The Skills I Needed, Not the Fixes I Chased
- 7 days ago
- 3 min read
By Cheryl B. Engelhardt
Anxiety has a way of disguising itself. For me, it arrived as panic attacks that felt suspiciously like food poisoning, very somatic, very rude. I wasn’t trying to fix myself. I was trying to listen. What I eventually understood, as a two-time GRAMMY®-nominated New Age musician and trauma-informed coach, was that anxiety was a symptom. A byproduct of my life choices.
At the time, I was an independent artist and freelancer in the music industry. I was also a wife in a toxic marriage. I truly believed that if I could just figure out the industry, fix my relationship, and somehow fix my husband, my anxiety would quietly pack its bags and leave.
It took me over a decade to realize this: I wasn’t broken. I was missing a skill.
I grew up with a mom who was always there to manage big emotions. Joy was celebrated. Sadness was soothed. In many ways, it was wonderful. But I never learned how to soothe myself. My mom’s catchphrase was “happy happy,” and big emotions were more often smoothed over than fully felt.
That dynamic followed me into adulthood. In my marriage, the unspoken rule became: you take care of my emotions. And if you were having big emotions of your own, you were clearly failing at that job. Cue anxiety.
A four-month separation and a lot of therapy helped me break those codependent patterns and establish healthy boundaries. Terry Real describes boundaries as orange peels. They’re not just for keeping others out; they’re also for containing ourselves. We don’t set boundaries to control others—we set them so our reactions, triggers, and moods don’t spill everywhere.
After 18 years of inner work, and while helping other artists ground their nervous systems so they can create meaningful results, my baseline is dramatically higher than it used to be. I no longer live waiting for the other anxious shoe to drop.
That foundation is built on gratitude, a five-year-and-running morning routine that includes meditation, yoga, and journaling in my Luminary Journal, and regular somatic practices that keep me connected to my body, my intuition, and my actual needs—not just the loudest ones.
As a New Age musician and someone who leads somatic and results-driven retreats and masterminds, I have become very good at spotting spiritual bypassing. These are people who identify as spiritual but have not expanded their capacity for discomfort or conflict. When challenged, they often communicate in ways that feel surprisingly young or reactive.
Somatic grounding and communication skills go hand in hand. Emotional health is measured less by how calm you feel in yoga and more by how you respond to a difficult email, a tense conversation, or a roommate who didn’t replace the toilet paper. When spirituality collapses under real life, burnout, resentment, and illness aren’t far behind.
The real shift comes when we look at where we can be fully responsible for the outcome.
I often ask myself: If I were responsible for this outcome, what would I do differently? Is there a skill I need to learn? Where can I seek—and actually accept—help?
Curiosity, especially toward myself, has been the single greatest factor in easing my anxiety, deepening my marriage, and creating sustained success in my career. None of it came from fixing others. It came from learning how to stay present, grounded, and accountable in my own life.
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