We were lucky to catch up with Amanda Huggins recently and have shared our conversation below.

Alright, Amanda thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. Was there a moment in your career that meaningfully altered your trajectory? If so, we’d love to hear the backstory.

Before becoming a coach, I spent nearly a decade in the fast-paced startup world. While at first, I thrived in those high-pressure environments, my career quickly became a place where I could pour all of my energy and identity into. It was the perfect enabler: it allowed me to avoid my underlying and pervasive anxiety.

However, I couldn’t run for long – nights of coming home from work, overwhelmed and exhausted, always led to deeper self-reflection. I would often myself herself asking questions like “Am I just staying in this job because it’s ‘safe’?”

“I drive myself into the ground for work I don’t have a connection to. Is this just what being an adult is?”

At first, I wasn’t able to fully examine those questions. That level of self-reflection directly triggered some of my most deeply-rooted beliefs: I had been conditioned to believe that stress was a badge of honor. Ever an overachiever, I sure as hell was going to get that badge, and wear it proudly.

And yet, as I continued on in her career, Impostor Syndrome began to pay more frequent visits. With every promotion, accolade, or new project, my self-doubt and anxiety grew. At first I was able to mask the struggles of self-worth by adopting the “work hard, party hard” mentality: every 60 hour workweek was “rewarded” with binge drinking as her only outlet of release. Not only was my life beginning to feel like Groundhog Day, my emotional and physical health had hit the floor: I was averaging 4 hours of sleep per night, masking her anxiety with Xanax, and fueling her body solely with Monster energy drinks and eating Taco Bell (two cheesy bean and rice burritos, to be clear) – the only restaurant open when I’d stop working at 2am.

While the cycle was unhealthy, it was safe and familiar to my subconscious mind: “My value is derived from how hard I work, and even then – my happiness isn’t guaranteed.” This narrative allowed me to perpetuate a toxic cycle – and it kept me “safe” from the bigger, scarier truth I was avoiding: I needed to change, STAT. Change careers, change behaviors, change myself.

One quiet Friday night in 2016 after my usual bottle of wine – “A decompression ritual that I’ve earned!”, I justified – I finally broke down. As the tears flowed (the first sign of emotion in months), I knew I was finally ready to address the truth I’d tried so hard to run away from: I was deeply anxious, deeply out of alignment, and no amount of external validation – career or otherwise – was going to break the cyclical pattern of avoidance I sought comfort in.

For the first time, I gave myself permission to ask a simple yet powerful question:

“What would actually make you happy, Amanda?”

For the first time ever, I began giving myself permission to work from the inside out, rather than the other way around. As I began to set down the weight of my impostor syndrome and self-avoidance, it created space for me to dive into my own inner work and healing.

While the path seemed daunting and unclear, Amanda did know one thing for certain: that this time, she was going to approach her future in a new way: with balance, purpose, and copious amounts of self-love throughout the journey.

Through deep inner work (and the guidance of many incredible teachers, coaches, and mentors), I ultimately left the corporate world to follow my call to become a coach. I didn’t know of any other anxiety coaches at the time to model my business after, but I did know that I wanted to become a resource for those who felt just as lost as I once did. With that as my north star, I have become deeply committed to those I serve, helping them step into the most empowered versions of themselves.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers

Becoming an Anxiety Coach wasn’t originally my goal; it was a divine byproduct of my own healing and a fervent desire to feel better. Early on in my growth journey, I realized I was looking for an approach that worked with the anxious mind, and taught me how to integrate “the work”. I wanted something that was scientific, spiritual, and most of all, actionable. When I couldn’t find exactly what I was looking for…I created it!

I tried a lot of things on my own healing journey, from the super-tactical (accountability, goal-setting, and action plans) to the super-esoteric (we’re talking vows of silence, energy work, and past-life regressions). It felt like I was piecing together a puzzle without a picture to follow, and that initial sense of confusion is what inspired me to create my own approach to coaching -scientific, spiritual, and tactical- in early 2018.

Since then, my mission has been to offer objective and compassionate support to as many individuals as possible. The intention to show people how to work through their stuff and live from their soul began with individual clients, but has since expanded to include partnerships with category-leading brands, podcasts, retreats, writing projects, and more. I’ve worked with hundreds of truly incredible souls over the past few years, and am immeasurably honored to be a support system on the often-tumultuous road of anxiety, healing, and growth.

Whether someone’s anxiety is an inner request to heal from the past, a “soul nudge” asking you to enact quantum change in the present, or something else entirely…one thing is for sure: it’s trying to get your attention.

Countless clients and students have shared some version of this statement with me: “Amanda, I know that I’m enough. I know that I’m worthy. I know that I’ll be fine…but I don’t feel like any of that is true. Knowing it doesn’t actually change anything.”

It’s a common, frustrating disconnect: knowing something is true, but feeling unable to enact change based on that knowledge. Together, my clients and I seek to understand, process, and release what is blocking them from embodying their vision for themselves. Together with my clients, we work with the mind, soothe the body, and connect to the soul. I take a three-pronged approach to my work: SCIENTIFIC, SPIRITUAL, and PRACTICAL.

SCIENTIFIC

Imagine trying to hold an important conversation with someone while standing front row at an overcrowded, noisy heavy metal concert. It’s an exercise in exhausting, ineffective communication, right? That’s exactly what it’s like to reprogram the mind for healing when the body is still in fight-or-flight: there’s too much noise for much of the inner work to stick! Together, we dial that volume down with research-backed approaches like:

Brain-heart coherence
Somatic awareness exercises
Parasympathetic nervous system support
Neural repogramming

SPIRITUAL

What if I asked you to explain your anxiety to me without using the word “anxiety”? What emotions, past experiences, and core narratives are driving how you show up today? Let’s open up a compassionate, non-judgemental space to explore what your unique soul work is. As you prepare to create a new vision for yourself (and embody it), we’ll safely identify, explore, and heal past narratives through practices like:

Emotional de-layering
Inner child work
Soul retrieval
Guided visioning
Quantum creation work

PRACTICAL

Practical, honest accountability is the answer to that million-dollar question: “Yeah, but how do I actually embody what I’m learning?”

Let’s figure out how your brain operates first. What’s your learning style? What has – and hasn’t worked – in the past when you’ve tried to create lasting change? Let’s take honesty, accountability, and personal responsibility to new heights without judgment or pressure.

The specifics of your inner work will always be uniquely yours, but there are systems, structures, and varied levels of support that we’ll adapt to suit your lifestyle:

Ownership and personal responsibility explorations
Daily and weekly accountability
Real-time support

Putting training and knowledge aside, what else do you think really matters in terms of succeeding in your field?

I think there are two important qualities that go hand-in-hand: removing your own ego from the work, and deeply listening to my clients.

As a coach, my role is to support them in their growth journey, not tell them what to do. In order to create a safe, judgment-free zone on all of my coaching calls, it’s critical for me to ensure I’m holding space to deeply listen to my clients and guide them towards better understanding themselves. The work isn’t about me – it’s about them.

What do you think helped you build your reputation within your market?

I think it’s the fact that I genuinely want to help people…and, I have a knack for breaking down lofty self-help concepts and making them more actionable / easier to integrate in a client’s day-to-day life.

Don’t get me wrong – I LOVE a good self-help book – but sometimes, they can be a little conceptual. You might feel great reading a book about positive thinking or neural reprogramming…but how do you actually integrate what you’ve read? That’s where I come in.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.amandahugginscoaching.com
• Instagram: @itsamandahuggins
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/amandahuggins
• Other: www.tiktok.com/@itsamandahuggins PODCAST: healingtalks.buzzsprout.com

Image Credits
Michelle Francesconi