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Why Trying Harder to Feel Calm Makes Anxiety Worse (And What Your Nervous System Actually Needs) · Motherhood Uncut

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: You have read the articles, you have downloaded the apps, you've done all the breathing exercises, the journaling, you've shown up for therapy, and the constant worry, maybe you call it anxiety, is still there.
• 0:12
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe it's a little bit better on good days, but it hasn't lifted the way you thought it would by now.
• 0:18
  SPEAKER_00: You have been extremely consistent, so disciplined, added strategy on top of strategy.
• 0:24
  SPEAKER_00: You track your sleep, whether you moved your body, whether you were present enough at dinner last night.
• 0:30
  SPEAKER_00: And underneath all of it, there's still this hum, this like waiting for the next shoe to drop.
• 0:37
  SPEAKER_00: I have worked with thousands of mothers.
• 0:39
  SPEAKER_00: The ones working the hardest to get better are often the most stuck.
• 0:43
  SPEAKER_00: And here's what I need you to hear.
• 0:45
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm gonna explain exactly how this works before this video is over.
• 0:51
  SPEAKER_00: The effort itself might be one of the main reasons that the anxiety isn't resolving.
• 0:57
  SPEAKER_00: Not because you're doing it wrong.
• 0:59
  SPEAKER_00: Clearly, you are doing everything right because of something specific about how your nervous system reads effort and what it concludes when you're working this hard to feel okay.
• 1:11
  SPEAKER_00: In this video today, I'm gonna show you what your nervous system is actually doing when you're trying to fix your anxiety, why that mechanism backfires for high achievers specifically, how to recognize the effort pattern in your own body right now, and what to do instead.
• 1:29
  SPEAKER_00: Something that feels almost too simple, but it works.
• 1:33
  SPEAKER_00: When something's wrong, you work harder, right?
• 1:36
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, that's the belief that got you through school, through your career, through every difficult thing you've ever navigated as a capable adult.
• 1:44
  SPEAKER_00: The belief is if I try hard enough and smart enough and consistently enough, I will figure this out.
• 1:50
  SPEAKER_00: I'll get on top of it.
• 1:52
  SPEAKER_00: I will get better, so to speak.
• 1:54
  SPEAKER_00: For high achievers, this approach has worked a thousand times.
• 1:58
  SPEAKER_00: So of course it becomes the default.
• 2:00
  SPEAKER_00: Something hurts, something's not working.
• 2:03
  SPEAKER_00: You increase the input, you research, you optimize, you build some kind of a plan, you do the plan harder when the first version doesn't work fast enough, right?
• 2:12
  SPEAKER_00: This is what competence looks like in every other area of your life.
• 2:17
  SPEAKER_00: Of course, you brought it here to motherhood with you.
• 2:19
  SPEAKER_00: Your nervous system doesn't respond to an increased effort the way a work project does, though.
• 2:25
  SPEAKER_00: When you're putting in all this effort to manage your anxiety, your nervous system is watching what you're doing.
• 2:31
  SPEAKER_00: And here is what it concludes.
• 2:34
  SPEAKER_00: This must be dangerous because she's working this hard to survive it.
• 2:38
  SPEAKER_00: Effort signals threat.
• 2:40
  SPEAKER_00: The more energy you put into managing the anxiety, the more your nervous system registers that something serious is happening that requires managing.
• 2:49
  SPEAKER_00: It's reading your behavior.
• 2:51
  SPEAKER_00: And your behavior says, we're not safe yet.
• 2:53
  SPEAKER_00: Your nervous system can't tell the difference between working hard to get calm and bracing against something dangerous.
• 3:01
  SPEAKER_00: So if effort isn't the answer, what on earth does a high achiever do with that?
• 3:05
  SPEAKER_00: Because I'm one of them.
• 3:07
  SPEAKER_00: And when I first realized this, I felt completely stuck.
• 3:11
  SPEAKER_00: Not working hard never felt like an option.
• 3:13
  SPEAKER_00: The path forward is actually just a different relationship with the discomfort itself.
• 3:19
  SPEAKER_00: Your nervous system needs to accumulate evidence that you are safe when you stop managing.
• 3:24
  SPEAKER_00: Larissa came to me having tried everything.
• 3:26
  SPEAKER_00: She described herself as both numb and anxious, completely disconnected from her baby, who by this point was two.
• 3:33
  SPEAKER_00: She hadn't stopped working at it for months.
• 3:36
  SPEAKER_00: And within weeks of learning to help her body feel safe, she started to connect.
• 3:42
  SPEAKER_00: She stopped working harder at getting calm and let her body settle instead.
• 3:47
  SPEAKER_00: The confidence came back because she stopped running a strategy and let her body catch up.
• 3:54
  SPEAKER_00: When you recognize that effort is part of the loop, you can start to unhook from it.
• 3:59
  SPEAKER_00: You can notice that when you're in fix it mode and ask a different question.
• 4:04
  SPEAKER_00: What would happen if I did nothing for the next 60 seconds?
• 4:08
  SPEAKER_00: Is it possible that nothing bad would happen?
• 4:11
  SPEAKER_00: But understanding why effort backfires is only the first part.
• 4:15
  SPEAKER_00: Part two is about what your nervous system is actually looking for.
• 4:20
  SPEAKER_00: And it's the opposite of what the achievement brain reaches for.
• 4:24
  SPEAKER_00: So the belief underneath the effort is this: if I can just get the anxiety to stop, I'll feel safe.
• 4:30
  SPEAKER_00: If I can just get calm, I can relax.
• 4:33
  SPEAKER_00: The calm comes first and then the safety.
• 4:36
  SPEAKER_00: So you work toward the calm, right?
• 4:39
  SPEAKER_00: You earn it, you produce it through discipline and enough of the right interventions.
• 4:44
  SPEAKER_00: This sequencing makes sense.
• 4:46
  SPEAKER_00: You feel bad, you do something about it, you feel better.
• 4:49
  SPEAKER_00: That's how most problems work.
• 4:51
  SPEAKER_00: You're hungry, you eat, you're not hungry.
• 4:53
  SPEAKER_00: You're cold, you put on a coat.
• 4:55
  SPEAKER_00: Cause action resolution.
• 4:57
  SPEAKER_00: The assumption is that calm is something you create through the right actions.
• 5:02
  SPEAKER_00: The nervous system actually runs in the opposite direction, though.
• 5:06
  SPEAKER_00: The experience of safety comes before the feeling of calm, before that feeling even becomes possible.
• 5:13
  SPEAKER_00: Your nervous system needs to experience that you're okay before it'll stop running the threat response.
• 5:18
  SPEAKER_00: And the experience of safety can't be performed or forced or earned.
• 5:22
  SPEAKER_00: Your body arrives at it through accumulating small moments of being inside discomfort and discovering that you're still okay.
• 5:30
  SPEAKER_00: Not calm, okay.
• 5:32
  SPEAKER_00: Those are different things.
• 5:33
  SPEAKER_00: You're waiting for calm before you give yourself permission to stop bracing, but the bracing is what's preventing the calm.
• 5:40
  SPEAKER_00: So what does it look like to stop bracing?
• 5:43
  SPEAKER_00: Is that even possible when it feels like the anxiety is in charge?
• 5:47
  SPEAKER_00: It's that bracing that comes with waiting for the shoe to drop.
• 5:51
  SPEAKER_00: The achievement brain wants to solve this, but the nervous system actually needs to be with it.
• 5:58
  SPEAKER_00: And those two things are pulling in opposite directions.
• 6:02
  SPEAKER_00: What works is allowing settling, staying present in the discomfort without doing anything about it, and letting your body register that you survived it without the fix.
• 6:12
  SPEAKER_00: Katie, one of the mothers I worked with, had built a full architecture around managing her anxiety.
• 6:18
  SPEAKER_00: Every variable was accounted for.
• 6:21
  SPEAKER_00: She was both hyper-vigilant and so exhausted.
• 6:24
  SPEAKER_00: And the anxiety was still running because it had never gotten the signal it was actually looking for, that she could be inside the hard feeling and still be okay without doing anything about it.
• 6:35
  SPEAKER_00: Once she learned to regulate from the inside and she stopped managing from the outside, the what if thoughts actually started to quiet.
• 6:44
  SPEAKER_00: The shift was really different.
• 6:46
  SPEAKER_00: When you understand that your nervous system is looking for evidence of safety, you can start offering it that by pausing the old strategy.
• 6:56
  SPEAKER_00: But before you offer your body something different, you have to be able to recognize what the effort pattern actually feels like from the inside.
• 7:04
  SPEAKER_00: And point number three is gonna help you find that right now.
• 7:08
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, so for just a moment, if this is landing, go ahead and subscribe.
• 7:13
  SPEAKER_00: I post a new video every single week.
• 7:15
  SPEAKER_00: And this series goes deep into exactly what postpartum anxiety is so hard to shift, why it's so hard to shift for high achieving moms and what actually works.
• 7:24
  SPEAKER_00: Go ahead and hit subscribe so you don't miss the next one.
• 7:27
  SPEAKER_00: All right, take a second right now.
• 7:29
  SPEAKER_00: Don't analyze anything, just notice.
• 7:32
  SPEAKER_00: Where are your shoulders?
• 7:33
  SPEAKER_00: Is your jaw soft or are your back teeth touching?
• 7:37
  SPEAKER_00: Are you breathing into your chest or into your belly?
• 7:40
  SPEAKER_00: Is there a tightness anywhere in your body that you've been carrying around so long that you actually stopped noticing it?
• 7:47
  SPEAKER_00: That tightness is the effort pattern.
• 7:50
  SPEAKER_00: It's what bracing looks like in the body.
• 7:52
  SPEAKER_00: Those raised shoulders and the clenched jaw and the held breath, the eyes that are always slightly scanning for danger.
• 8:00
  SPEAKER_00: Your nervous system is running a threat detection program at a low hum constantly because it's learned that vigilance is what keeps you safe.
• 8:08
  SPEAKER_00: And that program is exhausting.
• 8:10
  SPEAKER_00: You're working hard in your body all the time, whether you notice it or not.
• 8:14
  SPEAKER_00: So right now, without changing anything, let's notice this again.
• 8:17
  SPEAKER_00: Are your shoulders lower than your ears?
• 8:19
  SPEAKER_00: Do you take a slow breath into your belly, or does it stall in your chest?
• 8:24
  SPEAKER_00: Is there a place in your body that you're holding and wouldn't have named until I just asked about it?
• 8:31
  SPEAKER_00: That's the effort your nervous system is doing beneath the level of your thoughts.
• 8:37
  SPEAKER_00: Your body is doing it too.
• 8:39
  SPEAKER_00: Every muscle that's holding is your nervous system actually doing its job.
• 8:45
  SPEAKER_00: It's bracing against what might be coming.
• 8:48
  SPEAKER_00: It's ready to respond.
• 8:49
  SPEAKER_00: It's been doing this for a very long time, probably before motherhood.
• 8:53
  SPEAKER_00: And it genuinely believes this is keeping you safe.
• 8:57
  SPEAKER_00: That's what makes it so hard to put down because it's never gotten to find out what happens when it stops.
• 9:05
  SPEAKER_00: I had a client once who told me that she believed that her anxiety, like the anxiety itself, was protecting her and her children.
• 9:13
  SPEAKER_00: She wanted so desperately to stop feeling anxious, but her whole system believed that without it, something bad would happen.
• 9:20
  SPEAKER_00: She saw her anxiety as both the problem and the solution.
• 9:23
  SPEAKER_00: She felt stuck.
• 9:24
  SPEAKER_00: And this is what the anxiety cycle looks like for many, many moms.
• 9:29
  SPEAKER_00: You have permission to stop trying to fix your anxiety.
• 9:33
  SPEAKER_00: Your nervous system needs one thing: enough small experiences of being inside the discomfort and discovering that it passes, that you're still okay, that nothing catastrophic happened when you stopped breecing.
• 9:47
  SPEAKER_00: And that's what creates felt safety.
• 9:50
  SPEAKER_00: And felt safety is what actually resolves the anxiety.
• 9:54
  SPEAKER_00: When Larissa stopped trying to manage her anxiety and started simply to stay present inside of it, something shifted in her body within weeks because she stopped doing the thing that was keeping her nervous system in threat mode.
• 10:06
  SPEAKER_00: The anxiety actually had room to move, and it did.
• 10:09
  SPEAKER_00: It always does.
• 10:10
  SPEAKER_00: So stop adding interventions on top of interventions.
• 10:13
  SPEAKER_00: Stop the tracking, the optimizing, the monitoring of whether your coping strategies are working or not.
• 10:19
  SPEAKER_00: For right now, one moment at a time, when anxiety arises, pause before you reach for anything and feel that anxiety in your body.
• 10:27
  SPEAKER_00: Like feel, feel it.
• 10:29
  SPEAKER_00: That is different than thinking about it, right?
• 10:32
  SPEAKER_00: Notice the sensations in your belly and in your chest and your shoulders and jaw for just 30 seconds without doing anything about it.
• 10:39
  SPEAKER_00: To give your nervous system one piece of evidence, you can be here inside of this without fixing it, and you're still okay.
• 10:46
  SPEAKER_00: Uncomfortable, sure, but you're okay.
• 10:48
  SPEAKER_00: And tonight I want to give you a specific physical practice to make this real in your body, not just an idea or an intention.
• 10:57
  SPEAKER_00: Your nervous system stores safety in the body, not in thoughts.
• 11:01
  SPEAKER_00: When you release the physical bracing, even briefly, you interrupt the threat detection loop at the level it's actually running.
• 11:08
  SPEAKER_00: You're giving your body a direct experience of what it feels like when the effort stops.
• 11:14
  SPEAKER_00: That experience is what your nervous system has been missing and it accumulates.
• 11:19
  SPEAKER_00: Each time you do this, your body gets a little more evidence that stopping the brace isn't dangerous.
• 11:26
  SPEAKER_00: And over time, the bracing becomes less automatic because the body has learned it doesn't need to.
• 11:32
  SPEAKER_00: Now, the mothers who make the fastest progress are the ones who learn to let their bodies exhale to soften.
• 11:39
  SPEAKER_00: And once you feel that, feel-feel it, once you have one real moment of your shoulders dropping and your jaws softening and your breath reaching your belly without effort, you understand something.
• 11:51
  SPEAKER_00: Your brain can't from an article you read or a podcast you listened to.
• 11:56
  SPEAKER_00: Your body knows how to settle.
• 11:58
  SPEAKER_00: It just needs to be given the chance.
• 12:01
  SPEAKER_00: So tonight, find one quiet moment, even 60 seconds, and try this.
• 12:06
  SPEAKER_00: Step one, stand or sit with your feet flat on the floor.
• 12:10
  SPEAKER_00: Notice where you're bracing, shoulders, jaw, belly, hands.
• 12:13
  SPEAKER_00: Don't fix it yet.
• 12:15
  SPEAKER_00: Just find it.
• 12:16
  SPEAKER_00: Notice it.
• 12:17
  SPEAKER_00: Step two, drop your shoulders deliberately.
• 12:19
  SPEAKER_00: Unclench your jaw.
• 12:20
  SPEAKER_00: Open your hands if they're fisted or tight.
• 12:23
  SPEAKER_00: Take one slow breath and let the exhale go longer than the inhale.
• 12:27
  SPEAKER_00: Step three, stay here for 30 seconds.
• 12:30
  SPEAKER_00: Don't do anything.
• 12:31
  SPEAKER_00: If a thought pulls you towards fixing or analyzing, recognize it as just an old familiar thought, but then let it pass and come back into your body.
• 12:40
  SPEAKER_00: Feel your feet on the floor.
• 12:42
  SPEAKER_00: Step four, notice what changed in your body after those 30 seconds.
• 12:46
  SPEAKER_00: Not in your mind, but in your body.
• 12:48
  SPEAKER_00: That's the data your nervous system needed.
• 12:52
  SPEAKER_00: You have been working so hard to feel better.
• 12:55
  SPEAKER_00: That effort came from love, from commitment, from being exactly the kind of person who doesn't give up.
• 13:01
  SPEAKER_00: And I want to give you permission to put some of it down now.
• 13:05
  SPEAKER_00: Your nervous system needs to learn it's safe to stop bracing.
• 13:09
  SPEAKER_00: It needs to learn that the anxiety itself is neither the problem nor the solution.
• 13:15
  SPEAKER_00: And it can learn that one moment at a time, starting tonight.
• 13:20
  SPEAKER_00: If this landed for you, watch this next.
• 13:24
  SPEAKER_00: It's called The Truth About Postpartum Anxiety Going Away.
• 13:27
  SPEAKER_00: And it goes directly into why the timeline for recovery is so much longer for high achievers and what specifically shortens it.
• 13:36
  SPEAKER_00: Everything we talked about today is in that video, but from a different angle.
• 13:40
  SPEAKER_00: That will make it click even more.
• 13:42
  SPEAKER_00: The link is right here and on the end of the screen.
• 13:46
  SPEAKER_00: Go ahead and watch it, and I will see you there.