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Building Resilience
How To Heal Anxiety From The Body Up: 3 Frameworks To Calm Your Nervous System
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If you've been trying to think your way out of anxiety, it's time to flip the script. The real solution starts in your body. And here's how. Welcome to the Building resilience podcast. Episode 223, healing anxiety from the Body Up. Welcome to Building Resilience, a podcast where theory, practical strategies and inspiring stories show you how to unlock your best life. I'm your host, Leah Davidson. As a certified life coach, speech language pathologist, and nervous system resilience expert, it is my mission to teach you how to be more resilient to life's adversities. I will show you how to manage your mind, befriend your nervous system, process your emotions, and even eliminate stress. It's time to do more than just survive. It's time to thrive. Let's get started. Hello. Hello everybody. Welcome back to the Building Resilience Podcast. If you tuned in last week's episode, you know that we talked about a big misconception about anxiety, that it is just a mind problem and a thought problem. Well, we broke down why anxiety actually lives in the body and why you can't think your way out of it. So this week is a continuation. It's part two of us talking about anxiety and today we're diving into the solution. We're going to what you can do to break the anxiety cycle by working with your nervous system. So in this episode, we're going to cover a step by step framework to shift out of anxiety. We're going to talk about how to stop feeding that alarm anxiety cycle. And we're going to talk about why increasing safety in your body is the key to lasting change. So these are some of the same strategies that I use with my clients and trust me, when you start applying them, you will notice a huge difference. But before we get started, a couple housekeeping things. Firstly, if you're watching this on YouTube, I would so appreciate it if you could like subscribe and share. And if you're listening on another podcast platform, please follow and leave a review if this podcast is helpful because it really does help me reach more people. Secondly, just a reminder, I have my guided journal that's available on Amazon. It's a mental health journal for emotional well being, nervous system care. It's the perfect place to start to try to implement some of the things we talk about on the podcast here. You won't find it under my name. It is under my brand, Resilient Brilliance. And if you find the journal helpful, then please also consider leaving your feedback on Amazon. And lastly, I Have something else that is super exciting to share. I have started a mini membership called the Nervous System Journaling Club. Now, it's a community that is there to support your efforts at regulating your nervous system through journaling and doodling, which you may have taken my doodle your nervous system workshop. And if you like that workshop, you will love this membership because we will be doing a monthly live doodle class as well as a live journaling class. There's a course in there that helps support implementation of my guided journal. And of course we are building up an amazing community. So I hope to see you in there. All the links will be in the show notes or down below. All right, back to anxiety. When it comes to healing anxiety, the main thing we focus on, or we need to focus on, is safety. I want you to really think of anxiety like a fire alarm. Your body is sensing danger even when there's no actual danger there, no actual threat there. And if you try to turn off the alarm by just changing your thoughts, your body still feels unsafe. And so that alarm is going to keep blaring. So the cycle goes something like this. Your body will detect stress or tension. It will send signals of danger to your brain. Your brain will start to create anxious thoughts to match what your body is feeling. And these thoughts will increase the sense of alarm in your body. And then that loop will repeats over and over and over again. Your nervous system picks up on the threat. We start to create thoughts to match what's going on in the body and it comes a vicious loop. So what can we do about that? We want to try to step out of that loop. We want to try to interrupt that loop and interrupt that cycle. So I'm going to offer three different ways that we can do that. The first framework that I'm going to offer to you is based on Russell Kennedy's method. And I've slightly adapted it to make it a little bit easier to apply. And he says it's as simple as A, B and C. So A stands for. Again, some of this is my interpretation and adaptation of it. But A stands for awareness and attention because everything starts with awareness. If you're not even aware that you're in a state of alarm, how can you even change it? So the first thing you need to ask yourself is what is going on in your body? And you want to be scanning your body. Where do you feel anxiety? Is it in your chest? Is it in your stomach? Do you have a racing heart? So it's kind of like you're taking this inventory of your personal anxiety signals. The more familiar you are with them, the less they're going to be able to overwhelm you. And then you want to check in as well. Are you actually in any danger? We have the awareness. My body's feeling danger, but am I in any danger? You want to check that out and make sure that there's not a real reason that you have to be in this threat. So awareness can just interrupt this autopilot response. If. If you can notice the alarm in your body, feel the alarm, what happens is you distance yourself a little bit, you can observe the alarm, you can see the alarm, Rather than just becoming this alarm. Now, the b stands for getting into your body, breathe and befriend your body. You've identified there's an alarm going off in your body, and now it's time to send your body signals of safety. And we can do this using some really simple tools. Simple, but it's not always easy to use them. So, for example, you can use deep belly breathing. And when we use deep belly breathing, what happens is we're activating the vagus nerve. And that vagus nerve is primarily responsible for activating the parasympathetic nervous system, which is responsible for our rest and digest. So a simple tool of deep breathing can be really helpful for focusing on the exhalation. A second tool you can use is what I call the rag doll, where you just drop the tension in your body for five seconds. We want to release all tension. When we release tension, it sends a message of safety. And then thirdly, move. Our body has excess energy in it when we're feeling anxious. So do something with that energy. And it doesn't have to be dramatic movements. It can be just going for a walk if you have the time, but you can actually just shake it out. Start shaking and moving your body. You can stretch, you can dance. The idea is to get some of that energy out. So you want to be thinking like your brain and your body are having a conversation with each other. So your brain may be saying, okay, I checked, and there's nothing going on here. That is a real threat. So, so we're safe. And the body is like, yeah, I don't feel safe, though. So the brain says, all right, let's breathe and relax and see what happens. The body notices. The exhale says, all right, I'm starting to believe you that I actually am safe. When your body is relaxed, your brain then has the opportunity to catch up. Now, c in the ABC method stands for a couple of different things. Connection, compassion and care. Once you feel even a little bit more regulated by getting into your body and acknowledging that you're safe, it's time for a little self compassion. Anxiety really does thrive in self judgment. The more you resist, the more you shame yourself for feeling anxious, the stronger it's going to get. Instead, you want to treat your anxiety and treat yourself like a best friend, asking yourself, okay, if somebody I loved was feeling this way, what would I say to them now? Kristin Neff, she is a self compassion researcher. She identifies that there are three core elements of self compassion. And you can go back on the podcast. I have a whole episode dedicated to self compassion. But briefly. The first one is mindfulness. Recognizing your anxiety without judgment, recognizing that anxiety is there. And that's what we do with the awareness. The second piece of self compassion is common humanity. Reminding yourself, everybody experiences on some level some degree of anxiety or some degree of pain or some degree of suffering. It may be different, but you're not alone. You're not broken, because sometimes you're challenged and you experience anxiety. And thirdly, self kindness. You want to offer yourself the same care that you would give a loved one that you would give your best friend. So you can place your hand over your heart, remind yourself you're safe, it's okay to feel this way, and I'm here for myself. I love saying to myself, I always have my own back. And then I step into being the person who always does have her own back. So that is the ABC approach, again adapted from the work of Russell Kennedy. Awareness. Get into your body and then offer yourself self compassion, care, kindness and connection. Now, another framework that we can use to deal with anxiety is something that's called the stop approach. And this is where we can interrupt some anxious thoughts, thoughts that are happening. If you want a quick and easy tool for interrupting these thoughts, you may want to start and try the stop method. So let's go through it. S stands for stop. You really want to say stop out loud or in your head. When you notice anxious thoughts creeping in, you want to identify that they're there. Just like, stop, I see you, you're there. Stop the chatter. The second thing is, then you're going to t take a breath again, shifting from your thoughts. Get into your body to have that body awareness and do that by focusing on your breath. O is about observation. Observe your body, scan your body. Where do you feel the tension? Just notice where you feel the tension. And then P stands for proceed with safety. You get to choose a new response and the new Response could be some type of self soothing, can be some type of grounding, can be some type of relaxation or getting back to your breath. So instead of spiraling into fear, we interrupt kind of abruptly the cycle by saying stop, then taking a breath, getting into your body, observe what's going on in your body, and then proceed with safety. So it's a good acronym for us to remember to stop those thoughts and get into your body. And then the last framework I want to introduce you to is the one that I teach in all my programs. It is what I teach in the guided journal. There's even a little card at the front of the guided journal. In the guided journal, there's also a QR code. If you scan that QR code, it will bring you over to some videos. And in the videos, I go through this safety sequence. If you join the nervous system journaling club, there is a course in there that talks all about safety and all about it guides you through the journal. Actually, there's videos that take you step by step through the journal, and the focus is almost always on safety. This safety sequence is really designed to try to train your nervous system to default to calm and safety instead of anxiety. And it follows three key steps. The first step is we need to establish safety. So you're going to ask yourself, am I actually safe right now? Empirically safe right now? Look around your environment. Notice things that signal actual safety. Maybe it's a locked door or that you're sitting on a chair. It's a familiar space. There's nice lights on. You're listening to this video on YouTube or you're listening to it on a podcast. Use your senses. Feel the chair underneath you. Listen to background noise. Touch something, do something that sends that message, that cognitive message, empirically. Because what can happen is your brain is constantly scanning and taking up cues. It's called neuroception. It is neuroception. What's going externally, internally, and between us. And sometimes the neuroception can be off. It thinks it's in danger. Your nervous system thinks that you're threatened. So we want to interrupt that. Am I actually safe right now? I actually am. I'm recording this podcast. You're listening to this podcast. We're sitting, we're breathing. Nothing's chasing us. We're not in danger. But the second thing is, as we said, the body sometimes is like, I know you're telling me that I'm safe. I actually don't feel safe. So you want to get into your body. Where do I not feel safe? Do I feel safe right now. The. The answer is often no. Okay, so where do I not feel safe? Turn your attention into your body. Anxiety isn't just an emotion. It's not just thoughts. It's not just an emotion. It is physical sensations. So instead of trying to avoid the physical sensations, turn your attention towards them with curiosity. All right, describe it. My chest kind of feels tight right now. My stomach is fluttering. My shoulders are really tense. This is what anxiety feels like in my body. And then thirdly, we relax and release it. Acute relaxation. In this exact moment, we're going to relax into the anxiety. And you can do that different ways, but I recommend drop your shoulders, take a slow and low breath, focus on the exhalation. Remember, the exhalation is what is going to activate that vagus nerve to get us into a state that is more relaxed. Loosen any tension that you have in your face, your hands, your jaw, rag doll, your body. Combine these things. We're relaxing into it. And when you show your nervous system that's okay to feel anxiety, the alarm is going to start to quiet down. We're not trying to resist anything. We're trying to allow it to be there. Observe it being there, and relax into it. All right, so those are three frameworks that you can use. The ABC framework helps you calm anxiety in real time. That awareness dropping into your body. Compassion connection. The STOP approach is really a quick way to try to redirect anxious thoughts. If you notice those thoughts first, you know, telling them, no, we're not going to do that. We're getting into our body instead and redirecting it. And then the safety sequence. Are you safe? Yes. Do I feel safe? No. But relax your body as you confront your daily stressors, that daily anxiety that you feel as you feel the rise of anxiety in your body, when you introduce safety, when we don't resist the feelings that we have in our body, when we're curious with them, when we allow them, when we relax into them, that is when we'll start to see anxiety will quietly subside. And yes, it may take some time. And yes, you're always going to have some anxiety. We don't need to fuel it with fear. We can just notice when it arrives because we know what we can do with it. We have our own backs. Get into your body, relax your body and create that safety. I hope you found this helpful and I will see you next time. Thank you for listening to the Building Resilience podcast. If you're interested in learning a little bit more about managing stress, building resilience and leading a more purposeful life, then make sure we're connected on Instagram and Facebook at Leah Davidson Life Coaching. You can also subscribe to my Weekly newsletter at www.leahdavidsonlifecoaching.com newsletter. Looking forward to connecting.