Your Anxiety May Not Be Psychological: Potential Influences

We’ve been led to believe that struggles such as anxiety or depression are psychological, but for many, these are just symptoms rather than a disease.

While I won’t encourage you to disregard professional diagnosis from your primary care physician, I do want to challenge you to take a different approach to how you view your mental struggles outside of the conventional path.

The Bigger Picture of Mental Health:

More than 337 million antidepressants prescriptions were made in 2021. That’s a radically high number! While the mental health field has expanded with the rise of people struggling, the approach has gravitated to “treat the symptoms” vs the problem.

I can’t deny that antidepressants and anti-anxiety medications can provide immediate relief to those who suffer, we should strive to understand the root problem vs. the surface level experiences.

Research I did during my Masters Degree, I found that 80% of research done in the psychological field doesn’t reach clinical practices!

This means that those who are seeing patients aren’t also benefiting from the expanded understanding of psychological and neurological advancements we are making in the field.

This isn’t to discourage you from seeing your primary care physicians, but to help you do your own research. With anything in life, we can’t always rely on others to make the best decisions for us. We have to listen and then do our own research. It’s a basic practice for critical thinking. It’s not to deny the help of others, but to make an educated guess!

I felt inspired to write this for a few months. Not to jinx myself but after a few years of cycling out of extreme panic attacks, I finally got my experience under control. I wanted to share my personal research, my personal experience and my deeper understanding of psychological principles to help you further your own journey.

My lifelong experience:

I started having anxiety at the age of 5. While certain life events have absolutely contributed to the struggles I had, I also believe that through epigenetics (the genetic passing of traits), anxiety was passed down. My mom was extremely anxious during her pregnancy, was in an extremely abusive relationship and the birth was tremendously traumatic.

During my childhood it got so bad I had to listen to psychological tapes pre recorded at night to reprogram my brain. These tapes helped and after awhile I didn’t experience anxiety until my teenage years.

Teenage Years:

Fast forward to when I was 17, panic attacks began. I was heavily drinking, smoking weed because I was getting bullied in school. It got so bad I had to stop going after the first year of my senior year! I did school online to graduate.

A year went by and anxiety and life got so bad I got depressed. I would wake up in the middle of the night, unable to breathe, shaking and scared as hell! After awhile it wasn’t only at night, but in the middle of my day. Low and behold, how I begun this journey of self development and psychology in the first place! I was 18, my body was having these physiological reactions I couldn’t get any relief.

After 6 months of intensive healing, processing, meditating, eating clean and working out. Anxiety went away! I was so relieved… Until I turned 20 and it all started again.

It was 5 years of on and off anxiety. Of course, there were some unhealthy life events influencing anxiety but the consistent “on edge” feeling felt unnatural. I learned to live with it because I refused to take medications that would influence my what already felt like chemical imbalance or sensitivity.

Fast Forward to Present Day & My Research:

At some point, anxiety just gets old!

I wasn’t unhappy, I actually loved my life, where I was living, the work I was doing and proud of my accomplishments. I was traveling often and felt secure. Despite all of this, anxiety would wake me up from my sleep and lead to 30 minutes of non stop panic. Labored breathing, racing heart rate (to the point I truly felt like I was having a heart attack) !

I integrated therapy, but the four therapists I saw couldn’t really help me. At this point I was still taking a cognitive therapy approach with the thought I still had stored trauma or emotions in my body.

It wasn’t until I went into surgery to have my wisdom teeth out that the anxiety stopped! Now, I can’t tell you that having impacted wisdom teeth was causing anxiety, but after I got my wisdom teeth removed and finished the antibiotics, I stopped waking up in the middle of the night.

The kick was that I had what seemed like withdrawal symptoms on the third day of taking antibiotics. I was anxious, my heart was the fastest it had ever been and I was shaking so bad I had to take a cold shower to try and calm my nerves. It was truly the scariest anxiety I’d ever had!

After this, I wanted to find some answer to relieve anxiety! Basically fed the fuck up of the cycle. When I looked for answers, I couldn’t find any professional research done between antibiotics and anxiety, but Reddit was my friend! I read over 50 people talking about how they had the same exact response to antibiotics that I had (btw, I’ve never taken antibiotics before this experience). Of course you had people who said that there is not medical evidence to prove this, but when you have real people sharing their real experience, there needs to be a deeper look despite if it’s been professionally studied!

I researched the influence of antiobiotics on our body, and how it cleans out the healthy bacteria in our gut because of course, it’s clearing out any bacteria in our body.

When we don’t have healthy bacteria in our gut, the brain - gut connection becomes murky (I’ll talk about this briefly in a bit).

Upon further research, I explored gut health and anxiety. Nerve health and anxiety. Any PHYSICAL aspects that could help me understand.

After two weeks of taking some down time to heal from my wisdom teeth surgery, I went to the doctor to get some blood work done. They of course offered me anti anxiety medication but instead I asked for a full panel.

They found some vitamins that were low.

After all this, I went ahead and started a journey of enhancing my gut health, empowering micronutrients / vitamins and regulating my nervous system.

I gave it a few months to make sure nothing came back up, and here I am writing this for you.

So after this long winded explanation I come to share with you some non psychological things that may be impacting your mental health!

This is not to say you shouldn’t focus on cognitive and emotional healing, YOU ABSOLUTELY SHOULD. Journal. Meditate. Indulge in somatic practices, but also take a look at your over all physical health. I worked out, ate clean and was still having anxiety. It’s not just about going to the gym and having a perfect diet, it’s not just about honoring your emotions or seeing a therapist, it’s a well rounded approach. Understanding our biology and body.

Influences of Anxiety:

1. Vitamin deficiencies: GET YOUR BLOOD WORK DONE! This will tell you if you are low in any vitamins. Don’t just take vitamins because social media says you should. Get a clear picture of what your health is saying. Sometimes we are taking way too many supplements and influencing our natural chemicals. Sometimes, we are eating clean but not getting everything we need. When you take initiative to understand your body, you get to be empowered to make health decisions for YOU. Not societal influencers.

2. Unhealthy gut: Your gut is your second brain. It has what’s called the enteric nervous system, which holds over 100 million nerves. 70% of serotonin, which regulates our mood, comes from the gut. The enteric nervous system controls communication with the gut and brain. You are supposed to have healthy bacteria, which is called microbiome, in your gut. With an increase in unhealthy bacteria or a lack of healthy microbiome, it sends signals that can increase anxiety responses and symptoms.

3. Underlying health issues: Any disturbed function in the body can create an undesirable physiological reaction in our body. Our body is ALWAYS in communication. For me, all four wisdom teeth impacted was influencing nerves. Get your health checked and take the time to address issues that need to your attention.

These are just my top factors, for now.

I’m not a doctor. All of this may just be speculation. But I share this to inspire you to take another approach to your mental healthy if you’ve:

1. Tried therapy and it hasn’t helped you

2. You have a healthy routine and are still experiencing anxiety

3. You’ve done somatic healing practices and they still aren’t working for you

Taking a look at the bigger picture won’t harm, only enhance your healing journey. AGAIN, THIS IS NOT MEDICAL OR PROFESSIONAL ADVICE.

Like anything I share, this comes from my personal findings and understanding. I only share what I have tested for myself. I found relief in this approach to heal a physiological reaction influencing my psychological health. However, I wouldn’t have been able to address these issues if I didn’t have or have done my own foundational work in emotional and psychological healing of trauma. This doesn’t replace a psychological approach.

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I’m rooting for you and excited to continue to share findings from research, psychological principles, life revelations and explorations to help us all elevate & grow. ❤️