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If you’ve ever asked yourself why do I have anxiety — especially when nothing’s technically wrong — this blog breaks down how your nervous system learned to respond that way, and why it actually makes sense.
Cheryl Groskopf, LMFT, LPCC is a Los Angeles-based anxiety, trauma, and attachment therapist who helps self-aware, high-functioning adults understand the deeper parts driving their anxiety. She specializes in Internal Family Systems (IFS) therapy, somatic approaches, and nervous system healing for individuals who feel stuck.
You’ve probably heard something like: “It’s your thoughts,” “It’s from childhood,” or “It’s just chemical.” And sure, all of that can be true. But also… not super helpful when your chest is tight, your brain’s looping, and you’re three seconds away from texting “sorry!!” when you didn’t even do anything wrong.
Let’s back it up.
Anxiety didn’t just show up to ruin your life. It’s not some glitch in your brain or a random overreaction. Anxiety exists for a reason — and the reason is actually kind of brilliant. Your body is wired to detect threat, fast. Not to be calm, not to be rational — to protect you. Even when there’s no real danger in sight.
Here’s what we’ll cover: why anxiety can show up out of nowhere, why your body feels the way it does, and why “just breathe” doesn’t cut it when your system thinks something bad is about to happen — even if nothing’s technically wrong.
This is about making it make sense. From the inside out.
Most of us aren’t taught what anxiety actually is. We just know what it feels like: the tight chest, the fast thoughts, the sudden need to escape or fix something now. But those sensations aren’t random. They’re signals from a system that was built to respond to danger before you even had time to think.
Your brain and body evolved to prioritize survival — not happiness, not comfort, not perspective. The goal was to keep you breathing, which meant scanning for threat constantly. Anything unfamiliar, unpredictable, or socially risky got flagged as dangerous. That system worked beautifully when actual predators were part of the equation.
But now? The threats look different. You’re not running to shelter from the elements. You’re getting pulled into 50 Slack messages, trying to be liked, managing people’s perceptions of you, bracing for feedback, and telling yourself to calm down while your body’s still convinced something’s wrong.
That mismatch — between the speed of your life and the wiring of your body — is part of what makes anxiety feel so overwhelming. Your system doesn’t care if the danger is physical or emotional. It responds the same way. It ramps up, prepares for impact, and waits for the moment to pass — even if it never comes.
The more pressure you’re under to hold it all together, the harder this hits. Especially if you’ve been living like this for years without realizing your body has never been taught what safe actually feels like. It just knows how to stay alert.
If you’ve ever felt anxious even though you knew you were fine, you’re not imagining that disconnect. Your body doesn’t evaluate safety the way your brain does. It’s not asking, “Am I actually in danger?” It’s asking, “Have I felt this before — and what happened last time?”
Your nervous system tracks patterns, not facts. And it remembers everything. The tone someone used. The way your stomach dropped when someone sighed before answering you. The time you spoke up and it got weird. Those aren’t just thoughts — they’re stored experiences. And they’re what your body pulls from when it decides whether to relax or brace.
So when you walk into a room and suddenly feel off, when your chest tightens before you hit “send,” or when a neutral facial expression makes you feel like you did something wrong — that’s not you being reactive. That’s your system scanning for something it’s learned to watch out for.
This is also why “just remind yourself it’s not a big deal” doesn’t work. Your body doesn’t respond to reasoning. It responds to felt experience. If it doesn’t feel safe, it won’t act like it is — no matter how many times you tell yourself otherwise.
It’s not about logic. It’s about memory — the kind your body holds, even when your brain forgets.
Anxiety doesn’t always form around chaos. Sometimes, it forms around the things that were never safe — even when they should’ve been. Like asking for help. Being alone. Making a decision. Letting yourself be seen.
If you grew up with emotional inconsistency — support one day, distance the next — your system didn’t just “struggle with safety.” It learned that certain things came with strings. Being honest. Asking for help. Having needs. Things that should’ve felt neutral started to carry risk — not in theory, but in your body.
So now, when you try to rest, your body might panic. When someone supports you, you might brace. When you speak honestly, you might feel like you did something wrong. Not because the present moment is unsafe — but because you never got to feel safe in moments like this.
That’s how anxiety wires itself into your daily life. Not just in crisis, but in the ordinary. The soft moments. The quiet ones. The ones that require vulnerability — or self-trust — or presence.
Your body’s not reacting to the thing itself. It’s reacting to the absence of safety that used to surround it.
One of the most frustrating parts of anxiety is knowing that nothing’s technically wrong — and still feeling like your whole body is under threat. You tell yourself to breathe. You try to think clearly. You know it’s not a big deal. But your chest is tight, your jaw is locked, and your brain won’t shut up.
Here’s why that happens: once your body shifts into protection mode, it stops prioritizing calm. It starts prioritizing speed. Escape. Control. Certainty. Your nervous system isn’t designed to wait for logic — it’s designed to act fast enough to keep you safe.
That’s why anxious spirals feel so physical. It’s not just your thoughts. It’s your breath getting shallow, your muscles bracing, your heart speeding up — all of it sending the message that something’s wrong. Even when nothing actually is.
And because your body reacts faster than your brain, by the time you’re aware you’re anxious, you’re already deep in it. Your system made a decision before you had the chance to weigh in.
You can’t think your way out of a response that wasn’t created by thinking.
That’s not weakness — it’s biology.
The shift happens when you start listening to the signals underneath the spiral. Not fighting them. Not rationalizing them away. But actually noticing: what feels unsafe right now?
That’s where real change starts — not with control, but with curiosity.
When anxiety hits, most people try to get away from it. Breathe through it. Talk themselves down. Pretend they’re fine. But real change happens when you stop running from it — and start paying attention to what it’s trying to say.
It doesn’t mean liking the feeling. It doesn’t mean letting it take over. It just means turning toward the part of you that’s bracing. The part that feels like it’s about to get in trouble, or be misunderstood, or left out. That’s the part your nervous system is protecting.
You don’t have to “fix” anything in that moment. Just notice what’s happening while it’s happening. The muscle tension. The urge to apologize. The need to perform. That’s not overreaction — that’s your body trying to keep you safe, based on everything it’s learned so far.
And when you pause and check in — even briefly — you start building something most anxious systems have never had: a relationship. Not just strategies. Not just management. A real relationship with the part of you that thinks you’re still in danger.
You don’t calm anxiety by pushing it away. You calm it by walking toward it — with context, with curiosity, and without treating it like the enemy.
This is the kind of work I do with clients every day — not just talking about anxiety, but actually noticing the way it shows up in your body, your thoughts, your relationships, and how fast you move through the world.
We slow things down, just enough to catch what’s usually automatic. That moment your chest tightens. That urge to explain yourself. The feeling like you’re not doing enough. We stay with it — not to fix it, but to understand what it’s protecting.
In an interview with Parade, I talked about what actually helps in moments like this — and why most advice skips the part your nervous system really needs: to be acknowledged, not overridden. You don’t shift anxiety by ignoring it. You shift it by getting curious about what just activated you — even briefly. That’s where things start to change.
This also shows up in relationships. In this Well+Good feature, I explained how anxiety often creates urgency, hyper-awareness, or even shutdown in connection — not because you’re overreacting, but because your system is trying to prevent something it learned to fear.
And sometimes it doesn’t look like panic — it looks like pressure. Like productivity. Like being on all the time. I talk more about that in this Well+Good piece, where I shared why anxiety can come out as crying, irritability, or exhaustion — especially when you’ve been holding it together for too long.
A lot of the work I do comes from body-based healing approaches used in somatic therapy and parts-based approaches like Internal Family Systems (IFS) — where we get to know the protective parts of you that have been working overtime, and help your body stop bracing like it’s still in survival mode. It’s not about forcing a fake sense of “calmness.” It’s about building trust with the part of you that’s been doing the heavy lifting for way too long.
I’m a licensed therapist (LMFT, LPCC) who works at the intersection of anxiety, nervous system overwhelm, and old survival patterns that no longer fit the life you’re trying to live. A lot of the people I work with are high-functioning, smart, and totally exhausted — from trying to stay ahead of a nervous system that never fully shuts off.
My background pulls from somatic therapy, attachment work, and parts-based approaches like Internal Family Systems (IFS). But more than that, this work is about teaching your body how to feel safe — not just how to “calm down.
If you’ve been living with looping thoughts, constant over-analysis, or a body that always feels on edge — even when nothing’s wrong — my approach to anxiety therapy in Los Angeles is built to help with exactly that. We slow down just enough to track the patterns that used to fly under the radar — not to fix them on the spot, but to help you understand why they formed and how to shift them without overriding your system.
