Does going to the gym make you anxious? How EMDR can help

The NHS recognises exercise as an important part of supporting people with depression, and that keeping physically fit helps reduce tension, stress and anxiety and helps with focus and motivation.

The problem is that the very nature of depression, anxiety and trauma can make accessing fitness seem daunting: it's at the moment when exercise could be most helpful for you that it can feel the most difficult to start.

This article looks at some of the ways the thought of exercising can feel overwhelming and how psychotherapy, especially EMDR, can help you overcome this so you can access the range of benefits exercise can provide for your mental well-being.

Why exercise can feel overwhelming

Depression can feel like a lack of energy or motivation and low confidence, as well as low mood, which can make the thought of going to a gym feel like too much. Anxiety, especially social anxiety, can also be a barrier to joining a gym or exercise class elsewhere, in a park, for instance, due to spiralling thoughts and worries about how the other people in the group will respond to you.

Body dysmorphia and issues with body image can be another barrier to accessing exercise or fitness: people living with these conditions may feel that everyone else in the gym has a “perfect” physique and worry that they will feel out of place or judged because of their appearance. 

Unfortunately, social media can sometimes reinforce these feelings by promoting a narrow idea of what people who exercise “should” look like. Images of toned or highly athletic bodies can create the impression that everyone at the gym looks that way all the time, which may feel off-putting if you struggle with body image or haven’t exercised for a while.

Even once you’re in the gym or at an outdoor class, the nature of some exercises and the close proximity of other people can, for some individuals, feel triggering, particularly where there is a history of trauma or difficult experiences connected to intimacy, safety or body confidence. Other people may have had difficult experiences of PE classes at school, such as being the last person picked for the team or getting shamed for not being able to perform a certain exercise.

Other people might have a complicated relationship with fitness, as over-exercising can be a symptom of disordered eating, where someone might feel the need to work out or run to compensate for eating what they consider to be too much in one day. Excessive exercise can also be a way of avoiding uncomfortable feelings like anxiety – "As long as I keep running on the treadmill, I won't feel those knots in my stomach that remind me of what I'm worried about." Over-exercising can itself be damaging physically and emotionally, potentially leading to injury.

These barriers to exercise are a big issue, as being able to access the right amount and form of regular exercise has enormous benefits for our physical and mental health. So how can psychotherapy help?

How EMDR can help with gym anxiety

Eye Movement Desensitisation and Reprocessing, or EMDR, is a method of psychotherapy which can help in overcoming psychological blocks to exercising since it works with the past, present and future, and this is how it works.

Let's say you want to exercise, but the thought of going to the gym makes you too anxious to actually go. An EMDR therapist will help you explore where the anxiety comes from, such as feelings of insecurity about yourself and body-image issues being exacerbated by the thought of having to exercise in public, surrounded by other people you think will be much fitter than you. The therapist will help you explore the origin of these feelings, which might be related to traumatic or difficult experiences in your early life (being bullied about your appearance or athletic ability at school, perhaps).

An EMDR therapist would explain that the memory and feeling of being shamed about your appearance as a child or teenager is held in an isolated neural network in your brain, where the experience is being replayed on a loop. The thought of going to the gym wakes that part of you up, and you feel like your thirteen-year-old self again, with all their insecurities. In that instant, you lose touch with your more confident adult, present-day self. This is why the idea of the gym can be so overwhelming.

Processing past and present triggers

EMDR uses eye movements and other forms of Bi-Lateral Stimulation (BLS), such as tapping, while engaging with an image from the worst moment of a memory and the negative thoughts, emotions and bodily sensations which go with it to stimulate the flow of information round the brain, so that the knowledge that your difficult teenage years or childhood is over and you are safe, happy and confident in the present, can get to the part of you that still feels like a child, to 'update' that part of your brain. This is how EMDR can help resolve past trauma, and it can be a great relief. Once the memory is processed, the image will be faded, negative thoughts replaced by more positive ones, emotional disturbance lessened, and your body will feel calmer.

The next phase targets the situations in the present which you find triggering, so your therapist might ask you to think about going to the gym and find the worst aspect or moment. Again, you'll be asked to explain what you see, the negative thoughts you have about yourself in that moment, the emotions you feel and where you feel all this in your body. BLS is again used to process this scenario, until you can think about it without emotional disturbance.

Building confidence for the future

Finally, we look at the future. The therapist might ask you to visualise a visit to the gym, going through the whole experience from getting ready, leaving home, travelling to the gym, going in, warming up, using the equipment, cooling down and leaving, processing any moments of emotional disturbance which you might encounter as described above, until you are able to play the whole 'film' in your mind without anxiety.

An EMDR therapist can also help you prepare to exercise through resourcing. This process helps you identify the qualities you need to be able to go to the gym without being overwhelmed with anxiety, such as confidence, self-belief, or not worrying about what other people think of you. The therapist then helps you find memories of moments in your life when you have felt confident, or people (people you know, characters from a film or book, someone famous), who personify confidence and something from the natural world that represents confidence.

The therapist then explores with you how you feel (emotionally and physically) when you think of the memory, person and something from the natural world (perhaps a lion or a mountain, whatever means confidence for you) and uses BLS to amplify the feeling within your nervous system, for you to call on to boost your confidence when needed.

Taking the first step

All PTs and fitness instructors want people to train with them and come to their classes, and many will have been trained to make their sessions as accessible as possible. All gyms should offer an induction when you join, when one of the staff shows you round and how to use the equipment, so this is a good opportunity to speak with them about any anxieties you have and see what they recommend, such as quieter times of the day to train or classes aimed at people just beginning to exercise again. A therapist can help you prepare to approach such a conversation and what you might say.

Exercise really does aid recovery from a range of mental health and psychological conditions, so if there's something holding you back from starting, mention it to a therapist to see what they can do to help.