When Anxiety Isn’t “Just in Your Head”

What if anxiety wasn’t just a mental health issue — but a nervous system and physiological response happening inside the body?

In this episode of Healing Beyond the Symptoms, Dr. Leah Hahn D.C., and Dr. Scott Hahn D.C., shares two powerful client stories that reveal how chronic inflammation, Lyme disease, mold exposure, and nervous system dysregulation can create intense anxiety and emotional distress.

Through the stories of Lucy and Ellie, this episode explores the concept of dysautonomia — a condition where the autonomic nervous system becomes dysregulated and stuck in a chronic fight-or-flight response.

The autonomic nervous system controls critical body functions including:

• digestion
• detoxification
• immune activity
• hormone regulation
• heart rate and breathing

When the system becomes dysregulated due to chronic inflammation, infections, environmental toxins, or trauma, the body can remain trapped in survival physiology — often presenting as anxiety, brain fog, fatigue, and emotional instability.

In This Episode You’ll Learn

• What dysautonomia is and how it affects the body
• Why chronic Lyme disease and mold exposure can trigger nervous system dysregulation
• How inflammation can manifest as anxiety and emotional distress
• Why nervous system regulation is essential for healing chronic illness
• How Network Spinal care helps restore nervous system balance
• Why healing often requires both physiological and neurological support

Through gentle nervous system care and appropriate medical support, both Lucy and Ellie were able to regain trust in their bodies and reclaim their lives.

If you’ve struggled with unexplained anxiety, brain fog, fatigue, or chronic inflammation, this episode offers a powerful reminder:

Sometimes the missing piece of healing isn’t more medication or supplements — it’s helping the nervous system regulate again.

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Have you ever tried to control anxiety with just your thoughts? Or have you realized that maybe your anxiety has something to do with what's happening in your body physically? Today we're going to explore two stories that really go into just that, how anxiety could be part of what's being held in your body for a host of different reasons. Welcome to Healing Beyond the Symptoms, the podcast that helps people discover the root causes of their health struggles and take back control with science, strategy, and self-awareness. I'm Dr. Leah Hahn, a chiropractor and functional wellness doctor who believes that true healing starts beneath the surface. So let's dive in. So today we're going to highlight two different client stories. One that we're going to talk about is Lucy, another is Ellie. And when we talk about these stories, there's so many people in our area and throughout the United States, throughout the world, that have dealt with long-term Lyme or mold exposure that's creating a situation called dysautonomia within their nervous system. So I want to explore that with you, what that looks like, because you may not be as familiar with what could be happening on a chemical level or an inflammatory level within the body. But it really, these these stories really highlight how anxiety and emotional symptoms might not just be happening in your head. And when we can connect to the body and really start to go into that mind-body healing, it can make a huge difference in terms of someone's level of well-being and getting their quality of life back. So let's talk about those stories.

SPEAKER_00 1:36

So before I get into the dysautonomous side of stuff, what I want to talk about is, you know, Lucy, she came into us because she just moved into the area. She was looking for a gentle chiropractic. Because her body was dealing with chronic inflammation. She wasn't able to really tolerate the traditional high-velocity, low amplitude thrust, which is more the popping and cracking style chiropractic that most people associate with chiropractic. So she was looking for something gentler because her body couldn't tolerate that. But she knows she knew she needed help. As she got a little bit older, then she had some massive mold exposures with some of the places that she was living and working, which then also added this additional major inflamm inflammation cycle in her body. And what we noticed or what what she came in with was one of her major symptoms was just really intense anxiety, along with just, you know, looking for, you know, the different body aches and pains within kind of the neck pain, low back stuff, hip stuff.

SPEAKER_01 2:48

And I remember you talking a lot about this, is that she had really lost trust in her body. So she was someone who really like loved to do really intense outdoor activities, but didn't trust that her body to be able to show up and perform in a way that she felt safe doing those things, or was so worried that she would be triggered in a situation like that as well.

SPEAKER_00 3:09

Yeah. So the inflammation patterns would trigger her, and then her body, she wouldn't be able to use like her body to just wouldn't function right. So she wouldn't be able to go on the bike rides, go on the rafting trips, go on the different things that she liked to do. Um so what we what we noticed was is with her, was you know, the anxiety was really locked into her body. And and so she would she would frequently miss work, or we she'd call us up to, you know, say, hey, can I get in? Because her anxiety is really bad. And so her what was driving the anxiety in her scenario was this dysautonomia, where there is this dysregulation in the autonomic nervous system, which is basically the autonomic nervous system, is what controls kind of all the internal organ functions. So kind of like your stomach to digest food, your liver to kind of you know detoxify, the pancreas to release your digestive enzymes, the intestines kind of do what they're doing, the kidneys to detox, and just all the internal processes that that's what the autonomic nervous system controls. So dysautonomia means that there's dysregulation in that. And so for her, what we saw was is because of you know, one of the things I should say, not just her, but one of the things that we see in our patients who have kind of chronic Lyme or they have chronic mold exposure is their bodies will frequently be stuck in the fight or flight response. You know, we always associate fight or flight just purely from the stress response. But when we get exposed to different chemicals repeatedly, the body goes into defense physiology with that too, because it goes into protection mode. And so as the body goes into protection mode, what that does then is it puts us into the fight or flight response. And then therefore, it's like the chemical trigger can put us into the fight or flight response just as much as the mountain lion or some other sort of stressful event can throw us into the fight or flight response. So that's I think one of the big things that's kind of missing when people talk about that fight or flight response is knowing that it's not always just purely a stress response. It can be a chemical trigger on top of maybe an emotional trigger that that can drive that. And so in her case, what was driving that was this chronic inflammation in her detox pathways because they got hit really hard when she was young with the real intense antibiotics that she was on, and then the mold exposure, all of that had really kind of clogged up and bogged down her detox pathways, which then was leading into this major inflammation cycle that she was in. And what drive that then for her would be basically this raging anxiety that she would express, where she couldn't calm down. And she and she originally kind of, you know, it's just, you know, we don't understand where we perceive it, but then eventually she realized she's like, I perceived it in my body versus necessarily in my brain. And then as we were starting to work with her and allowing her body to start to clear the kind of the inflammation, I shouldn't say clear the inflammation, but allow her body to get out of that fight or flight response. Then what that did then was allow her body to better detox, better get rid of the toxicity, which then helped the inflammation come down, which then helped that anxiety come down. So she would almost always notice when she would come in for a visit if her anxiety was high when she started, it would almost be you know mostly gone or completely gone. And that was and that was something that was really big because originally when she first came into us, she had anxiety all the time. And then she, as if after she was with us for a little bit, then she started to know she had anxiety some of the time. And then she started to realize she's like calm most of the time with very few anxiety moments. So as and then from that moment, she was able to continue to gain better trust in her body, and she was able to gain greater confidence. And as the kind of the and as the nervous system and started to improve, that dysautonomia started to improve and started getting to better regulation, then she started to learn to trust her body again. And then she was able to kind of go on the rafting trips, go on the biking trips, do the things that she wanted to do without the worry that her body was going to give out on.

SPEAKER_01 7:12

And that's a, I mean, really common pattern that you see of how her story unfolded is that you see as the nervous system starts to connect to what tension is there and start to release that tension, their body, they start to, you know, notice that the symptoms start to improve. But healing rarely goes in this like perfect trajectory that we think it should. It's typically this up and down kind of experience. So as her body became more adaptable, like you said, her baseline state shifted. And so she was no longer in this chronic state of anxiety. It was periods of time. And then she got to a point where that really wasn't her state anymore because her body had become that much more adaptable. So that is very common in the healing process. But you really saw her start to take back her life in terms of how she was able to navigate things, show up for things that she really wanted to be a part of, enjoy, participate in life in a totally new way, which was really exciting because sometimes when people are dealing with these chronic conditions, they feel like there's no hope, that they're always going to be anxious, they're always going to be inflamed. And really, when the body can go into healing mode, and especially the mind-body healing mode, there's such a different way of being and a different way of living that can happen. So it's such a great story with how Lucy's life really shifted with network care. If we look at Ellie's story, the reason we chose to continue talking about Ellie's situation is that it was very common. There's some commonalities there. There's more and more people that are dealing with mold and long-term Lyme, chronic Lyme. And so in Ellie's situation, it was expressed a little bit differently, but there was still this feeling that she was dealing with a lot of emotional dysregulation that was caused by the nervous system not functioning like she wanted it to. So tell us more about her situation and her story.

SPEAKER_00 9:09

So what I remember with Ellie is she actually originally came into our office from a car accident. And she was dealing kind of with this inflammation cycle of that from the whiplash and her neck. And so what ended up happening was is after she wasn't healing, then we discovered like sh the chronic mold exposure that she was dealing with. And that in the apartment that she was living in. And what that was doing was just putting her body into this massive inflammation state, which wasn't allowing her body to get into that healing cycle. And unfortunately, you know, a little while into that too, then she was also diagnosed with chronic Lyme as well, too. And so there was in her scenario, it was just one of these things where each little piece just kind of built on the next, built on the next, built on the next, which then finally her body just couldn't tolerate anymore. And so she was just getting sicker and sicker and sicker, even though on the surface it looked like there was originally just this car accent component. There was all these other pieces that were sitting behind the scenes that were preventing her from healing. And so, as we were able to kind of dig into those and start to recognize some of those, that's where we were able to help her body to be able to start to shift that cycle. Because what would happen was is the car action put her body into a major fight or flight cycle. Because that was kind of an instant trauma, instant reaction, high stress response. But then because there was this kind of like underlying layer of inflammation that was being suppressed because it just had never gone through that high stress cycle, the instant the system went through that high stress cycle, then the chronic inflammation that was subtly sitting there behind the scenes, then that got expressed. And that's where kind of the illness started to kick in for her. And and basically it worse. So what we were able to do is with her is help her nervous system to get out of that kind of the fight or flight response. One of the things that we're starting to see more and more, the research is starting to show more and more in some of these really chronic um diseases or issues, like especially Lyme or mold, what they're finding out is it's nervous system dysregulation. That's the number one, you know, that's that's their new approach of what they're trying to do. And they're seeing huge changes with it, which doesn't surprise me because we've been seeing that for years in that group, is because it is this body gets stuck into the fight or flight response from whatever trauma, whatever it's, you know, whether it's a chemical trauma through, you know, basically being poisoned by mold or basically, you know, whatever infection might be in the system, it sets up in this kind of chronic inflammatory response syndrome. And so when you see these inflammation responses, then the body, then you see it start to manifest in different ways. And so Ellie was dealing with a lot of brain fob. She was dealing with tremendous amounts of fatigue to the point where she could barely work anymore. There was days, sometimes almost weeks, where she wasn't able to work. And what we were able to do then is get her assistant to start to shift out of that fight or flight response and then getting into kind of the healing cycle. And also, too, we, you know, we got her referred into like a kind of a Lyme specialist as well, too, to make sure that that side was handled because that's an another important piece, and then helped, you know, help her get the mold remediated as well, too, or to find an expert to kind of help her with that. So there's there's are other pieces that needed to happen, but there's still the healing that needs to happen on the inside. So just because maybe the infection's gone, or maybe just because the exposure to that chemical is gone, the body's still responding like it's there because it got trapped into that cycle, it got trapped into that fear response. And she was another one that lost trust within her body because it felt like everything that she did that she did would send it into a flare, would trigger it to be worse. And what she noticed was is that when she would come in and get work done and get the network spinal care, is that she would feel better, she could think clearer, she could work for longer, and she was able to start to process all these things. And then slowly over time, she was really able to gain her health back, her life back, and really be able to, you know, function 100% independently again, where a lot of times with some of the chronic Lyme and chronic mold, these people's lives are just absolutely destroyed because of the intensity of what they go through and the significance and how hard it takes them out.

SPEAKER_01 13:36

Well, and you're seeing that in a lot of the research is that they're showing that you know, they can add in all of the supplements uh for some of these clients and they can, you know, really try to do all of these different detoxification therapies and they're all helpful. But if the nervous system is stuck in fight or flight, it's just not there's there's something that will always be in the way from that person moving into healing mode. So it's really important, like in these situations, like you talked about for Ellie, that she got, you know, specific specialists to help with the mold issue and the Lyme issue, those types of things. But without the nervous system-based care, her body still could not navigate the healing process. So when she was able to get that, it was life-changing, really. Like in her new baseline state is so much healthier.

SPEAKER_00 14:23

She always tells me that she says if it wasn't for us, she doesn't think she'd be alive because it was the aspect of allowing her body to function better. Because what commonly what we'll see is in a lot of these mold lime scenarios, like some of the treatments can be pretty intense. And so if the care allows their bodies to function better, to detox better, and then it allows that treatment to function better, like it allows actually work. It allows the body to tolerate the treatment. A lot of times the body can't tolerate the treatment because they're just too sick. So if you can improve that baseline so they can tolerate the treatment, then they can start to get to this new level of health because they're able to get through the different protocols, they're able to get through the different recommendations. And when they can get through that, then they can actually get to that deeper level of healing so they can function and thrive once again in life. Where otherwise, it's commonly where the body's just stuck in these patterns, stuck in the fight or flight response, and they're not able to tolerate the treatments to move forward, they can't get through that, so they can never get to the other side.

SPEAKER_01 15:24

Well, and what goes so much with that as well is that emotional health and well-being. Because again, with the inflammatory cycles, I mean, people may just feel like they're so just dysregulated, like they are crying all the time, or they just feel really depressed or they feel really anxious. And that can be situational, but it also can be because of what's happening internally within the nervous system. And so we want to get that piece of it back on board as well, so that sense of well-being can start to come back.

SPEAKER_00 15:53

I listened to one doctor speak one time about how, um, and we know the brain doesn't perceive pain, even though you can get headaches and migraines and stuff like that. But what he was stressing was is when you see these like anxiety type responses, when you see like high emotional states, raging depression, stuff like that, those are equivalent of like pain type responses in the brain. It's not that they're actually pain, it's just that it's the the brain is is is screaming warning signals say something is wrong, something's not right here. Brain fog can show up that way too. So when you see these major emotional dysregulated states, a lot of times it has this underlying kind of chemical dysregulated state from toxicity or you know, from different pieces there. So if you can get the system to function better, get it out of that dysautonomic uh dysregulation in that sense of the dysautonomy and get it into like proper regulation and the body can properly detox, that's one of the reasons why you see the inflammation come down and why you see the such a healing response. Yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_01 16:59

Exactly. Hope these stories highlighted for you how important the nervous system is in terms of the healing response and what that piece of healing can be. If you're dealing with anxiety, depression, brain fog, inflammatory cycles, the nervous system could be your missing. We hope today's episode was helpful in terms of finding different solutions that could help you move into a new state of well-being and healing. Thanks for spending time with us today on Healing Beyond the. We hope you feel more connected, not only to what we do, but to why we do it. If you'd like to take the next step on your healing journey, you can book a consultation at Body and Balance Wellness Center. And don't forget to connect with us on Instagram at Body Imbalance Wellness Center. Until next time, remember, healing is a process. There are many solutions. We're here to walk with you every step of the way. Thanks again for joining me today on Healing Beyond the Symptoms. If you've been curious about network spinal or if you've tried everything else and still feel stuck, I want you to know this. Your body is not broken. It's patterned, and those patterns can change. If you're ready to experience how gentle care can lead to profound transformation, I'd love to invite you to book a wellness consultation at BodyinBalanceCarepractic.com. Together we'll look at what your body needs to finally release, reset, and thrive. Until next time, breathe deep, trust your body, and remember, gentle can be powerful.