Increased anxiety is real. I’ve been feeling it, and I’ve heard about it from family, friends, clients, and strangers in the course of conversation.

My theory is that we have been frozen in place for two and a half years, faced with a global pandemic. None of us had been through a global pandemic, and it was a collectively traumatic experience.

What makes something traumatic? This series of events was unpredictable, sudden, life-threatening, and beyond our control. I believe the pandemic qualifies, especially when factoring in the onset of quarantine and continued isolation, new variants, masking, vaccines, millions of deaths around the world, and the latest – supply chain issues.

What Does Anxiety Feel Like in Your Body?

Over these two and a half years, we’ve been frozen in place. We are now in what I call a Warming Up period, the transition after the meaty part of the pandemic.

Our brains can sense this shift in energy and it feels safer to begin processing symptoms relating to the stress of the pandemic. In our culture, we’re not taught how to acknowledge or process through trauma and grief, and this can all manifest as anxiety and depression symptoms.

The anxiety I feel generally gathers at the base of my throat and radiates down into my chest. I often feel my heart racing and the temptation to follow the anxious spiraling thoughts.

Awareness is key to dealing with trauma and grief and connecting our bodies and minds. Where do you feel anxiety in your body?

Time to Get Curious

Being aware of emotions in our bodies gives us opportunities to practice curiosity.

Why curiosity? It is kinder, gentler, and vastly more productive than self-judgement. You know, that little voice in your head that’s super mean to you and tells you to get it together.

Jumping straight to curiosity helps to get rid of these mean voices and allows us to spend time with the anxious emotions and thoughts. Giving ourselves time and space to explore these sensations expands our Window of Tolerance, which is a VIT – Very Important Tool for mental health.

Regulating Our Nervous Systems

Exploring the anxious sensations doesn’t need to last forever. Spending a bit of time being curious and simply sitting with the reality of how you feel can expand your Window of Tolerance.

But sooner or later, we’re going to want to regulate our nervous systems to give ourselves a much-needed break from trauma and grief responses.

After conversations with family and friends, I created an Anxiety Toolkit to give us simple tools that can be practiced anywhere to release our anxiety and bring ourselves out of an activated state and into calm. There is a variety of tools to try and then pick your favorite – mine is Body Scan.

I would LOVE to hear back about what exercises you practiced and what you prefer!

Download your free copy of the Anxiety Toolkit here!

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