Silence is not always golden: Emotional Anxiety

Over the past few blogs, we've explored the different ways anxiety can manifest. We've seen how physical symptoms often have emotional roots, and how financial fear is rarely about numbers. Instead, it's about the feeling of safety.

Both physical and financial anxiety are often driven by an unseen force: emotional anxiety. What makes emotional anxiety different is that it doesn’t always have an obvious trigger. It isn’t always a racing heart or a stack of bills. Instead, it hides.

Emotional Anxiety is the Quietest and Most Persistent Form

It's the vague sense that something is off.

It's the dread that creeps in when you're still.

It's the self-doubt that whispers even when things are going well.

Emotional anxiety can show up as:

• A constant undercurrent of worry, even in good times

• Feeling emotionally raw, overly sensitive, or easily triggered

• A sense that you "should" feel happy, but something still weighs you down

• Pulling away from people or feeling disconnected from joy

  
  

And here's the truth: Emotional anxiety often stems from unresolved emotional wounds. These could be unprocessed grief, childhood experiences, betrayal, heartbreak, or trauma that was never fully named or healed.

The Body Remembers

As Bessel van der Kolk, MD, explains in The Body Keeps the Score, trauma and emotional pain can become embedded in the body, altering the way the nervous system responds to the world. These stored emotions don’t just disappear—they shape how we think, feel, and interact. So even when life is calm on the outside, your nervous system may still be reacting to old emotional imprints.

The Mind Can’t Always Talk Itself Out of Pain

Unlike stress, which often has a cause-and-effect relationship you can name, emotional anxiety lingers without a clear reason. That’s what makes it so hard. You can’t logic your way out of it. You can’t fix it with a checklist. You can’t meditate it away in one sitting.

What it needs is acknowledgment, curiosity, and ultimately, release.

It’s Not Just You

Emotional anxiety is deeply human. Many women feel like they have to keep it together for everyone else. We carry the weight of our families, our communities, our past, and our expectations—and emotional anxiety becomes the soundtrack underneath it all.

What Can You Do?

While my full Anxiety Release Program isn’t quite ready yet, here’s one simple practice to start working with emotional anxiety:

Mini-Practice: Creating Space to Feel

Find a quiet space. Sit with your hand on your chest.

Ask yourself, gently:

• What am I feeling right now?

• Can I name the emotion, even if it’s uncomfortable?

• Can I allow it to be here without judgment?

Let the emotion be present without needing to fix or change it.

Even one minute of honest presence can begin to shift your internal state.

What’s Next?

In the next blog, I’ll share real-life stories of emotional anxiety—how it showed up, what it looked like in everyday life, and what happened when it was finally released. You’ll see you’re not alone. And more importantly—you’ll see what’s possible.

For now, know this:

If you feel anxious and you can’t explain why—you’re not broken. You’re human and healing is possible.

Best wishes,

Lisha