Your Anxiety Isn't Random--It's Trying To Protect You
Have you ever found yourself going throughout your day like any other—until BAM—a wave of unease crashes over you?
Suddenly your chest feels tight. Your thoughts speed up. There’s a sense of impending doom, even though nothing in your day actually changed.
Now you’re left wondering:
Why does this feeling always show up at the most random times?
Let me hold your hand while I say this:
It’s most likely not random.
You might be thinking, Steph, how is that possible? Literally nothing has happened to make me anxious right now.
But what if something in that moment felt unsafe to your body—and you didn’t consciously register it? Or what if something that feels “ordinary” to you is something your nervous system learned long ago to treat as a threat?
Because here’s the truth:
Your anxiety is trying to protect you.
Anxiety Is Not a Character Flaw
Anxiety is often treated like a malfunction—something broken that needs to be fixed, silenced, or pushed through. But anxiety isn’t a moral failure or a lack of faith or strength. It’s a protective response from a nervous system that learned early on that staying alert was safer than relaxing.
If your body learned that unpredictability, emotional distance, conflict, or pressure were part of everyday life, it adapted the best way it knew how.
It learned to:
Scan for danger
Anticipate others’ needs
Stay one step ahead
Be prepared for things to go wrong
At one point in your life, this wasn’t a problem.
It was survival.
Anxiety Also Isn’t a “Chemical Imbalance”
I know, I know. This has long been touted as the explanation for anxiety, depression, and so many other mental health struggles. But here’s what more recent research has been showing us:
People don’t have chemicals that are simply “off” in their brains that we can magically correct and be done.
More recent research has shown that anxiety and depression cannot be reduced to a simple serotonin or chemical deficit. In other words, there isn’t one missing substance causing your anxiety—and there isn’t one pill that permanently fixes it either.
That doesn’t mean medication can’t be helpful for some people—it absolutely can be.
But it does mean this:
Anxiety isn’t something you’re doomed to have because your brain is broken.
Your brain and nervous system are shaped by experience. They learn from repeated patterns of stress, pressure, attachment, and safety—or lack of it.
And what’s been learned… can also be gently relearned.
This matters because it means anxiety is treatable, workable, and changeable—especially when we focus on the nervous system, attachment, and lived experience, not just symptom management.
This is where agency comes back into the picture.
Because healing anxiety isn’t about forcing yourself to think differently.
It’s about helping your body experience safety differently.
Anxiety Is a Learned Protection Pattern
Instead of thinking of anxiety as something wrong with you, it’s more helpful to see it as something that was learned.
Your nervous system learned from a very young age that there are certain things that are safe and certain things that are unsafe in this world.
Some of those lessons are obvious and conscious—like don’t touch the stove while it’s on.
Others are subtle, instinctual, and often invisible until we slow down enough to notice them. Beliefs like:
If I don’t achieve, I don’t have worth.
If I can’t keep everyone happy, I might lose connection.
If I slow down, something bad might happen.
These beliefs send messages to your nervous system about what it needs to do to stay safe.
So your body adapts.
It learns to stay alert. It learns to anticipate. It learns to keep you moving, producing, pleasing, or perfecting.
At one point in your life, these patterns weren’t a problem.
They were protective.
When Anxiety Doesn’t Match the Moment
Let me give you a quick example that I see often in my therapy office.
A woman comes in confused and frustrated. She’ll say something like:
“I’ll be driving to work or folding laundry and suddenly my heart starts racing. Nothing bad is happening—but my body feels like it is.”
When we slow it down together, we usually discover that her body isn’t reacting to the present moment—it’s reacting to an old pattern.
Maybe being late once meant criticism. Maybe slowing down once meant being ignored. Maybe success became the safest way to stay connected.
Her anxiety isn’t random.
It’s her nervous system saying, Stay alert. Stay ready. Don’t mess this up.
When Protection Outlives the Threat
The problem isn’t that your nervous system learned these strategies.
The problem is that your body doesn’t always know when it’s safe to stop using them.
So now, even in calm moments, your system stays on high alert.
You feel anxious even when nothing is “wrong”
Rest makes you uncomfortable
You overthink conversations and decisions
Your body feels tense, wired, or exhausted
This doesn’t mean you’re broken.
It means your nervous system is still doing the job it once had to do.
Anxiety Lives in the Body, Not Just the Mind
Many people try to think their way out of anxiety.
They tell themselves:
I shouldn’t feel this way.
I need to calm down.
Other people handle this fine.
But anxiety isn’t primarily a thinking problem.
It’s a body memory.
Your nervous system remembers what it learned about safety, connection, and threat—often long before you had words for it. That’s why insight alone doesn’t always bring relief. Your body needs new experiences of safety, not more pressure to “get over it.”
Why Self-Compassion Matters More Than Control
When we treat anxiety like an enemy, we unknowingly reinforce the message that something inside us is dangerous or wrong.
But when we approach anxiety with curiosity instead of criticism, something shifts.
Instead of asking: How do I get rid of this?
We begin asking: What did I/my body need when this pattern formed?
That question opens the door to healing.
Because healing isn’t about becoming less sensitive or more disciplined.
It’s about becoming safer—internally and relationally.
You’re Not Weak for Feeling This Way
If anxiety has been part of your story, it doesn’t mean you failed at coping.
It means your system adapted the best way it knew how to the environment it was in.
Anxiety often develops in people who are:
Deeply attuned to others
Highly responsible
Emotionally perceptive
Used to carrying more than their share
Those traits didn’t come from nowhere.
And healing doesn’t mean getting rid of them.
It means helping your body learn that it doesn’t have to stay on guard to be safe, loved, or worthy.
With the right kind of support—support that works with your nervous system instead of against it—these patterns can soften.
Not through force.
Not through shame.
But through safety, connection, and new experience.
If this resonated, you’re not behind—and you’re not broken. Your anxiety has been trying to protect you. And it can learn, gently, that it doesn’t have to work quite so hard anymore.
If reading this stirred something in you and you’re finding yourself wanting more support, you don’t have to figure this out on your own.
Working with a therapist who understands anxiety through an attachment and nervous-system lens can help you move beyond just coping and toward feeling more grounded, safe, and connected.
If you’re curious about what that kind of support could look like for you, I’d love to connect. You’re welcome to reach out to learn more or to see if working together feels like a good fit.