The Missing Link Between Spirituality and Anxiety
In June of 2025 I was invited to chat about spirituality and anxiety with Sarah Faith Gottesdiener on her podcast, Moonbeaming. What unfolded was a conversation about why anxiety isn't a glitch to be fixed, but a protector to be understood. It turns out that our ancestors (and how we relate to them), is a large factor in how we experience anxiety. By using Brainspotting to bridge the the gap between our logic and our spiritual intuition, we can move beyond the idea of “vibrating higher” into true, somatic safety and ancestral connection.
Listen while you read ⬇️
Anxiety Isn’t Always a Flaw to “Fix”
In the summer of 2025, I sat down with Sarah Faith Gottesdiener on her podcast, Moonbeaming, to dissect a narrative that mainstream wellness spaces often get wrong. We explored the complex intersection of spirituality and anxiety, looking at why your anxiety isn’t always something that needs to be fixed, but that it is often an intelligent protector worth understanding.
During our conversation, I used my own family’s story to note how ignoring my own anxious responses would actually be doing my ancestors a profound disservice. We talked about how my own lineage utilized acute hyper-vigilance to escape the Jim Crow South which led to their own participation in what’s now known as The Great Migration.
My ancestors’ anxiety wasn’t a lack of spiritual alignment, but a baseline requirement for staying alive.
🎧 Listen to the full episode: At The Crossroads of Psychology & Spirituality
1. Anxiety as the "Protector"
In Internal Family Systems (IFS) or "Parts Work," we can view anxiety as a protector. It’s essentially a part of your system that’s been working overtime to keep you safe in a world that often isn't.
In my clinical experience, anxiety is often trying to give you the gift of time.
It creates a pause when it feels like visibility is dangerous.
It whispers, "Wait until we have more resources," whether those are internal (confidence) or external (community and finances).
When we stop pathologizing this part and start interviewing it, we find a deeply loyal advocate that is simply trying to ensure your survival.
2. The Ancestral Shield: Survival as a Lineage
From a decolonized perspective, we have to acknowledge that your hyper-vigilance may actually be an inherited survival skill. For ancestors who navigated systemic harm and oppression, being anxious was a requirement.
This explains why so many of my own high-achieving clients feel an insatiable urge to over-perform or over-function. They’ve been conditioned by the refrain spoken over them by their families that "people like us must work ten times harder to be taken even half as seriously."
So no, your nervous system isn’t completely messed up. It’s actually a finely tuned instrument that’s been trained by generations of survivors and your anxiety is the shield they passed down to you. When we bridge spirituality and anxiety, we begin to see that our anxiety is often just a displaced ancestral strategy that hasn't yet realized it is safe to put the shield down.
3. Brainspotting: Accessing the Ancestral Body
How do we tell the body that the war is over? We have to go deeper than talk therapy.
Brainspotting is a subcortical tool that helps us find where these survival stories are held in the brain. By finding a "Brainspot" (aka a specific point in your visual field) we can access the midbrain where ancestral trauma and physiological protection live.
During a Brainspotting session, you might notice your throat constrict or your breath shorten as we land on a Brainspot. As we keep your attention there, the body begins to process and release that stored tension. This is often when my own clients have experiences like hearing messages from ancestors or feeling their own intuition remind them that they’re capable, resourced, and no longer in the same danger as they once were.
4. Rejecting the "Vibrate Higher" Myth and New Age Spiritual Bypassing
The wellness industry often suggests that to heal, you simply need to "vibrate at a higher frequency." In the podcast, I discuss why this is a form of spiritual bypassing that lends itself to victim-blaming.
Telling someone with intergenerational trauma to "change their frequency" ignores the systemic reality of their life. New Age dogma often hyper-focuses on individual accountability while completely ignoring collective trauma and systemic factors.
Similarly, telling a person with intergenerational trauma that their thoughts create their reality is an insidious form of spiritual bypassing. True healing isn't about ascending away from your anxiety, but about descending into the body and building enough internal safety to hold the complexity of your experience.
Ready to Experience Spiritually Based Anxiety Therapy in Colorado or Oregon?
The adults I work with are often positioned at multiple intersections of identity. If you’re a Person of the Global Majority (including multiracial folks), queer, chronically ill, or neurodivergent, I have a space waiting for you that’ll affirm your own cultural context while also giving you tools for navigating your anxiety.
Brainspotting intensives allow us to deep dive into what’s been keeping you stuck, while also giving you space to process the backlog of emotions your anxiety has brought along for the ride.
