Moving Out Of Anxiety Paralysis

Hello dear friend, this talk is about the (hidden) signs and effects of anxiety paralysis, how it can impact us in different areas of our lives, the neurobiology of feeling frozen or stuck and some simple but effective practices and tips to move out of it.

Music by Maksym Dudchyk from Pixabay

Transcript

Hi there and welcome.

I'm Hannah and today I want to talk about anxiety paralysis because it took me a really long time to figure out that I was stuck in some sort of paralysis over many,

Many years.

And only when it became really restrictive in my life,

I've noticed that it's been going on for a really,

Really long time.

Previously I've been usually someone who's very spontaneous,

Making a lot of spontaneous decisions,

Going on trips spontaneously,

Booking last minute.

I would,

Even if I'd know I'd fly in a week,

I would still wait until like two days in advance to book.

Because in my head it was like,

But things could change,

Maybe I'm going to do this and I don't know yet what I'm going to do and I wanted to keep everything open.

And I've experienced loads of incredible things even in this time and I've traveled and I've done great things until life got a little bit more difficult and anxiety came up a little bit more and was more present in my daily life.

And suddenly I've realized that I just got really stuck in moments and it became really difficult to navigate my life because then I couldn't make that decision anymore.

Whether I would go somewhere,

What I would do now,

Whether that would be for my work,

For the household,

For cooking food,

For what to wear or where to go on traveling.

And maybe you find yourself in any one of those on some sort of level where you realize,

Oh yeah,

I tend to do things very last minute.

I tend to not decide in advance because I find it difficult to commit.

I tend to not know what to wear and yeah,

I'm kind of like getting in this state of I can't go back and forth now,

Like I can't make a decision.

I cannot not make a decision.

And during my studies as a neuroscience and becoming trained as a photographer,

I'm a therapeutic photographer and a polyvagal felt-sense practitioner,

I worked with people and in a photographic way and with the felt-sense and we worked together on moving out of states of freeze.

And that's when I realized also for the first time,

I was like,

Oh gosh,

I think I had this for a really long time and I did not move out of this state.

And today I just want to explain to you a little bit more about it,

Of what I've learned during my professional path about anxiety paralysis.

So anxiety paralysis is actually some sort of freeze and shut down of your nervous system.

It's when your dorsal vagus nerve is activated and you get into the state of feeling like you're paralyzed.

Of course,

You're not actually paralyzed.

So we're speaking about emotional paralysis here,

Where if it's difficult to make any sort of action or decision,

You can still move your body.

And this part of the vagus nerve is activated when the nervous system thinks there's no way to get out of a threatening situation by fight or by running away.

So we get into this sort of shutdown,

Which is a depersonalization.

We're kind of like removing ourselves a little bit from the situation,

Because it's just too overwhelming for our nervous system to deal with the situation.

The thing is,

Though,

That usually that is some sort of like a trauma response from,

That can be trauma that's like happened in childhood or whenever it happened during the life.

And it doesn't have to be some major traumatic incident.

Maybe something you can't even remember that makes it difficult to decide.

But often when we're in that state,

Our prefrontal cortex shuts down.

And the prefrontal cortex is very,

Very important to make decisions and to focus,

To plan ahead,

To create and make plans.

And we can see in the brain that one part is very active instead is the limbic area and the amygdala.

And the limbic area and the amygdala,

They send out hormones like cortisol and adrenaline to keep the body up in this protective mode of survival.

You know,

We have to get through this.

So as this is activated,

We get into this very intrinsic ancient type of state where we react without really thinking.

And so in order to get out of anxiety paralysis,

We have to learn to switch on our prefrontal cortex again.

And there are very simple practices to do that.

One super simple one,

And it might not work for you,

It might work for you.

This is a little bit of a trial and error kind of thing,

Is to just count down from 5 to 1.

Just do 5,

4,

3,

2,

1.

5,

4,

3,

2,

1.

5,

4,

3,

2,

1.

And you can do that if you are an English native speaker in English.

You can do that in your own language.

If you're not native,

You can do that in multiple languages.

It's just putting a little bit of focus and concentration on so that your prefrontal cortex has to work.

So if you count backwards numbers,

Your prefrontal cortex is turned on.

So like this,

You're constantly putting activation into your prefrontal cortex.

And over time,

The amygdala will slow down or it gives you a little bit of a window to make a decision.

Sometimes that's not enough.

Sometimes when you feel really paralyzed,

It can be really helpful to feel the body in whatever way.

Cold water can be an incredible tool to make you feel again.

Having a cold shower in this moment takes a lot of effort,

But it just wakes you up.

It makes you clean and clear again.

So everything that kind of activates and stimulates the vagus nerve in this moment can be super helpful to get you out of anxiety paralysis.

But in the long run,

It's something where your nervous system doesn't feel safe.

So there might be triggers and moments where you feel more anxious.

For me,

That was traveling back then.

And there were moments,

Like I told you,

Like I knew it was going to go,

But I just couldn't book the flight.

It was just,

It felt too much,

Too hard to commit because that was always a really tough decision.

And it felt,

I was always so stuck in this.

Should I,

Should I not?

Should I,

Should I not?

Although I knew I was going.

So over time to get out of,

Out of the state of survival mode,

We need to connect with our felt sense and we need to connect with our body and what our body is teaching us.

So I invite you to listen to your body and to listen to your triggers and your moments when you feel paralyzed.

And I invite you to count backwards some numbers and get out of the state of paralysis.

Because it's not true that whatever decision you make,

Like that one decision could be a wrong decision.

It's,

It's an anxiety mode.

It's your body trying to play kind of like a disastrous movie for you in your head for whatever decision you are taking.

Because in that moment,

It is threatening,

But this is not reality.

It's kind of like a lot of wrongly connected threatening moment,

But in reality,

There is no threat right now.

So in order to move completely out of it,

You might have to connect to this a little bit more often and learn more about your felt sense,

Learn more about your body,

Learn more about how your body communicates with you.

But overall,

Anxiety paralysis is just anxiety.

You might feel stuck,

But in the end,

It's just anxiety and you can learn how to get out of anxiety.

If this helped you and you like this,

Please leave a review or forward it to someone that you know might benefit from this.

I so love to read your comments and to read about your journey.

I'm Hannah,

I'm a neuroscientist,

A felt sense polyvagal practitioner and I work with people who are stuck in trauma states or addictive trauma loops.

Together,

We move the nervous system back to safety using the felt sense and also using some other creative approaches.

I'm so glad that you're here today listening to this talk and I hope you're having a great rest of your day.