Ever wonder why anxiety shows up even when “nothing is wrong”?

Anxiety gets a bad reputation, but what if it’s not the enemy?

In this episode of Healing Is My Hobby, Jessica Colarco invites you to take a softer, more compassionate look at anxiety, not as a flaw or something to “fix,” but as a natural nervous system response trying to keep you safe. Together, we explore the many ways anxiety can show up in your thoughts, body, and daily life, and why understanding it can open the door to more choice, ease, and self-trust.

Jessica breaks down common anxiety disorders, including generalized anxiety, panic disorder, and OCD, shares how to recognize when anxiety may be interfering with your life, and offers practical, accessible tools to support regulation, without pressure or perfection. From CBT strategies and sleep support to self-care that actually calms the nervous system and mindfulness practices that bring you back to the present, this episode is about meeting anxiety with awareness instead of judgment.

If you’ve ever thought, “Why am I like this?”—this conversation gently reframes the question to: “What does my nervous system need right now?”

👉 Click here for your free Nervous System Year in Review printable

Key Takeaways

1. Anxiety is a nervous system response, not a personal flaw.
2. Understanding anxiety can provide more choices in how to respond.
3. Common anxiety disorders include GAD, panic disorder, and OCD.
4. Anxiety can manifest physically and emotionally.
5. Recognizing when anxiety interferes with life is crucial for seeking help.
6. Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) is effective for managing anxiety.
7. Improving sleep quality is essential for emotional regulation.
8. Self-care should focus on regulation, not indulgence.
9. Mindfulness practices can help ground individuals in the present.
10. Healing involves awareness, compassion, and consistent choices.

Chapters

00:00 Understanding Anxiety: A Compassionate Approach

01:40 Exploring Common Anxiety Disorders

06:39 Recognizing Symptoms and Seeking Help

07:58 Tools for Managing Anxiety

08:28 Cognitive Behavioral Techniques

10:15 Improving Sleep for Better Mental Health

11:48 The Importance of Self-Care

13:08 Practicing Mindfulness and Grounding Techniques

15:04 Embracing Healing and Moving Forward

16:17 NEWCHAPTER

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anxiety, mental wellness, personal growth, coping strategies, cognitive behavioral therapy, mindfulness, self-care, sleep hygiene, anxiety disorders, emotional regulation

Welcome to Healing Is My Hobby, the podcast where we explore the tools, practices, and curiosities that support mental wellness and personal growth. I'm Jessica Colarco, a licensed clinical social worker, and I believe healing doesn't have to feel heavy or clinical all the time. It can be something we play with, explore, and weave into our everyday lives.

This month, we're talking about something so many of us live with quietly, constantly, and sometimes exhaustingly, anxiety.

If anxiety has been showing up for you lately, I wanna say this first. You're not broken, you're not weak, and you're not failing at healing. Anxiety is not a personal flaw. It's a nervous system response. And when we understand it with more clarity and compassion, we actually gain more choice in how we respond to it.

Today is our expert insight episode. We'll really dive into a topic and today the topic is anxiety. We'll be talking about anxiety this whole month. Today we really wanna explore what anxiety is.

common anxiety disorders and how they show up.

symptoms across anxiety disorders, when we might want to seek help, and then really identifying some tools to help manage our anxiety.

Anxiety is your body's

detection system doing its job, sometimes a little too well. At its core, anxiety is the nervous system asking, am I safe right now? It shows up as racing thoughts, a tight chest, shallow breathing, restlessness, trouble sleeping, irritability, or that constant sense of something bad is about to happen.

For many people, anxiety isn't about what's happening right now. It's about what might happen, what could go wrong, or what you're afraid you won't be able to handle. And here's something important I want you to hear. Anxiety is often protective, not pathological. It's trying to keep you safe, even if the method it's using isn't helpful anymore. Let's explore some common anxiety disorders and how they show up.

When we talk about anxiety, it's important to remember that it doesn't look the same for everyone.

different anxiety disorders, and while they overlap, they can show up in very distinct ways.

Generalized anxiety disorder, or some people just call it GAD, G-A-D, this is often described as chronic excessive worry that feels hard to control. And common symptoms may include persistent worry about everyday things, feeling keyed up, restless or on edge, muscle tension, fatigue, difficulty concentrating, trouble sleeping, people with.

generalized anxiety disorder often say, I don't know why I'm anxious, I just always am.

Panic disorder. Panic disorder involves recurrent panic attacks, which are sudden surges of intense fear. Common symptoms include racing heart or chest pain, shortness of breath, dizziness or feeling faint, nausea, sweating or shaking, fear of losing control or dying. What makes panic disorder especially difficult is the fear of the next attack, which can lead to avoidance of places or situations.

often in my clinical practice, my clients experiencing panic disorder come to me from the ER. As you notice when I describe the symptoms, most of them are very physical and intense symptoms, and my clients think they're having a heart attack or that they're dying or something's going wrong. It's very, very physical. So then we have this physical, intense experience.

and then we start avoiding places and situations because we don't want that to happen again or to feel like we're losing control or going out in public. Social anxiety disorder. Social anxiety goes beyond shyness. It's an intense fear of being judged, embarrassed, or rejected. Common symptoms include fear of social interactions or performance situations, avoiding social events, blushing, sweating, or trembling in social situations,

overanalyzing conversations afterward, fear of saying or doing the wrong thing. This can be incredibly isolating even for people who appear confident on the outside. Obsessive-compulsive disorder, OCD. OCD often involves intrusive, unwanted thoughts, which are the obsessions, and repetitive behaviors or mental rituals, compulsions, done to reduce anxiety. There is also OCD Pure O,

where you just have the obsessions and not the compulsions. So we'd have a disturbing thought, I'm a terrible mother, but when I tap the wall, the compulsion, it neutralizes the feeling, right? So we have the obsession and then the ritual that helps to neutralize the anxiety. Symptoms include disturbing or intrusive thoughts, repetitive checking, counting or cleaning. That's what we always say, like,

That's not really OCD, but when someone who's very type A, who wants to clean all the time or have things a certain way, they'll say, I'm OCD. Again, that's not clinical OCD, but that is commonly what we think of OCD when someone's cleaning a lot or checking. So some people might have ⁓ a thought and then they have to go back in the house and check all the light switches or something. And there are mental rituals like reassuring, seeking or replaying events.

Again, a strong urge to neutralize the anxiety. Importantly, OCD thoughts are not desires. They are fear-based and unwanted. And we have phobias. Phobias are intense fears of specific objects or situations. Common examples are flying, driving, medical procedures, certain animals, heights, or enclosed spaces. The fear is often immediate and leads to avoidance. Even when the person knows

the fear is disproportionate.

There are common symptoms Across all types of anxiety, people often experience racing or looping thoughts, tight chest or shortness of breath, digestive issues, headaches or muscle tension, sleep disturbances, irritability, fatigue, difficulty relaxing. Anxiety doesn't just live in the mind, it also

in the

And here's an important question to ask yourself. Is anxiety interfering with my ability to live the life I want? If so, it may be time to seek support. Also, if anxiety feels constant or overwhelming, you're avoiding people, places, or experiences, sleep is consistently impacted, panic attacks are occurring, you feel stuck in fear-based patterns, anxiety is affecting relationships, work, or health,

You're relying on unhealthy coping strategies to get through the day. Seeking help is not a failure, it's a skill. Therapy can help you. It can help you understand your anxiety patterns, learn tools to regulate your nervous system, challenge unhelpful thought cycles, build confidence in your ability to cope, and medication for some people can be a supportive

You know, as we begin to understand our anxiety, we wanna recognize that it's not about labeling yourself, it's about finding clarity. When we know what we're working with, we can choose tools that actually help. And that brings us back to how we gently support anxiety, starting with our thoughts. So my first tip is getting control of your thoughts. One of the most effective tools we have for anxiety comes from cognitive behavioral therapy.

or CBT. Anxiety thrives on unexamined thoughts. CBT helps us slow down and ask.

Is this thought a fact or a fear? Am I predicting the future? Am I assuming the worst case scenario? Instead of arguing with anxiety, we get curious about it. A simple reframe you can try.

is an anxious thought, not a prophecy. You don't need to eliminate anxious thoughts to reduce anxiety, you just need to stop letting them run the whole show.

I say this so much in both of my podcasts and in my clinical practice, but the story that we tell ourself becomes our reality. I will give clients when I do CBT in my practice a photo of two people riding a roller coaster. And the face on one of the person is showing fear. The face of the other person is showing excitement and happiness. So how can two people be at the same place at the same time?

but have completely different experiences and feelings about it. As a

clinician, I would say it's their thoughts. So if you are thinking, I'm gonna die, I'm gonna die, I'm gonna die, you're gonna have a different experience than someone who is thinking, I love roller coasters, this is the best time of my life. And so the first step is really kind of notice the story that you're telling yourself, and then we can begin examining it and challenging it.

and asking is this really based on reality, like the questions I asked earlier, am I predicting the future? And then we can start changing the way we think, which is called cognitive restructuring.

My second tip is improving sleep quality and quantity. An anxious nervous

sleep create a feedback loop. When we don't sleep well, our emotional regulation drops, our stress hormones rise, our ability to tolerate uncertainty shrinks. Improving sleep isn't about perfection, it's about consistency.

So a few gentle supports when we explore sleep hygiene are going to bed and waking up around the same time each day, reducing stimulation before bed, screens, news, problem solving. One of the reasons we wanna reduce screens is that our body, when we get tired, when the lights start getting low, when it gets dark outside, our body starts naturally producing melatonin, which is our sleep hormone. And research has found,

that screens emit blue light, particularly our phones and computer screens, televisions as

blue light emitted from those screens reduces our body's natural production of melatonin. So it really impacts our sleep cycle. So that is one reason why I always recommend turning your screens off, all screens off, an hour before bed. You can instead create a wind down routine that tells your body it's safe to rest now.

Sleep is not a luxury, it is a foundational anxiety intervention and I believe it is a core of our health and wellbeing that we are getting a minimum of seven hours of sleep each night.

My third tip is to engage in regular self-care. Self-care isn't necessarily bubble baths and candles, although those can be wonderful. True self-care for anxiety is about regulation, not indulgence. I encourage you to ask yourself, what helps my body settle? What helps me feel grounded? What brings my nervous system back into balance? It's gonna be different for everybody. For you, it might look like gentle movement,

Time outside, staying no more often, reducing overcommitment, those two sound like boundaries, building in moments of rest before you're exhausted. Self-care is how we show our nervous system that safety is allowed, not something we have to earn. So for me, my self-care includes going to bed,

same time every night and getting again a minimum of seven hours of sleep. Really for me it's a minimum of eight hours of sleep. Reading books, moving my body regularly and exercising, and connection with my friends. My final tip today is practicing mindfulness. Mindfulness helps anxiety by bringing us out of the future and back into the present. Anxiety lives in what if and mindfulness lives in right now.

You don't have to meditate for 30 minutes to benefit. Mindfulness can be as simple as feeling your feet on the floor, noticing your breath, naming what you can see, hear, or touch. Mindfulness teaches your body, am here, I am safe, I am enough in this moment. So before we end today, I would love to guide you through a brief grounding exercise.

You can do this seated, lying down, or wherever you are.

Start by gently placing one hand on your chest.

and one on your belly. Take a slow breath in through your nose and a longer exhale through your mouth.

Let your shoulders soften. Now quietly say to yourself, I am noticing anxiety, not judging it, not trying to fix it, just noticing. Take another breath in.

Slowly exhale. Now ask your body, what do I need right now to feel just a little safer? It might be rest, reassurance, movement, or simply permission to pause. Let that answer land. Take one more slow breath in.

and a long, steady breath out.

When you're ready, gently bring your attention back.

Anxiety doesn't need to be fought. It needs to be understood. Healing doesn't happen through pressure or perfection. It happens through awareness, compassion, and small, consistent choices. If anxiety is part of your story, you are not alone and you are not behind. Before you go, here's a quick preview of our next therapy is my cardio workout. We'll be practicing how to recognize when anxiety has pulled you into what if mode.

and how to interrupt that cycle by anchoring back into the body and the present moment. Think of it as strength training for your nervous system. No perfection required. Thank you for being here and for letting healing be something gentle. I'll see you next time on Healing is My Hobby. If you wanna connect with me, I encourage you to look me up on Instagram at Healing is My Hobby

at Healing is My Hobby. You can DM me or message me.

can check out my website, healingismyhobby.com.

If you'd like

more tips, free downloads, I encourage you to sign up for my newsletter at healingismyhobby.com or at jessicacolorcoelcsw.com. Have a great day.