The Antidote to Anxiety is NOT Calm

It's Safety...

For as long as I can remember, I thought the way to combat anxiety was to find calm - at first through deep breaths, then mindfulness, even stillness. Every therapist, every self-help book, every well-meaning friend offered variations of the same advice: “Just relax.” And yet, despite my best efforts, calm often felt impossible to access. It wasn’t until much later, through personal experience, extensive trauma processing, and an understanding of how our nervous systems work, that I realized I had been chasing the wrong thing.

Anxiety isn’t a lack of calm.

It’s a lack of safety.

Sit with that for a minute.

How does it make you feel?

The Body Knows Before the Mind Does

Anxiety, at its core, is our body’s alarm system going off, telling us that something is wrong, that we are in danger, even if our logical mind can’t identify the source. And for many of us, especially those who have lived through trauma, chronic illness, loss, or deep uncertainty, that alarm system has been over-activated for years, sometimes decades. When my therapist first described this to me, she told me that my house was on fire, that I was on fire inside of my house, and that the attempts I’d taken to put the fire out involved tossing a few glasses of water on the flames. I needed three cities of god damn fire fighters to come help me put this disaster out.

Because it’s impossible to erase years of hyper vigilance with a few deep breaths, my anxiety has required so much support in real time - including but not limited to talk therapy, psychiatric medication, somatic therapy, ketamine therapy, understanding the old mental pathways that were once laid down to protect me, and knowing that they no longer serve me in the same protective manner. I can’t just undo the wiring that says the world is unpredictable and dangerous simply by thinking differently. That re-write would never work in my brain, because the one thing I trust, 100% of the time, is that the next shoe is always getting ready to drop. This prevents me from quelling my own anxiety spirals at times, and it also prevents me from healing. But, I have enough physical, empirical evidence to know that in my life, this statement is true. And radical acknowledgement of this statement, it’s taken me a long time to come to. But I am unwilling to let go of this stance, because I believe there has to be a place between hypervigilent and calm, between anxiety and safety. I just have to find it.

Because the antidote to anxiety isn’t calm—it’s safety.

Real, embodied, undeniable safety.

Something thats honestly, embarrassingly, too new and familiar for me.

What Safety Really Feels Like

Safety isn’t just the absence of threat; it’s the presence of security. It’s knowing that we have support, that we are seen, that our needs are met. It’s when our nervous system recognizes that we are not in immediate danger - physically, emotionally, or psychologically. This has truly been some of the hardest work I’ve ever done, to identify this concept and then to break it down and identify places and spaces that might actually already have tiny portals burrowed in places were I could start to dabble with feeling safe.

For me, safety has looked like:

• A partner who understands my triggers and meets me with compassion instead of frustration.

• A child who has learned that big feelings aren’t anything to be afraid of, and that we must always feel our feelings before we can tackle them or answer questions about them or make any changes. Also, that it’s okay to not want to or not be able to sit alone with our feelings. People sometimes need other people.

• A team of doctors who listen, validate, and believe my symptoms (this one is sometimes next to impossible, and it feels so agonizing every time an old experience of disbelief and medical gaslighting occurs in present day).

• A friend who sits with me in the dark moments without trying to fix them. Without trying to fix me.

• A physical and emotional space where I can express my feelings without fear of judgment or abandonment.

When I feel safe, my body doesn’t need to be on high alert. My brain doesn’t have to spin worst-case scenarios on repeat. My breath deepens naturally, my muscles relax, my thoughts slow. Calm becomes a byproduct of safety—not the other way around.

Creating Safety in a World That Feels Unsafe

But what happens when those things I need for safety aren’t immediately available? What happens when I’m out in the world alone, and I feel the anxiety spinning out of control, especially in times like these when the world feels unpredictable, relationships feel fragile, and the ground beneath me is unsteady?

The best I’ve found is that I must start small. I look for tiny moments of safety wherever I can. A keychain I can rub my fingers against while driving. A song on my phone I can listen to on repeat. A show I can watch over and over again. A weighted blanket. A grounding practice. A mantra that reminds me that I am okay in this moment. A text to someone I trust. When it’s available, physical touch with my daughter, my husband, my best friends.

And I remember that safety isn’t just about the external world, it’s also about how I show up for myself. Let’s be honest - this seems to be the hardest possible thing for me to wrap my head around, and yet, here I am, quietly persisting, because I know the criticality of it.

Sometimes I wonder - can I be a safe place for my own emotions? Can I acknowledge my fears without shaming myself for them? Can I create boundaries that protect my emotional safety and energy?

I do not know the answer to this yet, but I do deeply hope that it is true.

I want to be able to reach safety, to find calm, without needing an army or an arsenal. I also know that there’s still so much work to be done to get to that point.

We ALL Deserve to Feel Safe

If you’ve ever felt like you were failing at calming down, I want you to hear this: You were never failing. You were searching for safety in a world that hasn’t always given it to you.

And that is not your fault.

So, instead of demanding yourself to “just relax,” a futile phrase that honestly means nothing to me anymore, start by asking: What would make me feel safe right now?

I think from what I’ve gathered, that’s where the healing begins.