It is a three day course and normally taught in groups. It is wrong to refer to the Lightning Process as a therapy. Really it is a technique that you learn to apply to your life, or in this case to anxiety, panic and phobias.

The basis for the Lightning Process is that we have got into patterns of behaviour which have lead us to be for example anxious or phobic at a particular time, or given particular cues. The idea is that you can effectively override these patterns of behaviour and choose how you want to feel. You do this through using posture, old memories and associations, and determination.

Through this, and self-coaching, you can bring about a change in feeling. And surprisingly, it does indeed seem to work for anxiety! It doesn’t necessarily work instantly, and you might have to go through the process again and again, but I did make definite improvements and quickly. My anxiety is now much less of a problem and of course I will make more improvements as I persevere.

The course itself seemed rather long, and I did think it could have been pushed into a single afternoon and therefore made cheaper. It’s a great technique, and a breath of fresh air from all the many expensive therapies that don’t work at all. If you can afford it, go for it!

If you believe that your mind and body are one, then this will make some sense to you. If you believe that anxiety is psychological and has no connection with the physical body then this won’t be of interest.

Chiropractors work primarily with the back, the spine and the neck. The nervous system has its superhighway, the spinal cord, running down the spine and any interruption in its flow could have an effect on mood. The link between anxiety and posture has often been made.

Let’s go back to common symptoms of anxiety: Feeling out of it, or strange, light-headed, slightly dizzy, difficulty swallowing, tight chest and breathing. Could some or even all of these be down to a misaligned spine butting pressure on the nerves and blood vessels in your neck and back? Yes, potentially they could. In which case, a Chiropractor might well be able to help you with anxiety.

If your anxiety is accompanied by, or exacerbated by, tension headaches that effect the back of your neck or reach over your crown onto your face then there may well be a link between you anxiety and spinal cord or skeletal structure, in which case in would well be worth speaking to a Chiropractor.

An interesting point: a lot of anxiety medication, such as Xanax and other benzodiazepines work also to relax muscles. Some people claim that part of their ant-anxiety effect is caused by the fact that they lessen pressure on the spinal cord and allow everything to work more easily.

There are no guarantees that a Chiropractor can have an effect on anxiety but it might well be worth a try.

But is this conventional opinion actually true? Lets look at anxiety and its relationship with dizziness more closely. The vestibular system that control balance from the inner-ear is highly complicated and not as well-understood as other parts of the human anatomy. Dizziness never killed anyone so medical research is thin on the ground here.

When something doesn’t have a clear physical cause, doctors like to tell you its psychological. But what they find it hard to accept is that there may be a physical cause that they don’t understand.

Looking at a symptom and saying “it’s anxiety” and packing them off to Cognitive Behavioural Therapist is much easier than saying “I don’t know”.

Why would anxiety make you dizzy? What would the function of it be? Anxiety is there to protect us, it is the fight or flight response. We hyperventilate to get more oxygen to the lungs, our heart beats faster to keep the blood pumping to our muscles, the adrenalin makes us ready for action. All of these things make it easier for us to fight the beasts that used to prey on us, or run from them. But dizziness doesn’t help us, it hinders us and there is no reason for it to be there. The fight or flight response has evolved over millenia and it is unlikely that dizziness is a part of it.

So does anxiety cause dizziness? Perhaps some of the fight or flight response and the physiological changes it brings can cause you to feel a bit of balance while you are anxious, but the idea that anxiety is a major cause of chronic dizziness is not one I believe.

I suspect that the link between anxiety and dizziness has been so often talked about that many doctors assume it’s true when the evidence simply does not exist.

Some people find that pain relievers like co-codamol, which contains the opiate codeine, relieves anxiety. You should be cautious about taking co-codamol regularly as it could be habit forming (although the opiate dose is quite low).

Also, with anti-anxiety drugs it can be tempting to take more and more as the effect becomes weaker the longer you take it. Overdosing on co-codamol can be fatal or cause serious and permanent organ damage.

The same can be said of over-the-counter sleep aids which often contain antihistamines which may have a small anti-anxiety effect. The fact is that they tend to stop working if you use them too often and any effect you get from them is likely to be quite small. They are probably safer than an opiate-containing analgesic.

There is one drug that is, occasionally, prescribed for anxiety but is also available in a slightly different form over the counter in many countries. Prochlorperazine is normally prescribed for vertigo and nausea and vomiting however at a higher dose it can be used for anxiety (although rarely is!).

Prochlorperazine is available over the counter under the name Buccastem. It is sold in a low dose, just 3mg, in a quickly absorbed under-the-tongue pill.

The problem is that if a doctor were to prescribe Prochlorperazine for anxiety the dose would be much higher. That means that you would have to take more than twice as much as the label recommends, something which I do not recommend and have certainly never tried myself.

All in all, you might get some anti-anxiety effect from an over the counter pill but it’s probably best to speak to your doctor about something more suitable or try a natural approach or read Anxiety Disorders Herbal Remedies.

Whatever you do, don’t be tempted to buy anything from an online pharmacy – the prices are ridiculous and the quality is dubious.

It is not surprising that anxiety and panic go hand in hand, they tend to have the same causes with a panic attack just being an extreme extension of anxiety. Ultimately anxiety and panic attacks tend to come down to low serotonin, low GABA, hyperventilation, vestibular dysfunction and trauma. People with Generalized Anxiety Disorder tend to have some of those and may even, if they are very unlucky, have both.

If you have anxiety disorder and are suffering from panic attacks it is a good idea to look at your breathing, Many people find they are suffering from Chronic Hyperventilation Syndrome.

It is also worth looking at all physical causes of anxiety, Killing Anxiety From The Roots has a lot of information on that.

You might also want to have a look at how much tryptophan you get in your diet as this can effect how much serotonin your body can produce. You could also think about the Amino Acid supplements that can raise your GABA level, which is essentially trying to do naturally what Benzodiazepines like Valium and Xanax to artificially. Which is basically to stop anxiety and panic attacks by raising GABA.