Help your body deal with anxiety
Social media, world events, the pandemic and the climate emergency all contribute to a modern society living with heightened anxieties. Often, when we feel anxious, symptoms arrive in our body to signal the presence of this stressful state.
In our podcast this month, UKCP psychotherapist Lorna Evans and I seek to find out how movement and breath are essential to us finding grounding.
Therapist Lorna Evans explores how anxiety affects the body and how reflection can help us find effective coping mechanisms
HEALTHY STRESS CAN encourage us to get stuff done in our lives. However, consistent exposure to psychologically draining world events, for example, can have a real impact on our mind and body, and we may find ourselves on constant high alert.
We always seek to protect ourselves when anxiety takes hold, with its accompanying sense of powerlessness. It is also difficult to think rationally. This is because our body’s reaction is to flood itself with adrenaline and cortisol. Once this happens, we typically respond in one of four ways: fight for survival, take flight and avoid, freeze with a sense of numbness, or fawn, where we seek to please the person who is in control to keep us safe.
When we feel under threat, our breathing changes. This is our body giving us enough oxygen to run away by pumping blood into our feet and arms so we can escape. Taking three deep breaths during anxious times is calming and helps us think sensibly again without panic.
Reflection is essential because only then can we find coping mechanisms for times of overwhelming anxious thoughts. This will give you space to ask key questions to help you work through your anxiety. For example, what are your early warning signs? What are you afraid of? What’s going on with your body and sleep?
When you experience anxiety, you are in survival mode, but reflection leads to understanding, which enables you to create successful coping mechanisms for the future.
When we take a moment to breathe
Professor Sarah Niblock, CEO of the UK Council for Psychotherapy, and psychotherapist Lorna Evans discuss the physical side of worry, tension and stress
and release our anxieties from our body by moving, we can start to feel safe within ourselves. Psychotherapy can also help. A therapist will provide a space of safety and understanding when you are anxious. Together, you can learn to identify your triggers, know your body and implement the right tools to help you.