In recent years, I’ve made many changes to the way I manage my mental health. Early intervention when required, the right tools and resources, and daily management have made a world of difference. But over the last few weeks, my husband’s diagnosis and hospitalisation, has tested all of my new strategies. My nervous system is non-compliant with the new tools under this much stress and my anxiety has landed me in the emergency room. As a result, I’ve been trying additional, more unusual things in an attempt to help me manage it. I can’t say they’ve all been successful and I can’t say I haven’t resorted to some of the old, comfortable coping mechanisms. But one thing that I’ve found that does help is shaking. On purpose. For fun.

I once asked my psychologist why I shivered when I had to have uncomfortable conversations and her response was “stress”. When adrenaline and cortisol are released into your body in huge amounts during a threat, they create neurogenic tremors in addition to speeding up your heart rate, blood pressure and breathing.

Shaking is the body’s natural way to release tension and stress and return to equilibrium. Animals instinctively shake to relieve stress after a life-threatening event. This helps them to discharge the energy of the traumatic event. But when humans are conditioned out of this response we lose the ability to re-calibrate our nervous system. We are supposed to cope. We are supposed to be fine. Unfazed.

Unfortunately, if we can’t shake it off, trauma can get trapped in the body. This impacts our ability to respond to future stressors and can lead to a complicated ripple of life-altering impacts. The brain and nervous system can become stuck. They are rewired in a way that can make healing a challenge as they remain on high alert for threats, continually flooding the body with stress hormones.

So in an attempt to reset my nervous system, I am shaking. On purpose. For fun. It doesn’t work all the time but if I shake for several minutes a day, it definitely helps. A friend calls me on Zoom in the morning, and together we do a shake session. She picks the music, I just show up.

If you want any more information on the science behind shaking, this link has plenty!

And if you need a song, here’s the first one she chose. Obviously.