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Russell Kennedy, MD | Anxiety Recovery Doctor

@theanxietymd

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Ex-Worrier
Neuroscientist/MD
Trauma Therapist SEP
Best Selling Writer
You’re not anxious - you’re alarmed
This is what you need to heal👇🏻

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Comment HEAL below if you'd like grounded weekly guidance on healing anxiety at the level of the body, not just the mind.

1. I Stopped Believing Every Thought I Had

For years, I assumed my anxious thoughts were the problem. I now understand they were symptoms of an alarmed nervous system. When the body feels unsafe, the mind creates explanations for why. Learning to question my thoughts instead of automatically believing them was a massive turning point for me.

2. I Learned to Feel My Body Instead of Escaping It

Anxiety had trained me to live almost entirely in my head. The healing began when I started paying attention to the sensations underneath the thoughts. Not analyzing them or fixing them, just feeling them. (Sensation without explanation)

3. I Reconnected With the Child Inside Me

The deepest source of my anxiety wasn't weakness. It was an abandoned, frightened part of me that never felt truly safe. Instead of trying to get rid of that part, I learned to listen to it, connect with it, and show it the compassion it had always needed.

4. I Practiced Every Day

Not pertectly, or for hours on end, just consistently. A few minutes of awareness. A few minutes of connection. A few minutes of reminding my nervous system that the danger was over.

This is your reminder that healing isn't a single breakthrough. It is thousands of small moments of choosing connection over abandonment. And over time, those moments changed my life, and they can change yours too.

👉 Comment HEAL to join my weekly newsletter and I'll send you for free practical tools and insights to help you begin feeling safer in your own body again. 
👉 And follow @theanxietymd for more grounded, compassionate support for healing anxiety from the inside out. 
With loving support, Dr. Russ * * * * * *
#anxietyhelp #anxietysupport #anxietyhealing #anxietyawareness #anxietyrelief by @theanxietymd

Comment SAFE below and I'll send you the first lesson from my anxiety healing program MBRX 2.0, completely free.

A huge amount of what we call anxiety is really an intolerance of uncertainty. And for most of us, it started in childhood.

So many of us worriers grew up with an excruciating level of not-knowing.

For some it was obvious: abuse, bullying, rejection. For just as many it was quieter, a parent who couldn't attune to us, or the impossible job of parenting a parent when we were far too young.   Pain almost always came packaged with uncertainty. We never knew when the next hard moment would land, only that it would, so our bodies learned to stay braced for it. 
Your amygdala remembers all of it, and it has no sense of time.   So uncertainty today, at work, in a relationship, with your health, can drop you straight back into the helpless feeling you had as a child. 
I know this one intimately.   Uncertainty is a huge trigger for my own alarm. It sends me straight back to my father becoming manic or psychotic. The worries change vehicles, but the engine was built in my childhood. 
So when uncertainty shows up, and it always will, here are three practices that interrupt the old groove: 
1. Change your body state. Breath, a hand over your heart, a grounding scent, anything that shifts your physiology out of the old pattern. 
2. Try to be grateful for the uncertainty. Gratitude releases dopamine instead of cortisol, giving you agency instead of helplessness. 
3. Have faith. Not pretending everything is fine, but trusting that the younger part of you who lived through the original uncertainty is no longer running the show. “I may not know what comes next, but I know I can meet it.” 
👉 Comment SAFE below and I'll send you the first lesson from MBRX 2.0, along with practical tools to help your body feel safer and your mind grow quieter.  👉 Follow @theanxietymd for grounded, compassionate support to heal anxiety from the inside out. With loving support, Dr. Russ * * * * * *
#anxietyhelp #AnxietySupport #TraumaHealing #childhoodtrauma #anxietyawareness by @theanxietymd

Comment RELIEF to get my anxiety healing program MBRX 2.0 for 20% off through Thursday.  I created the S.H.O.U.L.D. acronym for what every child needs to feel safe and securely attached. Here's how to give each one to yourself now. 
SEEN. If you weren't truly seen as a child, you don't have a template for seeing yourself now. Start by noticing the child still living in you. A photo of your younger self can help. 
HEARD. If you weren't heard, you never learned that your voice matters, and you lost touch with it. Revisit a hard moment from childhood and tell yourself, "That must have been really hard." Then listen. 
OPENED TO. If you had to suppress parts of yourself to be accepted, you're probably still shutting those feelings down today. See if you can be open to them now, even in a small way. 
UNDERSTOOD. If no one tried to understand you, you never learned to understand yourself, and your emotions still feel confusing. Go back to your younger self and tell them, "I'm here now. I want to understand." They've been waiting for that. 
LOVED. You may have been cared for, fed, clothed and housed, but never truly felt loved, so love struggles to land in your body now. Try picturing a beloved pet, then pour that same love into your younger self. 
DEFENDED. If no one protected you through painful experiences, you learned that pain has no end and that you have to do it all alone, so your body stays on guard. Can you begin to defend that child now, even for a moment? 
Each day, take five minutes and say to yourself: I will see you. I will hear you. I will be open to you. I will understand you. I will love you. I will defend you. 
You are still that child. Give them now what they didn't get back then. That's how you begin to feel safe again. 
👉 This is the work we do inside MBRX 2.0. In honour of National Wellness Month it's 20% off until Thursday.  Comment RELIEF and I'll send you the link to join.
 👉 Follow @theanxietymd for grounded, compassionate support to heal anxiety from the inside out. With loving support, Dr. Russ * * * * #innerchild #somatichealing #anxietyhelp #anxietysupport #anxiety by @theanxietymd

Comment SAFE below if you'd like the first lesson from my groundbreaking anxiety healing program MBRX 2.0 free.

Most of us were taught to try to heal anxiety with our minds. We’ve been told to track it, analyze it, and talk ourselves out of it.

But the alarm doesn’t live in your thoughts. It lives in your body, often in a younger part of you that never got the message that it’s safe now. 
You don’t need twenty different tools to reach that part of you. You simply need one practice, done gently, every day, for long enough that your nervous system starts to believe it.  👉 Comment SAFE below and I'll send you the first lesson from MBRX 2.0, along with practical tools to help your body feel safer and your mind grow quieter.  👉 Follow @theanxietymd for grounded, compassionate support to heal anxiety from the inside out.  With loving support, Dr. Russ * * * * * *
#safety #anxiety #anxietyhelp #AnxietySupport #anxietyawareness by @theanxietymd

Share this with someone whose anxious thoughts tend to take over their life.

So many people with anxiety spend years trying to "get rid of" their anxious thoughts. Arguing with them, distracting themselves from them, (or trying to swap them out for positive ones), and they’re often surprised when I tell them the thoughts were never really the root of the problem. 
Your mind is a meaning-making machine, and when it picks up a feeling of alarm (you might think of it as anxiety) in your body, it does exactly what it was built to do, which is to come up with a story that explains the feeling.

Because the feeling is fear-based, the story is fear-based too, and that’s where the warnings, the what-ifs and the worst-case scenarios come from. Think of the thoughts as the smoke, and the alarm in your body as the fire. Extinguish the fire, no more smoke! 
Try this for a moment. Think of a headache right now. Does that thought hurt? It doesn’t, does it? It’s just a thought.

A thought only gets its power when we believe it, because the moment we believe it, the body goes on red alert, the alarm gets louder, and the mind makes up even scarier stories to explain the louder alarm.

That’s what I call the "scary-go-round" so many of you know all too well.

So the work isn’t to fight your thoughts. It’s to notice them, to become conscious enough of them that you can say to yourself, “This isn’t just my mind. This is my body in alarm feeding my thoughts,” and then gently turn your attention toward the place in your body where that alarm lives.

When you stop feeding the story, the thoughts slowly start to lose their grip, and you can begin to tend to what was underneath them all along.
 👉 Follow @theanxietymd for grounded, compassionate support for healing anxiety from the inside out.  With loving support, Dr. Russ * * * * * * #anxiety #overthinker #worry #anxietyhelp #AnxietySupport by @theanxietymd

Comment HEAL below if you'd like grounded weekly guidance on healing anxiety at the level of the body, not just the mind.

I get asked about supplements for anxiety all the time in 1-to-1 sessions and on our MBRX group calls, and it’s a question I’ve always felt a little torn about.   I do take supplements myself to support my own healing, and I think they can help, but I’m also very careful not to give anyone the impression that there’s a magic pill or the perfect combination out there that will heal anxiety on its own, because that just isn’t how it works. 
Anxiety is driven by alarm that lives in the body, and healing that alarm takes deeper work than anything you can buy in a bottle. (Believe me, I tried them all)  What a few well-chosen supplements can do is give your body a bit more support while you do that work, and I really do believe that’s worth something. 
As always, please talk to your doctor or health care practitioner before starting anything new, especially if you’re on medication.  👉 Comment HEAL and I'll send you my free weekly newsletter, along with practical tools and insights to help you begin feeling safer in your own body again. 
👉 Follow @theanxietymd for more grounded, compassionate support for healing anxiety from the inside out. 
With loving support, Dr. Russ * * * * * * #AnxietySupport #anxietyhelp #anxietyhealing #holistichealing #nervoussystemhealing by @theanxietymd

Comment SAFE below if you'd like the first lesson from my groundbreaking anxiety healing program MBRX 2.0 free.

If you’ve ever wondered why something as ordinary as your phone buzzing or a plan changing can knock you sideways for the rest of the afternoon, it isn’t because there’s something wrong with you or that you’re simply overreacting.   It’s because your body has been carrying a level of alarm for so long that there isn’t much room left over for anything, well, unexpected. 
When your nervous system is already running close to its limit, it doesn’t take a big thing to tip it over, and the small things other people seem to brush off can land on you with a weight that’s hard to explain to anyone who hasn’t felt it for themselves. 
What I’ve learned, both as a doctor, clinical neuroscientist, and as someone who has lived with anxiety for most of my life, is that the answer isn’t to avoid every one of these situations. Doing that simply makes your life smaller and smaller until it’s really not much of a life at all.  The answer is to gently bring down that baseline of alarm in the body so you have more CAPACITY to begin with, and then the same busy parking lot or unexpected phone call can just be a mildly annoying part of your day instead of something that takes the whole day over.
 👉 Comment SAFE below and I'll send you the first lesson from MBRX 2.0, along with practical tools to help your body feel safer and your mind grow quieter.  👉 Follow @theanxietymd for grounded, compassionate support to heal anxiety from the inside out.  With loving support, Dr. Russ * * * * * *
#safety #anxiety #anxietyhelp #AnxietySupport #anxietyawareness by @theanxietymd

Send this to someone who may need a reminder that their anxiety is not "all in their head".

Chronic anxiety is what happens when your body is stuck in the past and your mind is trying to predict the future.

Your body remembers experiences your mind may have forgotten.

The rejection.
The abandonment.
The loss.
The moments when you felt unsafe, unseen, or alone.

Those experiences can leave behind a lingering sense of alarm in the body, and years later, that alarm is still there.

And because the mind doesn't like uncertainty, it starts searching for explanations. It worries about your health, your relationships, your future, your children, your job.

It's not because those things are necessarily dangerous, but because your mind is trying to make sense of what your body is feeling.

This is why anxiety can be so exhausting.
Your body is carrying something from a very long time ago that it was never able to fully process.

Your mind is trying to control tomorrow.
And neither one is fully here TODAY.

When we gently bring both back to the present moment, and give ourselves now, what we never got back then, that's when we heal.

👉 Follow @theanxietymd for grounded, compassionate support for healing anxiety from the inside out.  With loving support, Dr. Russ * * * * * * #anxiety #hypervigilance #anxietyhelp #AnxietySupport #worry by @theanxietymd

Comment HEAL below if you'd like grounded weekly guidance on healing anxiety at the level of the body, not just the mind.

I can't tell you the number of people that tell me this.

They open their eyes in the morning and the dread is already there. Before they've checked their phone, before a single thought has had a chance to form.

And the first thing most of us do is go looking for the reason, right?

Is it the meeting? The money? My health? My daughter's new boyfriend?

What we call anxiety is really two things: the worried thoughts of your thinking mind, and the sense of alarm in your feeling body.

Everything we've been taught about anxiety focuses on fixing the thoughts. But the alarm was there FIRST.

Alarm is old emotional pain, usually from childhood, that was too much to process and got pushed down into the body.

For me, it's a burning, hot pressure in my solar plexus. For you it might be a knot in your stomach or a hollow ache in your chest.

Your brain is constantly reading your body (it's called interoception). It feels that alarm and does what brains do best: it finds a reason.

A fearful feeling gets a fearful explanation, and the more your mind explains, the louder the alarm gets.

The feeling is REAL. But the story your mind hands you about it usually isn't.

So tomorrow morning, if you wake up with that feeling, try going toward it instead of trying to figure it out. Put a hand where you feel it most.

Take a breath and say, "I'm here with you." Then just notice the sensation without giving it a story. That alarm isn't your enemy, it's a younger part of you that has been waiting a long time for someone to show up.

👉 Comment HEAL and I'll send you my free weekly newsletter, along with practical tools and insights to help you begin feeling safer in your own body again. 
👉 Follow @theanxietymd for more grounded, compassionate support for healing anxiety from the inside out. 
With loving support, Dr. Russ * * * * * *
#anxiety #anxietyhelp #anxietyhealing #nervoussystemhealing #morninganxiety by @theanxietymd

Comment SAFE below if you'd like the first lesson from my groundbreaking anxiety healing program MBRX 2.0 free.

There is a gap where so many people with chronic anxiety get stuck. They do everything right in their heads, they check the facts, talk themselves down, reassure themselves again and again. And yet, their bodies don't budge. They're still terrified everyday, and assume they're not doing it right, or are inherently broken or unfixable.

This is NOT true.

It is simply because the alarm doesn't live in your thoughts. It lives in your body, and your body doesn't respond to your brain's logic.

The body learns safety through EXPERIENCE, a little bit at a time.

This is why I keep coming back to small, daily moments of connection with yourself. A few slow breaths where you actually FEEL your belly rise, or the air on your nostrils. Or maybe it's a hand resting on your chest while you stay with whatever emotion is there.

It can be something as simple as noticing the weight of your feet on the floor, or your butt in a chair.

None of it will feel like much on its own, but I promise you that repeated over days and weeks, it teaches your nervous system the safety your mind will never be able to.

👉 Comment SAFE below and I'll send you the first lesson from MBRX 2.0, along with practical tools to help your body feel safer and your mind grow quieter.  👉 Follow @theanxietymd for grounded, compassionate support to heal anxiety from the inside out.  With loving support, Dr. Russ * * * * * *
#safety #anxious #anxietyhelp #AnxietySupport #anxietyawareness by @theanxietymd

Send this to someone who's hard on themselves and could use a reminder of how they started out.

I can't tell you the number of people that come to me saying, "I've been hard on myself for decades. How do I just start loving myself now?"

I truly get it. It's like trying to jump from basic addition to advanced calculus.

But listen guys, no baby looks at their reflection and thinks anything less than "I'm perfect." And once upon a time, you did too.

Unfortunately, somewhere along the way most of us learned to turn on ourselves with what I call JABS: Judgment, Abandonment, Blame and Shame.

We picked it up from the people and messages around us, and then we kept doing it to ourselves long after they'd stopped.

If you've ever tried saying kind things to yourself in the mirror and it felt hollow or pointless, there's a reason.

When you don't have a template for loving connection with yourself, it's pretty darn hard to create it from scratch at this point in your life.

But here's the thing: you don't need to fall in love with yourself today. You just need a simple daily act of kindness and connection towards yourself. Over time, these connections will become something bigger - a new foundation (that you built yourself) for self-love and acceptance.

So today, instead of trying to move mountains, put a hand over your heart and simply say, "I'm here for you." You don't have to feel loving yet, you just have to stay with it.

👉 Follow @theanxietymd for grounded, compassionate support for healing anxiety from the inside out.  With loving support, Dr. Russ * * * * * *
#selflove #acceptance #anxietyhealing #innerchild #anxietyhelp by @theanxietymd