We all deal with different pressures in life – and many of us cope with it in different ways. But for women especially, living with anxiety and stress is simply – exhausting. It drains your energy and takes the joy out of many of the activities you love doing. This is why strengthening your mind-body connection to reduce your stress is so critical.
Taking care of a family and juggling a career while still finding time for yourself isn’t easy. Add to this fact that women are twice as likely to be diagnosed with anxiety than men; just getting through each day can seem like a significant accomplishment.
But this isn’t a healthy way to live, and you shouldn’t feel like repeating this cycle is the only way forward. By developing a deeper understanding of your mind-body connection, there are powerful strategies you can put in place. These strategies help manage your stress more effectively and give yourself room to grow in all areas of life.
Acknowledging the Unique Stressors Faced By Women Today
It can be difficult for many of us to show our vulnerabilities. There is so much pressure in life to conform to certain standards set by everyone else but ourselves.
Feeling like we need to constantly perform at 110% at school, home, or work, or we’ll be viewed as inferior to others, has unfortunately become a way of life for many. These unrealistic expectations are only reinforced by cultural biases that exist all over the world, especially when comparing women’s expectations against men.
This stress is also compounds by unique stressful situations that primarily only women experience, including:
- Coping with difficult relationships and breakups
- Struggling with body image issues
- Going through the physical and emotional changes of pregnancy, childbirth, and postpartum
- Hormonal imbalances during menstruation and menopause
- Becoming a victim of a physically and/or emotionally abusive relationship
Identifying these unique stressors isn’t just to help you remember why you should be stressed. On the contrary, acknowledging these stress points helps you develop a deeper respect for how resilient women can be when they develop healthy ways to manage all of these pressures in life.
The Complicated But Beautiful Mind-Body Connection
Your mind and body share a powerful connection that’s hard to fully understand. Most people know that our brains control everything we do – from keeping us alive to helping us solve simple math problems. But the synergy between our brains and our physical and emotional state is much deeper than that.
Neural pathways that go from our brain to other parts of our bodies aren’t a one-way street. Although our brains are responsible for driving action, such as speaking, picking up objects, or reacting to something too hot or cold, things we experience in life can have a similar effect on our minds.
For example, think about the last time you were in a stressful situation. What types of things did you have? Were you physically uncomfortable – experiencing a rapid heartbeat or sweating more than usual? Or did you feel emotionally distressed about something, possibly insecure about the situation you were in or experiencing a heightened sense of fear and panic?
Chances are, if any of these happened, you probably felt physical and emotional side effects. This is because of how our mind-body connection is programmed. Everything with experience in life – the good and the bad – impacts how we think and feel.
The great thing about this complicated but beautiful interplay is that we have more control over how this connection works than we might think.
Strengthening Your Mind-Body Connection
Even though you can’t control every situation you encounter in life, over time, you can effectively start to better manage how you react to them. To do this, you’ll want to build more awareness of your physical and emotional states.
Regularly acknowledging what you’re feeling and why can help you to put into practice more healthy coping mechanisms rather than allowing stress to unnecessarily weigh you down.
Below are some strategies you can use to start using to strengthen your mind-body connection:
Practicing Meditation
Meditation seems simple, but so many people misunderstand how it’s designed to work. It’s more than just sitting in a quiet room and thinking about your day. For some, this can just feed their anxiety levels and make it hard for them to focus on anything else.
When done correctly, meditation is actually a powerful tool for getting to the root of your thoughts and feelings while also embracing both the positive and negative reactions they’re having on you. It can be hard for anxious individuals to know what’s truly bothering them. The only real way to do this is by engaging what you’re feeling in a safe and controlled way.
Meditation lets you achieve this by helping you slow down your thoughts calming your mind and body so you can “hear” what they’re trying to tell you. This lowers your stress response and allows you to more clearly recognize how your thoughts or actions are impacting one another.
Getting Enough Exercise For Your Mind-Body Connection
Managing stress in your life is more than just a mental battle. How you take care of your body also has an impact on your emotional health.
When you exercise regularly, you feed your brain with healthy “feel good” chemicals – known as endorphins. These chemicals have a long-lasting effect on your body and help you improve your mood, reduce stress, and sharpen your focus.
Remembering to go to the gym isn’t the only way you can release more endorphins. Doing the activities you love, like dancing, playing a certain sport, or going for a bike ride, are all great ways to keep your mind and body in shape.
Be Mindful of Your Nutrition
Unfortunately, eating your problems doesn’t make them go away for good – even though we’ve all been there! While ice cream and chocolate can be a welcome distraction from what’s bothering us, they’re not a long-term solution for stress management.
On the other hand, how you eat can affect how well your brain functions and your general mood. All our minds and bodies run off of nutrients. But in order to get the right balance of vitamins and minerals each day, you need to make sure you make the right diet choices.
The trick here is that there needs to be balance. Being overly consumed in your diet can be an added stress in life you need to manage. The important thing to remember is that the healthier meal choices you make, the better overall health you’ll have. But this shouldn’t stop you from enjoying that much-needed piece of cake when your mind and body both say NOW!
Creating Better Emotional Resilience
Building a strong mind-body connection can be transformative. By building more self-awareness and emotional regulation, you’ll have the ability to recognize and address negative patterns in life that contribute to your stress and manage it in a more healthy way.
By Dr. Hannah Yang
Visionary and healthcare entrepreneur by passion, Licensed Psychologist by training, Dr. Hannah Yang loves creating new possibilities in the world of mental health and wellness. Dr. Yang established Balanced Awakening in 2015 as a niche psychotherapy practice for women. As Balanced Awakening flourishes in Chicago, and soon Miami, she also loves to tap into her passion for design and Feng Shui to create fabulous environments for herself, her team, and clients.
