EP 0093 - Dizziness and Unsteadiness Due To Anxiety

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For the full show notes on this episode including a link to the diaphragmatic breathing video I mentioned:

https://theanxioustruth.com/93

For many people, feeling dizzy or unsteady is one of the most enduring and difficult to deal with anxiety symptoms.  If you are

There are two main steps in dealing with dizziness and unsteadiness:

1. Change the way you think about and talk about this sensation.  This isn't true physically debilitating dizziness that makes you literally unable to stand upright. This sensation is simply a feeling of visual and physical discomfort when moving through space.  You are uncomfortable when moving, but you are still able to move through space and function without impairment.  Being uncomfortable isn't ideal, but start to embrace the difference between incapacitated and uncomfortable.  They are not equal.  You are unsteady, which is uncomfortable for you, and you are likely reacting in fear to that discomfort.  When think about this issue, this is how you must frame it.  When you talk about it, you must change the narrative.

"I'm so dizzy I cant do anything."

becomes

"I feel unsteady and its uncomfortable and scary, but I'm still capable of living life".

2. Change the way you react to this sensation.  Rather than stopping, retreating, avoiding, bracing and fighting, you must accept and fully surrender to the feeling of dizziness and unsteadiness. Rather than sitting down, leaving to go back to your safe zone, or "going to ground" (a term I hear all the time, you will relax your body, breathe slowly into your belly, and train your focus on your breath or some other point of your choosing rather than on the sensation and accompanying thoughts.  You can slow down and continue doing whatever it is you were doing or want to do, remaining physically relaxed, breathing properly (to avoid the over breathing/hyperventilation that makes the sensation worse), and and focused on the task at hand. Let the sensation and the thoughts come at you full force and surrender to the worst case that you can imagine.  It won't ever happen.

Remember, you are trying to learn that even when uncomfortable due to unsteadiness, you are OK.  Your goal with this symptom - as usual - is to learn that you do not have to fear it.  Lose the fear and the fear driven reaction and as usual, things will improve over time.

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