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What is your body telling you?

Anxiety is a normal human reaction in which the body is responding to your environment and communicating with you. When one experiences anxiety, our first reaction is to make it stop. What if instead, we listened to our body? What is your body telling you?

A lot of times, the message your body is trying to tell you goes unnoticed when we are so focused on the symptoms of anxiety. Many times this intense focus on the symptoms is accompanied by judgment and criticism, “I am not normal”, “people are going to judge me, and these are just your own thoughts working against you. By focusing on the anxiety you are unintentionally bringing more attention to it, along with judgment which only exacerbates the symptoms. I myself, who once suffered from anxiety can recall when I attempted to hide my anxiety symptoms to prevent others from judging me and realizing that in doing so, my anxiety would get worse because I would find myself obsessing over it until I learned to not give my anxiety so much power.

One way to approach anxiety is to use mindfulness; notice the anxiety, notice how it feels in your body and let it be, do not judge it. Do not criticize yourself for feeling that way; after all it’s a normal response. Instead we can try and understand why your body is reacting to your environment. It may be trying to tell you something about yourself, something that may be in your subconscious that you may not be aware of. Therapy can help you make the subconscious conscious.

If you are interested in learning about yourself by tapping into your subconscious or you are interested in learning the practice of mindfulness to help decrease your anxiety, contact Ventura Community Counseling.