We recently connected with Dr. Nicole Cain and have shared our conversation below.
Dr. Nicole, sincerely appreciate your selflessness in agreeing to discuss your mental health journey and how you overcame and persisted despite the challenges. Please share with our readers how you overcame. For readers, please note this is not medical advice, we are not doctors, you should always consult professionals for advice and that this is merely one person sharing their story and experience.
Anxiety affects over 70% of Americans and I was one of those people. Daytime stressors, blended into fitful sleep, amplifying into full-blown panic attacks like a snowball gaining momentum as it careened down a mountain in an avalanche.
The ironic part is that treating anxiety is my zone of genius. After years of academic study—an undergraduate degree in psychobiology, a master’s in clinical psychology, and a medical degree with postgraduate training in integrative and holistic medicine—I became the go-to resource for panic relief and consulted with clients and even experts in mental health, from around the globe.
But as my heart galloped inside my chest, adrenaline coursed through my veins, causing involuntary muscle twitches and spasms, and my gut clenched in rebellion against any sort of food, the tips and tricks that had worked for my clients for over a decade didn’t work for me. Even the ace in my pocket—an emergency prescription for Xanax—wasn’t giving me the relief I so desperately needed. It felt unfair that I would be immune to the solutions that had helped so many, and I felt like I was under the divine vengeance of some wrathful deity that had it out for me.
Many months later, after trying supplements, herbs, exercise, meditation, chiropractic medicine, Ayurveda, talk therapy, hypnosis, reiki, aromatherapy, vagus nerve stimulation, neurofeedback, biofeedback, and conventional medications, I found myself at rock-bottom. Despair told me that this was the end of my life as I knew it. That there was no hope. That panic and terror were going to win and that my body would eventually break down and fail.
Then something changed.
Here is what you need to know about anxiety: The more you deny it, the more it will amplify. In other words, what you suppress will express. By trying to stop my symptoms, I was like a rat stuck in a maze, finding one dead end after another. And that is because anxiety is not a problem to be solved; it is the body’s wise solution to an underlying problem. The more we try to stop our bodies from communicating, suppressing their cries for deeper healing and balance, the more out of tune and sick we become.
Imagine a spring in a mattress. Every time you lay down, it stabs you right in the back, interrupting your sleep and causing you to feel exhausted and irritable. So, in order to solve the problem, you try to press down on the spring to stop it from poking through the mattress surface. But the moment you remove the pressure of your hands, it springs back up, this time the momentum creating a tear in the material.
Next up, you try putting a brick on the spring, something to hold it down, so you can rest without being disturbed. But the brick isn’t much better. In fact, arguably it’s worse. The brick is rough and it scratches your skin, and takes up just as much space or more. If you’re like me, the old Hans Christian Andersen fairy tale story of The Princess and the Pea is coming to mind. (This is a story about a prince seeking a “true princess” by putting a potential bride to the test of sleeping on a pile of mattresses with a pea hidden underneath. He assessed her marriageability by her ability to feel the pea through all the bedding).
I remember being a kid and hearing this story, and asking in frustration: Why don’t they just remove the pea and be done with it? Then the princess can get good sleep, and the lonely prince can find his bride another way.
Turns out, this is exactly what we need to do in order to heal anxiety: go straight to the pea—the root cause.
Instead of adding mattresses or bricks—which in this metaphor represent supplements, herbs, strategies, and other quick fixes to silence, reduce, stop, or suppress my anxiety—my first step in overcoming anxiety was to start looking at it as the result of something deeper, my body’s way of telling me what needs attention. What came next was the exploration of figuring out exactly how to listen and respond to this message.
Let’s take a small detour – maybe you can share a bit about yourself before we dive back into some of the other questions we had for you?
As a tween, you could typically find me toting around one or two things: a first-aid kit and a notebook. Inside the first-aid bag was gauze, triple antibiotic cream, and Lisa Frank Band-Aids (brightly colored unicorns being the solution to almost any problem). The notebook was where I wrote stories and journaled my day-to-day thoughts.
Today, as an adult, it’s not much different, but swap the first-aid arsenal for the internationally renowned Panic Pack, and upgrade the notebook to my first book: “Panic Proof: The Holistic Solution for Ending Anxiety Forever.”
Over the years, studying mental health through an integrative and trauma-informed lens, and then going through and healing from my own mental health crisis has fueled me with knowledge, first-hand experience, and deep compassion for those stuck in the cycle of symptom suppression.
My passion is empowering people with a new paradigm (actually, this is old wisdom, just with a research-backed refresh and twist) to understand what their symptoms are trying to tell them needs healing, and providing practical and effective solutions on how to actually heal.
I no longer have panic attacks.
I no longer stay awake all night with thoughts of doom and death swimming around in my mind.
I no longer feel like an imposter, failure, or like I’m under divine attack.
Instead: I feel confident. In control. And eternally grateful.
I’m grateful for my body in never giving up on me and for the gift of my symptoms which lead me down the path of incredible transformation.
Maybe there was something to the prince’s methods of using the pea to discover who his princess really was (throwback to earlier when we were talking about the fairy tale story of The Princess and the Pea).
Maybe the pea provided an inroad for deeper discovery? Just like our symptoms do.
While anxiety no longer has a place in my life, my mind, body and nervous system continue to speak: the big difference is now I know how to listen.
And you can too. And I’d love to teach you how.
You can find me hanging out @drnicolecain on Instagram, sharing free resources, collaborating with other experts, and posting memes. Another one of my favorite places to hang out is inside of the Holistic Wellness Collective, which is an intentional space I created for motivated self-healers to dig into the details of how to feel more calm, confident, connected and free.
If you had to pick three qualities that are most important to develop, which three would you say matter most?
Curiosity. Compassion. Courageous.
Let’s start with curiosity: One of the most profound states of mind when it comes to healing is curiosity. By the very act of believing we know the answer to the question, we are precluded from discovering otherwise. It is only when we get curious and start asking questions that we discover new answers.
Here is an excerpt from my book, Panic Proof, that explains this as it pertains to the field of mental health, notably, clinical psychiatry:
“In 1937 the Italian scientists Maffu Vialli and Vittorio Espamer came across something that turned out to be one of the most important discoveries in neuroscience: a signaling molecule that they named enteramine (later renamed serotonin), located in little cells in the gut.”
“More than three decades after the discovery of serotonin in 1937, a groundbreaking study emerged in 1974. This research proposed a novel treatment for mood disorders: fluoxetine (Prozac), a drug designed to elevate serotonin levels in the brain. The theory was that depression and anxiety were caused by lowered serotonin in the brain, and that increasing serotonin levels with a selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRI) would improve a person’s mood. This was the birth of the chemical imbalance theory.”
But then everything changed.
“In 2022 a giant meta-analysis and systematic review, published in the journal Molecular Psychiatry, took down the chemical imbalance theory. Its conclusion can be boiled down to the following quote: “There is no convincing evidence that depression is associated with, or caused by, lower serotonin concentrations or activity.”
“And just like that, we find ourselves back at square one. And this is a wonderful place to be, because when we don’t have answers, we look for them. Instead of assuming someone has a chemical imbalance, we have the opportunity to ask questions.”
When we are curious, we learn more. Because we are willing to ask questions, look at things from a different perspective. And that opens the doors to incredible discoveries.
Compassion is next:
Compassion, both for oneself and others, plays a vital role in overcoming anxiety. Self-compassion allows us to respond to our own struggles with kindness rather than harsh self-criticism, which can exacerbate our symptoms and block us from the hard work of radically accepting our imperfections as part of the process of learning and healing.
I grew up in a family that struggled with compassion. At home, it was more important to be right than to be kind. Compassion was equated with weakness, and vulnerability was seen as a liability. I believed that I was fundamentally flawed, and that my symptoms were problems to be solved, requiring authoritarian intervention from the authorities who knew better than I did. Consequently, I grew up at war with myself, often feeling disconnected from my emotions and identity.
But when I started the process of befriending my body, acknowledging my fears, physical sensations, and other symptoms of panic, paradoxically they started to reduce. I began to dig into trauma-informed research about neurobiology, mindset, identity, and resilience, discovering that by fostering both self-compassion and compassion for others, we create a supportive emotional foundation that can significantly contribute to healing anxiety, promoting greater emotional resilience, and enhancing overall mental well-being.
And then there is courageousness:
Healing takes courage. Courage to acknowledge our past, feel through the present, and radically accept whatever the future may hold. It takes bravery and steadfastness to do the hard work of looking our symptoms straight on and saying to them, “I am listening. Tell me more.”
Instead of doing anything and everything to make them stop. It’s danting to get up in the morning, to step out of your comfort zone, to face your fears, challenge your beliefs, and embrace uncertainty. It’s wildly audacious to take back your power and accept that you are the answer that you desperately need. That you are worthy. That you are enough. And that you can actually heal.
Sometimes the fear of the unknown stops us from leaving the hell of the known. Taking a chance to do something different is incredibly courageous.
And you are incredible for reading these words. Considering the questions of: “What are my symptoms trying to tell me needs healing?” and “What changes do I need to make in order to take back my health and freedom?”
And you don’t have to do it alone.
What is the number one obstacle or challenge you are currently facing and what are you doing to try to resolve or overcome this challenge?
The biggest obstacle to overcoming anxiety is the pervasive myth that you can’t heal from it. This lie about anxiety’s meaning and prognosis has become deeply ingrained in our society. But the science tells a different story.
In my book, Panic Proof, I’ve consolidated decades of research on the nervous system, gut microbiome, brain, trauma, immune system, and endocrine system. This scientific data reveals the true root causes of anxiety and the most effective treatments. The evidence is clear: healing from anxiety is not only possible, it’s achievable.
My mission is to recast anxiety from the villain to the hero of our story. It’s time for a rebrand. We need to shift our perspective from seeing anxiety as a burden to recognizing it as a teacher, from viewing it as a weakness to embracing it as a source of strength.
You can be part of this transformative mission. The journey begins with listening to your body, challenging your beliefs, and embracing change. If you feel stuck – as if you’re caught in an avalanche or sleeping on a bed of springs – you can initiate change by practicing curiosity, compassion, and courage. Educate yourself, seek support, take action, and share your knowledge with others.
By openly discussing our symptoms with trusted friends or helpers, being authentic with our loved ones, and challenging the negative messaging about our bodies and minds, we embrace the gifts of self-awareness and resilience. This process allows us to repair our relationship with ourselves. The impact extends beyond our personal lives, creating systemic change in our families, communities, and society at large.
Are you ready to face the challenge of redefining anxiety? Together, we can transform the narrative surrounding anxiety and pave the way for deep personal healing and societal transformation.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://drnicolecain.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/drnicolecain/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/DrNicoleCain/
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dr-nicole-cain
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/c/DrNicoleCainNDMA
- Other: Panic Proof Book: https://www.panicproof.com/
Insight Timer: https://insighttimer.com/drnicolecain
Image Credits
Quianna Marie https://www.instagram.com/quiannamarie/
so if you or someone you know deserves recognition please let us know here.
