Why Stress Might Be Causing Your Bladder Leaks

Stress can manifest itself in so many ways, causing changes to your body, mood and behaviours. It may affect your sleep. You might get a pounding in your head and your muscles feel tense and achy. You may feel anxious with a lack of focus. Your stomach might feel uneasy. This all sounds familiar, but you might be less aware of how stress and anxiety can influence your pelvic floor. 

Many people hold stress in their muscles.

Not sure if you hold tension in your muscles?

Let’s do a quick check by scanning down your body.

·        Is your jaw clenched?

·        Are your shoulders pulled up towards your ears?

·        Do you feel tightness in your tummy?

·        Are you clenching your bottom muscles?

When your muscles are constantly contracted and tight this can lead to pain or dysfunction.

Stress and The Pelvic Floor 

So what does this all have to do with the pelvic floor?

If you have any of the above stress habits you may also be clenching your pelvic floor muscles and you are probably not even aware of it..

Stress is a normal part of life. Stress becomes problematic when it is prolonged and there is no relief between stressors. The pelvic floor is one of those regions that is very tightly intertwined with the rest of your nervous system, your brain and everything else that’s going on in your body and in your life, meaning that these tissues are likely to experience the negative effects of stress and anxiety.

In a study of involuntary pelvic floor activity and experienced threat in women (van der Velde & Everaerd, 2001), women were shown video clips from a scary movie, among more neutral clips like that of the weather. The women demonstrated increased pelvic floor tension when exposed to the threatening, or stressful film, but not while watching the neutral footage. Our pelvic floor muscles are susceptible to what is going on around us. We can hold a lot of the stress and negativity we see in the world in our pelvic floor.

Like any other muscle in the body, if your pelvic floor muscles is overactive and constantly switched on it can create problems.

What happens to the Pelvic Floor 

The amount of pelvic floor tension does not seem to be clearly related to our awareness of pelvic floor sensations. In other words, you might not realize you have stress-related pelvic floor tension until it leads to new and troublesome symptoms of dysfunction. Stress and the tightening of pelvic floor muscles can lead to: 

•  Urinary frequency (increased trips to the toilet) 

•  Urgency (strong sensation to use the toilet which feels hard to control) 

•  Constipation 

•  Night time urination (waking up more than once to visit the toilet) 

•  Sexual pain or dysfunction

•  Pelvic girdle pain (feelings of tension radiating into the hips, pubic bone, low back, and groin) 

Breathing, stress and the pelvic floor.

Lots of women that I assess are breathing not with their diaphragms but with their secondary accessory breathing muscles, which are their neck and upper shoulders. This is a stressed-out breath which stimulates the fight-flight sympathetic nervous system, which keeps you on edge and keeps your brain feeling like you’re in danger, making it send pain signals to the area it’s used to sending them to, to keep you protected.

Each time you breathe in the diaphragm lowers itself. And as it lowers it also allows the lowering of the pelvic floor. So, each time you’re breathing in deeply and breathing out, the pelvic floor is also getting a nice rhythmic movement.

And why is breathing so important? The stimulation of the parasympathetic nervous system allows the brain to feel safe and calm. A lot of people with pelvic floor dysfunction have some type of digestive, GI or constipation-related problem. When you’re in a state of tension (fight-flight) then the rest and digest nervous system are quiet. It can’t work.

What can I do if I have pelvic floor tension?

Body Scan or Body Check-in

Several times throughout the day, pause and pay attention to what your body is doing. Start at your jaw, then work down to your shoulders, chest, tummy, bum, pelvic floor and feet. If you notice that any of these areas are tight, try let them go and be heavy to relax them.

Try not to get frustrated with yourself if you constantly find you are gripping muscles. The more you bring your awareness to the muscles and release them the more they will get the message to stay in a relaxed position.

Diaphragmatic Breathing

Learning how to coordinate your diaphragm and pelvic floor muscles. This is best done through slow and deep breathing through your nose to fill your ribs, abdomen and pelvis. Imagine inflating a balloon in your pelvis as you inhale. Pause and slowly breathe out through the mouth.

Repeating this for 30 seconds several times during the day can really help release tension.

As you get better at this we add in a gentle pelvic floor contraction on the exhale. This is the foundation for getting a pelvic floor to work well again.

Our pelvic floor Revival Course is a 6-week programme which will help you understand and improve the coordination of the pelvic floor with the diaphragm and other surrounding muscles leaving you with a much stronger pelvic floor.

Stretch

Many stretches and positions can help get the pelvic floor moving well again and releasing tension. Two of my favourites are the happy baby pose the and child’s pose. These poses and other movements will all be included in our Pelvic Floor Revival Classes. It’s not all about the Kegels. Pelvic Floor training will actually be fun in our course.

When managing stress and muscle tension, it is essential to be consistent with what works for you. It’s not a one-time thing.

Why not join our 6-week Pelvic Floor Revival Couse to get you started on your journey to re discovering your pelvic floor.