What To Do When You're Anxious

It can be such a strange experience to be anxious. You may find yourself feeling that way doing something completely relaxing like trying to meditate, doing yoga or walking around your neighborhood. Your mind is like, um i’m not doing anything stressful. And yet your body is all amped up. Or it might hit you in the middle of a day where you have a lot to do and it’s hard to stop.

The first thing to do when you’re anxious is realize that there’s nothing wrong with you. For some reason, and you may not know why, your nervous system has a high sympathetic charge. This happens a lot when the tasks, decisions and pacing of everyday life become too much for your system at that moment. It can also happen when old stress energy is triggered. Like an iceberg, the in the moment experience may seem small, like the tip of an iceberg, but then it brings along the rest of the iceberg which is 100x its size down below.

Once you’ve discovered that your body is having a defensive response from too much stress, the next step is to get in your body. I have a million tools for this but for the sake of our purposes here are some simple steps to try.

1. Notice where you feel anxiety in your body and start to get to know it. It’s likely that you’ll feel it somewhere along the central channel of your body, so that’s a nice place to start. Just touch in like you’re checking in on a sick kid. Notice where it is and what it feels like.

2. Next, go to the ground. Notice all of the places where your body is touching the ground and begin to feel those places of connection.

3. Orient to the environment around you. Move your head, neck and eyes together noticing some objects around you. It’s really important to name the color and the name of the object you’re looking at. Look around you naming 5 objects and remember to look and see what’s behind you.

4. Check back in on the anxiety experience in your body and see what it’s doing. Is it changing or staying the same? Change is where we wanna go.
   This is really important!
   We’re not trying to FIX it, we’re helping the stress energy to digest and finish. If you are noticing a change, you can repeat this a few times and see fi it helps that feeling to finish. If nothing is changing, its time to find a way to lower the stress in your body, try doing the exercises a little slower or faster and see what happens. And find a loving witness to support you. Sometimes having support is what the system needs as trauma is too much too fast without an empathetic witness. (You can reach out to me for this support here)

Anxiety is very common these days and its not natural nor good for our bodies to be so revved up all the time. It’s very taxing on your system and can cause numerous physical and emotional challenges like

• Migraines

• Autoimmune

• Chronic Pain

• Anxiety/Depression

• Procrastination/Stuckness

To practice more of these tools with support, come to Somatic movement classes or contact me for 1 on 1 work .

With LOVE and Regulation
Dorie

Sick Of Your Own Thoughts?

Are you sick of hearing the same thoughts, beliefs and stories in your mind and feeling depressed, anxious, overwhelmed and sick?

Whether its self deprecating thoughts of all the ways you’re not good enough as a mom, wife, daughter, sister, brother, son, dad or in your work or relationships, these thoughts run through our minds as a story that you know near and dear. Or perhaps you have had certain physical symptoms for so long, you feel inadequate to support your body in healing. You’ve done so much healing work, you probably know why, the story behind what created these beliefs and have talked about them to numerous specialists, doctors, psychologists, nutritionists, your trainer, your friend, and your cat or dog.

It’s so f-ing frustrating to be putting all of this effort into self-care and still feeling the same old way.
There are few factors at play here.

1. The issues are not in your head, they’re in your tissues. What’s causing the distress, is in your bodyhome. You can’t strategize, analyze or talk yourself out of it. This is a big one.

2. Our culture prioritizes cognitive ability over all else. So when you’re not feeling “yourself” shame and blame are a next easy step for your mind which increases the stress energy is your bodyhome.

3. Self-care is only truly caring if it is shifting your nervous system to regulate and metabolize stress energy. If it doesn’t change how you respond to stress over time, its just a bandaid. If you’re doing the same self care you did 10 years ago and you’re still anxious, its not working. If you’re bopping around and not giving your nervous system time to adjust to new techniques, it’s not working.

4. We are not used to actually feeling our emotions. Now that we’re all carrying stress of the pandemic, our histories and generational trauma from your lineage, the stress energy that we’re carrying is a million times more intense. The idea of feeling your emotions is super scary and who would want to go there? It’s too much!

So where do I go from here?

Ironically, to shift your nervous system’s patterning to stress, you have to connect with your body on a level that you may never have before (even if you've done a shit ton of therapy, yoga, acupuncture, etc). It’s not complicated. It’s actually very simple to FEEL more like yourself.

You learn what that actually means by slowly following your body’s impulses and experiences. As you do this more and more, you begin to find a flow with your body, an inner conversation that provides the most incredible sense of self, belonging, connection, trust, safety, compassion and space to literally be yourself. Anxiety and depression decrease, you feel your emotions in a healthy way and your life energy becomes available for all that you want to do in your life.

It is not your fault and change is possible.

These classes and private sessions provide a space for you to do this work

Please reach out to me here for a 1 on 1 consult to chat about working together.
And/Or
Join a Somatic movement class this week.

With LOVE and Regulation
Dorie

Advocating for Yourself with Doctors

Don’t wanna read the blog - get your downloadable pdf to print out and take to doctors here

Sometimes the changes you've made in your life are so subtle you don't exactly see them until something big happens.  I'm going to share with you something big.

Going to get anything medical done, the doctor for a checkup, getting the vaccine, having a procedure, etc can be very stressful and traumatizing for many people, especially if you've had any medical trauma in your life, surgeries, accidents, etc. AND especially now during the pandemic.  Typically a doctor’s appointment like that can put me in fight/freeze for days.

Last week, I had a breast biopsy and there was a lot of anticipation around it.  The anticipation and nervousness were there for the obvious reasons, like, I f-ing hope I don't have cancer, but also because of my intense history with doctors and procedures in the past.  I have had multiple surgeries that started when I was a little kid.  My first major illness and surgery began at age 10 and my last one was 7 years ago.  So, finding out that they needed to biopsy my breast brought a lot up for me.

When old past stress-energy (trauma) is stirred up from a present experience, it can feel like you're going crazy.  Anxiety and emotions can feel very intense and may even accelerate into overwhelm which can cause many dis-eases like migraines, chronic pain, and autoimmune problems consequently helping you NOT follow through with the scary appointment or feeling shut down when you're at the doctor's office,  limiting your ability to advocate for yourself.

This time I decided to do it differently.  I realized about a week ago that I could let the doctors know about my trauma history and ASK for what I needed to happen.  So, I did.  I told them about my history and asked for very specific things.  I know from the trauma work I've done for myself and clients, that the body needs to know when things are coming (which is different from trauma which is too much too fast).  Knowing that I want to create as much safety for my body as possible, I was able to ask that they tell me what they were going to do and wait for consent before they did it.  I also asked that everyone in the room know my history and my request. 

The technician must have told the radiologist and assistant because when they came in the room, they all said they would let me know what they were going to do before they did it.  The assistant came in to hold my hand (I know, I teared up too) and they were amazing narrating each action before they did it and waited for me to agree.

During the procedure, I held the technician’s hand and looked at a colorful poster of 3 hibiscus flowers.  I kept my nervous system present by narrating what I saw in each flower, orange, yellow, red.  I let my eyes eat the texture and depth that the colors created.  I also read the sign over and over again that said "Hibiscus".  The attentiveness, the hand holding and connection, and the anchors in the room all helped my body feel a bit more present with being poked and prodded.

Once the procedure was done, the technician who was holding my hand was now holding gauze on the incision to help it stop bleeding.  We were there for about 10 minutes.  During that time I was able to let any activation (ie stress-energy) move through my body.  My body took big heaving breaths, I felt hot, cold, my eyes teared up, my body shaking and trembling.  This reminded me of a video I have seen in the past of a polar bear recovering after being tagged.  (this whole video is great if you want to learn more about how trauma energy is stored and released. The polar bear part starts at 10:57 mins and is about 4 mins long https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nmJDkzDMllc)  Animals in the world don't hold trauma even though they are in life/death situations every day.  What I'm describing is how they shake it off.

And then all of the sudden whoosh, all the energy moved through. I was relaxed and euphoric, the way you do after an orgasm. (no joke, my first thought as my body settled into the stillness was, "I need a joint).

I walked out of that experience with a ton of energy, clear-headed and grounded in my body in total awe.  In awe that I advocated for myself and what that could do.  In awe of the doctors and technicians that listened and provided a consentual safe space for me during AND after the procedure.

The biggest aha moment was in refection of the trauma work I've done.  Like I mentioned earlier, some of this work can feel very subtle a lot of the time, but this time, there was no denying, I am different, it's working and this work is nothing short of life-changing.

Are you ready to clear stuck stress energy in your body that's making you sick?
Connect with me here