A Body-Based Approach To Better Managing Stress
Stress and anxiety
Stress and anxiety doesn’t just happen in our brains. Even if we are aware of distressing thoughts, the only way we know we are stressed or anxious is actually because it is felt, which means it is happening in the body.
Even though the way we each manifest or display our stress may look wildly different person to person, there is a form and structure to what actually is going on for us underneath the label of “stress”. Specifically, all humans have a core contraction and a conditioned tendency. When we get to know our core contraction and our conditioned tendency, we are much better equipped to manage our triggers and our responses to them, and we are less at the whim of our more automatic, unhelpful reactions.
Core contraction
When you first receive stimulus that you are under some sort of stress (be it large or small) there is a fairly predictable way in which your body will react. It may not be the same as what happens to other bodies, but it will likely be what happens reliably inside your own body. For example, you may hold your breath, or tighten your jaw or stomach, or stop feeling your body altogether. You may feel a surge of tingling in your body, the rush of heat, or a knot in your throat. These are all examples of contractions in your body - a way in which the tissues of your body react to the perceived threat of safety or belonging. For most of us, there is a central place in our body where this contraction begins, hence the term “core” contraction.
Until you get to know your core contraction, it is likely occurring at the unconscious level. Unless you are well practiced in living in your body, it will be challenging to feel this core contraction. This is an old, physiological response to stress that likely has been operating for decades in the background of your awareness.
Conditioned Tendency
Your conditioned tendency is what behavior you then do as a learned reaction to your core contraction. We often think of this as fight, flight, freeze, appease. If the core contraction is the alarm bell in the body, the conditioned tendency is how we learned to behave in response to this alarm bell. For example, some people may have grown up learning that others connect more with them (think: increased safety and belonging) when they get loud or take up lots of space. This is the person who gets aggressive when under pressure as an adult. Others may have perceived it was not safe to speak up when under stress, and their bodies were conditioned to pull back, be quiet, or make themselves small under duress.
Remember we are always organizing our nervous system towards a felt sense of safety and belonging, so different people can have very different conditioned tendencies even if they share the same core contraction. Two people could both feel a tightening in their chest when under stress, but growing up in very different contexts could mean that one of them tends to get aggressive and shut others out, and the other tends to retreat and become passive. They may not behave in this way every time or in every context, but mostly we have a conditioning toward one behavior or another, hence the term conditioned “tendency”.
How to become more skillful at managing these reactions
The reality is that our core contractions are uncomfortable to feel in our bodies. Our historic conditioned tendencies in response to this discomfort has, at one point in our lives, served us well. As adults, our conditioned tendencies are often what we need to work on shifting or changing, but that is not to make them wrong or bad; they simply no longer serve us in our present day context. Often these old conditioned tendencies are at odds with our present day values.
Somatic coaching and somatic bodywork are both designed to help us deeply get to know our core contractions and our conditioned tendencies so that we can have more awareness and, subsequently, more choice in our behaviors. Schedule an online or in person appointment or schedule a free consult to learn more.