Believe it or not, I’ve had vertigo while driving, and it’s not pleasant at all. In fact, I find driving stressful at the best of times, even when I’m clear-headed and thinking well. So on top of that, have my vision going everywhere, feeling dizzy and feeling my stomach drop while I’m holding onto the steering wheel on a highway, it’s a very anxiety-producing event. So how did I get through that? It’s just random vertigo, it happens when it happens. And the most common response to having an onset of sudden vertigo and dizziness would be anxiety. So all of that’s quite normal.
I’m a vestibular audiologist and I’m highly trained in vertigo and dizziness, so I had a few key insights as to what to do, and I knew if the vertigo did not resolve quickly, I had to pull over because I would then become a danger to everybody else around me. So that was on my mind. I held onto the steering wheel, I felt my seatbelt, I really just ground my sitting bones, my buttocks and my legs. I did a quick body scan in my chair and I checked that I could sense I could orient myself and that I could have stable enough vision to drive safely.
And as I felt the steering wheel, I reminded myself:” False alarm, you’re safe, you’re in your car, you just had a little flurry of vertigo, your stomach dropped, your eyes spinned, it’s past.” Doesn’t matter why it happened. And I just went back to my breath and back to my body scanning so that my brain really quickly and really rapidly got that, “it’s okay,” the reassurance it’s just a false alarm. And that’s what the body is looking for. It’s like, “Okay, is there a tiger chasing me? Have I got cancer? Am I dying? Is there some life-threatening thing causing this vertigo?” And in that moment, we want the brain and body to say, “No, no, false alarm, it’s fine.” Vertigo can come and go in healthy, normal people. It doesn’t mean it’s a life-threatening event.
If you’ve never had vertigo before, and this is happening frequently, go and get medical clearance so that then you can hear it from the doctor’s mouth, and they say, “We haven’t found anything, no abnormalities detected. This was just a freak event.” And they give you medical clearance from there. If you’re worried about vertigo, if it’s creating anxiety for you or what we call maladaptive avoidance behaviors, which means perhaps you stop driving, you avoid driving, you’re afraid of driving or other avoidance behaviors in your life, please understand vertigo and dizziness are reversible, you can treat them at home, you can cure them at home. And my book, Rock Steady really explains how to do this. And there’s also a Rock Steady online program with further support and community. So visit seekingbalance.com.au to learn more. There’s plenty of resources. Read my book, Rock Steady. But above all, be reassured this is reversible, you do not have to live with this and you absolutely can continue driving, get medical clearance and learn how to interrupt that false alarm and bring your body from that dizziness, anxious cycle, back into the steadiness and calm cycle.
Is vertigo caused by stress? There are so many different causes to vertigo that yes, of course, stress is one of them. And it’s quite often in vestibular clinic that will say people who may have moved house, changed countries, gone through a job loss or divorce, and suddenly, they have these vestibular conditions, vertigo, dizziness that comes out of nowhere, but it has certainly aligned with a period of their life in deep stress, myself included. When I experienced vertigo, I had just gone through a huge trauma: My brother had broken his neck and become a quadriplegic, and I’d started full-time work as a vestibular audiologist.
I was working 9 to 5, as well as caring for my brother, and I was really depleted, exhausted, and emotionally strung out. It was a very sad time, and I don’t think it’s ever linear. So I wouldn’t ever say, “Oh, it’s because of stress I’ve got this.” And I wouldn’t blame the stress. It’s more like, “Okay, well, if stress is a factor and if stress is impacting my vertigo or dizziness symptoms, what can I do about it? How can I prevent stress? How can I support and reassure myself?” And all of these questions can be answered through a self-study process. It’s probably not going to be going to get craniosacral therapy or acupuncture. There’ll be very many skills and tools you need to help address your vertigo and any of the stress related to the vertigo.
Because the other piece in the puzzle is, while for some people stress seems to be the actual trigger, for others, stress is not the trigger. However, stress is the result. So they get the vertigo for whatever reason as a non-stressful related incident, the vertigo and dizziness begins and then vertigo and dizziness starts to trigger the stress. And then you can end up in this kind of disease—stress, anxiety, disease cycle. So what do you do about it? You learn how to treat this at home yourself. And the Rock Steady book explains why anxiety and vertigo and dizziness and stress are so interrelated and what we can do about that physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually to resolve it. It’s a process of self-study and insight. You learn to become the expert in you and you learn how to resolve any physical, mental, emotional, or spiritual conundrums that you find within yourself. And it’s a really beautiful process.
And I think so many people are used to asking somebody else to fix them that it can come as a real shock when they realize, “Oh, what do you mean I have to figure this out myself?” As a health professional, I don’t know you, I don’t know what you feel, I don’t know what you want to feel. And let’s say you do want to feel steady, peaceful, and calm: I don’t know how to trigger those neural pathways in you, which are the neural pathways you’re going to be building in order to heal and overcome your stress-related vertigo. And so you’re the expert in how you feel peaceful, you’re the expert in how you feel calm, you’re the expert in how you generate steadiness signals.
The Rock Steady book and the Rock Steady program offer a lot of supportive resources, ideas, skills, tools that you can trial and play around with. But at the end of the day, you decide what works for you in any given moment. And you’ll be designing your own at-home neuroplasticity practice to override your vertigo and dizziness and to completely support and resolve chronic stress patterns so that you can come back to a relaxed, open way of life with steadiness, calm and peace.
Does vertigo cause headaches? That is a great question. And I feel like my initial answer to that is it could, yes. I think the reason for that is vertigo is this sensory conflict, a sensory disruption — it’s dizziness. It means that I feel like I’m moving, spinning, bobbing, rocking when I know I should be still. I’m walking down the street, but I feel like I’m floating, or I’m sitting in a chair, but I feel like I’m rocking.
Dizziness and vertigo are sensory distortions. You can almost think about it as like being locked in a nightclub with flashing strobe lights and somebody rocking you, but you don’t want that—you want to be still. So it’s almost likened to an overwhelming overstimulation. Just like overstimulation can cause a headache, this sensory disruption can certainly lead to this feeling of fatigue and headache. In fact, a lot of people with vertigo and dizziness will report these kinds of fatigue-related headaches. Part of healing is being very sensitive to that. So we want to reduce stimulation, we do want to actually approach more quietness, we might need more in the process of healing vertigo while our body is remapping new neural pathways.
Some vertigo conditions are actually completely linked in with migraine. It’s part of the migraine family. The symptoms people report may not include headaches, but certainly could. But it could also be eyestrain or feeling of fullness at the back of the head. It could be visual spots, distortions. So this idea of vertigo and headaches: They really are like cousins, they do work hand in hand. Part of healing is listening and responding to the body. So if you’ve got headaches or vertigo, it probably means your body’s a bit overwhelmed and overstimulated, not just physically, but mentally, emotionally, and spiritually. And so looking at how you respond, nurture and support that process will be indicative of how quickly you recover, turn around and heal. So vertigo is reversible, headaches are not for life, but we do need to learn how to respond to them and support them. I’ve written a book, Rock Steady.
I get many questions about medicating vertigo and people asking for recommendations and advice. Firstly, I can reassure you that a lot of people completely heal and reverse vertigo. They returned to normal. I’m talking to people who may have had three decades of symptoms, chronic symptoms. Some people have very clear diagnoses, maybe they’re told they have Meniere’s or vestibular migraine, et cetera, or BPPV. Whereas other clients will have three decades of symptoms and no diagnosis, they’re just told it’s of unknown origin, it’s idiopathic, it’s psychogenic. All of these vague words are thrown around and they basically don’t know what the diagnosis is. And they’ll say to me, “Joey, can drugs help me? I’m so tired of this. Does Dramamine help? Does Serc help? Does Stemetil help? Does Endep help? Does Sandomigran help?”
And my question for you: Can you listen to your body? For some people, and in some circumstances, it could be useful to temporarily use medication just to help people get a bit of relief to think clearly, to numb symptoms and to help them just get their feet on track a little bit. In order to heal vertigo, we really need to be connected to our body. And we need all the basics, such as sleep and nourishment with a healthy well-rounded diet so that the body has the capacity to actually build new neural templates and heal the vertigo in a more long-term fashion. To completely recover, we have to take the old vertigo neural maps, the dizziness neural maps, which are error signals between the ears, eyes, brain, and body, and we need to rebuild them into neural maps and neural messages between the ears, eyes, brain, and body that now feels steady, feels centered, feel normal.
So when we’re very, very stressed or sickly or isolated, anxious, or depressed, it’s hard to learn, it’s hard to build new neural pathways, the biochemistry of the body shuts down a bit. So if someone is just feeling absolutely imploded, it could be that drugs temporarily help. Is it going to be a long-term solution? Probably not. Drugs tend to suppress neuroplasticity, which means they not only suppress symptoms, but they also suppress all of our capacity to really adapt and change. So it’s generally not a great idea in the long term. So my question for you would be to ask your body. Sure, if you want to try drugs, try them under the guidance of your doctor and literally stop and ask, “Are these side effects worth it? Is this helping me?” Because I do recommend that you look more into the Rock Steady process of healing, which is mastering the art of neuroplasticity.
Part of neuroplasticity is self-study and self-insight, which means looking at your mental patterns, your thought patterns and the dialogue that goes on within your inner world with yourself. In what ways can you treat yourself more kindly? Cut yourself some slack, become your own best friend. The Rock Steady path looks at emotional regulation and how you can actually interrupt anxiety cycles, how you can self-support and reassure yourself. Excuse me. And self-regulation and emotional regulation are such core important parts of overcoming anxiety, depression, and of course, vertigo and dizziness. And so the Rock Steady path will give you these lifelong skills that actually give you the long-term results.
So does Dramamine help vertigo? Do drugs help vertigo? Do medications help vertigo? In the long-term, I would say probably not. In the short term for temporary relief to help you sleep and relax and take a breather, maybe. Always consult your doctor when it comes to medications. And I think if you’re not interested in medications and it doesn’t really match your philosophy, you’d much rather take a natural holistic healing route. Then find a doctor that matches your philosophies and helps you perhaps trial very low doses of medications and wane off those medications as you pick up the skills to support yourself using something like the Rock Steady program, the Rock Steady path. Take a look at seekingbalance.com.au to learn more about my book, the Rock Steady program, and many, many free offerings to help get you on your way.
I get asked about vertigo exercises and often people, they’re feeling stuck, they’re feeling helpless, they’re feeling hopeless, they’re feeling like nothing works. And they’re like, “Come on, just give me a prescription, give me an exercise, I’ll do it every day.” The truth is, vertigo can occur for so many reasons. And there’s so much variability in where the dizziness or vertigo is coming from that it’s unlikely that some kind of generic exercise or generic video is going to provide long-term results.
My questions for you, so that you can design your own home exercises, would be: Do you have any specific movements in life that are difficult for you to perform? Perhaps a specific bodily position that you avoid? Do you have any known triggers that make you anxious or put you into this space of not trusting your body? I want you to write those down and identify those body positions or those behavioral choices or those kinds of movements, because what we want to do is we want you to return back to completely normal and have normal balance, steady, centered neural pathways for all of your balance maps.
Now you might think, “Joey, what does that mean?” Well, vertigo and dizziness are the result of neural messages being sent between your eyes, ears, body and brain. There’s something not quite right about them. The body’s healthy, the messages are being sent, but for whatever reason, whether there’s physical damage or not doesn’t actually matter, vertigo is always a result of these error messages, these neural messages, these neural maps that don’t feel quite right, they feel dizzy, they feel vertiginous. So we want to rebuild steady ones. And in order to do that, we have to have a neuroplasticity practice, which is, it’s not the same as building a muscle, but it’s similar to the analogy of wanting to build a muscle. So having a gym practice to do repeated exercises and build that strength.
So neuroplasticity maps are physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual, which is why it’s not like a gym exercise and why it’s not generic. We’ve got to look at what our thoughts are, our worries, our anxieties, our emotions, our beliefs in each of those positions. So it might be that you’re terrified to drive or that you’re terrified to bend over and do up your shoes or you’re terrified to roll over in bed, or it could be that you’re terrified to sit down and close your eyes and meditate because you totally freak out when you’re still in your body. So that’s a really good clue to developing your own vertigo home exercise is look at things you don’t want to do and things you’re avoiding because they’re probably where your medicine lies and where your best approach to healing is move into the discomfort and awkwardness bring a lot of self-compassion, self-love, self-kindness and really befriend yourself in those difficult and challenging situations because that’s going to be bringing in that mental, emotional, spiritual support that is required so the body can relax and build new neural pathways.
I talk a lot about the physical, mental, emotional, spiritual overlay and interaction within my book, Rock Steady, which really teaches people how to heal chronic vertigo and chronic dizziness. I explain why I cannot give you a video with generic exercises and it’s not that simple. I do recommend straight up in chapter one home exercises and home exercise ideas. And believe it or not, it starts with a body scan, sitting still in your body and noticing the sensations that you notice. So if you want to learn more about the body scan, please visit my website, seekingbalance.com.au, you’ll find information about my book. There’s also a Rock Steady online program and there’s a Free Starter Kit with a free body scan audio that you can try straightaway and download. So yes, just wishing you deep and profound healing, and I hope you find the perfect exercises to teach your brain how to rewire, reset and establish a completely steady, centered, peaceful baseline again so that you can totally override and overcome your vertigo.
So many people ask me, what causes vertigo and what cures vertigo?
The most common vertigo is benign paroxysmal positional vertigo, also known as BPPV. I’ve actually had this one twice. It’s incredibly common—about one in four people experience BPPV. It’s benign by nature. It’s not a sign of any disease or abnormality. In that regard, it’s just simply calcium particles that belong in the ears. They work in our little balance organs to help us detect movement like full bike acceleration, forward movement, stopping or deceleration, they actually move in little jelly pockets.
If those calcium particles roll out of the jelly and stop moving around the balance canals, it means that as we roll over in bed or look up or bend over into our posture, or put on our shoes with those really strong head gravity movements, the particles are rolling around and sending vertigo signals to our eyes. So the eyes will then flicker, our world spins and we’re like, “Whoa, what’s going on? Am I dying? Is it a stroke? Is it a heart attack?” And we can have this huge anxiety blowout, and there’s your vertigo incident. The good news is, positional vertigo is very brief. It’s generally less than 30 seconds and never longer than 60 seconds. So it’s a brief spinning, a brief vertigo, brief dizziness. It’s often quite strong, and it’s what we call “real vertigo.” And real vertigo includes this movement of the eyes rather than a dizziness sensation that’s just in the head and not necessarily including vision.
BPPV is caused by the moved otoconia calcium particles. To cure it and treat it, as a vestibular audiologist, I would assess my patient’s ears, I would assess which area is affected, I would assess which canal is affected because there’s three balance canals where the particles could be found. And then I would do a very specific maneuver to return those calcium particles from the canal back into those jelly pockets in the otoliths where they belong. Now that treatment, the test and treatment can be done at home using something like the BPPV video kits that I’ve designed. You can learn more about a lot of the causes of vertigo and ways to treat them in my book, Rock Steady. BPPV, I mentioned straight up because it’s the most common. So if you do have vertigo, it’s really important to check that one first because it’s treatable, it’s quick, it’s easy. And in many cases, it’s the best form of vertigo to have because it is so treatable and benign.
Other causes of vertigo can be infections, inflammation around the balance nerves. Another cause of vertigo we hear more about is Meniere’s disease, which is where there’s a buildup of balanced fluid in one usually one ear, but occasionally or rarely in both ears will be bilateral. The Meniere’s, the endolymph fluid of the balance creates too much of this fluid. There’s nowhere for it to go. The inner ear kind of balloons out and swells, which can give a roaring tinnitus sound and some dizziness, vertigo sensations, and can result in really, really strong, severe dizziness from minutes to hours, and then feeling a bit shaky for days or weeks afterwards.
How to cure it? Because it’s a fluid imbalance, the body will naturally reassess and reset its internal fluid. If there’s so much fluid buildup for someone with Meniere’s, it may burst and the body will naturally seep out that fluid to get rid of it to drain it. So it’s a natural process and then it will naturally repair those membranes. The problem is, there could be a good week or month where you’re really not feeling very well and it’s frightening and scary. It requires a little trust in the body to wait through this process. Some people become very reliant on medication because they don’t want it to happen again, they want to eliminate it, they want to get rid of it, when actually, I think it’s very fair to trust that the body will resolve itself. Living with that uncertainty is actually part of the art of healing and recovering from some of the chronic vertigo conditions.
Some other common conditions are vestibular migraine. For vestibular migraine, it’s a migraine issue, so there’s no anatomical damage, but for whatever reason, blood flow and neural messages are not being sent efficiently. They’re being roadblocked, they’re being flooded, they’re not flowing from A to B as would be expected. And that’s why people with migraines often just want a dark, quiet room to recuperate while the brain sorts out that kind of chaos.
For mal de debarquement syndrome, when people have chronic dizziness after a long boat trip or flight or travel of some form, then your messages, for some reason, have not gone back to normal after a lengthy traveling experience. It’s kind of like they’ve gotten so used to being on the boat that the ears adapted to the boat, but then they didn’t adapt back to the land. So again, air signals between the ears, eyes, body, and brain. So the main cause of vertigo is this confusion in the neural signals.
The way to cure it is neuroplasticity. We have to teach those signals how to come back to normal, how to come back to steadiness, calm, peace, quiet. A lot of people get these scary diagnoses of any vestibular condition, and honestly, it doesn’t matter which diagnosis you get given, the way to recover is using neuroplasticity to rebuild healthy, functional, steady neural pathways so you feel normal again, you feel balanced again, you feel centered again. And of course, to be able to address the mental, emotional, spiritual impact of having this uncertainty and of having the attack—it’s overwhelming, it’s isolating, it’s incredibly rare to make anyone with a vertigo vestibular condition without some associated anxiety and depression because of how debilitating and frightening it is.
So part of healing and part of mastering our nervous system and resetting it is having a level of respect and kindness towards our mental, emotional, and spiritual state. How has this affected me as a whole person? How can I support myself as a whole person? How can I regulate my emotions? How can I interrupt anxiety cycles and catastrophe thinking? And how can I believe in myself? That’s the spiritual piece. How can I believe in my body to heal? How can I trust my body again? And how can I allow my body to space its needs to reestablish new neural maps? I’ve literally written a book on how to do this. I mentioned a lot of the common conditions and causes of vertigo. So take a look at my book, Rock Steady.
And as I felt the steering wheel, I reminded myself:” False alarm, you’re safe, you’re in your car, you just had a little flurry of vertigo, your stomach dropped, your eyes spinned, it’s past.” Doesn’t matter why it happened. And I just went back to my breath and back to my body scanning so that my brain really quickly and really rapidly got that, “it’s okay,” the reassurance it’s just a false alarm. And that’s what the body is looking for. It’s like, “Okay, is there a tiger chasing me? Have I got cancer? Am I dying? Is there some life-threatening thing causing this vertigo?” And in that moment, we want the brain and body to say, “No, no, false alarm, it’s fine.” Vertigo can come and go in healthy, normal people. It doesn’t mean it’s a life-threatening event.
