Overcoming Worry: The Calming Power of Exercise 
by Bob Livingstone LCSW

There are a lot of us that spend too much time worrying. According to The National Institute on Mental Health, approximately 40 million American adults ages 18 and older, or about 18.1 percent of people in this age group in a given year, have an anxiety disorder. Anxiety prevents us from being happy, can cause physical ailments, and keeps us from taking healthy risks that may improve the quality of our lives.

Worry may be a trait that is passed on genetically from your family or it may be an outcome of your environment. One or both of your parents may suffer from intense anxiety and you learn to be anxious because it is modeled for you as a way of living. The worry is usually driven by a need to have a guaranteed outcome. Of course there are very few situations that result in a sure-fire conclusion. Therefore the worrying does not seem to have any purpose or any positive effects in one’s life. 

The worrying can become habitual where you immediately turn to the feelings of anxiousness in your stomach, the endless spinning of your thoughts and the sense that disaster is about to occur. You believe that there is not an alternative to this way of being because you have been processing information in this manner your entire life. 

However, there is a means to transform the worrying to peace through physical exercise. There are many studies that conclude that physical exercise brings a state of well being and calmness. There is research that indicates that working out as little as 15 minutes at a time will enable you to reach this state.

First, make an appointment with your physician to clear you for participating in physical exercise. While you are walking, running, biking or other aerobic activity do the following:

1. Notice if you are feeling anxious or worried when you begin your workout. What is making you anxious? Are you worried about some project at work that is overdue? Are you anxious about your relationship with your husband/wife or partner? Are you having a conflict with a friend or family member? 

2. Notice when a sense of calmness comes over you. What does this feel like? Do you notice your worrying decreasing or dissipating? What does your body feel like now? Do you feel strong and confident? Do you see yourself differently? Do you feel better about yourself? 

3. Now, focus on the issue that was making you anxious in the beginning of your workout. Do you still feel anxious or has the anxiety decreased? Do you feel that you can develop a strategy for working through this difficulty? If so, do you notice how clear thinking you are? How is the strategy planning going? Is it going smoothly?

A regular exercise program will help ease your worrying. You will notice that the confusion that is created by anxiety will decrease or dissipate. You will discover that issues that once seemed impossible to approach, much less resolve, and become much easier to work through. You can learn to capture this peaceful feeling that you obtain from exercising while you are sedentary. This process won’t happen overnight, but it can with practice. 

I have worked with many children, teenagers and adults who suffer from acute and generalized anxiety. I feel that one of the reasons that I have been successful working with people who worry a lot because I have also experienced overwhelming anxiety at different periods throughout my life.

I run five miles, five days per week and I always would feel better physically and emotionally after my work out. I discovered that combining physical exercise along with focusing on the emotional pain issue was a means to work through anxiety, worry and panic. 

Before my workout, I would develop an emotional pain question. One question I asked myself several months ago was, “Why am I feeling so mentally exhausted and seem to have physical problems that seem to be limiting my energy? 

I was having trouble sleeping and would frequently wake up at 3AM and not be able to fall back asleep. My pollen allergy seemed to be worse and I was sneezing all the time. My right hip ached and lower back was inflamed. At times, I felt like my body was falling apart, but I continued to exercise.

My mother, who I was very close to, died in December 2005. I knew that I was actively grieving, but even though I am well versed in the subject of grief and loss, I was unaware of how deeply I was affected by her death. Perhaps this is true for all of us when we lose someone we love. 

While I was running, I would rarely feel physical pain, but I welcomed the tears and heart ache of losing her. I was thankful that I could feel her presence and her loss. It felt so real to me. I celebrated her life and death running down the street with tears and sweat streaming.

When the workout was over, I would sit in my favorite chair and feel all the sudden physical pain shoot throughout my body. I would panic and wonder if my body was breaking down because I was getting older. I turned 55 that year and each new ache, pain and body chance would freak me out.

I began to experience tinnitus (ringing in the ears) in my left ear. It was experienced as a high pitch sound. Then my right ear began having a continual low bass sound. My lower left back pain would heal to only be re-injured again. I was diagnosed with a torn labrum in my right hip. This would also ache intermittently. I

I was indeed overwhelmed by all these ailments and sometimes they all struck at the same time. I had to learn to deal with all this and be able to function.

While I was exercising, I faced that I had to deal with not only these physical problems in a non-anxious way; I also had to accept that new physical maladies would enter my life and I had to deal with them constructively. 

I realized that I needed a healing script that I could say to myself when my back would hurt suddenly or my ear would ring. That script was, “Don’t panic, you have the ability to deal with all that life throws at you. Take a step back. You can get through this by researching the problem and making necessary changes.”

One of the positive changes I made was adding cycling to my exercise routine and reducing running. This put less pressure on my back and hip and now I hardly experience any physical pain.

I don’t listen to music as loudly any more and when I drum, I use ear plugs. The tinnitus still exists in the left ear, but has disappeared from the right. 

I also realized that my physical symptoms were greatly exacerbated by feelings that came from my mother’s death. The year I spent deeply mourning her loss while exercising, was healing physically, emotionally and spiritually.