Anxiety, Trauma & the Body
Our emotions, thoughts, relationships, and body are all deeply interconnected. Understanding how our body and stress system works is one of the first steps in managing anxiety and trauma. Anxiety is as much a physical experience in the body as it is an emotional or cognitive experience.
If you have experienced trauma, anxiety or depression, you know that they are very viceral. Anyone who has experienced anxiety will be familiar with the feeling of your heart racing, getting hot, your throat closing or your stomach turning. The thoughts and emotions we feel are deeply interconnected with our bodies. Why is this and how does this work? How do we get rid of the feeling of our throat closing every time we get anxious? Let's start by understanding how the body is interconnected with our emotions.
Why Consider the Body?
The body is the seat of emotion. This means that often the emotions and feelings we have typically start as a physical sensation. Noticing what is coming up in the body will help us to better manage the impacts of mental health.
How does understanding more about the body help us?
Understanding how our body responds helps us to make sense of our experiences in the world.
Because our body is hardwired to keep us safe, alive, and to survive danger, several automatic defences kick in when we experience a trigger.Becoming aware of what our body is trying to communicate with us allows us to respond well.
We can respond in a way that helps us to settle feelings of being activated/ triggered, to keep ourselves safe, or to respond in a way that is in alignment with our values.
Let’s start with an example:
You are hiking in the forest, and you are just outside of the camping area where you will stay tonight. You can hear people who are cooking their dinner, laughing, and talking. Suddenly you see a great big bear 100 meters away! Your heart starts pounding, your vision gets really focused, your muscles tense. In a split second your brain determines, without your conscious input, that the bear is too big to fight so you run as fast as you can to the campsite. You can feel your heart pound as you sprint, and your muscles propel you forward to safety. You see an open door to a large wooden lodge where you will camp. Quickly, you run inside and slam the thick wood door shut. With a large, heavy wood beam, you lock the door shut. Park rangers who are used to working around bears notice the bear and scare it away with loud noises. The people in the lodge can tell that you were afraid. A woman who is there with her kids gives you a big, long hug. You can feel your heart slow down and muscles relax. She invites you to join them in cooking dinner, gives you a cup of hot chocolate and shares her food with you. As you are in the lodge, you enjoy the sound of people chattering, the smell of food, and the warm atmosphere. You are able to take a long deep breath and feel yourself settle and muscles relax.
This would be a pretty scary experience. This also outlines a typical stress response:
You spot the bear.
The part of your brain that functions like a smoke detector sounds the alarm for danger. This mobilizes you into action as your brain releases a bunch of hormones that cause physical changes in your body to amp you up for action.
This activates your fight-flight response, helping you to run to safety.
Your body completed the stress cycle by fleeing and acting on the increased mobilization and can reenter a state of safety and rest.
Activation: What is It?
Activators (triggers) are the cues that activate a stress response.
We detect activators through our 5 senses: what we can see, hear, smell, taste, and touch.
Ex. a smell of perfume, someone touching our shoulder, etc.They can also be thoughts, emotions, or aspects of our internal experience.
Ex. feelings of shame, worries about a job application, or a body sensation (like a tightness in the chest)They could also include social dynamics or aspects of relationships.
Ex. someone being antagonistic, power dynamics (like people with more authority), etc.
Activators are different from activation.
The level of activation is the physiological response.
Activation is like a gas pedal that pumps gasoline into the engine of the car, propelling it forward. Except the gas pedal is our stress system/ nervous system mobilizing our body for action.
Some activators might lightly press the pedal (such as, waking up late for an appointment and rushing out the door) versus other events that really slam on the gas pedal (such as, seeing an angry bear running at us or someone robbing us at gunpoint).
What is the Nervous System (and what does it have to do with anything)?
The nervous system is sort of like the control center in your body that sends signals to all other organs, body parts and systems. It includes your brain and spinal cord (central nervous system), and nerves that run throughout your whole body (peripheral nervous system), communicating information from your brain to your body, and from your body back to your brain and spinal cord.
Some parts of our brain we have conscious control of which allows us to plan for the future, think about what we are doing now, talk with other people, or get up and walk. Other parts of our brain run on autopilot, and we do not have control over them. It keeps things going without us having to think about them, like our heart beating, our intestines digesting, and our lungs breathing.
Why does this matter?
Our emotions, thoughts, relationships, and body are all deeply interconnected. Understanding how our body and stress system works is one of the first steps in managing anxiety and trauma.
Anxiety is as much a physical experience in the body as it is an emotional or cognitive experience. This is actually good news! There are countless tools we have to use to calm the nervous system and restore a sense of peace that we can practice in counselling. When we ignore the experience of anxiety, trauma or stress in the body, we often get stuck in prolonged experiences of anxiety or stress, and it can amplify anxiety when we try to ignore it.
How We Deal with Anxiety
In counselling, we work to identify actvitators for anxiety/ trauma. This can bring awareness to our daily experience and help us to know why we suddenly feel anxious or amped up. We also explore the experiences and beliefs underlying the activator/trigger to deal with the root of the anxiety. We also learn and practice ways of dampening the stress response and restoring a felt sense of peace in the body, which helps restore peace in our mind and emotions.
As we become more aware of how anxiety, trauma and stress show up in the body, we learn to identify and manage the anxiety early. In other words, we help you to catch and manage the anxiety while it is a 1/10 instead of an 8/10 (which becomes much harder and unpleasant to manage).
There is no need to live with enduring fear and anxiety and practical ways to restore peace to our mind, body and emotions. I used to live with anxiety, and understand how awful and debilitating it can be. The good news is that there is full freedom available from anxiety and fear. We are here to help you navigate this process.
References
Corrigan, F., Fisher, J., & Nutt, D. (2010). Autonomic dysregulation and the window of tolerance model of the effects of complex emotional trauma. Journal of Psychopharmacology, 25(1), 17–25. https://doi.org/10.1177/0269881109354930
Kozlowska, K., Walker, P., McLean, L., & Carrive, P. (2014). Fear and the defense cascade: Clinical implications and management. Harvard Review of Psychiatry, 23(4), 263–287. https://doi.org/10.1097/HRP.0000000000000065
Porges, S. W. (2017). The pocket guide to the polyvagal theory. W W Norton & Co.
Van der Kolk, B. A. (2015). The body keeps the score: Brain, mind and body in the treatment of trauma. Viking Press.