50: The Anxiety I Couldn't Explain Led Me to the Rest I Desperately Needed

Episode 50 is here — and it's dropping on Dr. Brook Sheehan's 42nd birthday, which makes it extra special. But instead of a celebratory episode, Dr. Brook is doing something far more powerful: getting radically transparent about the debilitating anxiety she walked through for two and a half weeks in May.

This isn't a clinical breakdown of anxiety. This is a deeply personal, faith-filled account of what it looks like when someone who knows the body — hormones, cycles, nervous system and all — still gets knocked flat by something she can't immediately explain.

In this episode, Dr. Brook shares why she experienced a crushing wave of anxiety outside of her luteal phase and why that made it even more confusing and harder to dismiss. She walks through a quiet moment on May 6th that led to a word from God that changed everything — push through the fear, and I'll go with you. She opens up about her lifelong battle with fear of rejection and abandonment, rooted in being diagnosed with mild cerebral palsy as a child, and the unexpected ways those old patterns were still running in the background decades later.

She also unpacks the difference between surviving anxiety and actually resting through it, why we've become human doings instead of human beings, and how that pattern is quietly robbing us of the capacity to show up fully in the world. The pinball machine analogy she shares perfectly illustrates why rest isn't a reward you earn after burnout — it's the fuel that makes purpose possible.

This episode will meet you right where you are, whether you're in the middle of the valley, can't stop crying, or are carrying a weight on your chest you just can't explain. You are not alone.

✨ Your body has been trying to tell you something.

Find out what it's saying with the free 30-second Body Signal Decoder Assessment. Pick your signal, get your personalized guide straight to your inbox, and finally start making sense of what's going on inside.

Get it here: os.drbrooksheehan.com/decoder

🎧 And if you caught the mention of the Talk to Me, Body affirmation card deck during the episode, here's where to grab yours. 63 scripture-anchored cards to help you trust the body God designed for you.

Get yours here: drbrooksheehan.com/talk-to-me-body/

📱 Come say hi on Instagram: @drbrooksheehan

⭐ If this episode spoke to you, would you take a second to leave a five-star review on Apple or Spotify? It helps more women find this show. And more women learning to listen to their bodies is exactly why I do this.

Transcript

Dr. Brook Sheehan (00:00)

When you fear, I fear, and we spiral together. See, when we start to go into these panic modes about why something is happening the way that it is, not only are we adding fuel to the fire, we're making things actually worse. Now, I could have done this with my anxiety.

Are you doing everything right for your health but you still feel off? Does the wellness world have you overwhelmed, second-guessing your body, or chasing yet another fix? You’re not alone. I’m Dr. Brook Sheehan, and welcome to Beyond Wellness Culture, a space where we step out of the noise and rebuild trust with our body. This is where we stop overoptimizing, find clarity instead of confusion, and approach our health in a calmer, more grounded way. Take a deep breath, and let’s dive in. 

Well, hello there, friend. Welcome back to another episode. So glad you're gonna be joining me for this one. It is a very exciting episode. Not only is it episode 50 of the podcast, but it is also my 42nd birthday. So what a way to celebrate episode 50 of the podcast on my birthday. Definitely did not plan it that way. It just happened to roll into a Thursday on. this year. So how exciting for me. And I really hope that this episode blesses you.

It has been a very difficult one to record, not only because it's a topic that I honestly had a lot of anxiety recording. But then not only that, there was a lot of technical difficulties. So this is the third time I'm recording this. So hopefully the audio comes through great and there's no issues this time around, or we won't have episode 50 on June 18th. Before we get into the topic of today's episode.

I want to share a beautiful review I received from one of my beautiful listeners, friend. If this is you, thank you so much. But it says being over 40 can feel like you're in the upside down. And all the advice that we're given to take care of ourselves can feel like a full-time job. Grateful for Dr. Sheehan's advice as a 44-year-old trying to figure out which way is up.

Thank you so much for that review. It just blessed my heart reading that. Put the biggest smile on my face. You know, every single week I come with an episode prepared, whether it's myself or a guest, and we really break down how to really build a beautiful relationship with your body, how to understand what its signals are trying to say to you, and how to really cut through the noise of the health and wellness industry that is so loud and so daunting.

And can make us feel absolutely insane and overwhelmed. So I really just love that you took the time out to write that. And I'm very, very grateful. All right. So today's episode topic. And it's easy to talk about when it's not you. I bet a lot of you can relate listening to that. Like we can tell stories of other people. We can talk about something we've heard.

That we've read about, we can share with so much enthusiasm. And then when it's us, it's like, my gosh, do I really have to talk about that? See, my actual desire was to share something very celebratory on such a big day, like episode 50, which not very many podcasts actually get to. So it is a big milestone moment, episode 50. And then not only that, but episode 50 landing on my birthday.

I'm thinking of all the different things I can speak about. And honestly, God was like, uh-uh, nope, you're not gonna speak about any of that. I need you to talk about what you just walked through. And so here I am, really bearing it all out there, putting myself out there, letting you see me transparently. And I just pray that this episode really encourages your heart. Maybe there's somebody that you're thinking about as you're listening to this that can really resonate. And maybe you just go ahead and share it with them.

And may we all recognize and know that we are not alone, that we do struggle with things, and it is okay. And I hope that I make that known publicly here on the pod and that you can feel my heart and my outpouring of emotion as I share this. And with that being said, let me get into it.

So for about two and a half weeks in the middle of May, I was experiencing some insane debilitating anxiety. Now I know my body really, really well. And there are times that I naturally get a little bit of anxiety, which I know happens a lot when I'm in my luteal phase of my cycle, which for those of you who may not know, that is the phase of the cycle right before the menstrual bleed.

So it's also a time where I know my body wants to be restless and it doesn't like to necessarily sleep. And so we might be getting up at like three in the morning, three thirty, four o'clock. And that's okay. I've come to understand that about my body. I give it love, we pray, we talk, and we do our thing. And it's great. And we start the period and everything goes back to normal. And this anxiety, though, was not attached.

To that luteal phase. In fact, it was coming right after my cycle ended, which is at a stage hormonally where estrogen is typically higher. It's what is called the follicular phase of the cycle. And estrogen starts to rise and increase as you're moving into ovulation. Never intending to make this episode about the menstrual cycle, just wanting to explain that little tidbit.

So I'm in a period of my life in a season of my life, I should say, in my cycle where estrogen is is increasing. This is a time where you feel like you're gonna take on the world and everything feels great. You feel like you can accomplish a lot. And I was finding myself in these really bad places. Now when I say bad places, I just want to make it known there wasn't any depression. There wasn't any really horrible thoughts.

It was just me feeling really, really small and not being able to get this elephant off my chest. Felt like a big weight on my chest. And and the biggest thing about this weight on my chest was that I didn't understand where it was getting sourced from. It didn't make sense because it was outside of my cycle. My daughter went to Mexico for 10 days at the end of her school year. This anxiety started before that. I actually didn't even.

feel an ounce of anxiety. Thank you, Jesus, for her being on that trip. I knew she was being protected and she was with her dad and she speaks the language and everything was fine. I did not feel any anxiety about that at all. So it wasn't something that I could really pinpoint. And it actually, came on right towards the end of my trip in Hawaii.

Now we were in a beautiful place. We had a lot of fun. I felt rested. I felt all these incredible things. And I wasn't feeling anxious about work. I was going through the whole list, right? I was doing, okay, is it this? Nope. Is it this? Nope. Is it this? Nope. Is it this? Lord, what is this? And nothing about my day-to-day morning activities, how I take care of myself, how I dialogue with my body.

All these things that I do on a daily basis, nothing changed. Yet this impending anxious, overwhelmed feeling, all of it just came over me like a rushing wind, and I felt like it knocked me down. Now I was in my morning devotion time where I spend time in my Bible and I spend time in prayer, and I'm just asking the Lord, like, where what where's the source? Please help me. Give me the like supernatural endurance to get through every single day.

And while I didn't get a clear answer until about two and a half weeks later, and this is what I'm going to share with you guys today, I was able to make it through day to day by continuing the same practice that I do, by continuing not to fight against the anxiety, but to actually allow it to exist within me, not, where's this? I got to figure it out. Stressed out.

In this anxious, my gosh, causing more anxiety. You know, it's one of the body cards that I wrote in the Talk to Me body card deck, and it says, I am your body. When you fear, I fear, and we spiral together. See, when we start to go into these panic modes about why something is happening the way that it is, not only are we adding fuel to the fire, we're making things actually worse. Now, I could have done this with my anxiety.

Where you coming from? What's happening? my gosh, my gosh, my gosh, and spiraling myself out of control. But what I continue to do is I just gave myself grace. The Lord stepped in and supported me more than He could have supported me any other day. And I'm so grateful and thankful for it.

I was able to work with my patients, see my patients, rest in between seeing patients, and then go back into my next day of seeing more patients and so on. And the same cycle continued. Well, here's the issue. I need to take this a step backwards before I tell you how everything transpired.

See, all my life I struggled with really debilitating fear. Fear of rejection, fear of abandonment, fear of disappointment, fear of not being good enough, fear that somebody is going to see parts of me that they don't like and they're going to reject me and the whole cycle continue.

Now, this started when I was a little girl at a really young age. I have spoken it about about it on the podcast in prior episodes, but I haven't spoken about it recently, because I was really convicted by the Lord one day about how I was talking about it. So you see, I was born with a mild case of cerebral palsy that affects the right side of my body.

And for so many years, 20 years of my life, I really tried to mask it and hide it so people couldn't tell. Well, you only mask it as far as you can before people start to notice. And then you end up in junior high and people are making fun of you. And all these things happen and it just ends up like death by a thousand paper cuts. And so my soul was so broken. And as I built my relationship and built my faith in my early 20s with the Lord, I was like, okay, you know what?

I'm gonna accept this part about me and I'm going to be okay with this and we're gonna just tell people about it. And so it became almost like this thing where I would talk about it or tell somebody about it before they even notice. It's kind of like having a pimple on your face or something going on or like maybe a stain on your shirt that you're like, I know it's there. Like you're gonna tell people it's there before they even say anything about it, like you're drawing attention to it, almost like to deflect.

So I didn't realize that that is what I transferred into. Not only, okay, I'm hiding it, masking it, then I'm transferring it into deflection. And that wasn't healthy either. So I actually stopped speaking about it for a long time. And I do have permission to talk about it right now because I do believe that it is a tie-in to all of this stuff.

So at a young age, diagnosed with the cerebral palsy, and it affected just how I saw myself. And I went through that whole loop. Fear of rejection, had to be perfect, didn't want to be an inconvenience, all of it. So carrying that into adulthood and working on unraveling these fears and becoming more self-aware of things that were going on and how I was responding to things, I really felt like I was overcoming some of this fear without recognizing that that.

Fear still was there. So one morning on May 6th, of this year, so about six weeks ago, six and a half weeks ago, I'm sitting in my quiet time. It's a random Wednesday morning. I'm not anticipating this huge big word from the Lord or anything like that. And all of a sudden, my spirit landed this thing from the Lord, and he said, I want you to continue to push through the fear. And as soon as I heard that, it was like flashes back and forth from my past and all these ruminating moments where I saw these pictures of me either running back into safety like a little turtle.

Because somebody was calling me forward and I'm like, I don't want to, I don't want to, I don't want to. And I ran back into fear. And then other times where I'm like, okay, I'm gonna be brave. I'm gonna stick my head out. I'm gonna do these things. And then something happened and I run back into safety. So there was this push, pull, push, pull, push, pull going on. And it's like two steps forward, one step back, two steps forward, one step back. And I get frustrated at myself, like I'm not making any progress.

Because I'm being literally bound by fear. So when this happened on May 6th, one of the things that was shared in that moment was I want you to step out despite the fear, knowing that I, the Lord, am going with you and before you and surrounding you, and I'm there holding you and walking this out with you. But I want you to document this process.

So honestly, I was really encouraged in my spirit by that. I was like, yes, I'm gonna, I'm all for this. We're gonna do this. We're gonna push out, And I was meeting with a girlfriend of mine for a walk that morning. And I remember sharing it with her and telling her, like, hey, just want to share this with you out loud, kind of keep accountability for it. And I was gung ho. So here we were, and there were things that were happening that were putting me in a fear state. One of the things that I've been doing a lot of this year is pitching myself for other podcasts. And I know some of you probably have seen me or heard me on other podcast episodes. Maybe you're listening to this podcast right now from hearing me on another podcast. And while it's a beautiful experience, and while I love getting to share all of the amazing things that

I'm doing through Body OS and the framework and teaching people how to build this beautiful relationship with their body, it's also very scary. It's also very elicits a lot of fear because what you're doing in those moments is you're putting yourself in a position to be rejected. And I didn't really necessarily see it that way But then when there would be the occasional.

Not at this time, or this message isn't in alignment with what we're talking about. I would then shrink back. And so again, push, pull, push, pull, push, pull. so when the Lord said, I want you to continue to push through fear, even when it is scary, just continue to stay out there knowing that I'm gonna be with you. I thought, hey, everything's gonna be great. This is amazing. I'm not gonna feel things that make me feel upset or sad or rejected or any of those kind of things because I'm going to be insulated from all of that. My, my, my, my, my. Was I mistaken? So as I'm documenting all these things, there were moments where I really felt the hit to my stomach, the ooh, knock the breath out of you.

There were times when I questioned whether I was even human still, because I'm like, why is this not impacting me like it should? it was really cool to see this crazy dynamic, this tension between really feeling and ruminating on thoughts, but then also not feeling certain things and not allowing them to hurt my spirit in any kind of way, none of that. It wasn't able to do that. And so I was like, wow, this is so rad. This is amazing. My goodness.

And then what I didn't realize is that there were moments when I did feel like I was just talking about the tension when I didn't feel it versus when I did feel it. When I was ruminating. and when I talk about ruminating, I used to ruminate on things for days, weeks on end about how somebody said something, how they wrote something out to me, whether they're questioning, my entire existence.

I used to ruminate hardcore. And I feel like as the Lord has healed my heart in so many ways, I am ruminating less and less and less. I don't get on that train. Now there are moments I do get on that train. And this is the part from May sixth and the the two and a half weeks of anxiety, even where I didn't realize even just the small moments of ruminating.

It's like a track and field runner, right? They're running track and field and they're doing the jumps. Okay. So they do the jumps and they clip their back foot and they might get up and and start going again and then next jump clip their back foot and next jump clip their back foot.

So they're doing all of these jumps and they're never actually sitting in it to allow their body to repair, allowing their body to restore and get better. So they're just picking up and going, picking up and going, picking up and going. And all of a sudden they can't understand. Well, now they've got a broken bone, or now they've gotten a really bad torn ligament that they need surgery for. I'm not trying to be dramatic to say that.

My anxiety needs surgery by any means. But I'm giving that to express, what happened was as these little nicks, as these little things were happening, I was moving through it, I was being obedient, I was pressing through that fear, but I wasn't actually sitting in the resting. Now I would give myself a little break between patient calls, the 15 minutes, the 10 minutes, the five minutes.

Any little moment between patients that I could just to take an exhale, just to release all of the energy around whatever I was carrying. But I didn't allow myself true rest. And see, what I'm understanding about rest is one of the things we do as humans is we tend to rest from a place of reward, or we rest from a place of utter burnout and we're not resting the way that we have been designed to truly rest. See, we we get into this whole hustle culture, do do do that we become human doings instead of human beings.

And taking those moments of true rest just to rest, just to build up the energy capacity to show up in the way that we need to show up in the world. I think of it as a pinball machine, when you pull back on that pinball, the handle, you have to pull that thing back. You pull it all the way. You keep that tension, tension, tension, And then you release it. And the ball has the energy to bounce back and forth to do what it needs to do. But as soon as it starts running out of energy.

What happens? You can't keep it higher up. It starts falling lower and lower and lower to eventually falling into the hole. And you need to start all over. See, we've been designed where we do need to rest from a place of resting, true rest, where our cups can be full and get filled again. So we're not pouring out from an empty vessel, but we're getting energized to do the work that we've been called to do.

So in those moments when I felt all of that heaviness and that just stuff on my chest. And I just was spending my time in prayer and doing what I needed to do, I allowed it to exist as part of me. And it was so beautiful. It's been so beautiful to walk through because not only do I feel just stronger in my resolve to do the work that I've been called to do, but I just feel like wow, this.

Is such a learning lesson of what it looks like to truly rest. See, I talk about all the physical things about the body, and I know I talk about the four pillars: physical, spiritual, emotional, mental. And like I said in the very, very beginning, it's so easy to talk and share on things that are about somebody else or stories that we've heard, but it's not easy when we have to talk about ourselves.

So I'm here, friend, just to share with you that if you've experienced feelings like this, if you feel like you're going through the ick, that you're walking through the valley, that you just don't know how to get on the other side of it, sometimes, and a lot of times, you just need to sit with it. Whether that's a physical ailment.

Whether your knee is bothering you, whether you feel like emotionally you can't stop crying, or you just have this overwhelming feeling of just tears coming out your eyes and rolling through your face. Let it happen. Let your body express the way that it needs to express and know that, there is a God who loves you. There's a God who created you. There's a God who knows every aspect about you. And He is right there beside you. He is right there walking alongside of you. And I hope you are so encouraged by this episode. I pray you have a beautiful week and I will see you on the next episode.

Friend, thank you so much for spending this time with me today. I know your body is grateful that you listened to this episode as well. If this conversation supported you in any way, please share it with someone who feels overwhelmed by their health, or quite possibly stuck in that wellness spiral. And leave a review on Apple Podcast as it means a lot to know this space is supporting you, and helps this message reach the people who need it most. Alrighty, let’s close those tabs, exit the apps, and let your body do what it already knows how to do. I’ll meet you back here every single week. Bye for now.