In this article you will learn great tips on how to strengthen your mind against anxiety.
We Americans spend huge amounts of money trying to banish anxiety. We buy tranquilizers by the caseload, start new religions based on “inner peace,” read how-to books with titles like “How I Conquered Worry” — and still nearly half of us report feeling anxious most days.
Most likely, the problem isn’t that we’re not working hard enough at it. The human brain is exquisitely designed to be aware of threat — part of what makes us such successful survivors — but sometimes our ancient warning system gets stuck in the “on” position. Neither drugs nor positive thinking alone will correct this glitch; what’s needed is a way to strengthen your mind against anxiety .
Buckle up for some good news: Researchers are discovering how to do this by using the latest techniques in neuroscience. Here’s how it’s done.
1) Recognize that anxiety is part of life
2) Make friends with your amygdala
3) Practice relaxation, but not just when you’re anxious
4) Engage in physical activity every day
5) Treat yourself well by eating right and sleeping enough
6) Connect with others through social support or spirituality
7) Challenge the distorted thinking that sets off your alarms [*] To learn how to change how you experience worry, see David A. Clark’s ” Worry & Anxiety .” For help in overcoming phobias , take a look at Garry Paterson ‘s book, ” Overcoming Specific Phobias .”
For 30 years I have been learning how to strengthen my mind against anxiety . And when I teach the methods, over and over again students tell me how helpful they are. There’s a reason for this: These methods work by correcting mistakes in how we think about worry — mistakes our minds make because anxiety is a natural part of life.
For example, one mistake people make concerns how different parts of your brain process thoughts differently — how thoughts that pop into your head get “filtered” through your amygdala before you’re aware of them. Another mistake is that many people think that feelings should be avoided at all costs, rather than thinking of them as passing events caused by how you interpret an event. It was not until recently that scientists even knew how to study how you think. But in the last 15 years there’s been a revolution in how scientists see how your brain works — and how you can fix it so that anxiety doesn’t rule your life.
It all starts with how our brains evolved over eons as we became successful survivors, able to cope with whatever troubled us. This evolutionary process is called ” selection by consequences ,” a phrase coined by famed psychologist B.F. Skinner . He observed that if a behavior has good results, it will tend to be repeated; if bad results follow the behavior, then the behavior stops happening. In other words, natural selection favors an animal who makes sure he’s paying attention — watching for threats!– those who don’t survive long enough to pass on their genes.
The human brain is exquisitely designed for survival; it has the ability (unique among mammals) to worry, which allows you to imagine how future events might turn out badly and prepare you for what’s coming . It also stores memories of how bad these imagined events turned out, so that even years after an event you can become anxious at the thought of how things may end up , even if they didn’t happen that way .
This “anxiety system” was a brilliant invention for early humans living in small groups with precious few possessions. But anxiety evolved as our brains did — slowly. Our ancestors’ worries were about where the next meal would come from, how they’d protect themselves against wild animals or how they’d convince parents-in-law to let them marry their daughter. These may seem like unlikely problems today, but our brains aren’t set up to distinguish imaginary future dangers from real ones . You can see how this would be a bad thing if you were facing a saber tooth tiger — because by the time your conscious mind figured out how serious the threat was, it would be too late. But we do need anxiety to help us identify how we might lose what we value and motivate us to protect these things.
Fear is how your brain and body prepare you for fighting or fleeing in response to danger: Your heart beats faster and more blood flows to the muscles in your arms and legs; air passagesate so you can breathe deeply, to fuel your muscles; cortisol and adrenaline flow into your bloodstream, priming you to act. Anxiety triggers the body’s natural stress response , which is how this system works:
When a threat appears, signals are sent from sensory cells in your eyes or ears or other parts of your body to an almond-shaped structure deep inside your brain called the amygdala . This structure acts as a filter, determining how much information gets passed on to higher processing areas of the brain. The amygdala has many different nuclei (clusters of neurons) that “decide” how incoming information should be evaluated for how serious it seems.
If an event is perceived as dangerous — whether because it really is dangerous or not — then the amygdala sounds alarm bells throughout your body. Your heart beats faster, your muscles tense up to get you ready to fight or flee, cortisol and adrenaline flow into your bloodstream to fuel these actions — all while the amygdala scans for more information, trying to determine how serious the threat is. If childhood trauma or a particular bad experience is involved, then the amygdala may overreact even when there’s no real threat present .
This system developed because it truly was important for humans’ survival on the savannahs of Africa millions of years ago. But today our brains are still using this primitive system for decisions about how we respond to events in everyday life. The problem isn’t with how anxiety works but how you perceive things that don’t actually threaten you .
The good news is that how you think about how anxious your thoughts make you can help you make your anxiety work for, not against, you.
Every day we have to judge how dangerous situations are based on what little information our brains have access to. In the distant past that was usually a pretty safe bet! But now, as technology advances at a pace far faster than evolution can keep up with , it’s forcing us to adapt how we deal with things that aren’t really threats . Our amygdala still sounds an alarm when there isn’t anything dangerous present — which causes us unnecessary stress and anxiety . When this happens, especially if it’s been happening a lot, your brain starts working overtime trying to figure out how serious the threat is so it can sound the all clear.