“You can’t fix the mind with the mind. You have to fix the mind with the body.”
Mind blown 🤯
That’s exactly how I felt when I heard this from Dr. Russell Kennedy on Modern Wisdom last weekend.
He went on to explain how most anxiety is a result of stuck trauma in the body, and that the worry in the mind is just a way to make sense of it.
My insights from this fascinating conversation are that when we experience trauma as a child, either big T or small t trauma, it doesn’t matter; most of us don’t have the tools to be able to process this effectively. As a protection mechanism, it gets stored in our subconscious mind and our physical bodies.
This is the work of Bessel van der Kolk’s The Body Keeps the Score.
When left unresolved for years or even decades, it grows and manifests, leading to many of the anxiety and mental health disorders that are more prevalent today, such as panic attacks, Generalised Anxiety Disorder (GAD), Social Anxiety Disorder (SAD), and even conditions like anorexia, depression, and beyond.
While many of these conditions are complex and not to be underestimated, I think they are coping mechanisms to deal with, or at least linked to, hidden traumas, no matter how big or small, that have been left unresolved and fester within us.
What I found fascinating, and can resonate with from my own experiences and challenges with panic attacks and chronic anxiety, is that Dr. Russell Kennedy spoke about how most modern interventions try to resolve these issues with interventions like CBT and talk therapy.
Sure, these interventions are helpful and have their place. However, they are more cognitive-driven/focused.
The challenge with this, as far as I understand, is that they primarily focus on treating symptoms and learning to cope with an anxious, racing, worry-driven mind, etc., when the root cause is far deeper within; our thoughts are merely the symptom, not the bug.
A more effective solution is a somatic approach to truly heal.
Remember: coping isn’t truly healing. It’s kicking the can down the road.
That was one of the arguments that Dr. Kennedy put forward. He stated that cognitive-driven approaches and many traditional therapies don’t help people to truly heal, and instead, they stay in a perpetual cycle of talking about their traumas and issues over and over again.
In other words, stay stuck!
From my own experience with CBT, which I initially found very helpful, I got to a point where I needed something different in order to grow and change who I was being.
A somatic, more integrative approach is a form of therapy that looks at and honours the mind-body connection. Not just the mind.
This approach helps people to release stuck trauma in the body through many practices, including acupressure, hypnosis, breathwork, yoga, and dance.
Dr. Kennedy shared a practice that involves locating, in this case, anxiety in the body (but it could be used for any other emotion or feeling that feels alarming for us), using focused breathing (three short inhales, brief hold, full exhale), and offering compassionate attention to the sensation — much like comforting an inner child.
In the episode on Modern Wisdom, he walks us through steps to really feel where anxiety (or the alarm) shows up for us — identifying the location, giving it a feeling, and even a colour.
Then, he encourages us to remember a time when we felt the opposite — most likely deeply calm, loved, or safe — and practise that feeling in our body. He shares that over time, when the alarm is triggered, we can begin to consciously shift from an alarmed state to more of an “anchor feeling,” which effectively rewires our nervous system to respond with familiarity and safety instead of anxiety and fear.
This takes time, effort, and practice. It’s not an overnight fix or solution.
I’m not an expert at any of this. Are any of us?!
But it does give me great hope and optimism that there are tools out there to help us navigate this thing called life, and not be a victim to it or our minds, when we truly decide.
The insights and wisdom that Dr. Russell Kennedy shared, and his quote:
“You can’t fix the mind with the mind. You have to fix the mind with the body.”
…have left a deep and remarkable impact on me. It resonates with me deeply and I believe holds so much wisdom.
It reminds me of another idea, that we can’t fix a problem or challenge with the same level of thinking that put us there or created it in the first place.
In order to create change and get a different result, a new level of thinking and, furthermore, a way of being needs to occur.
The same approach can be applied here.
We can’t think ourselves out of hidden traumas and the things that we have been suppressing for years, if not decades.
A different approach is needed, and the case for a more somatic, integrative one is the best I’ve seen to date.
Somatic therapies give us the tools to be able to navigate and overcome traumas and issues from our pasts, so that we can live a more peaceful and better life.
I would highly advise checking out Dr. Kennedy’s chat on Modern Wisdom, especially if you or someone you know is having a particularly hard time with anxiety and worry.
It’s a fascinating one, and what I have shared here is my understanding of it. It only just touches the surface.
Remember: “You can’t fix the mind with the mind. You have to fix the mind with the body.”
REMINDERS
1.
Coping isn’t truly healing.
Cognitive tools help to manage symptoms, but true healing begins when we address the root cause of issues. These are often buried in the body, not just the mind.
2.
You can’t fix a problem with the same thinking that created it.
Transformation requires a shift in our nervous system, in how we think and relate to ourselves, and our past. Somatic therapy can help us with this.
3.
You can’t fix the mind with the mind. You have to fix the mind with the body.
To truly heal, we must go deeper and feel and release what thought alone can’t fix.