A good friend recently asked me how I’m doing, and I said, “I’m putting in the work—so I feel better today than I did yesterday. And better than the day before that.”
“What’s the work?” he asked.
In part, it’s just tending to the basics—making sure I’m surviving. Because if we can’t meet our survival needs, how can we ever hope to feel relaxed?
“Relaxed from what?” he asked.
From a general, underlying sense of anxiety.
He challenged me: “Do you think everyone has anxiety?”
I said, “Absolutely. Every living creature has anxiety. You stupid bastard.”
Seriously—what creature have you ever seen that isn’t prone to some form of anxiety, or something that closely resembles it? It depends, of course, on how developed their nervous system is. But look at a dog walking with its owner—you can immediately sense if it’s in a relaxed state or on edge. If something suddenly triggers it to bark or lunge, that’s anxiety in motion.
For humans, it’s the same—just more complex. Sometimes anxiety is triggered by physical danger, but often it’s caused by emotional experiences: a hit to our self-esteem, a tragedy, the threat of rejection or humiliation.
The term anxiety is relatively new in everyday language. It started as a clinical term, born from psychiatry. But when most people hear the word now, they often confuse it with weakness—when in fact, anxiety is one of the most natural and fundamental functions of the nervous system. It’s not a defect—it’s a design.
We are born with anxiety. It’s how we stay alive.
The central nervous system is in constant surveillance mode. Every moment you’re alive, it’s scanning your body and your environment for signs of threat. It connects everything—your organs, muscles, limbs, skin, breath, heartbeat, and senses. Based on the feedback it receives, it determines how you’ll respond.
Danger doesn’t have to be dramatic. A shift in temperature, an uncomfortable sock, a foot cramp, running late, needing to pee, financial stress, indigestion, a tight waistband, a tickle in your throat—each of these can create a spike in alertness or unease. This is low-level anxiety. Now add in past trauma, childhood conditioning, hormonal imbalances, inactivity, poor diet, lack of sleep, and negative thinking patterns—and you have a cocktail of chronic stress simmering just below the surface.
Anxiety isn’t just mental. It’s physical. Emotional. Hormonal. Historical. Spiritual.
It’s a web.
We’ve been in fight-or-flight mode as a species for thousands of years. In the past, that anxiety was driven by famine, wild animals, or enemy invasions. Today, it might be triggered by a late Amazon package or a Lamborghini that’s backordered by two months.
The point is, anxiety adapts. It evolves with us. But it never disappears.
The problem now is that anxiety hijacks our minds. It pulls us into a reactive, unconscious state. We act, speak, and react without thinking clearly. We imagine we’re in control, but most of the time, we're just managing symptoms.
And so, we have to work—to slow down, to become aware, to reconnect with our breath, to retrain our systems.
This is what the work looks like.
It’s not about never feeling anxious. It’s about learning to see it for what it is: a survival tool that’s been running the show for far too long without supervision.