Managing Anxiety by Listening to Your Body

Are your physical sensations causing you unnecessary stress and anxiety? What if changing your interpretation of these sensations could transform your mental well-being? Well, today we tackle the crucial topic of turning inwards to understand and manage the physical sensations linked to anxiety and panic. Instead of numbing these feelings through shopping, eating, or overworking, learn how to face them head-on for better anxiety management.

Let's uncover the harmful cycle created by misinterpreting natural bodily responses as weaknesses. I explain how modern-day threats are not life-threatening and how changing our perceptions can significantly reduce stress. By shifting our automatic responses to stressors, we can break free from the cycle of heightened physical and mental stress. Tune in and learn how to reset your approach to anxiety and stress for a more balanced life.

In this episode, I cover the following:
1. Understanding physical sensations associated with anxiety/stress.
2. How our subconscious mind is trying to protect us.
3. Importance of not perceiving physical anxiety sensations as threats.

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💗 Dr. Steph
@DrStephanieLopez
www.brave-method.com

Chapters

• 0:04 Understanding and Overcoming Anxiety Symptoms
• 8:02 Breaking Free From Anxiety Patterns

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:04

Hi, I'm Dr Steph and I'm here to guide you on your journey to healing from a difficult relationship with your mother, whether she was narcissistic, emotionally immature or just plain toxic. I want you to know that you are in fact not broken and you do not have to suffer from anxiety or explosive emotional reactions like lashing out. You can break the cycle. You are a strong, capable woman who can handle any challenge that comes your way, and I'm gonna show you how to have the ultimate control over your reactions so that you are unstoppable. Welcome to the Broken to Brave podcast. Welcome back. I hope you are having a wonderful week. I want to give you a quick update on the surrogacy journey. We are in the midst of waiting to find out if baby stuck, if the embryo stuck For the IVF process. There's about a 65% chance that it worked, maybe a bit higher for surrogates, because that number includes women who have been struggling with infertility as well. But right now we're waiting to find out and my patience is being tested. We'll just leave it at that. I just want to know for sure. Of course, who wouldn't? So I'll keep you posted. I'll be sharing more updates on Instagram, so if you're not following my stories there and you're interested, then definitely check it out, and I am so excited. I want to share something that is going to be added to Brave Academy. Brand new this month is what is called the seven day ditching anxiety accelerator. I have been documenting the top seven pieces of advice that I give clients to help them break free, and now I am putting it into this accelerator so that any new person in the program gets this at their fingertips the very first week that they're in the program, so that they can break free even faster, and I just cannot wait to see everybody's results. Wait to see everybody's results.

Speaker 1: 2:23

Without further ado, though, let's dive into today's episode. It's going to be quick. It's going to be powerful, though, and this is particularly true if you struggle with anxiety or panic, and I want to know to what extent do you notice the sensations in your body, like a pit in your stomach, tightness in your chest, clenching in your throat, heart beating faster, pressure in your head, heat in your face, all of these types of things. What I've noticed is that some of my clients are very in tune with the sensations, while others hardly notice them. They like don't notice it at all. In a sense, they've turned down the volume. Now, tuning into the sensations and being aware of them is really important, because it's the first indication that something is off, so we want to be aware of those.

Speaker 1: 3:20

This episode, though, is more for those who are really aware of the sensations, but it's going to be helpful no matter what, and all too often people don't realize that they have these defensive reactions that, to a very large extent, are there to actually avoid feeling one or more sensations in their body. And when they are not aware, when you are not aware of your sensations, it seems like it just happens or it happens automatically, and some go into a number of different ways to numb out so that they don't feel those sensations. Actually, I said some, but this is quite common. I think when I share this list with you, you're gonna be like oh yeah, so how are some people numbing so that they don't feel those sensations, even though they probably have no idea? That's why they're numbing Shopping, food, overworking, alcohol, prescription medications, drugs, video games, etc. Now, of course, I said some things like food, where you're? I think you know what I mean, but, just in case, just to be super obvious, I'm not talking about just eating, but I'm talking about using each of these in order to numb, in order to not feel, in order to avoid. So where in your life are you numbing, and what might happen for you if you chose not to numb and to allow yourself to feel?

Speaker 1: 4:56

When you feel these sensations, how do you interpret them? Do you interpret them as weakness? Do you interpret them as, oh my gosh, I'm really scared, I'm afraid, I'm terrified. What if it's not weakness and what if it's nothing to be scared of? I want to give you a totally new way to think about this. Imagine for a moment that a lion is chasing an antelope. We could blame the external and we could say well, the lion scared the antelope. Or we can dig a bit deeper and see that the antelope took in information when she saw the lion, and the information was interpreted by her mind and caused her to run. It caused her legs to be stronger so that she could run and so that she could flee the situation, or maybe, in a different case, with other animals, so that she could fight when the antelope's mind perceived a threat. What happened is her sympathetic nervous system kicked into high gear, which caused a number of changes in her body her heart to beat faster, her breathing to pick up her legs, to be stronger, when that sympathetic nervous system kicks on, kicks into high gear, that's great, because then she gets to flee the scene and she doesn't die, which is the point.

Speaker 1: 6:24

Your subconscious mind is protecting you from dying all the time, and the same reaction is built into humans, just like for an antelope. The subconscious mind of humans is there to keep you alive. But let me ask you this when was the last time that you needed to outrun a lion? Never. I don't even need to wait for a response on that one. You've never needed to outrun a lion and it makes sense that this is built into us.

Speaker 1: 6:55

But in present day society, these reactions are generally useless. Even though you might feel like you're going to die if you have this hard conversation, you won't. You really won't. Or you might feel like you're going to die if someone ignores you or judges you or thinks you're, you know, incompetent, but you're not going to. And the thing is, in animals, the sympathetic nervous system comes on and then they have a way of helping it snap off. And in humans we've talked about this before on a previous episode related to breath work Ours turns on. We automatically up regulate and we don't have that built in automatic process to down regulate. So then people can get stuck in this sympathetic nervous system activation and this sympathetic nervous system activation and then there's a whole nother piece that's important. So that aside, let's go back to this other piece.

Speaker 1: 7:59

How are you interpreting the sensations in your body?

Speaker 1: 8:02

Have you been interpreting them as a bad thing? Have you been interpreting them as weakness? Because here's the wild thing what happens when your mind perceives a threat so you know, antelope perceives the threat of a lion it increases. What Body strength and those physical sensations are the byproduct of that. The stronger legs, the heart beating faster, the change in breath is the byproduct of strength in the body. However, if you perceive the sensations as a further threat which is common that exacerbates the issue. So what happens for many people is they feel the sensation in their body, they interpret it as weakness, they interpret it as a threat, like, oh my God, something's wrong, and then their mind is like, oh no, there's a threat. So it gets stronger and the sensations get stronger and you can see how this would escalate very quickly. If you perceive the sensations as a threat, that exacerbates the issue, mind will try to increase strength more and then the physical sensations will increase in the body.

Speaker 1: 9:14

So the question is how do you shift your automatic response to these sensations and to triggers and to perceived threats in the environment, things that you are perceiving as stressful? How do you shift that automatic response? Well, that is exactly where the three pillars of the brave method and subconscious reprogramming using RRT come in, and that's how you break free. So, for more information on that, send me a DM with the word reset and I will send you all the details. I hope you have a beautiful week and I will talk to you soon. Thank you for listening today. If you're ready to heal, so that triggering situations no longer control you and so that you can feel empowered, brave and thrive in any situation, dm me the word brave on Instagram and I'll send you a training where you will learn three of the most common mistakes driven women are making that are keeping them stuck in negative emotions, and what you can do instead.