Chapter 4: Strategies for Body Regulation “Life is ten percent what you experience and ninety percent how you respond to it.” — Dorothy M. Neddermeyer Being aware of how your body responds to stress and anxiety, sometimes referred to as your ‘bottom up’ response, is very important. It is also important to recognize that different types of strategies work for different levels of physiological activation. For example, if you are very activated, perhaps even approaching panic, breathing exercises do not always work and may even heighten your activation level unless you have had a lot of practice with breathing exercises. Therefore, a first step is to notice your overall level of activation. In general, if you are at a medium to high level of activation, try a strategy that involves more movement. Imagine that when you have a high level of physiological or body activation, it is like your body is full of tiger fighting energy. You can’t go from fighting tigers, which is the state your body is in when you are anxious, to calm instantly, it takes time to return to a regulated or calm state and to a feeling of being safe. Level of Activation While the scale you use is not that important, what does matter is the concept that we have different levels of activation which correspond with different physiological events and are managed by different strategies. For example, if you choose a 10 point scale where 0 represents being asleep and 10 represents a panic attack, the 0 to 5 range corresponds with low to medium levels of activation and 5 to 10 corresponds with high activation such as panic. Whatever scale you use, the important part is to differentiate between low to medium levels of activation and high levels of activation because different bottom-up strategies will be effective depending on the level of activation. The purpose of the bottom up or body regulation strategies are to manage your physiological response. The goal is to get to a state of calm, but this can be a lofty goal for many people who struggle with anxiety. Many people rarely feel calm. Thus, while calm is the goal to work towards over time, the immediate focus is on down regulating the activation level in your body. You can think of this as if you’re ‘turning down the volume’ on your body’s response. With practice, you will get better and better at this and over time be able to achieve a feeling of calm. As a general guideline, breathing and muscle relaxation will be effective in the low to medium range (0 to 5 on the sample scale), while movement will be effective in the high range. I have had many people tell me that breathing doesn’t work for them and makes their anxiety worse. When we investigate more fully, we realize that they are using breathing during a period of high activation which often increases their level of activation. There are many different breathing and body regulation activities. I will outline only a few of them here. I encourage you to add your own favourites to the list. Below, I will share some ideas of strategies that will help you to down regulate your body’s response to stress and anxiety. I will provide some for low to middle levels of activation and others for middle to high levels of activation. Most important however, is to find body regulation strategies
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