Anxiety & Nervous System
Shortness of Breath Lying Down: Is It Anxiety?
Shortness of breath when lying down is the unsettling sense that you cannot get a full breath once your head hits the pillow, a feeling…
Somatic Anxiety: When You Feel It in Your Body
Somatic anxiety is anxiety you feel mainly through your body rather than through worried thoughts, a chest that tightens, a heart that races or pounds,…
Stress Hives: Why Anxiety Shows Up on Your Skin
Stress hives are raised, itchy welts, a form of urticaria, that appear or worsen when emotional stress sets off the body’s histamine and nervous system…
Does Caffeine Cause Anxiety? What to Know
Does caffeine cause anxiety? Not quite in the way most people fear. Caffeine does not, on its own, create an anxiety disorder. What it does…
Contamination OCD: Signs, the Cycle, and How Treatment Helps
Contamination OCD is the part of OCD that turns an ordinary feeling of “not clean” into something that can take over a whole day. It…
Window of Tolerance: What It Is & How to Widen Yours
The window of tolerance is the range of nervous-system activation within which you can think clearly, feel your feelings, stay connected to other people, and…
Thought-Action Fusion: Why Intrusive Thoughts Feel Real
Thought-action fusion is the cognitive distortion at the heart of much OCD suffering — the belief that thinking something is morally equivalent to doing it,…
How to Stop Ruminating: 9 Strategies That Work
If you are searching for “how to stop ruminating,” your brain is probably running in a loop right now. Maybe a conversation from yesterday that…
Mental Compulsions: The Hidden Side of OCD
When most people think of OCD, they picture the visible compulsions: handwashing until skin cracks, checking the stove ten times before leaving the house, counting…
Am I Lazy or Depressed? The Difference That Actually Matters
Here is something I have noticed over years of clinical work: the people who ask “am I lazy?” are almost never lazy. The actual lazy…