It is estimated that 15 million Americans suffer from depression. If you’re one of them, you may be surprised to know that diet plays an important role in mental health. So much so, that is has inspired an entire field of medicine called nutritional psychiatry. And the gut plays a key role.

Once the body has encoded an experience as a threat to survival it is remembered and stored within the limbic system, which allows it to be recalled easily and quickly as opposed to long-term memory.

If the experience stays in the limbic system, for a variety of reasons, then this past experience can be triggered, or ‘lit up’, months or years later with something as small as a sound or a smell, and the victim can feel like the trauma is happening all over again, even though it is not.

If you have been experiencing constant worrying, chaotic thoughts, loss of appetite, inability to focus, disconnection from others or your own body, and/or insomnia, know that you are not alone! The extensive power and water outages, as well as food shortages, last year were a real threat to our survival; hundreds of people did not survive and our bodies know this on a deep, unconscious level. The worrying, disconnection, and sleeplessness are a result of the trauma you experienced last year.

While individual therapy can help to uncover, integrate and even resolve early emotional regulation challenges, group therapy goes further to enlist the nervous system of others for co-regulation, attunement and comfort to express previously internally forbidden emotions. We have found that some of our people with depression, anxiety, and mood disorders can develop healthy emotional regulation, confidence and a sense of ease during periods of stress when they combine individual and group therapy.

When we shift our perspective to understanding how worry is fueled by the signals in the body, not the brain, it makes sense that conventional treatments like Xanax or even cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) would not be able to offer sustainable efficacy and relief.

It’s an impossible game to try to avoid stress. Since stress is ubiquitous, it’s how you react to it that counts the most when it comes to your wellbeing. So vagus nerve stimulation can be a tool you use during any moment you need to de-stress.

“Stimulating the vagus nerve tricks your brain into thinking that everything is okay,” says D’Elia Assenza. A great time to stimulate the vagus nerve, she says, is when you’re experiencing a heightened state of anxiety or stress.