Regulate & Rewire: An Anxiety & Depression Podcast

Uphill Healing: Why Everything Feels Harder (and How to Make It Easier)

• Amanda Armstrong • Season 1 • Episode 118

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Using a personal story about a difficult uphill walk versus an easy downhill one, this episode offers a powerful and validating analogy for the healing journey. Amanda explores why life and healing can feel so hard when you're dealing with anxiety or depression, diving into the real physiological and biological reasons your body is working overtime. This episode is a compassionate reminder that your struggle is not a personal failing and that the hard "uphill" work you're doing now is what creates the conditions for life to feel easier later.

In this episode, you’ll learn:

  • Why a dysregulated nervous system is "physiologically expensive" and makes daily life feel objectively harder.
  • The reasons the healing process itself—confronting the past, feeling new emotions, and changing habits—also feels uphill at first.
  • How underlying physiological issues, like hormone imbalances or nutrient deficiencies, can make the healing journey feel even steeper.
  • Practical strategies for navigating the "uphill" phase of healing without getting discouraged.
  • What the "downhill" phase of healing looks and feels like, and the hope that it is possible.

3 Takeaways:

  1. Life with anxiety or depression feels uphill because it literally IS harder. 
  2. Healing feels uphill because you're investing energy to create new conditions. 
  3. The uphill phase is temporary and necessary. 

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Welcome to regulate and rewire an anxiety and depression podcast where we discuss the
things I wish someone would have taught me earlier in my healing journey. I'm your
host, Amanda Armstrong, and I'll be sharing my steps, my mess steps, client
experiences and tangible research based tools to help you regulate your nervous
system, rewire your mind and reclaim your life. Thanks for being here.
Now let's dive in.
Hey friend, welcome back. I had a really simple experience yesterday that I think
makes a perfect analogy for something we often experience in our healing journey.
Today, we're going to talk about why healing often feels so uphill, so hard.
And we'll also talk about how and why that's not necessarily a sign that something's
gone wrong. It's not something that is wrong with you. It's not necessarily something
that's wrong about how you're approaching your healing. We'll also talk about how
understanding your physiology and the physiology of this heart, how that can bring a
lot of compassion and clarity into how you are choosing to approach and navigate
your anxiety and depression symptoms. So what is the experience I had yesterday.
Yesterday morning, I had a ultrasound appointment at the hospital that's just under a
mile from my house. So I decided I was gonna walk. That would be my morning
movement for the day. And then about three or four minutes into the walk, my heart
rate is already going. I'm starting to breathe pretty heavy. And I remembered that
the hospital is an entirely uphill walk from my house.
No exaggeration from my door to the hospital entrance, straight up hill.
The whole almost mile. I thought for a moment about turning around and getting in
the car and just driving there, but I kept walking because number one, I really
need movement right now. Morning movement actually is an important pillar of my own
regulated living all the time. And number two, I am 30 weeks pregnant in Virginia
hot humid summer. So if I am not moving early in the morning, there's a good
chance that it's not happening because my threshold for additional bodily discomfort
right now is just about zero. So I did it. I kept walking. I made it there
slowly, sweatily, Heart beating out of breath every step felt like effort,
but I made it to my appointment I had the appointment and then I had the walk
home and the beautiful thing about having an entirely uphill walk there is that when
it was a little hotter and a little bit more humid later My walk was entirely
downhill So same distance, same big old pregnant belly,
but the walk home was so much easier. And because I am just a nerdy data girly,
I tracked both walks on my order ring and I actually shared screenshots of that
data to my Instagram stories yesterday as I had a more abbreviated conversation of
what we'll have here on the podcast today. But what it showed was that on the walk
there, I moved slower, but my heart rate was higher and I burned more calories. It
was objectively more taxing on my system. And then what that bio data showed on the
way back, even though I moved faster, mostly due to gravity, I had a lower heart
rate, lower energy expenditure. My body did not have to work as hard.
Same distance, completely different experiences. And because walking is where I do
some of my best thinking, I got to thinking about how that parallels to so much of
what we experience in our healing journey. There are often seasons of life,
seasons of our healing that are uphill. For any number of reasons. These seasons are
objectively harder. We have to work so much harder to cover the same distance.
Not because we suck, not because we can't get it together, but because there are
very real circumstances contributing to that, whether we're aware of them or not.
There are certain conditions that make healing harder. For example,
if you belong to a marginalized group, or if your childhood experiences were less
stable or more overwhelming, then your healing will likely be and feel harder than
somebody else's, who had a different answer to those two categories. If you are not
getting the sleep, the movement, nourishment, or human connection needed as a
biological minimum for your wellbeing, things are gonna be harder. If you have an
underlying hormone or thyroid or micronutrient imbalance or deficiency, things are
going to feel harder. If you're still living reactively,
if you're still processing your current life through old traumas or stress patterns,
things are going to be and feel harder. And this is at the heart of how we
support our clients at regulated living with our multifaceted and really tangible
approach. This is why with our one -on -one clients, we look at blood work, we
assess lifestyle habits, we discuss relationships, we include psychoeducation and parts
work, because all of it matters, all of it has a place, and figuring out the
unique contributors to your anxiety and depression symptoms is what gives you the
context to create a more clear and strategic and supportive path forward. At
Regulated Living, we don't just say, Hey, here's a tool for anxiety or endlessly
repeat. Well, what do you think about that? Or where do you think that came from?
We are asking very specifically, what does your sleep look like? What are your labs
telling us? What is your stress load and your trauma history? What do you believe
about your body? What do you need in your relationships, in your environments to
feel safe enough to heal? Because when we understand the contributing factors to our
uphill climb, we can get the support that we need to walk it with more context,
compassion, clarity, and care. And if you are somebody who is navigating anxiety or
depression, your everyday life probably already feels uphill most days. Simple tasks
feel harder. Joy feels harder to access motivation, energy, connection. It can all
feel like climbing a mountain, at least for me, those simple things,
I was like, why? Why is it so hard for me to just do my dishes? Why is it so
hard for me to get through my inbox? Other people don't think these things are so
hard. It felt like I was climbing this mountain with no summit. I started to
believe at this phase of my healing journey that this is just how I was, that life
just was harder for me because of the way that I was. When I learned to understand
these through a nervous system lens, when I was invited into a space where I took
a real honest accounting of the way that I was living my life and the past
experiences I was still holding on to. I began to realize that it wasn't harder
because I was weak or because I was lazier because I came broken. It is because
dysregulation is physiologically expensive. When your nervous system is chronically
stuck in a survival state, whether that's activation or shutdown, your body is
working so much harder to do everything. Your internal, physiological and psychological
resources are spread so much thinner. Your HPA access, which is the stress response
system in your body, it's on high alert. And when it is your sleep is disrupted,
your digestion is compromised, your body is working overtime just to maintain basic
functioning. So of course, thing feels harder than it should. And then when you
start doing the work of healing, whether that's therapy or coaching, nervous system
tools, functional medicine, at least initially that also feels uphill because you're
likely changing your habits, you're confronting your past, addressing unmet needs,
rewiring a system that's probably not fully out of survival mode yet. Healing
requires you to do new things. And your nervous system equates the familiar with
safety, even when the familiar isn't healthy, isn't helpful. So when you start
therapy or set a boundary or change a habit, your system might initially register
that as threat. Whew, okay, contributing to the uphill. Healing often involves feeling
emotions you've been avoiding. If you have been numb, then finally having the space,
the capacity to feel your anger or your grief, that can be overwhelming. If you've
been anxious, slowing down enough to feel can be deeply uncomfortable. And part of
healing is walking towards that discomfort, adding a little bit more to the uphill.
Healing takes energy and resources that are often already depleted. It's like asking
somebody who's already exhausted to run another mile. But depending on the pace and
the approach and the context you have for why you might need to make that upfront
investment, and if it's the right strategic upfront investment, it usually pays off
later, even if it feels really costly at the start. And so something I want to
give you context for is that sometimes healing might make symptoms feel worse.
It might even bring new sensitivities or symptoms, and this doesn't always mean that
you're doing the wrong thing. It doesn't mean that you're failing. Oftentimes, this
is actually a sign that it's working, that your system isn't so shut down,
that you aren't moving at such an unsustainable pace that you're having to ignore
all of these things. Building a relationship with your nervous system, hearing the
messages that are there can feel like it's part of the uphill.
And what I want you to know is that you are brave and it is incredible to step
into this work. And I'll put a plug in that this hard, this uphill is a lot
easier to navigate when you're not trying to navigate it alone. So let's take the
last 10 or so minutes of this conversation. And the point I really want to make is
that you often have to walk uphill in order to create the conditions for things to
feel downhill later. And that's why every single one of you is here, is to figure
out how to make life feel a little easier, to lighten that load,
to get to a place where not everything feels so hard, and you can cover that same
distance and have it feel a little easier. And in this conversation, something else
that I want to talk about here is that the reasons things feel or are actually
harder than they need to be sometimes. You probably know this by now, but it's not
in your head. It's at least not all in your head. Oftentimes, it's in your body.
It's biological. It's physiological. Almost all of the clients that we have run labs
on have had at least one biomarker that was off in a way that research shows can
be a direct contributor to increased anxiety or depression symptoms. It could be a
B6 deficiency, a hormone imbalance, cortisol levels being off. One I'll talk to was
a client whose labs came back indicative of a thyroid condition. And most of our
clients have been told previously by their providers that their lab work was normal.
And this is why when we run labs, number one, we're typically looking at more
biomarkers than get checked at a standard annual physical. We were able to set up a
completely custom panel where we were able to pull in specific biomarkers that we
know are often linked to anxiety and depression symptoms. And Also,
when our provider looks at your labs, they're not just looking for normal. We are
assessing for optimal ranges, and we are looking at your numbers through a more
comprehensive lens of also your habits, your symptoms, your environments,
the current conditions of your daily life. So this particular client whose labs were
indicative of a thyroid condition, They had been in therapy prior to working with us
for three years and the discovery call went something like While therapy has felt
really really helpful in some ways The reality is I went to therapy to have less
anxiety. I'm three years in and I'm still having regular panic attacks I want to
need to try something different And so in working with us. Yes,
she was absolutely able to identify that there were belief systems, protective parts.
There's deeper inner work that she needed to do to heal. But the addition of, hey,
there is something going on. There is an underlying physiological stressor that no
matter how much of this deeper work mindset shifts you do, your symptoms might be
predominantly being triggered by your physiology. At the very least,
that additional unmanaged condition is adding a lot of stress load to your nervous
system. And if we can take the steps that we need to to get that more stable, the
shifts and the changes that deep inner work mindset stuff, it's going to come a lot
easier because you're going to have more stability within your system or capacity in
your system to address that. When your body is under resourced, your biology is
compensating. So if you're dealing with a micronutrient deficiency, hormone imbalance,
blood sugar instability, chronic inflammation, poor gut health, unprocessed trauma
stored in your body, it is going to make any form of healing that you are doing
feel harder. You're not just walking uphill, but you are walking uphill with a
weighted invest on that you might know nothing about, and this is why it was so
important for us at Regulated Living to figure out how to include blood work,
comprehensive lab testing as part of the way that we can support our clients because
it is a huge piece of the picture for many, many folks. And this is exactly why
one of the most healing moments for our clients is when they look at their stress
bucket assessment, or when they see their labs and they realize, oh my God,
it's not just me. There are very real and valid reasons based on my past lived
experiences, my current life circumstances, my underlying physiology for why I feel
this way. And that validation is powerful because it quiets the shame.
It softens that what's wrong with me spiral, and it provides a clearer,
more personalized map for what to do next in your unique healing journey.
So yes, there are parts of healing that can feel uphill, parts of healing where you
can question if it's even worth it. But my promise to you is that there is a
tipping point. There is a moment when your system starts to shift, when you have
put in enough of the groundwork, sleep, nourishment, safety, connection, support that
parts of your life stop needing so much effort. That is when you start to
experience your own version of the downhill walk. Maybe it looks like getting out of
bed in the morning easier or feeling more ease in your relationships or a greater
ability to set boundaries. Maybe it's that you just bounce back from stress faster,
not that you never get stressed, but you just reset from it more easily, or that
you have access to your full range of emotions, or you're able to respond in
situations more mindfully instead of so reactionarily. Maybe you have more focus, more
consistent energy, less brain fog, and especially to those of you who feel like you
have been in an endless uphill climb. I want you to know that this is possible.
It doesn't happen overnight, it does not happen by bypassing some of the realities
of your life, but it comes through honest, integrated, body -led healing,
a place where your mental and your physical health haven't equal seed at the table,
where you understand the ways that your physiology contributes to your psychology and
where you have the support and the accountability to make the tangible changes in
your life needed, to decrease that stress load on your system,
and then the compassionate support to help hold you as you learn to feel safe
again, to navigate a world with more presence. And I think a natural question,
and a question that we get often from our members is, how do I keep going? Like
how do I keep going when it feels so hard? How do I navigate this uphill journey?
And I want to offer kind of four points to answer that question. Number one is to
expect it. Just knowing that healing will feel uphill, oftentimes initially, and then
again at other times when you choose to face other patterns or to optimize in new
ways, just this knowing can help you to not interpret that difficulty as failure,
but to recognize that discomfort is part of the process. Number two is to start
small. You do not have to overhaul your entire life at once. One small manageable
step at a time. We often say, especially in trauma healing, slower is faster, less
is more. What is the 1 % shift that is meaningful and accessible to you today?
Number three is to get support. The uphill journey is so much easier and so much
less miserable with companions. So whether this is therapy, coaching, support group,
safe friends, you do not have to. And in my opinion, I don't believe that you can
do this alone. And the final thing is rest when you need to.
That uphill journey doesn't have to be a constant sprint. it shouldn't be,
it can't be, take the breaks, rest, return to the work when you have more capacity.
And I would, I will say that we need seasons of rest. We need seasons of reprieve
and seasons of downhill. And so if you do feel like you have been in an uphill,
uphill, uphill, uphill year after year after year, it might be time to pause and
assess that this isn't the natural uphill part of healing, but that maybe we do
need to come at this. You do need to come at this from a slightly different angle
or strategy or approach or support system. All right, bringing this all together,
coming back to my walk yesterday, that uphill portion of my walk was objectively
harder, but it was also necessary to create the conditions for an easier walk home.
My healing journey with anxiety and depression has felt very much the same. It has
felt challenging. I have kicked and screamed against certain hills I did not want to
climb. Things I did not want to face or change but that needed to, if I wanted my
overall life, my health, my nervous system, my relationships, to get better and for
me working with trauma informed coaches, therapists,
medical providers who understood the role of physiology and my nervous system and
what I was experiencing
made all of the difference for me. So your healing will likely feel the same at
times if it doesn't so right now and when you have the right support system in
place, the right context, the work that you are doing or will do is going to
create conditions for life to eventually feel more downhill. Now here are your three
takeaways from today. Number one, life with anxiety or depression feels uphill because
it literally is harder. When your nervous system is dysregulated, your body is
working overtime And this impacts your psychology in real ways and understanding this
can hopefully help you have more compassion for yourself to recognize that your
struggle is real and valid, not imaginary or dramatic. Number two, healing feels
uphill because you are investing energy to create new conditions. Just like walking
uphill requires more effort. Initially, healing often requires an upfront investment as
well of energy, of courage, of resources, and oftentimes the difficulty doesn't mean
that the healing isn't working. Sometimes it might actually be the thing saying that
it is. Number three, the uphill phase is necessary and should be temporary.
You should not feel like you're walking up hill forever. You are doing the work now
to create the conditions where daily life challenges, stressors become more manageable
over time. When you put in the right kind of uphill work with the right kind of
support, your downhill phase is inevitable. So my dear friend, keep walking,
keep healing, be patient with yourself during this process. The fact that you are
here listening to this episode means that you are already taking some of those
steps. And if this episode resonated, I'd love for you to share it or send it to
somebody else who might need it. And if you are looking for a new way of healing,
I'm here, my team is here, and I would love to hear from you. Until next week,
I am sending hope and healing your way. Thanks for listening to another episode of
the Regulate and Rewire podcast. If you enjoyed what you heard today, please
subscribe and leave a five -star review to help us get these powerful tools out to
even more people who need them. And if you yourself are looking for more
personalized support in applying what you've learned today, consider joining me Inside
Rise, my monthly mental health membership and nervous system healing space, or apply
for our one -on -one, exciting depression coaching program restore. I've shared a link
for more information to both in the show notes. Again, thanks so much for being
here. And I'll see you next time.