28 Feb Anxious? Subtle Signs of Anxiety You May Not Recognize

I had a client come to me for treatments to help relieve her anxiety. She described experiencing feelings of anxiousness that washed over her like a wave, causing her to feel unstable and unable to control her body. They came out of nowhere and caught her completely off guard. She’d recently experienced some challenging events in her personal life, which seemed to coincide with the onset of her anxiety.

“I’ve never experienced anxiety before this,” she explained. “I’ve never been an anxious person. I feel stressed out sometimes, as most people do, but this is different. This makes me panic and prevents me from doing anything other than just getting my nervous system back to its baseline.”

The Differences & Similarities Between Stress & Anxiety

I found it interesting that she differentiated between stress and anxiety because these days, those terms are often confused. Both stress and anxiety are physiological reactions to events but their causes are different. Stress occurs in response to external factors, aka stressors, such as work or family responsibilities or an argument. We can relieve stress by managing those stressors.

Anxiety is an internal experience characterized by feelings of panic, apprehension, and dread in situations that pose no threat. As my client described, it can wash over you, seemingly out of nowhere––while shopping for groceries, taking a shower, or stuck in traffic. Chronic stress can lead to anxiety, so minimizing stressors is critical for preventing anxiety. If anxiety becomes persistent and severe, it can result in an anxiety disorder, such as post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), generalized anxiety, panic disorders, or social anxiety.

Back to my client. I was interested in her somatic experience, rather than what she thought about it. I wanted to pinpoint where she felt those symptoms in her body. I asked her to describe what happened in her body just before she became mentally aware of the anxiety. Her heart rate quickened. A slight buzzing occurred on the surface of her skin, along with weakness in her legs and core. Her vision became sensitive to lights, her breathing rapid and shallow, and she described feeling as though her body was leading her somewhere she didn’t want to go. In short, she felt unable to control her body’s response to a point of overwhelm.

What Is The Brain Doing During Anxiety?

When you feel anxious, your body’s flight or fight mechanism ignites, releasing a flood of neurotransmitters such as adrenaline. Your pulse and breathing rate increase to supply more oxygen to your brain, preparing you to respond to a situation perceived as threatening.

It’s important to note that a certain degree of anxiety is natural and common to many people. It only becomes disabling when we attach to the physiological sensations, that is, when they feel intolerable and threatening, making us feel unsafe in perfectly safe situations.

How You Can Manage Anxiety

During these situations, it’s helpful to observe your body’s internal response, focus on moving your breath downward into your diaphragm and abdominal region, and remind yourself that you’re in a safe place.

Grounding, either by firmly planting both feet or sitting, and making contact with natural surroundings, such as a garden, can also help to move the energy downward toward our root chakra––our foundation for safety and security.

Drawing our attention to the centre of the torso where the front ribs unite has benefits too. This is where our ego identity and personal power reside, so identifying its presence can stimulate the energy there, helping us to feel in control.

Both stress and anxiety extend beyond physiological manifestations, so it’s important to look at how either one is subtly playing out in your day to day functioning. Being prone to distractions or self-interruptions, avoiding spontaneity, and overplanning are unconscious behaviours we assume to control external events by preventing stressors.

While there’s nothing pathological about wanting a semblance of order in your life, hiding behind these behaviours to avoid perceived threatening encounters with yourself can actually increase the potential for anxiety. Consciously identifying behaviours in the moment and seeking to understand why they occur can inspire deeper self-knowledge, putting us back in the driver’s seat of our lives.

There is strength in the ability to observe the parts of ourselves that feel weak, uncomfortable, or out of control. Being aware of the subtle signs of stress and anxiety is paramount to managing them. The goal is not to eradicate triggers (that may induce anxiety over time) or turn off our body’s natural and individual responses, but rather to notice ourselves in situations of stress or anxiety and coach ourselves through it with breathing and grounding techniques.

Reiki also has major benefits for relieving overall stress and anxiety. It works on all the layers of the body––physical, mental, emotional, energetic, spiritual––by guiding energy upwards or downwards, balancing chakras, stimulating deficient energies and containing excessive ones, and relaxing the overall body and nervous system.

Please reach out anytime to learn more about how Reiki can help you manage anxiety more effectively. I’m just a phone call away, live in Durham Region (Bowmanville) and I’d love to meet you. Call me now.