It’s Not in My Head—It’s in My Body

When Anxiety Is About Survival, Not Mindset

There’s something I wish more people understood about anxiety - it’s not always a mindset problem. It’s not just overthinking or worrying too much or being ‘too sensitive.’ Sometimes, anxiety is your body remembering something your mind has tried to forget. Sometimes, anxiety is survival.

I remember learning this while reading about how our bodies respond to perceived threat. The fight, flight, freeze or even fawn - responses aren’t just theoretical. They live in the body. They are the body. The amygdala, a small almond-shaped part of the brain, plays a central role in detecting danger. And when it’s been trained by trauma or prolonged stress, it doesn’t need much to sound the alarm. Neuroscience research shows the amygdala becomes hyperactive in anxious states, detecting threat even where there is none (Adolphs, 2008). It activates the autonomic nervous system, triggering physical symptoms like a racing heart, shortness of breath, or nausea (Friedman & Thayer, 1998). This is the body’s emergency broadcast system and it doesn’t always turn off when the danger passes.

That was a lightbulb moment for me. Because for most of my life, I thought something was wrong with me. I couldn’t understand why I would go into panic mode over things other people found easy like answering a phone call, going to a family event, or speaking up when I felt hurt. It felt ridiculous. But it wasn’t. My body wasn’t being dramatic. It was protecting me, the only way it knew how.

There have been days where my heart raced so hard I thought I was dying. My legs would go weak, my hands trembling, my stomach in knots. No danger in sight. But inside, a war. I’ve had full-blown panic attacks while standing in the queue at the supermarket, just because someone stood too close or made a comment that felt vaguely threatening. I couldn’t explain it then. I’d leave feeling ashamed, wondering why I couldn’t just get it together.

But now I understand - I was never broken. I was responding to a world that hadn’t always been safe. My nervous system learned to scan for threats constantly. Hypervigilance became my default. It didn’t matter if the threat was real or not….my body reacted anyway. That’s what survival looks like when you’ve lived through fear, instability, or trauma. It rewires you.

So when people say, “just breathe” or “don’t overthink it,” I want to tell them….it’s not about thinking. It’s about biology. It’s about a nervous system that’s been stretched too thin, too often. And healing doesn’t come from snapping out of it. It comes from gently helping your body feel safe again.

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The Myth of “Just Think Positive”

If I had a pound for every time someone told me to “just think positive,” I’d probably be writing this from a quiet villa by the sea, not my tiny 1 bedroom flat.

It’s not that positive thinking is useless. Of course it helps sometimes. But when you're living with severe anxiety, it’s not that simple. Positive thoughts don’t magically override a body that’s gone into survival mode. They don’t soothe a racing heart or unclench a stomach twisted in fear. They don’t make the dread go away when your nervous system has been trained by life, by trauma, by years of walking on eggshells to expect danger around every corner.

What frustrates me about the “just change your mindset” advice is how it quietly implies that if you’re still anxious, then you’re doing something wrong. That you’re choosing it. That if you were stronger, more optimistic, more grateful, this wouldn’t be happening. That’s not just untrue - it’s cruel.

There were times I forced myself to smile through panic attacks. I repeated affirmations until my throat hurt. I wrote gratitude lists and journaled and prayed and tried to reframe every scary thought. But underneath it all, my body was still on fire. Because healing doesn’t happen when you bypass what your body is screaming. It happens when you listen. When you give it space. When you stop trying to fix your feelings and start trying to understand them.

Some research backs this up too. Strategies like suppression - repressing emotions or avoidance - distracting yourself from them might offer temporary relief, but over time they tend to prolong anxiety (Aldao et al., 2010, p. 228). Not because you’re failing. But because your body is asking to be felt, not ignored.

Sometimes anxiety isn’t asking for a new perspective. Sometimes it’s asking for safety.

So no - thinking positive isn’t always the answer. Sometimes the most healing thing you can do is sit quietly with yourself, place a hand on your heart, and say, I see you. I know this is hard. You don’t have to pretend to be okay right now.

That kind of honesty has saved me more times than any affirmation ever has.

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Healing Beyond the Mindset

It took me years to understand that healing wasn’t about getting rid of anxiety. It was about building a relationship with it. About learning how to live alongside it without letting it control me or shame me into silence.

No one told me that healing might look more like slowing down than speeding up. That it might mean cancelling plans. Or eating the same comforting meal three nights in a row. Or saying no, again, even when I feared disappointing someone. No one told me that healing might feel like failure before it ever feels like peace.

What’s helped me most hasn’t been mindset tricks or motivational quotes - it’s been learning how to create moments of safety inside my own body. Sometimes that’s a warm drink and a weighted blanket. Sometimes it’s a quiet walk with no phone. Sometimes it’s telling a friend, “I’m not okay right now, I will reach out when I can” and letting that be enough.

Understanding my nervous system has been a turning point. Realising that my anxiety isn’t random or excessive - it’s patterned. It’s my body trying to protect me, even when the threat is long gone. Learning to ground myself through breath, through gentle touch, through presence has given me something I never had before: a way back to myself.

These aren’t just comfort habits. Practices like slow breathing, soft focus, and mindfulness actually help regulate the autonomic nervous system shifting the body out of a state of 'threat mode' and into what researchers call the 'rest and repair' state (Friedman & Thayer, 1998). When the body learns to slow down, the mind often follows.

And therapy helped too, when I finally found someone who didn’t try to fix me. She just sat with me. She let my words fall out messy and unfiltered. She reminded me that I didn’t have to earn rest, or explain my fear, or pretend I was stronger than I felt. That kind of safety changes you. It teaches you that you don’t have to fight your way through everything. You can soften. You can rest.

Research on emotion regulation shows that some ways of responding to distress help us recover, while others make it linger. Adaptive strategies like acceptance, problem solving, and reappraisal help us process and move through anxiety. In contrast, strategies like suppression, avoidance, and rumination tend to trap us in it (Aldao et al., 2010, p. 228). Sitting with emotions, being non-judgemental toward yourself, and staying grounded in the present aren’t just nice ideas. They’re how we slowly teach the body it’s safe again.

Healing, for me, hasn’t been a destination. It’s been a thousand tiny choices to treat myself like someone worth being kind to. And on the days I forget, I start again. Gently.

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A Note to Anyone Living with This

If you’re reading this with your chest tight and your jaw clenched, wondering if you’ll ever feel normal again - I just want to say this:

You’re not broken. You’re not weak. You’re not too much.

You’re a human being with a nervous system that has learned to stay alert because, at some point, it had to. Maybe the world felt unsafe. Maybe love came with conditions. Maybe your body was trained to expect the worst just to survive. That doesn’t mean you’re defective. It means you adapted.

Your anxiety isn’t proof of failure. It’s a sign that your body is trying, really trying to protect you. Even if it gets it wrong sometimes. Even if it doesn’t know when to turn the alarm off.

And I know you’re tired. I know you’ve tried to explain it to people who didn’t get it. Who told you to calm down or think positive or be more grateful. I know the shame that creeps in when your hands shake, or you cancel plans again, or you freeze when you desperately want to be present.

But I also know this: you’re doing better than you think.

You’re showing up. You’re learning. You’re surviving.

And one day, little by little, your body will start to believe it’s safe again. Not because you forced it to but because you stayed. Because you listened. Because you stopped seeing your anxiety as the enemy, and started seeing it as a part of you that just needed care.

So take the nap. Cancel the thing. Text the friend. Sit in the sunlight. Cry if you need to. You don’t have to perform wellness. You just have to keep coming home to yourself.

With love,

Salwa.

P.S. I’ve been quietly working on something behind the scenes—a gentle, grounded guide for living with anxiety, built from both personal experience and psychological insights. It’s the kind of support I longed for during my hardest moments. If this piece resonated, I think you’ll find comfort in what’s coming next. You can subscribe now to stay connected—and if you feel called, you can also pledge support to be automatically enrolled when I open paid subscriptions later this summer.