Anxiety is a mysterious cocktail of factors — to name a few, personality, family history, past trauma, hormonal balance, social influences, and stressful life circumstances can all play a role. But amid all the complexity, one thing research has made clear: “There is no greater risk factor for anxiety disorders,” Andrea Petersen notes, “than being born female.” 

For a decades, I’ve been following the way scientists can map out the chemical cascades in the body depending genetics, epi-genetics, and our own influences. There are precise pathways and signals of expression that are well understood at this point.

Anxiety isn’t a character flaw. Science understands that anxiety has specific brain activity and affects our emotions as well as our physical health. The good news is…this brain activity can be changed or reset, back to the factory settings. 

We were designed, our original factory settings were set to a capacity to handle stressors without side effects. There are many elements to consider here, more than this blog can cover, but to name a few:

• Our nervous system knows how to access a state of calm and heal
• Our nervous system has an autonomic branch which is taking care of beating your heart, repairing tissue, and digesting your food right now.
• Understanding how to influence our nervous system is a big deal and because we are conscious beings, we have the capacity to influence our system for good.
• The entire fabric of the Universe is Love and every human being is wired for this same Love. We have a natural bias for good choices wired into us. This is your default mode.

So why are so many women riddled with anxiety?

There is so much conditioning that overrides our natural bias and default mode, for good choices. This conditioning starts young, we all know it. As adults it’s everywhere in advertising and culture. It seems inescapable.

So it “seems” as if the over-protective mode, fear, and anxiety are normal. They are NOT normal, they just happen to be very common.

We were never taught what normal is. The good news… your cells carry the memory of normal.

We’re disconnected from an aspect of “Life” that supports us in having a stronger capacity for good choices. Which includes choices at every level of our being:

1. Mental…our thoughts and beliefs
2. Emotional…our feelings and what to do with them
3. Physical…how everything effects biological function (for better or worse)
4. Spiritual…our connection to the Source of Life.

Every moment of our day affects every level of our being.

Being a woman carries a different set of influences. Some of it is due to hormonal differences. Some of it is due to the disharmony between the masculine and feminine energies for the past several thousand years (some deep programming there!). Some of it has to do with variations of brain receptors in the female brain, to name a few.

All of that said, anxiety is NOT a character flaw. It’s NOT a ‘plague of the weaker sex’. Nor is it a life sentence.

It’s a matter of bringing light to the business of brain chemistry and balance. Much of this we have influence over. This is a muscle to build. It just so happens we’ve got a stronger muscle built for a chronic stress response that isn’t helping the situation. The world happenings, life circumstances and demands, struggles with sleep, weight, and mental/emotional control have many of us by the throat. Trapped on a hamsters wheel of anxiety.

I get what it means to have anxiety. I ‘managed’ it for years until I discovered how to evolved myself beyond it and into the state of having a choice. Do I still have wobbly times, absolutely, but it doesn’t own me anymore the way it used to. In my 20’s I didn’t want to keep living, it was too hard, too intense, too strangulating to deal with the barrage of anxiety provoking triggers. It felt like they were everywhere and I was trapped. Now I know different.

One small thing that is helpful when you begin to feel stress and anxiety is to slow down. Slow down your movements, breath, and thoughts. As if you’re downshifting from 5th gear to 3rd gear. You’re not in slow motion, but you’re not speeding either.

Your mind will want to go fast and spin, grasping for safety. Slow down anyway.

Remember: Slow is safe. When we breath slower it signals to the body that we are safe. This is a researched fact. Follow your breath if you need something to focus on. This is an ‘in the moment’ tool.

“Stress is an ignorant state. It believes that everything is an emergency. Nothing is that important.”
—Natalie Goldberg

Smile, breathe, and go slowly. -Thich Nhat Hanh

Just play with it and see how it goes, nothing terrible will happen I promise. The roof won’t cave in on you. Your co-worker won’t think you’re a freak. The bank teller won’t even know what you’re doing.  The world won’t collapse. But your head and your heart will be grateful. And that’s a good start.

I’ll be doing a 4-part series on Anxiety for Women, stay tuned!