What Is Anxiety And How Does Somatic Therapy Help?
How somatic therapists can help identify and regulate your anxiety.
4 min read | Illustration by Marcelo Clapp
Do you struggle with anxiety and wonder how somatic therapy can help? Have you tried talk therapy before, only to find temporary relief of the problem? Anxiety can be hard to treat through talking alone. That’s because anxiety actually starts out as a physiological response to feelings you have learned are not ok to feel. Here at Downtown Somatic Therapy, we can help you work through the feelings that lie underneath your anxiety.
Anxiety is how our bodies respond to an environment that says it’s not safe to feel grief, anger, and other complicated feelings. If something in our environment says it’s not ok to think or feel a certain way, we automatically learn to block that thought or feeling to keep ourselves safe.
It’s natural when you’re a child, for example, to want nurturing, responsive, and protective parents to help guide you through new and overwhelming situations. If your parents instead respond by yelling or dismissing your feelings, this will naturally give rise to grief and anger - feelings that could lead to rejection or punishment if you acted on them.
Because we naturally want to stay connected to our caregivers, we can learn that it’s unsafe to be angry with them or grieve what they weren’t able to give us at the time. So, what do we do with feelings like anger?
“Our goal is to reduce anxiety enough to explore the hidden feelings that lie underneath.”
“We suppress our anger when we learn that it’s not okay to express it,” explains Melanie Berkowitz, a therapist at Downtown Somatic Therapy. “We might feel overcome by guilt and shame and feel angry with ourselves for having these complicated feelings. We start to think that we are the problem.”
This coping strategy - blocking or suppressing difficult feelings - becomes our default way of being. We learn early on that it’s too risky to feel what we feel because we risk losing the love, safety, and support of our caregivers. This presents itself as anxiety.
Over time, this anxiety is held in place by a belief that was once necessary for survival but now no longer is. “Anxiety is how your body kept you safe when you didn’t have the tools to do it another way,” says Tina Tacorian, another therapist at Downtown Somatic Therapy. “So we have to help your nervous system know that it’s safe now to stay with your feelings. Our goal is to reduce anxiety enough to explore the hidden feelings that lie underneath,” adds Tina.
“Anxiety is how your body kept you safe when you didn’t have the tools to do it another way.”
Somatic Therapy and Anxiety
In somatic therapy, we identify anxiety by the way you present both verbally and non-verbally. For example, rapid speech, which is so common when we’re venting, can indicate a sense of panic and helplessness.
If we continue to speak quickly, we’re not actually paying attention to the source of our anxiety. Instead, “We have to shift the focus from the content of the story to what happens inside when we explore your underlying feelings,” says Tina.
Other signs that it doesn’t feel safe to be with our feelings is when we downplay, intellectualize, or talk abstractly about something that actually sounds connected to deeper feelings. For example, we might explain that our parents lived through extraordinary hardships, so we should be grateful that they were able to provide for us financially despite their emotional distance or harsh criticisms.
“It’s natural to fear getting stuck in negative emotions but it’s often when we block the natural flow of our emotions that we start to feel stuck.”
There’s nothing wrong with acknowledging the hardships that shaped their lives and parenting-style. But if we listen closely, we can hear how this explanation moves us away from how painful their distance or criticism must have been and how that feeling has been stifled down inside.
Feelings of grief and longing are often held down by guilt, anger, fear, or shame, making it harder to access and release on our own. “It’s natural to fear getting stuck in negative emotions but it’s often when we block the natural flow of our emotions that we start to feel stuck,” explains Tina.
The therapists at Downtown Somatic Therapy are also trained to look for non-verbal signs of anxiety. Shallow breathing, tightness in the chest, and nervousness in the stomach often accompany and even precede our anxious thoughts.
“When we slow down our breathing, turn our attention inward, and describe these sensations without judgement, we can learn to become more grounded, present, and patient with ourselves.”
Pia Wallgren is one of the several therapists at Downtown Somatic Therapy that uses mind-body techniques to explore how anxiety is held in our bodies. According to Pia, “When we slow down our breathing, turn our attention inward, and describe these sensations without judgement, we can learn to become more grounded, present, and patient with ourselves. Progressive muscle relaxation or PMR is a great way to drop into the present moment and explore how stress and anxiety show up in our bodies. When we consciously and mindfully release tension, we can start to differentiate our true selves from our racing thoughts.”
It’s through the slow and reassuring pace of the exploration that these once intolerable feelings start to become more manageable. Grounding prompts to take deep, mindful breaths, notice what happens inside, and “stay with” your therapist as you explore the once threatening feeling, is how we regulate the nervous system to guide you back to a more calm and centered state.
Anxiety needs to be resolved in a mindful manner so you’re able to face your fears without the overwhelming feelings that you experienced in the past when you couldn’t do it on your own. When emotions like anger, grief, and fear are fully and safely experienced in the body, the anxiety lessens and we’re able feel more open, authentic, and present in the moment.
If you struggle with anxiety and would like to address it with the help of a therapist, consider reaching out to Downtown Somatic Therapy today to schedule a free consultation.