Exercise and Anxiety

You've heard that exercise is good for stress a hundred times, but did you know that exercise and fear feel almost identical in our bodies?? In this episode I get into how movement is beneficial for anxious people, how I started with the tiniest bits of movement when I could barely leave the house, and how to tell when exercise has tipped from self-care into a safety behavior. Enjoy!

SOURCES:
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC12926410/ (Structured exercise used as exposure treatment; effects shown to last.) 

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:22

Welcome back to the 18 Minutes Podcast. I'm Amanda, and this is the show where we take everything that is scary, confusing, and isolating about fear, and we turn it into something you can actually work with. Today we're talking about exercise and anxiety. And I know you've heard a hundred times that exercise is good for anxiety and stress. I know. And it's true. But there's another part of this that I want to talk about because I find it really interesting and really helpful. The theme of today's episode is that exercise and fear feel almost identical in our bodies. And that is not a problem. It's a great opportunity to move from fear to freedom. As always, I'm not a therapist or a medical professional. Everything I share on this show comes from my own experience with fear, my journey through overcoming it, and the research that I do for the show. This is not a replacement for therapy, so please only take what's helpful to you, leave what isn't, and talk to your medical and mental health professionals first. Before we get started, I want to let you know that the signups for the next Reclaim cohort are officially open and the next session starts on August 12th. Reclaim is my small group coaching program where we work through moving from fear to freedom together with real support from me and from other people who get it. The last cohort was amazing, and I would love for you to be in this one. Head to amandaclay.com to grab your spot, and while you're there, you can check out the new website and grab the free fear to freedom guide if you haven't picked that up already. Okay, let's talk about exercise and anxiety. Let's start with the straightforward part. Moving your body is very good for your mental health. And I want to get into why, because I think once you understand what movement can actually do for you, you'll probably want to start incorporating some of these things into your routine if you haven't already. So here's some of what's happening when you move your body. Exercise helps burn through some of those stress hormones that show up when our fear response is activated. Things like cortisol and adrenaline. When you live with chronic fear, your body produces a lot of that. It can leave you feeling wired and on edge like all the time. Movement gives all of that energy somewhere to go. It actually uses it. So it acts as a release for all of that pent-up energy that the fear has created. Exercise also helps your body get better at coming back down after it's been worked up. There's this idea of nervous system flexibility, which is the ability to ramp up when you need to, and then the ability to settle back into a state of calm afterward. For a lot of us, that settling back to calm is the part that's not going so well. We get activated by something and then we just stay activated. Regular movement seems to help train that recovery so your body gets a little more practice at returning to a healthier baseline. And then there's the everyday stuff that matters for people like us more than you might think. Movement helps you sleep better, and sleep is huge for fear because an exhausted nervous system is an edgy nervous system. It actually helps steady your mood and your energy levels, and it releases endorphins, which take the edge off. None of this is a magic cure. I do believe that we need to practice facing fear and moving through it to actually overcome these issues that we're dealing with. But all of these things add up to a mind and body that are more regulated and more able to handle stress. And that is really the whole point of what I want you to hear today. When your nervous system is better regulated and has a healthier baseline and you're feeling calmer and you have more capacity, the work of moving through fear becomes easier. Think about it. When you're already wired, exhausted, running on no sleep and jittery, and then a wave of fear hits you, you don't have anything in the tank to meet it with. But when you've been taking care of your body, when you're getting more sleep, when you're more regulated, you have more capacity. The same wave of fear feels more manageable because you're not already maxed out when it shows up. Movement and exercise alone does not do the work for you, but it gives you more room to do it yourself. So I want to be clear about why I'm talking about this specifically. This is about caring for the body that you live in. It's not a fix that you're forcing yourself through so that you don't ever have to feel afraid of anything again. When movement and exercise comes from a place of I want to take care of my body and I want to build my capacity to tolerate discomfort, it's a really great thing. I'll talk later about what happens when it comes from a place of fear instead. But for now, just know that moving your body helps by making you more able to do hard things and feel better overall. Okay, so here's the part I wanted to make this whole episode about. Think about what happens in your body when you exercise. Your heart pounds, you're out of breath, you start sweating, you might feel like your chest is tight, your face gets flushed, um, maybe you even get a little lightheaded if you really push it. Now think about what happens in your body when you feel fear. Your heart starts pounding, you're out of breath, you start sweating, your chest feels tight, your face flushes, and you feel a little lightheaded. Those are the exact same sensations. The things your brain has learned to perceive as dangerous: the racing heart, the shortness of breath, the dizziness, the lightheadedness are the same things that a power walk or taking a flight of stairs produces. And that overlap, which maybe sounds like a problem, is actually one of the most useful things about exercise for people like you and me. Here's why. There's a therapeutic practice called introsceptive exposure. And what it is is deliberately bringing on physical sensations that you're afraid of on purpose in a safe context, over and over, until your brain gets the chance to learn that those sensations are not dangerous. I talked about this in the fear of dizziness episode, where some people will purposely spin around in a chair to make themselves feel dizzy to teach their brain that that sensation is not dangerous. Exercise does the same thing. When you get your heart pounding on a walk and you don't try to fix it and nothing bad happens, your brain slowly starts to change its opinion on how dangerous those sensations actually are. A racing heart doesn't automatically mean danger anymore. It just means I took the stairs. And this isn't just a nice theory. There's actually a lot of research on the effectiveness of this. Studies have found that physical activity measurably lowers something that researchers call anxiety sensitivity, which is essentially the fear of fear. A really common practice for treating the fear of fear as it shows up in anxiety disorders is using structured exercise as a form of exposure treatment. I'll put a couple papers in the show notes if you're curious and want to read them or talk about it with your therapist. But the takeaway is when you move your body and feel those big feelings and you don't do anything to fix them and everything goes okay, you're gradually teaching your brain that those feelings and those activities are safe. So exercise ends up being doubly beneficial. It's a form of self-care and it's a great opportunity to face multiple fears all at once. Now, if you're anything like I was, you might be listening to this and thinking, Amanda, I can't even leave the house. I'm not about to go do a spin class. And I hear you. So I want to tell you how I started because it was the least intimidating thing imaginable. I did not start at the gym. I didn't start with a workout program. I started with what I called daily movement, really small stuff. I might walk up and down the stairs in my house one time, and that was my exercise for the day. It might be um five minutes of gentle yoga, just enough to get me feeling a little bit nervous about how this was gonna make me feel, and that would be it. Sometimes it was just stretching. That was it. That was the whole thing. What I was doing was purposely doing something that made me a little bit uncomfortable over and over again until the subconscious parts of my brain got used to it and stopped setting off the fear response. Walking up the stairs got my heart rate going a little, and I let it. And then I would practice shifting my attention back to the present moment and not dwelling on it, but not doing anything to fix my heart rate being elevated because there's nothing to fix. And I know that intellectually, and you know that intellectually, but the subconscious parts of our brains don't know that, hence the rest of the symptoms that come along. So I would do it again and again, day after day, until a slightly elevated heart rate felt like just an elevated heart rate, not a threat to my life. Then I could do a little more and a little more after that. That gradual approach was really crucial for me and a lot of other people that I've talked to. You do not have to go get a gym membership and start on the stairmaster for two hours every day today. In fact, please don't. Some movement is better than none, truly. Going slow and being kind with yourself is going to get you so much further than pushing yourself super hard and feeling like you're failing and quitting. This is not about intensity. This is about self-compassion and consistency. A five-minute walk that you actually do beats a one-hour workout that you planned for, avoided, and didn't do. And movement counts in a lot of ways that aren't just a traditional workout. Cleaning the house, playing with your kids in the yard, walking your dog, dancing around your kitchen, taking the stairs instead of the elevator, uh, parking further from the front door, uh, carrying your groceries into the house. All of that counts. You don't need special clothes or a subscription or a perfect workout plan. You just need to move your body a little bit more than you did yesterday in a way that feels doable for you. And I have to add something in here because I always do, because it's important to me. Just like I talked about in the Healthy Habits episode, the line between doing something that keeps you stuck and something that moves you forward is almost never the activity itself. It's your intention behind it. Movement done as care for your body and for your nervous system or as a way to move through fear is amazing. But exercise can also tip into being a safety behavior that can look like compulsively exercising or moving your body because you're terrified of what will happen if you skip a day, or using exercise or movement to frantically burn off that adrenaline and cortisol so that you don't ever have to sit with those uncomfortable feelings. When it's coming from that place, it's not really self-care anymore. It's avoidance. And we know that that can keep us stuck in these fear loops. So just be honest with yourself. Can you skip a day of movement without spiraling? Are you moving toward something like a healthy body and a healthy mind and moving through fear? Or are you moving away from something like the feelings that fear brings in your body? I want to mention too that this is not me telling you to push harder and do more. For some of us, the work we need to do is actually less and to be kinder to ourselves. If you have any history with disordered eating or compulsive exercise, or you have a heart condition or other medical conditions, please consult your doctor or your therapist before you take any of this and run with it. This is general education from my own experience. And the right version of this for you is something that you need to work out with someone who knows your specific situation. So here's what I hope you walk away with today. Moving your body regulates your nervous system and builds the capacity that you can draw from when you're doing the hard work of facing fear and moving through it without trying to fix your feelings. So it's another tool you can add to your toolkit. On top of that, the pounding heart and the breathlessness that exercise and movement creates are the same sensations that fear creates, which means every time you feel them without avoiding them, you're teaching your brain that those sensations aren't dangerous. Start small, go gradual, and be kind to yourself. Because a little bit that you keep doing is better than a lot that you plan for and don't do. And that's all for today's episode on exercise and anxiety. If this is the kind of fear content you're into these days, I have two more episodes that you'll probably find really useful. The first one is the fear of dizziness, which was just two episodes ago, where I get into that introsceptive exposure practice for that specific situation that work. And the second one is Healthy Habits Comprom, where I talk about how healthy tools can actually turn into safety behaviors. And one more time because I'm so excited about it, we claim signups are open, and the first session of our four weeks together kicks off on August 12th. If you've been thinking, I really want to do this kind of work, I want to move from fear to freedom, um, then this is your opportunity. So head to amandaclay.com and grab your spot before we start. If you have a question about today's episode or you have a topic that you'd like me to dig into on the show, please send me a message. You can use the contact button on my website or send me an email at amanda at amandaclay.com, or you can DM me on TikTok or Instagram at heyamandaquay. And if today's episode resonated with you at all, please hit subscribe wherever you're listening. And if you have a second, please consider leaving a rating or review. Those really help other anxious people find their stories. Thank you so much for being here, and we'll see you next time.