If you have ever experienced anxiety before, then you know that it’s a very physical thing. While spiralling thoughts and worrying are also a part of it, the physical sensation of anxiety coursing through the body is unmatched. It’s important to consider the physicality of anxiety if we want to learn how to calm anxiety quickly. So how does anxiety affect the body? Here’s a non-exhaustive list of how it might show up:
- A sensation of big energy being trapped inside your body
- Feeling buzzy or tingly
- Rapid heart beat
- Clammy hands
- Breathing too fast or forgetting to breathe
- Headache
- Digestive issues
- Needing to pee a lot
- Trouble falling or staying asleep
- Feeling tired all the time
Here’s an important lesson I have learned on my journey to managing my anxiety: it is critical to attend to these physical sensations and symptoms rather than ignore them. And while it’s important to work on our rumination and anxious thoughts, it is often most beneficial to focus on the physical experience of anxiety first. Why should we focus on the body before the brain to manage anxiety? I’m so glad you asked! Keep reading to find out.
What Causes Anxiety in the Brain
Did you know that our brain comes equipped with a security guard? It is called the amygdala and can be found in your midbrain (a.k.a. the more emotions-based part of the brain). The amygdala picks up on danger before you are even consciously aware of it. Let’s say you come face to face with a bear – lucky for you, your amygdala has already sent the necessary messages to the rest of your body to prepare it for survival. Helpful, right? Well, for the most part.
The thing is, this little guy is super eager to do its job. Sometimes too eager, in fact. When you are a person who tends to experience more anxiety, the amygdala often perceives many things in your environment as a threat, just in case. And by the time you realize what’s happening on a conscious level, your body is already doing all the things it thinks it needs to do to keep you safe.
The good news is, if we can find ways to signal to our body that we are actually safe, it can send that message back up to the brain so that we can get out of survival mode (i.e., feeling anxious).
An Analogy to Better Understand How to Calm Anxiety Quickly
To help you get an even better understanding of how focusing on the body before the brain can be helpful for managing anxiety, picture the amygdala as a fire alarm. Imagine you’re sitting in an office, getting some work done, when the fire alarm starts blaring.
Fire alarms are meant to be loud and obnoxious so that they can get your attention and encourage you to move away from the sound (and therefore away from the fire). That’s what your amygdala essentially does: it sends a message that cannot be ignored so that your body can get you away from danger.
Now imagine that you know the fire alarm at your office is a false alarm due to a technical malfunction, and that you can stay and continue working while waiting for the electrician to get there and fix it. It would be pretty hard to get any work done while it’s screaming away in the background, am I right? Much like it’s hard to get things done when our body is filled with anxiety.
Unfortunately, just telling the fire alarm to shut up most probably won’t do a thing. Similar to how someone telling you to just stop worrying probably doesn’t turn your anxiety off. See where I’m going with this?
To shut off that fire alarm, the electrician needs to go do their thing with the faulty wires to send the signal to the alarm that it can shut off (my apologies in advance to any actual electricians out there for my very poor and simplistic description). And with anxiety, we can do the same thing by finding practices that help to calm our body down so that the brain gets the message that we are not actually in danger.
Taking a Bottom-Up vs. Top-Down Approach to Manage and Calm Anxiety
In the world of therapy, approaches to treatment can often be classified as either top-down or bottom-up. A top-down approach looks at treating thoughts first, followed by emotions and body sensations. A great example of this approach is cognitive-behavioural therapy (or CBT). On the other hand, a bottom-up approach (such as somatic experiencing therapy) treats body sensations and emotions first before moving on to thoughts.
For a long time, the gold standard in the therapy world has been therapeutic modalities that target our thoughts. But when considering how to calm anxiety quickly, bottom-up strategies are often the missing link. The reason for this relates back to the above analogy – sometimes it can be very difficult to focus on our thoughts when that fire alarm is constantly going off.
When we are triggered by something, the logical and rational part of our brain actually goes offline for a while, leaving our emotions to call the shots. Which means that focusing on our thoughts in an anxious state can be pretty difficult. But if we can find ways to help our body feel safe, then we can quiet the unnecessary noise and finally attend to our worries and rumination. Read on to learn some of these simple bottom-up/body-focused strategies.
Body-Focused Anxiety Relaxation Techniques
Now that we understand the benefits of focusing on our bodies before our brains when we feel anxious, let’s look at some actual ways to do it! Here are some of my personal favourite exercises for managing anxiety by helping the body find calm:
Get Your Body Moving!
Exercise can be especially helpful for discharging some of that overwhelming energy that I mentioned at the beginning of this post. Yoga is always a great place to start as it is gentle, places a lot of emphasis on the breath and teaches you to focus mindfully on your movements. Full body shakes are great too! It sounds silly, but I strongly urge you to give it a try. You could also try going for a walk or a run, playing a sport you enjoy or putting on a great song and dancing.
Breathing Exercises
Slowing down your breathing and breathing from your diaphragm (i.e., belly) instead of your chest signals to your body that it is safe to rest. This is why our breath is one of our greatest assets if we want to calm anxiety quickly. If you struggle to focus on your breathing, check out this post for a bunch of different breathing exercises to try.
Soothe Your Senses
Our senses are a powerful tool for helping us to feel grounded and calm. Finding ways to soothe your body using your sense of sight, hearing, smell, taste and/or touch can be very helpful. Some things that work for me are sipping a comforting cup of tea, diffusing essential oils, wrapping myself up in a weighted blanket, taking a hot shower or listening to comfort songs. Check out this post for some more ideas.
Self-Holding
Another great way to ground ourselves is through self-holding. Did you know that holding ourselves compassionately and receiving a hug from someone have the same stress-lowering effect? A great place to start is by placing one hand on your chest and one on your belly, then notice if this feels soothing or comforting to you. If not, try moving your hands around to find something that does feel soothing. Maybe it’s both hands over your heart, or gently rubbing your hands up and down your arms.
Conclusion
As we wrap up this post, I hope you have a better understanding of why using strategies that target the body before the brain is key to reducing anxiety. I hope you also feel more empowered regarding how to calm anxiety quickly using body-focused strategies. Next time you are feeling anxious, give one of these strategies a try! And let me know in the comments below some of your favourite ways to relax the body and feel more grounded.
PS – looking for some more body-focused strategies for calming anxiety? Check out my book Anxious and Empowered for plenty of chapters covering exactly that! Also check out these posts:
