How to reduce anxiety in public in Sixty Seconds
3 free videos of somatic techniques you can use to calm your nervous system and soothe anxiety, without ever leaving the room. Plus extra journalling prompts and a tracker sheet connected to each section to integrate the techniques and add your own modifications that fit your individual needs.
sensory environment
Awareness of your senses in the present moment of sight, hearing, touch, smell, and taste is a pleasure practice that helps you zoom out of anxious thoughts feelings and sensations to take in a clearer picture of your surroundings. Savouring the present moment in relation to the external world sharpens your inner intuition, so you can observe and decide to say yes with confidence to opportunities coming towards you.
Like anything that rewires the brain, repetition is key. A few moments of noticing the senses, of focus onto the experience of interacting with an object beyond its productive value, will start to form new neural pathways in the brain so that the anxiety pathway holds less and less power.
Self-touch & movement
Tapping in to the body’s wisdom, we quickly notice all the motions that have already been going on beyond conscious awareness, working hard to keep us feeling present, safe, and grounded. Bringing attention to this unlocks the power of touch to settle the nervous system and feel more at peace.
When in public, whether in a crowd, in a social group, or one-on-one, settling your own system helps others to feel calmer too. This goes far beyond “self-soothing” as a behaviour focussed only on the self; it’s a generous act to be a grounded presence for others. So just as anxiety is contagious, so is calmness.
In this video I am doing a few somatic movements (you’ll see a lot of rocking, swaying, looking away, and you might notice my breath changing as I do a couple of them because that’s my own nervous system settling) and techniques for self touch that are fairly subtle so you can work to feel calmer without worrying about anyone noticing. Who knows, if they do notice it, they may start doing it too!
imagination
I see anxiety as an excess of imagination. When your mind is full of thoughts about the endless ways the future could possibly turnout wrong, getting into the detail of conversations, life years from now resulting from the negative impact of the moment, the body goes into alarm because it senses these situations occurring in the present. This is a great mechanism when the threat of death is genuine and impending, so as to give the system a little shot of chemicals to prepare it for the real thing.
When there is no external threat of annihilation, it is possible to train the mind to conjour images, environments, and supportive entities that signal to the body that it is safe right now. If you think really hard about eating a lemon, you might have a memory of tasting one, and your mouth might even start to water. And you were probably so focussed on thinking about the sensory experience of lemons you were’t paying attention to much else. In this clip I offer 3 practices for harnessing the imagination to reduce anxiety in public.
Susie Showers Somatic Coach & Creative Arts Therapist
I am a queer nonbinary neurodivergent femme, a trauma-informed creative arts therapist & somatic coach, a witch, a dancer, a clown, a nervous system educator, helping burnt-out people-pleasers relax into success through embodiment rituals.
Who Am I?
Recognize and reduce the signs of anxiety in public
Embodied & sensory techniques to get out of fight-or-flight
Simple, effective movements for soothing overwhelm
Imagination exercises to guide you towards peace