From Survival to Self‑Understanding

Recognizing Anxiety: My Experience Living in Survival Mode

Part One:

I remember back in 2020, when I first felt anxiety move through my body. At the time, I didn’t have language for what was happening. I didn’t know it was anxiety. All I knew was that something felt deeply wrong.

There was panic in my mind and panic in my body—constant, relentless, and unfamiliar.

As days turned into months, and months turned into a year, that panic only intensified. What started as something subtle slowly began to take over every part of my life.

Physically, my body was in a constant state of distress. I was shaking, my nervous system felt permanently dysregulated, and over time I began to lose the ability to eat normally. Food no longer felt safe in my body.

Mentally, I couldn’t make rational decisions. My thoughts felt loud, intrusive, and overwhelming, as if logic had been replaced by fear.

Emotionally, I was completely unregulated. I didn’t know how to process what I was feeling, and eventually those unmanaged emotions turned into full‑blown anxiety and panic attacks.

Spiritually, I felt stuck—disconnected from myself and from any sense of peace or direction.

At that point, my life became a cycle of triggers, uncontrolled emotional responses, irrational thoughts, and physical consequences. I was desperate to escape the emotional pain I was experiencing, and I didn’t yet have the tools to understand what my body was signaling.

Looking back, I can see that my nervous system was in survival mode—responding to perceived threat, not logic—trying to keep me alive in the only way it knew how.

Until one moment in particular.

While in the midst of a panic attack, I heard a small voice say, “I cannot keep living like this anymore.”

Although at the time I understood that I no longer wanted to continue living life in panic, I had no idea how to help myself. Eventually, I started reading a book that was gifted to me called The Body Keeps the Score.

I started going to therapy, where I was then recommended another book, How to Get Out of Your Mind and Into Your Life. That was the moment I stopped surviving silently and began searching for understanding.