Somatic Healing for Wellness-Focused Women

(#71) Anxiety Is Information: Understanding the Wisdom Beneath the Worry

• Rae The Somatic Coach • Episode 71

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Welcome! The Raediant Life Podcast is now officially renamed to the Somatic Healing for Wellness-Focused Women Podcast, a title that better reflects the depth, intention, and embodiment work we explore in each episode.

In this episode, we’re diving deep into a topic close to my heart: rethinking anxiety. If you’ve ever wished you could just “get rid” of anxiety, this conversation will offer a powerful reframe.

What we’ll explore:
🌀 Anxiety isn’t the enemy—it’s a signal, not a flaw.
🌀 A breakdown of the science behind anxiety—what happens in the body (fight, flight, freeze, fawn), and why it matters
🌀 Personal stories on how anxiety has shown up in my life—and how learning to listen shifted everything
🌀 How to reframe anxiety as intelligence, not a problem
🌀 Why eliminating anxiety isn’t the goal—and how to respond with curiosity, compassion, and nervous system awareness
🌀 A gentle somatic practice to connect with what’s present in your body and meet it with care

Whether you're dealing with daily stress, perfectionism, or deeper emotional patterns, this episode will help you begin relating to anxiety as a guide—not a roadblock.

Don’t forget: the April newsletter is live! Sign up via the link in the show notes to receive monthly reflections, somatic tools, and soulful updates.

Tune in now to reconnect with your inner wisdom and start meeting anxiety from a place of understanding, not fear.

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Disclaimer: Please remember that the information shared on this podcast is intended to inspire, educate, and support you on your personal journey. It does not substitute for professional mental health advice. I am not a psychologist or medical professional. If you are experiencing distress, mental health challenges, or medical conditions, please seek help from a qualified professional.

Speaker 1:

Welcome to the Radiant Life Podcast. I'm your host, rae, the Somatic Coach, and I'm here to support you in healing your past, living in the present and creating your future so that you can become the most centered, embodied and happiest version of yourself. Each week, I'll be bringing you episodes to help you navigate life's challenges, ease stress and tension and learn more about holistic healing, spirituality and wellness. If you're interested in becoming the best version of yourself so that you can live the life of your dreams, then you're in the right place. Subscribe to the podcast and the monthly newsletter and follow me on Instagram and TikTok to know when new episodes are released each week. I am so happy that you've landed here. Let's dive in. Welcome back to the podcast. If you are new here, I'm Rae. I'm a somatic coach and breathwork facilitator, and if you aren't new here, welcome back. I'm so glad that you're tuning in for today's episode.

Speaker 1:

So two front desk items before we dive into today's topic. The first is that the monthly newsletter went out on April 1st, which I believe is yesterday when this episode will be released, and the theme for this month's newsletter is around anxiety and working with anxiety healing anxiety and everything anxiety, basically. So that is what we'll be doing this month on the podcast. I'm going to be doing a four-part series all around the different elements of anxiety and how we can work with this emotion and so on, so forth. So I'm excited to bring to you this series and I hope that it supports you. The second front desk item is that we do have a new name for the podcast. So the new name has landed. Thank you if you voted on the Instagram poll that I had posted last week and you participated. Thank you so much. So the new name is Inner Radiiance somatic breath and soul, and it's going to take me a little bit of time to update all the elements of the podcast and the branding and all that stuff, but the name has landed at least. So the reason for this change is I really pour in so much of my time and energy and heart and soul into the podcast and I really want people to be able to find me organically. So that looks like when somebody you know comes on to search for anything on Apple Podcasts or Spotify, they're not finding my previous name because it's not very searchable and I know on the outside it might look like oh yeah, having a podcast is easy.

Speaker 1:

Like every week, a new episode shows up, but the process from start to finish takes like a few hours. You know, I have to figure out what it is that I want to speak about. That might include taking some notes or doing a little bit of prep or planning, and other times it doesn't. Sometimes I, you know, do it on the fly and then I have to plan. So I need to, you know, schedule time, record the episode and then, as I'm recording the episode, sometimes I do take breaks, so I'll take like a long pause, which means that I need to go back and edit out those long pauses. Then it's ready to upload and then, after I upload it, you need to put like, you need to come up with a title, you need to come up with a description. So anyway, long story short, a lot of my heart and soul is pouring into the podcast and I'd really love if more people could find me. So if you are one of those new people, welcome. Maybe you found me through search and maybe not, and either way, I'm excited for this little change and for this little rebrand and we'll see where it takes us. So those are the front desk items for today and let's dive into our first topic of this month, which is around anxiety, and it's that anxiety isn't the enemy and how we can rethink what it might be trying to communicate to you.

Speaker 1:

So my personal story with anxiety is it's something that I had struggled with for a very long time, especially when I was in really as young as middle school, high school, definitely in college and a bit post-college as well. So for a majority really of my life, I'd say for the first 27, 28 years, I really, really struggled with anxiety, and it was something that I kind of just always navigated myself. It wasn't really until I was around 24, when my dad had passed away unexpectedly and, although I had already been struggling with anxiety, it brought it from like something that I was struggling with to something that was just really unmanageable. Um, and that is when I really dove into okay, like clearly what I'm doing isn't working, like what else, what there has to be like another way, because I was feeling like this is just the way that I'm going to be. You know, like that's kind of how it felt like for me and yeah, I mean I definitely run a little hot sometimes that's what I like to call it these days is yeah, it can be, definitely can be anxious sometimes, but from all of the work that I've discovered for myself and all of the things that I bring into my work with my clients, it is conversation to, yeah, reframe it, because anxiety itself is really intelligence.

Speaker 1:

It is bringing you some kind of information, it is bringing you insight, it is bringing you an alert to let you become aware of something, and it's not a quote-unquote problem. It's not something that is like a problem or something that is wrong with you. It is a response to something that's happening. And I will say that one of the things that I've learned personally, and something that I've been able to help my clients with as well, is learning what the difference is when you feel anxious versus what your intuition might be saying. So kind of like that difference between fear and intuition. And is this like an intuitive hit that you're feeling or is this your anxiety that might be running the show and I can share an example is something that was really coming up for me previously in a lot of my relationships was this anxious part, and this anxious part kept coming up and coming up, coming up, and I remember one of the last breakups that I went through, um, I kind of had this moment where I was like I felt like I kept choosing the other person and I kind of had this moment where I decided I wasn't going to do that anymore and I learned that this anxious part was actually just kind of seeking something from someone else rather than really feeling and receiving something from me myself actually.

Speaker 1:

So this anxious part of myself had a need and, instead of allowing myself to meet that need, I was trying to get that to happen from somebody else and I didn't know this was happening. This was, you know, totally subconscious. So, although I was feeling anxious in some of my relationships, I actually had a need, the inside, like an inner child need, that needed to be met. That I had no awareness around and it really dissipated my anxiety significantly. I mean, it was pretty incredible to actually feel the shift in perspective and feel the difference. And that is how I became so passionate about inner child work, because the moment that I experienced it myself, I was like, oh, this is pretty powerful stuff. And another element of anxiety that was really oh, this is pretty powerful stuff.

Speaker 1:

And another element of anxiety that was really really powerful for me to understand and learn about was what was happening in the body and the nervous system's response when you're feeling anxious. So this was actually something that I learned in like day two or something like so in the beginning of one of my somatic coaching certifications, and I remember learning this and being like, oh my gosh, I wish someone had told me this, because it brought so much understanding to what I was experiencing and what I was feeling, and I was like, oh my God, more people need to know about this. It's not something that I had learned, you know, in my 20s, and it was something that really was so helpful for me to know. So I'm going to dive into a little bit about that right now as well.

Speaker 1:

So something that I've talked about on the podcast previously is the four trauma responses fight, flight, freeze and fawn, and with anxiety. It is a signal that is, you know, going throughout your internal system, your nervous system, and it's kind of like an alarm, and it's like the alarm is going off, but sometimes the alarm isn't always necessary, and so it's not that the system is broken. It's not like, oh, my nervous system is broken. It's like your nervous system has a pattern and a response based on conditioning, previous lived experiences, the past, or sometimes it's an appropriate response to something in your environment that's dangerous. So it's not always a bad or wrong thing and there's definitely not anything that's broken.

Speaker 1:

And an example of this that I always find helpful is if you've ever heard of mono, like monoglucleocas or whatever it's called. It's like the kissing disease that you get when you're in like high school or college. When you get mono, it's your whole body is sending the fire truck, it's sending the ambulance, it's sending like all everybody on site to put out this fire. Meanwhile there's actually no fire and that's why when you get mono, you're so fatigued because your body is fighting so hard to put out this fire when there's actually no fire. So that's kind of similarly what happens with anxiety. It's like your body sends all the troops, it sends the fire truck, it sends the ambulance, it sends the police cars for something that maybe actually in the present moment isn't actually a fire.

Speaker 1:

And so one resource that's really helpful for this is Dan Siegel's work around a healthy nervous system and he breaks it down into the sympathetic which is your fight, flight, freeze and fawn, trauma responses. And that's what happens when you're going to be regulating some kind of threat, some kind of response in your nervous system. And then you have the parasympathetic, which is what maintains your normal body's function and is kind of like homeostasis. So when anxiousness or feelings of anxiety occur, we have activated our sympathetic nervous system into a state of hyperarousal and this can look like overwhelm, upset, ocd, impulsivity, and when this happens it means that your body is experiencing too much, too soon or too fast of whatever might be occurring. And then we have the parasympathetic nervous response and that is what helps the body relax and digest and that is when you're not in the fight or flight or freeze or fawn responses. And that is when you're not in the fight or flight or freeze or fawn responses. So that's why when people suggest meditation or yoga or breath work or spending time in nature, it's because it's activating your parasympathetic nervous system response, so it's allowing your body to naturally find homeostasis, naturally find a healthy nervous system state rather than a threat response.

Speaker 1:

And another part of Dan Siegel's work that really helps to understand the nervous system response, what's happening with anxiety when you're feeling anxious is something I've also referred to on the podcast quite a bit is called the window of tolerance and so the window of tolerance. It's really helpful and I can link something in the show notes if you have an image of what this looks like, but I'll try my best to explain it. It's basically when your nervous system has like an optimal window that it wants to operate in, and over time, if you've struggled with anxiety, that window can be not as expansive as you'd like it to be, and so when things are happening, you're moving it throughout your life, or throughout your day. You can move in and out of your window of tolerance. And so when you're feeling those anxious moments or you're feeling even angry or any kind of like bigger emotion in that sense, you might move into what's called hyperarousal, and that's something that I just spoke about a little bit before, so that's like fight or flight. You can also move into something that's called hypoarousal, which is more of like a sadness, or when you're struggling with boundaries or you might be being avoidant. So there's different places that you can move throughout your window of tolerance, depending on what is coming up for you. And so why we want to do those practices, to move into that parasympathetic state where we're maintaining a place of safety, is because we're wanting to stay within our window of tolerance and also expand our window of tolerance. So doing those practices like mindfulness, grounding, breath work, meditation, yoga, spending time in nature will allow you to optimize your window of tolerance, expand it and then eventually be able to self-soothe and self-regulate your emotionality organically inside yourself, independently. So it allows you the tools that you need to really metabolize a signal like anxiety or a sensation that you're receiving around anxiety.

Speaker 1:

And so when we're working with anxiety, oftentimes we're thinking that it's the enemy. We're thinking we need to get rid of this. This does not feel good, which I totally understand, when I think, actually, the new goal is okay. What do we do with this information? If it's not really to eliminate anxiety or really any feeling, it's to understand it, metabolize it and then create through it, because on the other side of anxiety is actually a lot of compassion, curiosity, openness, safety, grounding, possibility. So it's not like anything is broken or wrong. It's a sign. It's a signal, it's information, and when we respond from a place of curiosity and compassion, it changes the conversation. It changes how we're meeting ourself and what's coming up for us. And if you start to play with these shifts, these shifts in perspective and how you're meeting any anxious parts that might be coming up. It will allow you to understand your body a bit better. It will allow you to move forward much faster and it will allow you more compassion, rather than trying to outthink your experience or be avoidant with your experience.

Speaker 1:

And one practice that I would love to leave you with of how you can meet this anxious part, meet this emotion compassionately is placing your hand on your heart and taking a deep inhale through your nose and a deep exhale through your mouth and naming what is here for me right now. And naming what is here for me right now, can I meet what is arising in my body as just that, something that is arising? What if this part of me is scared? Can I ask it? What it might need from invitation would be what if the language that this part is using is outdated? What if this is from a previous lived experience? But it's not who you are today. It's old programming, it's not who you are in this moment.

Speaker 1:

And so another analogy that I always like to use is if you were driving in a minivan and you have all your parts, you know you have your anxious part, you have your heart. Maybe you have your, your parts. You know you have your anxious part, you have your, your heart. Maybe you have your divine feminine, your divine masculine. Maybe you have the part of you that's a perfectionist or, um, it could be anything. All your parts, they're all all in the minivan. And, uh, who's driving the car? Is it? Are you driving the car? Is your higher self, is it that anxious part? So I always like to say all the parts get to have a seat in the car, they all get to ride in the minivan, but maybe they're sitting in the back seat. Maybe it's like okay, you can hang out, but you don't get to run the show, you don't get to drive today. All right, so that's what I have for today's episode.

Speaker 1:

Thanks so much for tuning in. This is the first week of this series for rewriting the story of anxiety and I hope that you enjoyed today's episode. So I hope you have an incredible rest of your day, an incredible rest of your week, and I will talk to you soon. Thank you so much for tuning in to today's episode. If you are moved or inspired, please share with me by leaving a rating and review on Apple Podcasts. It means the world to me and I am so appreciative for your support in helping my podcast grow. If we aren't already connected on social media, head over to Instagram and TikTok and follow me at raythesomaticcoach. Make sure you check out the show notes of today's episode for links to freebies, opportunities to work with me and ways we can stay connected outside of the podcast. I'm so happy that you're here and I can only eat to talk with you on our next episode of the radiant life podcast.