Anxiety in Artists
Waking up feeling soft, integrated and grounded in your body, this is the dream. It’s also the rare experience for the creative spirit. With your heightened imagination and ability to see all angles of every situation, it’s very easy for your mind to accelerate. Your body can follow this and ramp up quickly to match. Lying in bed first thing in the morning and feeling your heart and mind racing is an overwhelming way to start a day. The morning should be a time of gentle entrance into the world, full of softness.
Knowing you, you’ve already been weaving yoga, breathwork, and meditation into your days to naturally ease the anxiety. Avoiding caffeine, herbal teas, eating upon waking, getting natural sunlight in your eyes first thing… you’ve been doing it all and yet it still isn’t fully resolving. It helps some days, but isn’t enough on other days. I hear you and get it.
Foundational Causes of Anxiety
You need a deeper support for those tough mornings. Perhaps you even need to look into your biological or emotional status to address the foundational sources. When it comes to anxiety, these are the areas I consider:
Biological
Gallbladder Congestion
GI Pathogens
Adrenal Hypo/Hyper Function (cortisol issues)
Reduced or Elevated Hormone Release
Toxin Burden (mold spores, mycotoxins, endotoxins, heavy metals, etc.)
Emotional
Unprocessed Stored Emotions
Attachment & Relational Wounds
PTSD
You do not have to be perfect to experience peace, but these areas should be reviewed and addressed if they are strongly affecting your body’s function or your ethereal state.
Natural Solution for Quick Relief
Whether you choose to address the above or not, a solution for the here and now until you find everyday ease is amino acid therapy. Amino acid therapy is my go-to solution for bringing you to a place of resilience now. It is non-addictive and can provide temporary ease if not full relief until you are able to go deeper.
Amino Acid Therapy: GABA
GABA stands for gamma-aminobutyric acid and is one of the brain's most important inhibitory neurotransmitters. It supports communication between brain cells (neurons) and ultimately slows down the rapid interactions that can occur. When it is at healthy levels in your body and brain you feel calm, cool, and collected. Often times a downstream effect of the foundational imbalances I listed above is neurotransmitter deficiency. GABA is commonly low in sensitive artists, especially when your schedule demands constant production and performance. Always being “on” can quickly deplete the body’s natural GABA reserves if your body’s foundations are already rocky.
The good news is that GABA can be taken as a supplement. The body absorbs and utilizes it very quickly, so you’ll feel the calming impact within 15 to 45 minutes of consumption, especially if taking your correct dose in the form and manner that suits your body.
Neurotransmitter Lab Testing for Anxiety
If you have time to test your neurotransmitter levels, I highly recommend it. This allows us to confirm exactly what you need. At times, excess GABA can also create the same symptoms as deficient GABA or another neurotransmitter imbalance could be at play. Testing cuts right to the problem and makes it very clear what will work and will not work without much experimentation. You can book a single session plus labs with me and order the Brain/Mood or Brain/Mood + Stress panel right HERE.
Dosing
If you need support ASAP and a 2-3 week turnaround time for testing is not an option or you want to combine your options and try GABA while you wait for test results, in case you can get some relief right away, then do it!
Here’s how to dose, if you’re trying it on your own. Please remember this is general advice as I do not know your starting state or full symptom presentation, but it may be enough to get you rolling. There is a lot of nuance in dosing, so I share this as an overarching guide.
Start low and slow. GABA comes in a couple forms. Begin with pure GABA capsules to keep it simple. I recommend no more than 100 mg per capsule, less if you can find it. Look at the fillers, avoid supplements with a long list of additional ingredients, like dextrose and rice flour. I do not recommend getting mutli’s or blends. Save that for later once you know how you respond to GABA on its own. Quality and effectiveness is everything when it comes to supplementation. I’ve included a few starter brands below for you to try.
Take away from food or other supplements so you can clearly observe how you feel. I recommend opening the capsule and pouring ½ on your tongue. Observe how you feel after 15-45 minutes. Set an alarm clock or ask a friend or partner to give you feedback on how you are acting 1 hour later. If they observe you smiling more, laughing or just seeming generally lighter, you know you’re on the right track! If you feel nothing, then the next day try it again, pouring 1 full capsule on the tongue. Continue increasing in this manner, but you only need to pour the first capsule on your tongue. You’re sending a message to your brain that the nutrient is available so that it responds quicker. If you cannot stand the taste, I added chewable options below for you to try as well.
If you feel more irritable within 15-60 minutes, then you know GABA is not the right fit and I would highly recommend testing your neurotransmitters.
Please note: if you’re on medication, consult with your prescribing physician before adding any additional mood balancers.
Once you find your right dosage, you can take regularly until you resolve your foundational imbalances or you fill up your GABA deficiency tank. You may find that after some time you need less support to feel good. This means that you gave your body what it needed to resolve the underlying imbalances, even if that was just the space of having a calm nervous system from taking GABA to bring everything back into working order, and it is now producing enough GABA on its own. Eventually, you will not need it and can keep it in the house for highly stressful seasons when you need extra care.
A peaceful grounded morning is possible for you. Give your mind and body the extra support and space they need with amino acid therapy.