Well with Arielle Lorre - 421: 9 Hidden Root Causes of Anxiety You Haven’t Heard About & the 3 Step Path to Healing with Dr. Nicole Cain

Episode Date: November 5, 2025

Dr. Nicole Cain is a leading expert in trauma-informed Clinical Psychology and holistic medicine for anxiety and panic, and author of the acclaimed book  Panic Proof. She joins the show to unpack the 9 types of anxiety and what your body is really trying to tell you. We explore how anxiety is more than a mental health issue; it’s often a message from your hormones, gut, immune system, or even unprocessed trauma. Dr. Cain breaks down the different types—from hormone and gut-driven anxiety to trauma, anger, and depressive anxiety—and how each has a unique root cause. We also get into the connection between autoimmune conditions and ACE scores, the truth about anxiety medications and dependency, and how to stop being gaslit by a system that overlooks the body’s role in anxiety. Plus, Dr. Cain shares her 3-step process to interrupt the anxiety cycle, how to regulate inbound stress, and simple ways to stimulate your vagus nerve to return to calm.This episode is brought to you by:Get 20% off your first order by visiting foriawellness.com/BLONDE or use code BLONDE at checkout. Save 15% off my favorite Red Light Face Mask by using code BLONDE at www.boncharge.com.Go to justthrivehealth.com and use code WELL for 20% off your first 90 day bottle of Just Thrive probiotic.Use promo code BLONDE at Puori.com/BLONDE for 20% off.Visit fatty15.com/WELL and use code WELL at checkout for an additional 15% off their Starter Kit.Go to fromourplace.com/BLONDE and use code BLONDE for 10% off sitewide.Please note that this episode may contain paid endorsements and advertisements for products and services. Individuals on the show may have a direct or indirect financial interest in products or services referred to in this episode.Produced by Dear Media.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

The following podcast is a dear media production. This is Well, a podcast about wellness in all its forms. I'm Ariel Laurie, and each week I'm sharing unfiltered conversations with people shaping how we feel, live, and look. Come for the substance, stay for the honesty, and leave with the tools to be well, inside and out. Welcome to the show. Today's episode is truly fascinating, wherever you lie on the anxiety spectrum. So I think that everybody has experienced some sort of anxiety at some point in their life, some people more than others, some people chronically, some people suffer more from panic. But it is a universal experience.

And my guest today, Dr. Nicole Kane, is a leading expert in trauma-informed clinical psychology and holistic medicine for anxiety and panic. So she has a really interesting perspective. on it. She basically theorizes that there are nine types of anxiety and they all derive from your body. Essentially, your body is trying to tell you something. So we explore how anxiety is more than just a brain chemistry mental health issue. This is something that I get into with her because I feel like, although I am no medical expert, some people do seem to be more predisposed to things like anxiety because their brain chemistry or their wiring is just different, but she argues that this is still something that derives from the body, whether it is trauma that's been passed down from generations.

You'll hear more in the episode. So we talk about how hormones gut, the immune system, and like I said, trauma come into play. We break down the different types of anxiety. We also get into the connection between autoimmune conditions, ACE scores, so adverse childhood events, the truth about anxiety medications, dependency. We talk about being gaslit by a system that tends to overlook the body's role in anxiety. And then she also shares her three-step process to interrupt the cycle, how to regulate stress, and really simple ways to stimulate your vagus nerve to return to calm. I found this to be so incredibly helpful and I think that you will too. So please enjoy Dr. Nicole Kane. So happy to be here.

I'm happy to have you here for selfish reasons. I was just telling you before we started recording that I've been dealing with my own journey over the last year or so. And throughout all of the different symptoms that I've had, anxiety has been a predominant one. anxiety in a way that I've never experienced anxiety before. And you really focus on the body's role in anxiety. So let's start there. Yeah, the body has a lot to say. In fact, the body, often has more important, accurate information about what's underneath of the anxiety than the thoughts and the emotions themselves. The body is constantly trying to speak with us. It's just a matter of figuring out what it's saying. Something that I've experienced, and I'm sure a lot of my audience as well, has been going to various doctors for various symptoms, and they essentially tell you that you're just anxious and that it's psychosomatic. And I think that to an extent that can be true, thoughts can create anxiety and physical symptoms and physical symptoms can cause anxiety. So what is your take on that? Well, one is if you have a doctor that's

telling you it's all in your head, then I would encourage you to find a different doctor. Because that paradigm is why anxiety numbers are skyrocketing and why we are often doing. dealing with shortages of anti-anxiety medications. I have a really good friend. She lives in Michigan and she hasn't had her anxiety prescription for two weeks because the pharmacy just can't get it. An SSRI? She's taking a benzodiazepine. Oh, that's even worse. It's even worse. Because you can have withdrawal, seizures. Yeah. She's also on an SSRI. So that was like a really brilliant guess. But the benzodia withdrawal is just awful. And some people will take benzos. And then, they don't realize that you can't stop them, just cold turkey like that. And so then that can

create anxiety and all sorts of symptoms head to toe. And I run into this all the time where doctors are like, I don't know, it's do some deep breathing and tell yourself you're fine, put some post-it notes on the mirror, look at them every morning, positive affirmations. By the way, your body doesn't give a shit about the positive affirmations unless you're actually speaking to the body itself in a way that it understands. And another thing with those medications, I have a lot of experience with benzodiazepines. I've been sober for over 10 years, but that was a big part of my story. And there's also interdose withdrawal. So you can be taking those medications. And if you're extremely sensitive like myself, and this isn't judging anybody who does take medication. But I know

that I experienced as the dose that I took, whatever, eight, 12 hours before was leaving my body, then I would get symptoms of anxiety. And then I feel like I need more. And that's how you build up tolerance to these things and get physically dependent on them. So it's a slippery slope. That was my story too. And I don't know if you resonate with this, but I come from a cult. I grew up in the Midwest. and it's very much like pull yourself up by your bootstraps and work your way through it and then go to the doctor who's an authority. They know better than you. And the doctor that I saw gave me prescriptions. And the way that my young brain understood that is that there's something wrong with me and that I need somebody else to try to fix it.

And so this cycle, like you were talking about, it's like a feedback loop. And then it got worse and worse and worse. And then part of my story is I was on benzos because nothing else was working. And it's almost like if you imagine a spring and the spring is pushing up and that's your body pushing out symptoms is trying to communicate. And then we're putting bricks on it. But then the spring can push through the bricks and it'll spring out 10 times worse. or another spring to the side will pop up. And then we feel like we're playing a game of whackamol,

and we feel like there's something wrong with us. What's wrong with me? Why is my body at war with me? And so then we feel like there's nothing else we can do, but take the medications. And there's no shame in that. Yeah, and they do work. I mean, benzos are so alluring, I think,

because they do work so well. So how do you start unwinding the root cause? Because there are so many different entry points, I feel like to anxiety. And you talk about this in your book, you talk about the nine different types of anxiety. So I would love to kind of go through those. But where do we start? Yeah. The first place is to take the quiz, which you did, I think. You really resonated with one of the types. I won't give it away. And we can talk about it. Yeah. We can talk about it. Yeah. So that's a really good place to start because otherwise it's so confusing and so overwhelming.

And so the quiz, it's free. It's online. The nine types of anxiety. And we'll run through them and then we can kind of expand as we go. We can spend extra time on immune today. I love talking about the immune system. It's really, really fun. So when you experience anxiety that shows up in your thoughts, your thoughts are racing, they're intrusive, they're obsessive, you lay down to bed at night and your brain just won't stop.

Or you get brain fog. Someone asks you a question and then your brain is blank and you're like, oh my God, just say something, anything, filled space, thought anxiety. Some people, they experience it in their chest, like an elephant's on my chest. My heart is pounding. I feel like I can't get a full breath. It's chest anxiety. And then some people, they feel like a churning or a knowing in their stomach.

And it could be to the point where they're throwing up. I was in a conversation the other day with somebody who was talking about how every time that they had to go on a trip, they had to fly, they would throw up and have diarrhea, just because their body was so stressed and so activated. So that's gut anxiety. And then we have anxiety that can cause headaches and muscle tension and numbness and tingling. And then we're like, oh, my God, I'm having a stroke. And then the feedback loop, right?

So it's nervous system anxiety. Oh, yeah, I have that too. That was my main thing when I was having horrible anxiety. It's like my skin was on fire but cold at the same time. What happens in your vestibular balance issues? Itching lately, which I did get testing. My blood allergy level was high. are things that are not normal. Muscle twitches, brain fog, which is happening right now. Dry eyes,

muscle aches, things like that. Yes. So it's kind of a Venn diagram for you. It's like an overlap of nervous system, an immune system. And hormone, I think, because there are certain times of the month when it's actually better. It's actually better like before and during my period, which it used to be the opposite. Oh my gosh. We have so many beautiful things. You're going to walk away from this conversation, you're going to feel so empowered and like your body is an ultimate badass. Amazing. That's really, really good. So hormone, endocrine anxiety is anxiety that's related to our hormones. And so it could be estrogen, testosterone, progesterone. It could be thyroid. It could be adrenal gland hormone, cortisol. And I have a story about a woman I was working with. I write about her

in the book. Her name is Charlotte. And she'd had two little twins and she was losing a ton of weight. And it wasn't voluntary. She's like eating more and more and more and she couldn't keep her weight on. Her body temperature is through the roof. She had heat intolerance. She was sweating. She's really hot. She's losing weight.

And she's so anxious. So she goes to the doctor and the doctor's like, oh, lucky you, you're losing your baby weight. It's probably just postpartum. And she gave her a Xanax. And so then she's getting worse. Her heart palpitations are worse. Her sleep is getting worse. Now she's getting intradose withdrawal.

Exactly what you see. said. And so I'm like, well, did they run a thyroid test? Because a lot of this sounds like thyroid. She's like, no, I had it done six months ago and it was normal. And I'm like, but you didn't have these symptoms six months ago. So go to a different doctor. Go get a second opinion. And that doctor said, yes, sounds like thyroid. They tested it. And she was in a grave's thyroid crisis. Wow. Wow. And so thank God she got a second opinion because that could be very, very dangerous for your health to have a thyroid crisis is not being managed. And now she's on this medication and necessarily that she now has to taper off of. It has a happy ending, thankfully. But that's

an example of hormone anxiety and then immune system anxiety. We were talking about, girl, our immune system has so much to say. Our immune system is involved in fighting predators like viruses and bacteria. It's involved in helping us send out hormone signals. It's involved in making neurotransmitters. It's involved in detox. Our immune system has so much to say. And our immune system can get activated and give us anxiety. For example, histamine.

So you're talking about skin rash. Histamine can cause allergies, skin rash, but it could also cause panic attacks because it's as stimulating as adrenaline. Yeah. Yeah. That's exactly how it feels to me. You resonate with that. Yeah, for sure.

Yeah. And so then people are like, why do I feel so much better when I take Benadryl? or hydroxazine. But the better question is why is my histamine through the roof? Or why is my immune system producing auto-antibodies like graves? Or why do I have a positive A&A autoimmunity test result? What is that? Why is that happening? Because there's always a reason. So immune system anxiety, we could get into that more, but just to finish up really quickly on the nine. Then we have trauma anxiety where the main thing of the main thing is trauma. So you have. intrusive thoughts, you have flashbacks, you've nightmares, you're avoiding whatever it was that

happened. And then the last two are anger, anxiety, which is part of the fight, a fight, flight, breeze, and depressive anxiety, where we could feel completely despairing, thinking of our exit strategy, hopelessness that comes with anxiety. So that's a lot. I knew I just like firehosed you to the face. It's a lot. Yeah. Let's take autoimmune, for example, if you have positive A&A. How do you get to the root and what is normally at the root if you have seen any patterns. Right. You're asking a really brilliant and complicated question. So if we come in on the presupposition that your body isn't broken and we believe that your body

is trying to heal itself, then the questions become more interesting. We can say, what is getting in the way of my body doing what is supposed to do? And so when we look at immune system, we look at psychoneuroimmunology, which is a whole field of science dedicated to the relationship between the immune system, your nervous system, and your emotions. We see that there are several key root causes. Okay. So one of which could be trauma. And we've seen this. An example would be the ACE study.

So the study looked at childhood adverse events. and then they looked at long-term effects from that. And they found that if you had traumas when you were a little kid, littleer, the more problematic, that that can predispose you to bone fractures later in life. It could predispose you to autoimmunity later in life, mood disorders later in life. So we want to think about was there something traumatic or adverse

that the body is trying to now keep you in that feedback loop, as you said, brilliantly. So it could be trauma. Another one that we're seeing really commonly is environmental exposure. So do you live in a wet building? Is there a possibility that you've been exposed to mold? And mold is the great mimicor, and it's really hard to diagnose accurately. Another environmental toxin that I see really commonly under immune system anxiety is solvents and metals.

And what's especially challenging about that is that you could have been in a a wet school when you were in kindergarten, and then you may not get symptoms till you're in your 20s or 30s. So it's really hard to figure that out, right? So part of the process of figuring out, do I have any sort of an environmental root cause, is to do a timeline and to write down what are the key events in your life and what happened during these key events? And then we zero in on things that seem like, oh, everything. ever since then, I've been having terrible allergies. My allergies started when I moved to this apartment in L.A.

Or it all started when we changed schools when I was in junior high. And so then we can peel back, as you said, that layer and say, okay, so we know that the body's sort of giving me data around this time. And if we go a little bit deeper, maybe we'll discover something there. And in the event that maybe you're stressed and you have other things that are happening in your life right now and you're like, now body, we're going to like have this immune system anxiety. Like what the F? Like what the heck? Why? And it could be that this issue happened when you were a little girl and it just you hit your threshold. And the body's like, we're done. We're going to scream because you haven't been listening or the doctors haven't been listening. So we got to figure out how to cycle back. So I knew I just threw a lot at you. Tell me questions you got. Is there ever not a cause?

Like, is it ever just purely brain chemistry? Ooh. So if we were back in the 1960s, they were like, chemical imbalance theory, we figured it out. We figured out mental health. And so the chemical imbalance theory, for those who aren't familiar with it, what they did is they discovered this little cell in the bowels. And they're like, oh, what is this? They called it entheramine. And then later they changed the name to serotonin.

And so this is the first neurotransmitter they discovered. And they're like, this is so cool. And so then they started studying it. And not too long later, they developed a drug called fluoxetine or Prozac. And they're like, what if we give this to people? And then they observed that some people got better. And so then they decided, and it took over 20 studies, by the way, for Prozac to do better than placebo.

But that's like a whole other conversation. but the conclusion that they drew was not correct. They were like correlation implies causation, and that's not correct, right? So what they decided is that, oh, low serotonin equals anxious and depressed. And if we give them more serotonin, then they feel less anxious and less depressed. Therefore, depression is caused by a serotonin deficiency or maybe a Prozac deficiency, right? So if before 2022 you'd ask somebody that question that you just asked me, they might be like, yeah, it's probably chemical imbalance.

And you could be born with a chemical imbalance. And that's it. But then in 2022, they did this huge meta study. And they were like, there is no compelling evidence to support this theory at all. This theory is crap. And so now we find ourselves back that square one scratching our heads. Well, what a great place to be, right? So now we get to ask questions and be curious.

And so the question is, is there always a reason? Or does it just happen? And I would argue that there's always a reason. Maybe the reason is six generations ago something happened in somebody in your family that caused an epigenetic change that predisposed you to anxiety that you inherited. and that something in your life switched on that gene and that you're living that experience. And so that's why some people, when they do trauma work, they get better. I took a class in EMDR and we were treating pandas.

And so pandas is somebody will get exposed to strep infection. And then they start getting ticks and immune system anxiety, right? And that was getting better doing trauma work. Wow. Yeah. I would argue that there's always a reason. It's just sometimes harder to find than other times, but we've got this. I am all about habit stacking and micro habits. And one of my favorite ways to habit stack is to do my meditation and my red light therapy at the same time. This has been such a calming ritual for me. And since we're talking about anxiety in this episode, I thought that this was relevant. So I've been using the bond charge red light. face mask for at least a year and a half now, maybe even more. And it has been a huge game changer in my skin. And now I do it with my morning meditation, which is about 10 to 15 minutes. I love the

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wellness.com slash blonde for 20% off your first order. What are the most common types of panic and anxiety that you see? Like, are some of these more common than others? So I see immune system anxiety a lot right now, actually. Really? I wouldn't have said that before COVID. Yeah, I was just going to say. Yeah.

Because I do feel like every doctor who have spoken to has said, ever since COVID, they have seen, I mean, a lot of pots, a lot of mass cell, a lot of weird immune deficiency, even subclinical things where it doesn't really show up on tests. I have heard that across the board from people. And I know so many people who not only have these issues that they can't get to the bottom of, whether it's anxiety or tons of allergy stuff, post-COVID, but they're reacting to things that they didn't react to before. And it's almost like all of our thresholds that to your point, what you were talking about before got full so quickly. And now it just takes little things to put us over that edge. Brilliant, my friend. So I write about it using the metaphor

of a bunch of marbles. So imagine that I have two cups. And the cup represents how much bandwidth you have. You come into this world. Have you ever encountered people that's like, they're just like ducks, things just roll off their shoulders. Nothing affects them. They can drink like a fish and eat garbage. And then they're like fine. And then you have like one teeny little margarita and you're like sick for two days. Yeah. You're like, what the hell is that? So they may have a bigger cup.

They may have more bandwidth. And we inherit our cup. We can't make the cup bigger. We can't make the cup smaller. And so then water being poured into the cup is environmental stress. And so you're describing quite rightly that we all have so much water being poured into our cups. We are all so stressed. I've been having so many conversations about stress with.

media, stress with screens, stress with data. Oh my goodness. And then poor nervous system. It's like caveman style. So it's like water being poured into a cup. But here's the thing is that we have marbles in the cup. And so the marbles can represent risk factors. The marbles occupy space in the water. So if I have a cup full of marbles and this marble may be a breakup when I was in high school, This marble may represent a wet moldy building. This marble may represent losing my job and dealing with economic uncertainty. This one could represent that I eat pizza every day and my gut microbiome is a mess. So we all have different marbles.

So if you have a cup full of marbles over here and then this cup may be smaller but empty, they may be able to hold more water in that cup than I am because mine's full. So the question is, is what is the threshold and what can we do about that? So one is you have some control to pour less water in your cup. And so to try to control and regulate inbound sources of stress on the mind, the body, and the nervous system. But then we can also work on drilling holes in the cup to drain water out. So strategies for stress reduction, working with the body, healing, recalibrating.

but then, girl, we got to take out some of those marbles. And so what does that look like? What is that process? And that's different for each marble. We could podcast every day for a year about that. Yeah, and I would imagine that we kind of inherit this cup and we probably inherit some marbles and then the rest are like nature. So there's some nurture mostly nature or how do you see that breakdown normally? I agree with you 100%.

It's a combination of nature and nurture. Yeah, absolutely. And nature and nurture could be life-giving or it could be draining. It could be a problem or it could be beneficial. Yeah. I mean, I'm just thinking of my own family and I'm sure that there are things that have been passed down. I'm sure we all have that stuff that we don't know about from generations ago. But my parents are those people who they have the threshold.

They're not big drinkers. They can eat anything. They can do anything. And I am the most sensitive and I would imagine that a lot of that is trauma. There was addiction, lots of exposure to various things, environmental, lots of stress, things like that. And the body holds on to that. I'm curious with your experiences, was there anything that was particularly difficult or traumatic or a loss before you were to? There was a lot of it after.

So that's a really protective factor for you. I mean, if we look at adverse childhood events, I have like none, zero, which is always so interesting because there was really nothing in my life that would indicate that I would go on to become, you know, a hope to die addict and alcoholic and nearly killed me in my 20s. But then my brother is not, you know, he can drink and cocaine was like a big thing for me. And I remember he and I talking about it back in the day, like maybe when we were in our 20s or maybe even late teens. And he had never tried it. And I was like, why?

And he said, because I know I'll like it too much. He had that judgment. And I did not because I was just looking to regulate. I really think that that's what it was. I think that oftentimes it's an attempt at self-regulation. And we just take that attempt a little too far. And the self-regulation feels so good. And then we're just constantly trying to chase that.

But yeah, I mean, back to your question. and nothing that stands out. My parents were together. I went to private school. My dad's a doctor. My mom stayed home. Both parents were present. Golden Retrievers, you know, the whole...

Lovely. The whole nine. Yeah. Yeah. So then I'm thinking about genetics. So if we look at your behaviors and your body from a place of curiosity and compassion, there was something that was a. occurring that you were doing the best you could with the resources that you had to try to

bridge that gap or to feel better or maybe even feel normal. And you may feel like you're racking your brain to say like what my life was perfect. Like why? Why do I do this to myself? But I think from a place of curiosity and radical compassion, maybe there is something that could have been inherited. Maybe you have genetically larger amygdala, for example. We see the highly sensitive people. Fear? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. The amygdala, but it's a superpower too. And it's what helps you connect with people. And I know that's something your audience loves about you is you deeply connect with people. And that's your amygdala. And so they did studies comparing brain scans of highly sensitive people and other people that they didn't really notice or attuned. And

and people can have larger amygdala. And so that will mean that you will attune very deeply. But then you may also experience bigger anxiety and bigger sadness and bigger anger. Genetically speaking, maybe there's an MAO gene or a gene that changes the way you process dopamine. And so maybe you were a teenager and you're crashing out on dopamine. And so then you're engaging in these things that make you feel better than dead. but then of course like you said then the feedback cycle so it's like adding marbles it's like

unfortunately you didn't have somebody to be like oh that's what this is my friend let's give you a health boosting strategy but then there were these feedback loops and so then maybe your gut microbiome changed and now you've got microbiomes like we're back in whatever 1980 1980 whatever year and then your immune system is like oh yeah we're back into and then everything is just spiraling. But the beautiful thing and why I'm so bubbly and running around, like so happy, is that you can actually heal. The body can heal. And the fact that your body is giving you so much data, she's like, girl, this is what's going on. And when you get that information and you are able to leverage that information into something that gives you more life,

that's what helps you heal as opposed to I remember when I was in medical practice back and I was doing my residency and we had someone who came in and they had no symptoms whatsoever and got a late stage four diagnosis of ovarian cancer because she had no symptoms so the body wasn't giving her clear data that I need something to put me back into balance there's something going on and so as you're looking at your symptoms right now and as those who are listening and you feel like my body hates me, my emotions hate me, my immune system is whacked out, my gut is a mess. Girl, they're talking to you. Yeah, my acupuncturist always says, because she's so, like, maternal. I've been going to her for so many years. And I was like,

why am I so sensitive? And she said, it's a gift. Same thing. And she said, also a gift of that is that you respond to treatment. I mean, acupuncture is, like, so helpful for me because I respond so quickly to it because I am so sensitive and things like meditation and things like breathwork and things like just walking you know it's like I think that is the other side of that coin and that's very hopeful for anybody listening because when you're dealing with any of this stuff wherever you are on the spectrum it's very discouraging and it's very it can feel very hopeless and it can be really difficult to break out of that thought pattern and that thought pattern just perpetuates the symptoms.

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So how do you recommend people start to break out of that? Because It is so difficult. I was hoping you'd ask that. That's where my brain was going. And I was like, God, I hope she asked that. So I'm going to give you a three-step process. And you can do this in three minutes. And I want those who are listening to write this down.

If you're not driving and you can write this down, pull out your phone and write this down. So step one is you're going to set your alarm for 60 seconds. And I want you to notice the main symptom that's coming up for you. And so if it's immune system anxiety, if it's like, oh my gosh, my arms are itching. I want to scratch them. I feel like I'm going to die if I don't scratch them. It could be that my heart is pounding.

It could be that my brain is racing, whatever it is. You're going to listen to the voice of your anxiety because if we deny it, it will amplify. What we resist will persist. So step one, set your alarm for 60 seconds, and I want you to just be in that space. and you may notice that it's hard to get to it. You may notice that the symptoms hide when you look for them. You may notice that they get bigger when you look at them. You may notice that they change when you look at them.

You're just going to notice it. So you're going to do that for 60 seconds. And then your alarm's going to go off and you're going to set 60 seconds again. And then I want you to go back into that sensation. and I want you to try to imagine going down the timeline to the earliest moment that you felt exactly that way. Because if we can figure out what this symptom is an adaptation to, then you're golden, right? So you're going to sit for 30 seconds, 60 seconds. You're going to go back the timeline and you're going to notice the earliest time that you remember feeling that way.

And then your alarm's going to go off. And this is your last 60 seconds is you're going to time. timestamp that. So you're going to go back. You're going to notice that. And when you identify that original thought, image sensation, memory, whatever it is. It could be when you got a diagnosis. It could be the first night you had a panic attack. It could be when you were a kid and your golden retriever licked you. Who knows? It could be anything. But whatever comes up, there's always a reason. The brain does its thing. And so then what I want you to do is for the last 60 seconds, I want you to close your eyes, place your hand over the place in the body where you notice that sensation.

maybe it's on your arms maybe it's in your head maybe it's in your chest and I want you to honor that part and I want you to say thank you so much for sharing with me I'm so grateful for you you have carried me through our life together and I hear you and I'm listening and I want you to know something that it is 24 and I'm grown up I have more resources than we did then. And I want you to know I've got you and that we're safe. And I did this exercise with a woman who had peniculitis. What's that? It's an autoimmune condition. So she had immune system. And it was manifesting in tumors that were forming all over her body, especially behind her eye and it was pushing out her left eye. So she did this exercise. She wanted it. She's like,

I need, what can you do to regulate my system? Can I take turmeric or Xveratrol? Everyone wants the thing, the external thing to take. Oh, yeah. I was like we can do you one better. Sure, you can take the supplements, whatever. You can change your diet, whatever. But the body is keeping the score, girl. So we did this exercise, and we went back.

We followed the timeline, and this image came to mind for her. And she had an image of herself. This is a very difficult story. She had an image of herself being kicked in the gut by her stepfather, who she worked for. He was an accountant and she worked for him and she helped him. And every time she did something wrong or made a mistake, he would hit her, kick her, tell her how stupid she was. And that's what came up. And so she started to acknowledge, she started to timestamp that.

She started to replace it with love. And that was the main thing that she changed. She'd been taking the supplements. And then she went back to her rheumatologist and her rheumatologist was like, you're a test. markers are going down. Your autoimmune markers are going down. And then we kept doing the work. We did some EMDR and we kept doing the work and the tumor behind her eye started shrinking. Now she doesn't have to wear an eye patch because her eye isn't dry and she could close it. And she ends up getting betters she can be. She goes to, I don't know, North Carolina or something.

We were in Arizona. She goes North Carolina and she's like living her dream. Wow. Three steps. It's like who doesn't have time for three minutes a day? Well, I think back to the supplement part is we often don't want to go within. We don't want to look within. And it's so much easier to believe that taking something, adding something external will change. But so many medications they know work by placebo, which proves that it's literally your thinking that's causing an effect on your physical state or your physical symptoms. So it's just that that proves the power of. thought alone. So thoughts are like an ingredient essentially, right? Thoughts are like a medication. They can be. And it can be to your detriment or it can be to your benefit. Absolutely. And the thoughts that come from the sensation in the body. So then there's this pivot, this nuance that you're pointing out, which I really appreciate, I want to emphasize for your listeners, is that instead of trying to talk ourselves out of, come on, A&A, just be just be normal.

Lime tiders, go down. I've seen Barr like, what the hell? I haven't had mono since I was 16, right? Just cut it out. Is that when we interoceptively become aware of the sensations in our body, the symptoms and the data in our body, and then we start to have that conversation, that bi-directional conversation, then stuff starts to change. You're taking away the autonomic arousal that comes from a symptom that could be here.

yucky. It's like doing, have you ever done like an ice bath? Yeah. Yeah. Immersion, we need to like jump into ice bath. So you get into that cold bath and your body's like, what the hell is this? Yeah. We don't like this. And then your brain is like, I notice this is unpleasant and I'm going to breathe and I'm going to calm the body and I'm going to sit in here for 45 more seconds and then 45 seconds pass and you're like you know what I think I could do it in another 45 seconds and so what you're doing is you're going into arousal and you're feeling those symptoms of arousal and then you're controlling it so that when you wake up in the morning if you've been practicing this you wake up in the morning and you have your leg is involuntarily twitching and jerking that you can

notice it just like you notice that freaking cold ice bath and start combat that arousal that comes with it because when autonomic arousal comes in, it starts pairing with the immune system, things get louder. Yeah. And then that takes your power away, right? And then you're frightened. And then you do anything you can to just make it stop, but that's going to make it worse. So what I want you to report back is when you wake up in the morning is you're going to notice the arousal,

you're going to be in that arousal, you're going to do the three minutes. And I would love to promise you. I would like, I'll eat a cactus. I'm from the Arizona. I'll eat a cactus if you're not like, I'm feeling a little more empowered here. Okay. I mean, even just listening to you talk about it and that analogy really resonates because I do cold plunge, not lately. But I know that feeling of, oh, shit.

Oh, my God. Fear, fear, fear. And then you do calm yourself down. So we do all have that power. When you're in the cold plunge, so like what is the strategy that helps you the most so that you don't freak out and get out? breath the breath yeah and what part of the breath is the most powerful for you i know you talk about the exhale yeah yeah i don't know because i haven't done it in a while but i think kind of the inhale i don't know it's been a long time but now i'm feeling inspired to get back in it's time to go back

yeah yeah what are some other tips that you have for panic in the moment because i know you talk about like the ice cubes on the eyes also you were just telling ashley about drinking water yeah can help So what are some tricks just to close out here for people listening? If they do get really heightened and they don't know how to calm themselves down. I talk about panic packs, which is so fun. I have a blinging bag that I carry. And inside of it, you're going to put things that are going to calm the body. And you want to calm the body because talking to yourself isn't going to work because

your logical prefrontal cortex, she's offline. She isn't paying attention. She's left the building. So you've got to go to the body. So temperature and scent and touch, grounding, movement. And so things that you might put in the panic pack are fidgets. I had a really not pleasant dental procedure done recently. And when he was injecting the numbing solution, I had a fidget and it looks kind of like a little hair tie, but it's spiky.

And so I was like spiking with the fidget to distract my brain from the feeling in my face as he was injecting me. And so different temperatures and textures and things can be really helpful. So if you Google Panic Pack and then Kane, Dr. Nicole Kane, you'll find how to build one. And then just experiment with what calms you. But really, girl, the breath is everywhere. Wherever you go, your breath will be. And the most powerful is what you said is the exhale is the most powerful part of the breath. That stimulates vagus nerve through diaphragm.

Amazing. Well, thank you so much. This is so fascinating. Tell everybody where they can find you and get your book and all of that. The book is called panic proof and it's anywhere fine books are sold. And so you can get it on Amazon or I like shopping local. So if I had it at your local bookstore and then come find me. Let's hang out on Instagram. I'm Dr. Nicole Kane. And you have lots of tips on your Instagram. That's where I learned the ice on the eyelids thing. So everyone go follow her. Thank you so much. It's a pleasure, my friend. Thank you. I hope you enjoyed that episode. If you liked the episode, and if you like the show in general, please take a second to rate, review, and subscribe. It goes such a long way in supporting the show. Follow the show over on Instagram at well.pod. You can also follow my personal Instagram at

Ariel Lorry. I'm always sharing great clips from the episodes, and we also have full episodes on YouTube as well if you want to watch in entirety. Thanks for listening. Hi, I'm Elizabeth Endress, a wellness founder for nearly a decade. My passion for feeling really good and commitment to the deep inner work have led me here, where I'll be sharing all the modalities that have helped me and sitting down weekly for unfiltered conversations with healers, practitioners, founders, and dear friends. I truly didn't believe emotions caused chronic symptoms until I started healing, and realizing that my type A, highly sensitive personality,

was very much linked to my skin and gut issues, pelvic pain, and more. If you were the sensitive one in the family growing up, The Wellness Process Podcast is for you. You can listen to the Wellness Process podcast wherever you get your podcasts. I am so happy you're here. Please note that this episode may contain paid endorsements and advertisements for products and services. Individuals on the show may have a direct or indirect financial interest in products or services referred to in this episode.