Understanding Anxiety
Why It’s Not All in Your Head
Hi Friends!
Happy Monday! I’m deep into a mind-blowing book called Anxiety RX by Dr. Russell Kennedy, and it’s completely changing how I think about anxiety. I made a video about it: Is Anxiety trapped in your mind or body? Check it out. Dr. Kennedy, an MD who’s been through the wringer with his own anxiety, spent years searching for a solution to finally bring him peace. He’s tried everything—from standard treatments to a therapeutic dose of LSD, which led to one of his biggest insights. But as he reassures us, you don’t need to go on a psychedelic journey—he’s done the heavy lifting! (Though part of me wonders what my psyche would reveal if I ever went down that path... terrifying, probably!).
Do you ever feel anxious or irritated out of nowhere? Maybe you’re hanging out with friends, visiting family, or doing something you should enjoy, but there’s still that persistent knot of dread or agitation in your body. Perhaps you start spinning stories to make sense of it: “Maybe so-and-so is judging me,” or, “My family doesn’t actually care about me.” Your mind tries to connect the dots between the uncomfortable sensations in your body and some logical explanation.
For the longest time, I assumed anxiety was just a mental problem—a jumble of anxious thoughts I needed to wrestle into submission. But this book introduced me to a completely new way of thinking. According to Dr. Kennedy, anxiety isn’t about your thoughts; it’s an alarm sounding in your body.
“I wonder how much faster my healing might have been if I had understood this mind-body connection earlier. I’ve poured the cost of a university education into talk therapy—no exaggeration—and while it’s given me valuable tools, I often left sessions intellectually enlightened but emotionally stagnant. Traditional therapy didn’t address the alarm ringing in my body.”
Anxiety as an Alarm in the Body
Dr. Kennedy’s theory is that, while we often experience anxiety as racing thoughts, the real “pain” of anxiety lives in the body. Anxiety is a physical alarm—a visceral signal that something isn’t right. When this alarm goes off, our minds jump in to rationalize the feeling, often creating negative or self-critical stories. But those stories are just a response to the alarm, not the root cause.
Does this resonate with you? Have you ever caught yourself spinning unhelpful stories, only to realize later they weren’t based on reality? This idea hit me hard because, for years, I treated my anxiety as a purely mental problem—something I could “fix” with positive thinking, cognitive behavioral therapy, or sheer willpower. But this perspective is shifting my focus to my body, making me realize I’d been addressing only part of the problem.
The Bigger Picture: Why the Gap Matters
This gap between mind and body isn’t just a personal struggle—it’s a systemic one. The fields of psychiatry and psychology rarely address the physical roots of anxiety, and the consequences of this oversight are far-reaching. We treat anxiety as a purely cognitive issue, offering strategies for reframing thoughts and altering behaviors, but this approach often falls short.
Why is this gap so persistent? Part of it may be historical—psychology’s early emphasis on thought processes sidelined the body’s role in emotional healing. Another factor is structural: insurance often favors cognitive-based therapies over more holistic approaches like somatic therapy or hypnotherapy.
Check out a past essay on how I use Hypnotherapy to heal my fear of flying.
This disconnect deeply affected my own journey. I spent years chasing intellectual clarity about my struggles without understanding that my body was holding the real answers. I suspect many others have had similar experiences, pouring money and time into solutions that only scratched the surface.
Foreground Alarm vs. Background Alarm
Dr. Kennedy’s work helped me understand why I’ve felt trapped in cycles of managing anxiety rather than healing it. He describes two types of anxiety: foreground alarm and background alarm. Foreground alarm is tied to the present—it flares up in response to external stressors, like a tight deadline, an awkward social interaction, or a difficult conversation. These alarms tend to resolve when the situation does.
But background alarm is different. It’s rooted in the body, tied to old emotional pain or trauma that hasn’t been fully processed. Kennedy draws on the concept of the painbody, a term coined by Eckhart Tolle, to describe how unresolved hurt embeds itself physically in our bodies. This painbody hums quietly beneath the surface, feeding a constant sense of unease. Unlike foreground alarm, background alarm doesn’t disappear when circumstances improve—it stays, waiting for the next opportunity to be triggered.
By the way, Tolle has a great video where he explains how we identify with the painbody. Total side note: I once sat next to him at a restaurant in B.C. years ago—definitely a fan-girl moment!
A Shift Toward Wholeness
Now, I’m learning to approach my anxiety differently—not as a puzzle to solve with logic but as an alarm to soothe with presence. Somatic practices like breathwork, grounding exercises, and simply placing a hand on my chest have been more effective than anything I’ve ever talked through in therapy. It’s as though I’m finally speaking the same language as my body.
This isn’t to say that talk therapy is useless—it’s given me valuable tools and insights. But for me, the missing piece was always this: calming my body to calm my mind. I wish I had realized this sooner, but now that I have, I can’t unsee it.
And maybe that’s the beauty of this journey. Healing isn’t always linear, but every step gets us closer to understanding ourselves—and finding the peace we deserve.
My Personal Discovery: Recognizing the Alarm
I’ve started noticing this background alarm in my own life. It flares up when I talk about politics, watch certain movies, or navigate everyday social interactions. Over the years, I’ve tried cognitive-behavioral therapy, mindfulness, and other anxiety-management techniques, but none of them clicked like this understanding of anxiety as a physical, body-based alarm.
Reflecting on this now, I wonder how much faster my healing might have been if I had understood this mind-body connection earlier. I’ve poured the cost of a university education into talk therapy—no exaggeration—and while it’s given me valuable tools, I often left sessions intellectually enlightened but emotionally stagnant. Traditional therapy didn’t address the alarm ringing in my body.
The Next Step: Healing the Alarm
Dr. Kennedy emphasizes that healing starts with awareness: recognizing when the alarm is ringing without diving into thought patterns to explain it. For me, this shift alone has been transformative. I can pause and remind myself, “This isn’t about the situation—it’s about something deeper within me.”
If you’re feeling anxious today, try this: pause and take a deep breath. Ask yourself, Is this alarm in my body? Where do I feel it? You don’t have to “fix” it right away—sometimes, just noticing is the first step.
Anxiety isn’t all in your head, and healing it won’t be, either. Let’s start listening to our bodies. Who knows what we might discover?
If you enjoyed this article, please leave a comment. I love hearing from you! Did you have any lightbulb moments?
Have a wonderful week!
Fake Guru aka Ashley
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Disclaimer: Never is anything written on this blog by, Fake Guru, to be taken as medical advice or substituted for any type of healthcare advice given under the care of a qualified mental health care professional. This is for your personal curiosity, entertainment and delight!
That's quite interesting Ash. I usually don't suffer of anxiety but I've experienced that strangling grasp a few times. I've personally gone through some shamanic meditation, herbs therapy, woods walking to weave back some connection with nature and my inner self. It actually worked very well and I can resonate with some of the things you said in the essay. All goes though acceptance and "letting go" whatever grudge is putting you in that specific unhealthy situation. "Understanding the alarm" is a key factor and also learning to read the signs your body/mind is sending. I had to "let go" a lot, and a lot came back from the universe (true!) - was it easy? Fuck no. At all. But it had to be done and you have to trust (accept) a universal simple truth: connecting dots only works looking backwards. Something of us constantly dies to make space for the new. Holding up is against this self-healing cycle. And creating/writing something may help to clear the board...but this you already know since you helped in some sort of "genesis 2.0" of that old song project of mine :D
Great piece! The body really does keep the score.