily block access to memories of your past successes
• Why your everyday actions count as real evidence of your capability
• The shift from asking “What if?” to knowing “Even if…”
• Three tools to reconnect with your capacity when anxiety tells you it’s gone

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Why Your Capacity Disappears When You Need It Most

Here’s a wild but true idea: in the exact moments we most need to remember how capable we are, our brains make us forget.

When you’re in survival mode, whether that comes from past trauma or present overwhelm, your nervous system changes how it processes information. The parts of the brain involved in reflection, perspective, and problem solving take a back seat, and the parts focused on immediate danger take over. Access to your memories of success, resilience, and good decisions gets harder to reach.

Try this the next time you notice panic rising. Ask yourself to recall a time you handled something difficult well. For most people, those memories feel strangely out of reach. The experiences happened. Stress hormones are temporarily getting in the way of retrieving them. Your history of coping is still there, waiting until your system settles enough to find it again.

Feeling Small Again: Anxiety and Regression

There’s another layer to this, and it can be a powerful one to understand. When we’re triggered or highly anxious, we often drop back into the felt sense of the age when we first felt overwhelmed or helpless.

So if you first felt truly overwhelmed at age five, part of you can feel five again when stress hits as an adult. You’re facing an adult problem while feeling like you only have a small child’s resources to meet it.

You might be a successful professional who has navigated countless challenges. In a triggered moment, you can still feel as powerless as you did when you were little. Your nervous system hasn’t updated its files to include all the skills, wisdom, and support you’ve gathered since then.

Seeing this clearly can bring a lot of compassion. That feeling of smallness is an old memory living in your body, and it tells you very little about who you are today.

You’re Doing Hard Things Every Day

We also underestimate ourselves because we overlook the evidence right in front of us. Consider what you already do on a regular basis:

• Getting through a full workday on very little sleep
• Managing a household and all its moving parts
• Navigating relationships, conflict, and repair
• Keeping yourself, and possibly other humans, alive and fed

These are hard things. We tend to file them under “just life” and move on. Each one is real evidence that you can handle difficulty.

On top of that, we compare our insides to everyone else’s outsides. Other people seem to handle things with ease, so we assume we’re uniquely incapable. What we don’t see are their 3 AM anxiety spirals or the meltdowns they send to their group chat.

If you’re reading this, your nervous system has already carried you through so much. You’re here, breathing, learning, and growing. That alone means you have capacity, even in the moments your body forgets.

Three Tools to Reconnect With Your Capacity

1. Evidence Gathering

Write down three challenges you’ve survived. They don’t have to be things you mastered or handled gracefully. Survival counts. That breakup you thought would break you? You’re still here. That job loss? You figured it out. That health scare? You navigated it.

Your track record is probably a 100% survival rate so far. That’s data, and it’s worth looking at when anxiety insists you can’t handle what’s ahead.

2. The Resource Reality Check

List your current resources, both internal and external. Anxiety makes us feel like we’re facing threats empty handed, and that’s rarely true. You have skills, knowledge, experience, and creativity.

You also have connection, which is where co-regulation comes in. A big part of your resource list is the people, places, and things that help you feel safe. Who can you borrow support from? A partner, a friend, a therapist, a higher power, or even a pet can all help your nervous system settle.

Sometimes capacity feels small because we’re trying to carry everything alone. Safe connection multiplies what we’re able to manage. This is a big reason we built community into the Regulated Living Membership and why our monthly Release Class brings people together to regulate in a shared space. Your system was designed to find steadiness alongside others.

3. The “Good Enough” Reminder

Ask yourself: “What would handling this ‘good enough’ look like?”

Let go of perfect and impressive for a moment and picture a version of handling it that simply gets you through. Most of the time, you’ll realize you’re completely capable of good enough. And good enough is usually all the situation actually requires. This question takes the pressure of perfectionism off the table, which frees up energy for action.

From “What If” to “Even If”

The Anxiety Equation has nothing to do with toxic positivity or pretending everything is fine. Its purpose is accurate assessment. Most threats are smaller than they feel in moments of activation, and you’re more capable than you remember.

One of the most helpful shifts you can make is moving from “what if” to “even if.” Maybe you can’t stop your brain from overestimating the threat today. That’s okay. Look at the worst case scenario and try finishing this sentence:

Even if this hard thing happens, I know I can figure it out. I know who, where, or what I can turn to for help.

“What if” keeps you scanning for danger. “Even if” brings your attention back to your capacity, and that’s often where relief begins.

Rebalancing the Equation

Both sides of this equation get distorted when your nervous system is triggered or chronically dysregulated. Those distortions come from its attempts to protect you. With awareness and practice, you can start to see more clearly. You can right size threats and remember your actual capacity.

The heart of this whole series is that anxiety makes sense when you see it as math. Threat feels too big. Capacity feels too small. Both of those variables can shift, and with awareness, practice, and support, you can rebalance the equation.

So the next time anxiety shows up, check your numbers. Are you overestimating the threat? Underestimating yourself? Probably both. Adjust where you can, with compassion for the part of you that’s just trying to keep you safe.

The more you practice, the more your system learns a new message: I have options. I have support. I can handle more than I think.

You’ve got this. You always have. And if you’d like support rebalancing your own equation, whether that’s 1:1 through RESTORE or in community inside the Regulated Living Membership, we’re here.

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Three Tangible Takeaways

1. Forgetting your capacity is a stress response. In survival mode, stress hormones and old patterns of regression make it harder to access memories of past success. Your resilience is still there, just temporarily out of reach.
2. Your everyday life is evidence. Hard days survived, households managed, and relationships navigated all count. Gather that evidence and list your resources, especially the people who help you feel safe.
3. Shift from “what if” to “even if.” Even if the hard thing happens, you can figure it out and you know where to turn for help. Pair that with asking what “good enough” looks like to move out of paralysis and into action.

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Looking for more personalized support?

• Book a FREE discovery call for RESTORE, our 1:1 anxiety & depression coaching program (HSA/FSA eligible & includes comprehensive bloodwork)
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• Join my Release Class, a monthly guided nervous system regulation class
• Order my book, Healing Through the Vagus Nerve today!
• Download free resources here

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Disclaimer: This article is for informational purposes only and is not a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Always seek the advice of your physician or qualified mental health provider with any questions you may have regarding a medical condition.