“Anxiety is a body event.”
Part of an occasional series about phrases that this therapist finds himself repeating, often.
As a clinician in private practice, one of the phrases that I hear myself saying over and over, often in this way is this: “Remember, anxiety is a body event.”
So what does this mean?
First, this statement, “anxiety is a body event”, reminds us that when we feel anxiety, it is made up of physical sensations. While you may not have all of the symptoms, people often describe an increased heart rate, sweating, tingling fingers, chest tightening, chest pain, nausea or pain in their stomach, feeling hot, and changes in breathing that usually show up like quick, short breaths.
These symptoms are often followed along by a deep sense of fear, of feeling closed in and needing to get out. You may feel as if you are about to die. This can also show up like an overwhelming irritability that may lead you to lash out at people around you. Anxiety is about “fight or flight”, so some of us are likely to want to run . . . and some of us get ready for a fight.
And all of this is NORMAL and NATURAL; we need this system! The problem is that this system has been triggered by some internal or external event that has bypassed your “thinking” brain and is talking…
