Anxiety Through a Nervous System Lens (Anxiety Mini Series – Part 1)
Episode 4: Spotify | Apple Podcasts | YouTube
View transcript on Buzzsprout
Have you ever been told that your anxiety is “just the way you are” or that you were “born anxious” and will need to manage it for life? Maybe you’ve tried countless thinking-based approaches—cognitive therapy, mindset work, positive affirmations—but still find yourself stuck in the same anxious patterns, feeling overwhelmed and out of control.
What if everything you’ve been told about anxiety is missing the most crucial piece? What if anxiety isn’t a thinking problem at all, but a body-based alarm system that’s stuck in survival mode—and there’s actually a clear roadmap to healing it?
This episode marks the beginning of a three-part anxiety series that will completely transform how you understand and approach your anxiety. Today, we’re laying the foundation by exploring what anxiety actually is through a nervous system lens.
What We Cover in This Episode
- Why anxiety is a body-based alarm, not a mind-based thinking problem
- How your childhood programming created your current anxiety patterns
- The real reason cognitive approaches often fall short for anxiety healing
- Why your nervous system overestimates threats and underestimates your abilities
- How stored stress energy from your past shows up as present-day anxiety
Anxiety: The Misunderstood Alarm System
Most people have anxiety completely backwards. We’ve been conditioned to think of anxiety as a thinking problem—spiraling thoughts, worst-case scenario planning, mental overwhelm. But here’s the truth that changes everything: anxiety is a body-based alarm that originates in your nervous system, not your mind.
Think about it this way: have you ever noticed that you can feel anxious in your body before your mind even catches up with why? Maybe you’re pouring your morning coffee and suddenly feel that familiar tightness in your chest, racing heart, or pit in your stomach—and then your brain scrambles to figure out what you should be worried about.
This happens because anxiety starts as a physiological alarm in your body. Your nervous system detects something it perceives as threatening (even when you’re logically safe), activates your fight-or-flight response, and then your thinking brain tries to make sense of why you feel alarmed by creating stories and worries that match the activated state.
Your State Determines Your Story
Here’s a powerful concept that explains why anxiety feels so consuming:
Your nervous system state determines the story your mind creates about any situation.
Imagine a friend who usually texts back quickly hasn’t responded for hours. If you’re in an anxious state, your brain offers stories like “They’re mad at me” or “Something terrible happened.” If you’re feeling depressed, you might think “They don’t care about me” or “I don’t matter.” But on a regulated day, you think “They’re probably busy—I’ll call later if I don’t hear back.”
Same situation, completely different interpretations. That’s because thoughts aren’t the root cause of anxiety—they’re the byproduct. Thoughts are symptoms of the alarm state, not the cause of it.
The Anxiety Cycle: From Body Alarm to Mental Spiral
Understanding how anxiety actually works helps explain why thinking your way out of it doesn’t work. Here’s what really happens:
- Something triggers your nervous system (consciously or unconsciously)
- Your amygdala sounds the alarm, causing immediate physiological changes
- Your body shifts into fight-or-flight mode (increased heart rate, blood pressure, shallow breathing)
- Your thinking brain notices the alarm and asks “What should we be worried about?”
- You create stories and worries that match the activated state
- These thoughts create more alarm, which generates more worried thoughts
- You get stuck in the anxiety spiral
This is why you can’t think your way out of anxiety any more than you could think your way out of overeating by eating more food. When you’re in an activated state, the part of your brain responsible for logical thinking, planning, and decision-making literally goes offline. You’re trying to use a system that’s impaired to fix the very problem that impaired it.
The Real Definition of Anxiety
Anxiety is an overestimation of threat paired with an underestimation of your ability to manage that threat.
This happens for very specific reasons rooted in your nervous system’s programming. We overestimate threats because our nervous system learned to scan for danger based on past experiences where we weren’t safe. We underestimate our abilities because we don’t have evidence or context that we can handle challenging situations—and in moments of activation, we often feel like that overwhelmed child again.
Your Childhood Programming: The 80% Rule
Here’s something that might surprise you: 80% of your brain development happens by age five. This means that most of your operating manual for how to get your needs met, what feels safe, and how to navigate the world was written by a very young version of yourself.
That little child had to figure out how to stay attached to their caregivers (their literal survival depended on it) while also trying to get their needs met. Every time you experienced overwhelming stress as a child—whether from chaos, unpredictable parents, emotional neglect, or even well-meaning parents who couldn’t regulate themselves—that stress energy got stored in your body when you couldn’t complete the natural stress cycle.
Your nervous system remembers every situation where you didn’t feel safe, seen, heard, or supported. It created an internal database of potential threats based on a child’s limited understanding of the world. Now, as an adult, anything that feels familiar to those past experiences triggers that same alarm system.
Why Modern Life Keeps Us Stuck
We’re biologically designed to be community-based hunters and gatherers, but we’re living in a culture that prioritizes productivity over purpose and competition over connection. We’re overstimulated, under-rested, and operating in chronic stress mode.
Your anxiety isn’t a personal failure or moral weakness. It’s your nervous system responding exactly as it was designed to, based on the combination of your past experiences and current life circumstances. The problem isn’t that you’re broken—the problem is that you’re using ancient hardware in a modern environment without the user manual.
The Path Forward: Regulation, Not Management
Traditional approaches focus on managing anxiety symptoms, but nervous system healing focuses on addressing the root cause: the alarm state in your body. When you learn to regulate your nervous system—to recognize activation and have tools to shift back toward safety—you’re not just coping with anxiety, you’re actually healing it.
This doesn’t mean anxiety will never show up again. A healthy nervous system still activates when there’s real danger or stress. But instead of being stuck in chronic activation, you develop the skills to move fluidly between states and return to regulation.
Three Tangible Takeaways
- Reframe: Anxiety is a Feeling Problem, Not a Thinking Problem The #1 reason people struggle to heal anxiety is because mainstream approaches focus on thoughts and cognition. But anxiety originates in your body as an alarm state. Healing happens when you turn toward that alarm and learn to work with it, not when you try to think your way out of it.
- Understand Your Childhood Programming Most of the alarm you feel today is based on stored stress energy from childhood experiences. Since 80% of your brain developed by age five, your current anxiety patterns often reflect that young child’s understanding of safety and threat. This isn’t your fault—it’s how nervous systems work.
- Trust That Anxiety Changes Your Physiology Anxiety creates measurable changes in your heart rate, blood pressure, and breathing. This means there are tangible, research-backed tools that can influence these systems to calm the alarm. This is root-cause healing, not just symptom management.
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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.
