Are you aware that the incidence of anxiety is rising dramatically? If you suffer from anxiety there is a good reason and it’s not your fault. The National Institute of Mental Health notes that more than 19% of all Americans suffer from anxiety at any one time.
There is a rapidly rising increase in anxiety among both children and adults. That’s understandable given the uncertainty of the world in which we live. Rapidly changing circumstances, uncertainty, and fear are just a few elements that can be considered the major ‘stressors’ contributing to this anxiety epidemic.
Here are a couple of social media posts I’ve done on anxiety:
The Anxiety Epidemic post features a picture of the cover of Newsweek on ‘The Anxiety Epidemic’. If you suffer from anxiety then you want to find resources offering anxiety treatment near you.
If you visit my website you can download a guide Take Back Control of Your Anxiety and Stress.
What’s the Cause of the Rising Anxiety?
The answer is stress but that requires some explanation. Most of us really don’t understand stress or how it has the impact on our bodies and health that it does. The famous Mayo Clinic says Chronic Stress Puts Your Health at Risk.
Here is a simple way to view how stress impacts the body.
- The impact of stress is much less about what the stress is and much more about how your brain and nervous system respond to the ‘stressor’
- Stress causes an activation of the Sympathetic ‘Fight-or-Flight’ Nervous System or SNS.
- The SNS is tasked with one objective, SURVIVAL
- The SNS raises heart rate, raises blood pressure, increases muscle tension and pain, raises inflammation, impairs digestion, impairs healing, and interferes with quality sleep.
- WHY? Because those functions are not necessary for immediate survival.
- Over time the SNS becomes more and more active.
- This chronic state of inflammation, tension, pain, and impaired quality sleep results in Anxiety for a growing number of people.
Do you see that it is the Nervous System that is the conductor of the orchestra of the body? And, if there is interference, imbalance, or tension on the nervous system it disrupts the communication pathway between the brain and the body.
What’s the Solution?
Before we tackle how to successfully treat anxiety let’s discuss what doesn’t work. Since anxiety is tied to long term stress many would naturally assume the answer lies in stress management. The problem there is that the vast majority of the stress we are exposed to lies outside of our control.
Another important concept is that it is less about the stress and more about how our brain and nervous system responds to the stress. Over time stress progressively activates the Sympathetic Nervous System. This activity is not easily turned off and managing stress is not the answer.
Medications are a common medical treatment for anxiety. They have many problems. First many take weeks to have an effect. They do not address the underlying cause and the side effects are many. Anti-depressants have potential serious side effects like suicidal ideation. Drugs like Xanax and Valium are addictive.
Another Approach to Anxiety
Let’s review a few things we know about what causes anxiety, how the body works, and how to reverse the conditions causing anxiety:
- The Nervous System is the control system responsible for maintaining balance in the body
- Stress over time over-activates the Sympathetic ‘Fight-or-Flight’ System
- This causes a cascade of reactions that increase pain, tension, inflammation and disrupt sleep and digestion
- The more the Sympathetic System becomes active the more an environment is established that allows the emergence of anxiety
The path out of anxiety is to reverse this process of Sympathetic Nervous System (SNS) overactivity or dominance. We want to re-establish balance to the nervous system.
The counterpart to the SNS is the Vagus Nerve of the Parasympathetic Nervous System. So, what is the Vagus Nerve responsible for:
- Calms your body down from the agitation of stress
- Controls breathing
- Proper Digestion
- Regulates healthy immune response, heart rate, blood pressure, digestion, mood, and much more
The 4 Critical Legs to a Successful Anxiety Treatment Program
Mental health counseling can be extremely valuable in understanding anxiety and changing patterns caused by trauma. The focus of my approach is to correct the imbalances in the Nervous System that are driving anxiety and other symptoms.
Critical Leg #1: Restore the body to balance. Structural imbalance is a source of stress on the body and is a perpetuating factor in the irritation of the nervous system that fires off the Sympathetic Nervous System (SNS).
You can check this out for yourself. Stand in front of a full length or bathroom mirror. It will help to have someone with you. Have them put their hands on top of your hips or pelvis. Is one side higher than the other? Go up to the shoulders and check if they are unlevel. Now look to the bottom of the ear lobes to see if your head is crooked.
From the side your ear should be right over your shoulder and your shoulder over your hip which should be over your ankle.
Did you find any imbalance? I rarely find someone without a pretty significant imbalance. The imbalance puts stress on your joints and makes your nervous system activate muscles in an attempt to bring you back to balance.
Correcting structural imbalance is the first step in bringing the body back to a state of ease.
Critical Leg #2: Cervical Curve. The spine has 3 curves that are your best defense against the forces of gravity. Due to significant trauma like car accidents, sports injuries and falls as well as postural microtrauma like computer work and texting the neck loses its curve. This causes a number of reactions:
- Increased muscle tension and pain through the neck and shoulders
- Accelerated degeneration causing arthritis
- Nervous System tension and pressure
An analogy I’ll often use to help understand the impact of the loss of the cervical curve is a motor vehicle and its tires and wheels. A new set of tires might last 40-50,000 miles. But, if the front end isn’t aligned or wheels are out of balance those tires might not last more than 30,000 miles. Drive a 100 miles and you’d be hard-pressed to notice any accelerated wear and tear. But, it’s starting.
The wear and tear in the cervical spine often takes place for years before it starts causing any significant problems. Quite often it causes neck and shoulder pain, headaches, and pain and numbness into the arms. But, it might not cause any significant pain before it causes nervous system imbalance and over activation of the Sympathetic System (SNS).
Promoting a restoration of the motion of the cervical spine and its curve is essential to reducing nervous system irritation.
Critical Leg #3: Correct irritation to the Autonomic Nervous System (ANS). The ANS consists of the Sympathetic System that is driving the tension and pain, interfering with quality sleep, and increasing inflammation. It also consists of the Vagus Nerve of the Parasympathetic System (PNS) that supports rest, digestion, recovery, healing, quality sleep, reduced inflammation and ease.
My focus here is the very upper cervical spine and the pelvis. These two areas are critical to removing tension and irritation from the Vagus Nerve. The Vagus Nerve passes right in front of C1, the top bone in the neck. Balancing the upper cervical spine is essential.
Proper motion of the mid back or thoracic spine is important in reducing activation of the Sympathetic ‘Fight-or-Flight’ Nervous System (SNS).
Critical Leg #4: Activating the Vagus Nerve. The longer your SNS has been activated and the more dominant it is, the more your Vagus Nerve activity or tone has been diminished. Restoring balance to your structure, promoting proper spinal curves, and restoring spinal motion are keys to removing tension that is perpetuating the underlying imbalance.
Now, we need to re-establish proper balance to the Autonomic Nervous System (ANS) by increasing the activity of the Vagus Nerve. The more your Sympathetic System has been triggered the more your Vagus Nerve is suppressed in its activity.
Beyond correcting any sources of irritation and tension we want to activate the Vagus Nerve. Doing this takes advantage of a neurological principle referred to as “Neurons that fire together, wire together”. The more you activate a nerve pathway the easier it becomes to activate it and the stronger it gets.
This is the pathway that contributed to the development of anxiety. We’re simply going to use the opposite pathway to restore balance.
Vagus Nerve activation is done in a variety of ways:
- Proper breathing to reduce breathing mechanics that activate the ‘Fight-or-Flight’ system.
- Conscious Breathwork to activate the Vagus.
- Regular exposure to the fractal patterns of nature.
- Gentle movement that promotes ease.
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