Unwinding Anxiety

Sharing my learnings from the book, Unwinding Anxiety by Judson Brewer

Unwinding Anxiety by Judson Brewer

We think of anxiety as everything from mild unease to full-blown panic. But it’s also what drives the addictive behaviors and bad habits we use to cope (e.g. stress eating, procrastination, doom scrolling and social media). Plus, anxiety lives in a part of the brain that resists rational thought. So we get stuck in anxiety habit loops that we can’t think our way out of or use willpower to overcome. Dr. Brewer teaches us map our brains to discover our triggers, defuse them with the simple but powerful practice of curiosity, and to train our brains using mindfulness and other practices that his lab has proven can work.

• when we’re anxious, our rational brains shut down. We’re responding, instead, to our powerful and primitive survival brains, which evolved to protect us from danger.
• Anxiety and stress shut down the rational part of our brains. In order to untangle our anxiety, we’re going to have to learn to rewire our survival brains. 
• Worry is also an addiction, a behavior we can’t stop indulging even though it feeds our anxiety and harms our well-being. 
• worrying provides a temporary escape from difficult feelings. Worrying is seductive, because it seems like you’re working toward a solution.
• if your brain learns that worrying provides temporary relief, then whenever you’re anxious your brain will trigger worry. It becomes a compulsive habit, over which you have no control.
• Understanding the psychology of your destructive habits is key to breaking them. 
  • mapping your own habit loops.
  • Write down as many habit loops as you can think of. This can be a very exciting process of discovery. You may feel like you finally understand your motivations and blind spots.
  • we have to discard old tools that don’t actually work.
• Habits are deeply ingrained in our brains. In order to change them, you’ll also have to change how you think about them. 
• Our brains are skilled at committing behaviors to our muscle memory, so that we can do them without thinking. The scientific name for the part of the brain that kicks into gear when we’re on autopilot is the Default Mode Network (DMN).
• By obsessively worrying and beating ourselves up, we end up creating a low mood, which just reinforces those negative thoughts.
  • One of the best ways is to spend less time on autopilot. The practice of becoming conscious of our thoughts is known as mindfulness.
  • Mindfulness training will be a key tool in interrupting your own habit loops — and untangling your anxiety.
• We can’t change our habits without changing how we think about rewards.
• The problem is that our brains often store outdated ideas about how rewarding a behavior is. When we live our lives on autopilot, our brains get stuck on these outdated notions of how rewarding particular behaviors are. But when we bring some mindfulness to what we’re doing, we have the chance to assess what the real rewards are in the present moment. 
• Focusing on the actual experience will likely show you that the “rewarding” behavior is not that enjoyable in the moment. That will immediately make the habit easier to break. The stronger the reward, the stronger the habit. If the brain realizes that a behavior isn’t as rewarding as it thought, it will be less likely to want to do it. 
• Many of us have become used to trying to change our behavior by criticizing ourselves harshly. This becomes a habit loop all on its own. Unfortunately, these loops will actually serve to keep you stuck. You become trapped in a cycle of despair and self-flagellation that will keep you on autopilot survival mode. 
  • When you feel like that, it can be helpful to practice taking yourself less seriously.
  • Practice being compassionate toward yourself and the survival behaviors that you cultivated to try to get through stressful situations. 
• When you’re unlearning habit loops, it’s essential to adopt a growth mindset, and see everything as an opportunity for development.
• Seeking specific information that we’re missing is known as deprivation curiosity. Childlike curiosity about everything and anything is called interest-based curiosity. This is the kind we need to cultivate. 
• Cultivating your natural curiosity is an essential tool for breaking anxious habit loops
• The best way to deal with an anxiety loop in the moment is actually to lean into it. This process can be explained using the RAIN system
  • you recognize the difficult feelings that are arising
  • you consciously accept them, and allow them to be there
  • you investigate the sensations in your body, and the emotions bubbling up
  • you note what’s going on, and simply observe yourself in the process.
• Breathing exercises are another great way to transition through anxious phases. Breathing helps you to stay focused on your body, instead of trying to think your way out of the situation.
• Some days, you may feel as if you’ve made no progress at all, and think that you’ll be trapped in anxious thinking forever. Instead of getting lost in the despondency cycle, you can bring in a bigger, better reward like curiosity, or kindness, or simply laughing at yourself.