Why Does My Anxiety Get Worse When I Finally Relax? Understanding Your Nervous System

Episode 20: Behind the Therapy Door

This article draws on a conversation between therapists Sarah Thome and Matt Gallagher. Listen to the full episode for the stories behind the takeaways.

You finally sat down. The weekend arrived. The vacation started. And instead of feeling calm, your heart is racing, your thoughts are spiraling, and you feel worse than you did during the busiest week of the year. You are not broken. Your nervous system is doing what it was built to do, and there are things you can do to calm your body even while your mind is still racing.

Related: About Sarah and Matt.

Related: PCM® vs StrengthsFinder: understanding stress responses.

Why Does Anxiety Surface When You Stop?

Take Tommy Shelby in Peaky Blinders. He comes home from World War I with PTSD, and his flashbacks don’t hit in the middle of a gang fight. They hit on the golf course, in the quiet. When stress isn’t processed, it keeps building. It’s easier to keep chasing the stress you can control (the next fight, the next dangerous call) because then the way your body feels makes sense. When you finally stop, it surfaces late and in the wrong place, like water coming out of the ground because a line broke somewhere far away.

Think of it like a fighter pilot pulling G-forces while sitting perfectly still. Matt uses this analogy: the body can be physically exhausted from internal tension alone. You look relaxed on the outside. Inside, you are clenching against forces nobody else can see.

Related: Understanding stress and personality.

How the Process Communication Model® Connects Personality to Anxiety Patterns

Each PCM® personality type experiences anxiety differently. With strong Persister energy, mild anxiety can work like a superpower: extra diligence, attention to detail, and a drive to do a good job so nothing gets missed. If you’re more nurturing, like the Harmonizer, the anxious thought sounds more like “Someone is going to be mad at me.” Take that one to the worst case and ask, “Then what?” You’re still going to be sitting here, still okay.

Understanding your type’s anxiety pattern matters because coping is not one-size-fits-all. PCM®-informed coping meets you where your personality actually lives.

Related: Which communication framework helps most with stress?.

What Is Actually Happening in Your Nervous System?

Sarah explains the vagus nerve, the 10th cranial nerve, the largest nerve bundle in the body, running from the base of the skull down the brainstem and spine with branches that touch nearly every major organ. When anxiety triggers a fight, flight, or freeze response, the vagus nerve is the mechanism that can help bring the body back down. Understanding this is powerful because it means calming is not just psychological. It is physiological. You can activate the vagus nerve deliberately.

It’s common for first responders to come into therapy describing panic symptoms they can’t explain. Open the DSM and they may check 8 of the 13, and one of those is fear of going crazy. What they need to hear: “You’re not going crazy. Your autonomic nervous system is wired to go into motion because it senses danger or threat.” There’s real freedom in knowing your body is doing exactly what it’s designed to do.

“Anxiety: it never lasts, it is never lethal, and it shrinks when you confront it.”

Matt Gallagher

Three Rules for Managing Anxiety

Three rules for anxiety worth memorizing:

• It never lasts. Anxiety always goes away. It feels eternal in the moment, but it has an expiration date. Knowing this does not make it comfortable, but it makes it survivable.
• It is never lethal. Anxiety symptoms, racing heart, shortness of breath, nausea, can mimic a heart attack. They are terrifying. But anxiety itself does not kill anyone. Your body is reacting to fight, flight, or freeze, not shutting down.
• It always shrinks when you confront it. Sarah’s own therapist told her to “lean into” anxiety. Her response: “You have lost your mind.” But it became a turning point. Go in with curiosity. Naming it out loud, “I notice I’m nervous about this,” already starts to shrink it.

Related: Therapy approaches.

Anxiety Coping Strategies That Work Right Now

Sarah and Matt share techniques you can use immediately, with one critical caveat: “You cannot wait to practice these skills until you are in a crisis.” Practice them when you are calm so they are accessible when panic hits.

• 4-7-8 breathing, with flexible counts. Inhale for a count of four, hold for five, exhale for seven, and adjust to your comfort level (try 2-5-6 or 3-5-7 if your breathing is really shallow). The key is that the exhale is longer than the inhale, which literally slows your heart rate.
• Cold stimulation for the vagus nerve. Stick your hands in cold water, suck on ice, drink something cold, or hold a cold compress to the back or side of your neck. The cold triggers the vagus nerve to begin calming the system.
• Grounding with your feet. Press your feet into the floor. Notice the sensation. This pulls your awareness from the spiral in your head back into your body.
• Text a trusted person. You do not have to explain everything. Just reaching out breaks the isolation that anxiety feeds on.
• Look at photos of loved ones. Pull up a picture of people you love on your phone. It brings you back to what’s actually true right now: you do have people who love you.
• Write your plan down when calm. Put the steps in your phone, so all you have to remember is to pull up your phone. When panic hits and you cannot think clearly, the written plan does the thinking for you.

Frequently Asked Questions