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What if the reason your vertigo anxiety is not improving is because everyone keeps treating it like it is only anxiety?
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Welcome to Migraine Heroes, a podcast for people living with chronic migraines with years of pain,
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misunderstanding and lack of answers.
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I'm Diane Ducarme. I've helped more than a thousand people reduce the burden of migraines and feel more in control.
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My mission in life? To help a million people.
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Each episode brings you grounded insight into what your body might be asking for and what can truly help.
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Just to keep you fully supported, this podcast is educational.
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For diagnosis or medication, always work with your doctor.
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Now, take a breath and let's dive in.
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In this episode, you will learn why vertigo and dizziness can create really neurological fear responses,
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even when you are trying your best to stay calm.
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How to recognize the difference between anxiety-causing symptoms versus symptoms-creating anxiety.
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And what your body may actually need in order to feel safe, steady and regulated again,
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instead of trapped in the same cycle.
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Stay with me till the end, because at the end of this episode, you will understand why calming your nervous system is important,
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but also why it is often not enough on its own when vertigo is involved.
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So, if you have ever been told it is just anxiety,
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after describing your dizziness, floating sensations, your
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rocking feelings, your visual instability, nausea or sudden panic during movement,
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you are really, really not alone.
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Many people who have what is called vestibular migraines, or
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persistent postural perceptual dizziness, or Meniere's disease, or chronic vertigo,
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those conditions are typically over and over dismissed. And over time,
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something really painful happens. You begin doubting your own experience.
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You wonder if you're weak, if you're overreacting, or somehow failing at coping.
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But when your brain constantly feels unsafe,
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unstable or disorientated,
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anxiety is not irrational. It's often a secondary survival response.
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So, let's begin with what vertigo actually is. It's the false sensation of movement.
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You're sort of spinning, swaying, rocking, tilting, or sort of have a certain form of instability.
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This closely ties to the vestibular system, the sensory system responsible for balance and spatial orientation.
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And the vestibular organs in the inner ear communicate continuously with your eyes,
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your muscles, your joints, and brainstem to help you know where you are in space.
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And when this system is becoming dysregulated, your brain receives complex information.
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Your eyes may say that you're still, while your vestibular system says that you're moving.
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And this sort of sensory mismatch creates a profound threat signal inside your nervous system.
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There was some research done by Dr. Jeffrey Stab, and he helped define something called
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persistent postural perceptual dizziness, a chronic dizziness condition that is strongly linked to
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vestibular dysfunction and heightened threat processing. And his work showed that people
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are not imagining symptoms. Instead, the brain becomes hypervigilant after an initial vestibular
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event, and the nervous system starts monitoring balance excessively, scanning constantly for danger.
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And this is really important. The anxiety often develops because the brain no longer trusts
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balance signals. Let's continue to stay in science for a minute. There were some functional magnetic
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resonance imaging studies that have shown altered activity in brain regions involved in spatial
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orientation, emotional regulation, and threat perception in vestibular disorders. And so
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researchers, including, for example, Dr. Bronstein and Dr. Fuhrman, have described how vestibular
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dysfunction interacts deeply with the autonomic nervous system activation. So in simple terms,
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what I mean is that when your balance system feels unreliable, your survival brain becomes
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alert. And this makes sort of evolutionary sense. Humans depend on orientation to survive. If your
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brain perceives falling, or instability, or loss of control, it's going to activate protective
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responses like increased adrenaline or muscle tension. It may take a visual hyperfocus or
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have panic sensations. It may give you rapid heartbeat or motion sensitivity. So when someone
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says, just relax, they may be kind and well-intended, but they're missing the biological reality that
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your nervous system is reacting to a perceived physical danger. Now, does anxiety also worsen
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vertigo symptoms? Well, absolutely. The relationship goes both ways, like you start to hear as a theme
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here. Studies published in journals such as Neurology and Journal of Vestibular Research
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have shown that anxiety amplifies that sensory sensitivity, increases visual dependence, and
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strengthens avoidance behavior. And so over time, people may stop driving, they may stop shopping,
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they may stop exercising, traveling, or even walking in busy environments because the brain
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associates movement with danger. And unfortunately, avoidance can reinforce the loop. The brain never
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gets the opportunity to relearn safety. But here's the critical nuance. Treating vertigo anxiety as
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only psychological can delay seeking help and solving the issue at the root cause. And so,
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for example, vestibular migraine is now recognized as one of the most common causes of
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recurrent vertigo, yet many patients go years before diagnosis because symptoms are mistaken
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for panic attacks or generalized anxiety disorder. And that's very true among the thousands of people
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I have actually met. You know, many will say vestibular as a diagnosis came very late
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in my migraine journey. Research published in Current Opinion in Neurology highlighted how
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vestibular migraine affects sensory integration networks in the brain. Patients may experience
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dizziness without headache at all, making that diagnosis even more difficult. I met with a nurse
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last week and she had downloaded the app and she was inside the app for a while. Super sweet.
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She was so complimentary about all of the work. I was like, you know, my eyes were watery of
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gratitude and emotions of meeting her, you know, after 40 years of migraine, her finding us and us
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being able to make a difference in her life. And she was mentioning, she was saying, I have the
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pain and I have the vertigo and oftentimes I have the vertigo with the pain. But, you know, some days
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I also only have the vertigo and I'm going to have to put my hands against the wall to orientate
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myself. And if I could let go of one of the two, I'd keep the pain. I'd let go of the vertigo.
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It's just so much. So it is just so difficult. And she's the one who made me do this podcast today.
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Because something heartbreaking happens when people start blaming themselves, and I'm not
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saying it was her case, but when people start blaming themselves for symptoms generated by
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a deeply dysregulated sensory system. So you're not crazy for feeling anxious when the ground
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feels unstable. Your body is trying to protect you and you're not crazy to put your hands against
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the wall to orientate yourself. If you need to, please do. Stay safe. The goal is not simply
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suppressing anxiety. The goal is helping the brain and body feel safe enough to recalibrate.
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Now, eastern medicine has long observed something modern medicine is only recently beginning to
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describe more clearly. When the brain no longer feels orientated, the mind starts searching for
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danger. Not because someone is weak, not because they are dramatic, because human beings are built
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to depend on orientation. You need to know where you are in space to feel safe. And when that sense
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becomes unreliable, when the floor feels unstable, when motion feels strange, when your eyes and body
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stop agreeing with each other, something very primitive happens inside people. The nervous
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system starts gripping. It grips reality harder. People begin monitoring themselves constantly.
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Am I about to fall? Am I okay? Is this dizziness dangerous? Why does the room feel wrong? Can I
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trust my body? Can I trust my body? This is just such a hard sentence to hear. And eastern medicine
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noticed this centuries ago, although it used different language. It understood that when the
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body loses its sense of grounding, the mind becomes restless. Not metaphorically, literally.
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Think about what happens when you stand on unstable ground, just for playfulness, okay?
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And your child tells you, okay, here I have this challenge, mom or dad. Just you have to stay on
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the plate and it's going to move, move, move. What's going to happen is, you know, your muscles are
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going to tighten and your eyes are going to be focused intently, maybe on a point on the horizon,
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and your breathing is going to change and you're going to stop relaxing. You become super vigilant.
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Eastern medicine saw vertigo and anxiety as deeply connected because both involve a loss
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of internal steadiness. Not just emotional steadiness, physical steadiness, perceptual
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steadiness, the feeling that you're anchored inside yourself. In many eastern traditions,
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illness is not viewed as a broken part inside an otherwise healthy machine. It is viewed more like
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weather patterns inside of a landscape. And vertigo is often described as a condition where
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the weather no longer settles. Everything keeps moving. The head feels busy, the senses feel
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overloaded, thoughts become repetitive, the body becomes reactive. And some traditional systems
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use the expression like wind rising, and it sounds a bit abstract, until you bring it down to earth.
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Imagine standing outside doing heavy, heavy wind. Nothing fully settles, tree shakes, water ripples,
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your eyes keep adjusting, your nervous system stays alert. This is how many people with chronic
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dizziness live internally. Their system never fully lands, and anxiety grows naturally from that state.
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Not because they're inventing symptoms, because instability itself is stressful to the human
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organism. Eastern medicine also links vertigo to exhaustion, not ordinary tiredness. The kind
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where the body no longer has enough reserve to keep stabilizing itself. You're so tired,
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you're restless. Does that make sense? Modern people often live in a state of continuous
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overstimulation. Constant screens, constant alerts, constant brightness, constant noise, constant
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urgency, constant anticipation. The brain rarely rests deeply enough to recalibrate, and eventually
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some people begin living as if their nervous system has one foot permanently on ice. Always
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constant. This is one of the reasons many people with vestibular issues describe feeling both
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physically dizzy and emotionally fragile at the same time. Because the same system that helps you
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orientate physically also helps you orientate emotionally. When your perception of stability
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weakens, your sense of safety often weakens too. Now, eastern medicine understood something really
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important. The mind cannot calm down properly if the body still feels disorientated. This is where
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many people get stuck. They are told to manage stress, to think positively, to calm their anxiety,
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when their brain is still receiving signals that something feels off, is off. Eastern medicine also
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tends to view symptoms less as enemies and more as signals that the system has lost balance
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somewhere. Not a punishment, not a failure, not a weakness, just a signal. Sometimes the signal is
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you're overloaded. Sometimes it is you've been running on adrenaline way too long. Sometimes it
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is your body no longer feels safe in this environment. And sometimes anxiety itself is not
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the problem. It's the smoke alarm produced by a nervous system that no longer trusts what it is
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perceiving. And that changes the emotional tone completely. Because many people with chronic
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vertigo secretly feel ashamed. Ashamed they cannot handle it better. Ashamed they avoid places.
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Ashamed they feel afraid of supermarkets, airports, crowds, bright lights or moving environments.
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But from this perspective, the fear does make sense. The organism is trying to regain orientation.
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Trying to find solid ground again. So what can you do today at home? Today at home you can try
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this simple nervous system grounding exercise. You sit somewhere quiet and place both feet firmly
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on the floor. You slowly turn your head and visually you're going to name five stable objects
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around you. Like chair, window, table, plant, ball. As you do this, you lengthen your exhale
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slightly longer than your inhale. This practice is going to help reconnect the vestibular system,
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the visual system and the nervous system with signals of safety and orientation. Do not push
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yourself to stop being anxious. And keep your hope up. You will find your way. I've seen it.
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It's possible. It is hard work, but I have seen it. And remember, every small step you take
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moves you closer to freedom. You are powerful. You are resilient. And you're not alone.
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Keep rising. Migrant Hero.
