Why Insight Isn’t Enough When You Have Anxiety
Feeling stuck despite insight? Learn why anxiety needs safety, not logic alone, and how therapy supports change with an anxiety therapist in Los Angeles.
“I Know What’s Going On, So Why Am I Still Stuck?”
There are many conversations happening around mental health across different types of social media—especially with therapists sharing psycho-educational pieces. This has led many people to begin seeing themselves and their relationships through a different set of eyes. They start to normalize their experiences, develop more self-validation, and gain deeper self-understanding.
Some clients come into therapy with me, as an anxiety therapist in Los Angeles Ca, feeling like they already know what’s going on based on their own research, tik-toks, and instagram posts. They often hold a deep sense of frustration because that knowledge or insight hasn’t created fundamental change they were hoping for.
They can understand their patterns: the common ways they struggle to express themselves or how they often become the listener or caregiver in relationships. They can name how it all points back to their family of origin. They can confidently say they have anxiety, that they overthink, and that they have moments where they get stuck in anxious thoughts. They can even reflect at the end of the day and clearly see the anxiety cycle they were caught in earlier.
Yet there is always a missing piece they identify: the feeling of frozenness when it’s time to take action or to navigate anxiety differently than they’re used to, despite knowing their patterns.
This isn’t a lack of motivation or effort. Creating change goes beyond insight and being able to name what’s happening for you. The deeper work comes afterward; the kind of work that helps you move away from the feeling of being stuck.
Insight Often Arrives Before Safety
Many adults who I work with as a therapist in Los Angeles are logical first in many areas of their lives often step into insight and awareness before anything else. This may come from being silent observers, from being more attuned to the feelings of others than their own, or from always wanting to stay one step ahead to avoid being caught off guard.
For anxious, high-functioning adults, awareness has often come easily and naturally. They’ve learned to rely on it instead of emotions. If you learned to push through feelings, hold it together, or believed emotions were a waste of time to sit with, then you’ve been living cognitively—not emotionally.
Insight has never been the problem, and it is always an important first step in my work with clients in anxiety therapy. Knowing the why behind your behaviors and emotions matters, but it’s only part of the picture. Insight doesn’t always speak to your body’s past experiences or to how internal beliefs around unreadiness and fear can create walls that block forward movement.
So yes, insight and awareness are important for understanding why you feel overwhelmed, over-function, or second-guess yourself. But they also lead to deeper questions, ones that go beyond the why and into how: how to build self-trust, self-compassion, and self-reliance. How your nervous system needs to feel safe enough to stop protecting you in so many different ways.
Anxiety Is Not Convinced by Logic Alone
In my anxiety therapy practice in Los Angeles, working with first-generation BIPOC and queer clients, I often notice that their relationship with anxiety has stayed at the surface level. They acknowledge it and can name it. What’s usually missing is an understanding of how anxiety interacts with the nervous system in an attempt to protect them.
I often return to the second Inside Out movie because of how it portrays anxiety as a protector responding to perceived threats. It humanizes an emotion that many people have complicated relationships with.
Anxiety has its own defense mechanisms and walls, as I like to call them, that show up when fear, the unknown, and uncertainty are present. A common theme I have found in my therapy practice for anxiety in Los Angeles.
Anxiety has its own defense mechanisms and walls, as I like to call them, that show up when fear, the unknown, and uncertainty are present.
And this looks different for everyone, which is important to consider. How anxiety protects us is unique to each nervous system, shaped by past experiences and how those experiences were perceived.
Some examples include avoidance, shutting down, defensiveness, and staying silent. Other, more discreet patterns can look like changing the subject in conversation, being the one who always asks questions, over-responsibility, people-pleasing, and second-guessing.
Sometimes it shows up as the automatic response of, “It’s okay, I’m okay,” or “It’s fine, I’m fine.”
Unpopular opinion: affirmations, reassurance, and self-talk are not enough to communicate to anxiety that it can ease up on its defenses. They can help build self-compassion and self-understanding, but they don’t tell your body that it’s safe.
The Gap Between Understanding and Doing
The stuck feeling many clients experience comes from a disconnect from their bodies. Knowing and understanding does not alone lead to a shift to automatic responses to anxiety. That is where the work is, work that many people do not realize exists beyond being informed about their patterns.
Because of this assumption, insight can actually increases frustration when changes are not happening internally or externally. There is often a belief that once their is a new understanding, things should automatically change. Stressors should feel diminished. People should meet them differently because their mindset has expanded. But all Insight does, is bring forward patterns of over-functioning and people pleasing.
There’s also the assumption that nothing beyond understanding is required to create change. As a result, clients can get caught in a cycle of frustration. This is something I see often in my work as an anxiety therapist in Los Angeles.
Avoidance is one example of a pattern that frequently shows up in therapy and remains unchanged. It is not because clients do not want to change, but because they do not know how to work with their nervous system’s way of protecting them from discomfort and uncertainty. Without that, they do not step into new ways of relating to their anxiety to let the body know it is safe to do something different. And that’s where the stuckness remains.
Many adults—especially First gen, BIPOC, and queer—move through the day without really asking themselves, “How am I feeling?”
When Insight Becomes Another Form of Self-Pressure
Many adults who come to work with me for anxiety treatment in Los Angeles come from backgrounds where they carried a lot of responsibility at a young age. Holding it together. Pushing through, no matter what.Achieving became part of their identity. There was little room to feel, pause, or reflect.
Their norm is moving through the day without really asking themselves, “How am I feeling?”
They rarely articulate how knowing more can actually create a higher sense of self-pressure, because is all they have known. It is an automatic response. It feels familiar and natural. And it’s also a defense mechanism shaped by anxiety.
The thought, “I should be doing better by now,” isn’t surprising when you’ve held yourself to a different standard for most of your life. And when you’re already in a vulnerable headspace, this pressure to feel better because of insight can be detrimental to how you see yourself. It can increase self-criticism, which then leads to shutting down. Some even revert back to old habits that feel more familiar and safe.
And, I get it. If you believe that what you’re doing is supposed to work. If insight is expected to be the solution to how anxiety impacts your life, then of course there is going to be disappointment when you don’t feel better.
Insight is just one piece of the puzzle when it comes to working with anxiety.
The Body’s Role in Readiness
A crucial part of working with anxiety is learning how to befriend your body. Many of us grow up deeply disconnected from our bodies because of being used to pushing through emotions and ignoring physical signs of tension most of the time. Much of the struggle in the doing comes from not knowing how to be with the body, to pause and listen to what it’s communicating. And it has a lot to say.
The body can signal when anxiety is present, and when those signals are ignored, it can take a toll on how easily we become irritated or frustrated. It can also let us know when it’s ready to take on challenges as in when it feels safe enough to engage in action. Readiness looks different for everyone. It might show up as an overall sense of relief, lightness, or a physical leaning in.
Our bodies remember past felt experiences. When healing or self-understanding stays at the surface, stuckness can remain because the body’s sense of safety hasn’t been addressed. This is where fundamental change happens: learning to be with the body and with anxiety, noticing when it’s in distress versus when it feels safe, and responding to what it needs in different moments. It’s about learning to move in harmony with the body.
Our bodies remember past felt experiences. When healing or self-understanding stays at the surface, stuckness can remain because the body’s sense of safety hasn’t been addressed. This is where fundamental change happens: learning to be with the body and with anxiety, noticing when it’s in distress versus when it feels safe, and responding to what it needs in different moments. It’s about learning to move in harmony with the body.
In sessions, the prompts I use with clients often revolve around three themes:
tracking felt experiences around distress and safety
noticing internal responses during activating moments
checking in with the body when resistance or readiness begins to show up.
I support clients in embodying the shifts they want to make—whether that’s second guessing less, feeling more confident, or learning it is okay to be fully and authentically themselves.
How Therapy Helps Bridge This Gap
I work with First generation BIPOC and queer clients as an anxiety therapist in Los Angeles Ca who grew up learning that pushing through and holding it together was the only way to live. Working with me includes building awareness and insight, but that is not where the deep work stops.
Working what emotional safety looks like for you across different areas in your life and how to recognize them within yourself. I support clients in embodying the shifts they want to make—whether that’s second guessing less, feeling more confident, or learning it is okay to be fully and authentically themselves.
I’m there with you in the journey of learning to slowing down and notice the patterns that keep you feeling stuck.
I’m there with you when doing the work feels frustrating and when life feels like too much.
Together, we practice making room for the gains you’re making in therapy, even when they are hard to see. A core value I bring into my work is meeting you where you are, while gently reflecting the changes you’ve already made, even when you don’t recognize them yet.
You Are Not Behind
Insight is a meaningful part of beginning your mental health journey—but it’s only the starting point.
You may have grew up learning to anticipate others’ needs, manage tension in the home, or stay small to avoid conflict. These behaviors once helped you cope and find some sense of internal peace. And while they made sense then, they don’t have to define how you move through adulthood.
You do not need to move through this feeling of stuckness alone or let it get in the way of the growth you have been looking for. As an anxiety therapist in Los Angeles, CA, I support first-generation, BIPOC, and Queer adults who are ready to stop carrying everything alone and want a more compassionate relationship with themselves and their relationships.Close with reassurance.
You deserve support that honors who you are, where you come from, and who you’re becoming.
Whenever you’re ready, I’m here.
Schedule a Free Consultation at (323) 493-6644 or Book Here.
Ligia Orellana, LMFT (#122659)
I’m an anxiety therapist in Los Angeles, California, certified in LGBTQ+ Affirmative Therapy and Somatic Attachment Therapy. I help first-generation BIPOC and Queer adults who feel the pressure to hold it all together move through self-doubt, anxiety, and relationship struggles. My work creates space for deeper connection and self-trust through emotional safety and cultural understanding.
Learn more about my work with relationship stress, people-pleasing and self-doubt, and online therapy, or visit my About page to learn more.
