What if everything you’ve been told about anxiety only scratches the surface? We’re taught to quiet our thoughts . . . but what if the real root of anxiety isn’t in your head at all, but in your body?”

Kelly Noonan Gores asked this question after she sat down with dr Russell Kennedy, physician, neuroscientist and author of ‘Anxiety Rx’ in her ‘Heal with Kelly’ podcast. Dr Russell believes that anxiety is actually an alarm state stored in the body, often rooted in unresolved trauma.

He says that you don’t even need to analyse the trauma. You just need to know the feeling of it in your body because your body keeps the score. For him, anxiety lives in his solar plexus. You go up into your head because you’re trying to avoid this alarm sensation in the body and that, says dr Russell, is why anxiety is so hard to heal: As soon as you get close to it, you want to pull away. You fear that the way you’re feeling now is the way you’ll always feel.

Dr Russell explains that the human brain has a tendency called the recency bias. When you’re caught in a moment, you project that feeling into the future indefinitely. “For those struggling with anxiety, depression, or similar challenges, this can feel like a trap, eroding your sense of hope. You can’t see a way out.”

There’s also something in our brains called a default mode network. Scientists tested this by putting patients in functional MRI machines and then giving them issues, such as a math problem, to solve. This puts them into a task positive network. However, as soon as the task is over, all these people went into a very repeatable kind of brain activity that scientists labelled the default mode network.

This is like a groove that we go into over and over. In anxiety it is a constant hyper vigilant alarm state. What’s needed to take you out of that default mode is to start teaching yourself to move into a task positive network. Dr Russell recommends somatic therapies, starting with breathing technique.

Stay with the anxious sensation in your body even if it’s uncomfortable, especially when it’s uncomfortable. “Put your hand over it, breathe into it, stay with it,” he says. “It’s basically two or three quick sniffs in, fill up your lungs as much as you can, spread your shoulders out with your breath, and slowly breathe out through your teeth, making kind of a hissing sound.”

Another somatic therapy is using essential oils. Dr Russell explains that the smell goes into the rhinencephalon, a primitive part of the brain that has direct connection to the thalamus, which can be likened to the brain’s switchboard. When you smell something pleasant or calming, the thalamus says you’re okay.

In ‘The Tapping Solution’ Nick Ortner says that tapping, also called emotional freedom technique (EFT), involves using your fingers to tap on nine specific points on the body that correspond to acupressure meridian points. This sends calming signals to the amygdala, the part of the brain that controls the stress response. When we tap, we are able to lower cortisol and other stress hormones.

Contrary to popular trends, you start tapping with a negative, an “even though” statement, such as: Even though I’m scared. Use statements that recognize how you feel and, as the process moves on, shift towards self-acceptance statements. Nick says this ultimately rewires how we feel and sends the body a signal to let it know that it is safe.

Our true selves only appear when it feels safe to do so. Elisabeth Kübler-Ross said that there are only two primary emotions, love and fear. But it’s more accurate to say that there is only love or fear, for we cannot feel these two emotions together at exactly the same time.

So, girlfriend, anytime you’re feeling anxious, know that you’ve left love and entered fear. Then move into a task positive network by taking a deep breath and start tapping until you can safely feel love because, as John Mark Green says, “Fear closes us down and makes us retreat. It locks doors and limits opportunities. Love is about opening to possibilities . . . Fear incarcerates, but love liberates.” – Angie Kleijn