When Was the Last Time You Danced? 5 Tips For Building a Better Relationship With Your Body When You Have Anxiety.
If you can take a moment, remember the last time you felt joy in your body. What were you doing? Who were you with? It may not have been dancing but when was the last time you felt good and happy in your body?
Many people who suffer with anxiety have an overall negative relationship with their bodies. The experience of being in the body--e.g. feeling emotions and bodily sensations--can be one of overwhelm and fear. Since acknowledging physical sensations, or feelings, can happen if you have a lot of space or time, many people keep up a guise of productivity or being busy so they don’t ever have to feel anything unpleasant in their bodies. Yet there is a downside to this: if you never stop and acknowledge what is happening in your body (feelings, sensations) because you fear being uncomfortable, you also never get the chance to acknowledge positive (not threatening) feelings and emotions either.
So how do you start to build a better relationship to your body if you suffer from anxiety? Here are some tips to help you get started.
1) Take time each day to observe how you feel in your body.
This will give you a baseline of how you feel and how you relate to your body. . .even if you take only two minutes each day to observe feelings and sensations without judging them.
2) Start to notice when your body feels good.
Is it after a run? When you dance? When you are sitting and reading? When you are out in nature? It doesn’t really matter what you are doing, only that your body feels good when you do it.
3) Build time in each day where you have positive associations with your body.
This means limiting judgment or attempting to improve what your body looks like during this time. Simply curate activities that feel good to you and try to do at least one of those each day.
4) If you have trouble connecting to positive things about your body, try looking for neutral associations at first. Keep looking for small moments of happiness in your body and don’t get discouraged if it takes a little bit of time.
5) And finally, if there is discomfort around trying to connect with your body, breathe deeply into your belly and know that this is normal. If you have anxiety, you may have to teach yourself that paying attention to your body is safe and deep breathing will help you do that.
If you have more questions about how to nurture a better relationship in your body and/or how to get anxiety therapy in San Francisco, please contact me, Lisa Manca, at (415) 212-8780 or email lisa@lisamanca.com.