Anxiety Physical Symptoms

Anxiety symptoms are often physical. As with any physical symptoms, you should check with a physician to make sure you don't have a medical problem:

• Heart racing or palpitating
• Nausea, or stomach or digestive problems
• Shortness of breath
• Tightness in your chest
• Headaches.
• Cold hands and feet
• Feeling dizzy or lightheaded
• Shortness of breath or smothering sensation
• Numbness or tingling sensations
• Hot or cold flushes
• Fear of losing control or going crazy

You may even have symptoms of a panic attack.

Because anxiety often shows up as physical symptoms, it can be very helpful to work with a somatic therapist, like myself, who can help you recover from both the psychological and physiological symptoms of anxiety.

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Anxiety is a Learned Response

Usually when people report problems with anxiety, I find that they have been through some sort of traumatic situation in their past where they learned to become anxious. Anxiety often involves a type of instinctual learning that is meant to help us react quickly to dangerous situations. Sometimes when we survive a situation that is either dangerous or seems dangerous, our bodies decide to "hard wire" our reaction so we can automatically do the same thing in future situations that are similar. The idea is that we must have done something that worked since we survived, so our bodies make sure we know how to do that again.

Quite often this strategy works and helps us in future situations, and sometimes we learn strategies that help us over a long period of time, for example, when we're children and we might have to deal with an abusive or dangerous parent and we need to somehow cope in order to survive. Usually, though, when people report problems with anxiety, it's because the orginal strategy is no longer helpful, and in some cases, the strategy may have never been helpful at all.

If you've been in a car accident, for example, your body might think it makes sense to scare you so much that you don't get back into a car. Your body doesn't care that you need to get to work and buy groceries, and it doesn't know that you're unlikely to get in an accident. It just knows that you were once in a very dangerous situation in a car, and so it wants to make sure that doesn't happen again. If you grew up with dangerous parents or have had dangerous relationships, your body might think it's a good strategy to avoid relationships so you won't be hurt, and so it may scare you away from others. Your body doesn't know or care that you may need relationships with safe people to feel whole and connected.

Anxiety is usually a self-protective instinct that can often serve to help us be safe, but sometimes it goes awry and needs some readjustment.

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Children and Anxiety

It is very common for children to develop anxiety symptoms just like adults. I find that the best interventions for younger children involve strengthening their connection with parents and caregivers.

In airplane safety demonstrations, we're always told to put on our own oxygen mask before we put a mask on our children. The idea behind this instruction is that kids are naturally inclined to mimic and model our behavior. All parents quickly realize that children pay more attention to what we do than what we say, as you may find out if you occasionally use strong language.

I make use of the tendency of children to mimic parents and caregivers. I teach parents and caregivers how to calm and soothe themselves, and in turn, in family therapy, I help parent and caregivers show their children how to recover from anxiety symptoms. I am one of very few therapists who uses EMDR and somatic therapy techniques in family therapy to help children.

In the event that a child is unable to make use of family or conjoint therapy, I work individually with the child using play therapy, narrative therapy, and art therapy techiniques to explore the source of their anxiety and to help them through to a feeling of safety, growth, and resolution.

With teens and adolescents who are striving to figure things out on their own, I teach self-soothing and cognitive skills to help with the forms of anxiety that are important to them - such as anxiety related to themes of social status and romance.

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