Anxiety isn't broken. You aren't broken. I know that's hard to believe when your chest feels like it's wrapped in barbed wire and your thoughts are ping-ponging between catastrophic scenarios. When you're lying awake at 3 AM, heart racing over something that might happen next week. Or next year. Or never. But here's what thirty years of spiritual practice and ten thousand intuitive readings have taught me: anxiety isn't your enemy. It's a messenger. And like most messengers, it keeps showing up until you actually listen to what it's trying to tell you. ## **The Wisdom Hidden in Your Worry** Your anxiety is trying to save your life. Seriously. Not from the imaginary tigers your mind conjures up, but from something real. Something that needs your attention. Maybe it's telling you that you're living someone else's life instead of your own. Maybe it's warning you that you've been ignoring your intuition for so long that it's had to resort to alarm bells to get through. I remember a woman who came to me for a reading, shaking with anxiety about her upcoming wedding. She'd been to therapists, tried medications, done breathing exercises. Nothing touched it. But when we dug deeper, the anxiety wasn't about the wedding. It was about marrying the wrong person. Her soul was screaming "No!" and she'd been trying to medicate the message instead of listening to it. Six months later, she called off the engagement. The anxiety? Gone. Your nervous system isn't malfunctioning. It's doing exactly what it's designed to do: alert you when something is off. The problem is, we've been taught to silence the alarm instead of checking for the fire. ## **What Your Anxiety Is Really Telling You** Most anxiety isn't about the future. It's about the past repeating itself. Your body remembers every time you were abandoned, betrayed, dismissed, or hurt. And now it's hypervigilant, scanning for threats that match those old patterns. That social anxiety? It might be your eight-year-old self remembering being laughed at in front of the class. That financial anxiety? Maybe it's your teenager self watching your parents fight about money until they divorced. When I sit with people in readings, I can often trace their anxiety back to specific moments when their trust was broken. When they learned that the world wasn't safe. When they discovered that people can hurt you, leave you, disappoint you. The anxiety isn't crazy. It's trying to protect you from experiencing that pain again. But here's the thing: that old protection strategy is now limiting your life. You're avoiding intimacy because you might get hurt. Staying in jobs that drain your soul because change feels dangerous. Playing small because being seen feels too risky. Are you with me? ## **The Body Keeps the Score** Anxiety lives in your body first, your mind second. That tightness in your chest, the knot in your stomach, the shallow breathing - these are your body's way of preparing for danger. Even when the only danger is an email you need to send or a conversation you need to have. During my years with Amma, I learned that the body holds our entire emotional history. Every unexpressed feeling, every swallowed truth, every moment we chose safety over authenticity gets stored in our tissues. Anxiety is often that stored energy trying to move through and out of your system. This is why talk therapy alone sometimes isn't enough. You can understand your anxiety perfectly and still feel it in your bones. Because trauma and fear get lodged below the level of thought, in the nervous system itself. I keep [magnesium glycinate](https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0B6CTYD6S?tag=spankyspinola-20) on my nightstand because it actually helps calm the nervous system at the cellular level *(paid link)*. But supplements alone won't do the work. You need to feel your way through this, not think your way through it. Start paying attention to where anxiety shows up in your body. Is it a tightness between your shoulder blades? A clenching in your jaw? A fluttering in your belly? Don't try to fix it immediately. Just notice it. Thank it for trying to protect you. And breathe into it. ## **Anxiety as Spiritual Awakening** Here's something most people don't realize: anxiety often appears when you're ready to grow. When your soul is pushing you toward your next level of evolution and your ego is terrified of letting go of the familiar. I've seen this pattern hundreds of times in readings. Someone will come to me drowning in anxiety, convinced something is wrong with them. But when we look at their life, they're often on the verge of a major breakthrough. Starting a business that aligns with their purpose. Leaving a relationship that's been slowly killing their spirit. Finally standing up to a family system that's kept them small. The anxiety isn't a sign you're going the wrong direction. It's often a sign you're going exactly the right direction, and your old self is terrified of who you might become. Think about a butterfly in the chrysalis. If it could think, it would probably be anxious as hell. Its entire reality is dissolving. Nothing makes sense anymore. But that dissolution is necessary for its transformation. Your anxiety might be the chrysalis. The uncomfortable space between who you were and who you're becoming. ## **Learning to Dialogue with Your Fear** Instead of fighting your anxiety, try having a conversation with it. I know this sounds weird, but stay with me here. The next time anxiety shows up, instead of immediately trying to make it go away, get curious about it. Ask it what it's trying to tell you. What is it afraid of? What does it need you to know? You might be surprised by what comes up. Maybe your anxiety about money is really about feeling valued. Maybe your social anxiety is about being accepted for who you really are. Maybe your health anxiety is about feeling powerless in your own life. When you start listening to anxiety as information instead of dismissing it as pathology, something shifts. You're no longer at war with yourself. You're learning to be your own ally. I often recommend keeping a journal specifically for these conversations. [This leather journal](https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01MFB63LA?tag=spankyspinola-20) has become my go-to for shadow work and emotional processing *(paid link)*. Write down what your anxiety feels like. What it's worried about. What it needs from you. You might discover patterns you never noticed before. ## **The Path Through, Not Around** The spiritual path isn't about transcending your humanity. It's about embracing it fully. That includes your anxiety, your fear, your messy emotional life. All of it. I spent years trying to meditate my anxiety away. Trying to breathe it away. Trying to think positive thoughts until it disappeared. But anxiety doesn't want to be fixed. It wants to be heard. When you stop trying to get rid of anxiety and start working with it, everything changes. You realize that you can feel anxious and still take action. You can be scared and still show up. You can have a racing heart and still speak your truth. Courage isn't the absence of fear. It's feeling the fear and doing what matters anyway. If you're dealing with serious anxiety, consider adding [ashwagandha](https://www.amazon.com/dp/B079K32QB6?tag=spankyspinola-20) to your toolkit *(paid link)*. It's an adaptogen that helps regulate cortisol and support your nervous system's resilience. But remember, healing anxiety isn't about finding the perfect supplement or technique. It's about changing your relationship with the feeling itself. ## **Your Anxiety Has Gifts** People with anxiety are often highly intuitive. Deeply empathic. Sensitive to energy and emotion in ways that others aren't. Your nervous system might be picking up on things that your mind hasn't consciously registered yet. Maybe your anxiety around certain people is your intuition warning you about their energy. Maybe your worry about future events is your psychic sensitivity picking up on potential timelines. Maybe your social anxiety is actually your soul saying "these aren't your people." I've done thousands of readings for highly anxious people, and I can tell you this: many of them are gifted intuitives who haven't learned to trust their sensitivity yet. They're receiving information through their nervous system and interpreting it as pathology instead of perception. This doesn't mean all anxiety is intuition. But some of it is. And learning to distinguish between fear-based anxiety and intuitive sensitivity is part of the spiritual journey. ## **Integration: Living with an Open Heart** The goal isn't to eliminate anxiety. The goal is to develop a mature relationship with it. To stop seeing it as evidence that something is wrong with you and start seeing it as information about what you need. Maybe you need more boundaries. Maybe you need to slow down. Maybe you need to speak a truth you've been avoiding. Maybe you need to take a risk you've been postponing. Maybe you need to grieve something you've been trying to move past too quickly. Anxiety often shows up when we're living disconnected from our deepest knowing. When we're trying to force ourselves into shapes that don't fit. When we're saying yes when we mean no, or staying silent when we need to speak. The path through anxiety is the path back to yourself. Back to your truth. Back to the life that's actually yours to live. Hard truth. You're not broken. You don't need to be fixed. You need to be heard. By yourself first, then by people who can hold space for all of who you are. Your anxiety isn't your enemy. It's the part of you that's been trying to keep you safe, even if its methods feel counterproductive now. Thank it for trying so hard. And then gently, lovingly, start listening to what it's really trying to tell you.