The Power of Somatic Work for Anxiety Symptoms in the Mind and Body
*Disclaimer: Nothing on this website or in this blog is meant to assess, diagnose, or treat mental health conditions.
Anxiety is something we all experience. It can show up in different ways throughout the mind and body. It’s typically a flight response, but it can turn into a freeze state over time. While your anxiety may not seem severe enough to get help, it can still negatively impact your well-being.
Your nervous system responses (fight, flight, freeze, collapse) are there to protect you. So how do you know when somatic work for anxiety might benefit you? It could help if you're:
Feeling paralyzed when you experience stress
Constantly tense and unable to relax or release tension
Feeling overwhelmed and having the urge to run from or ignore your problems
Having trouble sleeping or getting things done without the help of medication
Struggling to function and live life with frequent unwanted physical and emotional reactions
The goal isn’t to get rid of anxiety completely. These responses can be informative and appropriate in certain situations. Somatic work for anxiety helps you tune into those responses so you can heal and improve your capacity to handle normal stressors. The goal is to bring more ventral vagal (the safe and social nervous system state) on board so the mind and body can perceive safety when you're safe. This helps you to:
Be creative
Think clearly
Connect with others
All this makes it easier for you to cope with stress and for your system to more accurately detect safety and danger.
Talk-based therapies work for some and can complement somatic work. But they can also lead to intellectualizing feelings, which can prevent people from building the capacity to be present with life's challenges.
Before deciding which type of therapy is right for you, let’s consider where anxiety comes from and how it affects your day-to-day activities.
Risk Factors for Anxiety
Many experiences put us at a higher risk of having consistent anxiety. Life can be chaotic, so you might be experiencing symptoms of anxiety you’ve never noticed before.
Your brain and body are trying to protect you by going into a flight or freeze response. Freeze sounds like a passive response that's paralyzing, but it's more like having the gas and brake on at the same time. You may notice your heart beating out of your chest and/or a surge of energy while also struggling to move or speak. A freeze response to anxiety can also include dissociation, where your body is activated but your mind goes blank or takes you out of the present moment.
Some situations that send our minds and bodies into these nervous system states include:
Traumatic events
Stress from major life changes like a new job or having kids
Overwhelm from responsibilities at work, home, or both
An important upcoming event like an academic test or a presentation at work
Stress or trauma that stems from past experiences, including those as far back as childhood
You might experience anxiety daily, without any trauma or major life changes. Somatic work for anxiety can be beneficial with or without awareness of the root cause. A study was done on the effects of Somatic Experiencing (SE) on reducing anxiety and its physical symptoms for professionals who treat trauma (1). SE led to a decrease in anxiety symptoms and improved their overall health.
It’s helpful to be aware of the many ways in which anxiety can show up to understand why SE is useful for these symptoms.
Symptoms and Manifestations of Anxiety
It’s important to remember that even though you might only notice your emotions or physical symptoms, they’re directly related to each other. Anxiety is a physiological response. Your thoughts and behaviors are influenced by your nervous system state. When your amygdala, which is the threat detector, perceives a threat (whether it's real or not), your thoughts, emotions, behaviors, and physical sensations reflect this.
The most common symptoms of anxiety are excessive worry or panic in situations when this response isn’t helpful. While some anxiety is normal, frequent and significant symptoms can disrupt enjoyment and progress in your daily life.
Some of the most common signs of anxiety in the body resulting from a rush of adrenaline include (2):
Sweating
Dizziness
Rapid heart rate
Feeling short of breath
Being antsy/unable to sit still
Both emotional and physical symptoms result from the autonomic nervous system being in a state of arousal.
My work with clients focuses on helping them release energy or tension that’s built up over time. This energy can be a trigger that leads your brain to believe there's a threat. Our work together helps them reduce their anxiety triggers and experience felt safety more often.
Other Signs Somatic Work for Anxiety Could Help You
There are somatic symptoms that can be difficult to trace back to anxiety alone. These include:
Fatigue
Insomnia
Headaches
Chest and abdominal pain
Chronic pain anywhere in the body
It can be difficult to trace your symptoms to specific triggers because they can result from energy that's been trapped for a long time. Your mind looks for the cause of your symptoms, which feeds into a vicious cycle of anxiety. This is when the amygdala perceives threats based on what's felt inside your body (a process called interoception). You might notice your physical symptoms like fatigue, headaches, or abdominal pain cause you to panic or worry excessively.
Somatic work for anxiety is helpful for many because it’s a mind-body approach to a nervous system response that can show up in unexpected ways. Understanding anxiety from a mind-body lens involves seeing it as a normal response that isn't always helpful.
Somatic Work for Anxiety (In and Out of Sessions)
For many, the anxiety flight response feels like a lot of activation in the body. The mind-body link is often easy to notice with anxiety because it can come with a lot of unpleasant sensations and symptoms in the body. Somatic work for anxiety often helps because it’s a gentle way of bringing awareness to these physical feelings. Techniques like pendulation, titration, resourcing, and grounding help to increase your tolerance for pain and discomfort, as well as help you recognize what feels safe or neutral (I go into more detail about this in my blog on Somatic Experiencing).
During sessions, your somatic practitioner will observe and notice your responses. If something signals anxiety, I help my clients return to the present moment. I observe how they’re moving, what position they’re in, or the expressions on their face.
The act of bringing awareness to certain responses and returning to the present moment can help clients learn to self-regulate, even when they have trauma (3). It allows the mobilized energy that manifests as anxiety symptoms to discharge. This process also makes it possible to learn what's underneath the anxiety, such as unprocessed feelings, memories, or thought patterns.
Your anxiety might be telling you something about your life, relationships, or environment. SE can help you feel safe enough to tune into these sensations and understand this feedback.
Safe and Sound Protocol (SSP) is also effective for anxiety as it helps regulate the nervous system with filtered music that promotes feelings of safety (4). The music is meant to bring your system to a ventral vagal state, where you feel safe and secure (5).
Both SE and SSP help your nervous system recognize safety versus danger. This makes it easier for you to regulate your emotions and behavior in situations that would typically cause anxiety.
What Somatic Work for Anxiety Looks Like for My Clients
When my clients have a lot of anxiety, I recommend daily mindful movement between sessions. This helps release some of the adrenaline or pent-up energy that’s contributing to their anxiety. Examples include:
Walking
Running
Working out
Doing yoga
Any other activity that releases energy slowly
We also use movement in our sessions. When your body is in a heightened state of anxiety, you can release some of the adrenaline through slow, intentional movement. This might look like gently moving different parts of your body or pressing your feet into the floor. We often focus on the lower body since anxiety is usually a flight response. In this state, the energy is often in the lower body because your nervous system is preparing you to "flee" from the "threat".
If you suffer from emotional and physical symptoms of anxiety that stop you from living your life and pursuing your goals, please reach out. Somatic work for anxiety might be what your nervous system needs to rebalance and gain resiliency that allows you to move forward.