In this segment, therapist Shari B. Kaplan explains that a pounding heart upon waking can be interpreted as anxiety, but it may also be the body's preparatory response driven by cellular and microbiome memory of previous stressors, such as an important meeting the day before. She emphasizes that this heightened state is not always necessary and can be gently coached down through simple breathing exercises and light physical movements to calm the early‑morning hyperarousal.
When we talk about waking up in the morning with my heart pounding and people saying, I have anxiety, my heart is pounding when I wake up in the morning, I'm thinking, well, it could be anxiety, but what if the intelligence in your cells and all those microbiome remember that you woke up yesterday and you had an important meeting to speak at? Your body is just waking you up to be prepared. Now I need to coach it a little bit. Let's breathe. Let's do a few exercises. Let's calm that response down because I don't really need us this heightened and this hyper this early in the morning.
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