Tools for overcoming anxiety and finding inner peace
Have you ever
wondered how to cope with uncomfortable emotions like anxiety without getting
overwhelmed or shutting down?
Or
perhaps you've
thought, "I just want this uncomfortable feeling to go away before I start
working on my recovery."
However, for
your nervous system to feel safe and regain energy, you need to process the
emotions that keep you cycling back to a survival state of fight, flight, or
freeze.
You can't force
or bypass the uncomfortable feeling, but you can help yourself feel safe enough
to acknowledge that it's there and that it's not wrong or bad. This is the
first step in the mind body harmony.
It's challenging
to emotionally process when your body is in crisis. Therefore, you want to
gently let your nervous system know that you can be with the uncomfortable
feeling by using somatic practices that open a little bit of the release valve.
However, somatic
practices are not intended to make the hard feelings disappear but to help you
feel them without feeling like they're going to take you down.
To heal the
mental, physical, and emotional stressors that cause you stress, you need to
feel your emotions.
Emotions are
energy that is supposed to flow through us, except when we hold onto them and
don't know how to ride them out.
Learning how to
attune your body, energy, and overcome burnout will enable you to enjoy your
life fully.
Although the
hard stuff passes, so does the good stuff, and if you don't learn to let
yourself enjoy the beauty, you'll miss out on some incredible things.
I often
use somatic practices to help me be with uncomfortable emotions and
release them.
As I'm
doing these practices, I feel safe enough to let what was truly bothering me
underneath all that fight, flight, freeze to come to the surface.
I might cry,
journal, or get clear on the action I need to take next. Either way, my body,
mind, spirit, or nervous system understands a bit more about what it needs to
heal in that moment.
Somatic
practices refer to a broad range of techniques and exercises that help
individuals to connect with and become more aware of their physical sensations,
movements, and experiences.
These
practices can include mindful breathing, body scanning, yoga, dance,
meditation, and other forms of movement or touch-based
therapies.
The
goal of somatic practices is to cultivate a greater sense of self-awareness and
to help individuals learn to regulate their nervous system and emotional
states.
By
tuning into physical sensations and experiences, somatic practices can help
individuals to process and release stuck emotions and trauma and promote a
greater sense of overall well-being.