Explore 5 accessible anxiety relief tools to utilize throughout the day by practicing vagus nerve toning. Practicing each day for self-regulation is essential for anxiety management and finding the method that feels best fit for you! #letsnormalize that!
#LNT #anxiety #anxietymanagement #anxietyalleviation #regulation #takebackyourpower #TBYP #vagusnervetoning
Anxiety is our body's response to anticipated threats. This stress response takes in external information, processes it, and makes meaning of it. That meaning formulates cognitively and emotionally; making thoughts and emotions feel like reality when they are not.
At this point in society, we've all heard the term "I feel triggered" used.
When we give too much power to the thoughts and emotions "triggered" by the situations or antecedents we find ourselves taking in, processing, and applying meaning to, our sense of reality can become irrational.
As the sense of anxiety escalates, without applying healthy coping mechanisms to regulate and alleviate the reactive response, we fall deeper into cyclic, delusional, worry-thinking and farther from reality. Our amygdala releases adrenaline and cortisol, causing our limbic system to trigger somatic responses through the vagus nerve (Autonomic Nervous System, or ANS). These are, at times, intense physical symptoms felt in the body. This is when we feel the anxiety is most real.
Yellow: The Vagus nerve is activated as adrenaline/cortisol activates from the limbic system (top image). This is released down the spine, and somatic symptoms are felt (fight, flight, freeze, collapse) until the parasympathetic nervous system is activated. This calms the escalated sympathetic response (vagus nerve), grounds our racing minds and a sense of danger, and returns the body to a stable, regulated state.
As the feeling takes physical form through the sympathetic nervous system (fight, flight, freeze) response, people report experiencing: tense muscles, racing heart, hot and cold sweats, rapid breathing, quivering or trembling, insomnia, shortness of breath, abdominal pain, and more. If any of these feel familiar, it is best to contact a mental health professional to assess your needs and treatment.
Please let the professionals, as self-diagnosing can be dangerous and misleading, and escalate symptoms of anxiety more with irrational meaning-making and worrying. If you need places to begin, go to Psychology Today and explore therapists in your area, or call local resources such as community clinics! If they are booked, they will often provide or offer other resources for added support.
The parasympathetic nervous system (PNS) relaxes the SNS and is referred to often as the "rest and digest" response. These are accessible through somatosensory system input with vagus nerve toning, for example. I'll elaborate on what these techniques are, below.
In modern times, anxiety cannot tell whether it is being felt because we are nervous about a job interview, or being chased and attacked by a bear. The meaning is what we attach to it, giving us the power to reign in unnecessary escalation through healthy coping tools! These tools are accessible anxiety regulation techniques throughout the day that are rooted in cognitive theory approaches.
I hope you walk away with a foundation of psychoeducation to know WHY and WHEN to apply these techniques. Part of normalizing this topic is to re-author the true evidence-based benefits of these techniques. Tools like mindfulness and breathing have become rather watered down and loosely thrown around as "coping tools", but how many of us remember why these techniques exist and work in the first place?
5 Accessible Daily Anxiety Relief Tools With Vagus Nerve Toning
Parasympathetic Nervous System: Somatosensory & Vagus Nerve Toning
Practicing vagus nerve toning essentially helps you ground, assess, and gauge when to turn on and off ANS responses. For example, if you're feeling an intense fight or flight trigger from your SNS, vagus nerve toning identifies this, and knows how to rationally apply healthy nervous system regulation to activate the PNS.
Vagus nerve toning, in particular, stimulates the brain and stabilizes irregular activity from the vagus nerve. Acetylcholine is released as the main neurotransmitter in the PNS, alleviating and giving us control over the triggered and escalating anxiety response.
Through somatosensory input using the body's 5 senses in a rhythmic, grounding, calming way, we can activate our PNS and truly take back our power!
1. Steady Cardio
If you are someone who experiences anxiety escalating through the day, I encourage a routine that implements a steady state of cardio for 20-30 mins., as needed. A state of steady instead of intense cardio is important. As we are mimicking the stimulated vagus nerve, we are trying to stabilize symptoms of a racing heart, high blood pressure, and adrenaline. Please save the intense cardio and exercise for other practices.
Without escalating and enabling these s
ymptoms, we can access a steady state of cardio through a walk or a light job during the day to keep calm. Rhythmic state for our nervous system to follow and use as a baseline to return to. Additionally, your body is still exerting pent-up, charged anxious energy during steady-state cardio and you're also getting fresh air, if you can, and serotonin, again if possible!
1. Water
This speaks to the sense of touch. If you feel you receive touch well and it supports regulation, then lightly pat or splash water on your skin. Worried bout messing up your work makeup or hair? Use your arm!
Additionally, you can access the sense of taste by drinking the water (as we are supposed to do anyway, cough, wink). Not only can you feel the water and focus on that sensation as a grounding technique, but the clear, fresh taste can symbolize a fresh mind.
We are made of so much water in our bodies, so imagine the water you're adding to your body in this moment rejoining with the collection of ours within us. How connected do you feel to reality after that moment?
3. Stimulation Using Vocals
As bizarre or uncomfortable as this may sound initially, trust me there is a reason to normalize this. The vibrations from our vocal cords are perfect stimulation that ripples through the core of our bodies. It is a sound vibration stemming from where the vagus nerve runs parallel, so it is directly soothing and rhythmical. There are plenty of ways to make this accessible throughout the day.
Explore the examples below for inspiration:
Humming in a private or less populated space.
Singing in your car (who doesn't?).
Laughter is truly the best medicine in this technique, as well!
4. Muscle Release
Release your muscle tension in any accessible way you can during your day. Realistically, most of us won't have an on-call masseuse (co-regulation) or the ability to drop to the floor for self-myofascial release (self-regulation/foam rolling). Even accessing someone in the middle of the day to co-regulate is a privilege for a lot of people.
Some ways accessible ways to do this on your own are listed below for motivation and ideas. Personalize to your style!
Bring a lacrosse ball to roll out tense areas on your back holding anxiety and stress.
Either attend yoga classes, stretch on your own, or find an influencer with accessible content to follow. Dancing is another way and can fall under steady cardio, as well.
Place a warm towel over your face or neck. This is still soothing your muscles and allowing your mind to return to the here-and-now, away from irrational thinking.
5. Create Something
Create to release thoughts and emotions that are escalating symptoms of anxiety.
Due to the realistic meaning being placed on them within our control and choices, we can also break cyclic, irrational thinking.
Releasing them through creation is not only an outlet for abstract enabling between thoughts and emotions, but it also lets our eyes see, take in, re-process, and make new, realistic meaning of the trigger (situation/antecedent) that caused escalation, initially. We separate the anxiety from our identity and whole self to re-evaluate it as a passing state we are momentarily experiencing as a response to a meaning we gave life to in thought and feeling(s) associated.
So since anxiety stems from worry-thinking, you have control over re-authoring the situation, creating flexibility, regulation, and more opportunities for your problem-focused thinking to find reasonable solutions, if still needed in the outcome targeted.
Create anything you feel speaks best to you and your joy! Write if you love writing, or creating music is great. Art is a beautiful way to capture the image of what anxiety looks like, as well. You can scribble the texture and color of it, or give it an entire character separate from your identity. For example, some have created a comic character of their anxiety!
Conclusion
Remember, you're not alone! That is exactly why anxiety is worth normalizing. These are starting tools and techniques to apply to your anxiety, and self-regulation strategy throughout the day. Even if you have a therapist at this time, applying tools and knowing psychoeducation on why they are important for anxiety management will support your treatment and healing, further.
Author: Ashley Lynn Simon, MS, NASM PT | Creator of LNT Blog
What was I listening to while writing this post?
1.) Supernatural by Ariana Grande
2.) Loud by Mac Miller
3.) Good Luck, Babe! Chappell Roan
4.) Fainted Love by Conan Gray
5.) Overtime by Rainbow Kitten Surprise, Kacey Musgraves
6.) Prep-School Gangsters by Vampire Weekend
7.) Best For Me by Joyner Lucas, Jelly Roll
8.) Deli by Ice Spice
9.) Radio by Lana Del Rey
10.) fukumean by Gunna
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