Integrative Approaches to Anxiety
The Landscape from which Anxiety Arises
I’ve been thinking a lot about anxiety recently. Most of the women I work with have some amount of anxiety. For some women, anxiety is background noise in their life. It’s there, they’ve learned to live with it, and it likely becomes more prominent in certain seasons of life or certain situations. For others, anxiety is a prominent part of their everyday experience, often negatively affecting function or their ability to be in their life or their body with ease.
I am not a psychiatrist or an expert in anxiety, but I want to offer my perspective from my own experience. Anxiety often says either the world isn’t safe or my body isn’t safe. For many women, that feels true. The world isn’t truly safe for women. Women have had to learn to live in a way to try to keep themselves safe – physically and emotionally – as they navigate jobs, cities, relationships, travel, literally everything. I, like most women, can give you hundreds of examples of times and places I wasn’t sure I was safe as a woman. As women, many of us have well-developed hypervigilant parts that try to help us stay safe. So, those parts that are anxious and hypervigilant are adaptive parts that help us navigate the world as women.
For many women, they’ve also been taught that their body isn’t safe or isn’t to be trusted. This can be set up in so many ways. For many, it starts when we are young, and we intuitively feel that something isn’t right. Perhaps our caregivers or parents aren’t happy, and we feel tension or anger or pain. However, they smile and tell us that everything is fine. We are explicitly told not to trust what we feel by the people we love and trust. We therefore learn not to believe our body’s wisdom. For many of the women I work with, this also happens on their health journey. Their body is telling them that something is off or something isn’t right. They don’t feel well – maybe it’s fatigue or anxiety or bloating and nausea - and they go to doctors or other specialists who tell them that nothing is wrong. So once again, someone in authority is telling them that what their body is telling them isn’t to be believed. The message is that our somatic experience in our bodies isn’t to be trusted.
When I begin working with someone who suffers from anxiety, this is the landscape that I begin in. I believe that the anxiety is an adaptive part trying to protect us. We often end up in an adversarial and unhelpful relationship with our bodies when we approach any problem, including anxiety, as something wrong with us that needs to be fixed. I always approach with curiosity and an understanding that this is an adaptive response to something in our lives. Now, even when we view the anxiety as adaptive and have compassion for where it may be coming from, we still want to help quiet it or heal it so that we can live with ease in our bodies (anxiety does not allow us to find ease).
Integrative Approaches to Anxiety
Our daily habits are always the foundation of integrative medicine. The medicine is the food we eat, movement, sleep, and our stress (which can be from finances, relationships, jobs, big life changes, anything that disrupts our feeling of safety).
Food: it is important that we are heating whole foods with enough protein and fiber. Whole foods feed our brain and can help us feel more grounded as well. Choosing foods that keep your blood sugar more regulated also helps anxiety (so less sugar and low in processed foods). Some people may also need to avoid specific food triggers to feel their best. Lastly, I would avoid alcohol and avoid caffeine (or decrease significantly) when anxiety is interfering with life.
Exercise: movement is a fundamental part of mental health. Studies clearly show that exercise benefits mental health. In fact, exercise can be as effective as an antidepressant medication for mild to moderate depression. Movement can also help us be more present in our bodies.
Sleep: sleep and anxiety are very closely connected. Anxiety often disrupts the quality of sleep, and decreased sleep intensifies anxiety.
Stress: I object to the word stress management though it’s widely used. To me, stress management suggests that it’s okay for us to stay in toxic jobs, relationships, or situations as long as we manage the stress that it is causing. For me, stress management is creating a life where your job, relationships, and most of your day is spent without constant stress. Having said that, regardless of how intentional we are about creating a life that meets our needs, we will all encounter increased periods of stress at times. So, having practices that help return us to our bodies and help regulate our nervous systems is extremely important. Tools that are helpful for me are yoga and meditation, walking in nature, journaling, deep connection with people I love, dancing to songs I love, sex, coaching, and therapy.
Beyond the Foundation
After we’ve established foundational habits that support our bodies and mental health, other things to think about include:
The gut: there is a strong connection between the gut and the brain, and some people see a significant improvement in mental health by focusing on healing the gut (which may look like avoiding inflammatory foods, supplements for healing, thinking about the vagus nerve and stress and how the nervous system is affecting the gut).
Nervous system regulation, attunement, and embodiment: many of the women I meet have experienced trauma – whether the trauma was relational such as a lack of emotional attunement from caregivers or big traumas like sexual abuse or assault. Many women have never really felt safe in their bodies or have learned (adaptively) to disconnect from their bodies. They have also developed an adversarial and untrusting relationship with their bodies. So, some of the work is learning to attune to what we’re feeling, learning to be in our bodies, and learning to feel safe. These are practices. We may get pulled out of our bodies and have to come back to our bodies one hundred times in a day. Learning to attune to our emotions rather than push them away is a process we learn over weeks, months, and even years. It has taken us years to get to where we are, and it takes time to master these new ways of being. I’m not saying it will take years to feel better, but that this journey of healing is a journey that continues over months and years.
Botanicals and supplements: I love adaptogens. I also love omega 3 fatty acids. Many people benefit from targeted supplements to support their bodies as we focus on anxiety.
Medication: many women interested in integrative or holistic medicine feel like medication is failure. Medication is simply another tool and sometimes it is the best tool in that moment. I never recommend medication alone. When we are talking about medication, I always recommend medication plus an integrative approach.
Therapy: I am a huge fan of therapy. Therapy can help us understand and work through the past and help us shift the thought patterns or ways of being that continue to contribute to the anxiety. There are many different therapeutic approaches, and different people may benefit from different approaches. I find somatic practices especially beneficial for women learning to understand and trust their bodies.
In Summary
Anxiety is a common struggle for women, especially high-functioning, sensitive women whose bodies are constantly scanning the energy and environment around them. From my experience, the key elements in treating anxiety are food, movement, sleep, stress, and understanding the nervous system. The list above is by no means comprehensive. Many people find benefit in other modalities and practices (reiki, bodywork, energy medicine, psychedelics, acupuncture, and others). Healing anxiety often requires us to deepen our relationship with ourselves and learn to care for ourselves differently.
This article is for educational and informational purposes only and solely as a self-help tool for your own use. I am not providing medical, psychological, or nutrition therapy advice. You should not use this information to diagnose or treat any health problems or illnesses without consulting your own medical practitioner. Always seek the advice of your own medical practitioner and/or mental health provider about your specific health situation. For my full Disclaimer, please go to https://www.healingwithintentionim.com/disclaimer
