10/06/2026
Flutters and Flinches
Do you get them? Flutters in your heart, throat, or stomach?
Sometimes, entirely inexplicably, sometimes following a slight concern. It feels unpleasant and leads to difficulty settling, nausea, or heightened vigilance.
Or are you a flincher?
When a noise, a ‘look’ from someone, a ping in your inbox, or a particular tone of voice brings a jolt of tension that seems to takes an age to dissipate, if it does at all.
So many people suffer from this and just adapt and live with it, until it becomes more debilitating or persistent, causing lifestyle changes, restrictions, physical complaints... It’s so hard to live with it, but we push on.
It’s anxiety. It’s an entirely normal response to real or perceived threat in the environment. And if you experience it a lot, it’s absolutely and completely exhausting. Not to mention the physical toll it takes on your body. And if you’ve had past trauma, chronic stress or anxiety attacks, it can be even more acute.
Anxiety isn’t just panic attacks.
Sometimes you’ll get a feeling that you have done something wrong. You mentally run through your day or an interaction looking for potential problems. Again and again.
Often dismissed, these small, everyday things, for a sensitised nervous system, can feel enormous.
If you have experienced anxiety, panic, prolonged stress, or trauma in the past, your body can recall an experience of threat before your conscious mind has had chance to assess the situation. A micro-moment in the present can be linked, instantly, to something much bigger from the past.
A sensation in the chest can remind the body of panic.
A delayed reply can feel like rejection.
A raised voice can feel like danger.
A change of plan can feel like losing control.
And before you know it, your whole system is braced.
One of the most exhausting and persistent symptoms of anxiety is background scanning, constant mentally checking and never fully relaxing.
You'll probably tell yourself you are overthinking a situation.
Someone who hasn’t experienced it can’t make sense of what you are trying to describe, so it can feel quite isolating too.
Your body in anxiety, responds automatically to what a moment reminds it of. There’s no filter, it just goes ahead and relates a current feeling to a past event; without your conscious involvement.
That doesn’t mean the reaction is helpful or fear is appropriate, but it does mean there could be a good reason for it.
Anxiety is a protective function, even if it seems clumsy sometimes. It tries to keep you ahead of danger, to stop you getting overwhelmed, and to make sure you never get caught off guard. But as a consequence, it can start to perceive danger everywhere!
And that, in turn can make you feel vulnerable, out of control, or even like you're being difficult.
It’s not a conscious choice. Your system has learnt to be alert from experience. It has learnt from panic, stress, conflict, instability, loss, or fear.
So now your body needs help to learn that not every uncomfortable feeling needs to lead to high alert.
That learning requires a conscious decision to change and often, additional support, tailored strategies, and time.
It’s not about reading a self-help book or doing a meditation and forcing calm. It’s about taking a compassionate approach to slowly teach your mind and body new patterns and appropriate responses to non-threatening situations.
So if you often feel on edge, as though your reactions are bigger than the situation in front of you, there may be a very rational reason.
You are not broken. Your nervous system might just be working overtime.
And we can teach it a different way.
