Hey, it’s Candice here.
One of the most common patterns I see in my work is the swing between anxiety and depression.
It often looks like this: Periods of excessive worry, racing thoughts, and that constant “on edge” feeling.
Then, when the body and mind finally reach exhaustion, everything shifts. Energy drops. Motivation fades. A heavy fog of disconnection and low mood moves in.
It can feel like your nervous system is flipping between two extremes — wired and overwhelmed one week, shut down and depleted the next.
If you’ve experienced this swing, please know this is an understandable response to prolonged stress. Your system is doing exactly what it was designed to do when it’s been running on high for too long.
Why the Swing Happens
Chronic anxiety and worry keep the body in a prolonged state of activation. Over time, this drains your resources. The nervous system, which has been working so hard to stay vigilant, eventually moves into a protective shutdown mode (sometimes called dorsal vagal activation in Polyvagal Theory). This is the body’s natural way of conserving energy when continued fight-or-flight isn’t sustainable.
The result is often low energy, flat mood, and a sense of disconnection from yourself and life around you.
What looks like “depression” on the surface is frequently the downstream effect of an exhausted anxiety system.
Therapy Skills That Help You Return to Center
The goal isn’t to eliminate stress entirely — that’s not realistic for any human. The real goal is to build the capacity to stay closer to center, even when life feels difficult.
Drawing from CBT, DBT, and mindfulness-based approaches, we can gently interrupt the extreme swing and create more steadiness. Some of the most helpful practices include:
- Learning to notice the early signs of fatigue before full shutdown sets in
- Validating the worry without letting it take over (“This feels overwhelming right now… and that makes sense”)
- Using gentle grounding and nervous system regulation tools
- Developing a more balanced inner dialogue that doesn’t swing between panic and numbness
These skills don’t erase stress — they help you experience it without being pulled into the extremes. You can still feel worried or low, but it doesn’t have to tip you into complete overwhelm or shutdown.
Over time, this builds a deeper sense of trust in yourself — the quiet knowing that no matter how high the anxiety rises or how low the mood drops, you have the tools to find your way back to center.
The Hopeful Truth
If you’ve been riding this anxiety-depression swing for some time, I want you to know this:
Your system is simply tired — and it is asking for a different kind of support.
The beautiful part is that with the right skills and support, you can begin to experience stress as something you move through rather than something that controls you. You can still have hard days. You can still worry. You can still feel low. But those experiences no longer have to pull you into the extremes.
You can learn to live more consistently in the middle ground — the place where life feels more manageable and you feel more like yourself again.
This is the kind of steadiness I help people build every day. It is absolutely possible, and it is worth pursuing.
You deserve to feel more anchored — even when life remains uncertain.
References
Porges, S. W. (2011). The Polyvagal Theory: Neurophysiological foundations of emotions, attachment, communication, and self-regulation. W. W. Norton & Company.
Linehan, M. M. (2015). DBT Skills Training Manual (2nd ed.). Guilford Press.
Beck, J. S. (2011). Cognitive behavior therapy: Basics and beyond (2nd ed.). Guilford Press.
Hofmann, S. G., et al. (2012). The effect of mindfulness-based therapy on anxiety and depression: A meta-analytic review. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 80(2), 169–183.
