It may seem unusual for a therapist to confess this, yet it feels important to share — not as a dramatic revelation, but as a way of offering something honest and useful. In a world that expects us to be robotic, it is an act of rebellion to be relationally human.

How I experience anxiety is not as a constant state of being rather it arrives in waves, without reason, unpredictably and crucially, without reason. This article is a gentle offering of my lived experience of anxiety and how I have adopted a new perspective to live with it peacefully.

Anxiety begins in the body.

One night, lying awake and unable to settle, I realised I couldn’t define the cause of the disruption, dysregulation or upset that was preventing sleep. What was worrying me, what needed to change in my life, what was the threat? As sleep was evasive, I used the time to experiment. I turned toward the experience itself — the sensations, the textures, the internal movements inside my body.

That experiment shifted everything I understood about anxiety.

Because anxiety showed up in my body in the following ways:

• Confusion between deep nausea, loss of appetite and hunger
• Food that refuses to digest, sitting heavily with reflux.
• Higher sensitivity to smells, taste and touch
• A nervous system that fizzes, trembles, or quakes internally with a higher than usual body temperature.
• A mild headache or pain in the head reducing clarity and focus.
• An accelerated flow of energy that manifests as restlessness.
• Exhaustion that recycles the disruption the next day

I began to see anxiety as an embodied event rather than something externally caused. With this new perspective I developed a sense of agency, resilience, and a return to myself.

When focussing on the felt experience of the body, the cognitive story may or may not arrive later. This is interoception: the body speaking before the mind can interpret.  My body was signalling an overwhelming collection of indicators that I had ordinarily interpreted as something was wrong.  This input of my internal reality was assuming an external threat because my body felt dysregulated.  This is exactly what phenomenology emphasises: experience is lived through the body before it is conceptualised by the mind.

When the body changes, our encounter with the world changes.

When the energy of anxiety is framed towards being caused by a situation, a person or dependent on a circumstance, it reduces agency and wellbeing becomes contingent on a world that has to be a certain way if anxiety is to be avoided.  In an unpredictable world, this perspective becomes profoundly disempowering that teaches us to be safe only when the world is one particular way. That the body cannot regulate under certain external circumstances and that the body is reactive rather than safely capable.  In other words, the internal message is something outside of me has caused the anxiety and there is little I can do about it.

When attached to an external factor anxiety can be viewed with shame by self and others.  Seen through an embodied lens, anxiety is no more shameful than pain, tiredness, or illness. It is a bodily experience asking to be noticed, understood, and met with care.

Furthermore, the pursuit of attaching anxiety to an external circumstance itself leads to more dysregulation, further angst. When the body is in an anxious state, clarity about the worldview is distorted and multiple “threats” can emerge in the mind. Asking a person to define what they are anxious about is like asking them to catch a slippery fish.  Yet clients come to counselling with the hope that the counsellor may help them fix the external stressor when the stressor may not be the true sources of the anxiety.  The story created is attached to the state of the body.

Turning inwards on my experiment that night, taught me that the sensations I felt in my body were unpleasant but not dangerous.   I was in a state of dysregulation, but I was safe and I could stay with myself.  My body would be exhausted tomorrow, but I could manage my activities with resilience.  I learned that the unpleasantness would pass.  It was not being caused by something or someone, there were no life changing decisions to be made.  It was not about confidence or ability, not about being able to relate healthily with others, nor about being able to survive life generally.  From the body, I had the control to respond to what was needed.

Existential therapy does not aim to remove anxiety, rather it embraces it as a message, and to relate to it differently, with more awareness, with intention, and an new understanding of what anxiety is – a bodily experience - rather than an external threat.

This perspective says let’s work with what is actually here — your body, your breath, your sensations — because this is where anxiety lives.

This is not avoidance of the external world; it is a return to the starting point of the experience from where the true story can emerge.

This article is an invitation to explore your own embodied experience of anxiety. Gently turn inwards and notice where anxiety appears in your body. You might ask yourself:

• What sensations are present?
• Where does anxiety show up in your body?
• How would you describe the texture, movement, or intensity of the experience?
• Where does your thinking go with it – can you stay inside yourself or is there an urge to look externally?
• How does the state of your body change your relationship to the external world?

From that place of noticing, you may be better able to ask your body what it needs. More rest, nourishment, hydration, space to slow down, or permission to soften and loosen – with less judgement on what may be happening externally. Whatever the need, this awareness can help you respond with care and agency, working with the anxiety rather than against it.  If you are experiencing an anxious body you are welcome to reach out for some time limited focussed therapy sessions.

This post is offered as a space for reflection and discussion. It is not intended to provide medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment.

Anxiety can be distressing and, at times, debilitating. If anxiety is affecting your daily life, relationships, sleep, or wellbeing, please seek appropriate medical or therapeutic support.