Can My Anxiety Hurt Me?

Hey, loves. This is Dr. Nicole Cain. And today I want to talk about a common question that I hear, which is, is my anxiety harmful? So many people, when they are having a panic attack or when they're anxious, they start to worry, is the panic going to kill me? Is it going to hurt me? Is something bad going to happen? Because panic feels really dangerous. So I'm going to give you the answer to that question in just a moment. But first, I want to tell you really quickly about this amazing springboard that we have. It's basically an answer to getting you results really quickly while you're doing the work to get to the root cause of your anxiety, to get to the root cause of your stress. And the springboard is jam packed with resources that work really quickly that you can start using today. So I'll make sure to get you that link, but download it, it's free and it's beautiful, and I think you're really going to like it. And so the question that we're talking about today is, can anxiety hurt me? Can anxiety kill me? A lot of people are worried, oh, my gosh, am I going to have a heart attack from my anxiety? My heart is beating so fast. And so the answer to that question goes back to understanding how the body works. And so when we get anxious, our bodies have been designed to create a series processes that are actually designed to keep us safe. So imagine back in the day, you're gathering, you're making berries, and you hear a roar, a growl. You don't want to have to sit there and analyze what that is, what you should do. You want your body to just kick into gear and send you running so that you can get away to safety. And those people that were able to effectively do that were more likely to survive and thus have children that were more likely to do that. So what does your body actually doing? There's a couple of things. One is that your body releases a hormone from the adrenal glands called cortisol. Cortisol helps produce a fight flight freeze fawn response, which will increase your blood sugar to give your body energy to run. It will increase your heart rate to help you run faster. It will help increase your muscle strength and muscle tension. So your cortisol rises, it helps you rise to the occasion so you can respond quickly and effectively. And then your body, your adrenal glands will something called epinephrine or norepinephrine, which you may have heard called adrenaline. So that adrenaline response jumps up in tandem with the cortisol, and all of these processes happen and they make your heart race, they make you sweat, they make you tremble, they make your muscles spasm and twitch and jerk and they make you feel incredibly anxious. And part of that is all of this pent up energy that's inside of the body and you have to run, you have to get it out. So the difficult part about that is, is that your body doesn't very well discriminate between being really excited, being in actual danger, or feeling anxious or nervous. The processes are all the same and the difference is how we label it. So the answer to the question is that anxiety in and of itself is not harmful. It can feel really dangerous and really scary. Scary. But I have so many strategies for you to get started to being able to reframe what your body is doing and thus start to be able to control that response. One of the trickiest parts about the panic, that fight flight, freeze spawn response, that feeling of terror that comes with anxiety mounting, is that there's a few things that happen in the brain. And when we think of the brain and we think of neuroscience, we, we know that the brain is approximately broken down into three key areas. The logical prefrontal cortex, the emotional midbrain. And then we call it the reptilian brain, or the ancient brain, or that brain that sends us into those physical fight flight, freeze spawn responses. And so when we get really stressed or when we get really anxious, these two parts of the brain may shut down. Your higher order logical thinking may shut down. And that reptilian brain kicks into high gear, kicks into my workload. And so that's part of the problem when we're anxious or when we're really excited, or when we're really stressed and emotional and overwhelmed, is that our logical brain isn't able to keep up with this kind of fight flight, freeze spawn response. And the good news is that I have so many techniques and strategies to help you fix that. So check out our breakthrough springboard. It's so good it gets you started. And then jump in the Facebook group, because that Facebook group is jam packed with so much information, you can actually correct this process. Your brain has been paved with all these highways towards anxiety and stress and we can actually repave that brain. And I'm going to teach you how. And that is my jam. So check it out. We'll make sure to put a comment in the link in the tabs. And I hope that you can hear me. I'm outside. I was in the inspired I'm by this amazing oak tree. And so to learn more about what we have going on, what we have for you, how you can benefit, how you can get involved. Check out my website, Dr.nicolecane.com and otherwise, check out those two resources. Go to the springboard and I will see you guys next time. I honor you. I love you. You can get your life back from anxiety. Please, like this video and share with a friend that might benefit from this. It helps the algorithm for Facebook to know that what we're doing is valuable so you that that you can see future videos. All right, I love you. I'll see you guys later. Take care of.