How to regulate striated muscle anxiety
This blog will help you to identify, and know how to regulate, your striated muscle anxiety.
We will look at what striated muscle anxiety is, so that you can recognise your symptoms. Below, I list five different, yet simple, techniques, so that you can find one that works best for you.
Being able to recognise and regulate your anxiety at this stage, when it is at a low rise, is important, because it will stop it getting worse, and developing into more harmful symptoms.
If anxiety is not regulated when it is in the striated muscle, it can develop into smooth muscle anxiety, or it can go into your mind, causing problems with thinking, which is a type of anxiety called cognitive perceptual disruption.
A bonus of knowing how to regulate striated muscle anxiety, is that once regulated, it is much easier to access your emotions. And since repressed emotions are what causes anxiety, this is significant. I will write more on how emotions and anxiety are linked, in another blog.
Please note, that this blog is about anxiety pathways and regulation, which won’t stop the underlying cause of anxiety. In order to get to the bottom of your anxiety and treat it for good, please talk to a professional psychotherapist or counsellor.
What is striated muscle anxiety?
Anxiety is a physiological response in our bodies, to danger. Our first response to danger will be anxiety in the striated muscles, because striated muscle anxiety is anxiety at a low rise. We get anxious within nano seconds of the brain signalling danger, and the process is outside of our conscious control.
The striated muscles are the ones we use for movement, and which we have voluntary control over, such as our arms, legs, shoulders, neck, and stomach. They include our auxiliary breathing muscles. It is known as the fight flight response in trauma, and is activated by the sympathetic branch of the autonomic nervous system.
Symptoms of striated muscle anxiety are:
Increased eye blinking
Restlessness or fidgeting, clenching jaw
Muscle tension in hands, sweaty palms, or fidgeting
Muscle tension in the arms, shoulders, neck, head, face, throat
Tension in the chest, tight chest, heavy chest
Shallow breathing
Increased heart rate
Sighing
Muscle tension in the stomach, or butterflies
Muscle tension in the hips, legs, feet
Jiggling leg, restless legs
Trembling, shaking
Sometimes, because anxiety (and ultimately the emotions underneath it) are causing physical discomfort, we unconsciously disconnect from our bodies, and become detached. Some symptoms of this might be overthinking, worrying about the past or future, or ruminating. Detachment is a defence. The defences effectively get rid of anxiety, but at a high cost to you. I will write more about defences in another blog.
As a side note, anxiety and fear have different psychological meanings, but physiologically they are the same thing.
The importance of self diagnosis
There are three different types of anxiety (you can read about these in my blog post here), and each one has a different set of regulation techniques. Using the wrong type of regulation can make your anxiety worse. For example, if you try to regulate smooth muscle anxiety with breathing, which is a striated muscle anxiety regulation tool, then it makes the smooth muscle anxiety even worse. This is why it’s so important to know what is happening within your body, and accurately identify it - so that you can know how to effectively help yourself.
Step 1: Take your anxiety seriously: identify when you are anxious
Not taking your anxiety seriously, means you won’t regulate it.
How to regulate striated muscle anxiety starts with the capacity to observe your body and mind, and think about what’s happening within you. I see so many patients who are normalised to their anxiety, and ignore the symptoms which scream out to them. Or, they know it’s there, but minimise or dismiss it’s importance (ignoring, minimising, and dismissing are all defences).
Choose to notice how you respond to people, and situations, and how you respond to your thoughts and emotions, by noticing what is happening within your body -similar to mindfulness. With good enough mothering, we learn how to do this as we grow up. If you didn’t learn it back then, you can learn it now.
If you are physically safe, yet getting anxious, then the danger that your brain is signalling will be coming from inside of you: the danger is your emotions. You must have learnt somewhere, that it was not safe to have feelings.
Step 2: Choose to do something about it
This step is crucial: without choosing to take loving care of yourself, nothing will change.
If we ignore our anxiety, or criticise it, then we treat ourselves as if we don’t matter, and the cost is high: we continue to suffer. . We might have been treated this way in the past, but that doesn’t mean we have to continue to treat ourselves this way.
What can you do about your anxiety? You can notice it’s there, choose to regulate it, and try to understand why it has arisen in this moment. Anxiety doesn’t come out of nowhere, for no reason - it is your body communicating something important to you.
When you are assessing your anxiety, you are looking for where the symptoms are: where is tense, what do you perceive, or notice in your body? Have your senses changed, can you think clearly? Build an internal log of where and how your anxiety shows up, so you can learn to recognise the extent of it, at any given time.
Step 3: Know the physiological pathway of your anxiety
In order to know how to regulate striated muscle anxiety, you will have to be familiar with the pathway it takes through the body, as it escalates. It starts in the eyes and hands (symptoms listed above) and ends in the feet.
If only your hands are fidgety, then great - you’ve caught your anxiety early, before it has risen further through your body. If it’s got to your feet (tense or restless or jittery legs/feet) then you know it has escalated throughout your whole body.
The striated muscle anxiety pathway is:
Eyes, hands, arms, shoulders, neck, head, face, throat, chest, stomach, hips, legs, and lastly the feet.
If you don’t regulate anxiety once it’s reached your legs/feet, it could escalate into a panic attack, smooth muscle anxiety, or CPD (cognitive perceptual disruption). The latter two have a very different set of symptoms, as the anxiety moves from the sympathetic nervous system (fight flight), into the parasympathetic nervous system (collapse and freeze).
Step 4: Choose your method of regulation
This is not an exhaustive list, but these are the techniques that I see best results with in my clinic. You might want to try them all, and see which ones work best for you:
Body scan
Box breathing
Ocean breath (Ujjayi pranayama)
Coherence breathing (sama vritti pranayama)
Lengthen your exhale
Step 5: Regulate your striated muscle anxiety: instructions
A. Body scan
The body scan is similar to a mindfulness meditation, a yoga practice, or the first part of a yoga nidra, in that it is a practice of interoception. Interoception is being able to feel your body’s internal state and sensations, and improves your capacity to feel your emotions and regulate. It involves putting your awareness and mind into your body parts. What makes the body scan unique is the sequence, which follows the pathway that the anxiety takes, as it rises in your body.
Method:
Sit with a straight spine, both feet on the floor, and your hands resting uncrossed on your lap. Eyes closed. Start by taking your mind to your hands. What do you observe about your hands? What’s their sensation, quality, is anything different? Follow this process of mindful attention throughout your whole body in the following order:
Hands
Forearms
Upperarms
Shoulders
Neck
Head
Face
Jaw, tongue
Throat
Chest
Stomach
Thighs
Calf muscles
Feet
Once you’ve finished, spend a few moments reflecting on how your body feels overall, notice what has changed.
B. Box breathing
Used by the US Navy SEALS to manage anxiety in highly stressful situations, you can do your box breathing anywhere. This exercise is not appropriate for pregnant women, due to the breath retention.
Method:
Sit upright with both feet on the floor, hands resting on your lap. Breathe in and out through your nose. Keep your eyes open:
Inhale for the count of four
Hold your breath for the count of four
Exhale for the count of four
Hold your breath for the count of four
Repeat as many times as necessary.
C. Ocean breath (ujjayi breathing)
The slow breath used in this technique stimulates the vagus nerve, which is part of parasympathetic (rest and digest) nervous system and in charge of regulating relaxation from the brainstem, to the diaphragm (heart rate and breathing) down to the gut (digestion), so stimulating it helps us relax both physically and mentally. Some people report feeling relaxed almost immediately.
Method:
Sit upright with both feet on the floor, hands resting on your lap. Breathe in and out through your nose. Keep your eyes open:
Take long breaths in and out through your nose, breath deeply into your belly, and let your ribcage expand with the breath.
Draw your breath through your nose, to the back of your throat, so you can feel it resonating on your throat.
Slightly restrict your throat at the glottis, so that you can feel the air taking longer to pass in and out. Imagine your throat as a hose. As you squeeze the hose, the water comes out slower and thinner, so your breath becomes much longer, and controlled.
The breath passing through your restricted throat makes a gentle sound, like the distant ocean. If it sounds like Darth Vader, it is too forced and you need to relax your throat and jaw.
D. Coherence breathing
This one is so simple and effective, you can do it anywhere, and no-one will notice. There is evidence that coherence breathing increases your heart rate variability (HRV). HRV is the variation in time, between heartbeats. This is a good thing, because high HRV means your body can adapt better to stress, stimulus and your environment. Low HRV indicates that you get stuck in either an up regulated (sympathetic) or down regulated (parasympathetic) state, resulting in anxiety, depression, and possible health issues.
Method:
Take five breaths per minute, of equal length. Breathe through your nose: breathe in for six seconds, breathe out for six seconds.
Breathe like this for five or ten minutes, or as long as you want.
E. Lengthen your exhale
This is probably the most simple option, and can be done anywhere at anytime. The longer exhalation activates your parasympathetic nervous system, which slows your heart rate, and tells your body to relax.
Method:
Sit upright with both feet on the floor, hands resting on your lap. Breathe in and out through your nose. Keep your eyes open:
Take long, deep breaths in and out through your nose. Breath into your belly and let your ribcage expand with your breath.
Count how many seconds you inhale for, and make your exhale longer. When you breathe out, you might want to use your abdomen to extend your exhale. Relax your abdomen when you breathe in. Your exhale can be longer by a second, or up to twice as long as your inhale. Find a ratio that is comfortable for you.
An example might be: breathe in for 4 counts, out for 6 counts. Or in for 4, out for 8.
Breath like this until it ameliorates your anxiety.
Please note, that none of these breathing techniques should increase tension in your body, or make you feel more anxious. If this is the case, be conscious of holding tension when you apply the breathing, and let it go. Or reduce how long you inhale and exhale for, or look out for where you might be unconsciously holding your breath. Or, try the body scan instead.
I hope this blog has helped you to know how to regulate striated muscle anxiety, and to understand how the most important thing about how to regulate striated muscle anxiety, is to be able to identify it in your body. Then, to make the choice to attend to yourself, by doing something about it.
We looked at five different striated muscle anxiety regulation techniques, starting with the body scan, which follows the physiological pathway that anxiety takes as it rises through your body.
Then there were instructions for four different breathing techniques, so that you can find one that you feel comfortable with, and that helps you to feel regulated and relaxed.
We explored why regulating your anxiety is important, because if it escalates, you are at the risk of more severe symptoms, and further suffering. I briefly mentioned to look out for any defences that get in the way of helping yourself, such as ignoring, minimising, or treating your anxiety as if it’s not important.
You may want to think of regulating your anxiety as a way to take good care of yourself. This may not be something you are used to. But, with effort, it can pave the way for improved self worth, and wellbeing.
If you can relate to this, would you like some help?
I hope these tools will help you to know how to regulate striated muscle anxiety. If you can relate, and think you need professional help, I work with individual adults, and would be happy to hear from you. Book a free, 15-minute telephone consultation to talk about how I might be able to help you.