Anxiety is a beast. It clutches your gut, sits on your chest like a weight, or causes your imagination to flood with worst-case scenarios at the worst possible times. Perhaps you’ve coped with it for as long as you can remember. Perhaps you’ve discovered how to operate in spite of it—white-knuckling through the day, busying yourself, pushing it down until it bursts in the middle of the night when you are at last still.
And perhaps, like many others, you’ve written it off as simply your natural state. A nervous individual. Too sensitive. Normally prone to worry.
But suppose your nervousness is not an inherent feature of your personality? What if it’s not a random quirk of your brain chemistry but rather a learned reaction—something you adopted in childhood to survive?
Anxiety as a Survival Strategy
Whether that meant an angry parent, emotional neglect, or simply a continuous undercurrent of stress, you learned to keep on guard if you grew up in an unpredictable environment. Your nervous system was programmed for hypervigilance, constant danger-seeking, endless readiness to respond.
Your body remembers, even if you experienced nothing “big”—no overt violence or clear trauma. Your nervous system adapted if you had to walk on eggshells to avoid conflict, continuously manage the mood of a parent, or anticipate criticism. Anxiety evolved into your natural safety alert system.
When one reaches adulthood, that same alert system is still working even in the absence of any threat. Your boss emails you in ambiguous terms. Your body responds as though you’re about to get in hot water. Your partner seems distant. Panic starts. A social gathering? Your stomach turns over, your heart races, and suddenly escape seems to be the best choice.
The worst thing about it? Anxiety of this type does not feel optional. It comes automatically. Your body does it before you are even able to think.
The Daoist Perspective: Why Anxiety Feels Stuck in Your Body
Emotions in Daoist medicine inhabit more than your head. Your body’s where they reside. And anxiety? Usually, especially in three important areas, it indicates that your qi (energy) is not flowing correctly.
- Liver Qi Stagnation: Have you ever felt as though anxiety is bottled-up energy without release? Stuck qi is what this is. It drives tension, restlessness, and the sense that you have to act without knowing where.
- Disharmony Between the Heart-Kidneys: Racing thoughts, restlessness, problems falling or staying asleep? This results from the Kidneys’ (your deeper instincts) and the Heart (your conscious thinking) not being aligned. Your body feels drained while your head spins.
- Deficiency of Spleen Qi: Your Spleen, which controls digestion and mental processing, may be weak if your anxiety consists in overthinking, persistent worry, or digestive problems. This results in difficulty feeling grounded.
From a Daoist healing standpoint, persistent anxiety is about enabling your qi to flow in a way that helps you feel safe; it’s not only about calming your thoughts.
So, What Can You Do About It?
Surely you’ve figured out that anxiety doesn’t vanish just because you tell it to. You must retrain your nervous system, a task best accomplished via your body.
1. Get Your Qi Moving
Your anxiety’s manifesting as qi stagnation if it feels caught in your stomach, neck, or chest. Try this:
- Deep belly breathing: Sit in a chair or lie down, and place a hand on your lower belly, below your belly button. Inhale slowly and deeply to where your hand is, stretching your lower abdomen. Repeat ten times. This grounds you and downwardly moves stagnant qi.
- Press Pericardium 6: Three finger-widths down from the crease of your inner wrist, this acupressure point (inside your wrist) helps relax the heart and reduce anxiety. When you get on edge, softly press and massage it for one minute.
2. Rewire the Anxiety Loop
Anxiety is a learned response, hence you can unlearn it. Starting with a basic approach:
- Journal Prompt: What early safety messages did I pick up?
- You discovered that folks were unpredictable?
- You realized that love came with conditions?
- You came to believe that you had to be “good” to be accepted?
Identifying these old messages enables you to see when anxiety is a reaction to the past rather than the present.
3. Adjust Your Daily Routine for a Calmer Mind
- Avoid the caffeine overload: Caffeine amplifies anxiety. Try substituting a warm herbal tea such as chamomile or peppermint, or roasted barley tea for your second, or third, coffee.
- Eat grounding foods: Warm, prepared foods like soups, stews, and root vegetables will help level you if you often feel floating or unstable. Steer clear of cold/raw foods since they compromise digestion and Spleen function.
- Create a nighttime wind-down ritual: Before bed, dim the lights, switch off screens, and perform a basic breathwork exercise if your anxiety flares at night. The transition facilitates a downshift of your nervous system.
Final Thoughts: You’re Not Your Anxiety
If years of living with anxiety have become second nature to you, it can seem as though it permanently defines your personality. But that’s not the case. Though a deeply wired one, it’s just a pattern. And patterns can be transformed.
Beginning small is a good approach. Try one of the ideas on this post. Observe what changes. Healing is about providing your nervous system repeated experiences of safety, over and over until they begin to stick. This is not about eradicating anxiety over night.
Of what you’ve read today, does any of it speak to you? How have your own anxiety patterns been manifesting? Comment or offer ideas; I would be really interested to hear your experience.