I really enjoyed interviewing Dr. Kim D'Eramo. For one thing, she is incredibly lively and fun. For another, it's exciting to think that we have way more ability than we realize to heal ourselves.
She had a career as an emergency room physician, but meanwhile, since her teenage years and her own experience with anxiety, she was learning about how to harness the power of her own thoughts. Over time, her friends would send their friends with anxiety to Kim to learn about this mind-body stuff that she does.
She practices, among other things, emotional freedom technique, also known as tapping.
She no longer works in the ER, but has dedicated herself to mind-body medicine, and established the American Institute of Mind-Body Medicine, where she teaches both physicians and individuals how to heal with these simple tools of which we all have access.
So many of my female clients over the years have complained of anxiety. Some men too, but more often women. So I looked it up, and here is what the Anxiety and Depression Association of America had to say about it:
From the time a girl reaches puberty until about the age of 50, she is twice as likely to have an anxiety disorder as a man. Anxiety disorders also occur earlier in women than in men.
Women are also more likely to have multiple psychiatric disorders during their lifetime than men. The most common to co-occur with anxiety is depression.
Differences in brain chemistry may account for at least part of these differences. The brain system involved in the fight-or-flight response is activated more readily in women and stays activated longer than men, partly as a result of the action of estrogen and progesterone.
The neurotransmitter serotonin may also play a role in responsiveness to stress and anxiety. Some evidence suggests that the female brain does not process serotonin as quickly as the male brain. Recent research has found that women are more sensitive to low levels of corticotropin-releasing factor (CRF), a hormone that organizes stress responses in mammals, making them twice as vulnerable as men to stress-related disorders.
Dr. Kim is offering a series of free videos right now where you can get techniques to use right away to deal with anxiety. Click on the images below to access these videos. What do you have to lose?!
If you have had successful with wrangling anxiety, please share your wisdom below!