Are You Living Your Life, or Is Anxiety Living It for You?
Have you ever noticed how your anxiety influences your decision-making? It doesn't make a big announcement as the decision-maker. Instead, subconsciously, it may be such a familiar feeling or pattern that it feels like you are making logical choices, reasonable precautions, or simple preferences. Before you know it, you're living within the boundaries that anxiety has drawn for you, believing they're your own.

Here are five signs that anxiety may be running your life more than you realise:

1. Your Body Holds Tension as Its Default State
Your body may hold tension differently from what I offer here as an example. Your shoulders carry the weight of unspoken worries. Your jaw stays clenched from conversations you've had in your head, potentially replaying those conversations many times. Your breathing has become shallow and confined to your chest. You wake up tired because even sleep doesn't offer your nervous system true rest.

This debilitating tension has become so familiar that you've forgotten what relaxation feels like. Your body has adapted to anxiety as its baseline, and you've normalised living in a state of hypervigilance. When someone suggests you "just relax," you realise you genuinely don't know how. Your muscles have learned to brace for impact even when no threat is present.

2. You're Constantly Scanning for Threats or Problems That Might Arise
Your nervous system operates like a security system that's stuck in alarm mode. You walk into a room and immediately begin to assess exit routes, potential conflicts, or things that could go wrong. Your mind runs background checks on conversations, looking for signs of disapproval, judgment, or rejection. You've become an expert at reading between the lines, anticipating problems, and staying one step ahead of potential difficulties.

While this scanning once served as valid protection, it now consumes enormous amounts of mental and physical energy, leaving you feeling drained. If you tried to find the threat now, you might find that you can't. Yet your body is still on high alert. Of course, if you are still in danger, this response is absolutely essential.

3. You've Lost Touch with What Genuine Relaxation Feels Like
When you try to relax, your body doesn't know how to receive the message. You might sit down to rest, but your nervous system remains heightened. Even during activities that are supposed to be enjoyable, part of you stays vigilant, unable to fully surrender to the experience.

You've forgotten the feeling of true ease in your body, or you may not have ever experienced this feeling. Your nervous system has become so accustomed to activation that stillness feels foreign, even uncomfortable. You may find yourself creating busy work or mental tasks because genuine rest feels too vulnerable, too unprotected, or too unknown.

4. You Can't Even Find Rest In Your Sleep
Your mind treats bedtime as an opportunity to review the day's events, plan tomorrow's challenges, remind you of how bad/dumb/useless you are or rehearse conversations. Your body may feel tired, but your nervous system isn't ready to power down. You may lie awake with a racing heart, restless legs, or that feeling of being "wired and tired."

Even when you do fall asleep, your rest isn't restorative. You wake up feeling like you've been working all night, because in many ways, you have. Your nervous system has been processing, sorting, and staying alert even in sleep. Morning brings little relief because your body hasn't had the chance to truly recover.

5. You Feel Exhausted from Managing Internal Alarm Systems That Rarely Turn Off
You wake up tired and go to bed exhausted, not from physical activity but from the constant internal management of worry, tension, and hypervigilance. Your nervous system is working overtime, and you feel the fatigue in your bones.

This exhaustion is physical, emotional and mental. You're tired of being on guard, tired of feeling responsible for managing every possible outcome, tired of living in a body that feels like it's perpetually braced for impact. You've learned to function with an energy deficit. You long for a sense of ease that feels increasingly out of reach, and you may even feel exhausted by the idea of working to change these patterns.

There Is Another Way
If you recognise yourself in these signs, please know that you're not broken. Your nervous system has learned these patterns as a way of protecting you, often in response to experiences that required this level of vigilance.

The beautiful truth is that anxiety doesn't have to be your life's director. You can learn to hear its messages without letting it make your decisions. You can honour your nervous system's protective impulses while reclaiming leadership of your life.

Your anxiety has been trying to keep you safe, but safety without freedom isn't truly living. It's time to gently take back the reins of your life and discover who you are when anxiety isn't calling the shots.

You deserve to live a life that feels expansive rather than constrictive, present rather than perpetually worried, and authentically yours rather than dictated by fear of unresolved trauma patterns.

If these signs resonated with you, know that you're not alone in this experience. Many of the women I work with have found profound relief in comprehending how anxiety has been shaping their lives and learning practical ways to reclaim their autonomy. Take the next step toward transforming Anxiety, and I will meet you there.

See what's in the Anxiety Excursion here.

I love hearing from you and receiving your updates, so please keep them coming.

May you be well, may you be happy, and may you have inner peace.