What if it’s not your worries that are making you anxious, your anxiety is making you worry?

You’re up at night and can’t sleep because you can’t stop obsessing about what you said at the meeting yesterday or how you handled a challenging conversation with your spouse at dinner.

You’re also feeling extremely anxious and you think what happened earlier is the reason for your anxiety.

I can relate. I often fall into this trap of believing that my thoughts are the root cause of my anxiety.

Ever since I discovered that’s not true,, I’ve been experiencing a great deal of relief with my anxiety. 

There’s often a subconscious cue of danger which reminds us of a traumatic experience from the past. That triggers our nervous system which then activates our physiology to respond with an  appropriate defensive measure (fight, flight, freeze or fawn).

This state of alarm can latch on to any potential worry in the present. And pretty soon, we’re up in the middle of the night replaying what we said at dinner.

In a way, running away to our heads is more comfortable than experiencing the physical aspects of our anxiety. 

“Why does it matter what causes what”, you may ask, “The point is, I’m anxious”! 

Well, it matters because if you notice that you’re worried and overthinking, instead of trying to stop worrying, which rarely works, you can see it as a sign that there’s a nervous system activation in your body. If you address that activation, the worry can slow down.

Identify the physical sensations (heart racing, shallow breathing, restlessness) and take steps to balance your physiology. This sends the message to your nervous system that you’re safe, which helps ease the thinking.

You can learn how to do that in Somatic Therapy by tracking your body sensations and learning to tolerate them a little bit at a time so that eventually you can stay with them long enough that they transform on their own.