It's Not the Trigger, It's the Story!

In this episode, I'm talking about something that changed everything in my own recovery from health anxiety: understanding that the places and situations we fear aren't usually the real problem. Whether it's supermarkets, restaurants, flying, hot weather, or even leaving the house, it's often the fear story our brain has attached to those experiences that keeps us stuck.

I'll explain how the brain learns to associate certain situations with danger, why your amygdala can't tell the difference between a real threat and a perceived one, and how this creates the fight-or-flight response that makes anxiety feel so convincing.

We'll explore the common fear narratives behind health anxiety, from catastrophic "what if" thinking to fears that your body will betray you or that you won't cope. I'll also share why avoidance strengthens these beliefs and keeps the anxiety cycle going.

Finally, I'll walk you through three practical steps that helped me break free: learning to recognise the fear story, asking more accurate questions instead of feeding worst-case scenarios, and regulating your nervous system before trying to challenge anxious thoughts. If you're ready to stop letting fear dictate your life and start rebuilding trust in your body, this episode is for you

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:32

Welcome to Healing Beyond Health Anxiety, the podcast for anyone who feels stuck in fear, disconnected from their body, or exhausted from constantly monitoring symptoms and sensations. My name is Amy. I'm an ex-health anxiety sufferer, turned health anxiety coach. After my own health diagnosis and years of living with health anxiety, I know what it's like to feel betrayed by your body, to live on high alert, and to struggle to trust yourself again. Each week we'll have honest conversations about health anxiety, fear, symptoms, and recovery with practical tools and gentle shifts that will help you move forward without pressure. So take a breath, you're in the right place. Let's go. Hello and welcome back to Healing Beyond Health Anxiety. I'm Amy, your health anxiety coach, and I am so glad that you are here today. If you're new to this podcast, a huge welcome. This is about recovering from health anxiety and real honest practical ways. So I'm not talking about just think those happy thoughts, just be positive. I'm going to give you actual tools, actual neuroscience, and a lot of the work that I'm teaching is stuff that I teach because I have been there too. So I want to talk to you about today's episode because I've been wanting to record this one for a while, and it's something that I come back to again and again with my clients. And every time I talk about this, something else shifts. So today we're going to talk about triggers, specifically the idea that the thing that you think is triggering your anxiety usually isn't. Okay. So it's not always the heat, it's not always the supermarket, it's not always the aeroplane or the waiting room, the crowded train, or even the dinner party. It's the story that you're telling yourself about all of those things. And that's the real key distinction. Because that single shift in understanding is one of the most powerful things that I can offer you today. So let's get into it. So I want to start with something I hear an awful lot from the people that I work with, and that is Amy, I can't go to the supermarket when it's busy. Or Amy, I can't travel by plane. I've had a panic attack on the flight three years ago and I've never got back on one. Or Amy, I cannot be in a hot room for too long. The heat makes me dizzy. I think I'm gonna faint. I just can't do it. And I've even heard recently, Amy, I can't eat in restaurants because I don't know how the food has been prepared. And here's what these things all have in common. These people have all decided the thing. That's the place, the situation, the sensation is the problem. Because this is what I want you to know about the supermarket. The supermarket is just a building, it has big, bright, fluorescent lights, lots of trolleys, tin tomatoes. The supermarket is not doing anything to you. The same with the heat. The heat is just temperature. And if you're in the UK this week, I fully resonate, we're just not geared up for it. But it's molecules moving faster. The heat is not attacking you. And the same with the aeroplane. The aeroplane is a piece of engineering, they are very, very safe. You know, they go up and come down all the time. And statistically, it's one of the safest ways to travel the world. So the aeroplane is also not the threat. But what's happening in each of those situations is that your brain has written a story about them. And the story says, This place is dangerous. This situation is something that I might not survive. If I go there, something bad might happen. My body might betray me, I might lose control, I might be humiliated, I might be too frightened, and there will be no way out. But that is a story. That's not the supermarket, it's not the heat, it's not the airplane. So let me explain what's actually happening in your brain when you encounter one of these triggers. Because I think really the key to moving forward beyond health anxiety is understanding. When we can understand health anxiety, I promise you, everything will change and everything feels less fearful. So your brain has a structure and it's called the amygdala. Okay, I love the amygdala because it has my name in it. It makes me laugh every time I see it. The amygdala. Okay, so think of it as your personal alarm system. Its job is the only job that it has ever had is to scan the environment for threat and sound the alarm when it finds one. And it is very, very good at that job. Okay, it is so super good at that job. The problem is that it doesn't always get the threat level right. So at some point, maybe after a frightening experience on a plane, or hearing about a frightening experience on a plane, or maybe having a panic attack in the supermarket, or recognizing that that's something that could possibly happen. Maybe you felt dizzy, or maybe in the heat you you felt like you didn't have control. That's gonna make you feel unsafe in your body. And what happens is your amygdala, that fear center, is going to make a connection. And what it's gonna say is do not go to the supermarket again because the supermarket equals danger. Do not go on an airplane because the airplane can be really dangerous. The heat, you know, we're all suffering this week. The heat equals danger. I hear it time and time again. But it's because it's not familiar. It's not necessarily because there's any danger. Let's be honest. It's because it's not familiar to us. If you're living in the UK, we are not used to living with climate like this. Okay, we're not used to these high temperatures. We can deal with it when we go abroad, absolutely, but you know, we have air conditioning and all the likes. So it's not familiar to us, and therefore, anything unfamiliar, our amygdala is going to associate with danger. So from that moment on, every time you encounter that trigger, that alarm is going to fire up. And that isn't because you're in danger, um, but because your brain has learned to associate that situation with danger. Okay, so this bit is really important. Your amygdala cannot distinguish between a real threat and a perceived one. So it's going to respond in exactly the same way to a lion or that saber-toothed tiger running towards you as if it does to walking down a busy Tesco aisle on a Saturday afternoon. Okay, same hormones, same physical response, same overwhelming urge to get out. So, in this response, your body isn't lying to you, it genuinely, genuinely believes the threat is real. And this is the real crucial part that changes everything because the threat isn't the supermarket, it's the story the supermarket has come to represent. The story that says bad things happen here, I lose control here, I could embarrass myself here, people might look at me funny here, my body can't be trusted here. And this matters so much because if the supermarket were the problem, the only solution would be to never go to the supermarket. And you can absolutely do that for a while. You can avoid the supermarket. You know, we're all lucky to have online shopping, you know, a touch of a button. But then it's not just supermarkets, it then becomes any busy shop, and then any busy place, and then it leads to anywhere unfamiliar, and then anywhere you might feel trapped. And so the list grows, our worlds get smaller, and health anxiety 100% gets louder. So, because you're treating the symptom, the trigger is not the cause, and the cause is always the narrative. Okay, so let's talk about the fear narrative because I want you to understand what it is and how it forms, and most importantly, how to start changing it. So, a fear narrative is a story your brain tells you about a situation before, during, and possibly after it happens. Okay, it's automatic, it's fast, and most of the time you don't even realize you're doing it. Awareness is going to be really important for you. So it might sound like I'm going to go to the supermarket. Last time I was there, I felt dizzy. What if I feel dizzy again? What if I actually faint this time? What if nobody helps me, I'll be lying on the floor in the cereal aisle and everyone will stare. I'll be completely humiliated and I won't be able to get out. Do you notice what happened there? You haven't even left the house yet, but your body, your body has already responded as if every one of those things is true, and every one of those is currently happening. So your heart rate may have gone up at the thought of that, your muscles might have tensed, your breathing has probably changed. You're possibly even feeling anxious at the thought of that, if that is something that you genuinely fear. So, what will happen is you then decide not to go. And you feel a little bit of relief at that point. The anxiety can drop and subside, and your brain goes, Oh, phew, good. Okay, staying at home was the right thing to do. Staying at home kept us safe. So, what happens is the narrative was never tested. You haven't been able to prove that by doing that thing, actually you were okay, you were safe. So the supermarket never got a chance to be just a supermarket, and the story gets a little stronger, a little louder, a little more convincing for next time. So, what are the components of a fear narrative? I tend to see, I tend to see three main threads in the ones that my clients carry. So, number one is the what if. Okay, so what if I faint? What if I can't breathe? What if something is wrong and there is no way that I can get help? What if I lose control? The what if is your brain doing what it's exactly meant to do. It is scanning ahead for potential threats. The problem is in health anxiety, the what if scans exclusively for worst-case scenarios and it doesn't weigh probability at all. Okay, it just asks the most frightening question that it can think about and that it presents as a genuine possibility of happening. Number two is the body will betray me. So this is one of the most common narratives I hear, and it's a really deep, often unconscious belief that the body is unreliable. So it will choose the worst possible moment to do something frightening, that you just cannot trust it. So when you have health anxiety, this narrative is everywhere because you're scanning your body constantly for evidence to support it. And a body that is already anxious is absolutely going to have a racing heart. You're going to be breathing shallow, you're possibly going to feel dizzy from adrenaline. That is going to provide you with a lot of evidence. And this is where we get stuck because that evidence becomes fact in our mind, and then that feeds back into the belief. Okay, I have that symptom, I feel that way, therefore my body cannot support me because I feel dizzy. But we have to recognize here it's coming from a loop. It feels that way because the perceived threat is attached to it. Number three is I won't be able to cope. Okay, so underneath so much health anxiety is this belief that if something bad happens, I won't be able to handle it. I will absolutely fall apart, I'll lose control completely, and I will never recover from that. So that belief is really hard because it's it's going to keep us stuck. It's the engine that drives most of the avoidance. Because if you believe that you could cope with whatever was happening, whatever happened in life, then you would do it. You would try. And how many times have we all faced adversity and actually been okay? But right now, if one of these things that I'm talking about is resonating with you, chances are you're avoiding it because you don't believe that you could cope. And that situation is never the problem. The story about the situation is the problem. And stories can absolutely be rewritten. So if it's the narrative and not the trigger, how do we change it? I want to be honest with you here. Changing a fear narrative is absolutely not a quick process. Okay, a lot of people are looking for quick fixes with health anxiety recovery. I see it all the time. I want you just to recognize how long it has taken you to get to this point. Nobody just wakes up with health anxiety. It's going to build over time. So it doesn't just happen because you read a blog post or listened to somebody say something. This is going to happen. You know, fear is going to gain legs and grow over things that you learn, experiences that you go through. And it's exactly the same in reverse. So you know, please don't think that just by listening to this, everything is going to be cured. It's a very small part of the process. It's a really good one that you're here and you're doing it. And hats off for you, you know, for taking the time to do this for yourself. I really applaud you. But we have to recognize that this happens through consistent, repeated exposure to a different experience. Okay, through showing your nervous system again and again and again that the story that it has been telling you isn't true. So there are things that you can start doing right away that are going to begin to loosen the narrative's grip. And I want to share three of them with you today. So the first one is name the narrative. Okay, you don't have to become it. So the next time you notice the fear narrative and you have to be aware. So you have to start with that what if, okay, the cut the catastrophizing, the body betrayal thoughts. I want you to name it out loud if you can. If in your head is fine too. If you're out and about and you, you know, you don't want to say it out loud, that's fine. If you can say it out loud, it makes it even more powerful. So next time you you hear that what if, you hear that catastrophic thought, you hear that thought about the body betrayal. I want you to say, ah, that's the story. That's the story again. That's my brain telling me that the aeroplane is dangerous. That's that heat narrative. This is going to sound small, but it isn't small because this is the moment you name a narrative and you create distance from it. Remember, we are not health anxiety. Health anxiety is something that has happened over a period of time for us. It is not us. We want to separate ourselves from that. We want to separate ourselves from our subconscious mind. So you go from being inside the story to being an observer. And from that position, even just a tiny bit outside of it, what that gives you is it gives you a choice. Okay, so you're not the narrative, you are now the person noticing the narrative. And that distinction, I know it sounds small, that is going to be everything for you. Number two is ask a better question. I always say to my clients, and I feel like a parrot when I say it, but it's all about the questions that you ask yourself. The fear narrative runs on what-if questions. And if we leave them unchallenged, the what if will always go to worst case. So we need to replace it with a better question. We're not necessarily a positive affirmation. I'm not asking you to convince yourself everything is fine. I'm asking you to be accurate. So instead of what if I faint in the supermarket, what I want you to try is what actually happened the last time I was in a supermarket? Or instead of what if the plane goes down? I want you to ask yourself, what is the actual statistical likelihood of that happening? Or instead of what if the heat makes me collapse? Try what has heat actually done to me in the past? Did I collapse? Or did I just feel uncomfortable and then feel fun? So what we're doing here is we're not dismissing the fear, you are inviting accuracy in into a conversation that has only ever had one voice, and that is the protective narrative from your subconscious. And then thirdly, we want to be able to regulate, regulate first and then reframe second. So this is something that I cannot say enough. You cannot logic your way out of a triggered nervous system. This is why health anxiety is a very different beast. And I hear it time and time again: people are being taught generic ways, but our thoughts affect the way that our body shows up. And so we cannot do that. We cannot treat it in a generic way. So when the fear narrative is running and your body is flooded with adrenaline, the rational questioning part of your brain is offline, right? It's not even listening. You literally cannot access it properly. So before you try to challenge the story, you have to bring your nervous system down first. This is the really crucial part and why nervous system regulation is the pinnacle of the work that you'll do. Okay. If you are not dealing with your nervous system, if you're not looking at your nervous system right now, please do. Please just go away and I'm going to ask you to Google for the only time in my life I'll ever ask you to Google. I'm going to ask you to Google nervous system regulation tools. Okay. And just spend some time looking. What we know is things like breath work, just breathing in for the count of four, out for seven, long exhales at the end, grounding yourself, putting your feet on the floor, feeling the solidity beneath you. Do that for two or three times before you do anything else. That's going to help you regulate first, and then you're going to be able to reframe second. It's always in that order. So once your nervous system has even slightly settled and it doesn't need to be fully calm, just less activated. The questioning, the naming, the accurate thinking, all of that becomes possible as a result. So you're not the narrative, you are the person noticing the narrative. Okay, that is the distinction. That is everything. So I want to be really honest with you about something before we move on to the close of today's episode. And that is everything I've shared today is 100% true. The narrative is the problem, it's not the trigger. Naming it creates distance. Asking those better questions is going to build accuracy. And regulating first makes everything else possible. But knowing all of that and changing the actual lived experience of health anxiety are two very different things. And I get that. I a hundred percent get that. That is why a lot of people are staying stuck because they don't have the accountability, they don't have the consistency. So it's really important if you're not working with somebody and if you don't have that, if you don't have somebody to give you that accountability, then try and find it in other ways. Try and keep yourself accountable. Try and keep this consistent because that is exactly what's going to help you. Because the fear narrative isn't just a thought, it's a deeply embedded nervous system pattern. And it's been practiced thousands of times before. It fires automatically. You don't even have to think about it. It's going to do that in milliseconds before your conscious mind has even had a chance to catch up. So changing this is going to take time. Absolutely, consistency is key. And it's doing the thing even when the story is loud. It's going to be showing up for the supermarket, even when every part of you wants to turn around and go home. It's going to be getting on the plane, even when your heart is hammering. And it's not going to happen because you suddenly feel fearless, right? You are still going to have that with you. But it's because you've decided that the life on the other side of the story is more important than the temporary comfort of staying inside it. I know this is not easy, right? I know this from first hand experience. I know that because I've been there. I know what it is like to stand in that car park outside a supermarket and have a full internal argument with myself about whether or not I'm going in. And know what it's like to be in a plane with your hand gripping the seat and your heart in your throat, telling yourself all the things that you know and yet still being terrified. So recovery isn't the absence of fear, recovery is going anyway and doing it little bit, little bit, little bit, gradually, slowly, not in a linear way, but imperfectly, little by little, the story will change. So the supermarket just becomes a supermarket, the heat is just heat. And you become someone who no longer organises your life around a narrative that was never true in the first place. So I want to wrap up for today. Thank you so much for being here. The fear narrative is the problem, and the fear narrative can absolutely be changed. So start by naming it, create that distance, ask better questions, regulate your nervous system before you try to think your way out of it. And then gently, one step at a time, this is the work. Okay. I'm not saying it's glamorous, but it is the work. So thank you so much for being here. If today's episode has resonated with you, I would love to hear from you. I have heard from so many people recently who said, Amy, I really, really love listening to your podcast. And I find that amazing because here I am just outside Cambridge in the UK, and I know I have listeners all over the world. And I want to just say thank you. Almost want to get a bit emotional at this point because when I started this, even when I started this journey, I honestly had no idea of the impact that this would make on other people and on me. And it is so lovely to hear that you that you're listening, that helping you in even a tiny way, it fills my heart. So thank you. If you would love to go deeper, I have lots of resources for you. I have my 21-day reset planner, um, which is available. Please just drop me a DM with the word reset. I also am able to work with you on a one-to-one or group basis, and that is all via Zoom, the wonders of technology. So if you're at the point where you're feeling like you need more than just these podcasts, if you would like some proper support, some structure, um, someone in your corner every single week, um, then my programs might be exactly what you need. So you can book a free discovery call through my website or by dropping me a DM and we'll have a chat. I don't do any pressure, there is absolutely no obligation. I just don't want to see you stuck. So thank you so much for listening today. If this episode helped you, please do share it with someone else who may need it. You never know whose day you might change by passing this on. I'll be back next time with another episode. Until then, take care of yourself, be gentle with your nervous system, and remember it is not the supermarket. It never was.