Anxiety And Worry In Women – Causes, Symptoms And Natural Relief
For example, if you were constantly yelled at as a child, you may feel anxious later in life whenever there is potential for confrontation with an authority figure — and you may go to extremes to avoid that confrontation, even in a situation as seemingly benign as returning an article of clothing that doesn’t fit. By this point your conscious mind has lost track of the link between your current feeling and your past emotional experience — you no longer have any idea why you’re anxious about something that shouldn’t be a cause of anxiety.
The problem with anxiety is that it becomes so easily entrenched — it becomes your normal state. The links among your neurotransmitters, hormones and metabolism become tuned to an equilibrium in which anxiety is maintained. That’s why anxiety relief is all about changing the physical and emotional causes of your anxiety and creating a new, healthier equilibrium. But first let’s explore more deeply what causes anxiety.
Anxiety and emotional experience
Early emotional experience is the wellspring for anxiety. The experience may be a major childhood trauma (the death of a parent, divorce, child abuse or sexual abuse, etc.), emotional abuse (constant criticism, abandonment, deprivation), or emotional patterning (anxious parent, alcoholic parent). These adverse emotional experiences can set up a pattern of chronic anxiety.
Childhood is a time of little power and control. When terrible things happen to us as children, our coping mechanisms are not up to it. We can’t process what’s happened and move on in a healthy way. In a very real sense, that adverse childhood experience is trapped inside us. In adulthood, those hidden issues often surface as anxiety symptoms. It may be difficult to connect what is triggering your anxiety to what came before — but there is always a link.
I think of one patient who had very controlling parents. She was charming, bubbly, warm and gregarious (the way her parents wanted her to be) — and exceedingly anxious all the time. Even as an adult she was still performing for others — not living her own life at all — and had little knowledge of what was wrong except for a feeling that she was a fraud. She married a very controlling man (continuing the pattern) and developed a compulsive eating disorder which caused rectal bleeding and other problems.
Her tests showed that her adrenals were exhausted, her serotonin was extremely low and the foods she was eating were throwing her digestive and limbic system completely out of balance. Once she began to support her neurotransmitters through diet and nutritional supplements she had the strength to begin therapy. Through the “talking cure” she was able to find her own power within the balance of her family. Her gastrointestinal problems went away, her anxiety and compulsive eating lessened and she had the physical health to back up her newfound mental strength — all without using anxiety medication.
In my experience, you can’t wrangle with anxiety unless you are willing to approach it from many sides. This can take some work — something conventional doctors tend to stay clear of. Antidepressants are given out like candy to anxiety patients to calm their physical symptoms, but in order to find complete anxiety relief — no matter what kind of anxiety symptoms you’re feeling — you must deal with the emotional piece.
Read more articles about how emotions can play a role in our section, Emotions, Anxiety and Mood.
The physical factors behind anxiety
Women have been taught for so long that anxiety is all in their heads that I’d like to spend a few moments talking about how anxiety is everywhere — in your brain, your pituitary gland, your adrenals, your GI system, your heart, and your ovaries too! And of course, they’re all interrelated.
- Neurotransmitters and anxiety. A neurotransmitter imbalance can sensitize your brain to a fear response. Consistently high levels of excitatory neurotransmitters (norepinephrine, epinephrine and dopamine) and correspondingly low levels of the calming, inhibitory neurotransmitters (serotonin and gamma-aminobutyric acid, or GABA) actually modify your brain chemistry. At Women to Women, we run a neurotransmitter test on every patient with symptoms of anxiety. The test is controversial but very useful in the hands of an experienced professional.
Caffeine affects brain chemistry by raising levels of dopamine; in sufficient amounts coffee and other caffeine-laden drinks can bring on panic attack symptoms. The jitteriness you feel from a shot of espresso comes from elevated dopamine. The neurotransmitter imbalances that cause anxiety are related to those in children with ADHD and ADD (conditions also associated with high dopamine); in fact, what may look like ADD in some children may actually be related to severe anxiety. The symptoms can be very similar. Read more about caffeine in our Detoxification section.