36 - My Journey with Anxiety

In this deeply personal episode, Courtney shares her lived experience with anxiety for the very first time—without an outline, without teaching, and straight from the heart. From realizing that not everyone feels constant internal tension, to navigating postpartum anxiety, people-pleasing, boundary-setting, and the pressure of a fast-paced world, this episode offers an honest look at what anxiety has felt like throughout her life.

If you’ve ever felt stuck in your head, overwhelmed by the future, or disconnected from your body, this episode will help you feel less alone and remind you that healing doesn’t have to be all or nothing.

In This Episode, We Discuss:

• What anxiety has felt like throughout Courtney’s life
• Realizing that constant anxiety isn’t “normal” for everyone
• How anxiety shows up physically (tightness, heaviness, racing thoughts)
• The role of people-pleasing, boundaries, and fear of others’ opinions
• Postpartum anxiety after both pregnancies
• The power of getting out of your head and back into your body
• Why anxiety often means we’re living in the future instead of the present

Part 2 of this series will focus on how Courtney manages anxiety through food, nervous system regulation, and simple daily practices you can realistically incorporate into your life.

Free Resource Mentioned:

Get your 10-Minute Calm Morning Reset HERE!

A free guide designed to help you start your day feeling calm, grounded, and regulated without adding more to your plate. Includes:

• A quick version for busy mornings
• A slower, expanded option when you have more time

Connect with Courtney:

Instagram: @healthywithcourtneyy

Work with Courtney

Transcript

0:00

Welcome to the Nourished Living Podcast, where we go beyond diets and quick fixes, and reconnect with what it really means to feel good in your body. I am Courtney Podany, nutritional therapist, personal trainer, energy worker, type one diabetic, and mom here to guide you toward health that feels simple, sustainable, and aligned. Each episode will explore how to nourish your body. Balance your energy and strengthen your intuition so you can thrive and actually understand what your body is telling you. So grab your favorite drink. Take a deep breath, and let's jump into your new nourished life. Welcome back to the Nourished Living Podcast. I am your host, Courtney Podany, and happy 2026. Happy New Year's. This is the first episode of the New Year, which as I'm looking at the date right now, it's January 15th, so, uh, oops. I have not. Recorded recently. I did have one, like right before. I think it came out on December 31st. But anyway, I hope you have been having a good New Year's. I hope you had wonderful holidays. Hopefully you were all healthy and got to enjoy everything and now you're probably back into the groove. You're moving and grooving in 2026. I am happy to be here with you today. We are going to talk and explore my journey with anxiety, and this is actually a first for me because I've realized every other episode that I've done of this podcast has been me teaching you something or sharing a message how to better yourself. So there's usually like some tips and tricks, some. Evidence backed goodies for you on how you can feel your best, or there have been, you know, some interviews, but with all of those episodes, I've always had an outline present with me to work off of because I don't want to forget or leave anything out. So this is different because I do not have an outline here. I'm just gonna speak from the heart and we will see what transpires from that. But when I was at my business conference in December, I had this download that I should be helping people. With their anxiety through food and nutrition and nervous system regulation, which, you know, I already am deep in the nutrition and nervous system regulation world already, but I. Anxiety is something that I have to deal with on a daily basis. So I think merging the two, my own lived experience, plus what I already know about food and nature and all of that, I think it could really help some other people. We live in such a fast-paced world, I think, most people have some degree of anxiety that they go through. So today I'm just going to share my journey and what it's been like for me and then the following podcast will be about how I manage it. So it will be a two part episode. Also my first part one and part two, I think. All righty, let's get into it. So, let's just say I've had anxiety since as long as I could remember, but I just thought this was how everyone else operated as well. I thought we were all the same. Everyone else had these feelings, so it wasn't something that I needed to try to fix or manage, or get rid of. It was just life. Then in my twenties, I became aware that what I was feeling, what I was experiencing was anxiety. And no, not everyone feels it like I do. I think I realized at first, after being with my husband, who was my boyfriend at the time for a little bit, just noticing how in certain situations, you know, I would feel anxious and he would be calm and kind of asking me questions like, well, like why? Why does that matter? Why do you care about that right now? So I realized that there was. A term for what I was feeling and that, maybe there was something that could be done about it and that I didn't have to just feel like this all the time. Um, a lot of times once I got anxious for the day. That anxiety just seemed to be present with me for the rest of the day, and it did have the capacity to grow. It just wouldn't go away until I slept and woke up the next day. So, of course, if I got anxious in the morning, that just stayed with me the whole entire day. And for me, when I feel anxious, you know, I of course have. Racing thoughts, I'm really in my head, but I feel it as like a tightness and heaviness in my chest. As that anxiety would grow and increase throughout the day, that tightness in my chest just increased and increased as well. And when that tightness and heaviness got. To be too much. It was at a place that was too uncomfortable. That's when I would, get short with people, get irritated, become reactive, and want to just disengage and, you know, be in my own little shell and not talk to anybody or not interact with anyone and just. Try to focus on decreasing that pain. Right? That's not sustainable, Two examples of things that without fail that are still ever present in my life and always get me anxious are being on time and worrying about what other people are going to think. So I people please, I don't exactly know where the bean on time one comes from, but I get very anxious if I am cutting it close or. If I am going to be late, so naturally I am always early and my husband hates it because he's like, well, we have three kids now. No one expects us to ever be on time, but even with the addition of three kids, I still like to be on time and we'll be very anxious. And short with people if it looks like we are going to be late. So that's not fun. That is something I need to work on. And the other example that always gets me anxious is holding my own boundaries. So I say no to someone because then I am worried or anxious about how they will react or what they will think of me. But then if I give in and say yes, even though I don't want to, I'm not being true to myself. And then that comes with its own slew of. Other issues and emotions and whatnot. So that is definitely something that I am trying to work on, is holding boundaries and saying no when I need to say no, and not just going along with what everyone else wants to because I am worried and anxious about what they will then say to me or how they will perceive me. So those have been with me my whole life as they still are, but I just wanted to provide examples of things that, you know, I'm working on. I am aware that they're there and they still make me anxious. and it's funny because I have this conversation all the time with so many different people. I literally just had this conversation on Tuesday with a friend and people always say like. I would've had no idea that you had anxiety. And it's like, well, yeah, I seem extremely calm on the outside because I'm so consumed with all of the thoughts going on in my head nonstop, that I'm almost not even present to what's going on outside of my body. Sometimes I just get so wrapped up in my thoughts. I don't know what's going on in the outside world, even though I am physically there, I'm not mentally there. Right? So that's what it feels like for me and. Even after I had realized what was going on in like, I don't know, my mid to late twenties, I didn't really start to do anything about it until after I had my daughter. She was born in 2020 and when she was about four months old, so this would've been January, 2021, the anxiety just felt like it was getting worse and worse and less manageable like it. Had just gotten to a point where I needed to do something, so I was four months postpartum. At that time. We had been in a pandemic for up almost a year at that point, and so things were extremely different. We were in like uncharted territory. My postpartum hormones were probably all over the place. I wasn't sleeping. I was a new mom not knowing anything about what I was doing. So there were definitely multiple factors at play there, but that's when I realized that I had to do something. And then I had my boys in 2022. And so same thing, right at that four month mark around January, 2023, I started to feel the anxiety again. So those two specific circumstances could be in large part due to the postpartum hormones and lack of sleep and whatnot, but it made me realize that something had to be done about it and I'm not on medication. It has definitely been, um, recommended to me many times from my therapist and my doctor, but, I'm not against medication for mental health when you need it, but for me, I really just wanted to try to get things under control. Myself first, before I went that route, I wanted to like exhaust every other option before I went on a medication. Right? And so again, like I said, I will go into specific tips and tricks that work for me. So maybe that can help you as well, in the next episode. But I have been able to, manage it and reduce it a lot within the past three years, I guess.'cause it came to a head again January, 2023. And I've really been working, vigilantly on it. So I have noticed. A significant reduction, but it really is something that I have to think about and kind of have in the back of my mind every day. And a lot of times it takes a conscious choice to say, okay, I'm not gonna feed into this. I'm not going to keep worrying about something in the future that may or may not happen. To keep it at bay. And so I don't start spiraling because once you start spiraling it can be hard to get out of that for sure. And like I was saying earlier, we live in such a fast paced world where everyone is hustling and always on the go, and sometimes that is even glamorized. How busy you are, how many things you do in a day, where it seems like we are just in our heads so much. And I will say that one of the things that has helped immensely is getting back into my body. Just trying to clear my mind, see how my body actually feels, notice what's going on in my body because man, I'm sure I could have gone like months before not even thinking about my body. Just thought after thought after thought. Worrying about this, worrying about that. Stressed, oh my gosh, what am I gonna do? Blah, blah, blah, whatever. But getting into your body, out of your head, noticing what is going on, listening to your body too, because you get feedback from your body. It's not just all these thoughts and emotions running around in your head. And so that has. Really been a game changer for me. So a lot of the practices that I share next week will be based around getting into your body, getting out of your head, and half the stuff that we think about is not gonna happen. You know, it might happen, but it might not go the way you think it's gonna go. Right? So. We need to get out of worrying about the future so dang much, and just live in the present. I heard something recently that said when you're depressed, you're living in the past. When you're anxious, you're living in the future. But neither of those is the present moment. So we need to get out of our heads, drop back into our bodies, and live in the present moment. Enjoy the present moment because that's really all that we have and, and I don't want to miss out on what is going on now to worry about something that may or may not even happen. But it's a struggle. It is a daily struggle. Okay, so that is, very much a shortened version. But, if anyone can relate to this. I would really love to hear from you and hear about your experience as well. You can shoot me a DM on Instagram. I am Healthy with Courtneyy. Courtney has two y's in it. And like I said, I am really feeling called to speak more about this, even though it's kind of hard and vulnerable for me, but I just recorded a whole podcast episode about it, so I guess I'm. I'm working through that. But anyway, I will kind of be shifting my message a little bit to help those who have anxiety and want to manage it through food and nervous system regulation. I might even just have something coming up next month that will benefit you. So you'll definitely want to keep up with me, keep tabs on me. Again, my Instagram is Healthy with Courtneyy. Courtney has two y's and thank you so much for being here and listening to my story. And part two will be up in the next episode with tips and tricks that you can hopefully seamlessly incorporate into your everyday life as well. Also, before you go, I wanted to let you know about a free guide that I put together just for you. It is called the 10 Minute Calm Morning Reset, and this is for anyone who wants a calmer, less anxious day without adding more to their plate. There is a quick version for busy mornings and a slower, more expanded option when you have the time. It is so important to start your day regulated because this will give your nervous system a sense of safety that supports you long after the morning is over. I have included the link in the show notes. It is free, so I just need your email so I know where to send it, and it will arrive immediately at your inbox so you could get started tomorrow. Even. If anything in this episode has resonated with you, I highly, highly recommend downloading this guide. All right. Thanks for being here. I will see you on the next episode. Thanks for hanging out with me today and tuning into the Nourished Living Podcast. I hope you enjoyed today's episode and found something you can start implementing right away to kickstart your nourished transformation. If you loved this episode, don't forget to subscribe, leave a review, or share it with someone who could benefit from these insights. Until next time, stay nourished.