Key aspects of this process include:

• Reducing stressors where possible

• Building soothing and grounding skills

• Gently shifting attention toward the more positive or neutral parts of your experience

• Cultivating self-compassion

• Noticing the connection between the fight-or-flight response and your symptoms

• Identifying and befriending thoughts and feelings

Remember: Each of these skills takes time to develop. You’re working to shift patterns and habits that have likely been in place for a long time. It’s okay if progress feels slow—every small step you take adds up. Even if you don’t see the changes right away, what you’re putting in is moving you toward greater wellbeing.

1. First, try to cut back on stress and activity where you can. Giving yourself some breathing room can help ease symptoms and create a bit more space to start feeling better. If possible, try not to push yourself, and keep activity at a level that doesn’t trigger a symptom flare-up beyond what you can comfortably manage.

2. It might feel a bit counterintuitive, but try spending some time with the thoughts and feelings that come up about your symptoms. See if you can meet yourself with as much compassion as possible—this is a deeply challenging experience, and whatever you're feeling is completely valid and normal. You can check out Dr. Kristin Neff’s website for more information about self-compassion and guided meditations: https://self-compassion.org

   As you do this, try bringing in some gentle physical touch. You might place a hand over your heart and notice how that feels, rub your palms together, or gently touch your arms or neck—whatever feels soothing in the moment. While doing so, remind yourself that it’s okay to feel what you’re feeling. This kind of touch can help ground you and send a signal of safety and care to your nervous system.

3. Alongside that, see if you can find small moments of relief or joy. Maybe it's noticing the trees outside, the feeling of your blanket, the sound of birds, or even something neutral that feels okay. These small, sensory moments can help anchor and ground you. We often take the ability to experience the world for granted—but when we really tune into a sensation, even briefly, it can become something to appreciate. That sense of presence can gently shift how you're feeling, even if just a little.

   Our brains also have a built-in bias toward the negative—our attention naturally gravitates toward what's wrong or uncomfortable, which means we can easily overlook the neutral or positive parts of our experience. This is a normal part of being human, but it’s also a bias we can gently work to shift with practice.

4. Keep practicing the steps 2 and 3 until you begin to feel some warmth toward yourself and notice your attention naturally shifting toward the more positive parts of your experience.

5. Next, when you’re feeling distress or experiencing symptoms, take a moment to check in with yourself—can you sense a fight-or-flight response happening alongside it? Situations or emotions we find scary can trigger a fight-or-flight response; that response can produce symptoms, and those symptoms can, in turn, trigger even more fight-or-flight. See if you can notice emotions like anxiety, fear, anger, or even a sense of panic. Physical signs might include an increased heart rate or blood pressure, faster breathing, brain fog or dissociation, and muscle tension. These are all signals that your nervous system may be in a reactive state.

   Our bodies aren’t designed to stay in fight-or-flight mode for long periods—but modern life, and especially times of illness or chronic stress, can keep us stuck there. Over time, this ongoing activation can wear down the body, contributing to issues like immune system dysfunction, inflammation, chronic pain, sleep problems, digestive issues, and hormonal imbalances.

   That’s why a key part of this process is learning to recognize your personal fight-or-flight triggers and gently unwinding them—by becoming curious about them, and slowly learning to befriend the underlying emotions and patterns.

6. Whenever you’re feeling distress or experiencing symptoms, see if you can gently turn your attention inward and notice what thoughts and feelings might be present. Most of us miss a lot of our inner experience—so part of the process is learning to build the skill of noticing. This awareness gives us the information we need to eventually shift how we relate to those thoughts and emotions.

   For most people, thoughts and feelings are happening almost constantly, even if we’re only aware of a small portion at first. That means there’s a lot of room for growth—and with practice, you'll likely begin to access more of your inner world over time.

7. For connecting with your thoughts, you can set a short timer, even starting with one minute, and just see what thoughts you can notice. Thoughts generally come up verbally or as an image, and it can help to close your eyes and actually try to see the visual thoughts and hear the verbal thoughts. It can also be helpful to have a journaling practice where you’re putting everything that comes to mind on paper with no filters or judgment. One system for this is Nicole Sach’s JournalSpeak (you can learn more here: yourbreakawake.com/journalspeak). Lastly, try to notice the thoughts that come up throughout your day. Every feeling or action is connected to one or more thoughts, so whenever you experience a feeling or action, you can ask yourself what the related thought is, even if it’s just catching the topic of the thought at first and then more details of the thoughts with practice.

8. As you notice different thoughts coming up, remember this: You don’t have to believe everything your mind tells you—but you don’t need to fight it, either. Thoughts tend to show up on their own, just like the pancreas secretes bile, our brains naturally produce thoughts. If we could choose every thought, we’d probably pick more peaceful or positive ones. Try this exercise to explore our control over thoughts: Are you able to predict what your next thought will be?

   Most anxious or fearful thoughts are about the future or something unknown, and while it may feel very real, it’s helpful to remind ourselves that we can’t know how things will unfold. It’s not easy, but this can make a big difference: see if you can let the thoughts come and go, without grabbing onto them or pushing them away. Just like if someone else were talking to you, you can listen without automatically believing what they say. You don’t have to agree or argue—just notice and allow.

9. To get in touch with your feelings, it helps to let your attention settle on the body, especially the belly, chest, head areas, and notice the physical sensations that come with those emotions. Take a moment to scan your body—see if you can feel pressure, tension, movement, warmth, or anything else. Sometimes emotions can feel hard to pinpoint, but with practice, tuning in will become as natural as noticing how a chair feels beneath you.

   Connecting with emotions can feel really scary, and be a trigger for the fight-or-flight response. We all carry beliefs about emotions that we’ve built up over time that lead us to be afraid of them and feel a need to push them away. A very important part of this process is learning that those old beliefs might not be true and finding ways to make friends with your emotions, so it feels safe to be in your body with them.

   Emotions are a natural part of how we respond to the world, and they’ll continue to arise in reaction to different situations. That’s not a problem—in fact, on their own, emotions tend to come, peak, and then pass. The key is learning to befriend them, so they don’t keep triggering a cycle of fight-or-flight activation.

   Don’t push yourself to feel everything all at once. Start by finding ways to be with your emotions that feel safe. For example, playing calming music might help. Then, gently bring your attention to the sensations of your emotions—but only for a little while. Try shifting your focus back and forth between the soothing music and the feelings in your body, staying within what feels manageable for you as your body learns that it’s safe to feel.

10. The physical sensations that come with emotions and feelings aren’t actually scary or unpleasant on their own—it’s the beliefs we hold about them that can make them feel that way. Try bringing a genuine curiosity to these sensations. Notice and describe them in as much detail as you can, as if you were explaining them to an alien who has never experienced emotions before. Where do you feel it in your body? What shape does it have? How heavy or dense does it feel? If it had a color, what would it be? If it could speak, what might it say to you? How is it trying to help? Can you remember the first time you experienced this feeling?

    As the saying goes, “There isn’t anyone you couldn’t learn to love once you’ve heard their story.” In much the same way, when we come to know our emotional experiences and inner parts with compassionate curiosity, we begin to relate to them with greater love and understanding. This process can take time, as we navigate various emotions tied to different life experiences. But as we start to see that each feeling comes from a part of us that longs for care and connection, the journey itself can become deeply rewarding.

11. As you begin to observe your thoughts more clearly and reduce resistance to your emotional experiences, you may notice your fight-or-flight system gradually settling. This shift allows your body a better opportunity to heal. Some symptoms may have been part of the fight-or-flight response itself—or the result of it being chronically overactivated—and these often diminish more quickly. Many people I know have shared that symptoms they hadn’t realized were connected to the fight-or-flight response began to fade as they engaged in this process.

    As you begin to return to previous activities, they may trigger a fight-or-flight response—especially if they were previously associated with symptoms or danger. When that happens, use the same tools mentioned above to calm your nervous system by gently allowing and feeling the emotions underneath, rather than resisting them.

12. For more on working with thoughts and feelings, you can look at the page Working On Your Own.

References:

McEwen, B. S. (2006). Protective and damaging effects of stress mediators: Central role of the brain. Dialogues in Clinical Neuroscience, 8(4), 367–381. https://doi.org/10.31887/DCNS.2006.8.4/bmcewen

Chrousos, G. P. (2009). Stress and disorders of the stress system. Nature Reviews Endocrinology, 5(7), 374–381. https://doi.org/10.1038/nrendo.2009.106

Tsigos, C., & Chrousos, G. P. (2002). Hypothalamic–pituitary–adrenal axis, neuroendocrine factors and stress. Journal of Psychosomatic Research, 53(4), 865–871. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0022-3999(02)00429-4

Cohen, S., Janicki-Deverts, D., & Miller, G. E. (2007). Psychological stress and disease. JAMA, 298(14), 1685–1687. https://doi.org/10.1001/jama.298.14.1685

Black, P. H., & Garbutt, L. D. (2002). Stress, inflammation and cardiovascular disease. Journal of Psychosomatic Research, 52(1), 1–23. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0022-3999(01)00302-6

McEwen, B. S., & Wingfield, J. C. (2003). The concept of allostasis in biology and biomedicine. Hormones and Behavior, 43(1), 2–15. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0018-506X(02)00024-7

Juster, R. P., McEwen, B. S., & Lupien, S. J. (2010). Allostatic load biomarkers of chronic stress and impact on health and cognition. Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews, 35(1), 2–16. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neubiorev.2009.10.002