Social Anxiety and Posture

Hey folks,

I read the other day that the number of people who now suffer from anxiety and depression has drastically increased since this pandemic began. And it makes sense; as social creatures, we have been barred from satisfying one of our deepest instincts; spending time together. Mix this with the fear associated with a global pandemic and you have the optimal environment to develop a pretty considerable anxiety disorder. And that’s not saying anything about your life before the pandemic began, which if memory serves, approximated 1 in 4 people suffering from some form of chronic anxiety and depression. This has undoubtedly become a more pronounced problem that unfortunately seems to need to get worse before it gets better, from a societal perspective anyways.

I am no stranger to anxiety and depression, and how we can live in a relatively normal way until depression or anxiety rears its ugly head and we have to drop everything in our life just to stay floating. It’s easy to let it get worse before deciding to do something about it. Yet I am so thankful for my interactions with the depths of the human psyche because, without it, I wouldn’t be who I am today. My relationship with my own anxiety and depression has given me great purpose and reason to explore the landscape that is the human mind, and all the potentialities that can come out of it, dark or bright they may be.

During my battle with these states, mixed with my traditional and non-traditional educational path, I have managed to learn many great ways to help combat these negative states and to actually get something useful out of it.

Among the things I have learned, I’ve noticed this overarching theme; when we are stressed and/or depressed, there are a number of conscious and unconscious responses that our body begins to have. More to the point, we start to “wear” our stresses. Anxiety and depression often breed feelings and thoughts of being burdened, like our life load is too heavy to carry, so our self-esteem and sense of self begin to adapt and believe that we are too small, or too weak to carry on. Psychologically, this is a major source of suffering, secondary of course, to the initial cause of depression/anxiety. Physically, for some, this might actually look like we are carrying a great weight on our shoulders. Our shoulders roll forward, our head shoots out in front of us, we look down at the ground while walking, we might even start to saunter, allowing our heels to drag along the ground. Our body language begins to communicate how we feel inside.

In fact, I remember going to the gym one particular day, which must be close to 10 years ago now, and I noticed, thanks to the way the gym mirrors were set up, that my head looked like it had been pushed forward, with my ears sitting well in front of my collarbone. My teenage shoulders were rolled so forward that my hands landed on the front of my thighs as I walked, and the heels on all of my shoes had been worn down so badly that the inside sole was now rubbing away.

Little did I know then that my body had begun to take on my internal psychological state. My anxiety had “boiled” over out of my psyche and into my body. It was like my body was trying to shrink to confirm the way I was feeling inside. And of course, noticing this, I felt even smaller!

“I can’t even stand up normally for goodness sakes”

It wasn’t until a few years after this realization did I do anything about it. I can remember hearing someone talk about the “power stance” (picture how Superman stands), and how a brief 5-minute power stance can improve confidence and self-esteem. I was intrigued, yet highly skeptical. I was sure that my anxiety could easily overpower any “power stance” or “battle cry”. Alas, I gave it a shot. Before I would go out into public, which back then was just the gym and high school, I would stand in front of a mirror and stand with my hands on my hips with my feet spread apart. At first, it felt silly, but within a minute or 2, I thought I could feel some of the benefits I was promised.

That single experience flicked a switch in my mind. Although I still had anxiety, I noticed that the way I was holding my body had an almost immediate effect on the way I was feeling. I also knew that I sure wasn’t about to walk around in public in this stance as a way to alleviate the thoughts that people were starring at me and judging me. But it did make me curious.

Around this time, I was also really getting into bodybuilding and lifting weights. Any free time I had where I wasn’t in school or at the gym, I was watching videos of people lifting heavy weights, posing, and learning how the physical body worked. One thing I admired most about a lot of the bodybuilders and powerlifters that I watched, was the way they carried themselves. They always looked so confident, with their chests puffed out and their arms hanging by their sides. They were doing the exact opposite of what my teenage body was doing; while I was trying to make myself as small as possible, they were trying to make themselves as big as possible.

It doesn’t take a psychologist to see some possible motivation for them to do that; for all I knew, they probably felt the same as I did on the inside, so they did everything in their power to not put that on display.

It’s an easy thought to snicker at or to feel bad for them.

But there’s also something very valuable that it taught me. Their posture didn’t tell me they were anxious. In fact, I thought these guys were the most confident people on the planet; despite watching and reading interviews where almost all of them admitted to feeling small, psychologically.

This instilled within me a deep awareness that how we carry our body has a direct impact on our psychological state, just like our psychological state has a direct impact on how we carry our body! It’s a 2-way street. And fortunately for us, one of these streets is very easy for most people to change. Posture.

Being aware of posture, especially when out in public, has been one of the single most powerful changes I’ve made to attenuate my social anxiety. And for more reasons than one. Firstly, like we just went over, having an upright, structurally aware posture feeds into a positive sense of self by demonstrating that your body is capable of carrying your psychological load. Your mind is very skilled at building associations. When we carry ourselves in a proud confident manner, we are activating associated psychological states that ultimately lead to the internal changes that we’re looking for; we feel proud and confident. Just how our crappy, falling forward posture feeds into our small, diminished sense of self.

And secondly, especially when first learning, paying attention to how you’re organizing your body keeps your mind occupied and less likely to ruminate on what people might be thinking about you. Thanks to our brain’s ability to only attend to one thing at a time, we can use our focus on maintaining ideal posture to quiet a lot of those all-too-familiar voices.

And I know, you’re probably thinking, “I could never walk confidently in public, that would make me more anxious”.

You’re probably not wrong. Believe me, when my focus would shift from my posture to what I thought I looked like, I felt like an absolute phony. Just give it time. I bet if you went for a walk and decided beforehand that, no matter who crossed your path, you would maintain an upright posture, you’d actually feel confident and anxiety-free by the time you got back home.

If you don’t know what an upright or optimal posture looks like, just give it a quick youtube or google, there are literally thousands of videos that will teach you how to hold your body. If you tend to be a very anxious person, try to make these postural changes in the privacy of your home first so you can build some familiarity with it and then take it out in public when you feel ready. You can do this. You deserve this.

I sincerely wish you the best of luck when making this change. Be patient, acknowledge that you are, depending on how long you’ve been anxious, changing an old habit, so expect some “awkward” feelings for the first little while. I promise, like almost everything else in life, if you practice and stick to it, it will feel normal in no time.

Be sure to keep an eye out for a post this week where I will expand on this idea and how posture changes can actually improve your health!