Somatic Healing for Anxiety and Stress: Why You Still Can’t Relax
- Tanya Master
- Sep 9, 2024
- 3 min read
Updated: Oct 26
Why your nervous system doesn’t feel safe—even when your surroundings are
Even in the most peaceful settings—on holiday, in nature, in bed with nowhere to be—many trauma survivors can’t feel ease. If safety feels unfamiliar, it’s often because the nervous system hasn’t had enough chances to practice it.
If this is you, it’s not your fault. It’s nervous system conditioning. And it’s changeable.
Understanding Somatic Anxiety
Somatic anxiety refers to the way stress and unresolved trauma show up in the body: muscle tension, shallow breathing, a racing heart, or the inability to settle, even in calm environments.
This is especially common in people with chronic stress, CPTSD, or high-functioning trauma, where the internal landscape is wired for threat long after the actual threat is gone. You may logically know you’re safe, but your body hasn’t caught up.
Why You Can’t Just “Relax”
For trauma survivors, states of peace or comfort often feel unfamiliar, even threatening. When the nervous system is wired for fight, flight, freeze, or fawn, any attempt to slow down can feel like exposure.
The body isn’t being “difficult”, it’s protecting you from a past it hasn’t yet integrated.
You might notice:
Hypervigilance even in quiet places
Tension during rest
Feeling unsafe without “a reason”
Resistance to ease, softness, or slowing down
These are all cues from a system still scanning for danger.
The Role of Somatic Healing in Nervous System Repair
1. Somatic Work for Anxiety and Trauma
Somatic methods like Somatic Experiencing® help regulate the nervous system by tracking sensations, releasing stored tension, and gradually introducing safety at a pace the body can tolerate. This helps shift the body out of survival states, without overriding its intelligence.
2. IFS-Informed Parts Work
Many symptoms of anxiety are actually parts of the self that learned to stay alert in order to survive. Somatic parts work (IFS-informed) helps bring curiosity and care to these internal protectors, building capacity for new, less reactive pathways.
Read more on Parts Work here: Parts Work for Inner Conflict: 8 Signs Your System Is in Tension
3. Breathwork for Stress and Hyperarousal
Shallow or held breath is a hallmark of chronic stress. Learning to breathe into the belly and extend your exhale sends real-time safety signals to your vagus nerve. Just three deep breaths can begin to shift your state, no matter where you are.
4. Mindfulness and Somatic Awareness
Mindfulness isn’t about being calm, it’s about being with what’s present. Trauma-informed mindfulness practices focus less on achieving a state and more on building tolerance for the one you’re already in. This widens your window of tolerance over time.
5. Body-Based Therapies and Movement
Trauma lives in the body, and so must recovery. Modalities like somatic yoga, Feldenkrais, and conscious dance provide safe movement pathways to discharge energy, restore presence, and expand your sense of self.
The Goal Isn’t Paradise. It’s Capacity.
Trauma work isn’t about becoming relaxed all the time. It’s about becoming able to stay with yourself, especially when ease arises.
The nervous system’s capacity to feel safe doesn’t come from logic. It comes from slow, attuned somatic re-patterning over time.
If You’re Struggling Healing Somatic Anxiety or Chronic Stress
Your system is responding intelligently to a world your body once learned wasn’t safe. But working with anxiety through somatic healing is possible, and safety can be rebuilt.
If you’re ready to feel less hypervigilant, more grounded, and better able to rest, I offer a trauma-informed, body-based approach that blends:
Somatic coaching and SE-informed work
IFS-informed parts dialogue
Nervous system regulation tools
Practical strategies for embodied ease
Explore my approach or schedule an Introductory Session.
