The Fear of Dizziness

If you struggle with the fear of dizziness, this episode is for you! Today I talk about why it's such a common fear among sufferers of disordered anxiety, what the causes are, and what we can do to overcome it. Enjoy! 

SOURCES: 

https://birchgrovementalhealth.com/would-anxiety-cause-dizziness/

https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/symptoms/6422-dizziness

Get your FREE Fear to Freedom Guide here! 

 TikTok: @heyamandaklay

Instagram: @heyamandaklay

YouTube: @heyamandaklay

Email: amanda@amandaklay.com 

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:22

Welcome back to the 18 Minutes Podcast. I'm Amanda, and this is the show where we take everything that is confusing, isolating, and scary about fear and anxiety, and we turn it into something you can actually work with. I love to talk about sensations we have around fear because I think a lot of people think about overcoming a fear or overcoming some kind of disordered anxiety as complicated. Especially if you have a lot of fears, which if you're listening to this show, you probably do. But the truth is, in my opinion, and based on my own experiences, all of our fears kind of have the same root and can be worked on using the same methods and principles. Essentially, once you learn some basic principles, you can apply them not only to other fears that you have, but other habits and patterns you might have in your life that you want to change. All of the processes and methods that I talk about are simply utilizing the mind-body connection that already exists to our benefit. As a reminder, I am not a therapist or a medical professional. Everything I share on this show is based on my own experience with fear and anxiety, my journey through overcoming them, and the research I do for the show. This is not a replacement for therapy. So please take only what's helpful to you, leave what isn't, and listen to your medical and mental health professionals first. One quick thing I want to share is that the Reclaim cohort is currently on week three of four, and I cannot express the incredible group of people that has come together for this. The progress everyone is making and the support and encouragement I've seen has been so inspiring. It really is incredible how one hour a week for four weeks, plus a little group chat on the side that one of the members created, has helped all of us in this cohort stay accountable to making progress on the work that we've decided we need to do. I have just been blown away by the foundations these people are already building and the way their lives are already expanding. So there will be other opportunities if that sounds like something you want to be a part of. I'm hoping to launch another cohort yet this summer. So if you'd like to join a cohort, make sure you're signed up for the newsletter because that's where I announce everything first. And if you're interested, shoot me an email. If I get a full group of people who tell me they're interested early, I'll just go ahead and start one up. Also, quick side note: I did a fun little rebrand recently. If you interact with my content regularly, you will have already noticed that while this podcast is still called the 18 Minutes Podcast, the rest of my content is now under Amanda Clay. I wanted things to feel more personal and authentic to me and less business-y, maybe, which I know it is, but all the work I do is about helping people and using my own story and experiences and connection. So I just wanted things to feel a little more like me. So my socials are all now under Hey Amanda Clay. My website is amandaclay.com and my email is amanda at amandaclay.com. The website and email redirect back, so no worries if you recently use the old one. I still get all those messages. There's also some fun new colors and graphics. So if you're into that kind of thing, you can go check it out. Okay, let's get into today's topic. Fear of dizziness. Fear and anxiety around dizziness is super common. I experienced this for years and it becomes something that people get kind of stuck on. It can become a hyperfixation really quickly when there's fear around it because fear is a really, really strong emotion. Most psychologists agree, actually, fun fact, that fear is the strongest emotion that humans can feel. So if this applies to you, you are not alone in this. A lot of people get caught up in a fear cycle specifically around dizziness. Some people say dizzy and they mean spinning, like the room feels like it's spinning. Uh, some people mean lightheaded. Some people mean feeling just off-kilter, kind of like you're walking on a boat, like your balance just feels off. So I'm just gonna lump all of those things together under dizziness for the purpose of today's episode. Dizziness happens for all kinds of reasons: dehydration, overheating, vestibular issues, anemia, side effects for medications, ear infections, migraines, motion sickness, and you guessed it, fear. Fear and anxiety can cause dizziness for several reasons, also. The one I think most people think of is overbreathing or hyperventilation, which can cause dizziness for sure, but there are a lot of other reasons too. Muscle tension in your neck and shoulders can cause you to feel off balance. Your blood pressure changing even slightly can cause feelings of dizziness. And stress affects our nervous systems generally in a whole host of ways that make our bodies just feel a little bit different. On top of that, when we're feeling anxious and afraid, especially chronically, we become hyper-aware of our bodily sensations. So a feeling that in states of calm we might not even notice becomes something that we hyperfixate on when we're in a state of stress. I'm going into the rest of this episode assuming that you have been checked by a doctor if this is an ongoing issue for you, and that any physical potential causes have been ruled out. So the rest of the information I'm going to share is based on dizziness that is caused by fear and not one of the physical treatable causes I mentioned earlier. So let's talk about how to overcome this fear. If every time you feel dizzy, you do something to stop it from happening, you have created a pattern in your mind and body that says dizziness is not acceptable and it needs to be dealt with immediately. Because of that, your brain that wants to protect you at all costs is going to start up the fight or flight system every time you feel dizzy to make sure nothing bad happens to you. The thing is, dizziness in most cases, in almost every case, is harmless. So, since we've rolled out other physical causes and we know our anxiety is almost definitely being caused by stress, fear, or anxiety, we can create a new pattern where our brain doesn't flag dizziness as something it needs adrenaline to help fix. So, that being the case, we can actually work and take steps to change this pattern. This is the exact same pattern that I used to overcome all of my disordered anxiety and the pattern I continue to use to grow and expand my comfort zone. With dizziness, specifically, there's a couple ways you can go about this depending on your specific situation. And as always, please talk to your therapist or mental health professional before implementing any behavioral changes. First and foremost, you can practice acceptance and willingness. If you haven't listened to my episode called How to Practice Acceptance, highly recommend. It's my most listened to episode, and it walks through in depth how to practice acceptance. To practice acceptance and willingness with dizziness, the only thing you need is to feel dizzy. Once you do have that feeling, the the one key part of acceptance is not changing your behavior because of the dizziness. You are accepting the fact that you are dizzy. And any kind of reaction, like sitting down, grabbing onto something for balance, getting a drink of water, are going to reinforce to your brain, your amygdala specifically, that the dizziness is a problem that needs to be treated. It's not okay to feel that way. And you might actually believe that's true right now, that it's not acceptable and that it's not okay. And that's okay. You can still practice this if you're unsure. That's the beauty of the mind-body connection. It works both ways. We can convince our subconscious minds of new truths by behaving as if they're true. That's the whole reason why you and I got into this mess in the first place. Because we started avoiding things because we thought those situations or feelings might be dangerous to us. And the avoidant behavior we participated in and continue to participate in proves to the deepest parts of our brains that it's true, that those things must be dangerous. So thankfully, it works the other way too. The unfortunate part is that it's uncomfortable because now we've developed a fear that needs to be faced head-on, and that is really scary. But if you're willing to feel some fear, you have everything you need to get through this for good. So while you're accepting, while you're not using safety behaviors, while you're staying present, going about your business, even though you feel dizzy, it can be really helpful to tell yourself specifically I'm practicing allowing myself to feel dizziness right now, and I'm willing to feel this way without doing anything about it. Getting really clear and specific and direct with yourself about what exactly is going on can be really grounding and it can help keep you from spiraling. Another thing you can do, depending on where you're at, and I do recommend asking your therapist about this one, is interoceptive exposure practice. It's essentially what I just described, but this is where you purposely bring on sensations that you're scared of to more directly challenge the belief that you hold about those feelings. It's like facing fears on steroids. For dizziness, I know a lot of people will spin around in a chair multiple times or spin around standing up to intentionally become dizzy. That's the whole purpose. Then the rest of the principles in acceptance and willingness apply. Practice allowing yourself to feel those feelings without getting them to stop. When we practice these kinds of things repeatedly, our brains learn that the feelings themselves aren't dangerous. And so when they do come up out of nowhere, because dizziness is something that's going to come up out of nowhere. I feel that way. People who have never experienced disordered anxiety have experienced sudden dizziness or lightheadedness. So when that happens, if we've practiced this acceptance and willingness, we are much less likely to feel feelings of anxiety, like that adrenaline rush, when it comes up. I want to mention that this work of overcoming fears is challenging. Feeling fear is hard in itself. It's uncomfortable. But this really is life-changing work, and it's not easy, and there's no quick fix for shifting our perspectives on fear either at a conscious intellectual level or at a deeper subconscious level. I've said this before, but most people do not ever have a need to confront a fear because their lives are manageable without doing that. And if you're listening to this episode, that's probably not the case for you. You're here because something in your life, or more likely, a lot of things in your life, are not manageable anymore. And yes, it might sound silly to people who have never experienced this before, but a fear of dizziness is debilitating. I know how it feels to wake up every day feeling off balance and wondering if it's ever going to end and not having the capacity to live my regular life because of it. I also tried everything to get it to go away. I tried supplements, I tried exercising, I tried resting, I tried drinking more water, I went to the doctor countless times, and nothing made the dizziness go away or my fear of it go away until I learned how to accept my feelings and rewire and reteach my brain that feeling dizzy is not inherently dangerous. So that's why I'm sharing this with you. And a huge part of my mission is convincing people to prioritize this work in the first place. I did go through years and years of panic disorder, agoraphobia, and OCD, but underneath all of that was this perception of the world as risky and dangerous above all else. I didn't develop those conditions out of nowhere. They came from beliefs I held about the intense importance of comfort and safety above everything else. And I really believe that that kind of perspective is worth changing for all of us. There's a whole world out there for you to see, and people and places that need you. So this work, while challenging and uncomfortable, is so important. And I believe 100% that you can live a life that is peaceful and free and exciting and authentic to you. You are so much stronger and more capable to change your life than you think. And that's all for today's episode, kind of a quick one. Um, I hope that was helpful to you. Um remember also that these principles apply to other sensations, situations, and feelings, not just dizziness. So if this isn't something you're struggling with specifically, but you have other sensations that you do struggle with that have become chronic and you know that they're caused by your fear or anxiety, you can apply the same methods of acceptance and willingness to those feelings as well. Again, check with your doctor, check with your therapist. Um, these are based on my own experience with fear and anxiety, but like I said, I tried everything, and this is the only thing that worked for me, and it worked. That being said, if you're looking for more resources on these kinds of topics, you can head to my website, amandandplay.com, and there's a resources tab right on the top of the page. That's where I have everything that I create for. If you have a question about today's episode or a topic you'd like me to dive into on the podcast, you can use the contact form on my website or send me an email at amanda at amandaclay.com. I would love to hear that. Thank you so much for being here, and I'll see you next time.