Anxiety and Pelvic Floor: An Intimate Relationship
Anxiety and the pelvic floor are in an intimate relationship. In fact, anxiety has relationships with a lot of parts of your body. Remember last time you felt anxious or stressed and you noticed your neck was tense as your shoulders were hiked up? Or maybe your jaw cracked open after it was just in a tense battle with your thoughts? Anxiety and the neck, shoulders, jaw… they’re in a very intimate relationship, just like the pelvic floor.
New to knowing what the pelvic floor is? In short, it’s a bowl of muscles sitting between your hips, including the genitals, that helps you pee, poop, have sex, have babies, all that good stuff! And guess what? It’s deeply connected to your nervous system, meaning stress and anxiety can directly impact its function.
How Anxiety Affects the Pelvic Floor
Like with many components of our body and its beautiful functioning, if you really dive deep it can get complex… but right now let’s just keep it simple.
Anxiety can lead to tension, and this can include tension in the pelvic floor. If the anxiety is chronic, the tension can be chronic. Chronic tension in the pelvic floor can create pain and dysfunction. Imagine something contracted all day, this tightness leads to tenderness. Plus if things are really tight, they can’t work for us in their full capacity.
To deepen this connection further, anxiety impacts the brain signals involved in the functioning of organs that are a part of your pelvic health (like your bladder or bowels).
When the nervous system perceives stress or danger (whether real or imagined), it activates the body’s fight-or-flight response. This triggers muscle tension as a protective mechanism, including in the pelvic floor. Stress and anxiety are not “bad” emotions, but we only want to use them short term to help us in a situation when needed. If stress and anxiety are frequent or we get stuck in this stress cycle, the tension becomes frequent as well. This lack of regulation in the nervous system can also interfere with how we perceive pain or how the gut functions.
TL/DR: When the pelvic floor holds chronic tension, it can lead to discomfort, pain, and even dysfunction in essential bodily functions.
Let’s elaborate. Chronic tension can create:
Pelvic pain – This can be with sitting, exercise, intercourse, arousal, non-sex related insertion (tampons, gyno exams), bowel movements, peeing, or seemingly unprovoked.
Urinary (pee) urgency or hesitancy – A tight pelvic floor can make it harder to start your pee stream and/or it can cause a sense of urgency and frequency.
Pooping difficulties – If the “door” so to speak for poop to come out is tight, then it can be difficult to release stool. You could have constipation, increased straining, incomplete emptying, or discomfort with bowel movements. (and this is just from the tension, not even including the impact of the stress on gut and digestion overall).
Sexual dysfunction – This can be pain with insertion, difficulty with arousal, difficulty with erections, or decreased even sensation.
The Nervous System-Pelvic Floor Connection
Your pelvic floor and nervous system are in constant communication.
So we’ve established that when your body is in a chronic state of stress, the pelvic floor may remain in a contracted state. When muscles are engaged all day when we don’t need them to, they can get tired and weak. This can make it difficult to properly engage or release these muscles when needed.
More about their communication... As far as relationships go, the pelvic floor (& its organs) and your nervous system communicate A LOT.
Let’s go to that classic example we all know and love… you’re being chased by a bear. If you’re being chased by a bear… odds are your flight or flight will kick in! Although it is NOT recommended to actually run from a bear, for the sake of ease of explanation, let’s say you run. To do that, your body is going to allocate all your resources to survival. This means taking your body’s focus away from things like digestion, and refocusing them to activate your arms and legs to run away.
On the flip side, supporting a regulated nervous system can help the pelvic floor function more optimally.
Why Addressing Both Matters
Focusing only on one aspect—whether it's stress reduction or pelvic floor exercises—often isn’t enough to make long lasting impacts. A holistic approach that considers both the nervous system and pelvic floor functioning can help break the cycle of tension, discomfort, and dsyfunction. Strategies like breathwork, movement, and nervous system regulation techniques can play a crucial role in restoring balance.
If you’re dealing with pelvic floor dysfunction and anxiety, know that you’re not alone—and there are ways to support your body in finding relief. Keep following @anxiouspelvis for more insights on how to improve pelvic wellness by addressing both the body and mind.
