Ep.69 Why I Used to Wake Up in a Full Panic Every Morning

If you wake up already scanning your body for what's wrong, already bracing before your feet hit the floor, this episode is for you. You are not crazy and you are not broken. Your body has just been trying to talk to you, and somewhere along the way you stopped listening, not your fault, this has become a learned habit.

EPISODE SUMMARY
For years Sari felt like the victim of her own anxiety. Like it had a hold on her and she was just along for the ride, waiting for the next panic attack, predicting her whole life around it. If you've been diagnosed with a medical condition and you're left wondering why your body keeps reacting, new things are showing up, or if tension and restlessness have become so normal you don't even notice them anymore, this episode breaks down the WHY.

Sari walks through why the body speaks first, always, before the mind ever creates a single anxious thought. She unpacks the feeling and thinking loop that turns one heart palpitation into a full blown spiral, why chronic anxiety reprograms your nervous system to expect chaos, and the real difference between being a victim of anxiety and learning to work with it. She closes with a guided body scan to help you start asking your body what it's actually been trying to tell you.

WHAT YOU'LL LEARN

• Why anxiety can feel like your own body is turning against you
• How chronic stress and a dysregulated nervous system are connected to diagnoses
• Why your body sends the signal first, before your mind ever creates the anxious thought
• The feeling and thinking loop that turns one small sensation into a full spiral
• Why tension and restlessness start to feel "normal" the longer you live in survival mode
• The real difference between being a victim of anxiety and choosing to work with it, listen to what it's trying to tell you
• A simple way to start listening to your body instead of bracing against it

REFLECTION
What has become so normal in your body, the tension, the restlessness, the bracing, that you don't even notice it anymore?
If your body could talk right now, what would it say?
Are you living as the victim of your anxiety, or are you ready to start working with it?

RESOURCES + WORK WITH ME
This is exactly the work Sari does with her clients in one on one sessions. Not a general meditation, but going in together to what your body is specifically holding, what it's been trying to say, what got shoved down so long it just became background noise.

If anxiety feels like it has a hold on you right now, start with the Free 5 Minute Nervous System Reset. Something that actually helps in the moment, before the spiral takes over.

And if you're ready to stop being the victim and get curious about what your body has been trying to tell you, book a Freedom Roadmap session with Sari. It's less of a discovery call and more of a curiosity call. No pressure, just clarity.

 You're not broken.
 You're not behind.
 And you're not alone.

TIMESTAMPS
00:01 Welcome back, where Sari's episode ideas come from, and the idea of being a victim of anxiety
00:01 Sari's husband's early shift and the adrenaline that hit her just from him saying goodbye
02:31 Anxiety as a messenger, and how symptoms can feel like the body turning on you
05:01 Living in chronic anxiety until it starts to feel normal
06:59 Victim of anxiety versus working with it, and the energy of curiosity versus control
08:44 The body speaks first, always, before the mind creates the panic
11:08 "The mind doesn't create anxiety. It reacts to what the body is already feeling."
13:06 The feeling and thinking loop, and how one palpitation spirals into a full panic
14:18 The Body Keeps the Score, and how dysregulation starts to feel like a normal Tuesday
16:18 Why it's so hard to hear the whisper when chaos is all you've ever known
16:37 Taking inventory of what's become normal, and why Sari uses hypnosis
17:32 Why meditation and hypnosis aren't about emptying the mind, they're about creating space to hear what's already there
19:28 Not knowing what joy or love even felt like, and imagining freedom from anxiety
20:49 Meditation and hypnosis as a phone call with your body
22:22 A guided body scan, noticing tension without judgment
23:14 The beginning of working with your anxiety instead of fighting it
24:07 Asking your body what it's trying to tell you and what it's ready to let go of
25:25 The curiosity call invitation and closing

5 minute nervous system reset ad for midroll

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:08

Fuck anxiety. It's a battle cry to all the women out there who are so tired of continuing to let anxiety keep them imprisoned in their own lives. If you wake up already exhausted, even after a full night of sleep, you move through your day taking care of everything. The kids, the work, the responsibilities, you show up with a smile like you have it all together. But underneath that, something doesn't feel right. No one can really tell. Because you've got really good. So stick around, because I'm going to share with you both and stories that get you back. Welcome back, everyone. I want to share, I was meditating yesterday, and um a lot of times where I get my inspiration for these episodes is through meditation. Um, and this is really about me opening and receiving divine guidance from spirit, from the universe, of what this audience needs to receive. And also going back to my own remembering of how things were for me when my anxiety was the worst, and how I can put myself back in those shoes and really support you and what you may need right now in this moment. And what came up was this kind of idea that I was very much the victim of my anxiety. I was very much, this thing has a hold of me, it's in control, and I am its prisoner, I am its victim, and I wake up every day and I am at the mercy of my anxiety. And if that sounds like you at all, I can completely relate. I can remember my husband, he works in the ER and he's a nurse, and he works seven to seven shifts. So he, at the time, we were living pretty far away from the hospital. So he would have to get up at five in the morning and get ready for work and leave. And if he would wake me up in the morning to say goodbye, the idea of him leaving, that like he wasn't gonna be around to help me, actually gave me anxiety. And so if he would wake me up and say, like, bye, babe, I'm leaving, immediately adrenaline would be pulsing through my veins and cortisol would be shooting up, and I would be freaking out, like, oh my God, am I gonna be okay? Because he's not gonna be here. And I had to tell him at the time, I love you so much, but don't wake me up when you leave because it's adding another trigger to my anxiety. And this was also just a messenger. I talk a lot about how now I believe that anxiety is a messenger and it's a messenger for all the things I kept shoving down. You know, our emotions have signals and they usually signals us in our body first. I want you to just understand that when your body takes over in anxiousness or in panic or in stress, you know, we tend to think that like our body is the enemy. We're getting all these symptoms, and we think, oh, something's wrong. Um, every symptom, every sensation, every wave of these anxious feelings feels like an attack. And I definitely started to feel like my body was like turning on me. I mean, even to the point to where I was diagnosed with hypothyroidism, I was diagnosed with PCOS, um, just getting the diagnosis after diagnosis and like thinking like, what it like, what is happening? Why is my body reacting? Why are these things continuing to show up? But what I understand now that I couldn't understand in the moment was it was never actually an attack on me. But what if it was all just information and I and feedback? And I in other episodes I've definitely talked about how anxiety is feedback. So I want you to just think, like when you wake up in the morning, are you already scanning? Are you already checking? Are you already asking, am I okay? Do you already feel tension in your chest? Do you already feel your heart racing? Is there a sense of restlessness? You know, this kind of undertone of unease. And you're thinking, something's wrong with me. And believe me, there were so many mornings that I woke up thinking that like I'm fucking crazy. I've lost my mind. Like, and I lived in that state for so long that it almost began to feel normal. Just the pace of my breath, the heart, heart rate spiking, the palpitations in my chest, the shallow breathing, the fact that I couldn't sit still or I couldn't slow down. This becomes our normal. This tension, this baseline, this worry, it becomes the normal, the baseline. And we don't even realize it. And I get it because that was me. So let's go back and talk about there's the victim of anxiety, which I absolutely played into. And then there's working with it, which is the thing I think that started to bring me peace. So they're two completely different relationships, but you're having the same experience. So the victim of anxiety is happening to you in real time. You have no control over it, and you are predicting your life based on the next one, or when you're going to be stressed, or predicting your life on what control feels good. And then there's working with it, which is anxiety is happening for you. It's data, it's giving you agency and feedback around what you're not listening to. So you can shift it. It goes back to choice. We talk about choice a lot on this podcast. Do you want to choose to continue being the victim and that your body is betraying you, that you feel fucking crazy, or do you want to use it as agency and start shifting with curiosity instead of control? Let's just think about like the two words of curiosity versus control, the energy of the two. When you think of curiosity, right? I think of a little kid, of how like little kid, you know, especially like toddlers, they just want to get into everything because they're curious, right? Like, what's this? Oh, what's this? Oh, right, versus control. Control, like there's tension there. There's almost like dominance in control and so many things. And it doesn't feel whimsy, it doesn't feel airy, it doesn't feel flowy. And so, with that, right, like think about those two words in your body, even this moment. What does curiosity feel like in your body? It makes me feel all loosey-goosey as I'm even just sitting here moving my body. And when I think about control, I think about the version of myself that needs to control things, even just something that's coming up right now is controlling that things with my girls and how I want them to be raised, right? Like there's a certain piece of control that's still stuck in there that if it's not this way, like it's not gonna feel good. So, emotions, our emotions are the body's signal. Our body speaks first. It always speaks first before our mind. And this was the very thing that really started giving me peace was that I always thought it was my thoughts that were controlling or starting the panic attack, right? And that's a piece. I'm not gonna discount that. That is a piece and it is intertwined within the body's signal. But in reality, the body signals us first. But a lot of us have become so dissociated from our body. I think I was actually hyperaware. That's why most of my panic attacks came up in physical symptoms. But a lot of us, I think, also dissociate from our bodies. And so when think, let's just, this is going extreme, but let's just talk about like a serious trauma. Okay. So let's just say, let's use like a car wreck, for example. Let's say that you were in a car wreck as a child, and it was, you know, everybody survived, but maybe the the accident was pretty brutal. And so now every time you get in the car, and I think that this actually happened to me. I don't know that I was in a car wreck, but I can remember being in the car with my mom and she would like wait to the last second to step on the brake when someone else was braking in front of her. And I could just like, I would like tense up in the car of like, oh, that didn't feel good. Like I wanted her to slow down faster because I was worried that she was gonna hit the car in front of each, in front of her. And sometimes I still do this with my husband. Um so with that, right? Like our body, it's not even so much our thought that's triggering the body signal, but what happens first is the body tenses up, the body speaks first, always. The mind doesn't create the anxiety, it reacts to what the body is already feeling. I'm gonna say that one more time. The mind doesn't create anxiety, it reacts to what the body is already feeling. Whether that's from a trauma, whether that's just from an experience where girls were being mean to you, whether it's from a a teacher that said you weren't smart, whether it's from you not winning a competition of some sort, the tight chest, the pit in your stomach, the sudden need to leave the room, the sudden need to go to the bathroom. My youngest daughter, anytime she is anxious, she has to go to the bathroom. Her bowels are moving and she has to go poop. And I always know something's wrong. And she's like, my tummy hurts. And I'm like, okay, what are you upset about? It always comes first. And then the story, the spiral, the alarm bells of what's wrong, that's what comes second. But a lot of times we're trying to manage the second thing before addressing the first, and that's the body. And I love, love, love, love, love to work on this with clients in our one-on-one sessions. Because the body speaks first, the the sooner you catch it by recognizing it's happening within the body, the sooner that you can stop the spiral. But it's this loop. It's a feeling and thinking loop. You have the feeling, it creates the thought. That thought creates another feeling. Feel it even more in your body, and then that creates another thought. And I'll just use this for example, right? So I would feel a palpitation in my heart or in my chest. That triggered the what's wrong? Why am I having a palpitation? Then that would start my heart racing. I would feel my heart racing. Why? Because adrenaline is now coursing through my body. I would put my fingers up to my neck and check my pulse, and it was definitely faster. Then that would trigger another thought of like, okay, something's wrong. Am I having a heart attack? Then that would create my fingers, my hands feeling sweaty, feeling clammy. And then that would create another thought of like, okay, there's something else. And then, like, all of a sudden, my breathing is dysregulated and it just keeps going. And that's where the spiral happens. So, what if we thought about our body being the place that we never actually considered what's wrong first? Our body keeps the score. There's a book called The Body Keeps the Score. It's a great read. I highly recommend it. It's on one of my reading lists for sure. So when our body feels dysregulated and it's trying to tell us this over time, and now we've lived in a dysregulated nervous system for however long, sometimes dysregulation starts to feel neutral or normal. And now the tension that you're feeling in your shoulders or in your neck, you don't even know that you're tense. Tense is just a typical Tuesday. Restlessness, your inability to sit still, always needing to do something. What's the next task I need to do? You just can't be, right? The people who are like, I can't just sit down and do nothing. There's a reason for that because they have programmed their body to be dysregulated, to constantly go, go, go, go, go. That is what chronic anxiety does to the nervous system over time. And then we wonder why am I getting a diagnosis of hypothyroidism? Oh, because I'm in chronic flight or fight or flight all the time. Why am I getting a diagnosis of polycystic ovarian syndrome? Oh, because I'm in fight or flight all the time, because anxiety has become my normal. And yet I'm thinking I'm the victim of it. It's really hard to hear the whispers that your body is telling you when noise, when chaos, when restlessness, when tension is all you've ever known. So could you take inventory of what are the things that have become normal for you? Is it your inability to sit still? Is it the constant tension, the weight, right? Like even the metaphor, we hold the weight on our shoulders. Why has that become normal for you? What are you holding on to? And sometimes this isn't something that we can even get consciously. This is why I use hypnosis, why I became a hypnotherapist, because we need to get to the root of that. And sometimes our subconscious mind is closed shut. It doesn't want you to know those things because it wants you to stay the same, because that's what we've considered normal. So, you know, a lot of people say, I can't meditate. I can't just like clear my thoughts. And this is why I think meditation and hypnosis are so amazing. Number one, sitting in meditation of any kind isn't about being a Buddhist monk. It's about just witnessing the thoughts that are coming in and being curious about them. And hypnosis is so fucking cool because you just get to like sit back and enjoy the ride. And I get to guide you so that you don't have to really do any heavy lifting. I get to like hold the flashlight for you and show you what needs to be changed that isn't working for you anymore and a soul purpose. Because when we're too involved in it in our conscious minds, and you slow down, the body finally gets to start talking to you. And sometimes that feels terrifying as fuck. Because again, you avoid stillness. You avoid stillness because you've been running from what? What have you been running from? You may not even know. Maybe you've buried it so deep. And that's why your body is now giving you feedback through the form of anxiety in some degree. But that stillness is exactly where the information lives that you need to actually live in freedom. When I first started using meditation, and one of the guiding meditations was talking about, you know, what is joy? What is love? I didn't really, to be honest, know what those things were because my normal was so much in the fight or flight, so much in survival mode, so much in worry, so much in panic, so much in predicting, so much in control that I don't even know if I knew what true love or joy was in the moment. But I could imagine what it felt like to be free from my anxiety. What would it feel like to be free from your tension, from the weight on your shoulders? What would it feel like to be free from the restlessness, from the constant energizer bunny? I have to do this, this, this, this. What would it feel like to be free of the victim of anxiety? To get out of the fucking prison. And this is where we can start experiencing this in meditation and hypnosis. They aren't about emptying the mind. They're about creating enough quiet, enough space to hear what's been there all along to free you from its chains. And some people are like, oh, that's too woo-woo for me. But they aren't. It's literally like picking up a phone with a friend. It's a phone call with your body of what your body actually wants. We want answers. This is how we get them in stillness. And then the body can finally say, This is what I've been trying to tell you all along. This is what this anxiety has been all about. And then the symptoms start making sense. The patterns become visible and you can become aware of them. And then you become so aware of them that when they show up, you're like, uh-uh, sister, not today. Because I'm choosing my fucking freedom today. You stop being afraid of what's in there, and you start understanding it because you're curious. This is where the real work happens. Not in the spiral in the I need to do this, I need to control this. It happens in the slowness, in the listening, and the choice, and the freedom, and the understanding, and the curiosity. So just right now, before this next thought, just before the next task, before the next thing you need to do, could you just scan your body? Are you feeling tension anywhere right now? I was just kind of feeling it in my shoulders, to be honest. We don't need to fix it, we don't need to judge it, we just need to be aware of it. And a curious thought when you're asking this tension in your body, I'll ask my shoulders. If my shoulders could talk right now, or this body part that you're experiencing could talk right now, what would it say? You don't have to have all the answers right now. But sometimes the question is just a start to open the door. The question, the curiosity. And that's the beginning of working with your anxiety instead of fighting it. And if you could just take a slow deep breath for a minute, let your exhale be longer than the inhale. What if you stopped trying to worry or fix everything? Maybe there's even anxiety coming up about that. That Who am I if I don't have this to worry about? If I don't have this thing to fix. But bring your awareness into your body. Notice where you're holding this. I know it's in there somewhere. And maybe even place your hand there if it feels good. Or even just your attention. And instead of having the alarm bells going off of what's wrong, could you ask it? What are you trying to tell me? Why are you trying to get my attention? What have I been pushing down or ignoring? That's ready to be let go of. Sit with that. Your body has been talking for a long time. And maybe today is the first day you're actually letting it and listening to it. And this is why I do the work I do in my one-on-one sessions. I'm not just guiding you through a general meditation. We go in together specifically to what your body is holding, what it's been trying to say, what got shoved down, that just became background noise. And if you're ready to no longer be the victim of your anxiety, to even be curious as to what this process could look like, there's a link in the show notes to book a free discovery call. It should be called a curiosity call. Where we get to talk about what's coming up for you. What did it feel like in your body just now? Was there an answer that came up when you asked your body what it was trying to tell you? Maybe you're like, where do I go from here? And we can plan that out. No matter what, you made it here, and that means something. And we're gonna keep bringing you stories and real-time tools. And I'm so glad you showed up. If this episode felt like it was speaking directly to you, share it with another woman who might need to hear this too. And please leave a rating and a review. This helps boost the podcast so women just like you can find it and find real-time support and believe. Stay tuned for more episodes, stories, tools, and real time. Because you're more than just the identity of a woman who has inside you. And when you begin to heal your way, not just changing your life. Changing what is passed down to your daughters, your granddaughters, and the women who come after you. You are not. And this is where we get.