The 3 Hidden Types of Anxiety Dave Asprey Just Exposed — and How to Biohack Them
“Lesson #1: All Anxiety Is Hackable.”
— Dave Asprey, Heavily Meditated
🚨 Why Your Anxiety Often Makes No Logical Sense
Have you ever felt your chest tighten or your mind race for no clear reason?
That sudden jolt isn't a weakness—it’s an ancient survival program stored in your nervous system. The moment a familiar trigger appears, your body fires first and your conscious mind scrambles to explain it.
Dave Asprey’s upcoming book, Heavily Meditated, breaks this down into three distinct, subconscious types of anxiety—and reminds us that every one of them is hackable. Let’s decode them and give you a tactical path to freedom.
📕Quick Primer: Who’s Dave Asprey & What’s Biohacking?
If you drink Bulletproof Coffee, track your HRV, or dream of living past 180, you already know Dave Asprey—founder of Upgrade Labs and the man who mainstreamed biohacking. His new focus? Mental and emotional optimization. Because throttling anxiety is the ultimate performance upgrade.
“Your body knows before your brain does. Expose it to a stressor and the mind scrambles to match a story—usually one from the past.”
— Dave Asprey
💥 The 3 Subconscious Types of Anxiety (That No One Talks About)
1. Physical Anxiety
Your nervous system is the world’s fastest threat detector. It triggers milliseconds before your prefrontal cortex weighs in. Treat it like an early-warning radar, not an enemy.
“If you expose yourself to something or someone that causes your body to feel stress, your brain will look for a story to match and validate that feeling. This is typically from past experiences that felt similar, even if they are totally different– your body doesn’t know the difference between stored and new emotions”!
💡 Mental Fitness Tip: To recognize the souce of your anxiety, start by closing your eyes. Listen to the sound of your breath, then ask yourself, “What am I feeling?” When you tune in, you can interrupt the downward spiral before it takes you into outer space.
2. Reactive Anxiety
A present-day spark ignites an old trauma file. Your subconscious launches a full defense protocol—fight, flight, or freeze—until you consciously interrupt the script.
“Recognizing your triggers is so important because when you do, you can track it back to where it all began and do the work to get to the other side.”
In the book, Dave Asprey shares a story about how an uncomfortable experience Joe Rogan fans tied back to a childhood traumatizing experience where he felt unjustly accused. He said, “The core of my emotions stemmed from a pivotal moment of injustice in first grade; it wasn’t about Joe at all. It’s astonishing how something seemingly insignificant from childhood can have such a profound impact in adulthood.” When he finally got curious enough to sit with the underlying cause of his reaction to the circumstance, he completely removed the trigger. Now he remembers it but the past no longer bothers him.
💡 Mental Fitness Tip: Instead automatically reacting, train yourself to pause. Give yourself a rule to count to 10 and choose to respond instead of react. Ask yourself, “Where is this coming from? When have I felt this way before?” Questions are like seeds we plant in our brain. If you ask the right question, your brain will go to work to find the answer.
3. Emotional Anxiety
This is the story your mind writes after the body alarm. Looping thoughts try to rationalize the surge—but thinking harder rarely fixes a feeling problem. Feeling ➡ releasing ➡ rewiring does.
This kind of story we believe to be true based on past experiences can also apply when we try and forecast future circumstances based on the false assumptions of those same stories. The most important stories we create are those we believe to be true about ourselves and the way that others perceive us. These stories determine the foundation of how we relate to others, at home and at work. Your brain is spinning because it’s trying to solve what your emotions haven’t been able to feel and release yet. You can’t think your way out of anxiety. But you can feel your way through it—with tools that work at the emotional and subconscious level.
💡 Mental Fitness Tip: When you notice yourself automatically assuming something to be true, learn to question your assumptions. Ask yourself, “Is that really true? Where does that belief come from?”
🎯 Biohacker’s Action Plan
Track – Journal daily triggers; tag them P (Physical), R (Reactive), or E (Emotional).
Interrupt – Deploy the matching hack from the table within 90 seconds of noticing the surge.
Rewire – Repeat the hack 21 times; consistency forges new neural pathways.
📺 2-Minute Breakdown (Watch Now)
Prefer video? I unpack these three anxiety types—and share how I rewired a lifelong trigger—in under two minutes.
👉 Watch on YouTube: 3 Hidden Types of Anxiety Dave Asprey Just Exposed
“You can’t think your way out of anxiety… but you can rewire your way through it.” — Pennie Wilson
Whether you’re more of a reader or a visual learner, this is a must-watch to anchor what you’ve just learned and feel the shift start for yourself.
🙌 Real-World Proof
A Kokoro community member finished our Problem-Solving Mini-Course yesterday. The next time anxiety punched, she paused, did the 10-Second Interrupt, and reset her nervous system in under 15 minutes. That’s mental fitness.
👉 Watch on YouTube: Testimonial of Charlene
🔍 Ready to Pinpoint Your Biggest Mental Bottleneck?
Here’s where to start:
Take the Abundance Mindset Quiz—a quick diagnostic that reveals:
Which anxiety loop grips you most
Where subconscious patterns hijack your focus
The exact tool to start rewiring today
👉 Take the Quiz Here
It’s time to shift your anxiety story from fear… to freedom.
Thanks for reading, biohacker friend. If this sparked an “aha,” pass it on—learning amplifies when we share.
To your victory,
Pennie Wilson | Mental Fitness Coach
