How Your Brain Understands Anxiety
Anxiety is a terrible experience that feels both overwhelming and exhausting to the mind and body. When it starts, it can feel like there is no stopping it, which often only furthers the sense of impending doom that anxiety brings. You might have wondered why your brain is acting like this, especially the times when you don't even know why you’re anxious.
Anxiety differs from fear as fear is the reaction to a direct threat, and anxiety is the anticipation of an anticipated threat. Although anxiety may be a reaction to something imagined or realistically non-threatening, it activates similar brain pathways as our reaction to fear, triggering similar brain structures into action.
While fear may be a healthy response that keeps you safe, constant activation of your fight/flight/freeze response when no real threat exists can wear on your body, mind and even affect your relationships. However, learning more about the brain and how it processes anxiety-related messages can help us make changes in our own reactions.
What is Happening in the Brain When Anxiety Strikes?
Multiple areas of the brain are involved in the escalation of anxiety, which helps the brain understand how to react. This “emotional brain” is a neural network that communicates with one another to help prepare your body to manage threats. Your body is actually trying to help you survive, but a constant sense of anxiety results when it becomes overactive and prohibits other brain functions like thinking clearly and making decisions.
Here are some of the major players in the brain that impact anxiety levels:
Amygdala: This part of the brain is responsible for noticing if the information you’re processing is a threat to your wellbeing. The amygdala can become overactive and start to perceive danger even if there is no real threat that will set off the alarm bells to the rest of the brain.
Hypothalamus: When this part of the brain gets the message from the amygdala, it will continue the message throughout the brain both neurally and by releasing hormones. This loudspeaker effect engages the sympathetic nervous system (what you know as the fight/flight/freeze response), and you may begin to notice your heartbeat and breath quicken as well as a heightened state of alertness.
Hippocampus: After we experience all of these bodily sensations, this part of the brain is activated to explore our memories to understand the threat and how we might handle it. For people with anxiety disorders, this tends to increase panic as memories of anxiety—or perhaps actual instances of fear—feel threatening.
Prefrontal Cortex (PFC): Otherwise known as the brain’s thinking center, the PFC can either calm down or heighten the response based on the threat. The prefrontal cortex can use logic to determine the severity of the danger, but the amygdala takes over when the brain is overstimulated without giving the prefrontal cortex a chance. This is why it can feel impossible to think or relax when anxiety strikes.
Tips for Retraining Your Brain
The best way to help anxiety is to interrupt the neural network that has been fueling the symptoms. The amygdala is quick at perceiving threats, but the prefrontal cortex has the ability to keep this part of the brain in check.
Learning how to help the prefrontal cortex come back online during the fight or flight response and developing positive memories about managing stress will naturally lessen feelings of anxiety.
Thought Journal - Writing down your thoughts can help reduce the chatter going on in your head. Once these thoughts are on paper, you can also better see patterns. Are there certain thoughts that trigger anxiety? What evidence is there for or against this thought? You might have difficulty analyzing your thoughts in the moment, but once they are written down, you can always go back to explore.
Positive Thinking - When you build awareness of your thinking, you can reframe the thoughts that lead to anxiety. For example, you may have journaled, “I can’t get anything done.” Instead of ruminating on this thought, you can practice saying, “I will do the best I can today, even if I do just one thing.” Changing our thinking towards compassion and away from criticism can help reduce anxiety.
Mindfulness - You can help convince your brain that you are safe and not in danger by using your body! Mindfulness skills such as deep breathing or grounding in the present moment can help reduce blood pressure and lower heart rate. Centering yourself in this way sends messages to the brain that you are calm and not under any threat, allowing the PFC to effectively regulate the amygdala.
Accepting the Uncertain - Anxiety is full of “what if’s” that focus your attention on what can’t be controlled. It can help to write out a mantra on accepting what is out of your control and focus on what you can impact. Read your mantra in the midst of experiencing anxiety to help gear your brain towards problem-solving using that prefrontal cortex!
Exposure - Anxiety can start to convince you that avoiding the things that cause anxiety is a good idea, even if the situations themselves are non-threatening. Slowly exposing yourself to these anxiety triggers again while using your tools while knowing you’re ultimately safe can help to store new memories in the hippocampus of you managing these feelings. Exposure is a great skill to work on with a therapist to help guide you, along with the rest of these skills.
We are here to help you learn more about how anxiety works and ways to address it. Please reach out today to learn more about our counseling services.
Reference:
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/basics/anxiety/the-biology-anxiety