When Anxiety Signals What Matters Most

What if your anxiety isn't a problem to fix, but a signal pointing you toward what you care about most? This practice reframes anxiety as a normal human response when your values—like fairness or safety—are disrupted or missing from your life. Through gentle body awareness and real-world examples, you'll learn to validate your anxiety by connecting it to what truly matters to you, creating space for it to make sense instead of fighting it.

Transcript

Hi, I'm Brooke. I'm glad you're here. I'm a marriage and family therapist, And I work often with folks who are struggling with anxiety. In my practice, I found it quite helpful to understand anxiety with a lens of values. So in this lesson, I'm going to guide you through this practice of connecting with your values to offer yourself understanding, Validation, And self-compassion for your responses of anxiety. That instead of pathologizing it, Perhaps we could be less surprised by our anxiety. That you would move away from criticism and instead say something like, Yeah, This makes sense why I'm feeling anxious. So let's take a look at how anxiety can point to your values, How they can give you information about what matters most to you. Okay, So settle in. I want you to tune into your body. Take a couple of deep breaths here. See if you can offer a bit of space at the far corners of your eyes where the lids meet. Just a little bit of space there. One last breath. I want you to tune into your body's intelligence as I walk through a few examples here and how values can interact with anxiety. So let's say ethics are really important to you and in your current environment, You are experiencing yourself or perhaps someone else engaging in a way that is unethical. Well, It's quite reasonable and, Let's be honest, Non-robotic of you to respond with some anxiety here. The body is saying, Hey, This isn't okay with me. I'm feeling anxious about moving back towards an ethical action. You're responding to what matters to you. Let's use another example, Reminding yourself of that body intelligence that's happening here. Let's say fun is a value for you. Yes, Fun is certainly a value. If your week is full of things that are completely disconnected from fun, It would make sense that your body would have this buildup of energy trying to push you towards taking some time for fun. Your body is responding to something that matters to you, Something that's not present in your life. Let's use one more. Let's say fairness. So fairness is one I hear pretty often. It would be expected that anxiety would show up in your life if you are working really hard to move yourself to an environment towards fairness. But say in your lived life, You are over-functioning and someone around you, It appears that they are maybe under-functioning and if fairness is important to you here, Your body is going to talk to you. Your body is going to say, Hey, Something doesn't feel okay here. I feel anxious about moving it back towards a place of fairness. It makes sense that you would experience anxiety here. Would you be willing to look at your anxiety with a lens of values? Would you be willing to offer yourself validation and even compassion by saying, Yes, This makes sense why anxiety is showing up here. It matters to me. Might you loosen the desire to control this anxiety but make room for it? This is really important to you. I want to name just a few more values and I would like you to take a moment to reflect on which ones you notice your body responding to. So come back to the corner of your eyes. Give them just a bit more room here. Listen to the body's intelligence. Creativity. Simplicity. Respect. Responsibility. Listen to your emotional responses here. Safety. Nature. Well-being. Belonging. Notice what comes up for you. Say to yourself, I'm having a normal human response. My anxiety makes sense here. This really matters to me. The values I shared today is a small sampling. If this resonates with you, I really encourage you to do some further research on values that show up for you. If one comes to mind, Feel free to drop it in the comments. I'd love to hear which ones you notice your body responding to. Thank you for joining today. We'll see you again.