Resources for managing anxiety at home

Mar 16

Coronavirus is scary

I’m on day 7 of self-isolation (with my family) due to the coronavirus pandemic. This is a scary thing. My social media feeds are full of people reaching out for reassurance and verbalising how they are fighting the edge of panic all the time. We are in the midst of complete uncertainty about what the future is going to look like and everything feels out of our control.

I am lucky enough to have some body-based resources for managing anxiety and I wanted to share them because I feel that they might benefit a lot of people right now.

Jane Clapp is a movement therapist and the creator of the movement for trauma program. She has been offering some free online co-regulation sessions. The next one is on March 25th. Here she offers some anxiety reduction techniques.

Yvette Lalonde is a psychotherapist specialising in complex trauma. Her IG is wealth of wisdom and she often shares movements and techniques for regulating the nervous system. Scroll through her feed and you’ll find lots of resources.

Here’s an example.

And another

I recommend experimenting. If you read through some of Yvette’s posts you’ll quickly see that a lot of what she does is simply feeling into the way her body wants to move in order to create a sense of safety. This is pretty simplistic example but, if your nervous system is generating a flight response then going for a run, or even jumping around your house may work to regulate that.

Lastly I want to leave you with two more ideas:

Find a way to stimulate the ventral vagal nerve. The ventral pathway of stimulates the parasympathetic (rest and digest) nervous system. When we’re in high sympathetic activation (fight or flight) it helps to return to a parasympathetic state. The best way to activate the ventral vagus nerve is singing, humming and chanting. ( I’m seriously considering going for a drive in my car and cranking the radio - that way I can get a break from my kids AND some ventral vagal stimulation!)
Try EFT tapping. Many people find it to be a very practical method for reducing anxiety and regulating the nervous system. I’m not including a link because there are no specific videos or practitioners that I follow but there a ton of videos on YouTube.

I sincerely hope that at least a few of you will find these ideas helpful.

Stay Well,

Stephanie