Dear Heart: Anxiety is Not Your Fault, It’s Your Body Yelling for Safety

Dear Heart,

If you are reading this, you are likely intimately familiar with the gnawing tension of anxiety. It’s that constant, low-grade hum of fear that makes you feel perpetually unsafe, exhausted, and often sick.

We’re taught to power through it, to “just be positive,” or to simply drink more coffee. But I want to tell you the real truth I’ve learned on my own journey through trauma, cancer, and chronic pain like fibromyalgia: Anxiety is not a character flaw. It is a physical symptom of a nervous system that is stuck in the past.

It is your body yelling, “We are still not safe!” even when you are sitting quietly in your home. And until you address the root—the physical, stuck energy of unreleased emotion—you will always be fighting an impossible battle.

The Science of Survival: Why Your Body is a Sentry

Remember how I talked about the weight you carry? Anxiety is the internal manifestation of that same protective shield.

Here is what is happening inside your warrior body:

1. The Alarm Bell is Jammed: The root of anxiety lies in your body’s stress response system, known as the HPA Axis (Hypothalamic-Pituitary-Adrenal Axis). When you experienced abuse and sustained fear as a child, your HPA axis learned that the world was constantly dangerous. Your body flooded your system with the stress hormone cortisol and adrenaline to prepare you to fight, flee, or freeze.
2. The Switch Broke: For a healed person, once the threat is gone, the nervous system switches off and the body returns to baseline calm. For a trauma survivor, that switch is broken. Your nervous system stays “on,” locked into a state of hyper-vigilance. This chronic state of elevated cortisol diverts energy from your digestion, suppresses your immune system, and contributes to the body-wide inflammation and pain that show up as conditions like fibromyalgia.
3. The Cost of “Fake Happy”: The document I’ve been studying confirms something critical: trying to enforce a rigid “always positive” mindset—what we call toxic positivity—is physically detrimental. Suppressing negative emotions (like sadness, anger, or deep grief) actually increases stress and emotional instability. It makes the body’s cortisol levels worse because you are fighting your authentic internal experience. You are pushing down the truth your body desperately needs to release.

I lived this for years—forcing the happy, putting on the smile. It almost killed me, eventually manifesting as cancer. We must stop pretending.

The Path is Through the Body: The Three Keys to Healing Anxiety

Since anxiety is a physical response, the solution must be physical, too. You cannot simply think your way out of a physiological problem. You must feel your way out.

This is the work of Pillar 2: Find Your Center.

Key 1: Somatic Release—Allowing the Discharge

The goal is to teach your body that the threat is over and that the energy locked in your muscles and tissues can finally be released.

• Breathwork: Simple, conscious breathing is your most powerful tool. It directly regulates the Vagus Nerve, the information superhighway of your nervous system. By consciously slowing your breath, you signal to your brain, “I am safe right now.”
• Movement & Shaking: Animals naturally shake off trauma. We will learn techniques, like simple Trauma Releasing Exercises (TRE), that allow that bound-up survival energy to discharge from your body. This is why cleaning or repetitive chores felt so meditative for me—it was a form of gentle, physical release.
• The Undoing Hypothesis: The science shows that positive emotions have a unique ability to rapidly reverse the lingering physiological effects of stress. We seek to cultivate moments of genuine peace (not forced happiness) after a trigger, speeding up your body’s return to a baseline state.

Key 2: Emotional Reappraisal—Reframing the Narrative

This is where the mind helps the body heal. We use a powerful technique called Cognitive Reappraisal (a form of cognitive restructuring).

• The Technique: You don’t try to stop the anxious thought. You simply change your interpretation of the event. Instead of viewing the anxious flutter as “I’m falling apart,” you reframe it as: “That is the old survival energy leaving my body. I am healing right now.”
• The Outcome: This subtle shift in narrative, supported by practices like journaling, is what builds true, sustainable resilience—the ability to bounce back quickly from adversity.

Key 3: Physical Boundaries—Building External Safety

Your nervous system needs physical, measurable proof that you are in control of your environment. This means mastering boundaries.

When you allow people or situations to drain you, your body registers that as a low-grade threat. Setting a boundary—saying “No” to an obligation, or holding firm on your new, higher pricing—signals to your HPA axis: “The warrior is in charge. We are safe.”

Anxiety is demanding your attention. It’s a plea from the part of you that was left unprotected. You have the power to answer that plea, not with a fake smile, but with deep, somatic compassion and a commitment to release the shield, one breath at a time.

With deepest belief in your strength,

Heidi Morton

What is one small, physical practice you can commit to for the next 48 hours to signal safety to your nervous system? (Hint: It might be a 5-minute silent scrub of the sink.)