Somatic Therapy for Anxiety: How It Works and What to Expect

How Does Somatic Therapy Treat Anxiety?

One of the main reasons people come to see me is to heal their symptoms of anxiety. Whether you struggle with overthinking, social anxiety, insomnia, gut issues, overwhelm, or feeling 'wired but tired', you've probably heard that nervous system regulation can help.

Many of my clients are high-achieving and self-aware. They know their patterns, they've talked it through, and they want a new way of approaching their symptoms.

They have high-level jobs and run businesses; they're stay-at-home parents with families, they're tackling generational trauma and navigating the medical system.

And anxiety leaves them feeling like there's no space inside to be present or to feel connected to themselves.

Somatic Approaches to Anxiety

In order to understand how we treat anxiety with somatic therapy, we need to lay out a few foundational concepts on how anxiety is viewed somatically:

1. Your body was there for everything that's ever happened to you.

   
   

2. When overwhelming things happen, our body goes into a threat response.

3. We can't always fully process our threat responses in the moment. We're left with unprocessed activation (tension, adrenaline/cortisol).

   
   

4. We store that activation in the body: you might recognize this as a racing heart, tension, a buzzing feeling, a spinning mind, or a constant sense of hypervigilance. Or, you might feel overwhelmed but numb at the same time.
   
   

Why We Work With Your Nervous System

When the nervous system gets stuck in that activated state, it begins treating everyday life as if the threat is still present.

That's why the grocery store can feel like an emergency.

Your body isn't broken, it's doing exactly what it was designed to do. It just hasn't gotten the signal that it's safe enough to turn off the alarm bell.

When we treat anxiety somatically, we work with these activation cycles and the threat response. You can think of it as closing activation loops.

We're teaching your body 'that part is over now.' And 'it's safe enough to settle.'

Your window of tolerance (the range of experience you can move through without tipping into overwhelm) narrows when activation has been building for a long time.

Somatic therapy works to widen that window incrementally, so there's more space between "fine" and "flooded."

Anxiety and Trauma

Oftentimes anxiety shows up as a message from your body that it's time to address something that has been impacting you for a while.

Maybe you've:

• experienced something traumatic

• had a series of events that accumulated over time,

• had a long period of chronic stress that your body never fully recovered from,

• or patterns that began in childhood that your nervous system is still responding to.

Anxiety can often shift significantly once we begin working with the underlying experiences driving it.

I have seen clients go from not being able to go to the grocery store without panic and dizziness, to being able to travel, connect, and advocate for themselves.

I have seen people reconnect with their creativity, find fulfilling relationships, and uncover new love for their bodies.

Processing deeper feelings and activation is experiential and can be an emotional experience. That's what I'm here to support you with - we do it together at a pace that works for your system.

You Don't Have to Be in Emergency Mode

Traditional talk therapy helps us find insight and self-understanding — to learn new approaches and understand where our anxious feelings come from. Somatic therapy helps you slow down, settle, and remind your body that it doesn't have to be in emergency mode all of the time.

We might talk about what's on your mind and what situations in your life are making you anxious, but we also slow down to help your body complete what it's been holding, and discharge the survival energy that keeps you buzzing.

Over time, your window of tolerance widens, your 'vagal tone' strengthens, and you become more resilient to stress. The vagus nerve is your body's main pathway for signalling safety - when it's well regulated, your whole system settles more easily.

Life Can Be Stressful

Let's be real — there's a lot in the world to be stressed about. We live in a fast-paced world with more access to information than ever before. It doesn't take much to feel anxious when you open your phone to the news.

In addition, many people are experiencing real hardship. Financial stress, health challenges, discrimination, and the weight of systems that were never designed to support them.

When you're experiencing debilitating anxiety, everything seems like it's moving too fast.

What somatic work can do is raise the threshold for survival mode. Things still happen, relationships are still challenging, the world is still doing its thing. But you feel more present, more empowered to support yourself, and more spacious inside.

Less anxiety means more accurate responses from your body around what is actually an emergency. You can trust your body more, you can respond when you need to. It means more connection, more flow, and more creativity.

Finally, somatic work helps us understand ourselves from the inside out. Not through the eyes of an 'expert,' not from a lens of fixing or managing, but centering your lived experience and your sense of connection as the primary goal.

Buzzing? Try A Two-Minute Orienting Practice

(Note: find a safe moment to try this...not while driving or operating anything that needs your attention.)

1. Notice the quality of the anxiety: does it feel like your head is spinning, a sense of overwhelm, tension in your chest? (We don't need to spend much time here, just check in with your body over a couple of breaths.)

2. Next, feel yourself in your chair. What parts of your body are making contact with the seat? Take a breath here.

3. Then slowly take a 360 view of the room you're in. (If this makes you dizzy, just glance around). Let your eyes move across the whole space & stay curious.

   
   

4. Consciously check for your safety in this moment. (This helps your brain check for real-time threat and turn down the threat response.)

5. Finally, close your eyes and take one deep breath. Notice any subtle shifts in your experience.

   
   

Feeling Present & Relaxed is Possible

If this resonates with you, somatic work can help you step off the "figure it out and fix it" hamster wheel. Together, we will explore the skills and practices that help you connect with your body and remember a sense of safety.

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