My history with Anxiety and Panic 

written March 2015

A dear friend of mine just posted a New York Times article from Feb 28, 2015 exposing that 1 in 4 women in the US are on psychiatric medication. That news chilled me as recently I realized I have been experiencing things that easily could put me in that1 in four. I grew up in a loving family, have always been healthy, have a great husband, kids and love my work. However, about 6 weeks ago was completely scared and humbled with the experience of my first real panic attack (ironically on an acupuncturist’s table). In my family anxiety and depression were weaknesses that were not real and when felt at all just needed to be pushed through as it was a temporary feeling based in the reality that fatigue was the problem and we just need to rest. We are a get-r-done batch of folks, feeling joy by accomplishing much and quickly. This worked great for 37 years of my life until the day when I felt like I was going to die. I felt truly like something was very wrong with me I just did not know what. I felt like I was dangerously close to a precipice that I had never before realized was there and on the other side of this precipice was complete loss of control and insanity. I was deeply scared and shaken. I felt weak in my body, tingly, with a tightness in my chest. I felt like I could not do the simple tasks that were in front of me (drive home, feed my kids). I call it “procedural thinking” where I literally have to talk to myself in my head “now pick up the cup, now walk to the fridge, now respond to your child.” I could not sleep at night and cried and cried. I felt so scared. My husband and family did not really understand, they had never seen me like this and they did not even know what to think. I had ceased my tremendous skill of “holding it all together” of being able to keep juggling all the balls in the air that are my life.

It took me a few very skilled practitioners, my loving husband, family and friends and my own knowledge of human physiology to figure out what was going on and to start fixing it. See, I am a fix-it person and expect I can do the fixing very quickly and efficiently. Again, I am humbled with this experience as even writing these words I know I am not out of the woods… yet. I could have easily become a statistic on another anti-anxiety medication. But that is not how my family works, we are in the holistic medicine world and believe also that everything happens for a reason, so I am discovering what my reasons are and what I am supposed to learn from this.

The practitioners that helped me the most were in the field of homeopathy (I did a constitutional remedy) and counseling (a great therapist in Portland spent 4 hours with me over the course of my 4cday visit.) She helped me identify it was anxiety because I just thought I was dying. I had never received messages from my body that were not reliable, were not helpful and true. I ordered my own blood work (convinced it was all physiological at first). I already know about adrenal glands and indeed have been passionate about helping my patients identify adrenal fatigue and fix it. But I did not realize how much I did not know.

So here is the physiology (this is the part I am good at!). There are adrenal glands which sit on your kidneys. They are in charge of how we deal with stress and secrete adrenaline and cortisol when we get into a stress response. Our body does not differentiate between good and bad stress, it is all interpreted as the same thing by our adrenals and our sympathetic nervous system kicks in and puts us into full outrun-the-bear mode, fight or freeze. This sympathetic “survival” mode literally changes out physiology. Our blood is taken from the digestive and reproductive tract and shunted to large muscles to run, our pupils dilate to let in more light, our heart-rate and blood pressure increases, our sphincters constrict so we don’t eliminate waste, the hormones are switched from the reproductive sex hormone to stress hormone production and more. If you think of our stress response sounding the alarm to good stress, bad stress, our children’s needs, the news, pollution and environmental toxins, bad foods, etc, you can guess that many of us are in a constant stress response. What happens long term? Our adrenals become dysregulated. After 6 years in practice and 10 years of working on my own adrenals, I think now that if we are not extremely careful, it is not how your adrenals will go, but when. I feel like we are all ticking time bombs in our messed up reality of go go go do do do.

Adrenals can deregulate in two ways. One is they fatigue (the cortisol output literally cannot keep up with the stress and poops out). That is the one I had experienced and could easily catch in my practice. That is the one where you are so tired you can’t get going so you rely on sugar or caffeine. Where you need another shot of sugar or caffeine around 3pm and where you feel like you can’t get enough sleep. Honestly, now that I know the other side, this adrenal fatigue feels like the easy one. You take your adrenal herbs, modify your diet, etc and you can heal your adrenals! If you don’t this adrenal fatigue is like the domino that once it falls finally it likely knocks the thyroid and reproductive system out. Not so ironically, 1 in 4 women have hypothyroid disease by the time they are in their 40s. Hypothyroid not only includes intense fatigue, but also dry skin, hair, cold hands and feet, weight gain and sluggish metabolism in general. Reproductive issues are infertility, PMS, heavy periods, etc. The reason the adrenals is the first domino is that all three of these systems are regulated by the same part of our brain, the hypothalamus and pituitary glands (the HP axis). Also not so ironically, melatonin production and sleep are also on this axis. And the pancreas and blood sugar regulation. It is all connected.

The second way adrenals deregulate is they go high cortisol. This is what was new for me. Of course I have heard about it for years, but never experienced it. High cortisol is a serious alarm phase, you are literally running. Your heart rate can increase, you feel adrenaline in your system, you cannot rest but you are exhausted, “wired and tired” is how it is classically described. You can read my other adrenal articles to learn more about other symptoms related. Basically though it comes down to anxiety. I never knew what anxiety felt like so I could not even identify myself in that place. It took two practitioners to help me identify it (I am not my own best doctor!) Although when my brain told my body something was really wrong it was extra scary because I have always been able to hear messages from my body that were true. But indeed, this is what I am dealing with. What it manifests as it a feeling that I can’t drink caffeine as I could get way too jittery, a racing mind, a constant hunger (eating carbohydrates brings cortisol down, more later), an absolute inability to lose weight, more emotional reactions to my husband/family, not sleeping, an energy burst around 8pm, feeling like the lines were getting so deep in my face/I could see myself aging, a feeling of dread, “catastrophizing” where everything feels like it is on a train straight to disaster, a lot of fear, guilt because I am not wanting to be with my kids as much, and an inner knowledge of deep and profound fatigue that was being masked by these symptoms. Those of you who know about anxiety may see this as classic. I have never learned about anxiety though or been around it, so all this is a new discovery for me and I feel like I am a pioneer though a new terrain, trying to navigate.

I do feel like I am on the road to recovery. I want a quick fix, and if were more inclined to like meds, may have turned to those as a quick fix. However, I am really trying to take this as a time to look at my whole life and see how I got to this place, what I need to change so I don’t do it again, and go forward as a better and more enriched person.