Anxiety and Being in the Moment
We all get a little anxious sometimes. How do we handle that in the moment?
The More|Better substack is a weekly dose of fitness, wellness, and wellbeing content here to help you make sense of all the nonsense. Written by personal trainer, wellness coach, and positive psychology practitioner Darlene Marshall.
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A few weeks ago I was down in Philadelphia at the University of Pennsylvania’s annual gathering of positive psychology alumni. I think of it as a gathering of Martin Seligman’s proteges - between 200 and 300 graduates of the program he started nearly 20 years ago. We congregate to see old friends, make new ones, and connect with the latest thought leadership in the field of wellbeing science. Sitting in the UFO-like auditorium of the Penn Museum, my palms were sweating and my heart was thumping so hard in my chest I could see it pulsing under my shirt.
I was anxious.
My hand was up to ask one of our visiting scholars a question and was simultaneously having an anxiety attack that the others assembled would think I was stupid.
You’d never know by my high participation grades throughout my academic career, but that has been a reaction for much of my life. Largely due to the teasing I took for being the “Annoyingly Smart Girl” as a kid.
According to the Mayo Clinic, occasionally being a bit anxious is totally normal. People with anxiety disorders have frequent, intense anxiety that’s excessive and overwhelming about everyday things.
Earlier this year the World Health Organization advised global institutions to ramp up resources for mental health. Depression and anxiety are on the rise; in my opinion a combination of the de-stigmatization efforts of mental health struggles and the effects of the struggles these last few years.
For a deep dive into the physiology of anxiety and stress check out these two previous articles:
Anxiety isn’t only your thoughts
It’s a collection of mental and physical factors all relating to the autonomic nervous system. When your “fight or flight” response stays activated without resolving your sense of threat you can become dysregulated:
Increased heart rate and blood pressures
Feeling fatigued and weak
Sweating/ trembling
Can’t concentrate
Can’t sleep
Gut issues like IBS (ANS controls digestion)
Uncontrolled worry
Urge to avoid what’s making you anxious… but what if it’s something necessary!? Or important!?
What do we do about it?
Generally the most effective tools for anxiety are going to be things that help use the parts of us we have control over to manage the parts of us that we don't. In technical terms, to use the somatic parts of our nervous system (what we have control of) to re-regulate the autonomic (the parts we don’t have control of). Things like movement, breathing, and practices like cold plunge, yoga, meditation, and the like.
Movement
Specifically to help with anxiety there are 2 categories of movement: acute management and long term support.
Acute practices: These are for when you’re specifically feeling anxious and to be done in the moment. Any movement is going to help, but short bursts of high intensity movement help to match the intensity of how you feel and then calm you back down. Jumping rope, running up the stairs, lunges, box jumps, jumping jacks, sprints. Anything that will jack your heart rate up.
Long term practices: Regular movement and exercise helps to tone the nervous system and keep in “in shape”, just like any other part of the body. You want your nervous system to be adaptive to stress and it’s environment; regularly moving your body helps to do that. Walks, hikes, going to the gym, sports, running around with your kids or friends - all will help pull this off
Breathing
Just like movement, breathing to help with anxiety also falls under 2 categories of regular training and acute response. There are two specific techniques I teach my clients (but teaching breathing in text is difficult so go over to my Instagram feed and I’ll pin the videos to the top).
Changing Your State
This is a catch all for a wide variety of practices that retrain the nervous system.
Cold plunge, sauna, yoga, cupping.
Foam rolling, gua-sha, tai chi, chi gong.
Acupuncture.
There are lots of “alternative” modalities that teach your nervous system to re-regulate. There’s research on some, not all. As with any other practice, not everything will work for everyone all the time. If something sounds interesting give it a try and see what you can learn about yourself.