Wellness In Every Season
Welcome to the Wellness in Every Season podcast, where wellness means more than diet and exercise—it’s about thriving across every part of life. I’m Autumn Carter, a life coach and parenting mentor, and I work with people who put themselves last on their never-ending to-do list yet continue to carry the weight of families, teams, and entire organizations. You are the visionaries, the change makers, the assistants who keep everything running, and the parents who pour countless hours into those you love. In this space, we’ll dig into what’s missing from your wellness routine across all eight dimensions of life—emotional, social, intellectual, spiritual, financial, environmental, professional, and physical—so you can uncover the fastest path to results that sustain you. Each episode is a reminder that you are already the backbone, the catalyst, the leader, the quiet force—and here, you’ll find the balance, clarity, and resilience to keep creating impact without losing yourself along the way.
Wellness In Every Season
Listening to Anxiety: What Your Body Is Trying to Tell You
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Episode 195: Listening to Anxiety — What Your Body Is Trying to Tell You
What if anxiety isn’t something to silence, but a signal your body is asking you to listen to?
In this episode of Wellness in Every Season, Autumn Carter explores a powerful shift in perspective around anxiety. Instead of immediately trying to push anxiety away, what if we approached it with curiosity? Autumn shares her personal experience with ADHD and anxiety, including the moment she realized how closely the two can be connected. Sometimes we don’t recognize anxiety until it’s suddenly quieter — and that awareness can open the door to deeper understanding.
This episode invites listeners to reconnect with the body and notice how emotions often show up physically before we attach thoughts to them. Autumn guides you through a short somatic awareness exercise designed to help you identify where anxiety lives in your body and what it might be trying to communicate. From tightness in the chest to tension in the stomach or shoulders, these sensations can offer insight into stress, past experiences, and areas where healing or attention may be needed.
As part of a global podcast collaboration supporting mental health awareness, this episode also highlights the work of the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI). If this conversation resonates with you and you’d like to support their mission of providing education, advocacy, and support for people navigating mental health challenges, you can learn more here: https://www.nami.org/?campaign=509521
If anxiety has ever left you feeling confused, overwhelmed, or disconnected from yourself, this episode offers a gentle reminder: your body holds wisdom, and learning to listen can be a powerful step toward regulation and healing.
For more wellness tips and exclusive content, join my newsletter! Sign up now at https://wellness-in-every-season.kit.com/5-days-to-mastering-mornings-and-evenings receive a free 5-day guide called "Awaken and Unwind: 5 Days to Mastering Life's Mornings and Evenings."
Anxiety and ADHD
SPEAKER_00This is episode 195. We're talking about listening to your anxiety, what your body is trying to tell you. Welcome to Wellness in Every Season. We talk all things wellness to help you align yourself, align with your goals, find balance in your life, and just recalibrate yourself. If you are listening for the first time, welcome, welcome. I'm so glad you're here. And let's get started in the rest of the podcast. This is important if you have any kind of neurodivergency because oftentimes anxiety is a part of it. For me personally, I have ADHD diagnosed, lived it, and I did not realize that I have anxiety along with it until I started taking a medication that also helps with anxiety. And suddenly I didn't have anxiety. I didn't realize that's what it was until it was gone. And I was like, oh, okay, that's what's happening here. So listen to this, even if you are somebody who says I don't have anxiety, because I've said that my whole life. Oh, hold on a second. So before we really jump in though, I want to tell you that this episode is part of a starting to become a global reach. It's through podcasts on is what it's called. And it's where a whole bunch of podcasters that are English speaking, French speaking, Dutch, and I think we're starting to get German-speaking podcasters around the world are getting together for this week, and we are doing donation-based episodes. And we get to choose who we are sponsoring. And if you guys want to help support them, then you look in the description and you can click the link and you can go and donate that. And the place that I've chosen to sponsor is the National Alliance on Mental Illness or Danny. And the reason why I chose this one is because it relates to talking about wellness. Mental health is huge. It's really hard to take care of your physical health if you're not taking care of your mental health, your social health, all these other areas of wellness, professional, intellectual. But if your mental health is struggling, everything is struggling in life. We have all have lived experiences, some short, some long, some ongoing, some in the past, some in the future of this. So Nami is someone that I choose to support because they are a nonprofit that does a lot of work raising awareness about mental health and helping people who are struggling who can't afford help. So let's talk about anxiety for a minute. And it's going to be a little bit different today. Not only am I sponsoring somebody through my guests on Mammy, is why I'm sponsoring again, but we're going to talk about stress or anxiety, which they can kind of go hand in hand. They're kind of overlap, but they can be different. We're going to talk about them in an abstract way. And we're going to do a short experience with this. If you are driving, walking, running, you're not in a place break, you can sit down and do this, still join. Know that you won't be able to do the full experience, and you can come back to it to do the full experience. No matter how much you can experience this and really dive into this, you're going to get something out of it. So just know that. And please share this with other people who are struggling with stress and anxiety because really it's so hard to make it through this life or make it through the day unscathed at that time. So let's talk about a big misunderstanding with anxiety is that people believe it's something we should immediately silence or push away. Still struggle with that. As soon as I feel it, it's like, no, I don't want this. And for me today, I was driving to my dentist's appointment to get teeth cleaned. And I have a new enough car that I have CarPlay. And my phone and CarPlay, I was driving on the freeway and it flipped out. And it was taking me in a way that I have never been looking for. Can you imagine the stress there? And I the more I tried to struggle through, and I'm gonna make this work, the more I started to feel that resistance. And it's that reminder of it to go with the flow a little more. But it's hard to get yourself there when you're in the middle of the stress or the anxiety. You agree? But here's the idea, and I wanted to push the anxiety away while I was going through this. This is why I was sharing my experience, is it often carries information. So for me, it was that realization that I'm not trusting myself and that I knew most of the way to get there, or I could figure it out. So that was the information for me. And it was also reminding me of the places that I have and deal with that anxiety, and anxiety can come from past trauma. And with directions, there is some past trauma there because my dad owned his own business, and he would give me the map books. I don't know if you remember the old map books where you can turn the pages and see street. He would hand that to me, and I was a little kid, barely learning how to read, and he would hand it to me and say, navigate me here, instead of pulling over on the road and figuring it out himself as an adult. And it was a lot of pressure, and it was, I need to know right now how to get to this clientele. Very stressful. So when Google Maps stopped working for me, it was bringing in that stress. And it's that reminder that your body is incredibly intelligent. And for me, it's it's the stored emotions that are in different places within my body. And sometimes it one stored emotion in one spot will kind of ping it to another spot, and then maybe another spot.
SPEAKER_01Sometimes your anxiety is simply your nervous system, asks you to pay attention. Where do I need to heal? What do I need to release?
SPEAKER_00Can I imagine it releasing from those areas? Work on that.
SPEAKER_01So if you're driving, no, you're not going to be able to do the full experience.
Where Anxiety Lives
SPEAKER_00If you're running or walking, same story. But if you're able to sit down with me, like I am right here, you can do the full experience. And if you're somewhere comfortable, this will only take a few minutes. If you're not, it still will. Okay, so let's talk about why this matters as you dive into it. Many people live almost entirely in their thoughts. I have been there. I'm still learning how to unplug in a healthy way. Because we often think of unplugging like I can have a remote in my hand or that phone in my hand or the Kindle in my hand, or it you're unplugging from thoughts, but then you're putting other thoughts in, force thoughts of whatever you're watching or reading or doing, instead of just relaxing and breathing and being in the moment.
SPEAKER_01And anxiety takes you out of the moment. And it doesn't start in the mind, it starts in the body.
SPEAKER_00Emotions start in our body, and then we attach a thought to them. I don't know if you've ever heard that before. But the first time I heard that, I was like, pulled on. Wait, what? And the more I thought about it and experienced it for myself, it makes sense. Try that on. It might feel as tightness in your chest, pressure in your throat, maybe your throat feeling out of alignment, then not in your stomach, tension in your shoulders, erasing all of them. If it's all of them, then you're really feeling some big thing. It can feel like maybe your hips feeling out of alignment or a little sore. Think about it. What does it feel like? Are you it can be very general population kills it? So it can also be very specific to you.
SPEAKER_01Where does it start in your body? For me, it starts more in my diaphragm. That tightening. And when we ignore the signal, they tend to get louder. Think about that for a second. You reflect on pastimes. Is that true or false for you? Does it tend to get louder when you ignore them? What about when you listen to them? Do they soften? For me, it's sometimes. But it's also because I'm listening while trying to shove it away.
SPEAKER_00Instead of having maybe a longer XL or okay, what is this trying to tell me?
Guided Somatic Exercise
SPEAKER_01What do I need to do about this? So it's that reminder instead of doing things faster in the wrong direction, it slow down. Okay, let's restart it. So while we listen, it softened. I noticed that for me in my experience. What have you noticed? That's what we're gonna practice. You ready? Okay. So if you are able to find a comfortable chair and sit down. If you're not, your comfortable chairs, you're parsing. Sound like mom right now. It's the feet you're sitting in while driving.
SPEAKER_00Or it's while you're walking or running or cleaning the house. If you're cleaning the house, take a minute and just sit down. This will be fat, okay? Or bowling laundry, whatever you're doing. Let your feet rest on the floor if you're able to. And allow your hands to relax on the steering wheel or in your lap.
SPEAKER_01Take a slow breath in. And then gently expell.
SPEAKER_00Now close your eyes if you're not driving or walking or moving. And just for a moment, I want you to create a little bit of anxiety. Tiny bit. Nothing overwhelming.
SPEAKER_01Maybe think about a task that you've been avoiding. Or something you know you need to be able to assume. Something coming to mind for you? Nothing is coming to mind.
SPEAKER_00Maybe think about the conversation that you need to have with somebody that's uncomfortable that you've been avoiding. And this is just enough of that little bit of anxiety to feel the sensation.
SPEAKER_01And then pause. Notice where that feeling of cure is in your body. Is it any of the areas that I mentioned before?
SPEAKER_00The throat, the shoulders. I mentioned for myself it's the diaphragm. Is it maybe the heart? Or maybe the stomach?
SPEAKER_01For me, it can depend on what exactly I'm feeling. Sometimes it's in the stomach. Okay. Notice it. Like I said, it could be in your trance, your stomach, your throat, maybe your hips. Maybe none of those areas that I mentioned.
SPEAKER_00Wherever it shows up, gently place your hand there. Driving just one. One hand. Let your hand rest on that spot. And now bring your attention to the suspicion itself. And it's just part somatic work here.
SPEAKER_01Have you ever wondered what the word somatic is? It's about your body. Now, what does that feel like? Can be warm, sharp, bubbly, doesn't move or stay still. Just observe it, not analyzing it.
SPEAKER_00Take your hand Imagine that this sensation is trying to show you something. Let your awareness follow the feeling. Almost as if it's leading you somewhere. Your own personal journey. If your mind wanders, that's okay.
SPEAKER_01But bring your attention back to the sensation under your hand. Stay with it and just breathe.
SPEAKER_00For me, because of fast trauma, I find that the longer exhale, make it a longer exhale than an inhale, it centers me. I can't do breathing exercises where I do longer inhales than exhales. It triggers me. So continue to do box breathing where you do four in, hold for four, four out, hold for, four in. Whatever breathing works for you, but you can stay grounded in the zone, okay?
Reflect and Get Support
SPEAKER_01Bring your attention back to that sensation. Where is it leading you? Now slowly take a deeper breath and notice whether the sensation has shifted at all. Maybe it softened. Stay the same. It doesn't matter what it's done. Perfectly okay no matter what. Gently open your eyes if they were closed. And then reflect on this. What did you experience? Did you experience anything?
SPEAKER_00What didn't you learn from this experience? Now you can analyze it a little bit. Don't go too deep into self-therapezing yourself in any way, shape, or form. But this is just to give you an idea of where does your anxiety typically reside in your body? And what is it trying to tell you?
SPEAKER_01And then what can you do about it if it's an easy fix?
SPEAKER_00If it's not an easy fix, then this is exactly why Nanny, why I'm sponsoring them. Why I'm giving you the chance to donate to them. And if this isn't the right fit for you, maybe coaching is for you. I am a coach, I am happy to help you through this.
SPEAKER_01And you have friends, but or you should have friends, or speak to a friend who is really good at listening to you.
Listen Don’t Fight
SPEAKER_00Another option is to control the habit to let you have that chance to really reflect and dig deeper in a safe environment where you're not feeling judged and where you're not going to be judging yourself. Somebody who will call you out as soon as you start going down the judgment. Because one of the interesting things about anxiety is that it often changes the moment you give it attention. Not because we forced it to go away, but because we stopped fighting it. That is important. That part we stopped fighting it. Our nervous system responds to kiriosy very differently than it responds to them. And sometimes when people do this exercise, they realize anxiety was connected to something specific. Like for me, with that whole having to look at the paper maps and try and read it while going down a road. And I used to get a little bit of car stick with it too. And I was just learning how to read. So it triggered a lot of things for me. And it's reminding myself that I know the town that I live in, and I can figure out how to get there eventually. And I was running super early. So I had all of these things going for me.
SPEAKER_01If it was raining, yes. I could have pulled over, yes. I'm figuring it out.
SPEAKER_00And it's that reminder, heard that quote of everything is figured outable.
SPEAKER_01So what is yours?
Daily Practice Questions
SPEAKER_00Is it related to a conversation you've been avoiding, a boundary that needs to be set, a decision you've been postponing, maybe an area where you need to want some more self-trust, like where I was this morning. So maybe you simply need to release a little bit of tension that's been sitting in the body. So no matter the outcome, it is valuable to be able to do this exercise because you are still reconnect with your body. We talked about emotions in past episodes, and now there's still an emotion, the anxiety part. It's about reconnecting. You live in such a world where we disconnect all the time. When we are unplugging, we're still disconnecting instead of learning to be in the moment, be tuned in, maybe tuned into nature around us or tuned into ourselves. That we want, we have value and be our action and that our experiences so when anxiety shows up during the day, try this simple question. Where do I feel it in my body? Then place your hand there and breathe for 10 to 20 seconds. And you might be surprised how quickly your nervous system begins to regulate. And it's something that I've been working on since I started work with my somatics coach two years ago now.
SPEAKER_01I don't even know how long it's been.
SPEAKER_00But we'll also notice that it's not about eliminating the anxiety, it's about learning to listen to it. And this goes back to a previous episode that I did that's called the nightly check-in, which this goes really well where you can really check in and what is my body trying to what's coming up for me. So here are some coaching questions to go along with this. When anxiety shows up for me, where do I usually feel it in my body? What might this feeling be asking me to pay attention to?
SPEAKER_01Hope you found this to be valuable.
SPEAKER_00I know that this is something that I've been working on with a client with adults and with my children, and it's made in
SPEAKER_01really big difference in that anxiety is okay feelings are okay and what we tell our kids almost constantly is what we do about it that matters things come up for us we are human beings living this life and we're not gonna go through this life like robots we have higher thinking than robots which is something we also remind our children with the world of AI but what mattered is what we do about these emotions and these thoughts so I hope today's exercise resonated with you I hope that you gained a lot out of them and you've had a great rest of your week and I will see you in the next episode.
SPEAKER_00Thank you so much for listening to this episode I hope that you found the answers that you needed and you had some amazing aha moments. Please share this episode with others because it helps us align ourselves and then better align the world so that we can seek the healing that we really are looking for. As part of the legal language I am a certified life coach with a bachelor's in applied health that is what I am leaning on for this is general advice taken as that. See you in the next episode.