The Armor I Couldn’t Remove: A Somatic Guide to Why You’re Always Tense and How to Finally Let Go

For fifteen years, I built a career teaching people how to be well.

I ran workshops on resilience, coached executives on stress management, and wrote articles about finding balance in a chaotic world.

And for fifteen years, my own body was a fortress of tension.

It was a secret I kept locked away, a profound and painful paradox.

My shoulders were permanently hitched towards my ears, hard as stones.

My jaw was so tightly clenched in my sleep that I’d wake with headaches that radiated down my neck.¹

I lived with a constant, low-grade hum of anxiety, a vibration so persistent I had come to believe it was a fundamental part of my personality.

This wasn’t just occasional stress; this was a chronic state of being, a suit of armor I couldn’t seem to take off.²

I tried everything my professional toolkit had to offer.

I meditated, practiced gratitude, and repeated positive affirmations.

I followed all the standard advice I gave to my own clients.

Yet, the tension remained, a stubborn and silent refutation of my own expertise.

The breaking point—the moment the cracks in my carefully constructed identity finally shattered—came during a high-stakes corporate wellness retreat I was leading.

I stood before a room of senior leaders, my heart hammering against my ribs, my breath shallow and tight.⁴

The pressure was immense, and my body was screaming.

As I tried to speak, my mind, which I had always relied on, simply went blank.

The words vanished.

I froze, a classic symptom of overwhelming anxiety and cognitive shutdown under duress.⁶

The silence in that room was deafening.

It wasn’t just a professional failure; it was the complete collapse of the person I thought I was.

That humiliating moment became a turning point.

It forced me to confront a terrifying truth: my entire approach was wrong.

All my attempts to manage my tension had been focused on my mind, on trying to think my way into a state of calm.

But what if the problem wasn’t in my mind at all? This question ignited a desperate, years-long quest for a different answer.

It led me away from the familiar world of mindset coaching and into the intricate landscapes of neuroscience and physiology.

What if my body was stuck in a physiological state of alarm, and no amount of positive thinking could override its primal scream for safety? What if I was trying to solve a hardware problem with software patches? This investigation didn’t just give me an answer; it gave me a completely new map of the human experience, a map that finally showed me the way out of my own prison of tension.

Part I: The Futile Battle and Why “Just Relax” Is a Trap

If you’ve ever lived with chronic tension, you’ve undoubtedly been told to “just relax.” It’s the most common, well-intentioned, and utterly useless piece of advice on the planet.⁸

For years, I would sit down to meditate, determined to find that elusive inner peace, only to feel a surge of agitation.

My mind would race faster, my muscles would clench tighter, and I’d end the session more stressed than when I began.

I felt like a failure, convinced I was uniquely broken, incapable of doing the one thing that was supposed to help.

It turns out, this experience is not a personal failing; it’s a predictable biological phenomenon.

Researchers have identified a state known as “relaxation-induced anxiety,” a paradoxical response where attempts to relax actually trigger more anxiety.⁹

For a nervous system that has been trained by chronic stress or trauma to equate a state of high alert with survival, stillness feels profoundly unsafe.¹⁰

The brain, in its primal wisdom, has learned a simple but powerful equation: “Being on guard keeps me safe.” When you try to force a rapid shift from this hypervigilant state to a calm one, the body’s subconscious threat-detection system doesn’t register it as peace.

It registers it as a dangerous drop in defenses, like a guard suddenly abandoning their post in hostile territory.

In response, the system triggers a defensive counter-reaction—a jolt of anxiety—to pull you back to the familiar, “safer” state of high alert.⁹

This creates a vicious cycle: you try to relax, you feel more anxious, which reinforces the belief that you’re “bad at relaxing,” leading to more stress and more tension.

The advice fails because it fundamentally misunderstands the biological imperative of a dysregulated system.

For a long time, our understanding of this process was limited to what I call the “old map”: the Hypothalamic-Pituitary-Adrenal (HPA) axis and the fight-or-flight response.¹¹

This model accurately describes the chemical cascade of stress—the flood of hormones like cortisol and adrenaline that prepare the body for immediate action.¹¹

It explained why my heart raced and my muscles tensed.

It showed me the landscape of my stress.

But it couldn’t tell me why I was permanently lost in that terrain, unable to find my way back to safety.

It was a map of the “what,” but not the “why.” To truly understand the roots of chronic tension, I needed a more detailed, more nuanced guide to the inner workings of my own nervous system.

Part II: The Epiphany: Discovering My Body’s Real Operating System

My breakthrough came not from a psychology book or a wellness seminar, but from the dense, fascinating world of neuroscience.

I stumbled upon the work of Dr. Stephen Porges and his Polyvagal Theory, and it felt like finding the Rosetta Stone for my body’s confusing language.⁷

It provided a new paradigm, a new operating manual that explained everything I had been experiencing.

Personal stories from others who had found this framework echoed my own sense of discovery, validating that this was a transformative key.¹⁵

I had always thought of my nervous system as a simple on/off switch: either stressed or relaxed.

Polyvagal Theory revealed it to be a far more sophisticated, three-tiered security system, with distinct protocols for different levels of perceived threat.

This analogy, moving beyond simplistic computer metaphors that often fail to capture the brain’s active, embodied nature, became my guide.¹⁷

The mechanism that drives this entire system is a process Dr. Porges named neuroception.

It is the nervous system’s capacity to distinguish safe, dangerous, or life-threatening situations without involving conscious thought.¹⁴

Operating in the most primitive parts of our brain, neuroception is our body’s unconscious radar, constantly scanning our internal state (a process called interoception), our external environment, and the social cues of others—like facial expressions and tone of voice—for signals of safety or danger.²¹

This led me to a profound realization: my chronic tension wasn’t a conscious choice or a psychological flaw; it was a neuroceptive verdict.

It was the physical, unavoidable outcome of a nervous system whose internal radar had delivered a continuous, unrelenting verdict of “DANGER.” This process happens automatically, preceding conscious thought, and it reflexively shifts our entire physiology to optimize survival.¹⁴

A history of trauma or prolonged, intense stress can create what is essentially a “faulty neuroception,” biasing the system to detect threats even in perfectly safe environments.¹⁴

This is why you can be sitting in your comfortable living room, logically knowing you are safe, yet feel a knot of anxiety in your stomach and a steel band of tension across your shoulders.

Your conscious mind says “safe,” but your body’s radar is screaming “danger,” and it’s the body’s report that dictates your physical reality.²

The persistent tension is not the problem itself; it is the

symptom of this deeper, unconscious process of threat detection.

You cannot simply think your way out of this verdict, because it is rendered by a part of the brain that doesn’t speak the language of logic.

It speaks the ancient language of survival.

Part III: The New Map: Navigating the Three States of Your Nervous System

Understanding this three-tiered system was like being handed a detailed map of my own inner world for the first time.

It allowed me to stop judging my states and start navigating them.

Each state is an adaptive, intelligent response to a specific level of perceived threat.

The problem of chronic tension arises when we get stuck in the defensive states and lose the flexibility to move back to safety.

Subsection 3.1: The Sympathetic State – “Code Orange: Mobilize for Action”

This is the state most people associate with stress.

In the security system analogy, an alarm is sounding.

The system is flooded with energy—adrenaline and cortisol—to prepare for immediate, decisive action: fight or flight.²

This is the domain of the sympathetic nervous system (SNS).

For years, this was my home base.

It was the state of anxiety, irritation, and simmering panic that felt so familiar.

It was the racing heart before a presentation, the shallow, clipped breathing during a difficult conversation, and the tense, ready-for-battle muscles that never got the signal to stand down.⁴

This state is brilliantly adaptive for escaping an acute, short-term threat.

But when it becomes our default setting, the constant physiological arousal takes a heavy toll.

The sustained release of stress hormones and the lack of oxygen circulating in tense muscle fibers contribute to a cascade of chronic issues, including tension headaches, digestive problems like acid reflux or IBS, profound fatigue, and a weakened immune system.¹

We are essentially keeping the engine revved in the red zone, burning up immense energy even while at rest, leading to burnout and exhaustion.¹

Subsection 3.2: The Dorsal Vagal State – “Code Red: System Shutdown”

What happens when the threat is perceived as so overwhelming that fighting or fleeing is impossible? The nervous system shifts into its oldest, most primitive survival strategy: immobilization.

This is the “Code Red” of the security system.

The system doesn’t just sound an alarm; it cuts power to non-essential functions to conserve energy, feign death, and hopefully survive the inescapable threat.

This is the state of collapse, freeze, and dissociation, governed by the ancient, unmyelinated dorsal vagal circuit of the parasympathetic nervous system.⁷

This was the state I crashed into at that corporate retreat.

It wasn’t just anxiety; it was a full system shutdown.

The profound fatigue, the brain fog, the feeling of being emotionally numb and disconnected from my own body—these were the hallmarks of a dorsal vagal response.⁶

In this state, our physiology plummets: heart rate and blood pressure drop, breathing becomes shallow, and we can feel hopeless, ashamed, and utterly disconnected from the world.⁷

While it’s a life-saving response for a mouse in the jaws of a cat, in our modern lives it manifests as depression, chronic fatigue syndrome, dissociation, and a feeling of being trapped and helpless.⁷

Subsection 3.3: The Ventral Vagal State – “System Normal: Safe and Connected”

This is the state we are all striving for.

It’s not merely the absence of stress; it’s the vibrant, active presence of well-being.

In our security analogy, this is “System Normal.” All signals are green.

The neuroceptive verdict is “SAFE.” In this state, we feel grounded, present, curious, and open.

We can connect with others, play, create, and our bodies can focus on the vital functions of health, growth, and restoration.²⁸

This optimal state is governed by the newest, most evolved part of our autonomic nervous system: the myelinated ventral vagal circuit.¹³

Unique to mammals, this system is intricately linked with the nerves that control facial expression, vocal tone, and even hearing.

This is our “social engagement system”.⁷

When the ventral vagal system is active, it acts like a “vagal brake,” keeping our heart rate slow and steady even when we are engaged in active tasks.³⁰

It promotes calm, deep breathing and allows for the nuanced social signaling—a warm smile, a soothing tone of voice—that tells another nervous system, “You are safe with me.” It is only from this neurophysiological platform of safety that we can truly heal, learn, and thrive.

To make these concepts more concrete, this table provides an at-a-glance summary.

Recognizing which state you are in is the first, most crucial step toward gaining agency over your own physiology.

It moves you from a vague feeling of being “tense” to a specific understanding of your body’s current operating mode.

Feature	Ventral Vagal (Safe & Social)	Sympathetic (Mobilization)	Dorsal Vagal (Immobilization)
Core Function	Connection, Safety, Calm	Fight, Flight, Action	Freeze, Shutdown, Conservation
Felt Sense	Grounded, present, open, curious, playful	Anxious, angry, panicked, agitated, restless	Numb, disconnected, hopeless, foggy, collapsed, ashamed
Physiology	Regulated heart rate, deep breathing, relaxed muscles, good digestion	Increased heart rate, shallow/rapid breathing, muscle tension, adrenaline/cortisol surge	Drastic drop in heart rate/blood pressure, low energy, shallow breathing, dissociation
Behavioral Cue	“I am safe and connected. The world is welcoming.”	“I am in danger and must act to survive.”	“I am trapped and life is a threat. I must disappear.”

Part IV: The Somatic Toolkit: Becoming the Engineer of Your Own Nervous System

With this new map in hand, I realized I could stop fighting my body and start working with it.

I could become the engineer of my own nervous system, learning to consciously influence the subconscious processes that had held me captive for so long.

This required a radical shift in approach, from trying to impose control from the top down to learning to listen and respond from the bottom up.

The following principles and practices form the core of the somatic toolkit I developed for myself and now share with my clients.

Principle 1: From Ignoring to Inquiring (Bottom-Up Regulation)

My old approach was to shout orders at my body: “Calm down! Stop being so tense!” The new approach began with a question: “What are you trying to tell me?” This is the essence of bottom-up regulation.

It acknowledges that to change our state, we must first change the signals the body is sending to the brain.³¹

The vagus nerve, after all, is primarily an information highway from the body to the brain, with some estimates suggesting 80% of its fibers are afferent, carrying signals inward.³⁰

The foundational skill for this is interoception, the practice of tuning into and noticing inner bodily sensations without judgment.³²

This is where the healing begins.

• Actionable Step: The Body Scan: Find a comfortable position and close your eyes. Start at your feet and slowly bring your awareness up through your body. Don’t try to change anything. Simply notice. Is there warmth in your feet? A tingling in your calves? A tightness in your belly? A coolness on your skin? Use neutral, descriptive words: hot, cold, buzzing, heavy, light, tight, spacious.³³ This simple practice of non-judgmental awareness is the first step in rebuilding the connection between mind and body, and it begins to teach your nervous system that it’s safe to be felt.

Principle 2: Sending Signals of Safety (Activating the Vagal Brake)

Once I learned to listen to my body, the next step was to learn how to speak its language.

I discovered I could use my own body as a tuning fork to gently guide my nervous system back toward the ventral vagal state of safety.

These are not complex interventions; they are simple, physiological cues that directly stimulate the vagus nerve, sending an “all clear” signal to the brain’s security center.

• Breathwork: The way we breathe is one of the most powerful and immediate ways to influence our physiological state. Specifically, slow, extended exhales are a direct biological signal to the parasympathetic nervous system to engage the “vagal brake” and calm the body down.³⁶

• The Physiological Sigh: This is your nervous system’s built-in reset button. It involves two quick inhales through the nose (the first one big, the second one smaller to fully inflate the lungs) followed by a long, slow, complete exhale through the mouth. Repeat this three to five times when you feel a wave of stress.³⁶
• Box Breathing: Used by elite soldiers to stay calm under pressure, this technique involves equal-length breaths. Inhale for a count of four, hold for four, exhale for four, and hold for four. Visualizing a square can help guide the rhythm. This practice lowers heart rate and brings predictability to the system.³⁷
• Vocal Toning and Humming: The vagus nerve is connected to your vocal cords. The physical vibration from humming, chanting, or even singing your favorite song stimulates the vagus nerve, activating the calming ventral vagal pathway.⁴⁰

• Sensory Grounding: When your mind is spinning with anxiety, anchor it in the present moment by engaging your five senses. Name five things you can see, four things you can feel (the texture of your shirt, the solidness of the chair), three things you can hear, two things you can smell, and one thing you can taste. This pulls your attention out of future worries and into the safety of the here-and-now.³⁶
• Gentle Movement: Rhythmic, repetitive movements are deeply regulating for the nervous system. Gentle rocking in a chair, swaying from side to side, or even dancing to music can help discharge sympathetic energy and soothe the system.⁴⁰

Principle 3: Releasing Stored Energy (Somatic Experiencing Techniques)

I came to understand that the chronic tension in my shoulders wasn’t just “stress.” It was the fossilized energy of a thousand thwarted fight-or-flight responses, trapped in my tissues.

Somatic Experiencing (SE), a body-oriented therapy developed by Dr. Peter Levine, provides a framework for gently and safely releasing this stored survival energy.²⁷

Two of its core techniques were revolutionary for me.

• Titration: This is the art of touching into discomfort without getting flooded by it. Instead of diving headfirst into the overwhelming sensation of my shoulder tension, I learned to approach it gently. I would bring my awareness to the very edge of the tightness, just enough to feel it, and then immediately guide my attention back to a place in my body that felt neutral or even pleasant (like the warmth in my hands). This process of “dipping a toe in” builds the nervous system’s capacity—its “window of tolerance”—to process the stored charge in small, manageable doses, preventing overwhelm.³¹
• Pendulation: This technique builds on titration. It is the practice of rhythmically shifting your attention back and forth between a sensation of activation (the knot in your stomach, the tightness in your chest) and a sensation of resource or calm (the feeling of your feet solid on the floor, a memory of a safe place). This gentle oscillation prevents the nervous system from getting stuck in either hyper-arousal (sympathetic) or hypo-arousal (dorsal vagal). It helps the system find its own way back to a regulated, balanced state, discharging energy through subtle signs like a deep breath, a tremor, or a feeling of warmth.³¹

Principle 4: Engineering Safety in Your World

The final piece of the puzzle was realizing that my nervous system was constantly listening to everything—my relationships, my workspace, the news I consumed.

To truly heal, I had to become the conscious curator of my own safety cues, actively shaping my life to provide more of what my neuroception needed to hear.

• Co-regulation: We are social mammals, wired for connection. Co-regulation—the process by which one nervous system calms another—is a biological necessity, not a psychological luxury.¹⁴ Being in the physical presence of a calm, safe person (or even a pet) allows our own nervous system to “borrow” their regulation. Their calm breathing, steady heart rate, and soft vocal tones are powerful neuroceptive cues of safety that our body registers and responds to.²² This reframes “seeking support” from a sign of weakness to an intelligent physiological strategy.
• Environmental Curation: We can consciously design our environment to be more regulating. This can include using a weighted blanket for deep pressure stimulation, which activates the parasympathetic system.³⁶ It means making time to walk in nature, which has a profoundly calming effect.³⁶ Crucially, it involves setting and maintaining firm boundaries around work, draining relationships, and stressful media consumption to reduce the constant influx of threat signals.³⁸

Part V: A Holistic Approach: Recruiting the Mind as a Supportive Ally

While the foundation of my recovery was this body-first, somatic approach, the mind still has a vital role to play.

The key was to change its job description.

Instead of being the tyrannical boss shouting ineffective orders, the mind could become a supportive ally, reinforcing the new state of safety the body was learning to inhabit.

The feedback loop between body and mind is bidirectional; our thoughts influence our physiology, and our physiology influences our thoughts.⁴²

The most critical insight here is that cognitive therapies work best when they are applied to a regulated physiological platform.

Trying to use complex cognitive tools like thought-challenging or value-based decision-making during a physiological “system crash”—like a panic attack or a dorsal shutdown—is like trying to run sophisticated software on a computer that is overheating and has no memory available.

It’s destined to fail.

Cognitive therapies require access to our prefrontal cortex, the part of the brain responsible for logic, reason, and perspective-taking.⁴⁴

But high-arousal defensive states hijack brain function, shifting resources away from the prefrontal cortex to the primitive, reactive survival centers like the amygdala.⁴⁷

Somatic regulation practices, by shifting the nervous system back toward the ventral vagal state, restore blood flow and function to the prefrontal cortex, creating the stable operating system needed for these cognitive “software” tools to run effectively.⁷

The most effective sequence for deep, lasting change is often Body-First.

With a more regulated baseline, two types of cognitive tools became incredibly helpful allies:

• Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) for Pain Catastrophizing: Chronic tension often comes with a running commentary of catastrophic thoughts: “This neck pain is getting worse, it must be something serious,” or “I’ll never be free of this tension”.⁴⁹ CBT offers tools to gently question these thoughts, not to deny the physical sensation, but to stop adding mental fuel to the physiological fire. By examining the evidence for these worst-case scenarios, we can reduce the fear and helplessness that amplify the pain experience.⁴⁶
• Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) for Cognitive Defusion: While CBT often challenges the content of thoughts, ACT focuses on changing our relationship to them. The goal is not to eliminate anxious thoughts but to “defuse” from them, to see them for what they are—just words and images passing through our minds—rather than literal truths we must obey. This creates psychological flexibility.⁵³ I found simple defusion techniques to be life-changing:

• Labeling: When a familiar anxious thought arises, simply label it: “I’m having the thought that I’m going to fail” or “There’s the ‘I’m not good enough’ story again.” This simple act of noticing creates a sliver of space between you and the thought.⁵⁶
• Thanking Your Mind: Instead of fighting with your anxious mind, you can treat it like a well-meaning but overzealous friend. “Thanks, mind, for trying to keep me safe with that warning.” This acknowledges the thought without buying into its content.⁵⁷
• Leaves on a Stream: A classic ACT visualization where you imagine placing each thought on a leaf and watching it float down a stream. You don’t push the leaf or try to change its speed; you just watch it pass. This trains the mind to let thoughts come and go without getting hooked by them.⁵⁹

Conclusion: Coming Home to a Body at Ease

My journey from a chronically tense, anxious expert to someone who feels genuinely at home in their own skin did not happen overnight.

It was a process of unlearning, discovery, and gentle, consistent practice.

The turning point was not a single event, but the gradual integration of this new, body-first understanding.

Recently, I found myself in a situation that would have previously sent me into a sympathetic tailspin—a last-minute request to give a major presentation.

I felt the familiar flicker of adrenaline, the tightening in my chest.

But this time, I didn’t fight it.

I didn’t tell myself to “just relax.”

Instead, I excused myself for a moment.

I stood in a quiet hallway, placed a hand on my heart, and took three long, slow physiological sighs.

I felt my feet on the floor.

I named the sensation in my chest: “Ah, there’s activation.

My body is getting ready.” I used the tools not to extinguish the feeling, but to meet it, to let my nervous system know that even though the task was challenging, we were fundamentally safe.

I walked back into that room and delivered the presentation with a sense of grounded calm I had never thought possible.

The goal, I’ve learned, isn’t a life free from stress.

It’s a life with increased resilience, with the capacity to navigate challenges and return to a state of safety and connection more quickly and easily.¹⁴

If you are reading this because you, too, feel trapped in an armor of tension, I want you to hear this: You are not broken.

Your tension is an intelligent, albeit outdated, survival response from a nervous system doing its absolute best to keep you safe.

The constant state of guardedness is not a character flaw; it is a physiological state.

By learning the language of your nervous system through the map of Polyvagal Theory, and by using somatic tools to consciously and consistently signal safety, you can move from being a prisoner of your physiology to its trusted partner.

You can, finally, lay down the armor.

Start with one small, gentle act.

Right now, place a hand on your heart and take one slow breath, making the exhale just a little longer than the inhale.

Hum your favorite song for thirty seconds.

Notice the feeling of your feet on the floor.

This is not another task to perfect; it is a way of coming home to yourself.

Be patient.

Be curious.

Progress, not perfection, is the goal.⁶²

Your body has been waiting a long time to feel safe with you again.

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