Anxiety and Depression - Mind and Body

Too Much Too Fast… Too Little for Too Long… Too Much for Too Long…

Think about those sentences for a second. You may ask: “Too much of what is too fast?” The what matters less. What matters is the experience itself, your experience.

Life experiences impact mind and body.

When you experience something or someone in an extreme way, it can be traumatic, causing anxiety, depression, and other issues. This experience can affect your overall mental and physical health.

The story, timeline, and history are important, but that’s not all. When you tell your story, your body is part of it and not just a bunch of words.

Your body holds all the thoughts, perceptions, feelings, and sensations from the first day of life to where you are now.

Your body and mind are here to communicate with you, conveying your needs, wants, pain, joy, risks, fears, and hope.

Your mind and body are asking for quiet…

…but you hear it all, you personalize it all, you feel it all.

When you are going through challenging times, you may not always know what you are truly feeling, thinking, wanting, or needing.

Many times, everything around you feels like it is too much or nonexistent. You may feel lost, detached, and triggered by everything and everyone.

“If only I could stop those thoughts and get some quiet.”

Attempting to quiet the noise is not working.

You may seek to become numb to the noise through alcohol, fasting, binging, purging, sex, over-exercise, drugs, people, self-harm, and other devices. Although relief from these attempts to have a break from the noise may work for a while, they don’t last and will resurface.

Everything around you and inside you screams – but you don’t hear, you don’t care, you don’t feel…

Hiding in the darkness is not the answer.

The only place that feels somehow safe is your bed, covered in blankets lying in the dark. You don’t enjoy it – it is not safe. But it has been too long and too painful, so all you feel you can do at this point is hide.

It doesn’t matter; nothing feels like it matters. You don’t feel like you matter. You are exhausted. The body hurts, heart hurts. “I don’t care” is what you mumble at this point.

The body reacts to anxiety and depression as well as the mind.

Anxiety and depression manifest in the physical body as well as in the mind. There are times you may not know that this is what you are experiencing.

Before the age of two, you communicated with your body only. As you became older, you developed a more sophisticated means of communication.

From only body language as a baby and toddler, there became a verbal language.

However, this did not negate the power of your body language to communicate still. Your body houses you and your past and present experiences.

In therapy, we can explore the connections between the body experience and the mind experience which can help you heal.

As overwhelmed or numb as you feel, it is possible to make a change.

You can work on healing painful scars while learning to live with some scars and learning to breathe when you feel suffocated and anxious.

You can learn to self-care and learn positive coping skills, even if all you feel is being depressed, wanting to sleep, and disappear.

It will take some effort from you – which will be to show up for yourself.

You can and should make the first move, so you can feel better and live your life fully as you deserve.

Therapy helps make that connection.

You are a whole person. Therefore, in therapy, we work with the whole person – Mind and Body.

We can work together to rewrite your story, work on your treatment goals, and learn new behaviors and skills. These will be helpful for you to make that mind/body connection and alleviate those problems that are holding you captive.

One of the goals will be to make you more aware of what is at the heart of the problem and help reduce anxiety and impulsivity so that you can find peace and build a positive connection to your mind and body.

Connecting with your body provides another means of support to help and guide you on your journey of recovery.

Healing starts with you.

The choice is yours to make. You are a person with many different characteristics, wants, and needs.

You are not your issues, diagnosis, and problems. Don’t let them define you.

If you don’t know who you are without all of those “identities,” then it is time for you to discover your real identity. To discover your true self, your goals, dreams, and how you can work on yourself to heal, be present, and feel better.

All you need to do…

…is to choose to show up and be curious. It’s your choice and your opportunity. It’s about choosing you, not the fears, not opinions of others, and not your own negative voice.

Be curious about you!

You can’t control what has happened to you, but you can work on how to ensure a different outcome and how you react to what is triggering the way you feel. Small steps lead to a better day and a new path for your life.

Even if all feels overwhelming, stuck, or empty, something is there; there is another step, another breath, another choice you can make. You are the change you want to experience. Be that change, take that step, dare.

As Aristotle said, “What we learn to do we learn by doing.”