The Strange, Weird, Curious Symptoms that Anxiety Can Cause... | Ep. 121

Hadlee, today is such a fun day because we are pulling out our best of the funny, strange, curious symptoms that anxiety can cause. And we just pulled out some of our favorites, some of the most interesting, and that's what we're going to be doing today.

I'm so excited for this episode. We had a whole series. This was a little while ago now, but we had a whole series of the different types of anxiety and how each type of anxiety might show up in our bodies with physical sensations and different things, and how our physical body also interacts with our anxiety. And it was maybe our most loved series of episodes. Like, you guys, they're really good. So we wanted to highlight them. This is going to be like a compilation episode of some highlights from those 5 episodes that we did before. You're not going to want to miss this, this episode. And if there's— if any of the ones kind of pique your interest, if you're like, oh, that's the one that I feel like I have, or I think my sister has that one, or maybe it's like, oh my gosh, my— someone that I want to help has this one. Maybe you want to go and listen to the individual episode from the— from that specific highlight. And we will link all of those. those in the, in the bio below the episode so that you can go listen to the full episode of each highlight. But even if you don't listen to any of the full episodes, this is going to be a really, really helpful one to kind of give you a snippet of how anxiety can show up in the body, what weird sensations, what weird symptoms can come up that we might not even think about. Like sometimes some of these things are like, wait, that's, that's from anxiety? Like, what? So I think you guys are really going to enjoy this episode. And the other thing that I wanted to say was there's also a book. Have you heard? So you can listen to these episodes, but there's also a full book about anxiety and ending anxiety in your life. And it's written by the one, The only Dr. Nicole Cain.

Yes,

called Panic Proof, and you definitely, definitely, definitely want to read it. So we will put the link to that in the show notes as well so that you can get your hands on it, because y'all, it is really, really good.

Yeah, you have a sneak peek copy. Hadley is like one of the first people to read the finished— it's like you and my editors and my friend Rochelle, who has been helping me edit. So—

Oh my gosh, I love it! I feel like such a VIP. And you guys, it's gripping. Like, it's so good. So you definitely want to read it.

Oh, we're so much fun. Thank you, Hadlee. Thank you for that. Yeah, and you can go to panicproof.com to find all the different places that the book is So you ready to dive in?

Yeah, let's do it.

So I was curious if you have any sort of like a memory or a recollection of the most intense, peculiar, annoying, unexpected, surprising, disconcerting, all of the words of like how anxiety showed up for you. It was like, you know, like tightness and, you know, It felt like a kind of a, like a hard rock that was super painful at the same time in my, in my stomach. And I know that so many people have experienced this as well. So that's like the, the one that stands out to me the most, I would say. And we've actually talked about that before, and Ayurveda has an explanation for that. And so what I would love to talk about in this conversation Is the strange sensations that we can experience when we're anxious, because I get a lot of questions like, can anxiety cause this or can anxiety cause that? And generally speaking, the answer is yes, anxiety can cause that. The way that your body was telling you was like this. You had no appetite. You were feeling really worried. You're feeling really anxious. You're feeling really ungrounded and insecure. You're not feeling like solid in your body. You're having to like. Scale this mountain and then go back down. You put food in your body and it's like a rock in your gut and it's just really, really painful and uncomfortable, right? Yep, exactly.

And what can happen with gut anxiety then is you're, you're going to— a lot of times what happens is emotional eating. And so when we have more of that kapha tendency, it's like, oh, I don't like this feeling of anxiety, so I'm going to ground it down. with food. And it's actually a really adaptive response because food does ground it down temporarily. And it's also not helpful in the long term. But, you know, for the first moment of that, it's like, oh yeah, food pacifies, food like brings us down. But then we start to have that feeling of like heaviness. And, you know, whereas vata is more of the bloating, Kapha is more of the stagnant energy.

I'm wondering about mucus in the stool too, because with irritable bowel syndrome, we often see mucus in the stool. And so people—

That's kapha.

That's kapha. And so if you look at your stool and it looks like you have shiny, clear worms in there, they're not worms. It's mucus.

Hopefully they're not worms.

Hopefully. I've had so many people send me pictures of poop And they see worms, but it's really just kapha mucus.

I love it. We are big poop talkers.

The really important thing is to just notice what is in your chest. And so in your chest, you have your heart, you have your lungs, you also have your esophagus goes up your chest. And so your esophagus is what comes up from your stomach. It goes up through your chest. And so some people with heartburn think that they're having a heart attack. Some people with a heart attack think they're having reflux. So there's the, the esophagus that lives there, but you also have a lot of musculoskeletal tissue there, and you have the ribs there, and you have intercostal muscles there. So there's a lot of stuff happening in the chest. And so if at any point that your body is sending stress to this area, you may feel a myriad of different symptoms. So some people, when they're stressed, as an example, they Clench all of the muscles in their back. And as a result of the muscles spasming in their back, their spine goes out of alignment, and then the nerves come out of the spine that go to the area of the chest, like the muscles in the ribs or your heart or your lungs or your esophagus, any of that. You can get pains that feel like nerve pains. When my anxiety was at its worst, I felt like there were hot coals in my chest, like literal— Mm-hmm. Awful, terrible burning pains in my chest. It was— I wouldn't wish it on my worst enemy. It was awful. So much burning and so much cramping and so much stiffness and tightness, right? So that can be from stress and anxiety. I know what I think that would be, and we'll see if I'm correct according to the expert. But as you're listening to this, what does this sound like? Does this sound like vata with that air space movement, hollow, dry, fluttery, cold? Does this sound like Pitta, pain, heat, fiery inflammation? Or does this sound more like kapha, that water, earth, elephant on the chest, fullness, the deep grief, the crushing?

Yeah. So ding, ding, ding, kapha.

I feel like, yeah, this is a really great example of kapha. And as a homeopathic doctor, I would have given her Gelsemium, but now we're equipped with an additional tool. So, yeah, if you resonate with this, if you have chest anxiety and you have this heaviness and this fullness, especially heaviness of the eyes and the chest and the head, then yeah, Gelsemium is a good hack for this. That's G-E-L-S-E-M-I-U-M. But you also want to do pacifying strategies for that kapha imbalance if that's the case. And again, we talked about cinnamon bark on the stomach if it's going to your gut, but you can use oils essentially anywhere topically as long as it's not a mucosal membrane. Like, you don't wanna put it like your eye or your like genitalia or anything like that, or open wounds. But oils can be just wonderful for soothing a lot of this. This is one of, as you said, Hadlee, one of the most common misconceptions is that a person doesn't have anxiety. They'll say things like, oh, well, I'm stressed. But stress is, your body doesn't care about the nomenclature. The physiology of stress is essentially the same.

Yeah, I love how you said your body doesn't actually care about the nomenclature. Because yeah, it's like, we can call— people will call the same physical sensation a different emotion, right? Like people will call fear anger. So like the same person who's feeling the same exact emotion, maybe it's like a tightness in their chest. Like some people will call that fear, some people will call that anger, or, you know, there have been, there have been studies on this. And so We are kind of breaking it down more into physical sensations in your body, as well as, you know, maybe how it shows up, manifests in different ways emotionally, how anxiety might show up in, in different ways emotionally.

Essentially, depression anxiety or depressive anxiety is anxiety symptoms mixed with depression symptoms. Pretty straightforward, right? And in the Diagnostic Statistical Manual, which is that great big book that psychiatrists and psychologists and counselors use to give you a mental health diagnosis to justify treatment and getting paid by your insurance company is that they've diagnosed depressive anxiety as either major depressive disorder with anxious features or generalized anxiety disorder with depressed features, just depending on which one predominates. And I would encourage you, as you're listening to this, is to just throw away the labels. Don't worry about what the label is, but rather listen to the messages that your body is giving you. And so signs that your body is out of balance in such a way that it's experiencing depressive anxiety may be those depression symptoms. If you feel empty or hopeless, or if you're feeling really fatigued, or difficulties with concentration, memory, thoughts of worthlessness, or feelings of failure, loss of interest in activities, and even thoughts of death or thoughts of self-harm. Those are all signs of depression. But with depression anxiety, we also have a predominating anxiety picture where there's worrying. Oftentimes there's a feeling of lack of control and we're thinking about the future and trying to problem solve. And so our thoughts can be really intrusive or racing. We also feel keyed up or on edge. We get these symptoms of maybe restlessness or trembling any way that your body tells you you're anxious would be categorized, if it has the depression feature with it, as depressive anxiety. Do you have questions about that as I'm saying that? Anything I'm missing that you could think of?

No, I think that makes total sense. And I'm just putting it into the perspective of Ayurveda and it makes crystal clear sense with Ayurveda as well.

So an herb that comes to mind that It's good for anxiety. This herb is antidepressant. It's anti-anxiety. It's useful for seasonal affective disorder, and it's been actually studied as a beneficial herb that is comparable with antidepressant therapy, especially if you have mild to moderate depression, maybe not severe suicidal extreme depression. But if it's just like that depressive anxiety with the anxious features, this herb is really good for that. It's been studied for that. And it also pacifies Vata and it pacifies Kapha. And the herb is called St. John's wort.

Oh yeah, that's a great one.

It's an astringent. And so that helps with the Kapha because it's that muddy. It's bitter, it's clear, it's light. It helps carry the energy Upward while also being really grounding. And so it like kind of balances that Vata-Kapha and it's really, really good for sleep, depression, and anxiety. And so I was thinking about Hypericum or St. John's Wort as you were describing that. And there's a really good herb and this herb is anti-anxiety, antidepressant. You can take it orally, but if you're on medications and you can't take it orally, or if we're talking about like a little kiddo and you're don't want to give them anything orally yet, is lavender flower is just wonderful.

Yes.

It's like the sigh of happiness. I have all my oils here. Lavender flower has been studied in double-blind studies and it's been found to be effective for both depression and anxiety. And it's great for, especially if your symptoms are very Pitta-based. And so you can apply it topically. We talk about essential oils in our content, so take a peek in some of the other blogs and stuff we have because we dig more into that. But I love lavella. If you want to take it orally, you want to get it from a really good brand like Wise Woman Herbals, and you want the flower. There's a difference between lavella flower tincture and the essential oil. If you want to take lavender essential oil, then use that topically. Don't take it internally. Some people do. some companies say it's fine to take internally, but that's silly. That's like drinking juice out of a, like by trying to bite a hole in the orange. Like, don't bite the hole. Just don't do that. Just, just get the juice. As, as you know, anxiety can show up in all sorts of different ways. And so when I've had anxiety, I've had moments where it's like electricity in my teeth, and then that's neurological anxiety. And then I've had other anxiety moments where my stomach is just like so queasy and nauseated and it's anxiety, but the way that the body is presenting it is very different. And so of course, then naturally we would treat it more differently than if it was always the same, right?

Exactly, yes. And that's where Ayurveda really shines because there is no one-size-fits-all approach. A lot of times in other health systems in the modern, modern, wellness systems and health, health systems, it's like, okay, what's the norm for the majority of people? And when we do that, we can kind of lose the nuance, which, you know, we are all about nuance here. And so we can sort of lose this based on your specific mind-body type, based on what is most prominent for you at that point in your life. And so Ayurveda does a really good job of being able to see Okay, so you're experiencing this thing, and that's because this dosha is most prevalent for you. Here's a map for how to actually balance out that dosha, then you can, you can kind of tailor it to yourself a lot easier.

When it comes to trauma anxiety, is you want to think about this as more of an umbrella over the other 8 types or the other 7 types of anxiety, because you can have trauma And it can present as trauma anxiety. But then, as a result of having adapted to an adverse trauma or an adverse event, is you may get also gut anxiety and thought anxiety. So don't think of trauma anxiety as mutually exclusive. Think of it more as like a Venn diagram. It's just data. But signs that you've gone through trauma, or signs that it's trauma anxiety, is you may have some symptoms in there related to the trauma itself, like it started after a big event, or you have an extensive history of neglect. Maybe it's not about what happened to you, but about what didn't happen to you. So do you have a history of unmet needs, childhood neglect? Did you not get the encouragement that you needed in order to have that confidence and self-esteem in your abilities. Um, and it could be something like going through a major event, like a tornado, natural disaster, divorce, um, being bullied. It could be having a major illness diagnosed or going through cancer. So trauma is anything that you had to adjust to. So trauma, trauma anxiety, and the way that it's showing up and the symptoms that you might be experiencing in particular, Fight, flight, freeze, flop, fawn. And so fawn, tell us a little bit about that.

The last one. Yeah. So fawn is— so this one's interesting because there's not a super clear dosha to map out on fawn. You see a lot of people pleasing within both kapha and vata. Vata feels a little bit more like anxious people pleasing where it's like, oh, got to make sure that everything's okay versus kapha people pleasing is more like mama bear nurturing people pleasing. So there's a little bit more of that groundedness, but it still is not considering our own needs and considering everyone else's needs above our own. And so that's the case for both the kapha and the vata. So kapha, it might feel a little bit more grounded, but it doesn't feel empowering, right? So it's like we're giving our power away to other people and not meeting our own emotional, physical, whatever needs.

Let's say that you're somebody who's gone through trauma and you take the 8 types of anxiety quiz and you're like, oh my gosh, it's total trauma anxiety. And you take the dosha quiz and you're like, oh my gosh, I am like totally in a fight and I'm in a pitta state. Like, I am like angry and hot and I'm getting all of this eczema and I'm frustrated and I'm getting all these flashbacks and I just, I'm so resentful. And so then the next step is that your symptoms have now given you all of this information about what needs healing. And then the Ayurveda course that we made gives you solutions on how to restore balance to your doshas. And so if you're in a, a pitta excess state, we talk about how to eat, what behaviors that can help your, your doshas get more balanced. We talk about herbs, you know, different supplements that you can use. So if you're looking— So it's like quick, maybe a little bit condescending, critical. Sharp, like very intelligent. It's not like you're confused or wandering thoughts. Like you, you're, you've got the answer and—

Yeah, it's intense.

Yeah, it's intense. So the flavor, there's this like intensity to it. And so then, so as y'all are listening, start thinking about what dosha might be predominating in a thought pattern like that. And then I'll tell you guys what my thoughts are like when I get thought anxiety, which is quite different than Hadley. And that's just the joy and the magic of symptoms and how they show up differently for everyone, is that my thoughts tend to be racing and worried and anxious and a little bit like fast and hyperactive. There can be this like undercurrent of, especially if there's irritation that gets mixed in with anxiety, Like an anxious irritable, like a Venn diagram where there's irritability and anxiousness and they're all like kind of coming together. There can be a little bit of that like condescending heat criticalness, but like mostly for me, it's like very like intrusive and busy and thought and anxious. Step 1 is just to reframe what our thoughts are. They're sticky. They're stubborn. They're intrusive. They're fear. And it's easy to look at the thought as the problem. But we actually wanna go deeper and identify the thought is a canary. It is an indicator of an adaptation to something deeper. And so it's producing the information like, hey, if you follow us, there's something deeper here. So number one is we're just gonna reframe what our thoughts are. And your thoughts are just simply data. The content of the thoughts aren't as relevant. Yeah. As the, the reason that they're there. And so sometimes we get really disturbing thoughts and we think of like our biggest fears, or we worry that we said something wrong and we obsess over it, whatever it is. The brain likes to think. The brain is gonna do all sorts of thinking. It could literally be just a squirt of cortisol came out, it went through your brain, and your brain attached a thought to it. And so,

yeah.

All we wanna do is say, oh, I'm having thoughts. What are these thoughts like? Are they kind of kapha-y, pitta-y, vata-y? There's something deeper that these thoughts are trying to tell me about. So number one, what are the thoughts trying to tell you? The somatographic imagery is what you would do is you would explore it from lots of different angles. So you would see it, you would notice it, and then you would notice what color it is, the weight, the texture, the movement. And you would ask it questions like, how old are you? Where did you come from? What do you need me to do for you? And then we actually then work on breathing light into it and changing the temperature and changing the size and then dissipating it. So we like go through this like entire— like we're grabbing all the different parts of the brain, like the color and the sound and the creativity and the texture. and we're integrating all these parts of the brain because that's the key with trauma treatment is, is bihemispheric integration, is that trauma often gets stuck in one part of the brain and you don't have access to being able to process it, which is like the cool thing of EMDR, right? Right. But, um, but what I like about somatic expansion is you're just giving it more space so that you're not getting these like little indurated, tenacious, really dense, awful, hard, uncomfortable somatic experiences as you're making them like more supported and larger. Y'all were asking if, can this symptom be a sign of panic? Can this symptom be a sign of anxiety? Is it a heart attack or could it be chest anxiety? And so we've been here talking about how anxiety and stress can show up in your body and then what you can do about it. And so I love this. conversation on thought anxiety, because we all have brains and our brains like to think. And so taking back the power, and instead of your thoughts controlling you, is understanding what your thoughts are trying to do for you. That, that could be pretty life-transforming.

Yeah, there's nothing wrong with thoughts, and we can be in control of our thoughts, and then they can actually serve us.

And so think of nerves, think of neurons, and think of Muscles, tendons, ligaments. So this is your nervous system. And so when in a state of imbalance and you're feeling anxious, if you feel like you get tight muscles, shoulder tension, neck tension, back tension, stiffness, pain, if you get tingling or numbness or zapping pains or shooting pains or cramps, Even, um, this is neurological anxiety. If you get migraine headaches, some people will get peripheral neuropathy where it feels like you sat on your foot, but it could be anywhere in your body. This is neurological anxiety. And by a good hack for most people would be doing golden milk. And then you can go and check out the Ayurveda course and then see what kind of milk might be optimal depending on what needs rebalancing for you. But I like that this is a tridoshic option. And then another tridoshic option that has an affinity for the nervous system is Gotu Kola, which is a really great herb, and it's anti-anxiety. It's great for healing the nervous system. It can calm down hyperactive spasming nerves. It can help with sleep. And so these are kind of 2 take-homes for neurological anxiety. Both of these supplements that you would take orally or tridoshic, and then you can supercharge your golden milk like Hadley, you were saying, with your milk type. But go check that out in the course.

Mm-hmm.

And then as you were saying, it's like, don't just skip over the grounding activities. If it is vata and it's causing involuntary movements and your thoughts are racing and busy and all over the place, do those grounding activities. And Hadley teaches a lot on touch. And self-massage. And so check out some of our other stuff on that.

Yeah, you could chug your golden milk before bed and still be equally stressed if you're just going and drinking it really fast.

So then that can actually help if that doshic imbalance is contributing to aggravating or amplifying thyroid health. And just think of health of the glands. health of the body. And so that's what this is really about, is how can we identify imbalances in health because of unmet needs or maybe an over-predominance of something that's problematic? And so we're working on supporting that. And so some people, this is enough to get their thyroid working better, maybe converting more efficiently into active thyroid hormone. But I do want to point out here too that If you have hypothyroidism, that it isn't a failure, that it isn't a failure on your part if you're taking thyroid medicine, and that some of these things are— it's inherited. Some of these things are just the cards that you're dealt with, but you still have the power to optimize the health of your organs, optimize the health of your body, even if you're still taking thyroid medication and that's just a part of your story. That's okay. And We can put a semicolon or a comma at the end of that and then pursue even greater health with our holistic strategies. And so yeah, if you're listening to this and you're like, well, I'm hypothyroid and I'm taking medication and I feel good, then like rock and roll. That's really good. You have an amazing medicine that's got you where you need to be. And so maybe that's not where that's showing up for you anymore. And if your body needs support, it will tell you and it will use different voices, which is such a mercy. Cortisol is our stress hormone. And it has lots of different jobs. And so cortisol can rise and cortisol can drop, and it should do that. It, it, it should have a pattern of rising in the morning and then going down through the afternoon and being at its lowest in the evening. And so when cortisol levels spike in the morning, what happens is you get this burst of energy. It helps you get out of bed. It wakes you up. It mobilizes blood sugar. It increases your heart rate. It increases your blood pressure. And it increases energy. And so those things that we associate with cortisol being too high would be too much of all of that. And so super high cortisol, which we can see in certain diseases like Cushing's, would be really high blood pressure and really high blood sugars because cortisol is like pulling the sugar out so we can use it to run away from the tiger. And so all of these symptoms that we associate with adrenergic Arousal, sympathetic arousal, fight, flight, freeze, you know, all of those hyper symptoms. And then on the other end of the spectrum, we can have too low cortisol where the adrenals aren't producing enough cortisol. And that's what people call adrenal fatigue. And what's actually happening is that when you have insufficient amounts of cortisol is it can look like a disease called Addison's.