1259: Feeling Stuck In Anxiety: Why It Doesnt Mean Youre Not Healing

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Anxiety Coaches Podcast (0:37): Welcome to the anxiety coaches podcast, a relaxing and informative show where we explore anxiety, panic, and PTSD, sharing how you can overcome them for life.

Gina Ryan (0:53): Aloha. Welcome back to the anxiety coaches podcast. I'm your host and coach, Gina Ryan, and I am so happy to be with you again today as together we can consider the many ways to bring your mind and body back to its natural peace and calm. In today's episode, I'm talking about feeling stuck in anxiety. Have you ever had that feeling?

Gina Ryan (1:21): And I want you to know today we're gonna talk about why it doesn't mean that you're not healing. You know, maybe you've been working on your anxiety for months, maybe years, like many people that I work with. But you've learned the tools. You've had good stretches. And then one difficult day shows up, and suddenly you're wondering, why am I still dealing with this?

Gina Ryan (1:47): Am I ever going to get there? Is this ever going to end? Now be honest with yourself. Have you ever asked that? Well, it's not uncommon to ask those questions.

Gina Ryan (2:02): Today isn't really about getting unstuck, but it's about realizing that what feels like being stuck and never going to get there wherever there is is a very normal part of healing your nervous system. If you feel stuck, it doesn't mean you're not healing. It often means you are changing in ways that aren't immediately visible. So if you're feeling stuck, let's talk about finding your way forward. One of the hardest parts of anxiety recovery isn't usually the panic.

Gina Ryan (2:48): It's the feeling that nothing is changing. Right? You practice. You put the time in. You learn.

Gina Ryan (2:57): You're digging into all kinds of new information. You meditate. You breathe. You challenge yourself. And then one difficult week arrives, and your anxious mind whispers, see, you're right back where you started.

Gina Ryan (3:16): But here's something important to remember. Feeling stuck is not the same as being stuck. Healing rarely moves in a straight line. If you've ever been in my group or seen any of my posts online, I have that little drawing that I did of a straight line, what we think healing looks like. It's a straight line going up and to the right, and then it just keeps going with a little arrowhead on the end of it.

Gina Ryan (3:48): We're going from left to right, from bottom to top. That's what we think it looks like. But healing rarely moves in that straight line. What it looks like and what it is are very different. Healing moves.

Gina Ryan (4:05): It can be like a ball of yarn, a tangled ball of yarn. It can look like a spiral. Actually, healing and life moves in spirals, all of our life in layers, in tiny nervous system shifts that often go unnoticed until one day you realize, wait, six months ago this would have been completely difficult for me. Six months ago this situation would have taken me down, and it didn't. Progress often becomes visible only in hindsight.

Gina Ryan (4:46): That's why I often think about it as a surfer paddling out to the horizon. You can just keep paddling and paddling and paddling in that ocean. In order to see how far you have come from the shore, you have to sit up on the board and turn around and see. Now you can see the progress, not when you were going toward the horizon. You have to turn around and look.

Gina Ryan (5:14): Maybe you could do that today to take a moment to just sit and look back because progress often only becomes visible in hindsight. So let's see if we can think of a different way to think about the word stuck. Right? When we live with anxiety for months or years or decades, believe me, it has happened, and those people actually change too. Our nervous system becomes very good at predicting danger when we have been with this for a long time.

Gina Ryan (5:52): Its job, our nervous system's job that is, isn't happiness. The nervous system's job is survival. Unfortunately, it begins treating uncertainty like new experiences and physical sensations and even moments of peace and calm, right, as things to monitor. This isn't because you're weak or because you're not going anywhere. It's because your nervous system learned this pattern through what?

Gina Ryan (6:28): Through repetition. And the beautiful news is anything learned through repetition can also gently be unlearned through repetition. So sometimes stuck, the word stuck really means, instead of asking ourselves, why am I stuck? Try asking, what might my nervous system need right now? Just this moment, what does it need?

Gina Ryan (6:58): Perhaps it needs more rest, not more challenges or pushing in this moment. Maybe it needs more consistency, not more new techniques. Maybe it needs more self compassion, not more self criticism and beating myself up. Maybe it needs more tiny experiences of safety, not another Internet search. Before we begin, let's hear from the sponsors that support the show.

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Gina Ryan (13:11): Your brain may be simply asking, are you sure we're safe enough to do something different? Your brain doesn't care whether you're free. It cares whether you're alive. If your brain is hardwired solely for biological survival rather than personal liberation, discerning what to do requires overriding your autopilot because your nervous system equates safety with the familiar. You must use conscious intention to bridge the gap between just existing and truly living.

Gina Ryan (13:58): So ask yourself, when resistance shows up, gently explore these ideas. What feels unsafe right now? Can you ask yourself that next time you get that feeling of resistance? Maybe you could ask, is there actual danger here, or is it familiar discomfort? They're different.

Gina Ryan (14:26): Actual danger is different from the familiar discomfort of things. Am I trying to eliminate anxiety, you can ask yourself, or learn that I can live well even when stress and anxiety visit. Journal as if two parts of you are talking. Your anxious mind says everything it's worried about, and then let your wise mind respond with kindness, not arguments. That would be a beautiful journal experience.

Gina Ryan (15:08): Try that out for yourself. Take the left hand page and write out exactly what it is that your anxious mind is worried about. Then let your wise mind respond on the right hand page with kindness, not with arguments. Give it a try. Let's talk about some ways to gently shake yourself loose.

Gina Ryan (15:35): Notice that I'm talking here about gently. We don't wanna be pushing ourselves because anxiety already pushes hard. Recovery doesn't have to push hard. Healing doesn't have to push. You wanna return to your body.

Gina Ryan (15:55): Instead of trying to think your way out using your head for everything, help your body remember safety. Try a slow walk. Not a power walk, not an exercise walk, or running late and gotta get to the car walk. No. A slow meandering kind of walk.

Gina Ryan (16:20): Maybe wander. Maybe you could try stretching. Again, not stretching for exercise or a particular routine. That has its place, of course. But just stretching.

Gina Ryan (16:36): Like, roll out the yoga mat and just, what does my body feel like it wants to do? Listen to your body. Return to it. Not following somebody's prompts or a routine that you have memorized and are going to go through, but just what does my body want? Try humming.

Gina Ryan (16:59): You can do this anywhere, anytime. Humming. Give yourself a check back into your body by humming. Another way that you can remember safety is by gently rocking. People do this intuitively.

Gina Ryan (17:18): You might notice people rocking. They might be just returning to their own inner safety by doing that. Another way is to place your hand over your heart. Just do that right now. Why not help your body right this moment with me remember safety?

Gina Ryan (17:42): It's showing ourselves we are here. We are here, and we can protect this heart. Another way is to simply feel your feet on the floor inside of your shoes. Bring the awareness to your feet. Ground them in.

Gina Ryan (18:00): Bring that energy down. Notice those toes. And another is my tried and true favorite of longer exhalations. Easy enough to do. The more you do it, the more your body will remember to do it even before you are consciously thinking to do it.

Gina Ryan (18:22): Believe me. It's true. Safety is experienced, not thought into existence. Maybe you can do one small new thing. The anxious brain loves predictability, but our recovery and our healing grows through gentle novelty.

Gina Ryan (18:46): Notice I said gentle again. We're not going to push ourselves into large novel experiences. We're going to try some gentle novelty, such as taking a different route to work or sitting somewhere new. Maybe when you go to lunch, you sit at the same table in the same chair every day. Maybe you could sit somewhere new.

Gina Ryan (19:15): Maybe you could eat outside, take your lunch outside. Maybe you could visit a bookstore and travel down the aisles that you don't normally travel down. Listen to some unfamiliar music. Music is so easy for us to access nowadays. Back in the day, we had to go out and buy albums.

Gina Ryan (19:42): And in order to listen to something new and novel, I guess we could find something perhaps on the radio. But in order to have it in time in your own home, the exact thing, you would have to buy music for it. Now you can go on the Internet and explore some different kinds of music. This is a gentle, novel way to expand and try something new. And tiny acts of new teach your brain that uncertainty isn't automatically dangerous.

Gina Ryan (20:20): That uncertain place that you're sitting now or the uncertain rose in the bookstore and this unfamiliar new music, it's okay. It isn't automatically dangerous. Another thing we can do is to borrow hope. When you've lived with anxiety for a long time, your brain selectively remembers the hard days. So borrow hope from someone else's story.

Gina Ryan (20:53): I hope that you are borrowing hope from listening to the bits and pieces of my story or from the earlier episodes of this week of Diane's story. Listen to recovery stories. Read your journal from six months ago. You'll see your own recovery journey and your story. Talk with someone who believes in you until you can believe again.

Gina Ryan (21:25): Sometimes we borrow hope before we can grow our own. And I hope you know that I am here holding the light of hope for you until you have lit your own and you can find your own way. We are here to keep that hope alive. I hope you can feel that. We can also stop measuring every day.

Gina Ryan (21:53): Healing isn't measured daily. I know if any of you have ever been on other kinds of physical healing journeys, it isn't the day after day that we see the changes. And the same is very true with our nervous system. Healing isn't measured day one to day two. It's measured over seasons.

Gina Ryan (22:18): If you weigh your child every hour, you'll miss their growth. Recovery works the same way. Instead of asking, am I better today? Ask, am I responding differently than I would have six months ago? Let's put some time and space in there.

Gina Ryan (22:44): And also look for signs of progress that you might be missing because progress isn't always fewer anxious thoughts. Sometimes it's things like recovering faster from when you did have a difficult time. It's staying present longer. It's canceling fewer plans because you're freaking out. It's being kinder to yourself instead of a taskmaster.

Gina Ryan (23:14): It's feeling fear without immediately having to escape, and it's trusting yourself just a little bit more. These are profound nervous system victories, and I want you to celebrate them. Try becoming curious instead of critical. Rather than saying, why can't I get over this? Try, that's interesting what's happening here.

Gina Ryan (23:48): Curiosity calms the nervous system, and judgment contracts it. So add that curiosity. Things can be just interesting. They don't have to be good or bad. And remember your future self.

Gina Ryan (24:07): Imagine the version of you one year from now. What would they thank you for continuing? Usually not perfection. Usually, it's consistency. The future you would be saying thank you for being consistent and keeping going.

Gina Ryan (24:30): And one more thing. If you've been anxious for years, you may secretly believe that anxiety has become your identity. It hasn't. It's become familiar. Those are not the same thing.

Gina Ryan (24:45): There is still a calm, steady, wise part of you beneath all the noise. Recovery isn't creating someone new. It's uncovering the person that anxiety has been talking over. The core of you still exists. You will be a brand new sparkling different you from all of the changes that you have learned through this journey, but that still calm, steady, wise part of you is still there, like I said, beneath the noise.

Gina Ryan (25:26): You know, you can write your own prescription. Write down your own plan before you need it. Complete these kind of prompts. Write it down in your journal. When I begin feeling stuck, I will remind myself, fill in the blank.

Gina Ryan (25:46): Three things that help my nervous system feel safe, put down one, two, and three. Someone I can reach out to, fill in the blank. A place where I feel grounded, fill it in. One tiny brave step I can always take is, fill in the blank. And what I know is true even when anxiety says otherwise.

Gina Ryan (26:19): Fill in that blank. Let yourself have this little worksheet or this little prescription, if you will. Sometimes what feels like being stuck isn't actually a lack of progress at all. It's the nervous system asking for one more season of gentle repetition. We don't build freedom by having one fearless day.

Gina Ryan (26:46): We build it by teaching our brain over and over that we are safe enough to stay present with this moment. It's less about fighting anxiety and more about befriending the nervous system while we're still moving toward a full, meaningful life. Healing doesn't have an expiration date. Even after months or years of being anxious and full of stress, the brain and nervous system remain capable of change, especially through small, consistent experiences of safety, flexibility, and trust. You got this.

Gina Ryan (27:36): Thanks for listening and being a part of this healing journey. Each episode is a reminder that you are not your anxiety. You are so much more. And now for today's quote. The curious paradox is that when I accept myself just as I am, then I can change.

Unknown Speaker (28:05): And that's from Carl Rogers. I'll be back in a few more days with another podcast. Until then, be well and aloha.

Anxiety Coaches Podcast (28:17): Thanks so much for joining us for today's episode of the Anxiety Coaches Podcast. Find more information at the anxietycoachespodcast.com.