The Physiology of Anxiety—9 Essential Insights from a Nervous System Expert

Up until just recently, anxiety was believed to be:

A chemical imbalance
A mental illness
A symptom that needs to be calmed
Something to live with forever

But here’s what I’ve learned after years of working with thousands of people:

Anxiety is trapped survival energy in the body.

It is raw, unprocessed sensations of fight, flight, and freeze that is wreaking havoc with your emotions, mental state, relationships, and daily behaviours.

This stored survival energy (aka: survival stress; aka: trapped trauma) is often a result of unhealed early and developmental trauma (EDT) — the kind most people (and doctors) never think to ask about.

Here are some examples of EDT that can wire your system for “anxiety” (remember: it is not “anxiety,” it’s stored survival stress):

Complicated births or emergency C-sections
Stress in the womb (if your mother was stressed, anxious, sick, or unsafe)
Early hospital stays, high fevers, medical interventions
Surgeries, anesthesia, or even circumcision
Near-death experiences like near drowning or choking
Any moment where you were helpless and couldn’t escape

Said simply: Your body remembers what your mind forgot.

The solution? Grow more nervous system health (capacity + regulation) so you can start to process the old stored survival stresses that are keeping you stuck in an anxiety spiral.

Luckily, teaching people how to do this at the root (somatic) level is my speciality! 😉

Here are 3 ways to begin (or continue) your learning (and healing), today: