What Happens to the Stress Response System in Anxiety?
Today, perhaps more than any time in our history, we’re exposed to stressful situations that are either put upon us or created by us on a regular basis. This repeated exposure to stress often wreaks havoc on our stress response system and, over time, brings about significant anxiety, which leads to a person developing an anxiety disorder.
Our body has a natural defense system that was created to respond to life-challenging/threatening situations. However, this system is typically activated in response to life’s stressful situations. When this system is continually activated, it tends to overreact to these stressors and brings about both physiological and brain changes that contribute to anxiety, depression, and addiction disorders.
Normally, our stress response system reacts to a stressor by bringing about an increase in adrenaline and cortisol levels that activate so we can respond to the situation. Adrenaline increases our heart rate, elevates blood pressure, and boosts energy supplies. The increase in cortisol brings on an increase in sugar (glucose) in the bloodstream, enhancing our ability to repair tissues in the body. This cortisol limits functions that are considered non-essential or would negatively impact the flight-or-flight response to the stressor. For example, it alters our immune system response and suppresses the digestive, reproductive, and growth systems because these are considered non-essential to fight off whatever danger we are facing (the stressor).
Once the perceived stress is gone, our body hormone level returns to normal. As adrenaline and cortisol levels drop, your heart rate and blood pressure return to baseline levels, and our system resumes our regular activities, such as supporting immunity, digestion, reproduction, and growth.
However, when stressors both perceived and actual are always present, we are constantly in this stress response system of flight-or-fight. The long-term activation of this system disrupts the normal bodily processes and puts a person at increased risk for health and psychological challenges.
These include:
- Anxiety
- Depression
- Digestive problems
- Headaches
- Continual/chronic muscle tension and pain
- Heart disease, heart attack, high blood pressure, and stroke
- Chronic sleep problems
- Weight gain/loss
- Memory and concentration impairment
- Irritability
- Anger
It is vital to our physical and mental well being that we learn healthy ways to cope with life situations and stressors.
Therapy and Neurofeedback can assist in regaining control of the stress system. This can significantly help in reducing the physical and the mental affect stress and our stress response have on our body and mind.
Symptoms of Anxiety
- Excessive worry or anxious thinking
- Racing thoughts
- Digestive problems
- Rapid or fast heart rate
- Trembling hands
- Shortness of breath
- Irritability
- Difficulty concentrating and maintaining focus due to excessive thinking
- Sleeping problems (difficulty falling or staying asleep, or restlessness and unsatisfying sleep)
- Fatigue
- Muscle tension
- Restless
- Feeling keyed up
- Being on edge
Types of Anxiety Disorders
- Social Anxiety
- Situational Anxiety
- Phobias – Specific anxiety (public speaking, heights, dogs, etc.)
- Separation Anxiety
- Panic Disorder
- Agoraphobia
- Generalized Anxiety
Neurotherapy For Anxiety Why Choose Neurotherapy for Treatment
Neurofeedback is the process of the brain learning to make physiological changes to work better and become more coherently organized. Our brains often become dysregulated, and Neurofeedback addresses the problems of brain dysregulation. For example, in individuals with anxiety, their brains have become dysregulated, often with an excess of Beta brainwaves. Beta brainwaves are the brain’s very fast brainwaves, which allow us to become directly engaged in a conversation or solving problems. However, when the brain has too many beta waves present, it causes us to be anxious.
Also, when someone has anxiety, their Alpha waves become dysregulated. Alpha brain waves are the brain’s ability to calm down and relax, and this dysregulation does not allow us to calm down and relax, thus increasing our anxieties.
Neurofeedback in the treatment of anxiety has been demonstrated to be an effective treatment modality for various disorders, including anxiety disorders. Research shows that Neurofeedback has resulted in significant improvement in symptoms for patients with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) or generalized anxiety disorder (GAD).
Restoring the Brain Back to Ideal Health
Therapy/Counseling Services
- Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) – This helps a person learn to recognize irrational thought patterns that lead to anxious thoughts, emotions, negative behaviors and outcomes, then construct new rational thought patterns instead of negative ones.
- Exposure therapy (a form of CBT) – Exposure therapy is commonly used in treating anxiety disorders. Exposure therapy implements systematic desensitization, where a person is gradually introduced or exposed to anxiety-provoking situations or objects.
Systematic desensitization involves a person learning to relax or turn off the body’s stress response system. Then, they have a list of triggers that are listed in rank order of intensity.
Once this is achieved, the person is slowly exposed to the stressful situation or object (rank order list) as they use the relaxation techniques to stop the stress reaction system from reacting to the perceived stressor. Gradually, this reduces the anxiety of the object or situation, so it is manageable and no longer brings on the debilitating anxiety response.
- Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) – EMDR is a form of therapy designed to alleviate the stress associated with traumatic anxious experiences. EMDR incorporates the use of eye movements and other forms of rhythmic left-right (bilateral) stimulation. These are such things as direct eye movements to external stimuli, hand/finger movement, hand-tapping, light and audio stimulation. While clients briefly focus on the trauma memory and simultaneously experience bilateral stimulation (BLS), the vividness and emotion of the memory are reduced.
- Skills Training
- Developing and using positive coping skills
- Problems solving
- Strategic planning and perspective-taking skill development
- Achieving a balanced and healthy lifestyle
- Relaxation training
- Parental training – Assists parents in helping children with anxiety more directly in finding ways to overcome the symptoms.
Contact Ogden Psychological Services today to learn more about anxiety and ways to treat it.
