Stop Calling It My Anxiety (Here’s Why)

Somewhere along the way, many of us were given a label.

Anxiety. Panic disorder. Overthinker.

And while that label can bring relief and understanding… it can also quietly become part of our identity.

In this episode of The Anxiety Compass, Sammy and Nat explore what happens when anxiety shifts from something you experience… to something you believe you are.

Because there’s a big difference between:
 “I have anxiety” and  “This is who I am”

And that difference can shape your choices, your confidence, and the size of your world.

We unpack:

✨ Why the brain loves labels (and how it uses them to keep you “safe”)
 ✨ How language like “my anxiety” can subtly reinforce identity
✨ The link between thought patterns, neuroplasticity, and behaviour
✨ Why over-identifying with anxiety can keep you stuck
✨ The difference between identity vs experience
✨ How to start separating yourself from the feeling without dismissing it
✨ A simple but powerful reframe that opens up possibility again

This episode is for anyone who has ever caught themselves saying:

 “I’m just an anxious person”
 “I can’t do that because of my anxiety”
 “This is just how I am”

What if anxiety wasn’t who you are…  but something your body is communicating?

Because you are not the compass.  You are the one holding it.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:11

We'll swap stories and share tools and have a laugh while we find our way back to true north. Come along. Hello everyone and welcome back to another episode. Hey Nat, how are you doing? I'm good, Sammy. How are you? I'm fantastic. I am yeah, I'm just I've had to shut the door because my neighbors are doing some construction. So hopefully we don't hear that. But there's no Midas here today, Nat. There's no I know. He's in getting his teeth removed. He is a little gummy bear. He is gonna be a little gummy bear. He's already my little teddy, but it's always hard when you're working from home and your dog's not here because you realize how much you actually talk to your uh very little friends. But yeah, so true. So today we wanted to chat about uh anxiety becoming your identity. So this was something that happened to me when I was young. When um at first so a little bit backstory for me, for you and for the listeners. When I was a little girl, uh I had panic and anxiety disorder, and nobody knew what was wrong with me because it wasn't common back then, which you're I'm sure you especially in children, it wasn't common. And so I went months and months thinking I was dying, there was something wrong with me. Every doctor thought I was a hypochondriac. Uh cat scans, MRIs, you name it. And eventually uh I found a book and uh I found a psychologist who told me what I was experiencing was anxiety and panic disorder. And so for me, I realized okay, this thing has a name, and this is what I have now, and this is who I am. I I am this person that has anxiety, that can't leave my house, that has panic attacks, and it became my identity. I was the girl who had anxiety, and yeah, it consumed me. Did you and I started referring to it as my anxiety? And I noticed we've done that a few times throughout other podcasts because it's a habit that we get into where we identify as this thing that we are, um, when it's it's sort of an extension, it's a feeling, it's an emotion that we that we have. We become, it's like you know how we talk about it being our compass. It's like you have a compass that guides you. You're not the compass, it's not an a part of you, it's an extension that you hold on to that guides you. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, does that make sense? Or am I just talking?

SPEAKER_01 2:51

No, no, no, it does.

SPEAKER_00 2:52

It absolutely does. You're just looking at me like, but no, I'm listening to you. Have you ever sort of like someone's given you a diagnosis and you've just decided, okay, well, this is what I am, I can't be anything other than this.

SPEAKER_01 3:07

Yeah, no, no, I I was, I guess because I was older when I was when I developed anxiety or became aware. Obviously, I had anxiety when I was a child, but it wasn't extreme and I hit it well. And I didn't even know I was hitting hit hitting uh hiding away. I was trying to say hitting it. I was hitting it well. Um but didn't even know that I was, it was just my normal default. So and and you know, no one knew what I was experiencing. So and I didn't think about it. I I didn't think, oh, I've got this or I'm trying to hide this. It was just I was just doing it. But when I was diagnosed, so mine was a long journey though. Um, you know, I had a had a breakdown uh at work one day and was taken to hospital because they all thought I was having a heart attack. I didn't know what was going on, but they ran all the tests, and you know, I had this really lovely um female doctor, and she was sitting with me, sitting on the edge of the bed in an emergency. They'd run all the tests, and she said, You're not having a heart attack, you're you're physically, you're okay. And she actually said, honey, you've you've actually just had a breakdown. And my reaction was like, What? What? No, there was disbelief. So it wasn't like, oh, okay, this is what it is. It was like, uh, yeah, no. It then took two years of uh before I was actually diagnosed with complex PDSD. Now obviously they knew they had told me, I mean, it was obvious I had anxiety. I never actually identified with it, with you know, as that. Yeah. I was very aware of my language, even though I I probably didn't really understand like we do today the power of um our language, but I was just like, no, I'm I I refuse this. I haven't been sick like this before. I'm not going to be like this forever, even knowing I had many doctors actually tell me you're so sick, you will never get better.

SPEAKER_00 5:13

This is you.

SPEAKER_01 5:14

This is this is this is it, this is you, this is you now. And I was like, yeah, no, yeah, yeah. I was like, no, I I I never said my anxiety or my PDSD. I always said, um, you know, I have anxiety or I'm feeling anxious. So there was a a part of me that was distancing myself from the disorder, even knowing, like I said, even though I wasn't aware that I was doing that, or the reasons why, but I ref I refused. But that came with its own problems though, as well.

SPEAKER_00 5:51

Because I didn't accept, yeah. You push yourself.

SPEAKER_01 5:54

Yeah, I pushed, I went the other extreme, and that was actually a big part of those early years was learning to accept that I had a disorder, but not identifying as the disorder.

SPEAKER_00 6:10

Yeah, I find that really interesting. I've met, like I don't know if you've noticed in clinic, I had so I was for some reason I was attracting myself in clinic, but I had so many women coming into my clinic with anxiety. Um, it was, you know, a symptom, this emotional thing, and their body was always in flight and fight. The body was talking to them, right? Because it's it's um it is, it's anxiety is basically a signal from your compass to say something's not right, let's switch to um, you know, everything back to north. You're true, North. But these women that would come in, they would treat it like it was their personality trait. Yes, I'm anxious, I'm not that, I can't stick up for myself. I have to stay here. I don't go out at night, I don't leave my house. Like it was just set in stone. This is who I am, this is my personality, and I can't break from that because I've been told this is who I am.

SPEAKER_01 7:03

Yeah, I see that all the time as well. It's very, they're very black and white in it.

SPEAKER_00 7:07

Yeah, and it's something I'm noticing a lot, like people uh relying on a diagnosis to be able to give them that freedom and break away to say, oh no, I have this, I can't do that. Yeah, and it it actually is quite limiting and it stops us, like as you're saying, it stops us from truly connecting with our body and and challenging those those feelings and sensations. We're just allowing sort of anxiety to take over and and control our lives when yeah, rule our lives, yeah, yeah. There is science behind it, so the brain actually loves labels because a label is predictable, right? If you label something, like you know, you label all these things and you label each day and you label and you make sure you've got in your calendar how things work because it's safe. Yeah, and the structure is safe, exactly. This is who we are now, let's behave accordingly, and um it keeps you very rigid and and we've spoken about neuroplasticity on this um podcast before, haven't we? Yeah, we have, we've touched on it a few times, yeah. Yeah, and I feel like a lot of people don't realize that the brain can continually be, I'm not gonna use well, manipulated. I guess it's kind of like using Play-Doh and changing the shape and forming new connections. Malleable, maybe yeah, yeah. And so if we continue to reinforce that this is this is who we are now, let's behave accordingly, you're not allowing that natural growth patterns to happen and form in in the brain without sciencey, because I'm not very good at speaking in science language, let's be honest. I teach kids on stages.

SPEAKER_01 9:00

Um yeah, and and I've found in clinic, it's also when I was in hospital, I met I came across hundreds of people who were in that I that they identify with their diagnosis. Um the more their the world, your world or their world gets smaller and smaller as well. The harder you identify and you start putting limitations on what you can and can't do, the brain then says, Oh, okay, that's not safe. And so your corridor of what you can do becomes narrower, narrower and narrower.

SPEAKER_00 9:36

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 9:36

To the point where you literally aren't functioning in society.

SPEAKER_00 9:40

We what was it? Agoraphobia, where we is that how you pronounce it because I've heard agoraphobia. Yeah, I was watching a podcast and I'm calling agoraphobia. I'm like, no, I mean, you know, science is tomato. Let's call the whole thing off, you know. I know, right? Uh so yeah, I find like when you say I'm anxious, your body will become anxious if you tell something, it will, it will find evidence to support that. Yes, you are anxious because we have all this information coming in here and this is happening. Rather than saying I'm anxious, you can say, Okay, I'm feeling a little bit anxious right now. I wonder what's causing my body to feel that way. Not I'm anxious. This is something, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 10:24

So exactly exploring it, having a curious mind, staying open rather than because I'm anxious and and that rigidity is very uh, like I said, limited, we're limiting and we become stiff, like there's as we said, there's no malleability, like not in just in our brain, but in our whole body. So remaining, as you said, because saying I'm feeling anxious, yeah, and checking in as to well, what is it that's causing this anxiety? Yeah, because curiosity opens our mind.

SPEAKER_00 10:56

Does, and that's exactly what sort of shifted me. So as a little girl, um, when I realized I wasn't dying or going crazy because you sometimes think you're going crazy, uh, I thought, well, I can't live trapped in my house and with no friends and no school, and I have to, I have to just do something here. And so I started just doing small things at first, and eventually, you know, I signed up for the scariest stuff. And when I realized that I didn't die from those things, it was like I kept kind of pushing myself that little bit further. And uh I feel like I still sort of had in the background for a long time that I identified with it, but now I've definitely sort of it's one, it's like a signal in my body, and that it's only sort of happened in the last, I'm gonna say eight years or so where I've actually been able to not be the anxious person and realize it's just a it's a gift and it's a feeling and sensation that I've been blessed with that I can use to do other things in my life. So we sort of talked a bit about the identity trap, which is what we were saying, you know, language shapes our behavior. I can't go, I have anxiety, I don't do crowds, I don't do confrontation, I don't do these things because that's not my personality. Meanwhile, you're just going in overprotection, limiting yourself, going around in circles. Um, identity is a fixed sort of thing, whereas experience is more fluid with the brain and growth and that malleability. When you're feeling anxious, it's often your body telling you that it's afraid of something. Um, it's overloaded by too much information. We talked about noise in the last um a couple of episodes ago, that um noise can be an un thing. Uh, it can be a misalignment. Maybe you're hanging out with the wrong person. Your body is really intuitive at letting you know when there's a misalignment. Like this doesn't feel right. Something's going on here, especially in business. I find you can pick that up straight away when you realize that I don't want to work with that person. Something doesn't feel right here. Um, yeah. Unmet needs is another big one as well. Do you ever get anxious when you know you need something but you haven't met that desire yet? And you just kind of it's like, I don't know, uh it could be anything, really. Like um, I know with my business, there's so many things that I want to do and achieve that sometimes I get anxious because I haven't created the space to do that. And as soon as I complete that or I do that, it's like that anxious feeling just subsides because I'm like, oh yay, I've I've completed it and I've done it and I feel amazing now. Like absolutely, and that's the thing, right?

SPEAKER_01 13:30

Yeah, we all experience the feeling of anxiety at some point. So what you're experiencing is just normal, everyday, like just anxiety as opposed to an anxiety disorder. Like so you you're anxious about you haven't done something, or or you know, you've got you're a bit overwhelmed at the moment, but as soon as you address it, that anxiety subsides and goes away. That's that's when you know you don't have an anxiety disorder anymore. Because anxiety itself is not building in evil and bad. Yeah, absolutely. It's when that it becomes dysregulated and starts affecting your life, and you've got this like generalized anxiety or social anxiety, and it starts limiting your life in whatever way. That's when it becomes a disorder as opposed to just feeling normal anxiety, which again it's just our our body signal saying, Hey, you've moved away from your true north, we just need to come back, we just need to recalibrate.

SPEAKER_00 14:29

Yeah, it can consume you. I, if you if you let it, uh when I was in it, I would lose sleep, it would consume me. And you had to sort of stop and create that space, which was extremely difficult to do, um, to sort of find out what anxiety is trying to show you. It's the more you ignore your body and just identify with this is who I am, I'm not I'm not listening to my body, this is it. It consumes you, it really does. So um, we've done a lot of sort of practical shifts that you can do in previous episodes. Like, I mean, we always go back to the breath that slows the breath. Always the breath, slows that compass from spinning, and you can really tune into what your body's saying. But what about language reframes? We did touch base on that just a little bit, but I mean, we were talking about reframing it, saying, I it's my anxiety, or I have anxiety too, I'm feeling anxious because, and then you know, sort of the there are other language things that we can use, Nat, because I know that words are really powerful.

SPEAKER_01 15:32

Yeah, absolutely. Just saying, I mean, what really helped me was just saying, I'm safe, I'm okay, just to rewrite that script of I'm not safe because my nervous system is telling me I'm not safe. So using that language of I'm safe. My biggest one though, the mantra that I used as soon as I came across it was this too shall pass.

SPEAKER_00 15:55

Oh, I love that. I love that analogy that the metaphor of being the the storm will always be there in the crashing waves. But if you just sink a little bit down underneath and let it pass, I can't let the waves roll over you.

SPEAKER_01 16:10

Yeah, yeah, because you don't feel the crashing, you just see the ripple above you. Exactly. Yeah. That was my biggest one. This too shall pass. Yeah, yeah. I say that.

SPEAKER_00 16:21

What about you? Yeah. Um, for me, I I do actually think that when I'm feeling at my most anxious, like when something's really consuming me, like maybe I did have a confrontational conversation with someone, and you know, that that is can be challenging for someone who isn't used to that. And so my body would go into overdrive for a bit as it was learning a new pattern, which is always fun. Uh, but I would constantly keep reassuring myself that time doesn't stand still, this too will pass, and my body's just processing this. This is fine. And often I I also look at other things like the resilience that I've built, and I'll flash back to similar things that my body has gone through and the feelings and sensations. And I'm like, yeah, yeah, I felt this before. We're just up-leveling, we're learning a new code, the brain's forming a new code here, and it's challenging. And um, we'll come out the other end fine.

SPEAKER_01 17:15

So yeah, and as you said, you're not gonna die from it because I think that's the biggest thing. I I felt the same. Like, oh my god, am I gonna die? Am I having a heart attack? You know, blah, blah, blah. So knowing, yeah, um, uh the brain loves proof. Yeah. So when we start giving it proof that, oh, hang on, I I'm I'm not dying. I'm I'm not actually having a heart attack. The sky didn't fall in, the world didn't end when you know, when this happened.

SPEAKER_00 17:40

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 17:41

When I did get through it, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 17:43

That's the resilience, right? That's the resilience. You've got the story, you've got the book, you've got the proof. And um, you know, maybe write down every time you've challenged your perception of reality and and all the things, write down in a journal somewhere. So when you do have that, you know, moment, because it will come up again. It does me. Your body's gonna challenge you, your brain's gonna challenge you, uh, you know, as to whether or not this is safe, what you're doing. Gosh, it happens regularly for me because I'm constantly up-leveling in my business and putting myself in scary spaces, but they're only scary now, they're not scary later once my body realizes they're not scary.

SPEAKER_01 18:21

Uh, but even that, that language there, you could change, even change that to an exciting experience. Exciting and fun. You think about um, like if you know I I don't like roller coasters, but just say you want to uh love roller coasters and you're going up the up the um steep part at the beginning and and you're a bit scared and but you know that you at the at the peak, you're gonna go down and that's when it's gonna be fun. So that's the way of looking at it rather than it being, oh, this is a scary thing. It's just like I'm on the roller coaster and I'm just about to get to the peak to go down the fun bit.

SPEAKER_00 18:58

It's like the anxious bit. That's what I always said to my hubby and my mates. I said, I don't know if I could ever go skydiving. And it's not the actual skydiving, it's getting in the plane and going up there, it's the anticipation because that's what anxiety is. It's the unknown, it's the not being able to control what's going to happen. But when the thing is happening, it's it's it's fine. Like you get the adrenaline, you get through it. Yeah, so it's the climb. Absolutely, it's the climb. It's the climb. Yeah, yeah. So the moment that you stop identifying with anxiety is the moment that you can start learning from it, the moment you can start changing things and growing and using it as a as a as a superpower, which is what I talked about in my book. Uh and reconnect with your body. Uh, if you're feeling more anxious than people around you, perhaps you've been given a gift where you're really connected to your body and it's it's trying to overprotect you, and you need to just have those conversations and change the language from this is scary to uh this is this is exciting, and um, we're growing and we're changing. So did you want to add anything else to that? I think this will be a lovely, uh, a nice little lovely episode. I mean, I haven't got an idea of the timing, but yeah, let's do you want to throw anything else in there?

SPEAKER_01 20:13

Be gentle and kind to yourself because you're learning a new skill. So don't come down heavy on yourself when just stay curious, stay mindful, and when you notice that you um that the language or internal language that you're using is not helpful, just observe it, acknowledge it, and then just gently do a reframe rather than getting anxious about the fact that you're using language that isn't helpful because then you start getting into that spiral again.

SPEAKER_00 20:46

Yeah, anxious about the anxious language with the anxious yeah, that's the spiralling. Uh the loop. Wonderful loop for our listeners. I'm gonna do a reflective question. Uh, if anxiety wasn't part of your identity, what would you be willing to try? Like, would you be willing to actually stand up for yourself? Would you be willing to, you know, confront that person? Because I find a lot of the women that were in my clinic now, they kept going and running from life and they were being bullied and moving house and and changing job after job because they weren't they had identified as I'm not strong enough to have that conversation. This is who I am, this is my personality, I am an anxious person, and I just don't do things like that. And so they they would go around in circles and and never change. So yeah, maybe pretend let's pretend that anxiety, well, anxiety isn't your identity, and and what would you what would you do with that? I love that. What would you do with that? All right, well, we're gonna leave that here. We'll see you um in the next episode. Bye. Thanks for joining us on the anxiety compass. Love this episode. Share it with a friend who needs a little laugh and a low calm. We'll see you in the next one. Keep following your true norm. Disclaimer Time. Sammy and Natalie may be clinical nutritionists, but we're not your personal doctors. What you hear is for learning and laughing, not diagnosing or prescribing. If things feel bigger than you, call your doctor or local support line or reach out to a qualified health professional. They've got your back too.