Meeting Stress from Above and Below
How do you make sense of stress?
When it comes to navigating stress, we are often informed to think our way through it. We analyze, reframe, rationalize, and push forward with the hope that clarity alone will calm the storm. This works well, but it is only one essential puzzle piece in understanding how we make sense of, and navigate stress.
When we logically feel safe while our bodies still feel tense, restless, overwhelmed, or even just “off” — this is where we recognize we have met the limitations of a thinking centric approach.
Today’s Mindful Monday invites a broader, more compassionate, understanding of stress. We will cover the mind’s capacity to make meaning as well as the body’s need to be felt, supported, and regulated.
Top Down and Bottom Up Processing
Trauma informed psychology often distinguishes between two complementary pathways of processing experience: top down and bottom up. The most effective healing happens not by choosing one over the other, but by learning how they work together.
The Regulating Mind
Top down processing refers to the brain’s higher order functions (e.g. reasoning, reflection, language, meaning making, and conscious choice). Think of skills like:
Naming emotions
Reframing unhelpful thoughts
Orienting to the present moment
These processes are essential as they help create context, coherence, and safety — especially when emotions feel overwhelming. Top down skills support stabilization by strengthening the nervous systems ability to pause, assess, and respond rather than react.
The Accessing Body
Bottom up processing works in the opposite direction, starting with the body and moving upwards to the brain. Stress and trauma are not only remembered as thoughts or images, they are stored as sensations, impulses, and physiological patterns. Bottom up approaches look like:
Noticing breath, muscle tension, temperature, or posture
Allowing emotions to move through the body
Using movement, rhythm, or grounding to discharge activation
These methods don’t require explanation or analysis. Instead, they help the nervous system complete stress responses that were interrupted during moments of overwhelm. (i.e. if trauma or stress halted you from taking up space or speaking out, bottom up strategies allow you to achieve this response that was thwarted by increased stress or trauma)
Why this matters (In trauma and everyday stress)
Top down strategies help us understand what is happening. Bottom up strategies help us feel and release what is happening. When only one pathway is used, stress can often linger. (i.e. insight without embodiment can feel stuck, circular, or exhausting, and sensation without meaning can feel disorganizing or confusing)
Together, they allow experiences to be metabolized emotionally, cognitively, and physically.
This is precisely why trauma informed care emphasizes pacing and choice. We regulate first, then access, allowing the body to participate. This isn’t just for trauma recovery but profoundly beneficial for everyday stress such as: interpersonal conflict, burnout, or decision making under pressure.
Off The Page: Actioning The Insights
Bringing this into your daily life
Start slow and recognize the impacts
The benefits of this framework can support you no matter where you are in your life or what you are navigating — in order to give you a greater sense of self understanding and clarity. Here are a few gentle ways to begin working with both systems in everyday moments of stress.
Start with Regulation
When stress arises, orient yourself first. Name what is happening, ground yourself in time, and notice three neutral elements in your environment. This signals safety to the nervous system and creates enough stability to begin going deeper.
Invite the Body In
Once there is steadiness, shift your attention inward. Where do you feel this stress in your body? Are you tight, heavy, restless? What happens if you breathe into this area where you notice the stress without attempting to change it? The goal is not to fix, but rather to notice and allow.
Move Between Meaning and Sensation
After sensing the body, gently reflect. What might my body be responding to right now? What does this sensation need? Movement, rest, reassurance, space? This back and forth between body and mind, mind and body, supports greater integration rather than suppression.
Practice Curiosity over Control
Stress often intensifies when we judge our reactions. Instead of, “Why am I like this?” try, “What is my system trying to protect me from?” Curiosity diffuses the metaphorical fires of judgment.
Thank You
Thank you for joining me this week! I’m excited to keep sharing insights from my work, research, and personal journey with you.
Did something resonate with you? Curious about applying these strategies in your life? Or know someone who might benefit?
Use the link below to schedule a consultation or forward this newsletter to a friend!
● I am asking for your support!
Adria Moses @ The School of Radical Healing
I’d like to pause this week to highlight someone very special to me — my friend Adria. She’s preparing for surgery as part of her ongoing healing from Crohn’s Disease and is seeking communal support along the way.
If you feel called, I invite you to learn more and consider supporting her journey below!
ADRIA — MOSES
“I’ve lived with Crohn’s Disease for most of my life. It’s invisible, unpredictable, and exhausting, and this January I’ll be having another major surgery. This time, I’m choosing to do it differently. I’m asking for help. I created a GoFundMe to support my healing — the time I’ll need to rest, the cost of care, and the essentials that make recovery possible.
I know I can’t do this alone. Every donation, every share, every word of encouragement makes a real difference.”
Extras
Let your voice be heard
Click the button below to share anonymous feedback on Mindful Monday. This will support me in continually bringing aligned insights that you all can action in your day to day life to witness a shift.
● New Reads in the Library!
I am currently reading The Anxious Generation by Jonathan Haidt with my book club. This text takes a look at an epidemic of mental illness, that the author relates directly to how children are raised in contemporary times. [Insert your favorite joke about screen addicted generations here lol]
If you want to read along with us, feel free to snag this title from My Library to add to your own + feel free to share your thoughts with me!
If you are anything like me . . .
You might not just read one title at a time. If so, you can check out another book I am currently reading (and enjoying) — Giovanni’s Room by James Baldwin.
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