Regulate & Rewire: An Anxiety & Depression Podcast

"Dear Anxiety": What This Song Gets Right About Healing

• Amanda Armstrong • Season 1 • Episode 148

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In this episode, I'm breaking down the song "Dear Anxiety" by Blu Eyes—and why it might be the most accurate description of anxiety and nervous system regulation I've ever heard set to music.

We explore why anxiety isn't a disorder or a malfunction but a protective response, what it actually looks like to be in relationship with your anxiety instead of at war with it, and how this one song captures the entire arc of regulation work—from somatic awareness to sending signals of safety to letting emotions move through.

This is a song that hits you in the feels while providing such deep validation.

Hit play for the full song here:

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Website: https://www.regulatedliving.com/podcast

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Welcome to Regulate and Rewire, an anxiety and depression podcast where we discussed 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 missteps, 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, welcome back. Today I want to do something a little different. I want to break down a song with you. This is a song called Dear Anxiety by Blue Eyes. I would love to just play it for you here, but due to copywriting things and because I want this artist to get credit for every play of her song. I am going to link this song in the show notes, which you can maybe pause me now and go listen to it before we dissect the lyrics or be sure to listen to it immediately following this conversation. 

It is such a soul song. When I first heard this song, I actually had to just stop what I was doing and sit with it for a minute. Actually many minutes because I then think I listened to it another seven times in a row because this song captures something that I spent so many years in personally experiencing myself. It's also something that I spend so much time trying to teach and I think it does this beautifully in less than three minutes.  

So this song is essentially a letter to anxiety. And what makes it so powerful is that it's not a letter that says, go away. It's not a letter that says, I hate you, I don't ever want to experience this again. It is a letter that says, hey, anxiety, I see you. I understand you and I even love you. And if you have been listening to this podcast for any amount of time, you know that this is the work. So what I am going to do is I am going to read a line or two of the song and then offer some thoughts, then move back to a couple other lines from the song, offer some thoughts, and so on. 

So let's get into it. The song opens with the line, 

“dear anxiety, I see you, feel you filling the space in my chest” 

So right out of the gate this is somatic awareness she's not saying I'm anxious as an identity statement she's not saying I have anxiety like it's a diagnosis that she's been handed she is saying 

“I can feel you in my body in my chest” 

She's locating that sensation and this is something that I talk about all the time. Anxiety or activation, it's not just these racing thoughts in your head. It's not just a mood. It is a physiological experience. It lives mostly in our body. That tightness in your chest, the constricting of your throat, the pit in your stomach. That is the way that your nervous system communicates with you. 

And the very first step in regulation is exactly what she's doing here, noticing it, Not judging it, not panicking about the panic, just, I see you and I feel you. And that is the difference between being consumed by anxiety and being in relationship with it. She then goes on to saying:

“Dear anxiety, I hear you screaming and trying to protect me.”

Oh, this line got me. Because this is the reframe that I think changes everything. She's not framing anxiety as the enemy as a problem. She's not framing it as disorder or malfunction. She is naming it for what it actually is. It's a protective response. And this, again, is the core of so much of what I teach here. Your anxiety is not broken hardwiring. It is your nervous system doing its job. It detected a threat real or perceived. It activated a survival response to try to keep you safe. The racing heart protection, the hypervigilance, protection, the urge to flee or to shut down. Protection. The problem isn't that the response exists. The problem is when it fires in situations where we're not actually in danger or when it gets stuck in this on position because our nervous system has not gotten the signal that we're safe. We don't know how to give it that signal or maybe we're living in a life or that signal doesn't come. But the intention behind this activation is always protection. And when you can see anxiety through that lens, something shifts. We stop fighting ourselves. We stop treating our own body like it's the enemy. And we can start to work with our nervous system instead of against it. 

So then we get to the verse that I think might be the most vulnerable part of this whole song. And she sings:

“Dear anxiety, I know you better than I know most of my friends. because you were there with me at my lowest. You were there when I didn't think I was good enough when I watched my whole life come undone.”

Now let's just sit with that for a second. 

“I know you better than I know most my friends”

That's not a fun realization. But I think there is this moment where that feels true for a lot of us. Anxiety has been the most consistent presence in their life up to this point, maybe in yours. It's there during a breakup, the failure, the rock bottom moment. It's there at 2 a .m. when nobody else was there. Not because it was invited, but just because the anxiety never left. 

I can't tell you how many discovery calls I get on with folks who become our clients who tell me I have had anxiety for as long as I can remember. Or I didn't realize until lately that this was anxiety, but I've been this way forever. It finally got a label.   And this is something I think is really important to name. Anxiety often shows up the loudest during the moments when we already feel the most inadequate, when we don't think that we're good enough, when life is falling apart, your nervous system is reading those moments of vulnerability as a threat and it doubles down on its protection, not because you're weak, but because your system is working over time to try to keep you safe during what it perceives as danger.   

So when she says, 

“you're with me at my lowest, you were there when I didn't think I was good enough when I watched my whole life come undone.” 

There's also something really profound about the fact that she doesn't seem to sound like she resents anxiety for being there during those moments. She doesn't say you ruined those experiences. You're the worst. She says you were with me. There's an acknowledgement of this part of her. That is somebody who has stopped seeing anxiety as the villain of their story and started to see it as this misguided but loyal companion that just does not know how or when to stand down.

And then she sings, 

“but now you don't have to worry.”  

That, but now is everything. It is a turning point. It is her saying, I understand why you showed up. I understand that you were trying to help. And we don't need that level of protection anymore. It is honoring the past while redirecting the present. And ultimately, like, that's nervous system work in a nutshell. And she followed that. So she says, 

“…but you don't have to worry. I promise that I'm safe. We don't need to shut this body down or try to run away. I promise we're okay.”

She is talking to this anxious part of her. She is sending signals of safety to her nervous system. And she's naming the two survival responses, the shutdown and this flight and telling her body, we don't need those things right now. 

I want you to imagine for a second. Imagine a moment of feeling really anxious about something that you logically know. You logically know you're fine, but you don't feel fine. And I want you to imagine turning inward and having this conversation with your internal system. Hey, hey anxiety, I promise. I promise we're safe. You do not need to shut this body down. You don't need to try to run away. I promise we're okay right now. This is co-regulation with yourself. This is what it looks like to be your own safe place.  

Again, notice that language. She's not saying, stop it, go away. She says, you don't have to. There is so much gentleness in that. She's not demanding that the anxiety leave. She's letting her system know that it's allowed to stand down, that her regulated adult self is here and present and capable. And then she says, 

“so I'll just sit here with you a while and watch as you fade away” 

That's it. That's the entire practice. She's not forcing anything. She's not white knuckling through it. She is sitting with the sensation and allowing it to metabolize, to re-contextualize through a more present based lens, to resource, and to move through. Because that is what emotions do when we let them. They move. They rise. They peak. They fade. But only if we stop resisting them. And then in what I think is the bridge of this song is where you might feel seen in a new way. She says, 

“until next time, this is for life, this thing you and I, we've got together.”

She is acknowledging that anxiety isn't something that you cure. It's not something that goes away forever one day and never comes back. And when you understand anxiety through a nervous system lens, not as some pathologized disorder, but as activation, as a nervous system sounding the alarm that says, hey, pay attention, this feels big, this feels important, this feels violating, this feels familiar too, like remember when? When that's how you come to understand this activated feeling that we label as anxiety so often, it shifts everything, it's no longer this thing that you have or you don't have. It's this spectrum of, oh, I feel a little activated right now. Ooh, I'm very activated. Like, panic attack might be coming. But it's part of this spectrum of human experience, not this thing to cure and get rid of.

Now, do I believe that you can turn the overall volume and frequency down on your anxiety? Absolutely. Nobody has to keep living with daily panic attacks. But this compassionate reframe of like, hey, I'm sure we're going to meet again. And I will recognize you for what you are as my protector. And we will work together to feel settled and safe again. That is what so many of our clients experience, this line of 

“until next time. Like this is for life, this thing, you and I, we've got it together.”

And again, this line, I think that's one of the most compassionate and honest things that you can say about this experience because so many people are waiting for the day that they just like won't feel anxious anymore. And that waiting, that expectation actually makes the anxiety worse because then every time it shows back up even a little bit, it feels like failure. That anxiety about your anxiety shows up again. But it's not failure.  

Anxiety coming back, I will reiterate over and over and over again. It's just part of the human experience, part of being a human with a nervous system. 

“healing doesn't mean the absence of activation or anxiety. Healing means cultivating a different relationship with it when it arrives.” 

And then the next line she shares is, 

“I'll be honest. My world feels darkest when you're around, but I still try.”

That's not pretending it doesn't hurt. That is honesty and resiliency at the same time. It's saying, this is hard. I don't love it. And I'm still here. And I'm still showing up for myself.  And then she ends the song with the line, 

“dear anxiety, I love you. I hope you know that I really mean that.”

Now, I know, I know that might sound radical. Loving your anxiety, I don't know, that might be a stretch. But think about what she is really saying here, or what I believe she might be saying here. I think she's saying, I love that part of me that is trying so hard to protect me. Even when it's messy, even when it's loud, even when it makes my world feel really dark. This is what it means to stop pathologizing your own experience.   This is what it looks like to stop being at war with yourself. You do not have to love the feeling of anxiety. But can you love the part of you that's behind it? The part of you, often the little that's where real healing happens, not because the anxiety disappears, but because we're no longer adding a second layer of suffering on top of it. We are no longer anxious about our anxiety or we no longer have a story of shame around that anxiety.

So what I want to leave with you today, instead of our normal three takeaways, because really the one takeaway is go listen to that song. 

But an invitation is that the next time anxiety shows up. And it will because you're human and maybe you don't call it anxiety anymore. Maybe it's activation. Use your term. But I want to invite you to try something instead of the like, oh, what's wrong with me? Can you try turning towards that feeling, that sensation, that part of you? Hey, hey, What are you trying to protect me from? Hey, I know this maybe feels familiar to then, but it's now, and I've got us now. We're okay. I'll sit with you until you believe it. Instead of fighting it, can you notice where you feel it in your body? Instead of demanding that it leaves, try what she does in this song. Can you sit with it for a while? Let it know that you're safe and just watch what happens. or maybe the next time you're feeling anxious, hit play on this song and let her help guide you through this practice.  Use the song for a moment of co -regulation and as a reminder that you are not alone in this experience. 

Now, if you haven't already, head to the show notes. Hit play because I really do think Everyone needs to hear this song, especially those of you who find yourself listening through a podcast like this. 

And if this resonated and you want to go deeper with understanding and approaching anxiety or depression through a nervous system lens, working with your system instead of against it, I'm here. I'm here. And thank you for being here.  

And until next week, I am sending so much 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 anxiety and 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.