This episode of FUCK Anxiety is for the woman who looks like she has it all together and is quietly coming undone underneath it. If your anxiety used to show up as panic attacks and now it shows up in a hundred sneakier ways, you are in the right place.
This week I share a real, in-the-moment story about the week I wanted to burn everything to the fucking ground. The podcast. The PTA role. My leadership role with my workout group. All of it. I wanted to say Fuck It, and quit everything.
I used to live a life of chronic panic attacks. Multiple a day, debilitating, the kind that run your entire life, the minute you wake up in the morning, til the time you finally fall asleep. And even seven, eight years later, anxiety still finds new doors to walk through, new ways to show up, because it is a primal response. This episode is me walking you through those doors and different costumes it likes to show up in, so you can finally name what is happening inside your own body.
Let's get into it.
What You'll Learn About Survival Responses in This Episode
- The 4 survival responses of anxiety: fight, flight, freeze, and fawn, and why most women have a go-to without even knowing it
- Why we overcommit ourselves into a corner: the void we are trying to fill, and the real question underneath it
- How control becomes a prison: why carrying everything alone is a survival response, not a personality trait
- Why anxiety is the messenger: how to read the signal instead of silencing it
- The difference between awareness and choice: awareness wakes you up, but choice is the thing that actually frees you
- How your cycle changes everything: why your hormones turn the volume up, and why you are allowed to give yourself space
- What real nervous system regulation looks like: not bypassing the feeling, but knowing how long to feel it before you zoom out
Listen to the full episode here
Apple Podcasts
SpotifyTop Takeaways on High Functioning Anxiety and Your Survival Responses
1Fight, Flight, Freeze, Fawn: The 4 survival responses, and finding your go-to
Fight, flight, freeze, fawn. We talk about fight or flight all the time, but there are four.
- Fight is confrontation. Needing to be right. My way or the highway. That was the old, black and white me. Control dressed up as certainty.
- Flight is avoidance. Fleeing the scene. Sweeping it under the rug and pretending it never happened.
- Freeze is the do nothing state. The one that can look like depression. I do not know what to do, so I will just stay here in my bedroom and not deal.
- Fawn is over caretaking, and the fawn response is the one most women never realize they live in. Making sure everyone else is okay while you abandon yourself. Pretending you are fine when you are absolutely not.
Here is what got me this week. My normal response is fight. But this week it showed up as freeze and flight, and believe me I did not see this coming. I just wanted to quit it all. However, as I have created this amazing tool of observing myself, I was able to catch it before it became a part of my identity, or personality. Witnessing yourself shift between these is the first crack of light.
2Why you overcommit and panic, and the void underneath your anxiety
I am really good at overcommitting myself. My husband would tell you the same, and is always like, Sari, here we are again…you always do this. I do it when I feel purposeless or isolated. So I go fill the calendar to feel of purpose. Signing up for the PTA treasurer (which I will never do again). The Queen of Leadership in my workout group, Warrior Women. Clients. Podcast. And then one day I am freaking out because I built a life I cannot carry.
So the real question is not how do I manage my schedule. The real question is: Why do I feel like I have to fill this? What is missing that I am trying to cover up?
That is where the healing lives. Not in the to-do list. In the subconscious belief underneath it.
Where might this be resonating for you as you read this? Do you have similar patterns?
3Why control and anxiety go hand in hand (and why it's a survival response)
For so long I believed I had to hold everything. That I was the only one who could fix it, carry it, change it. You know the saying that you're holding the world on our shoulders….and we wonder why we are so tight and tense in our shoulder neck area.
That is the lie of control. Especially for moms. Especially for women sold the boss babe fantasy of doing it all with ease. It is bullshit. We are strung out, overstimulated, and running on go-go-go like little energizer bunnies, and we are calling it being type A like it is a trophy.
When do we let the nervous system slow down? When do we stop the over-functioning?
4Nervous system response: Anxiety is the messenger, so stop ignoring the whisper
All of this came up because my body was sending me a message. Something was out of alignment, and it was trying to tell me.
It starts as a whisper. That little voice in the back of your mind, the one you wave off like an annoying fly. The more you ignore the whisper, the louder your body has to get. The whisper becomes the brick. The brick becomes the Mack truck.
By the time I wanted to burn it all down, the message had been knocking for a while. So when are we going to listen?
How to Work With Nervous System Regulation in Real Life
Here is what I want you to actually take into your week, How to calm your nervous system out of survival mode.
Step 1: Name your survival response
Next time anxiety hits, just notice. Are you fighting, fleeing, freezing, or fawning? No fixing yet. Just witnessing.
Step 2: Ask how long you need to feel it
I will never tell you to just be love and light and skip the feeling. Feel it. But ask yourself, is this a few minutes, a few hours, a few days? Give it a container.
Step 3: Zoom out before you decide
When you are super zoomed in on the details, everything is heavy and there is no logic available. You cannot make a clear choice from inside survival. Get out of the spiral first, then look at the situation from above.
Step 4: Honor your no and your aligned yes
Before you say yes to one more thing, ask: is this aligned, or am I just trying to keep myself busy and feed the anxiety? Your no is allowed to be a full sentence.
And let me add one loving truth to all of this. If you are on your cycle and feeling everything at full volume, that is not you being broken. That is your body cleansing and releasing. Give yourself space. Let the people you love know what you are moving through, it's time to let go of busting ass when your body is asking you to slow down, and listen to it.
"The busy part is just a distraction from what wants to be released."
Common Subconscious Patterns and Survival Modes to Watch For
- Mistaking control for safety. Holding everything alone does not make you strong. It makes you exhausted.
- Letting the burn it down moment become a pattern. Quitting everything can feel like relief, but if it becomes your only exit, it is just another survival loop.
- Skipping the feeling. Bypassing your emotions with positivity does not regulate your nervous system. It just buries the message.
Reflect on This
- Out of fight, flight, freeze, and fawn, which one is your go to?
- Are you in fight or flight all the time, even when nothing is technically wrong?
- Why do you overcommit and then panic when the weight of it all catches up?
- What whisper has your body been trying to send you that you keep waving off?
I would love to hear from you. Which survival response felt like looking in a mirror?
Resources Mentioned in This Episode
- The Four Agreements, by Don Miguel Ruiz, and the idea of honoring your no
- The Rebecca Campbell Work Your Light Oracle deck
- Ep.61 on the whisper, the brick, and the mack truck
Your free tool:
Start with the Free 5 Minute Nervous System Reset. It is a guided hypnotic meditation you can use the second anxiety shows up, to interrupt the old pattern before it takes the wheel. Something that actually helps tonight.
Get the Free ResetWork With Me
You do not have to white knuckle your way through this alone. That belief that you have to carry it all by yourself is exactly the program we get to rewrite.
In my 1:1 sessions we go on custom hypnotic journeys built around your exact situation. Not a generic recording. We sit down with the patterns that have been running you, the ones that learned to protect a younger version of you who needed it, and we change your relationship to them. That is where the freedom lives.
If that lit something up in you, let's map it out together on a Freedom Roadmap Session. No pitch. No pressure. Just clarity.
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