The Body Knows: Anxiety Isn’t in Your Head

(And Depression Isn’t Laziness)

We’re living wired and wound up—and our bodies are screaming for relief.

Tight. Addicted. In pain.

The Body Knows is about listening to the raw intelligence under your skin—the signals that know before you do when something’s wrong, when you’re safe, or when you’re bullshitting yourself. This series rips the lid off how our ancient wiring runs the show—and why learning to read your body isn’t just self-help, but the only way we’ll change a world that’s burning.

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You say you have anxiety. But what does that actually mean?

Is it the racing thoughts?

The late-night spirals?

The endless effort to fix yourself so maybe—just maybe—you can feel okay again?

Here’s the thing: You don’t think your way into anxiety. And you can’t think your way out of it.

You lie awake, trying to solve life like a math problem—if you just behave better, think

clearer, do more—maybe the pressure will lift.

But it doesn’t.

Because anxiety isn’t a flaw in your logic.

And depression isn’t just a lack of motivation.

They’re not separate issues. They’re two sides of the same nervous system coin.

Anxiety is the body in a state of hyper-alertness, scanning for threat.

Depression is what happens when your system gives up on fighting so that you can live to fight another day.

One says, “I have to keep going or something bad will happen.”The other says: “What’s the point? It’s already too late.”

Both are biological states, not personal failures.

They live not in your mind, but in your shoulders. Your breath. Your belly. Your bones.

And until you meet them there, they won’t budge.

When Anxiety Doesn’t Look Like Panic

Most people don’t recognize their anxiety because it doesn’t look like what they’ve been taught.

It’s not always a panic attack on the bathroom floor. Sometimes it’s:

• Obsessively checking your messages—or avoiding them completely

• Feeling on edge in a quiet room

• Constant neck and shoulder tension you call “normal”

• A body that never fully relaxes, even on vacation

• Chronic pain or autoimmune flare-ups that no one can explain

• Perfectionism

• Being "the problem solver"

If you’ve ever said “I have anxiety,” try asking:

“Where do I feel it?”

Because anxiety is not just a mental health condition.

It’s a physiological state—a full-body broadcast that something feels off, unsafe, unfinished.

Try staying in a coherent, relaxed state the next time you walk into a crowded work event—or a family gathering where everyone’s talking politics.

Your body doesn’t just respond to what’s happening inside you.

It responds to what's happening in the breath and the bodies of those around you!

From Tiger to Deadline: Your Nervous System Can’t Tell the Difference

Here’s a secret your body knows:

Anxiety is ancient.

It’s not a character defect. It’s your survival system doing its job.

Thousands of years ago, when a tiger leapt out from behind a tree, your shoulders rose to protect the bloodline from your head to your heart (necks are an instant kill).

Your heart raced.

Your muscles tensed.

Your breath paused, then sped up.

And you ran. Or fought. Or froze.

Then—you shook it off. You discharged the energy. You survived.

Today, there are no tigers. But your body reacts as if.

A deadline. A judgmental glance. An unread email. A child’s scream. A memory. They all trigger the same ancient pathways.

But instead of discharging, you brace. Again. And again. And again. Until your shoulders stay locked up near your ears and you forget what rest even feels like.

Sympathetic Activation: The Biology of Feeling Unsafe

The part of your nervous system that jumps into action here is called the sympathetic branch—the “go mode” of the vagus nerve system. Everyone knows about the fight/flight/fawn response of sympathetic activation in the ANS. It is less known that this part of the vagus nerve complex helps you rise to a challenge: to run, act, play, and perform when the ventral vagal nerve bundle is also involved.

This video comes from the Science of Compassion conference, hosted by Stanford’s Center for Compassion and Altruism Research and Education. In it, researchers share groundbreaking (and surprisingly human) insights into how our biology responds to connection—or the lack of it. This isn’t just neuroscience for academics. It’s a real look at how loneliness, stress, and disconnection literally shape our immune systems, our gene expression, and our health.

One famous study showed that people who felt disconnected—who lacked meaningful connection or community—had hundreds of genes expressed differently than those who felt supported. Their immune systems acted like they were under physical attack.

The brain sends chemical cues to your immune system, saying: “Brace for impact.” And your immune system listens.

• Your system releases more norepinephrine—a stress chemical that prepares for fight or flight

• Your white blood cells switch to inflammatory mode (expecting injury)

• Genes that fight viral infections are turned down

• Genes that promote inflammation are turned up

• You start producing more quick-response immune cells, designed to patch wounds—even if no wound ever comes

  
  

Here are the risk factors that led to these genetic changes.

Loneliness.

Disconnection.

A subtle, persistent sense that you're not safe, seen, or supported.

What does this actually mean?

If the world taught you that you had to be hypervigilant… or a perfectionist... or the fixer.... or the caregiver... or the overachiever... or the one who never falls apart...

Then your immune system reflects that.

Your cells reflect that.

Your pain, your fatigue, your sleepless nights all reflect that.

And no amount of Valium will stop those hamsters in your head from having a rave party - glow sticks, thumping bass, and absolutely no bedtime.

When the Body Gives Up: Depression as a Nervous System State

Now here’s the other side of the coin.

If anxiety is the “fight or flight” system stuck on, depression is what happens when the body finally says: I can’t win this.

It’s called a defeat-withdrawal response, and it’s just as biological.

In this state:

• The HPA axis (your stress pathway) floods you with cortisol

• Inflammatory and antiviral genes both get suppressed

• Energy drops, immunity tanks, appetite shifts

• The world feels heavy. Pointless. Impossible.

This is the body’s way of protecting you when the fight feels unwinnable. It’s not laziness. It’s survival.

And again, it often begins not with a life-threatening danger—but with long-term disconnection, overwhelm, or shame.

A Practice: Feel It, Don’t Fix It

Let’s be clear: coping with anxiety is a losing battle if you don’t involve the body.

You can’t outthink a survival state.

You can’t out-breathe a nervous system that’s still bracing for impact.

You can’t talk your way out of what your tissues remember.

Somatic work isn’t a luxury.

It’s not a “nice-to-have.”

It’s a biological imperative.

But it’s more than that.

It’s a social imperative.

We live in a world on fire—and each one of us is an ember. Our dysregulation doesn’t

end with us. It spreads. It spills. It shapes how we parent, how we relate, how we vote, how we heal—or don’t. Every time we choose to regulate rather than react, to feel instead of fix, we become the peace we keep waiting to find in someone else.

So the next time you say, “I’m anxious,” or “I feel low,” Don’t rush to fix it. Don’t numb it, bypass it, or muscle through it.

Pause. Turn toward it. And feel.

Where does the sensation live? What’s the temperature? The texture? Are you pulled in or puffed up? Is your breath shallow? Are your hands buzzing? Your belly clenched?

Don’t narrate. Just notice. Let the story pause so sensation can speak.

You might hear nothing. You might cry. You may begin to move spontaneously.

You might realize you’ve been holding your breath for hours.

You might finally exhale.

This isn’t self-indulgent work. This is how we start to cool the fire—inside us, and between us.

The Real Work Begins Here

Let’s be honest: Feeling isn’t easy.

Sensation sounds simple until you’re actually sitting in it. Until your chest tightens .Your belly flips. Your skin crawls .And every ancient part of your brain screams: “Get me out of here.”

That’s not weakness. That’s biology.

When you pause and choose to stay—just stay—you’re going up against the oldest part

of your wiring. The part that evolved to keep you alive by running, hiding, appeasing, or numbing out. And you’re doing it using the youngest part of your brain: the part that can witness, stay present, and choose something different.

It takes strength. It takes stamina . And it takes practice.

And here’s the hard part: Even when you’ve done it—sat with a wave, breathed through a spiral, let something rise and fall without running—You’ll forget.

When overwhelm hits again, it’s easy to forget the times you made it through.

That’s why we don’t do this work alone.

The Invitation

This is what my work is about. Not fixing you. Not bypassing the pain .But helping you remember that you can stay.That you have stayed before.That you are strong enough to befriend the sensations that once scared you.

I offer a somatic, science-rooted, soul-aware approach to anxiety, pain, and overwhelm. I bring maps of the nervous system, tools to regulate and rewire, and a compassionate presence to walk beside you while you practice staying—until it feels like coming home.

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Samantha is a member of the International Association of Yoga Therapists, a Noom Certified Health Coach, and the founder of Davidson Yoga Therapy and Health Coaching.

She has held complimentary healthcare positions at The Blanchard Institute, Atrium

Hospital, Levine Cancer Institute, Sanger Heart Clinic, and Davidson College. She has presented for Fortune 500 companies and major Universities, both public and professional audiences, on this thing called yoga therapy and what it can do when it is unpeeled, revealed, and adapted to meet the needs and the abilities of the person doing it. 

She leverages her three decades of yoga therapy, and health coaching experience with the following therapeutic models:

• Breathing Technology

• Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction

• Jungian Psychology

• Jungian Dream Interpretation

• Somatic Cognition

• Internal Family Systems

• Interfaith Perspectives

• Spiritual Technologies

• Trauma Healing

• Polyvagal Somatics

• Ayurvedic Lifestyle Coaching

• Compassionate Inquiry

• Pain Reprocessing Therapy

• The Neurosequential Model

All this is to say, there are many doorways to use on the path to healing and self-discovery, and Samantha’s breadth of experience allows for vast creativity on which approach is right for you!