A couple of months ago, I asked my doctor to remove the word anxiety from my medical chart.
It might not sound radical—but to me, it felt like freedom.
I also had them remove IBS—another label that had followed me for decades, like a tattoo across my identity.
These weren’t just conditions. They became who I was.
At countless appointments, I’d lead with it: I’m anxious. My stomach hurts. It shaped how I saw myself—and how I was seen.
It determined what I said yes to, where I went, and how much of myself I brought into any room — or didn’t.
But anxiety wasn’t just a diagnosis. It was a signal.
Most of the time, my system wasn’t “anxious.” I cycled through states.
There were low-energy, heavy days where I felt almost shut down. There were high-alert stretches where I was hyper-productive at work — sharp, on, performing. And then there were the moments when I tipped into overwhelm. My body would shift before my mind caught up. Heart racing, vision narrowing, everything suddenly too loud and too close. I could feel it on my face — a look I couldn’t hide and couldn’t explain.
I used to call it the point of no return. Once I crossed it, it was incredibly hard to stabilize.
Beneath the labels, the coping, the managing — I now see it as a messenger from wounds I didn’t yet have language for.
It wasn’t until I made a conscious decision to pause alcohol for a while — to care for myself differently, to listen instead of push through —
that I began to write again.
And in that stillness, I could finally look back at my struggles and connect the dots between what I felt and where it came from.
Before I understood my anxiety as a signal, I had to understand its architecture.
The Invisible Framework
Shame, fear, and a sense of separation formed an invisible framework — woven through my body and life. They shaped how I moved through the world: what I avoided, what I believed about myself, and where I never let myself go.
They lived in my nervous system. I felt them most acutely in my stomach.
What I called anxiety was really all of it, layered together.
Shame was the silent conviction that something was inherently wrong with me. It didn’t just live in my mind — it lived in how I felt on high alert walking into a room. In how I second-guessed what I said, even in casual conversations. It showed up at school when I blushed too easily. In report cards that read bright, but distracted — a way of saying I talked too much, needed too much, and took up too much space.
In the way I held my breath at home, waiting for the next criticism, I started to believe that being myself was the problem.
Wearing a mask became second nature. I smiled. I made myself useful. I performed on cue.
I fit in everywhere, without belonging anywhere — because I knew how to adapt.
Shame doesn’t just mark the moment. It fuses blame with identity— until the event and the self become indistinguishable. It wasn’t just that something happened. Somewhere beneath the surface, I absorbed the idea that I was the problem.
What I didn’t understand then was that I never learned emotional regulation at home. I learned how to be in the world. I didn’t learn how to be with myself.
Shame doesn’t just mark the moment. It fuses blame with identity — until the event and the self become indistinguishable.
Fear was the constant hum beneath my days — the dread that something bad would happen, the pit in my stomach I always felt during any kind of transition. It was the dizziness in busy, unfamiliar spaces.
But fear wasn’t always loud. Sometimes it was a tightening in my chest while packing for a trip. Sometimes it was standing in line at a store and suddenly needing to leave. It showed up in elevators, crowded rooms, even on familiar streets and subways.
I’d tell myself I was fine. I’d try to act normal. But my heart would pound, my vision would blur, and all I could think about was escape.
I wasn’t afraid of life. I was afraid of what would happen inside my own body.
I didn’t have the language for panic — just a vague, terrifying sense that I was somehow flawed. So I made my world smaller, safer, more controllable. I planned around exits. I avoided plans altogether. That wasn’t passivity — it was survival, in the only language my body understood.
It wasn’t fear of any one thing. It was fear of what would happen if I lost control of it — and fear of falling apart in public. Of being seen unraveling, and no one knowing what to do with it. Not even me.
Separation wasn’t just about being alone. It was the absence of emotional holding — of anyone attuning to my inner world, of hearing: You’re okay. You’re safe. I see you. I’ve got you.
I didn’t grow up seeing what it looks like to feel something fully — to cry, be angry, be hurt — and then settle again. No one showed me that emotions rise and resolve. So I learned to shut that part down.
When my body was on edge and my mind was working overtime, it became almost impossible to feel what I was actually feeling. My nervous system stayed on guard. My mind became overactive. Stories formed. Beliefs solidified. They felt like truth. But they were reactions to what I lived through.
Anxiety isn’t just fear. It was a fear response that never fully resolved.
What I didn’t have language for then was chronic activation — a nervous system that never learned to downshift, running on alert long after the original threat had passed. It wasn’t a character flaw or a chemical imbalance. It was a physiological response that had become a permanent setting.
I sat in my room, feelings too big to name, learning to hold what no one else could help me carry. I became fluent in silence. I filled the space with daydreams, books, and diary entries I tore up and threw away.
From a young age, I adapted. I scanned rooms for danger. I stayed quiet. I over-functioned. And then, eventually, I rebelled — and got in trouble. I was always blamed for causing problems, for bringing shame into the home. But much of that shame wasn’t mine to carry.
I moved through life with a constant awareness that I wasn’t safe.
It would take collapse, stillness, and grief years later for me to finally understand what all of this had been trying to tell me.
The Rupture
I was 17 when I had my first full-blown panic attack. I landed in the hospital for a week. They ran every test — EKGs, scans, bloodwork. Everything came back normal.
Except I wasn’t.
There was no name for what I was going through — just the unspoken shame of being the girl who panicked.
I started to fear the fear itself. I felt unsafe in my own body. Disoriented in public. Terrified I’d fall apart without warning.
I became agoraphobic, though no one used that word. I just knew I needed to stay close to home. But it wasn’t grounding — just familiar.
And like my dad, I discovered that alcohol could quiet the noise. But the anxiety always came back with a vengeance.
That first rupture shaped who I became in the world. The grief that came later landed harder because of it.
Performing Wellness
For years, I parented myself the best way I knew how. I found ways to cope that looked functional on the outside. Ways to take the edge off. They brought relief. But relief isn’t the same as restoration.
Then I went all in on self-improvement. I found comfort in structure — school, work, routine. I devoured books on psychology and spirituality. I went on weekend retreats along the California coast, in Big Sur. I exercised. Meditated. Journaled. Ate clean. Practiced mindfulness. Tried breathwork. CBT. Supplements.
I was committed. I was consistent. And still something remained fractured.
I was learning how to manage the state — not transform the pattern.
Healing wasn’t about merging with the universe or mastering better coping strategies. It was about meeting the source.
That’s why — even after doing everything — there was still a part of me that felt split.
When Grief Arrived
When my mother passed, everything surfaced. The fresh wound of an identity rupture. The structure I had built — work, caretaking, routine — collapsed. No deadlines. No demands. Just space. And the question: Who was I outside of these roles?
I felt physically unwell. Doctors barely looked at me before reaching for the prescription pad. And then the panic attacks returned — the kind I hadn’t had since growing up in Park Slope. They came back fast and hard. Out of nowhere, and everywhere. Like my body had stored it all and was finally letting it loose. Brooklyn itself had become a trigger.
I coped the only way I knew how — numbing, distracting, avoiding. But in the quiet aftermath, something broke open.
Oddly, I could hear my mother’s voice in my head: Get up. Get dressed. Get out. She never actually said those words together. She didn’t speak in emotional language — but she passed down a kind of kinetic, forward-moving strength. For a long time I couldn’t hear it. I was too busy numbing, distracting, filling the space with anything that kept me from stillness. And in time, that energy resurfaced — an anchor back to my standards, a way to return to myself.
So I listened. I got up, got dressed, got out. I exercised. I cooked. I slept. And eventually, I started writing again.
Writing was something I did as a child to get the energy out — a way to go inward and listen. I wandered through corridors of memory, collecting fragments. I sat with them, piece by piece. And slowly, I stopped running from the shadow.
The Return to Self
Today, I no longer treat anxiety as a flaw to fix. I treat it as a compass.
I listen to the signals. I rest when I’m overstimulated. I set boundaries around energy. I regulate my nervous system through soft structure, space, and presence.
Shame still whispers. Fear still hums. And separation still lingers — the familiar lack of attunement I once adapted to without noticing.
But I meet them now — with curiosity instead of judgment.
I no longer fuse mistakes with identity. Blame is information now — not a verdict. I can feel something, process it, correct course, and move on.
The labels that once defined me no longer lead the conversation—or my life.
“Healing begins the moment we stop abandoning the parts of us that were only ever trying to keep us safe.”
Read:
→ How Unresolved Trauma Lives in the Body
→ The Science of the Healing State
→ Breaking the Cycle
→ Emotional Inheritance
→ Feel to Heal
→ Wired Differently: ADHD, HSP, or Just Me?
