32: Before You Call It Anxiety, Check Your Body

What if what you’re feeling… isn’t emotional?

In this episode of (re)Parenting Radio, Lisa challenges the way we’ve been taught to interpret anxiety, overwhelm, and lack of focus—and introduces a different lens:

Your body might be responding, not malfunctioning.

Because not every “emotional” experience starts in the mind.
Many start in the body.

From unstable blood sugar to overstimulation, lack of sunlight, screen exposure, and environmental inputs—your nervous system is constantly processing signals and adjusting your state accordingly.

And then your mind steps in… and makes it mean something.

In this episode, we explore:

• Why your emotional state isn’t always coming from your thoughts
• The connection between blood sugar and anxiety-like symptoms
• How your environment (light, screens, stimulation) impacts your nervous system
• The pattern: body creates the state → mind creates the story
• Why calm is a biochemical state, not a personality trait

You’ll also learn simple ways to begin shifting your awareness:

• How to check your inputs before judging your emotions
• Why nourishment and consistency create stability
• What it looks like to support your system instead of trying to fix yourself

This episode is an invitation to stop making it personal, and start getting curious about what your body is responding to.

Because when you understand the source, everything changes.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:01

Welcome to Reparenting Radio. I'm Lisa Watson, Architect of Human Transformation. This is a space for leaders, parents, and anyone ready to break old patterns, regulate their nervous system, and show up in their life with clarity and self-trust. If you're ready to change the way you lead, love, and live, you're in the right place. Let's begin. Hello, everybody. Welcome back to Reparenting Radio. Today's episode might challenge something that you've been believing about yourself for a long time. I actually hope that all of these episodes challenge you into seeing things differently that you've been believing for a long time about yourself. Because when we really look at it, some of what we actually call emotional dysregulation is actually physiological instability. And some of what we may be labeling ourselves as, you know, overwhelmed, anxious, unable to focus, ADHD, I just feel off today. It's coming from it's not coming from your thoughts. It's not coming from your past. It's not even coming from your current circumstances. Often it may be coming from your body or your environment. From things like maybe what you ate or how long it's been since you've eaten, um, your blood sugar levels, also the air quality that you're breathing, the quality of the water that you're drinking, the type of lighting that you've been under or looking at, the amount of stimulation that your nervous system has been processing. Even things like constant screens or artificial light, LED light, blue light, maybe even that electric car is the reason that you're feeling irritable or having a headache because you've been sitting in EMFs all day or for many, many hours. All of these are inputs, and your body is always responding to them. And what happens is your body creates a state, it gets into a state, and your mind tries to explain to you why you're in that state. And often instead of recognizing it as my system is under stress, we turn it into something like, oh, there must be something wrong with me. Why can't I just calm down? I can't ever seem to focus. And this is where the mislabeling begins. Because your body doesn't say, hey, your blood sugar just crashed, or, you know, your nervous system's a little dysregulated right now. It just sends signals. And those signals they come across as irritability, anxiety, restlessness, brain fog, short fuse, you know, lack of focus. And then your mind builds a story around it. Oh, it must be because I didn't sleep well last night. Oh, maybe it's, you know, that conversation I had with my friend, or I just have too much going on. I'm just overwhelmed. I'm sure that's what it is. And sometimes those things may be true, but sometimes they're interpretations of a physicological state. And everything can start to shift once we have awareness in the correct area. Awareness is always, always, always the number one thing. Because when you understand that your emotional state is influenced by your physiology and your environment, you stop making it personal. You stop turning temporary states into your identity. You stop thinking this is who I am. And for a lot of people, this comes back to something very simple. Unstable blood sugar. Now I know that that sounds probably a little oversimplified, but this is where your power really comes back online. Because when you realize that comb is not necessarily a personality trait, comb is a biochemical state. You can look at what is actually occurring with broader focus, more awareness. And what it may look like in real life is you wake up, maybe you have coffee first thing, maybe you skip breakfast, or you grab something quick that's mostly sugar or carbs, and your blood sugar spikes, and then it drops. And when it drops, your body experiences that is stress. And by now you're already at work having an interaction with your boss, and you're feeling irritable, and you're thinking it's your boss. He's too demanding, or you're not good enough at your job, or something. Because it's coming across as irritability, anxiety, urgency, brain fog, short fuse. So your your mind is trying to explain it. And now you're in a loop, and your body is the one that actually created the state, and your mind is the one that created the story. And this is where we tend to get stuck. Trying to regulate something at a level of the mind that is actually started in the body. It's kind of like trying to meditate during a fire alarm. I had this experience last week. In fact, I wrote about it in my newsletter that I wasn't feeling well. I had been sick for over two weeks, and it really started impacting me on an emotional level because I wasn't able to go work out. I was getting behind in the things that I needed to do for my business and around the house and with my work, you know, other parts of my work. And I started believing that it was something wrong with me, you know, that I just couldn't think the right way, I couldn't do the right things, and and luckily I have very heightened awareness, and I realized that no, it was more of a physiological problem, that I had just been sick for too long, that I was stressed and I was going back to old, old program and old wiring. But when these things happen, it doesn't, it doesn't mean that your emotional work isn't real. It just means that sometimes you're trying to do deep healing work on top of an unstable foundation, or you're thinking that this is healing work when it's just a physiological problem. And that's exhausting. So think about a time recently where maybe you felt short tempered, overwhelmed, reactive, maybe unable to focus. And then pause and ask yourself if you can remember, when was the last time you had eaten? What was it that you ate? Was it actually nourishing? But then don't stop there. When was the last time you had been outside? Did you get any sunlight? How much time had you spent on screens? How much stimulation had your nervous system been having to process? You know, what kind of environment had you been in? What kind of energy had you been around? Were you in electric an electric car? Were you in front of a lot of computer screens or under a lot of white lights? LED lighting, blue light. Because it's not just food, it's all of it. Last week I talked about sound and music and the impact that they have on your nervous system, both positively and negatively. And this is just an extension of that. Your body is constantly responding to everything that you're exposed to. Light, sound, food, stimulation, environment, all of it is an input. And more often than not, your state is not personal failure. It's a physiological response. And here we can we can get really practical because this isn't about adding more to your plate. It's about changing what you pay attention to. Instead of immediately asking, you know, what's wrong with me, you could start saying, you know, what is my body trying to tell me right now? And that one shift alone can change everything. We go from blame and judgment to curiosity. And curiosity creates space. It creates space between the feeling and the identity that you've attached it to. You're no longer spiraling into I'm overwhelmed, I'm off, I can't focus. You're observing there must be something in my system that needs support. Instead of blaming it on the outside environment, it must be because my boss is just a jerk, you know, my spouse never validates me, or you know my kids never listen. Maybe there's just something I'm not getting the right nourishment, I'm not getting enough sunlight, maybe I'm not getting enough sleep. And that's a very different relationship with yourself. That's a an entirely different conversation. It's more grounded, it's more accurate, and it's a lot more empowering. Because now you have options. You can choose. You can choose to eat something that stabilizes you. You can step outside and get some sunlight, go for a nice brisk walk. Heck, you can do a couple jumping jacks and get your blood pumping. You can take a break from the ki the screens, from the television, you can shift your environment. You can support your system instead of trying to just override it. And over time, this is what actually builds regulation. Not forcing yourself to think differently, but consistently giving your body what it needs to feel safe. I think that we've been tricked into thinking that so many of our mental health and physical health are attributed to things outside of us that we don't have control over, that are maybe more complex, when the reality is it may be something very simple that we do have power over to change. And we have the ability to change it. And when your body feels safe, your mind is going to follow. So if you've been trying to regulate your emotions from the top down through thoughts, through awareness, through mindset, I'm not saying that's not a bad thing, because it's very important that we become the master of our thoughts. But we also need to become the master of our emotions and the masters of our physical body. Remember, this work is done in layers on four different bodies: the mental, the physical, the emotional, and the spiritual. We've got to look at all of them. And your body may be asking you to start from the bottom up for a minute, to stabilize the foundation so that everything can become easier to handle. Not because you're forcing it, but because you're finally supporting the system that you've been living in this whole time. Alright, well, that's what I have for you today. I hope this landed with you. If it did shift something for you, I'd love to hear your thoughts. You can drop me a question at info at reparent-yourself.com. I promise I respond to every question that I get. And I will talk to you all next week. Have a great day. Thank you for listening to Reparenting Radio. If today's conversation supported you, take a moment to subscribe, leave a review, or share it with someone who knows they were made for more than the patterns that they inherited. If you're ready for serious inner work and real transformation, personally or professionally, you can explore my leadership pathways at Lisa-Watson.com. And if you're raising little ones alongside your own healing, you'll find my children's books at awakentheone.org. Until next time, stay grounded, stay open, and keep reparenting the parts of you that are ready to come home to their authenticity.