How to reduce panic and anxiety - Try Vergence to self soothe
Vergence is a technique that was developed out of a type of therapy called brainspotting. It uses your changing eye movements to help reduce anxiety and panic symptoms. But before we get into how you can do vergence on yourself, we need to first have a little science lesson.
The body is made up of two main nervous systems - the central nervous system (CNS) and the peripheral nervous system (PNS). The peripheral nervous system regulates involuntary body functions such as breathing, digesting, and even our fight or flight response. Within the peripheral nervous system, there are two additional systems - the sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous system. The sympathetic nervous system is responsible for our survival. It’s the thing that allows you to go into fight or flight. It can be extremely useful when our sense of safety is being compromised and we need to recognize anything that might be a threat, while the parasympathetic nervous system is responsible for taking our sympathetic nervous system offline. It calms us down, allows us to down-regulate our bodies into rest and calmness.
The vagus nerve is one of the central components of the parasympathetic nervous system. When we engage the vagus nerve, it allows our parasympathetic nervous system to come online and gives our body the feedback necessary to come out of fight or flight. There are other ways to activate the vagus nerve, but vergence can be an effective way to curb panic and anxiety symptoms. It’s very simple and requires just a few minutes and a pen.
Hold a pen or your finger about 6 inches in front of your face and hold your eyes there for about 3 seconds.
Look through the pen to a point in the distance about 10 feet away and hold your eyes on that point for about three seconds.
Return your eyes to the pen (close point) for three seconds.
Repeat shifting your focus from the pen to the far away point for about two to three minutes.
You can set a timer on your phone to help with the time!
While it won’t address the root cause of anxiety or panic, it can be a very useful tool to have in addition to individual therapy. We have several different therapist that specialize in anxiety, panic, and trauma here if you are looking to schedule a consultation to see if we might be a good fit for you!
Resources:
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/216064110_Treatment_of_Panic_Attack_With_Vergence_Therapy_and_unexpected_visual-vagus_connection