Ep.74 High-Functioning Anxiety: What Has to Change Before You Feel Free.

You're craving more. More freedom. More passion. More life than the one you're currently living. But your mind and body keep gripping onto what's known, even when known means small and anxious. The only way to the more you're craving is through letting go of what you already know.

EPISODE SUMMARY 

Sari gets honest about what it took to go from 15 panic attacks a day to trusting something bigger than herself. She breaks down why control and surrender can't coexist: they're two separate operating systems, and you can only run one at a time. She talks about the moment she realized her anxiety wasn't a mood or a bad day, it was an identity she'd built for decades. And she gets into why meditation alone doesn't fix it if you walk out and pick control right back up.

This week we're talking about surrender, and not the version where you say the word and hope it fixes something. The real version, the one that requires the anxious, controlling personality you've been running for years to actually die so a new one can take its place.

If you've done the reading, tried the apps, and still feel like nothing's actually landing in your body, this one's going to hit different.

WHAT YOU'LL LEARN

• Why control and surrender can't exist in you at the same time
• What it actually means when people talk about "ego death," and why it's not as scary as it sounds, or actually dying.
• Why your anxiety and control isn't a mood, it's an operating system you installed years ago
• The difference between surrendering and just taking a vacation from your anxiety
• Why daily practice matters more than one big breakthrough
• How to know what you're really trying to control right now
• Why the days you don't want to do the work are the most important ones

REFLECTION 

Who is the personality you're waking up as every day, and does she actually believe what she's carrying is hers to carry?

What are you trying to control right now that you could actually let unfold?

WORK WITH ME

 If you're ready to stop collecting insights about your anxiety and actually feel it shift, book your free Freedom Roadmap session at thegrowthgoddess.net. It's just a conversation. Let's look at what you're carrying and what it would feel like to put it down.

And if you want somewhere to start tonight, grab the free 5-Minute Nervous System Reset at thegrowthgoddess.net/reset.

TIMESTAMPS 

02:34: The anxious, controlling personality can't coexist with the free, trusting version of you 

03:13: Surrender as the leap off the cliff; two operating systems, only one can run at a time 

05:15: Ego death explained; panic attacks as stored energy; pruning the identity that validates the old self 

07:02: Who are you waking up as? The 15-panic-attacks-a-day question, choosing who you want to be instead 

09:13: What surrender really means; the mom-life control example with her daughters 

11:18: The elephant-sized weight of carrying everything alone for 23 years 

11:45: The body caving inward under the weight, and how crumbling led her to meditation 

13:48: Finding a loving, universal consciousness in meditation; true surrender vs. taking a "vacation" from anxiety 

15:53: The moment the personality actually dies; why daily journaling and returning to it matters 

17:38: Why the days you don't want to show up are the most important; custom hypnosis recordings explained 

18:41: Uninstalling one operating system to install another; the old ego bucking back before it dies 

20:25: Why this work is life-changing over time;  

22:13: Journaling question: who is the personality you're waking up as? 22:36: Journaling question: who do you want to wake up as? 

22:49: Journaling questions: what's your operating system running on, what have you been carrying alone? 

 You're not broken. You're not behind. And you're not alone. If you made it here, that means something.

5 minute nervous system reset ad for midroll

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 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, most of 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.

SPEAKER_00 0:59

So stick around because I'm going to share with stories that get you back.

SPEAKER_01 1:20

The one that worries, the one that controls, the one that is predicting your day, you're bracing for the worst. Do you feel like no matter how hard you try, you keep coming back to the same patterns, the same anxieties, the same fears every day? Maybe you've heard the word surrender and either you've rolled your eyes at it or you have no idea what it actually means or even how to go about surrendering. And is there a version of you that you can feel on the other side of this that is freer, that has a life so much fuller than what you're experiencing, but you have no idea how to get there, then this episode is for you. Because today we're talking about something that changed everything for me. The personality that kept me stuck in anxiety had to die. And what I had to surrender it to was something so much bigger than me, so much more loving than I ever imagined. So let's get into it. Now, if you've been listening, you know that the old version of me was super anxious, super fearful. And I had a very specific personality. Now, when you think of a personality, you think of their traits, how they behave, or who they are. You know, you think of somebody with a bubbly personality. How are they going to act? How are they going to behave? When you think of someone who's anxious, what do you think about? What is the vision you come? Like, I just think of like, I was closed off. I was probably being a smaller version of myself. She needed to control everything. So she was really rigid and I trusted nothing and I held everything myself. That personality and the trusting, the surrendered version, they cannot exist at the same time. And the minute that I realized that, that the personality of the version of myself that was extremely anxious, extremely fearful, had to be in control, could not exist as a virgin who was free of that. These two functions, the personality that's controlling everything and the personality that's trusting everything, they can't coexist. They're two separate operating systems. And you can only run one at a time. And what began to shift is when you think of surrender, it's kind of like that leap of faith, like that you're gonna jump off the cliff and you're gonna trust that something is going to catch you. But when you're in control, because you're anxious and you're predicting everything and you're rigid about what needs to happen for you because of the fear that's underneath it, it doesn't want to surrender. It doesn't want to jump off the cliff, it doesn't want to trust that something's gonna catch it because it believes that the only thing that can keep it safe is itself. So we think about this personality and how it has to die. And I don't mean that to say in like a morbid way, but like because they can't coexist, it has to die so that a new version of yourself can be born. We talk about wanting to change, but we don't talk about what has to go on for that to actually even happen. The anxious, fearful, controlling version of you is not just a mood. It's not just a behavior, it's a personality, it's an identity. It's something that you have created from years of coping, from years of dealing with something that happened years ago, but you created a mood, you created a behavior, you created the personality, and then you created the identity. The subconscious has been running this program for years, decades, maybe, since you were a child, potentially. And that program cannot coexist with the trusting, open, surrendered version of you. This is what some people say the ego death. And yes, sometimes it feels like dying, and it feels like dying because a version of yourself that you've been a really long time, that your body now has as a known, it's comfortable. It knows exactly what's gonna happen, it knows exactly how you're going to behave. And this was so important because when I was having panic attacks, like 15 panic attacks a day, obviously I didn't want to experience 15 panic attacks a day, but I didn't know how to not experience it. And once I realized that this was just the coping mechanism that I had created from years and years and years of it really wanting to leave my body, but I didn't really know how to let that happen. This was stored energy and my body was releasing it through panic attacks. And I had programmed it to have a panic attack at this time, at this specific day. And so, in order for that personality, that identity to die, it had to, I had to really look at the versions of myself that were validating that identity. And I had to prune them away. And it had to die by me not giving it energy, by me not giving it attention, by stopping it. So let me ask you: who are you waking up as every single day? Is it truly who you want to be? And that was the question I had to ask myself every day. Do I want to wake up today and have 15 fucking panic attacks? Do I want to be worried that my husband's going to work and something's going to happen to me and I'm not going to be okay, that I'm going to be stranded and my children are going to be left? Do I want to have these spiraling thoughts every single day? Or do I want to wake up and say, you know what? Fuck that. I don't want to be that. What do I want to be? And you can't change until you even figure out who you want to be instead. I think a lot of times the answer is, well, I don't know. I just want the opposite of this. Okay, well, the opposite of that to me was freedom. What does freedom look like different than what I've been doing? So there's another piece of this, too. And that piece I'm going to go back to is surrender. It's a word that some people hate because surrender doesn't feel easy. Again, it's the can you leap off the cliff and trust? Some don't know how to do it. Some think just saying it will fix everything. Like, I surrender. But are you really surrendering? And what are you surrendering to? Surrender again is the opposite of control. So think about your life right now. What is it that you are trying to control? I'm going to bring this back to just my mom life right now because this is present for me currently. But when I think about control, even everything that I've learned, all of you know, the neuroplasticity, all of the subconscious work, all of the neuroscience, all of the neurolinguistic programming, everything that I've learned, I look at my daughters growing up now. And if they're not doing it in the way that I want them to, I kind of freak out. So that's a version of control. And I have to like give it up and trust that they're going to make the right decisions in the right moment and to stop fucking controlling the situation. So ask yourself, where am I trying to control something? Where do I need it to fit in this box of what can work for me? And where am I not trusting that it's all going to unfold in divine perfect timing? Surrender means to let go. It means to release the outcome, to stop white-knuckling what you've been holding because you think that you have some false sense of security or certainty by doing it. I'm going to tell you, it's an illusion. And in a world that has conditioned us to hold on to everything and control everything, this surrender is the last thing that your mind and body wants to do. And we're going to get into that here in a second. So let's talk about the weight of the personality of everything that you're carrying all by yourself. If you have never had faith in something bigger than yourself, then all you've ever had is you. And I tell this to my daughter all the time: control is a sure sign that you're only trusting in yourself. And if you're the only one that you trust in that can control the outcome, that's a big ass fucking enormous elephant-sized weight to carry. Think about it. Maybe you decided at 12 years old that you had no one to lean on but yourself. And now you're 35. That's 23 years of carrying that big fat fucking elephant of weight. How heavy do you think that weight is? How does it feel carrying it? As it gets heavier with every passing minute, day in, day out, every hour, every day, every year. The body starts to cave inward under that weight. The body starts to cave inward under that weight. And now what's somewhat ironic about that is that weight that I had carried, that anxiety, that fear that I had carried so long, having those panic attacks, caving inward underneath all the weight was actually the exact thing that happened and the exact thing I needed because I crumbled. I crumbled so much that I had to figure something else out. And this is where I found meditation. This is where I went inside because inside and meditation began to be the only place that felt calm. I remember when I first started meditating, I would get to this kind of just peaceful, blissful state. And one of my biggest fears was fear of death. And I can remember thinking in meditation that if this is what death is, I'm okay with this. This floating, blissful, peaceful state. And I get to share this state with my clients all the time in hypnosis. And what I found in that blissful state was this universal loving consciousness energy. Some people call it God, some call it spirit, some call it the divine mother, whatever word fits for you. Sometimes it's just an energy, but something bigger that was willing to take everything that I had been holding. To be honest, I didn't even know at first that I was surrendering, but it felt like relief to have my eyes closed, to witness the self that was holding everything and that could feel everything and to give it up to something bigger. Every day I did this in meditation, I got a little lighter and a little lighter and a little lighter. Now, with that, here's where people fall short. The thing with surrender is you have to actually trust that it's happening. Because while I was beginning to feel lighter with each day, it's not necessarily an instant gratification. You can surrender in meditation and then walk right out of your meditation and pick up the fears and the c controls and the anxieties right back up. The predicting, the stress, the worry. If you go back to that, you haven't actually surrendered. You just kind of took a little vacation from it. True surrender means trusting that something bigger took it from you and is organizing it in a way that works best for you. And that something bigger is more creative, it's more loving, it's more capable than you ever imagined. And to take those those very anxieties, those very control controlling aspects of yourself that you have to do it all on your own and to give it up to something else and to trust it. But you have to let it take over. You have to stay in that trust. You have to go back in your day, and you have to decide, I did the work, I let it go. And in that moment, that's where the personality dies. That's where the ego dies. I'm not gonna pick up any behavior today that was from that old personality. And this is where journaling comes in really important. And I do a lot of this with my clients one-on-one. You can have a breakthrough in a session and feel it completely, even in hypnosis. But if you're not coming back to it every single day, the old operating system puts the boots back on. And if you're not coming back to it every single day, the old operating system boots back up and reminds you of who you used to be, not who you're trying to be. It's almost like it brings it back from the dead instead of being born renewed. So if control is the current operating system, and it has been for years, it is fast, it is automatic, and it is loud, and it is going to be the first voice you hear. But as you begin installing this new operating system of trust and surrender, it needs daily practice to take hold. Just like going to the gym. You don't build muscle from one single workout. You have to go back day after day, week after week. You build it by showing up. And even on the days that you don't feel like it, those are actually the most important. The days that you want to give up, the days that you don't want to do it, those are the most important. And this is also why all of my clients get a custom hypnosis recording so that whatever we are working on in their session, they get it. And throughout the time between their next session, they can be with this recording every day and they can reinforce and rewire the program they do want to be. The integration is where the real change happens, not just in the one session. It's in the daily commitment to it. Whether you're working one-on-one with a coach, using hypnosis, sitting in meditation, journaling, whatever it might be, you have to sit with the daily commitment. Because you are uninstalling one operating system and installing another. One operating system has to die in order for the next one to be reborn. And every time you surrender to this loving presence, you begin to unwire the old operating system. Now, there is something that happens as this slowly begins to die, is that it gets this like extra boost of energy where it wants to like buck and kick and tell you who's boss. And believe me, it will come up with every excuse to go back to the old program, to go back to the control, to go back to the, but I know how to do this myself. Why would I surrender to something bigger? Of I need to worry, of I need to do something, of I need to protect myself. Because control is what kept you safe. The nervous system knows control. It trusted your control. But every time you choose to surrender and trust to this big loving consciousness, that is a fucking revolution in your nervous system. The small, the quiet, the daily actions that you're choosing to overcome the old program and create a new one is completely life-changing over time. And remember, this is exactly the work that I really love to do. I love witnessing this happen in real time. One, because I know it myself, and then I get to witness it with my clients. I get to which witness them experience their freedom. Every client gets that custom hypnosis recording made specifically for them. There's a reason why sometimes guided meditations don't really work for the general population because they're not specific to what you're experiencing unless you really know how to observe witness these triggers. And my clients get to return to these recordings every single day. And the things that they need with the images that they created in the session that is specific to them. Because that subconscious needs repetition. It needs daily reminders that there is something safe to take everything they've been holding and give this to. Where that old personality starts to dissolve and the new one starts to take root. If you want to know what that would look like, go visit thegrowthgoddess.net and book your free Freedom Roadmap session. It's just a conversation. And let's look at what you're carrying. Let's look at the weight. Let's look at the control. Let's look at what's keeping you fucking stuck. And what would it feel like to finally put it down? So a couple questions to sit with. Who is the personality you are waking up as every day? Describe her. Honestly. What does she believe? How does she move through the world? And how does she feel in her body? Who is the personality you want to wake up as? What does she believe? What does she trust in? What does your current operating system run on? Control? Fear? Improving yourself? Surviving? What would you have to give up to install the operating system of trust? What have you been carrying for so long that was never really yours to carry? And carry it alone. And what would it feel like to hand it to something that's so much bigger than you and actually let it go? I will paste all of these questions in the show notes if you want to go back and revisit them. But I also highly suggest re-listening to this, press pause when you want to do the journaling and sit with them. Come back to them. There's also the five-minute nervous system reset, thegrowthgoddess.com/slash reset, where you get it for free. You can join my newsletter and get all of my stories and tools and craziness, plus podcast bundles, and playlists and all the things. Would love to have you. We'll see you next time. 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 belief also. Stay tuned for more episodes of stories, tools, and real life. Because you're more than just the identity of a woman who has inside. And when you begin to heal your body, you're not just changing your life. You're changing what gets passed out to your daughters, your granddaughters, and the women who come after you. You know. And this is where we get to.