The Real Work with Maggie Sterling

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I've been keeping a list of everything I thought was my personality that turned out to be survival mode. In this video I share six of them and what changed as my nervous system came out of years of chronic stress and anxiety.
For a long time I said I hated Disneyland, that I wasn't a movie person, and that I had no time for anything "frivolous." I believed those things were just who I was. If you've been living in survival mode, a lot of what you believe about yourself may have been decided by fear too.

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 If you've dealt with chronic anxiety, chronic pain, or long-term physical or mental symptoms, this one might be hard to hear. I spent 20 years identifying as the girl with anxiety, and later with every diagnosis that came after it. In this video I share the shift I had to make before anything started to change, and why it can feel like you're gaslighting yourself at first.

Get my nervous system sensitization course
Take the nervous system sensitization quiz
Are your symptoms caused by your nervous system? Take the Quiz.
 If you're living with chronic pain, anxiety, insomnia, or a hypersensitive nervous system and you can't picture a future where you feel better, this video is for you. I share the realization that changed everything for me when I was at my worst, and the one thing I had to stop doing before anything could start to shift. My symptoms were horrific. Burning, stinging, insomnia, anxiety, OCD, anhedonia. I spent every day monitoring my body, trying to fix it, and grieving a future that hadn't even happened yet. If that sounds familiar, I want you to know your future may look very different from what you're imagining today.

Get my nervous system sensitization course
Take the nervous system sensitization quiz
 Are your symptoms caused by your nervous system? Take the Quiz.
If your nervous system always feels on edge, your phone could be keeping it there. In this video I share my honest answer on whether you need a digital detox, especially if you deal with chronic anxiety, chronic pain, or insomnia. I also talk about why I've never been a fan of detoxes, how I tell the difference between using my phone for work and using it out of hypervigilance, and what finally worked for me after years of making content online.

Get my nervous system sensitization course
Take the nervous system sensitization quiz
Are your symptoms caused by your nervous system? Take the Quiz.
 In this anxiety recovery story, Brett shares how he went from being bedridden for months, believing he was dying every day, to working, working out, and taking care of his family again. Nervous system healing didn't look the way he expected, and he still has some symptoms today. Brett's symptoms started out of nowhere in May 2025. Over the next year he had panic attacks every day, made repeated trips to the ER, saw specialists, and paid for procedures hoping someone could fix him. In this conversation we talk about what got him to that point, the decisions that turned things around, and what his life looks like now.