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How Can Corsets Help With Anxiety?

Posted on by Rachel Barb
How Can Corsets Help With Anxiety
21
Feb

Featured Corset: Jolie Black Cotton Corset

Corsets aren’t typically thought of as a tool to improve mental health. Most women become interested in waist training and corsetry for physical benefits, such as correcting posture, strengthening the back, and minimizing the waist. 

Who doesn’t love a tiny, snatched waist? For many women, corseting is empowering. Bye-bye body issues and hello gorgeous. But it turns out that helping you look and feel good isn’t all a mighty corset can do.

6 Ways Corseting Can Lower Anxiety

Listen, girl, if you suspect you have an anxiety disorder get yourself to a mental health expert. Taking care of yourself means taking care of your whole self—mental health included. All right? 

This article isn’t claiming corsets can solve all of your psychological problems. But it turns out that wearing a corset just might be a valuable part of your overall health care plan. Check out these ways wearing a corset can help lower anxiety levels. 

Corseting Can Increase Your Confidence

Many women with anxiety issues also have trouble with self-esteem. Some symptoms of an anxiety disorder include feeling nervous, anxious, and persistently worrying about everything—including how others see you. 

Thankfully women are becoming more body positive, embracing their natural shape even if it’s not model-perfect, but let’s be honest. Many women still carry a great deal of anxiety about their bodies.

Wearing a corset makes you stand straight and tall. As soon as you put it on, you feel a shift in how you carry yourself. Anything and everything you can do to boost that self-confidence will help ease feelings of anxiety.

Corsets Are Surprisingly Soothing

When worn correctly, a corset doesn’t squeeze or pinch. It should fit like a long comforting hug from your favorite person. What’s more soothing than that? A “corset hug” works on the same principle as a weighted blanket. It is similar to being swaddled when you were a baby. 

That small amount of pressure on the abdomen a corset provides helps alleviate the butterflies in the stomach feeling that frequently accompanies anxiety attacks. 

A Corset Creates a Protective Barrier

Corsets are sexy, but they’re not flimsy ~tear this off me, baby~ kind of sexy. A corset acts almost like a piece of armor that protects a vulnerable part of your body—your abdomen. It’s an extra layer of protection from the outside world. 

Many women enjoy corseting because they like the feeling of power and safety it provides. If the thought of being accidentally touched by strangers in a crowded space gives you anxiety, a protective full-coverage garment like an overbust corset may help. But hey, if you’re into being touched by strangers, we’re not here to judge.

Corsets Are Grounding

Living with an anxiety disorder can make a person feel out of balance and ungrounded. The constant presence of a corset wrapped around your waist is like a physical reminder to be present in your body and now worry about tomorrow or replay past mistakes. 

If anxiety makes you feel like you’re “out of your body” and going 1000 directions at once, try corseting. Start with an underbust corset that fits snugly enough to remind you it’s there but not tight enough to limit your movements.

Corsets Add Structure

Some people with anxiety feel so many things in their lives are out of control. They’re always waiting for the next anxiety attack to ruin their plans, or they stop making plans at all. We don’t want that for you, no! We want you to get out there and grab life by the laces, honey. But sometimes, before you can feel free, you need to feel you have control. That’s where corseting comes in.

Wearing a corset now and then for fashion or fun is great. Waist training is a discipline that requires some commitment. If having more structure in your life would ease your anxiety, try a short cotton corset or a corset belt and work your way up to a full overbust trainer. 

Celebrating every inch of progress along the way will help you feel like the conquering shero you really are.

Corsets Are So Meta

In the language of metaphysics, compression over the abdominal area, and especially over the solar plexus, activates the Manipura chakra. Some spiritual traditions teach that humans have seven primary chakra or energy centers located along an energy line that runs from the top of the head through the body’s center. 

The Manipura chakra relates to self-esteem and interpersonal relationships. A corset provides a constant pressure source at just the right spot to keep the chakra stimulated. Will it help you feel more enlightened? Maybe so.  

Give Me the Science

At first glance, it may seem like wearing a corset to soothe anxiety is more fantasy than fact, but there is some science to support the idea. Touch has a calming effect on almost everyone. For people with anxiety, a firm, soothing touch can be more calming than any other type of gesture. 

Pressure on certain points of the body, especially deep pressure, is shown to calm overstimulated nerves. The kind of deep touch that a corset offers signals to the brain to produce “feel good” hormones like dopamine and serotonin. These neurotransmitters naturally slow the heart rate and make you feel more relaxed. And you just got scienced!.

Of course, wearing a corset won’t cure any type of mental health issue, but adding corseting to the rest of your recommended treatments may help you feel more confident, more relaxed, and more present in your body. If you also look fabulous while taking care of your mental health, what’s wrong with that?

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