Is Your Anxiety Actually a Message from Your Body?
For many high-achieving people, anxiety is treated like a faulty "check engine" light on a dashboard. The instinct is to find a way to switch it off, ignore it, or—if you’re particularly driven—tape over it so you can keep on driving. You might view your racing heart, tight chest, or restless mind as a biological "glitch" that interferes with your performance and your logic.
But what if that anxiety isn’t a mistake? What if it is a sophisticated, albeit uncomfortable, piece of communication from your body?
In my Preston practice, I often work with people who are "affect phobic"—they have learned to fear their internal sensations. However, current research in affective neuroscience suggests that by trying to "think" our way out of anxiety, we are ignoring the very signals that could lead to our resolution.
The Wisdom of the Body: The Somatic Marker Hypothesis
We like to believe we are rational creatures who occasionally have emotions. Affective neuroscience, particularly the work of Dr. Antonio Damasio, suggests the opposite. Damasio’s Somatic Marker Hypothesis demonstrates that our bodies "evaluate" our environment and internal states long before our conscious minds catch up.
Those "gut feelings" or the sudden tightening in your throat during a boardroom meeting are "somatic markers." They are your brain's way of using your body to signal that something in your current environment resonates with past experiences of danger, boundary-crossing, or emotional need. When we dismiss these as "just anxiety," we miss the opportunity to understand the underlying message.
The Nervous System: Beyond "All in Your Head"
To understand anxiety, we must look at the Autonomic Nervous System (ANS). Modern psychotherapy is increasingly informed by Dr. Stephen Porges’ Polyvagal Theory, which describes how our nervous system scans for safety and threat.
Sympathetic Activation: This is the classic "Fight or Flight." Your body is prepping for action. If you are in a situation where you cannot physically fight or flee (like a difficult conversation with a partner), that energy gets trapped, manifesting as the "buzzing" or "jittery" sensation we call anxiety.
Dorsal Vagal Shutdown: If the threat feels too great, the body might move into "Freeze." This looks like brain fog, numbness, or a lack of motivation—often a "collapse" that follows a long period of high anxiety.
As Dr. Bessel van der Kolk famously noted in The Body Keeps the Score, the body remembers what the mind tries to forget. If you were raised in an environment where certain emotions—like grief or fear—were "off-limits" (a common staple of the male gender script), your body may now produce anxiety as an inhibitory affect. It is a smoke screen designed to keep you from feeling a deeper, "forbidden" emotion.
Why Men "Tape Over" the Light
For many men, the pressure to be the "secure base" for others means they have become experts at somatic dissociation. You learn to "rub dirt on it" and keep going. While this stoicism might get you through a crisis, it is a disastrous long-term strategy for mental health.
When you chronically ignore the body's signals, the body simply turns up the volume. This is why "unexplained" back pain, digestive issues, or sudden panic attacks often strike men who seemingly "have it all together." The body is staging a protest because its messages are being deleted before they are read.
How to Start Decoding the Message
The shift from "fighting" anxiety to "listening" to it requires a move from the head to the body. Here is how you can begin:
Describe, Don't Diagnose: When you feel "anxious," stop using that word. Instead, describe the physical sensations. "I feel a coldness in my stomach and a pressure behind my eyes." This moves you from a judgmental state to an observational one.
Locate the "Missing" Emotion: Often, anxiety is the "guard dog" for a more vulnerable emotion. Ask yourself: "If this physical sensation had a voice, would it be angry? Would it be sad? Would it be scared?"
Tolerate the Sensation: In Affect Phobia Therapy (APT), we practice sitting with the sensation without trying to fix it. Notice that the racing heart is just a racing heart—it isn't a heart attack, and it isn't a sign that you are failing. By staying with the sensation, you widen your Window of Tolerance.
From Glitch to Guide
When we stop treating anxiety as an enemy, it can become a powerful guide. It can tell you when your boundaries are being violated, when you are burnt out, or when you are acting out of alignment with your true values.
Unlocking your potential as a leader, a partner, and a man doesn't mean becoming an emotionless machine. It means becoming a man who is "literate" in the language of his own body.
Is your body trying to tell you something that your mind is refusing to hear? If you are tired of the constant "background noise" of anxiety and are ready to decode the messages your body is sending, I am here to help. Together, we can move beyond "managing" symptoms and start building a life based on genuine internal security and somatic awareness. Reach out to book a consultation in my Preston office or online.
Crucible Personal Development is a private psychotherapy and counselling practice in Preston, Lancashire.
References:
Damasio, A. R. (1994). Descartes' Error: Emotion, Reason, and the Human Brain. Putnam. (On the Somatic Marker Hypothesis).
Porges, S. W. (2011). The Polyvagal Theory: Neurophysiological Foundations of Emotions, Attachment, Communication, and Self-regulation. W. W. Norton & Company.
Van der Kolk, B. A. (2014). The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma. Viking.
Panksepp, J. (1998). Affective Neuroscience: The Foundations of Human and Animal Emotions. Oxford University Press.
McCullough, L. (2003). Treating Affect Phobia: A Manual for Short-Term Dynamic Psychotherapy. Guilford Press.
Barry, J. A., et al. (2019). The Handbook of Male Psychology and Mental Health. Palgrave Macmillan.
Keywords: anxiety, somatic experiencing, affective neuroscience, male mental health, body-mind connection, Polyvagal Theory, somatic marker hypothesis, Preston psychotherapy.
