Moving Through Fear & Anxiety - Insight Timer Live

Fear and anxiety grip our hearts and close us to life. We long to open, and yet we struggle to overcome these protective responses. Yes, the times we live in have much to fear. And also, there are practical and profoundly loving practices that center us in our open, soft hearts and steady, strong backs, ready to stand as our full adult selves, hold our terrified inner parts, and meet the moment with confidence and compassion. In this live recording from June 2025, Catherine shares her unconventional perspective on anxiety and leads us through these practices, including somatic work for nervous system regulation and parts work for re-centering in our strongest and most loving self. Meditation music by Jamiel Conlon.

Transcript

Welcome to Moving Through Fear and Anxiety.

Thank you for being here.

These are very,

Very scary times that we live in.

So I first want to take a deep breath and invite you all to do so with me.

Taking a deep breath into our bodies as they are right now.

In this moment.

And as you're sitting here or lying down,

Moving whatever you are doing.

See if you can send breath into the lower abdomen.

And notice how that part of the body feels.

For most of us right now,

In the world,

In our personal lives,

Which are if you're like my friends,

Mostly falling apart,

You know,

At the seams.

It's uncertainty with a capital U right now for everyone I know,

Including me and my family,

Many layers of uncertainty.

And then we have the world.

So I don't think any of us are breathing right now.

Do you feel me?

Okay.

Let's breathe together into the belly and invite subtle softness and subtle opening up in the lower abdomen with the breath.

And imagine what a scared baby bunny looks like when it's breathing.

And that kind of hyperventilating the shallow rapid breathing in the chest.

So for most of us,

Especially women,

Femmes,

Highly sensitive people,

When we sense danger,

We go into what somatic experiencing practitioner Kimberly Ann Johnson calls a prey response,

Like the response of a prey animal to a threat,

Which is why I bring up the bunny.

And what does a prey animal do?

Well,

When their nervous system gets activated,

When danger appears,

Or they expect danger,

They run away.

You know,

They don't have confidence that they can fight,

Right?

So prey animal will run,

Generally speaking,

Or collapse and play dead.

So that's the flight response of the sympathetic nervous system.

And then that is the that's activated part of our nervous system,

Right?

And then there's the collapse,

The freeze response,

Part of the parasympathetic nervous system that shuts us down and slows us down,

Right?

And in any event,

We're not breathing.

We're either breathing very shallowly and rapidly if our system tends toward flight response,

Or we're just kind of holding our breath and playing dead inside.

And there's or we vacillate between,

You know,

Those states.

Or maybe you're someone who is quick to anger,

And you do have the fight response in you and you lash out,

Right?

So just kind of note,

What does your nervous system personally tend to do when you perceive danger,

Or expect danger?

Thank you,

Jameel,

For reminding me of the fawn response.

Yes.

People pleasing is another thing that we do.

Again,

Women,

Femmes,

Highly sensitive people tend to have the fawn response.

And in because there are people on the spectrum here,

I'm also including people on the spectrum in highly sensitive people.

You're your own flavor of it.

And of course,

There's the fawn response.

That means like,

Have you ever noticed that you might compliment someone a little too much if you're intimidated by them?

You know,

Befriending the enemy.

So just making a note in yourself,

While you arrive here and you breathe into a softening belly.

And I want to make a note here of a common misunderstanding when we talk about the nervous system,

And what regulation means.

There's a common misunderstanding that to have a regulated nervous system means you have a calm nervous system,

Kind of no matter what.

That's not true.

Having a regulated nervous system means we have a flexible and responsive system to what is really actually happening in the present moment.

And I want to say that because so much of this talk today,

And this practice today is going to be about helping you to know that there is absolutely nothing wrong with you for having anxiety,

Having fear,

Having terror,

Right now.

In fact,

It's part of a healthy nervous system response to have these experiences when life is scary.

And so this session today is absolutely not about telling you being another voice,

It's going to tell you to calm down,

Because guess what,

That systems of oppression talking that are again,

Wanting to oppress the sensitive ones,

The feminine ones,

The ones with divergent opinions and beliefs,

You know,

I'm not going to be telling you to calm down.

I'm not even going to be saying you should calm down what we're going to be doing today,

What we're already doing is co-regulating together,

Even though we can't see each other,

Just feeling into the knowing that we're all here together.

We're all feeling this way.

We're all feeling anxious and scared.

And that's okay.

And we're feeling this together.

And I invite you to close your eyes for a moment and imagine all of us sitting in a circle in a beautiful space.

And just let your imagination,

Create the space,

Create the circle that we're in together.

Feeling that this is a safe place.

Feeling that each and every one of us is attuned to each other's vulnerability and fear.

And we care so much.

We care so much about each person in the circle.

Because we know that our lives are interwoven.

And we are here feeling,

Seeing each other,

Hearing each other,

So to speak.

Together,

Taking deep breaths into the belly.

And see if you can lean back into the strength of your back.

We talked about this in the healing the father wound talk.

That's also recorded on my teacher profile.

Our inner masculine,

Our inner support.

And how this is part of us feeling safe.

And as we're here in the circle together,

I'll invite us to do some box breathing,

Which is a technique that I find personally really effective.

When I'm feeling anxious,

Which is almost every day.

And so I'll let you know what the invitation is.

And you can choose to do it as I speak it,

Or do your own version of it.

It involves the box breathing I know and I use involves breathing in for a count of four,

Holding the breath at the top for another count of four.

And you can adjust these counts based on what feels good in your body,

By the way,

Please do.

And then we release the breath for a count of four.

And then we hold at the bottom for a count of four or whatever count you're doing.

And if anything feels like forcing it,

I want you to adjust it for you.

Nothing I do is ever,

Ever going to be about forcing.

We want to do these exercises right,

Quote unquote,

But right means what feels good in your own body.

So if you like,

We'll do I know I'll feel it out maybe four or five rounds of this box breathing.

So sitting or lying down,

Feeling the strength of your back and the softness of your front.

We're going to intend the breath into the lower part of our body.

So when you're ready,

We'll prepare to breathe and breathing in one,

Two,

Three,

Four,

And holding at the top,

Two,

Three,

Four,

Releasing two,

Three,

Four,

Holding at the bottom,

Two,

Three,

Four,

Inhale,

Two,

Three,

Four,

Hold,

Two,

Three,

Four,

Releasing two,

Three,

Four,

Holding at the bottom,

Two,

Three,

Four.

Now do at least two more rounds on your own.

Last round.

If you like,

You can continue if you found that helpful,

Or simply return to a gentle breath,

Maybe a little bit slower,

A little bit deeper in the body than before.

Notice how your system feels.

When I do this practice,

I feel like more of my brain is available to me.

And that's literally something that happens right when we're in this acute response to perceive danger.

Our prefrontal cortex is not as accessible to us.

This is the part that can think with nuance,

That can access a wider perspective and more possibility.

We become unable when we're in the acute state to access this part of ourselves.

And this is one of the reasons,

And this is I find really fascinating,

That you can tell what state someone's nervous system is in by the language they use.

If it's black and white,

Good or bad,

Right or wrong,

Their system is amped up.

They don't have access to the nuance and the wider perspective and possibility.

Isn't that interesting?

Have you seen that anywhere in the world by chance?

Yeah.

Oh,

I'm glad that some of you are feeling calmer.

Yeah.

So yeah.

And really important point that Shan brings up that whenever,

Sometimes when we hold the breath,

It can induce panic.

So please,

If you feel,

If you know yourself as being prone to panic,

Do what feels right for you.

Absolutely.

All right.

So we have more access to our brains now,

Hopefully.

And if you need more,

Please continue it.

And please put this in your pocket for when you feel that acute state.

I want to say a little bit about what anxiety is from my experience and perspective.

I'm somebody with a lot of experience personally with anxiety,

Especially postpartum acute anxiety and insomnia,

Nightly anxiety attacks,

Panic attacks for almost a year.

That was the really acute,

Acute phase.

And that was,

Let's see,

My oldest is almost six right now.

So that was back then.

And yeah.

So this is what I've come to think about anxiety.

It's not what we're taught it is.

Some of you know,

I'm a counseling school dropout.

Part of the reason I dropped out of counseling school,

Even though my program was supposed to be holistic on paper,

Is that I had this sense in this knowing that what we call these so called mental health issues are far,

Far deeper than our own individual chemistry and even our own individual history.

They're far wider,

Far deeper,

Far more systemic than we're led to believe in traditional psychology.

Yeah.

So what I,

So let's think about human beings for a moment.

Human beings lived in affinity groups in tribal communities of about 50 to 150 people for about 300,

000 years.

I had to look this up.

As our biologically identical species today.

Far,

Far,

Far longer than that.

If you count who we were evolutionarily before that.

300,

000 years,

We lived in tribal affinity groups where parenting was shared by parents and alloparents,

Which are non-biological parents,

Which are adults who are not the biological parents.

Hunter gatherer or semi-nomadic societies.

So we started to become slightly more isolated,

You know,

Only about 10,

000 years ago with the advent of agriculture,

Where we started staying in the same place and families started living together,

But we were still in family groups.

The modern nuclear family where you have best case scenario,

Two loving parents in an isolated environment,

Raising their children.

We've only had generously speaking for about 150 years.

I have come to know and believe also as someone raising children in a nuclear family myself,

That an enormous amount of our anxiety has its root in the nuclear family.

Because here is what anxiety is from my perspective and experience.

I have found that anxiety is frozen grief.

I'd like you to breathe into that for a moment.

Anxiety is frozen grief.

Yes.

Anxiety is fear.

Anxiety is unmoored fear.

Anxiety is fear without a container.

Anxiety is free floating unmoored fear that has nowhere to go.

But more importantly,

No one to hold it.

Fear with no one to hold it.

And here's where the grief comes in.

Because I started getting curious about this when I noticed that when I worked with people who experience anxiety,

When I used to have a private practice,

And also with myself,

I noticed something very clear that when I helped someone move through their anxiety,

What helped was when they got to a place in themselves where they could really feel the grief of their child self having to feel their feelings alone.

Without support,

Without the attuned,

Loving,

Holding and presence of adults.

And I noticed that when someone got to that place where they could grieve what they did not receive what their biological being expected to receive from 300 plus thousand years years of being held by 40 pairs of arms and seen with 40 pairs of eyes from being basically never alone.

We were never alone in our tribal communities.

Coming in with that genetic blueprint and the shock and the grief of being alone.

A lot of the time with these huge feelings that all children have.

Speaking as a mother of two young children,

I know,

All children have feelings we were never meant or able to hold by ourselves.

It is insane to expect a child to feel to hold the immensity.

Do you remember the intensity of your childhood feelings?

As a child,

You have no perspective.

You are pure feeling,

Pure experience.

And to be shut down,

To be told stop crying,

To be isolated as a punishment,

Time out,

Go to your room.

And remember,

It was actually like the conscious parents of the 90s who did timeouts instead of corporeal punishment.

Imagine that.

But to be isolated as a punishment for feeling in a big way when what we needed more than anything else was to be held.

And the reality is,

And here's where it threads back into nuclear families.

No two people,

No matter if they're saints,

You could be raised by saints.

It wouldn't be enough.

We came into this life needing the village.

Here's what happens in our psyches when the village does not arrive.

We learn that because there's no container to hold us,

Again,

Even if we're raised by saints,

We need many adults.

We realize that because there's no container to hold us,

We become the container ourselves.

We learn that we need to hold back our own feeling.

We need to shut it down.

We need to freeze it deep in our bodies in order to be lovable.

That's what children raised in nuclear families are forced to do.

And I say this in full grief that I'm raising children in a nuclear family.

And my husband and I are just,

I mean,

Not breaking ourselves.

We are doing,

We're moving mountains to raise these girls as well as we possibly can.

We're doing a great job with the systemic disconnect that we live in.

But still,

I see my girls,

I mean,

My youngest is 22 months right now,

So she's not able to yet.

But I see my oldest clamping down.

And this is when I raised her with as absolute emotional intelligence attunement,

Like she's my daughter.

I've always asked her about her feelings and sat with her.

And still,

She clamps down.

There's nothing I can do.

This is structural.

This is structural.

There's nothing I can do.

There's nothing we can do.

We can do our best.

And that's important.

Because at least she has the emotionally intelligent attuned parents,

At least she has two of us,

You know.

So we get to be adults who habitually hold ourselves.

And I've realized that it's this holding ourselves that creates the anxiety.

Because we're,

The human being needs to have periodic releases of grief in order to grow.

And so we have these frozen tears in us.

And our systems,

Like one thing that that Francis Weller,

The author of The Wild Edge of Sorrow says,

And he,

By the way,

Is a Jungian psychologist and does soul work,

It's mostly Jungian and ritual work.

So he's famous for grief ritual,

Bringing grief ritual,

Like from the Dagora tradition to the to the West.

What he says is that in his work with grief ritual with people,

We are frozen with our fear,

With our grief,

With our anxiety.

Because we're subconsciously waiting for the village to appear so we can release it.

The human being is designed to feel to release our feelings in the attuned,

Loving presence of other people,

Ideally multiple people,

At least one other person.

In our practice today,

I want to guide you into a place where you can contact viscerally the grief of your loneliness as a young person.

Because what we're doing today is we're learning how to move through fear and anxiety by learning how to be our own loving container.

And I know that that's not what I've been saying,

Like we can't do this by ourselves.

But what parts work allows us to do is have a sense of an inner village,

An inner multiplicity.

And here's the thing,

When we do that.

Yes,

Exactly somebody anticipated what I'm going to say,

When we have experience holding ourselves with love,

We need to do that in order to be able to receive and welcome the attuned support of loving others.

The cliche goes,

You can only feel love if you love yourself.

You know,

If we're stuck in these cycles of emotional shame,

Like we all have in this structurally disconnected nuclear family atomic culture,

Right?

If we're stuck in that emotional shame and frozen in our fear and our grief,

We can't let other people in.

We can't actually receive the help of the village that we desperately need.

Yes.

And I want to name two that when when I talk about how our personal grief is at the root of our anxiety,

That's not that's not the only thing that's there,

Right?

We feel anxiety also because of ancestral pain,

Fear and grief.

We feel anxiety also because of collective fear,

Grief,

You know,

And in my experience,

What is needed,

It's like,

We,

We can't access the layers,

The wider picture layers like ancestral grief,

And collective grief until we've opened a channel in our own personal grief.

Does that make sense?

It's like,

That's how the channel opens is in our own bodies with our own history.

And then in my experience,

It becomes much more accessible to get to the layers of ancestral and collective healing.

So I'll tell you the invitation for today for practice and you can decide if it feels right for you now or knowing that this is going to be recorded and seems like insight timer is taking a little bit longer to post things right now.

But just knowing that it's going to be recorded,

Maybe do it later.

So here's the invitation to the extent that feels doable,

Safe enough for you right now,

Knowing that you're probably alone in the space that you're in.

The invitation is to bring into your awareness,

Into your imagination,

A situation that creates anxiety for you.

Again,

Only to the extent that it feels right for now.

It shouldn't be something that creates the most anxiety for you.

You need support for that.

But maybe a small anxiety,

Because ultimately,

It'll lead back to a similar place.

So if I pick my anxiety that my husband is currently,

As of the time of this speaking,

Unemployed,

I'm going to breathe in and notice how it makes my body feel.

What does my body do that tells me I feel anxiety about this?

Well,

If I check in,

There's a tightness around the heart space,

My belly tightens up,

My throat tightens up,

And I'm going to just let that be so.

And by the way,

I'm not leading you through practice yet.

I'm just demonstrating right now in myself so you can see what we're doing.

And then what I'm going to do is I'm going to let my intuition show me an early time in my life where I felt a similar imprint.

And this,

It's a good sign if it's surprising to you.

We're not thinking about the right memory.

It doesn't even have to be a memory.

For most people,

It's not.

For most people,

It's a vague sense of,

Oh,

I think I was about this age,

Maybe with this person.

Or something like that.

It may be a memory,

But for most,

Not.

And I'm going to travel in my mind back to that time and place and just let my imagination create it.

I'm not worrying about is this right?

Is this accurate?

And I'm going to feel now myself the witness as the strongest and most loving version of my adult self.

So I'm not identifying,

I'm not feeling with the body of the child or the young person.

I'm looking across the space through the eyes of my strongest,

Most loving adult self,

Similar to how IFS names the self with a capital S,

Right?

Or you might say higher self,

Your full adult self,

Right?

I'm looking at the child or the young person.

And we're going to then empathically,

Lovingly witness,

Just witness what's happening.

Because remember,

What we're doing is we're going in and we're healing unseen pain.

We're healing a situation that was not held by a tuned,

Loving community,

But was deeply painful.

We're healing a situation where we were alone with our feelings in a body that was absolutely unable and unprepared to process and experience that feeling by themselves.

So that's what we're going to be doing.

And then it's going to get all lovey,

All soft,

All squishy,

All lovey,

Really seeing validating this younger version of yourself as you create this bridge,

As you create this relationship and this relational connection with this young part of yourself who had to be their own container.

You are no longer your own container.

You are containing yourself with another part.

Yes,

Technically,

It's still you.

But again,

This opens us,

This practice opens us to be able to allow actual other people to hold us.

And if you,

By the way,

Want more about that specifically,

Please listen to my talk on Insight Timer called How to Find Your People.

You can just make a note of it,

How to find your people.

All right,

So if you are going to practice with us today for just a few minutes together,

If you're not in it already,

Go ahead and make yourself very comfortable and sit or lie down.

If you found it helpful before,

You may return to a kind of box breath like we did at the beginning,

Or just really slow,

Gentle breathing in and out,

Intending it down in the belly.

And again,

Sensing that we are all here in circle together.

Even though you cannot see us with your eyes,

And I cannot see you with my eyes,

I feel you energetically.

And we're feeling that we're here together.

We're feeling this together.

We all have these terrified,

Incredibly lonely inner parts.

We're all in this together.

And with that in mind held by the circle,

I invite you if you want to bring into your experience viscerally,

A smaller anxiety that you have.

Not the big one,

One that you can experience without feeling overwhelmed.

Breathing into it and noticing now what's happening in your body.

Naming the body sensations that make themselves known as a signature of anxiety or a signature of this fear.

And as soon as that's clear for you,

Taking a few more breaths to really,

Really make it crystal clear here.

As soon as that's clear for you,

Allowing your intuition to show you now to take you to an earlier time,

Maybe the earliest in your psyche that you remember or have a vague sense about feeling something similar,

The same body sensations or similar.

Let your first impression be true.

No matter how surprising or strange it might seem.

Let your first impression be true and take deep breaths as you now feel your strong back and soft front as your strongest and most loving adult self.

As you're now looking at your young self,

Wherever they are,

And with whomever they are.

Where are they or who are they with?

Breathing and witnessing what do you see here?

What is this young person's body language?

What is their feeling?

What what are they feeling here?

You're not intervening,

You're not trying to help,

You're simply witnessing with this incredibly kind,

Allowing presence.

And now if there's anyone else in the scene,

You're just going to let them freeze for a moment.

As you focus your awareness on your young self,

Who is not frozen,

They are alive,

And they see you there.

They see that you are there,

Seeing them.

How do they respond?

There's no right or wrong,

They might be glad to see you,

They might run from you,

It's all okay.

Notice their eyes,

If they're making eye contact or not.

And hear and sense and feel yourself now telling them something like,

I see you,

And I'm here for you.

And I'm here for you.

Allowing them to respond however they respond.

The healing is not happening because of a specific reaction from them,

It's happening in your willingness to connect to them.

So whatever is happening,

It is healing,

It is doing the work.

I see you,

And I'm here for you,

No matter what.

You get to feel exactly as you feel.

I'm here for you.

Breathing and allowing.

And you might ask them now,

What do you really need?

Let them speak.

What do you really need,

Little one?

If it feels right,

You might see,

Sense and feel yourself meeting this need for them.

Or whatever else feels aligned.

If your intuitive imagination has taken you somewhere else,

That's beautiful,

Too.

Breathing and allowing.

And really feeling that you are so there for them,

No matter what.

You're there to hold them,

To see them,

To feel them,

To know them,

Exactly as they are.

And to love them exactly as they are.

Forever.

And so as we close this encounter,

You can let your intuition give you a sense for what is needed to bring this to a close in this moment.

What is the most loving act or words that your younger self would need to bring this to a close?

Knowing that you're not leaving them,

You're just simply going to be shifting dimension,

So to speak,

In a moment.

This part of you is always there with them.

In your heart,

Holding them,

Holding you.

Holding this pain that was not held.

Breathing and bringing this beautiful encounter to a very loving close now.

Knowing that this is just part of a lifelong relationship with them.

And whenever you're ready,

You can gently bring yourself into the space that you're in.

It's allowing the scene to fade.

Looking around your space.

And maybe even giving your self here a hug,

Really feeling that compression,

Feeling that you're here in this body.

Deep breaths as you collect all parts of yourself back here now.

In this circle,

As we are together right here.

And it's my hope that you can use this practice to help you access the feelings that are frozen,

That underlie the anxiety.

Because as we become more skilled and fluid with accessing and moving our own personal grief,

We open to the reality of the deeper layers and wider layers as well of collective grief,

Of ancestral grief,

Which are all extraordinarily real.

So remember that this is the practice of opening in ourselves so that we can become wider so that we can interweave with all beings and become open to life and one another as we were always meant to be.

Thank you all so,

So very much for practicing today.

It takes enormous courage to slow down,

To feel.

I mean,

Who in their right mind feels their anxiety,

Right?

Feels the fear,

Right?

Of course I do.

I encourage it.

It's what I'm about.

But like nothing in our culture encourages this.

So you are somebody who is very special,

Very,

Very courageous to be doing this work.

And I deeply,

Deeply appreciate each and every one of you.

And I never take your attention and your time for granted at all.

Thank you all so very much.

Reviews

Always so helpful. Very powerful to hear your explanation of the origins of these difficult feelings and ways to work with them mindfully and skillfully. Thank you.

Thank You 🙏 For the most profound experience. I didn’t expect the depth & connection to touching on something I was unaware of “frozen grief”. The exercise of feeling & seeing one’s younger self & embracing was truly heartfelt & moving. The “tribe” & sense of belonging was so apt for my present mindset. Thank you for sharing such wisdom - compassion & true understanding - 🙏🙏

This is an essential tool to have in one's armoury. Catherine Liggett is such a gentle, empathetic and insightful guide. 💚🌻
Brilliant! 🔥

I’ve only done one other course session with you and it was extraordinarily impactful. This too, was quite amazing and I’ve done a lot of deep work in the past. Thank you, it’s exactly where I needed to go to feel the forgotten layers of my traumas and feelings. So grateful for your guidance and insight.

Oh Catherine, I find your offerings so beautiful. Deep heartfelt gratitude 🙏🏼❤️ There is so much anxiety in my system, and also shame. I struggle a lot with decision-making stress, have been for quite a long time, I feel a lot of pressure to 'make the right decision'. Today I was taken back to the time when I had to choose what to study.. and the mix of confusion, pressure and sense of feeling lost back then. Maybe this pressure is actually to a large extent internalized capitalist system pressure..! It is so hard to give space to this feeling of decision-making stress, it is so uncomfortable, it feels so wrong, it is so much stuckness that it feels hard to move. It was a bit easier to see my younger self in her confused state and to have compassion for her 💜

with your first prompt i felt not being wanted invitro … i rejected that and started to search for another…you encouraged us to go with the first feeling … so i did the exercise holding seeing and loving myself before birth … this realizing the “freeze” started before birth is blowing my mind …