I dealt with anxiety for 20 years. I could not remember a time when it wasn't a huge problem for me that I was dealing with. One thing I knew about myself is that my stress tolerance had always been non-existent. It got especially bad. I think the thing that kind of pushed it over the edge was after I had my first son, which was in 2015. He had hip dysplasia and he had to be in a hip brace for an entire year. It was such an anxietyprovoking time that I ended up going to a doctor back in 2015 who put me on an antiscychotic because I could not sleep at night and hear I was hearing my son cry when he wasn't. We were living in a very small apartment and it was really one of the first times I saw my entire nervous system get tipped over. At that point I would have told you I was sensitized that my nervous system was sensitized. As someone with a history of extreme OCD, please listen to me when I tell you this. There is not a modality that claims to help anxiety that I am not aware of. I I literally tried everything to help my anxiety. Anything that I found. Some things would help temporarily, but never long term. And honestly, not very long, even temporarily. The anxiety would always come back normally worse. And after about 20 years, the thing that finally worked for me was the most counterintuitive approach, I don't even know if I would have wanted to hear it any earlier than I did just because I was so committed to finding an easier solution. Anxiety has not been a problem for me for well over a year now. And stress, I don't even interpret it as stress because of how bad things were before. I don't panic about stuff. I can finally handle my life. I got my life back. I want that for you, too. I want you to get your life back. So, today I am going to explain what finally healed my anxiety. Like I said, I lived with debilitating anxiety from the time I was about 15. Of course, it came from a history of trauma. I was adopted. I experienced abuse growing up. I had my reasons that the anxiety started. It started just as feeling afraid all of the time. feeling afraid and then feeling afraid more and more and more of the time. It wasn't just anxiety and fear that I was experiencing. I also experienced like this chronic lowgrade exhaustion. Like I was just so tired all the time, but like they say, that feeling of being tired and wired is exactly how I felt. I was so ramped up, but I was also so exhausted. And I was put into weekly therapy at 15. Also, psychiatrists, you know, medications, all that stuff. And I was an A+ student at therapy. I really gave it my all. I tried to do my supplemental work during the week in between because I knew it wasn't going to be therapy that got me where I needed to go. I put a lot of that on me. I would say one of the most painful parts of this was that when I was young and up until this point, therapy was always kind of sold as this thing that you needed to do. Especially for me, especially if you have CPTTSD, especially if you have depression and anxiety and trauma, like therapy is the thing. And it was so painful to not make any progress in therapy and to feel like I was giving it my all because that's of course there are many different things you can try for anxiety and and chronic symptoms like that, but therapy is the thing. And it it just didn't help me. And I went to a lot of therapy. I was the worst case scenario queen. Everything that I experienced, every possibility that presented itself in my life, my brain would go to the worst case scenario. It just it had a filter in it that was just like, "Hey, what's the worst possible thing that can happen here?" Things like moving to another house or finding a pediatrician or finding a parking spot at the airport. It didn't matter how small it was. My brain was just always like, "Are we going to get robbed right now? Is this going to work? Are we never going to find someone this good ever again?" It was just the filter was so desparing and fearful. It was just a chronic fear filter. My brain was always looking to tell me that based on this thing that you're looking at right now in this moment, if this goes the way we think it could go, life is over. I I like to describe it as I always felt like I was living so close to the edge where I was tortured constantly of things that didn't actually exist. So that when something did exist, I had no capacity for it. It just pushed me over a threshold that I was always living really close to the edge of. And so every new thing that I tried to initially help with this anxiety was just another attempt to fix what was what I was experiencing. It was another attempt to make it go away. I hated waking up feeling that doom. I hated feeling scared all the time. I hated being scared all the time. And yet, it was just what I was used to. There's something about, you know, how I'm always telling you guys you need to stop looking for fixes and stop trying to fix your anxiety. It's really hard when you hear stories about someone who was just like, "It was just my hormones. I got my hormones tested and I got on some progesterone or testosterone and I'm all I'm better." Oh, for me it was just my thyroid. Oh, for me, have you checked into this? Have you checked into that? Funny thing with me is that Yeah, I did. I did. I did all those things. I wanted it to be easy. I wanted it to be simple. I wanted it to be cut and dry. So, when you are anxious and you struggle with like health OCD, you want to find that one thing and it feels so dangerous to stop looking for it. Most people don't want to do the hard work of letting themselves feel very very afraid and not fix it because we do anything to make it go away. It wasn't anxiety for me though after a certain point especially after 2015 and especially after a couple years ago it had become sensitization. When your anxiety locks on and it becomes this constant thing where it's you're dealing with it every single day or on a very constant frequent basis. It's not just anxiety anymore. It is sensitization once it becomes chronic. Your body and your nervous system should have the ability to deal with a threat and come back down to baseline. Now, you may be disregulated, and if you are, if you deal with some dysregulation on and off, you may struggle to come back down to baseline. It might take you a little while longer, but your body figures it out. That is not the same deal with sensitization. And if you don't know which one of those you are, I have a quiz, and I'm going to link it in the description for you to take it. I like to describe it like a car alarm that goes off for any purpose at all. And mostly purposes that aren't actually dangerous. There is not someone breaking into this car. And it is going off all of the time. It's going off when you switch lanes. It's going off when you open the door, when you close the door, when a leaf falls on the door, when it rains, when you turn on your windshield wipers, when someone almost goes into your lane. Every reason. And there's no reason that car alarm should be going off because the danger has passed. There's no one trying to break into the car. There's nothing actually physically wrong with our bodies. Especially with anxiety specifically, that is our body going into a threat response to try to figure out, do we need to fight? Do we need to freeze? Do we need to flee? What do we need to do right now? But that's to deal with an active threat. It's to help you be more efficient in running away or getting very still or fighting. But when there's no active threat, it's overusing this mechanism that it does not need to use. And that's what sensitization is. I, you know, I've talked about my best friend having the same kind of issue and I I want to explain it the same way to you guys that I would explain it to her. You have to understand that there's nothing wrong with you if you're dealing with chronic anxiety or other symptoms or all of the other symptoms that come from chronic anxiety. Because I've said it once and I'll say it again. I do believe that when my chronic anxiety turned into chronic pain, that was just a result of that chronic stress and that chronically anxious state. There is nothing broken with you or your nervous system when you move into the land of sensitization. Nothing is wrong with you. In fact, the system is actually working too well. It's doing what it was designed to do too well. Instead of being like, "Okay, it's my job to interpret threats. That is a threat. That is safe. Okay, that is safe. This is dangerous." Instead, it's like, "Let's just be safe and assume everything is dangerous." If we assume everything is dangerous, what that's going to do is keep your system locked on and ready to protect yourself. Imagine what that does to your body after an extended period of time of your body living in that chronic threat state, chronic survival. We are not created to live in that state for an extended period of time. Your system is hyperatuned. It's just too sensitive. That's it. So, I never want it to seem like, oh, sensitization is so bad and dysregulation isn't as bad. I see them on a spectrum and one of them has you a little bit further down the line on that spectrum. Doesn't matter how long it's been, doesn't matter how long you've struggled with it. The the solution is the same. Sensitization can be reversed. Thousands of people are doing it. You are not the exception to that. And so to speak to that really quick, it's very common. Like I would say one of the main components of sensitization is doubting whatever it is that you have specifically. Like I get people asking me for reassurance all the time. They'll say, "Yeah, yeah." So, okay. So, I know. I know what you mean. I get it. But what about this specific symptom? Enter whatever symptom you want to. Okay. But what if what started it was something like this? I've never heard anyone explain that before. And I want you to know that that's part of this. It's one of the biggest identifying factors of this is that you believe that what you have is very unique. It's a very unique makeup that might be excluded. Once you get the testing done and you are checked out by a medical professional and they either cannot find anything or they cannot help you, you have nothing to lose by doing the work of desensitizing your nervous system. It cannot hurt. It can only help once you figure out what could be a more what could be a better response and reaction to what I'm experiencing right now that can help lower that fear, which I will get into. Real healing for me, the actual thing that healed my nervous system and desensitized it was the scariest option for me. And so if if what I talk about kind of makes you go into a panic, I get that because we want to do more. We want to know what the problem is. We we want to hold tighter. We want to fight harder. It makes us feel like we're doing something, like we are in action making it happen. But that's not how I healed. And that's not how I desensitized. I did that by slowly letting go. Complete opposite of what I wanted to do. I wanted to hold on tighter. I wanted to find like surely I've missed something. This can't be right. But it was the polar opposite of that. And something that was a little bit possibly unique to me, I'm not sure, is that when I got to this place where I decided I was really going to let go, a big part of that was being really done with the fight. And one thing that I can be sure of that I'm not able to do for people is get them to that point. I would love for you to find that point sooner, but you have to get to that point of change on your own. You have to decide you're not going to keep seeking reassurance from people and asking questions and trying to count yourself out and living in this chronic state of not only fear but doubt constantly. You don't need to have full belief but you can't be in 100% doubt all the time either. That's very very important. I I became so aware that nothing was working. And so maybe you're at that point too where you're just so exhausted because you feel like you're working hard but nothing's moving the needle and your capacity isn't growing and you're not getting any less anxious and you feel tortured by your brain all day long. And so you start thinking, you know, maybe there there will be one more thing. There comes a time when you make that decision where you say, I'm done. I'm not going to try to make this work anymore. And you realize what acceptance actually means, which it does not mean that you're giving up. For me, it meant giving myself an actual real chance to heal by doing something like radically different than what I had ever tried before and doing less. When you live in chronic fear, releasing what little control you have can be debilitating to consider cuz you're already holding on for dear life and like barely hanging on at that. And when someone says, "Let go. Let it exist. Let it be there. Stop the fight. Stop the resistance. You start to feel like, what do I have if I do that? That's me giving up all control. And it's kind of like, yeah, that that's the point. Because it was not control that stopped my anxiety. It was learning to live without the certainty. And I think as anxious people, we feel like the more control we have, the more chance we have to get rid of our anxiety. and to heal. It's like I just got to get control over this. I I But anxiety will humble you real quick and show you that you don't have control of Like it it is imperative that you start learning to live with the uncertainty. And I know you're going to say, "What are you talking about? I have been I everything is uncertain. I have no control over anything. I have no control over my body, my symptoms, my life." And that while that's true, it's the energy behind that. It's not about being uncertain. It's about allowing uncertainty. It's about walking into uncertainty. It's about having these urges and these compulsive desires to ask somebody to to reassure you or to do another Google search or to hop on Reddit again or to watch another, you know, recovery story or something. It's a decision to stop that and instead say, "I don't know." And that's okay. It's not the uncertainty that's the that's the problem. It's our inability to be with it. It's our allergy to uncertainty. Our rejection to anything that that doesn't tell us exactly what's happening so I can know what to expect and know what to plan for. We believe certainty gives us safety. But you've probably found that life isn't very certain. And if we're seeking that certainty, we're actually going to live a really, really fearfilled life. And I don't want that for you. This is what is actually healing people every single day. There are people that are out there healing and reversing decades of anxiety, panic, OCD, chronic illnesses, chronic pain syndromes, everything you can think of. I I see more pop up every single day. There is a beautiful life that's waiting for you on the other side once you're ready to give up the fight and the resistance that you have to what you're experiencing. Once you're willing to look at the anxiety and look at the symptoms you're experiencing and say, "I'm not going to fight these anymore. I'm not going to try to get to the bottom of these anymore. I'm going to accept them. I'm going to accept that this is the situation we're in right now. And I'm going to allow these symptoms to do whatever they want, and I'm going to work on my response to them. And I'm going to start responding in a less fearful way." I used to imagine what it would be like in the depths of my anxiety and my despair about my chronic pain condition. I would just I would just imagine what it would be like to wake up in the morning, go downstairs, drink coffee, which I had avoided for a year because I was so afraid of the sensations of drinking coffee, the anxiety it gave me, the nerve pain it gave me. None of that was true. That was all my fear. And I I wondered what it would be like to feel excited to start the day again. And just what would it be like to wake up and be like, I'm so happy to be here. I spent a long time feeling the opposite of that. I did not want to be here in that way. I didn't want to feel those feelings and continue my day. I didn't want to I didn't think I could feel any better until my symptoms were gone. I didn't think anything could change until I had clarity, until I had an answer and it was fruitless. And I just kept going in circles and going in circles and going in circles. And now I wake up feeling so peaceful. If I don't wake up with that just boulder in my chest of doom, like I got kicked in the stomach, it's gone. I feel peaceful. I feel happy. I feel inspired. I feel hopeful. I feel optimistic. I feel excited to create, to help, to work. All of that was gone. Before it was just like, wake up and try to get through this freaking day the best that you can. And oh my god, how am I going to do this forever? That was what that was how my day started along with a body scan of doom as well. like how bad is it going to be today? What's my heart rate? What's my HRV? What's how did I sleep? How much deep sleep did I get? What what do I have on the schedule today? I hope I can like that is gone. And I drink the coffee now. It's amazing. Sometimes I drink two coffees a day. Someone was like, "Oh, I haven't um" They responded to one of my Instagram stories and said, "I haven't had coffee in in five months." And I was like, "There's always today. There's always another chance to have coffee today. I have very very low fear levels now, which is mind-blowing to me. And I want to tell you something that came to me the other day when I was just having a quiet moment. I thought about what would have happened if when all of this really hit its like fever pitch in in November of 2023. I was thinking about what it would have been like if I had gone to a doctor or any of the number of specialists that I had gone to see and if one of them had given me a solution for my symptoms. If when I had the the facial pain or the or the anxiety or the panic or the insomnia, if I had gone and someone was able to give me a good solution, which none of them could, I considered what a loss that would have been. I considered what a loss it would have been to have solved the symptoms without solving the root. If they had given me something that would have quieted what my attention was on, stopped the anxiety, helped me sleep, stopped the nerve pain, stopped everything I was experiencing because of decades of chronic stress and anxiety, and they were able to just quiet the symptoms. It would have prevented me from living the life that I'm living now. It would have been robbery ultimately because going through all of that made it so that I had to do the actual real work. I had to change my relationship with everything, with myself, with my symptoms, with life. And that all completely changed by acceptance and by allowing and by softening and by everything I talk about and everything that I teach. And because of that, I have a new life now. I don't just have a life that doesn't have lots of anxiety or, you know, doesn't have insomnia and doesn't have symptoms, although all of that's true. I have a life with very, very low levels of fear and no levels of fear for things that aren't things that I should be afraid about. It's not that there aren't things to fear. Of course, it was the decades that I lived fearing everything that wasn't an actual threat in my personal reality. Right now, I'm recording a podcast. I look around. I see four walls. I see lighting. I see a microphone. I see the camera that I'm talking into. I am not unsafe in this moment. But when I was sensitized, my body would have been interpreting this, not necessarily the set that I'm in, but life would have felt dangerous right now. Even though I was just recording a podcast, this work didn't just stop the anxiety for me along with many other symptoms. It fundamentally changed who I am 100%. I am so glad that there wasn't a quick fix that solved all this for me. It was never about the anxiety. And that's why I'm glad I I've I've been on this freaking wild goose chase for the last 20 years. It's a long time. But it wasn't ever about the symptoms. It's not about your symptoms. It's about what's underneath. It's about what's driving it. It's about your resistance to reality and what is and our inability to be with uncertainty. And so I'm grateful for it. And I didn't think I would ever get to that place where I would be grateful for such a I don't even feel like I have words to describe how bad it was. To get on the other side of that and feel deeply grateful that I got the message. You'll hear people talk about that like your illness, your symptoms, your anxiety, your panic. It has a message for you. And we miss the message when we try to just put out the symptoms and we just go, "Oh, I just have anx." But why? Why? Why do you have the anxiety? When we just eliminate the symptoms, we're not getting to the root of what the symptoms are trying to tell us. And then when the symptoms are you're so sensitized and that you are having all different types of s symptoms in all different systems of your body, it gets really hard to have any neutrality about that. It can be very challenging to come back from, but it's absolutely possible and it's easier than you think. And it's a lot more to do with doing less than it is to doing more. And as sensitized people, we need those reminders in that specific way over and over and over. In my desensitized course, I created that course so on purpose. I know I could have fluffed it up. I know I could have added hours of lecture and all this stuff, but as someone who went through this and has helped other people get through it, we need very simple reminders over and over and over again. Your response is keeping this going. We must change your response. You need to accept this. You need to allow this. Those reminders that we need over and over because you're going to have moments where you go, "Okay, so I totally get it, but like what about this?" And that's where you need to pop these reminders into your ears and remind yourself this is part of it. This seeking is part of it. This doubting is part of it. This panic is part of it. This falling back into symptoms, having flares. We need reminders over and over and over in such a straightforward way because do you know how hard it is to penetrate the mind of a sensitized nervous system. It is so challenging. I was my toughest client. Like I was the worst. I didn't believe anybody. I didn't trust anybody. Nobody could help me. I resisted everything. So, I know how hard it can be. And I have conversations with people where when I talk to people, they it is so hard for them to hear me over the fear and their brain screaming that something must be terribly wrong because of what I'm experiencing in my head and in my body. And I get that. I was there. I was there for a really long time. No matter how loud it is, loud doesn't mean true. And I mean loud symptoms, loud anxiety, loud, you know, heart palpitations, loud migraines, any of the symptoms that come from chronic anxiety. It doesn't matter how loud they are. That doesn't make them more true or more real. This may be you. you if you've been anxious for years and nothing has worked. If you have been the A+ student doing all the programs and all the therapy and bringing your therapist notes of things that you need to discuss like I did and you're still struggling, there might not be something actually wrong with you, which is isn't that great news? Your system just might be sensitized. It really could be that simple. And I I want to keep it as simple as possible. I do that on purpose. It's all intentional. The way that I talk, the way that I share these messages for sensitized people is very on purpose. I've worked with people for over six years in a different space, in a different style of coaching. And there's a very big difference capacity-wise. Sensitized people need it straight. They need it direct. They need it firm and and just straightforward. No BS. That that is the path that we're looking at walking. When you find yourself in a place where your anxiety that used to be here or there is now locked on and is now chronic, there is a way out of that. 20 years of anxiety for me that started as as a young teenager did not go away because I found that very secret hidden thing. The one like little supplement or like pharmaceutical or something that would just put my levels back in place and then I would that's not what what worked for me. It ended because I stopped looking for a fix. It ended because I started accepting that my system had got this way in a way that makes perfect sense and that I could show up to my symptoms and what I was experiencing with less fear so that I could first recover from the fear and then recover from the chronic symptoms that I was experiencing. So, if you resonate with this experience, I want you to make sure you like and subscribe and I will see you on the next video. Bye everybody.