Dr. Nicole Cain explains trauma anxiety, which stems from a single major event or accumulated smaller ones that shift how you see yourself and the world. Flashbacks, intrusive thoughts, nightmares, and hypervigilance are core symptoms. EMDR is the primary evidence-based treatment, often covered by insurance, alongside mindfulness and nervous-system retraining.
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Dr. Nicole Cain
May 7, 2024
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Your results indicate that you may be dealing with a type of anxiety called trauma anxiety. Trauma anxiety refers to anxiety that is primarily focused around a big event or a bunch of small events that may have affected the way that you see yourself, others, and the world. Oftentimes with trauma anxiety, we see that people deal with flashbacks or intrusive thoughts or nightmares or, or they're avoiding situations where they tend to get activated. And while adversity and stress can cause a domino effect that leads to all the other symptoms of anxiety, all the other subtypes of anxiety, with trauma anxiety, the trauma is the main thing. And so that's where you want to focus on first. Think about it as the root cause. We've seen a lot of literature coming out in the past decade about how adversity and stress, stress and overwhelm, require that the mind, the body, the nervous system, and the other bodily organ systems to constantly adapt and change. And those adaptations are designed to help you survive and thrive despite the stressors or difficulties. But symptoms arise when those adaptations aren't flowing or they get sticky. And this could be because it's too much for your window of tolerance. It may have been overwhelming to you. Perhaps you didn't have the resources that you needed, whether they're emotional or economic, nutritional or behavioral. And so inside the Holistic Wellness Collective, we explore how to explore your history on your own, including looking at keystone events. What happened that was stressful or overwhelming for you, or maybe even what didn't happen? Where are there times where you had unmet needs as you look through your history? Are there times where you felt like you really had to change your behavior or your thoughts, or that maybe that change was involuntary, but you know, you haven't been well since? These are the cardinal features of trauma anxiety. And the number one thing that I want to make sure you know is that trauma anxiety can heal. In fact, EMDR is the number one form of therapy used for trauma. And whether that trauma is really small or really big, EMDR can work incredibly well. And most people's insurance covers it. And the results can be powerful and quick. And so I highly recommend that that's just something for you to know. And the second thing is that when our body, our minds, our nervous systems, and our other bodily systems do their adaptations that we need to go in and we need to help them readapt to our where you want to be. So maybe your nervous system has been programmed to be really hyper vigilant because in your childhood hyper vigilance protected you, but now you find that you get really easily startled or you get stressed or you have nightmares, or you have a really small ability to tolerate things in your environment. We want to reprogram that and repattern that. And that is through mindfulness, through trauma therapy, through parts work. But it's also, how is your gut affecting your nervous system? How is your gut perhaps holding you in this space to keep you better poised for the past? Or is your immune system an adaptation to stress? What about your hormone levels as a result of chronic stress? What's going on with your cortisol levels? Are you in constant cortisol arousal where your levels are really high and you're in fight flight freeze, or are you actually in a cortisol flatline as opposed to feeling really high levels? And so getting to the root cause with functional testing can help you learn how to heal the mind, the body, your immune system and your gut, and to use natural remedies that not only target your symptoms, but target the health. And I teach you all about that and the Holistic Wellness Collective. And I highly recommend that you get the information and bring it to your trauma expert and get the support to work through everything. I'm looking forward to empowering you with knowledge and wisdom so that you can actually heal and feel like yourself again. If you want to learn more, click on the link below. I really look forward to seeing you on the other side.
