June 5, 2025

Your Anxiety Is Brilliant

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Are you anxious? Or are you just not listening to your body, mind and soul?

Is it “genetic”? Or do you come from a lineage of people who were taught that it wasn’t safe to feel how they feel and express themselves?

These are important questions that we must explore honestly. Most people are anxious not because they inherited faulty brain chemistry, but because they’re living lives that violate the sacredness of their being.

The Lie We’ve Been Sold

“Everyone in my family has anxiety—it’s genetic.” “I have a chemical imbalance.”

Bullshit.

This narrative has been largely disproven, but it persists because it’s profitable. When they say there’s a chemical issue and offer something that “fixes” the imbalance, they create customers, not cures.

But what if your anxiety isn’t evidence of your inadequacy? What if it’s evidence of your brilliance?

Anxiety: Your Inner Canary

Your body is the canary in the coal mine. Your anxiety is saying, “Hey, there’s something to be concerned about in the future we’re creating and the way we’re behaving… today.”

Hilary Jacobs Hendel, author of “It’s Not Always Depression,” calls anxiety an inhibitory emotion — a feeling we get when we can’t fully access our core emotions… or when core emotions become too intense. Our brain wants to shut them down to protect us from the emotional overwhelm.

When you’re cut off from your anger, your grief, your joy, your desire, anxiety steps in as the messenger. When those feelings are too much and you want to prevent overwhelm… insert… anxiety.

So if you grew up in a family and/or culture where it wasn’t safe to feel one or more of your core emotions, for whatever reason, anxiety is the only brilliant alternative. (Shame and guilt come in there, too.)

The Real Problem: You’re Not Fully Expressed

When you don’t have full access to your feelings, you don’t have full access to your self-expression. Without access to your beautiful emotional inventory, you will lack the ability to discern and choose the direction of your life, your relationships, what you’re saying “yes” and “no” to…

Further, self-expression and self-trust are inextricably connected.

If you can’t use your voice, you can’t fully direct your life. And if you can’t direct your life, your nervous system is going to sound the alarm… because at the core of your being, you can’t even trust yourself to have your own back. Damn. Read that again… because that is what is at the basis of so many of our mental and emotional health challenges.

But you and I are set up to lose our minds because here’s the thing — we’re taught that “negative” emotions are bad, that there’s something wrong with us if we feel them. But anxiety isn’t an indication that you’re broken. It’s information that you’re not listening to yourself. It’s an indication that you’re not feeling all the feels.

You know when you gossip and feel sick in your stomach? You know when you go to a job you hate? You know when you continue to deny the doubt you have about your relationship, your health, or your habits? You know when you question your relationship to alcohol, yet you keep drinking it? When you do these things, you are denying your essence. You are ignoring valuable information that is trying to direct your life.

Stop Trying to Fix Yourself

You can spend hours in therapy trying to figure out WHY you have anxiety, or what’s “wrong” with you that you feel this way, or where you suppress your feelings and self-expression… (probably won’t have to look far!)

OR

We can see your emotions and anxiety as brilliance. We can see your anxiety as the feeling that made you take pause and look within, and wonder, “What other emotions are possibly present below my anxiety?”

The Inquiry That Changes Everything

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