From Autopilot to Awareness: What Sunrises Taught Me About Anxiety

How Do We Know What We Feel? Understanding Anxiety Through Everyday Awareness

Key Points

• Many people live in a constant state of tension without realising it because anxiety can feel familiar rather than alarming.
• Mirror neurons help us sense the emotions of others, and they often reveal stress before we consciously notice it in ourselves.
• When we cannot identify anxiety directly, using a personal scale such as “doable or comfortable” can help us understand our emotional state.
• Repetition and mindful observation, such as in psychotherapeutic driving sessions, can reveal body signals we usually ignore.
• Personal growth often begins with small recognitions, such as noticing a sunrise, a breath or a shift in how our body reacts.
• Awareness allows us to move from living on autopilot to living with intention and emotional clarity.

The Moment I Realised Something Had Changed

When I started enjoying sunrises and sunsets, I knew something inside me had shifted. These moments of colour and calm were always there, yet for years I had moved past them without truly seeing them. Recently, I found myself waking early and looking forward to the sky softening into the morning, and again in the evening when the day faded into warm shades. This simple act said something important about my emotional state. It made me reflect on how much we experience without noticing, and how often we accept tension as normal simply because it is familiar.

This thought stayed with me until one morning a client walked into a psychotherapeutic driving session and shared something that opened the door to a long, meaningful conversation.

A Simple Question That Opens a Complex Door

My client told me, you are always reminding me to breathe. I went to my dancing class, and my dance teacher said the same thing. They told me, remember to breathe. I found it strange that two different people told me exactly the same thing. How do you know that I am not breathing?

That question, simple on the surface, took us into a deeper discussion about emotional awareness. My client insisted they were not anxious, but also that they didn’t know how to recognise “being Anxious”. They said they felt normal. Yet two different professionals had noticed the same signs: held breath, tension and subtle physical rigidity.

Understanding Mirror Neurons and Emotional Perception

I introduced them to the idea of mirror neurons, a concept that helps explain how we intuitively sense the emotions of others. Mirror neurons are a specialised group of brain cells that activate both when we perform an action and when we see someone else perform the same action. They play a role in empathy, emotional recognition and non-verbal understanding.

This means that when we see someone clench their jaw, tighten their shoulders or move in a tense, spasmodic way, our brain quietly mirrors these movements and sends us an emotional signal. It is the same reason we can walk into a room and instantly feel whether people are relaxed or stressed. Our nervous system is constantly reading the nervous systems of others.

In therapy, this can be part of what we call transference or countertransference, where what one person feels becomes echoed in the other. Because of this, I always pay attention to both what I see and what I sense. Sometimes I cannot consciously identify a specific movement or expression, yet my body tells me something is happening.

So in driving sessions, when someone’s hands grip the steering wheel a little too tightly, or their movements become sharper than usual, it can quietly reveal stress even when the person does not recognise it themselves. Perhaps their dance teacher had noticed the same thing.

When Anxiety Becomes Familiar, It Becomes Invisible

This brought us to the next big question. If breathing stops without awareness and tension becomes normal, how do you know if you are anxious?

For many people, anxiety develops early in life and eventually becomes the emotional landscape they grow up in. When that happens, the body learns to treat that state as natural. The brain seeks what is familiar, not what is healthy or comfortable. It does not distinguish between safe and unsafe. It simply repeats what it knows.

Because of this, recognising our own anxiety can be incredibly challenging. We might only notice it when others reflect it back to us.

Creating a Scale That Actually Works

Since my client could not recognise anxiety directly, we needed a different approach. Instead of asking them to identify stress, I asked them to assess whether a task felt doable or comfortable a scaling technique used in Dialectical Behaviour Therapy

Doable meant they could push through it even if they were overwhelmed. Comfortable meant they had space to feel their body, breathe and move with steadiness rather than urgency.

This gave them a language they could understand.

As we practised in psychotherapeutic driving sessions, they began to see how much of their behaviour came from doing what was doable rather than what was comfortable. When something required precision or calm, they would rush into it. They would move quickly, get close to other cars or approach a situation before they were mentally ready. Their body was acting from a survival response, not from confidence.

Repeating similar scenarios allowed them to recognise early signs of tension. They did not need to label it anxiety. They could simply sense that when something only felt doable, their body tightened. When it felt comfortable, they had more presence and control.

Applying the Same Awareness to Everyday Life

They began using this approach outside the car as well. In work meetings, in difficult conversations, in fast paced environments, they would ask themselves a quiet internal question. Am I doing this in a doable way, or a comfortable way?

This simple question became their guide. It became a way of checking in with themselves without judgment. And it also created a new habit of emotional awareness that had not existed before.

A Realisation About My Own Emotional State

Their progress made me reflect on my own life. I have always woken up early and I believed I was functioning well. I thought I was not stressed. But I asked myself the same question I had asked my client. How do I know that? How do I understand my emotional state before someone else tells me?

And that is when I realised how much sunrises and sunsets had become part of my daily emotional compass.

What Sunrises Taught Me About Myself

I grew up in Greece, surrounded by some of the most beautiful sunrises and sunsets in the world. People travel from everywhere to see them. Yet during my younger years, when I was dealing with personal challenges and emotional pressure, I was completely disconnected from them. I would see them without seeing them. I could not absorb their beauty. My emotional state simply did not allow it.

Now, living in England, I find myself actively seeking them. The colours soften me. They ground me. They remind me I am present. And I realised that my ability to appreciate these moments meant I was no longer living in the same internal tension that once shaped my everyday life.

This contrast helped me understand that emotional awareness is not always about identifying stress. Sometimes it is about recognising the presence of ease. Sometimes the sign that we are well is the quiet ability to pause and enjoy something simple.

Finding Your Own Personal Scale

Every person needs their own way of understanding how they feel. For my client, it was the scale of doable and comfortable. For me, it was the ability to observe natural beauty. For someone else, it may be the softness of their shoulders, the sound of their breath or the tone of their voice.

Personal growth does not always begin with clear emotional labels. Sometimes it begins with noticing something small. A breath, a movement, a colour in the sky. These moments help us understand whether we are living with awareness or simply surviving on autopilot.

When we learn to recognise what our body and emotions are telling us, we give ourselves the chance to live with more intention, more comfort and more inner freedom.