38. Learning about Anxiety and How to Identify the 8 Types of Anxiety

Welcome to my podcast. I'm Dr. Nicole Cain, a naturopathic doctor with a master's in clinical psychology and a former anxiety sufferer turned anxiety freedom rebel. I've been talking a lot about the eight types of anxiety. Have you ever heard that before, that there are eight types of anxiety? It's amazing because by knowing what type of the eight types of anxiety that you have, it can help you actually zoom in on treatments that work. And this is really especially important to know because it takes us beyond the label. So many people think about anxiety in terms of what diagnosis do I have? And anxiety diagnoses are useful in the more standard medical model because by having a specific diagnosis, they can give you a specific medication protocol. And I am all about helping you actually go beyond the specific medication protocol in actually getting to the bottom of why you feel anxious. And so one of the best ways to do that is to know what type of anxiety you're actually dealing with. And there are eight main types of anxiety, not eight diagnoses of anxiety, but eight main ways that we may experience anxiety. And most people that I with fall on a spectrum where it's a little bit of a Venn diagram, right? So I may be all chest anxiety, like when I'm anxious, it goes in the chest. But maybe you may experience more anxiety in your gut, but then you get a little bit of heart palpitations, but it's mostly in your gut. So in that Venn diagram, you have a little bit of overlap. So when I'm going through these is start to think about what you resonate the most with. And then we want to rank it in order of priority. These types of anxiety are is it's just straight up your body giving you information on how uniquely it's out of balance so that we can help you restore balance. Anxiety is your body attempting to give you information so that you can heal. And so we don't want to just slap a label on you. We want to actually get to the root cause of why your body is out of balance. And by looking at one of the eight types or a blend of the eight types, we can start to do that more quickly and more effectively. So the eight types we wanna think about is we have gut anxiety, and that's anxiety that you feel in your gut. It could be when you get anxious, you get butterflies in your stomach, it could be nausea, it could be diarrhea, it could be irritable bowel type syndrome, it could be constipation, it could be really anything that's focused in your gut or in your digestive tract. And that can cause anxiety or it can get worse when you're anxious. The second type of anxiety is more like the thought anxiety. And this is an, that really focuses in your mind. This is where we may have ocd, obsessive thoughts, magical thoughts, ritualistic thinking, persistent thoughts. If you've ever dealt with just repetitive, annoying, fearful thoughts or even phobias or belief systems, this is called thought anxiety. And it's the second type. And so thoughts can make us anxious. And this is why cognitive behavioral therapy works so well for some people and it doesn't work for others, is those who have thought anxiety. Anxiety will do really well with intervals that actually address the thoughts. But if you have, for example, gut anxiety, doing CBT might not be the specific solution for you. She talked about gut anxiety and thought anxiety. And then the third one is depressive anxiety. And this is if you feel low and depressed and you feel despair and totally discouraged, and if you feel hopeless and maybe that wired and tired feeling, but really the anxiety is really blended and mixed with pretty intense feelings of depression. And so botanically, some herbs are really good at reducing anxiety, but also lifting the mood. And there are certain supplements and there are certain things that we can find on testing that give us data about why you might be experiencing this kind of anxiety. Right, the depression anxiety. And it's always on a spectrum. And so some of us have low grade depression. And depression anxiety is when it's pretty significant and it's going hand in hand, right? So then we have cardiac anxiety. And this is anything that's in the chest area. So this is anxiety that may result in palpitations or trembling of a heart, your heart skipping a beat, your heart racing, chest pains. A lot of people with chest anxiety or cardiac anxiety are afraid that they're going to have a heart attack when really it's a panic attack. In fact, that's one of the most common reasons that people go into the ER is that they think they're having a heart attack and it's actually a panic attack. So if you deal with feelings of nervousness or impending doom or pressure or any sensations in the chest, then you might be dealing with chest anxiety. And so then we have neurological anxiety, which is the muscles and the nerves. And so people with neurological anxiety will experience tingling in the fingers, or some individuals get headaches or jaw tension, like anything that has to do with your muscles or has to do with your nerves. And so do you get muscle tension? Do you get neck soreness? Do you get headaches, do you get restless legs? Do you get trembling? When you feel anxious, then you might have the neurological type, muscle type of anxiety. And then we have three more. And the next one is angry anxiety. And this is really the fight flavor of the fight flight, freeze, fawn response. And so this is when we get really agitated or amplified, our fuse is really short. And so angry anxiety is when you feel anxious, you might not actually realize this anxiety. You might actually just be feeling really frustrated and annoyed and easily overstimulated and really triggerable. And so the solutions for angry anxiety or anxiety that's mounting in frustration, as you can see, are really different than anxiety that's manifesting in your muscles. But diagnostically, you may still be given the same diagnosis. They may just say, yeah, you have generalized anxiety disorder, take this antidepressant or this benzo. But as we start to get into the types, you'll see why it matters and how it can give us data. The last two types of anxiety we have endocrine anxiety and trauma anxiety. Endocrine anxiety is any anxiety that comes from hormones or affects your hormones. If you ever get anxious around your periods, or do you get anxious when you're pregnant, or do you get anxious postpartum, or do you get anxious around menopause, or did you get anxious when you hit puberty? Anything that has to do with sex hormones can relate to anxiety. And so if you notice that there's a hormonal link to it, we can look at your hormones and restore balance. There's also thyroid hormone. Oftentimes, an imbalance in the thyroid hormone can cause anxiety symptoms. And if we don't check your hormones, we would never know. I have a friend who that happened to. She was incredibly anxious, and her doctors didn't check her thyroid. We checked her thyroid. She had hyperthyroidism. Also, we know that emotional stress triggers and anxiety can cause imbalances in our hormones. For example, women may be so anxious that their periods are late or that they miss a period altogether. And we also know that endocrine anxiety can be the adrenal glands. Right? We know that high cortisol, high stress can make us anxious, and it can feed into the adrenals producing a lot of stress hormone. Right? And then the last of the eight types of anxiety is trauma anxiety, and trauma anxiety is anxiety where it's really rooted in a trauma. So you may deal with flashbacks or intrusive memories, or you may have other symptoms of ptsd, and the anxiety is really focused around that. So knowing that information. It will help us treat the root cause, which is the trauma, so that your anxiety goes away. As opposed to just trying to prune the weeds out of the top of the ground. We can get to the roots of those weeds, the trauma, and totally clear that so your anxiety goes away. Getting to the root cause of what type of anxiety you have is going to help us get you the results and the answers that you're looking for. So stay tuned for more free content. I'm Dr. Nicole and I will see you later. Bye.

The recording you just listened to consists of the personal opinions of Dr. Nicole Caine, a naturopathic doctor with a Master's in Clinical psychology. While these opinions are based upon literature, her counseling education, medical training, and clinical experience, this content should not be viewed as the definitive opinion on these subjects. Listening to this podcast is not a substitute for any sort of medical, psychological or other form of treatment. If you are in a Crisis, please call 911 or call the National Suicide Prevention Line at 1-800-273-8255. If you're in need of counseling, don't hesitate to make an appointment with a counselor in your area. Dr. Nicole Cain is so passionate about people getting their life back. If this resonates with you and you think this podcast would help someone you love, please share it with them. Stay in the conversation with Dr. Nicole Cain about writing the next chapter of your life so that it plays out just just the way you want it. Explore your options for working with her at www. Dr. Nicolecane.com that's Dr. D R Nicole N I C O L E Cain C-A-I n.com when you're there, be sure to take advantage of the Free Anxiety Freedom One week challenge. We look forward to seeing you on the next episode of the get your life Back podcast. Here's to your next chapter there.

Sam.