Anxiety

Clinic

• Anxiety is an entity which contain sign/symptoms such as Uneasiness / Worry/ Palpitation / Hyper hydrosis / Mouth dryness
• Its underlying mechanism is Sympathetic hyperactivity.

Anxiety vs. Fear

• Both are entities, differentiating from their qualities as below.

Four main domains	Fear	Anxiety
Duration of emotional experience	Short	Long
Temporal focus	Present	Futute
Specificity of the threat	Specific	Diffuse
Motivated direction	Escape	Additional associated cognitive activity

Neuroanatomy

• Amygdala (which regulates emotions like anxiety and fear, stimulating the HPA axis and sympathetic nervous system). People who have anxiety tend to show high activity in response to emotional stimuli in the amygdala. Some writers believe that excessive anxiety can lead to an overpotentiation of the limbic system (which includes the amygdala and nucleus accumbens), giving increased future anxiety, but this does not appear to have been proven.
• Hippocampus (which is implicated in emotional memory along with the amygdala)

• Research upon adolescents who as infants had been highly apprehensive, vigilant, and fearful finds that their nucleus accumbens is more sensitive than that in other people when deciding to make an action that determined whether they received a reward. This suggests a link between circuits responsible for fear and also reward in anxious people. As researchers note, "a sense of 'responsibility', or self-agency, in a context of uncertainty (probabilistic outcomes) drives the neural system underlying appetitive motivation (i.e., nucleus accumbens) more strongly in temperamentally inhibited than noninhibited adolescents".

The gut-brain axis

• The microbes of the gut can connect with the brain to affect anxiety. Gut microbes such as Bifidobacterium and Bacillus produce GABA and dopamine, respectively.
• Another key pathway is HPA axis. The microbes can control the levels of cytokines in the body, and altering cytokine levels creates direct effects on areas of the brain such as the hypothalamus, the area that triggers HPA axis activity.
• HPA axis regulates production of cortisol. When HPA activity spikes, cortisol levels increase, processing and reducing anxiety in stressful situations.

Remedies

Acon

• Intense, sudden anxiety, panic, or fear.
• Panic could be connected to PTSD. Symptoms of this type of panic include dry skin, dry mouth, and fast heartbeat.

Arg-n

• Anxiety that is due to uncertainty
• Claustrophobia, hypochondria, fear of heights, or fear of everyday things.
• It could be accompanied with digestive disturbance, like diarrhea, and sweets cravings.

Ars

• Anxiety due to fear of loneliness, darkness, or being imperfect.
• They may relieve anxiety through control or criticism of others.
• They may also feel cold often

Calc

• Like Ars, anxiety is due to breaking out of any safe routine.
• Agg when plans are changed, and they show difficulty in “going with the flow.”

Gels

• Anxiety due to feelings of inadequacy
• They are often timid and shaky
• Agoraphobia, avoid crowds or public speaking
• Vulnerable to fainting
• They often desire solitude and avoid insistent pressure from other people.

Ign

• Anxiety from grief or loss
• Very sensitive
• Mood swings, moving from laughter to tears
• Depression

Kali-ars

• Health-based anxiety include hypochondria, excessive grooming, and even fear of heart attacks
• Racing thoughts and difficulty sleeping
• Fear of death or dying
• Feeling cold
• Vulnerable to panic attacks.

Kali-p

• Vulnerable to stress or becoming overwhelmed.
• Their anxiety from having too much to do or increased ambitions
• Physical complication of anxiety

Lyc

• Lack self-confidence (Similar to Gels, Sil)
• Stage fright: Fear of speaking in public but they hide it well by talking loudly or loquacity

Phos

• Social people with anxiety
• When anxious or vexed, their thoughts get scattered and they have a difficult time focusing or getting things done
• Anxiety of being approved in social circles or from romantic partners

Puls

• Childlike anxiety
• They need lots of reassurance and support from others to feel better.

Sil

• Lack self-confidence(Similar to Gels, Lyc)
• Fear experiencing new things, Stage fright
• Fear of getting a lot of attention
• They tend to become workaholics to soothe their fears.

Stram

• Night terrors, nightmares, or dark thoughts while awake
• Fear of the dark or being alone and are especially scared by thoughts of monsters or mysterious figures
• Their imaginations tend to worsen their anxiety