Q&A 11 – What is anxiety?

If you experience anxiety this podcast episode will help clarify where it comes from, what it is, and how simply knowing these two things will change your anxiety for the better.

You can listen above, on your favorite podcast app, or watch on YouTube. Notes, links, resources, and a full transcript are below. 

Show Notes

* What is anxiety really trying to tell us?

* Where does anxiety come from?

* What information is anxiety sharing?

* What can we do about anxiety?

Resources mentioned in this episode

* Podcast: A Little Peace of Mind

* Book: A Little Peace of Mind by Nicola Bird

Transcript of Episode

Hello explorers, and welcome back to a Q&A; episode of Unbroken. This is Q&A; Episode 11 and I’m so happy to have you here. My name is Alexandra Amor and these are the episodes of the podcast where I answer your questions. 

So just a reminder, you can submit a question that you’ve got about unwanted habits, anything like that, to alexandraamor.com/question. There’s a form there you can fill out and I’ll be happy to answer your question on a future episode. 

Today the question is, “What is anxiety?”

This is a topic close to my heart, because I’ve got a funny story about my own personal experience with anxiety that I’ll get to in just a second. 

Very simply, anxiety is our body’s way of letting us know that we’re caught up in some insecure thinking.

That’s all it is. It’s very simple. It’s actually the opposite of what it can look like to us, which I think is what makes it such an interesting topic. It’s not a problem. And we’ll talk about why that is in just a second. It’s not something we need to manage or control.

Very similarly to cravings that we have when we have an unwanted habit, anxiety is information from the wisdom and the the universal life energy that’s within all of us. So we’ll talk about that a bit more in just a second. Right now, I want to share my personal experience, just so you know, that I know whereof I speak.

For years, I experienced a form of anxiety that I would describe as urgency.

The really funny thing about it is I didn’t know that that’s what it was. Put a pin in that, because it’s really interesting that we misunderstand the messages that are coming from our body and our wisdom. And that was absolutely true for me.

For as long as I could remember, I felt a sense of urgency. I wouldn’t say of course, I can’t say 100% of the time, but a lot of the time, especially around work, and also around things like running errands, for example. So that was one that was really puzzling for me. If I had a list of, let’s say, four errands that I needed to run, I would be out doing them and I would get to the second one, and start to feel this sense of urgency like I just needed the errands to be finished.

Inevitably, probably nine times out of 10, maybe more, I would just say “Oh, forget it” about the last two errands on the list. And I would go home.