Dancing with Anxiety
When something happens in the real world, our brain needs to react to that. It needs to perceive, and interpret, in order to understand what the heck is going on. A noise outside, the brain is activated.
What was that? Is it dangerous? Or is it nice? Do I like it? What does that sound similar to? What does it mean? Yes, that’s not dangerous. Good. Not screaming, not thunder, not a crash.
This is the sound of music. Wait yes! This is one of my favorite songs from childhood! I remember this, it brings me back to happy days, playing outdoors with my friends.
Our brain perceives our reality based on our conditioning, influenced by culture, what we learned about the world growing up, and our previous life experiences, processed in incredibly short moments.
The world demands responding to, and depending on our interpretation of stimuli, we will feel either good or bad. Safe or threatened. Joyful, sad, fearful, angry, or disgusted. Positive or negative.
Anxiety is a survival response and fear is the emotion that drives it. Anxiety, like fear, is here to save you from harm. The challenge arises when fear & anxiety overreact so frequently that instead of helping, as they want to do, they end up hurting.
While depression is the most widespread form of mental illness worldwide, anxiety is the most common in the United States, affecting around 48 million adults (18+), or roughly 20% of the population, each year (source: National Alliance on Mental Illness).
There’s many ways, or things, to be anxious about. The medical community has classified different types: generalized anxiety, social anxiety, separation anxiety, agoraphobia, specific phobias, and panic disorders.
Although they are really trying to help, fear & anxiety often do more than what’s required. So acknowledge them, thank them, and invite them to dance with you. Your favorite childhood song is still playing outside.
They accept your invitation, but only within the privacy, comfort, and safety of your room, away from the danger of others’ judgements. You listen & they do too.
You jump together and play together. You fall into the fun and out of the worries. Your attention and focus is now elsewhere. Moving from your head to your body, stress is let loose. What was heavy before now feels lighter.
Dance movement therapy exists to help with things like anxiety. You can dance with depression too, they often go hand in hand and dancing helps with both.
We dance like dorks, it makes things easier. No rules. No right or wrong. Like ecstatic dancing, it’s free dancing.
We dance out in public and hope to see you there. If not, maybe on social media, or heck, maybe we will never connect. Just know we are here, we’d love to dance with you to share this mental health journey together. We are dancing with anxiety.
We are #dorkdancing for mental health.