Anxiety is a primal response to danger or perceived danger.

After years of stress my body has been stuck in fight or flight mode with no off button. I’m learning to recondition it so it comes back to a normal base level.

After a pretty emotionally stressful day yesterday I knew this morning was likely to be tough.

For months I would wake up with cortisol (I think) pumping through my body. If you have never experienced it, it’s like having an icy liquid pumped through your veins that makes everything shake. The first time it happens is terrifying. It used to last all day and my body would be shaking non stop.

But once I learned what anxiety is and that it’s primal I started to think of ways to beat it. I asked myself what a caveman would do if he sensed danger or had been in a dangerous situation. I didn’t come up with an answer but what I did remember was being on rugby tour in South Africa and on safari in Kruger park. We had seen some gazelles run from a pack of hyenas. I remembered watching all these gazelles stop running and then shake their body.

Thinking about it I realised this was the primal flight or fight response and they were shaking off the last of the adrenaline that had spiked to help them run from danger. So instead of being scared of the shaking I tapped into it.

So this morning when I got that cortisol dump after yesterday’s stressful events I decided to shake out my body. I tensed up really hard and let my body tremble. Almost immediately the cortisol feeling that would last all day evaporated. Nature has a lot to teach us if we watch and listen.

I then thought back to my caveman and asked what he would do….. and I figured he’d probably fight his way out of danger……

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