Somatic Resources for Acute Anxiety

Sometimes anxiety can come on quickly.  It may feel big, overwhelming, deep, and intense.  Anxiety is the experience of a revved autonomic nervous system.  The nervous system evolved to respond to predators and ensure survival through mobilizing the impulses to fight, flee or freeze.  In modern times, with no lions to run from, the nervous system can become unbalanced by everyday stressors and startling events.  The energy the body creates to spring into action needs to be released, metabolized and discharged.  

You can help your body release un-used energy before it turns to tension.  Here are some specific skills and practices that can help manage acute anxiety and bring the nervous system back into balance.  A balanced autonomic nervous system brings about the experience of calm, clarity and control.  

Weight and pressure.  Put something heavy on your lap.  Use a heavy backpack, a pile of books, or anything else that has some weight to it.  This is particularly effective if you are experiencing shaking that feels uncomfortable or out of control.  You can also firmly squeeze your arms and press on your legs, or wrap up tightly in a blanket.  All of these things are grounding and counter the fast and high energy of anxiety. 

Take a breath.  Start with one or two if it feels like too much to take five or ten.  Try to make your breath deep and slow, but don’t force or strain.  Stay with deep breaths as long as feels comfortable.  After the acute anxiety has passed, notice impulses to breathe, sigh and yawn as your body continues to regulate. Know that sometimes deep breathing can actually increase feelings of anxiety.  Stop if this happens.  Trust yourself.  

Allow movement.  Movement is normal when you feel anxious.  Your body is trying to discharge energy.  Shakiness and restlessness can be uncomfortable and even scary.  Know that this your body’s way of trying come back to homeostasis and calm.  Allow it when it feels okay.  Help it subside when it doesn’t.  Stretch, walk around, pace.  Put things away, wash dishes.  Open and close your hands, roll your ankles, bend your knees.  Fidget.  Set aside judgement for a moment, and just notice and follow.  Holding back movements creates tension.  Allowing movement resolves it.  

Reach out.  Talking with someone who helps you feel safe can be a quick way to calm anxiety.  We are social creatures.  It is written in our biology.  We have the capacity to communicate on unconscious levels—nervous system to nervous system.  We naturally co-regulate with the people around is.  Connect with someone you trust, someone who can honestly tell you that although you don’t feel okay now, you will feel okay soon.  This will connect with the part inside of you that knows this too.  Strengthening this connection to the calmer parts of yourself will help you be gentle and calm with yourself as well.  

Notice moments of calm. As your system begins to calm down, take a moment to notice what it feels like.  Check in with the quality of your thoughts.  Is there slowing?  More space?  Check in with your body and notice if your heartbeat and breath have begun to settle.  You might notices that you feel more “in” your body.  See if you can sense into your hips and sit-bones or feel your feet on the ground.  Honor and celebrate the shifts.  It can feel risky to bring awareness to your experience and to try to change it.  It is hard work, and work worth doing.  You might notice that the feelings of anxiety come back.  This is normal.  It can help to notice it happening.  This is you learning to ride the waves.

Somatic Resources for Anxiety and Life Transitions

Anxiety is a common experience during life transitions.  Transitions often go hand-in-hand with stressors—increased external demands, tension in relationships and uncertainty.  These stressors can lead to waves of anxiety, which may feel overwhelming at times. Stress management can reduce anxiety, increase feelings of being grounded and focused, and generally smooth transitions. 

Stress management involves regulating the nervous system.  Regulating means bringing the two branches of the autonomic nervous system into balance.  These two branches are responsible for survival (fight, flight, freeze), and social engagement (rest and digest).  A healthy nervous system responds congruently with the environment, and the person is able to mobilize in the face of danger and then return to rest once the danger has passed.  

A variety of life experiences can jangle or damage the nervous system.  Often the fight, flight, freeze side of the equation gets revved up and stays revved up.  Fight, flight and freeze responses are mobilized when there is no need to run, fight or hide. The body doesn’t know the difference between something that doesn't pose a physical threat, such as a disagreement or a bounced check, and something that does, such as being chased by a lion.  A set of responses that is adaptive and useful when escaping sharp teeth is anything but helpful when trying to navigate relationships or problem solve.  This mismatch is the physiological experience of anxiety.

On the other hand, A healthy, self-regulating nervous system is the physiological basis for the experience of ease.  Thus, healing and supporting the nervous system is the process for decreasing anxiety.  Somatic resources do just that.  Somatic resources are tools and practices that engage the body and work directly with the nervous system.  They include, broadly, breath, movement and awareness.  The following suggestions incorporate each of these.

Walking is a somatic resource that is available to many of us almost anywhere.  It deepens the breath and increases circulation.  It engages large muscles, evoking a sense of grounding.  The rhythm of footsteps can be soothing, and often walking creates physical distance from the stressor.  Moving the body can take you of your head and away from repetitive thoughts. Try walking around the block when you feel stuck on a project or have just had a stressful interaction.  Notice how you feel before, during and after the walk.  Take it a step (ha!) further, and integrate walking into your weekly or daily routine. Consider walking in nature as often as possible, at least a few times a month. Wherever you are, pay attention to how your inner state, and especially anxiety levels, shift before, during and after the walk. 

Deep breaths are tried and true.  The breath tightens in the “fight, flight, freeze” state.  Shifting your breath lets your body know that there’s no physical threat, no need to mobilize.  Start by noticing how you are breathing.  If you’re feeling anxious, your breath is probably shallow, and it may be fast or uneven.  It may feel like you’re not breathing at all.  Often, just noticing this type of breathing naturally brings a deeper breath.  Keep paying attention.  Notice where the breath flows, and where it is a little tighter.  Try not to judge how you are breathing, since judgment can increase anxiety.  Now, gently deepen your breath.   Play with noticing the natural pauses between inhale and exhale.  Play with extending the out-breath.  Notice, deepen, play.  Repeat, repeat, repeat, repeat.  

Move in awareness.  Yoga, dance, martial arts, sports and exercise all provide spaces where the focus is on movement and the body.  Awareness of movement necessarily includes awareness of breath.  This sort of focus on the body and breath can bring you out of your head.  With your focus elsewhere, you can take a break from the constricted thought patterns that often accompany anxiety.  Before starting your movement practice, take a quick inventory of how you feel.  Track any shifts during the practice.  And then just in again when you are done. Extend your awareness into how you move throughout the day, and notice how that impacts your experience and mood.  

Positive relationships are another somatic resource.  As social creatures, we interact on many levels, including nervous system to nervous system.  In these (largely unconscious) interactions we co-regulate.  A calm body can help a less calm body settle.  Without trying, we can “borrow” the nervous system of another person to help bring our own nervous system back into regulation.  We can be settled and soothed.  This is a resource, and we can tap into it by intentionally connecting with people who help us feel safe.  We can support our body’s natural capacity for accessing this kind of resource by paying attention to it happening.  Notice deep breaths that happen during supportive conversations.  Notice the sense of relief you feel when you sense that someone is hearing you.  Taking time to take this kind of experience in helps your system re-learn that these feelings of spaciousness, calm and safety are possible.  

Follow Yourself

Here is the good news: stuck, scattered or buried, trapped, adrift or knocked off your feet, you have everything you need.  It’s inside you.  Feel your way in, and you find your way out.  

Try this: start where you are.  Notice what is already there, the ways you are already beginning to find your way.  There are stirrings inside.  Energies, frustrations.  There is something in you that is not stuck.  Something in you is already moving.  Follow that.  Follow the feeling inside that knows what to do.  Pick up the mess.  Listen to music.  Reach out.  Growl.  These impulses toward comfort and pleasure? These are your messengers.  Listen to them.

At times, and especially at first, it may not feel like enough.  The challenges are overwhelming, the logistics seem impossible.  How can it be enough to feel my way through?  How can it be enough to just follow? Rest for a moment in the assumption that there are trustworthy parts inside that know what to do.  We are each born with these parts, and with the capacity to move and grow.  

Chances are, you have done this before, this finding your way.  Remember, if just for a moment, if just in your bones.  There have been times when you have known exactly what to do.  You move toward the light or you reach with your hands.  You will your way through, or dream. 

Pay attention to what you are already doing, and follow yourself as you do.  Write it down, from time to time, or tell somebody about it.  Today it felt good to wash all the dishes; today it felt good to walk around the block twice.  Notice how you do these little things more now.  Notice how these little things begin to break down the feelings of being frozen or lost.  Notice how you gently listen in, and follow, and trust.   

You can trust the part inside that knows how to take care of yourself.  It is wise.  It has your best intentions at heart.  You have the potential to be living in a rhythm that suits you, at a speed and a brightness and noise level that is aligned with your inner way of being.  You know how to do it. Listening to yourself to find out what you need will not make you lazy or self-centered.  It will make you strong. When you are strong, you can be with the discomfort.  When you are strong, you can tolerate uncertainty.  

And you will find your way through.  Again.  

Need help following?  Therapy can help.  A therapist can help you tune your attention inside and help you reflect on what’s working and what’s not.  Working with a therapist can also help alleviate the anxiety, discomfort and depression that gets in the way.  As a therapist, I trust that you have intelligent inner resources, and I see my role as helping you find and grow them.  

Finding Ground Through Life Transitions

Life transitions can be rough.  Relationships break up.  Friendships change.  Jobs and projects come to an end. Things that once felt as certain as the sidewalk beneath your feet are suddenly gone, or drastically different.  There may be some sort of deep knowing that everything will be okay, but feelings of anxiety, fear and sadness can overwhelm that wise inner voice.  These feelings are normal during transitions.  And, believe it or not, they’re useful.  These types of emotions are signals that there’s something up.  Something needs attention.  Something needs care.  So what can you do to give yourself that kind of care?

First of all, start where you are.  Ask yourself in this moment, what do you need? 

Stability! you say.  Strength! Calm! Peace! A new love! More friendship! A new job!  

Yes. Yes! Of course.  You want and need these things.       

But how about right in this moment?  Are you feeling ungrounded and adrift? Uncentered and scattered?  Dark and heavy? Take a moment to gently focus on the feeling—no need to dive deep into it, just give it a little bit of space in your mind.  Maybe name it for yourself.  For example, I feel ungrounded.  Now, what does that ungrounded feeling need? Nothing comes to mind? 

Try feeling the ground.  Literally.  Feel your feet on the floor.  Focus on the sensations of your feet. Try wiggling your toes and pressing your feet into the floor.  Stand and do some gentle squats and engage your large leg muscles.  Check in with that ungrounded feeling.  Has anything shifted? Or, go outside and get your hands in some dirt.  Pay attention to what it feels like.  If you find something about it that feels pleasurable, maybe some space around those rough feelings.  Hang with that sense of space, or whatever part of you feels a little more okay.  Take a breath into it; take a mental snapshot of what you’re feeling.  Is there anything else that needs to happen?  Something else, small or big, that you can do to take care of yourself?  Follow your impulses, and then check back in.  How grounded or ungrounded do you feel now? 

You can work with other feelings in the same way.  If you’re uncentered, can you put your hands on your belly to help find your center again?  Can you contain the scattered feeling by wrapping yourself in a blanket? Step into the sun to lighten the darkness?  These are just ideas.  See if you can find a little something that works for you.  If you’re having a hard finding that edge of pleasure to grab onto, it might help to reach out to a friend, family member or other part of your community for reflection and support. 

It can be important to remember that these more easeful moments, like the more difficult moments, will come and go.  By paying attention to them you’re not trying to lock them in or prevent the rough feelings altogether.  You’re just building the tools that will help you navigate whatever transition you’re in.