Unlearning Anxiety

What if the anxiety that feels “normal” is just a habit your brain learned—and can unlearn? We dig into the subtle ways chronic worry becomes a comfort zone, how early cues and environments shape our stress responses, and the simple, daily practices that rebuild calm from the inside out.

We share practical tools you can use today. You’ll hear the traffic-light test for runaway thoughts, sensory anchors that snap you back to the present, and micro breaks that slow the feeling of time so you can think clearly again. We talk about editing your media diet, setting kind but firm boundaries with people who lead with bad news, and why self-care is not selfish when your work and family rely on your steadiness. You’ll learn how to spot the quiet signs of chronic anxiety—irritability, low energy, avoidance—and how small rituals retrain your nervous system toward safety.

This conversation blends real-life stories with therapist-backed strategies: grounding with touch, scent, and sight; reframing unhelpful beliefs like “worry keeps me safe”; and creating a new comfort zone where calm is familiar, not frightening. We also tackle lifestyle levers—caffeine, sleep, movement—and show how minor swaps add up to a resilient baseline. The aim isn’t to eliminate fear; it’s to meet life’s ups and downs with clarity, presence, and a kinder inner voice.

If this resonates, tap follow, share with a friend who needs a softer day, and leave a quick review to help others find the show. Your support helps this community grow—and helps more people remember that peace is a practice we can all learn.

Chapters

• 0:00 Anxiety As A Learned Habit
• 2:45 Catching Cues And Early Conditioning
• 4:50 Chronic Anxiety And The Boiling Frog
• 7:20 Signs You’re Living On Edge
• 9:35 Thought Tools And Traffic Lights
• 12:00 Grounding With Sensory Anchors
• 16:10 Time, Presence, And Micro Breaks
• 19:00 Boundaries, Media Diet, And No
• 22:20 Self Care Isn’t Selfish
• 25:00 Building A New Calm Comfort Zone
• 27:00 Letting Go And Riding Life’s Waves
• 30:10 Recap And Ways To Support

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:00

Feeling anxious. I think we all do sometimes, but what we might not realize is that anxiety, feeling anxious and the whole thing around anxiety can actually be something we can unlearn. Yeah, and it can be something that you're so comfortable with having without even realizing it that you can you it it kind of forms a an anxiety habit of you just feeling anxious all the time and that kind of gives you a feeling of safety. We are therapists, we are here to help you, and you're listening to get real with uh English podcast, and it always seems to be unbelievable, doesn't it? Because it does why on earth would anxiety be a habit? But unfortunately, it's very much a habit, and it's something that we learn even when we're very, very young, and we can learn it from a parent, from uh somebody that takes care of us, and we can observe and and and learn. We kind of catch it, can't we? You can catch anxiety. You catch anxiety, you you very much feel it when somebody's around you, you can just feel it. There are small non-verbal cues that that person will give off as well, and us as humans, we can detect those cues, and we're very, very good at detecting them when we're very young. And even small babies, yes, they can see they can detect it, even babies in the womb can detect it. That's what yeah, apparently that is very, very true. And as soon as we're born, we're very, very capable and very able because that's what we need for survival. So we need to know that we're gonna have somebody that's gonna look after us and be able to nourish us and take care of us, and if that person is overwhelmed and feeling very, very anxious, we certainly to take that makes a very anxious baby. So it's something that we learn. So if we can learn to be anxious, we can also unlearn it, can't we? Yes, that's the exciting news talk about today is how to unlearn some of these mental behaviors that we have learned and can they're tricky because they may have been instilled in us for a very, very long time and they may have become part of what's actually become our comfort zone. So we know we feel when we feel anxious, we feel as if that's normal, and that is how we're supposed to be feeling because if we're not feeling anxious, like what many of our clients have told us, they fear the worst may happen. That brings me back to a time when I was thinking about when I had really high blood pressure, poor thing, and I didn't know I had it. No, and uh it was actually the gynecologist at the time that she measured my blood pressure, and she said, No, it's really high, you have to go to a cardiologist for that. So I went to the cardiologist and I said, But how come I don't I I can't notice this? And she said, Unfortunately, when you have very high blood pressure, sometimes that's why it's called the silent killer, you're not aware of it, and your body is actually used to running on that high blood pressure, and you're gonna feel really weird once you're on medication at first, until you get used to it. So I'm warning you, Violetta, be careful. When you first start taking the medication, you might feel a bit out of sorts, which I did, and then I thought of her, and then I thought, okay, this is normal, so it was fine. And then afterwards, I got used to it and I was fine. But it's funny how it's it's similar to feeling anxious. I was feeling okay on it, even though I knew well, once I found out, I knew I had high blood pressure. But I thought, how comes I'm not feeling like bad, ill, or something? Well, wouldn't I know? Wouldn't I know? Wouldn't I have a symptom of this? And a lot of the times that's the same with anxiety, unless you're in tune with it, or somebody you've listened to like this podcast, or somebody else has told you about it, you might just not really become be aware of it, but you might just be living in a constant state of chronic anxiety, which is the kind of anxiety we're actually gonna be talking about more today, because that's the anxiety that we feel is the the more subtle one, the one that's the one that's habit forming. It's habit forming, exactly. It's like what what what's that expression you say? You don't realise until the tone the boiling frog. The boiling frog, yeah. What what is that? Well, the boiling frog is that you put a frog in the cold water and they don't realise they're in boiling hot water and they die. They don't realise that the water slowly gets hotter, they don't uh because because at first you put them in cold water and so they're they it's a slow thing, they slow thing. So they can't jump out. That's what I think about them. No, no, that's it. That's uh the way the metaphor comes from which is what when you're in a high stress situation or you're feeling really anxious, you probably know you're anxious, but you don't realise how anxious and how abnormal that actually is until maybe you have feel different like a panic attack or something that actually alerts you to it. Something quite dramatic, then you think, oh dear, yeah. That and that'll actually alert, and then that's when you go to your doctor, and then the doctor will tell you you're suffering from anxiety and it's been brought on by this or whatever. But um a lot of the times you don't realize what it is until you don't no longer have it. Yes, or how insidious it actually is and how it's affecting you and your I remember, for example, my my my son's girlfriend, when she first came over to stay with us, she used to she used to really she said, gosh, everyone's sort of so calm around here. This house is calm. And I said, But your house is calm too. She said, Oh no. You know, those words, she actually said it, no. I can especially around you. She said, I feel like calm, and and and I've only noticed it now because it's different to how I would feel at my house, and she loves her parents very much, but she said it feels different here. So sometimes it takes for you to actually go out of that environment for you to realize what kind of environment you're actually in. It's like sometimes at work you might think it's normal to feel like that constant state of anxiety until you go to a new new job and you think, gosh, people around here are like so chill. What the hell is going on? You know, this is nice, this is good. I like this, but you didn't realize it because you were constantly in it. Very much like the high blood pressure or the frog. Yes, yeah, which is scary. And so, what how what can we actually help you with if we can make you realize that number one, you may be in that chronic state of anxiety. Well, if you're snapping or being maybe you know, getting angry quickly and things like that, that's one of the signs, isn't it? That is one of the signs. Another sign is that you don't feel that you have enough energy just to do anything at all. So, like anybody that comes and says, Do you want to do this? your first reaction would be, oh no, yeah, uh, I can't handle it. You think I can't handle it. There's a reason why you're thinking you can't handle it because your brain is filled with anxiety and anxious thoughts. Yeah. So you feel as if anything else that's comes. Anything that's not an autopilot that you're not doing every day is an extra. So it's an extra thing. If it's a nice thing, like going on holiday or yeah, it could be something good, but that's good. It's just an extra thing for you to think about, and you you just feel as if you can't. It could tip over, you know, the uh the the the the balance of balance because you're trying to keep everything together, aren't you? You're like juggling and trying to walk on eggs, as to say, because your nervous system is actually walking on these eggshells, and you don't really realize it. So we have to first of all, first step is to become aware of it and think maybe it, you know, that's how I might be feeling right now. And even though we're therapists, I say that to myself many a times. I think, gosh, I'm actually anxious now. I know, I'm feeling anxiety. Yeah, I'm feeling anxiety. But then I'm become aware of it and I think, okay, yes. I also think about something we spoke about in an episode before this, which is are these thoughts, is this thought actually helpful to me now for me to be overthinking something? And if if the answer is no, then I really do try and you know stop thinking about it. I know that can be easier said than done, depending on what it is, but many times there are thoughts that you can put aside, or you can use the like the the traffic light system, can't you? Where you say, is this a helpful thought, green, go ahead with it. Yes. Or if it's not helpful, red, stop. Stop. And you can you can in your mind stop, and then you can you can change your thoughts because when our mind is ours. It shouldn't be a runaway train, it shouldn't be like free to just roam and like uh someone was telling me the other day, a friend of mine was saying, my mind is like is like inside it's like chaos. I I I'm constantly having all these anxious thoughts floating around inside me, bits of news that I read about people that have died, or a plane crash, or uh an earthquake somewhere in the world, and all the the the world is so unsettled, and we're not at peace, and there's so many wars going on. And I said, You have to put a stop to all that, and when you're in the present moment, just be here and now. And she said, How do I do that? And I said, You have to install a habit of mindfulness. So I she, you know, putting the brakes on those thoughts and bringing yourself back to where you are now, are your feet grounded on the floor, is the sunshine around you, or you've got a pretty flower on your on your desk at work, just come back into the now and how your senses are feeling. So, you know, take a few deep breaths and then think about something pleasant. That that's actually a really good point. Even just having a plant or a pretty flower, and I think you if you make the effort to to become aware of grounding yourself and making sure that ever in your environment there is something that's going to give you joy, like like a um a plant or a flower or something, something you can look at that could bring you back into the present. I think that's why we like pleasant things around us so much. Yeah, we could even be like a little crystal or a little soft toy. We bought a soft toy the other day, didn't we? Just because we liked it. Yeah, they're like this teddy bear. You're thinking, oh, we're a bit old for that. We just bought ourselves, you know, these two like little teddy bears. Well, you bought one for yourself, and then you bought me one. I did, because I thought there's two of them. Of course, I there's two, and they were like there, they were really cute, like crocheted little teddy bears in this lovely camel colour. But look, even the way I'm explaining it, when I see that little toy, it brings me joy. It reminds me of the memory conduct. But the reason is that it brings you back into where you are now, exactly into the present moment. It's something to look at that's sensory and will give you that joy. It's the same thing, like a soft blanket, something you can touch will bring you back. Many people, in order to bring them back, they have that elastic band technique which gives you they snap the elastic band that they put on their wrist. That's a different way, and that's also bringing you back in. If you prefer that, that's also a renowned technique that bring gives you a little snap, a little bit of pain in that case, which we go for more something that brings you delight instead of the pain. But that's a very instantly quick way of bringing you back into the moment. Back into the lovely, that lovely soft little waistcoat that I bought the other day. Yes, I loved it, and then I went and I was touching it really softly, caressing it. I I thought this is really cute. It was like a fake false burst thing, but it was lovely and soft and tactile. And that's a reason why you liked it so much. But then I actually really enjoyed wearing it, and I got compliments on it as well, other people saying they liked it, and I said yes, and I also like it because it's really lovely to wear, because it's very tactile and soft. But there's a reason behind these things, is and if we're aware of them, we're put more, we won't like you think that was a guilty pleasure buying a little toy. But the toy also brought us back to our childhood, didn't we think of dad? And then he used to buy us soft toys. Exactly. So and it's like it's everything, they're all anchors to the past, but they're good, feel good anchors that make you feel grounded and in the present moment and loved. So if you buy yourself some fresh flowers, there's actually a big study around fresh flowers in the home and how they can actually obviously, if you're not allergic to them, I was thinking that I'm like allergic to some of them, but if you're not having uh investing the money and the time or going to pick them or whatever, even in yourself and having them in your home can reduce anxiety because it's something that's going to make you focused on that at the moment, and it defocuses you from the rest of your anxious thoughts. It can help you by focusing on something that makes you feel good, you're also slowing time down, which makes you feel as if you have more time to do everything in the end. That's very interesting because time is such a playful element, really. It is totally, totally little mischievous thing. You can actually manage to slow it down yourself, and you would say that's that's impossible. It's an illusion, but everything is an illusion. When you're waiting for a dentist appointment out there, you're nervous. Well, I am, and time seems that 20 minutes waiting there, oh my gosh, can be like an eternity. Whether as 20 minutes having a chat with you with your letter can seem like nothing. We said it today, didn't we? How time has flown by. Time just flew by the minute you came here, and it was lunchtime already. And I thought, how could that be? And I realize, you know, the heart that that is why it's such a playful element, because it's it can become so. I mean, we had that client, didn't we, who said she was really busy, she's a doctor. She said she was really busy all the time, and we said, slow time down. And she said, How can I do that? I go, first of all, you have to make time for yourself. So between one visit and the next, make sure you have a break, a five-minute break. And she said, Oh, that's a good idea. And then in those five can yeah, in those five minutes, take a few deep breaths. You can maybe journal a couple of thoughts down that are making you feel good, something look forward to something you're going to do tonight. Sensory things around you that are pleasant. Like, well, we said that as well. That really helped her. You can have some a nice scent that you can smell. I think she even had some kind of soft toy, if I remember correctly. I can't remember. I can't remember exactly, but there was something that she said she would actually look at that would actually make her feel calmer. Yeah. Have some kind of good anchor to it because everything we have around us reflects back some kind of anchor to us, and it will bring us back into that time and moment. That's why we bring back souvenirs from holidays. Otherwise, why would we do that? We go to a place, might even be just a little pebble, and we might keep that because that reminded us of something. Well, you brought back the oregano, didn't you? The oregano. And I what was I doing? You were smelling, you smell it. We bought that back from from Calabria from our holidays. From our holidays in in the south of Italy. We were we bought that back and we and I was just smelling it, yes, immediately bringing me back to that place, and also to our my our childhood where we used to have that on the mountains when we would go to La Sierra in Spain because our mum was Spanish, and that that kind of smell just instantly brings me back to it. But those were the days where we would just be roaming. Happy and free like wild. We would think we would nobody was looking at us, but obviously, our auntie was just down at the house. We thought it was this massive mountain that we were climbing. It's a big garden, it was for our standards. For our standards, because we were from London and we had little homes, uh, little homes, little gardens. To be just out there on the Sierra, it was like, oh we're the mountain. We thought we were wild, didn't we? We did. We were wild. We were we weren't that wild around all day, yeah. But now of course we had shoes on, but not all the time. Did we? Not all the time, no. But we were like free. We felt as if we were free because we did nothing all day but play exactly in them in the garden, yeah, in the mountains, in the mountainside and climb up to the top of the mountain with the rocks like little rabbits. Yes, that's why it was such a joy at that age. Sunshine, we get called in for food at lunch. For food and we'd have to have the siesta, we'd have to be forced to go to sleep a couple of hours if we say, Hey, that was tedious. I still remember all the adults in the same room. Otherwise, the kids would be making a well do you remember they just built the because they hadn't built their main house, they'd built the little house, they'd just built like a little shack house of one floor, and all the beds were in the like side by side. Oh my god, there was like it looked like a five beds in the dormitory, yeah, like a little cooker in the corner. I can't remember. But they were just whale days of just like doing nothing all day, just playing with our cousins in the sunshine. You could see the adults just like preparing food. Is that what like yeah, they would like to go to the garden would be uh growing their tomatoes, oh yeah, it'd be like a vegetable patch, yeah, yeah. It was just total contact with nature, and I think that's probably why I love it so much. I was good men love that. Oh yeah, it just plays lovely. Yeah, and so having something like that brings back that kind of anchor and those kind of memories, that's why they're important. That can really bring you back into your help you naturally unlearn some of the habits that you might have formed. So you have to and I think you have to become really aware of like what is actually making you feel anxious. So notice like when you're scrolling on social media, is it making you feel good or is it giving you anxiety? For instance, the other day there was a lady that was scrolling through and she was telling, look at this, look at this horrible thing that's happened. Oh my god. That's not too far away from me. So she was really relating. And I said to her, Look, you've already told me that you suffer from anxiety, so this is not helping you right now. We're at, you know, we're at the dinner table, just enjoy being here and now in the present moment. And she said, Oh, you're so right. I should do more of that. So just become aware of what's actually giving you joy and what's actually overwhelming you and making you feel as if you can't you can't do anything about it. Because when that's when I think that's when people get really anxious when you feel as if you have no control or you can't help in any way, but you can you can be the driver, you can control in many, many aspects. You can control some of the thoughts that are going to go in through your brain, you can do that by learning that these thoughts can be harnessed, as to say, in a certain way. You know, your brain is not just a wild horse off and about and running and going nuts. No, you can control it, you can learn to harness it, you can learn to drive it in the appropriate way that's a good way for you. And it doesn't just have to be completely, it could be a good wild, like us when we were kids. That was a good kind of wild. So you can change it from a wild that gives you anxiety to some other kind of free, calm mind that can select thoughts out and keep the ones and and the ones that are calming for you. So certain focus on certain things that make you feel good throughout your day, and become more aware of what's causing you anxiety, and you can either physically get away from it, you know, like if it's something and scrolling through your phone, or if it's people that are making you a certain person that's perhaps producing a lot of anxiety in you, you can perhaps limit your time, create certain boundaries, and learn to say no as well and learn to say no, yes. You have you can learn to say no to certain especially speak up for yourself and say no, I'm sorry, but this isn't just right for me right now. So if you that can take a lot of courage, so you have someone that always wants you to watch the news, for instance, or is always talking about some disaster that's happened, you can say that. I can't really take that right now. Can you just, you know, keep it to yourself, please? And it's not selfish because some people say, Oh, you're selfish, you're not interested in what's happening in the world, you're not interested in what's going on, you're just a selfish person. But the thing is that we believe that if you can keep inner peace within yourself, then you're gonna be able to emanate that peace to the people around you and the people that truly matter to you. And if everybody did that in the world, the world would be a very peaceful and loving world. So we can only, you know, we can what might seem selfish by because you're not uh become being informed of every tragedy that's happening, in the end, it makes you that calm person that makes other people want to be around you, and you will transfer that calmness, you'll transfer me, transfer it onto them. So, in the end, it's an act of being maybe selfish in the moment and taking care of yourself is helping so many other people around you, and that's especially important to remember, also, as people that are in the giving, like if you're a nurse or a doctor's and how to therapy on the plane, put your own life mask on first, exactly, and it's because if you don't have that, then the people around you won't have it either. So if you don't bother to put your oxygen mask on, you're not gonna be able to help that many people around you, and it's the same thing as saying, okay, I'm gonna take care of myself and what's going through my own mind at the moment, which is important for me in order to be able to help all the other people around me, is really, really essential. And I think just by knowing that it's anxiety is something that you've learnt, whether you learnt it by yourself or it's a transferred habit, something that somebody else has taught you to be that way, is something you can unlearn. And the first step is just becoming aware of it and saying, I don't want that. I'm aware of this now, and wow, boy, is this gonna make a change in my life. What is, and you're becoming more you're focused on what's making you feel good, and there is less of what's making you feel anxious, and that can become part of your normal life. The new routine and the new routine, a new comfort zone, which is a zone that you're actually calm in. And you can actually you can also actually listen to mindfulness and learn new things as well about how how mindfulness works and how you can become more mindful and more in the present moment. Because when you are in the present moment, that's when your life expands and you feel great and you feel good and you feel calm, and you can share that loving energy with other people. You've got more time, more time, more you can become more empathic with other people, you become more aware of the non-verbal cues they're giving off, and you can also help them more, the people that you love around you, you can think because because your mind is calmer and your anxiety is quiet and everybody feels anxiety, everybody. We feel it, we know that it's it's a normal thing, but whether it's always always present in your life, it doesn't have to be. No, no, you can learn to manage it, you can manage it, and learn to quieten it, and you can learn to prioritize feeling and learn how to feel it every day and learn how to feel it and feel safe not feeling it, yeah. And you can also maybe look at your habits as well. What do you what are you eating? What are you drinking? Are you having 10 cups of coffee exactly during the day just because you feel you need to you know survive? Or look at maybe changing it to some matcha tea or something else that feel makes you feel energized, but karma. Yes, that's a good point. Just looking at your daily habits, all the kind of habits that you wouldn't think anxiety is a habit. No, just cutting back. Or it it's like we had I remember somebody once told me, but if I don't worry about it, it means that something horrible is going to happen. Now that that's we know that that's not a reasonable way of thinking. Is that true? Is that really true? If you don't worry, will something no, it that's not true. You did if you don't worry about it, it doesn't mean that it's well, how was it? You know, that's right. I'm getting twisted in my own mind now saying worry doesn't help you, does it? No, worry does not actually help you, exactly. It doesn't mean that it's it's like when you think if I'm too happy, something bad is going to happen. Yeah, and you don't allow you don't allow yourself to feel happy. Exactly, yes. And is that necessarily true? No, it's not. It's not true, it's not true, it's you feeling fear and anxious and that's anxious because you're suddenly feeling so happy or so calm. You think this isn't life. This can't life can't be like that. This can't be right. Something bad has to happen. But it does that something bad and something good always happen. Life will always have its ups and downs. We have to focus and plunge ourselves into the good and allow the bad. Allow the bad to just it's just part of this roller coaster that life is. Things will always happen, and there is not much we can actually control, even in our own personal lives, our health. Uh yes, up to a certain point we can control it. We can build ourselves, but then afterwards things happen that would that are uh out of our control in everything, every life, it's always like that. You can't you might get suddenly find your partner's decided to leave you. There's that's out of your control. You could have done everything you you could possibly to save that relationship, but it's just changed. It's and that's when you have to learn to let go. And letting go is a big part of understanding uh how to uh you couldn't let go of your anxiety too in the same way, very much so. So I think we've tried to say some of the main points for today, and obviously there's a lot more to discuss, but this is just the first step about how to become aware that anxiety is something that you may have learned how to do, and you can learn to undo it slowly but surely. Surely. So do come and say hi on Instagram at get will with the English Sisters to show your support andor on YouTube or both if you're feeling generous. And come and see the video version of this too, where you'll see us the video. Also, click on the link in our bio so you can see everything that we're up to at the moment, and just come and say hi. We really appreciate you. Thank you for listening. The podcast is growing, we want it to grow more, so please do subscribe to our YouTube channel, follow us on social media because every like and every follow they really do count, they count and they make us grow, and we appreciate you so much. So, thank you very much. Thank you. Lots of love and smiles from the English sisters. Bye.