Hack your brain to overcome anxiety:
This week’s blog post comes from Thrive Programme Coach® Fiona Brown
I always got funny looks from my clients when I tell them that they should stop trying so hard to be less anxious.
A mental health professional who specialises in treating anxiety disorders telling her clients that being less anxious wasn’t really something they ought to strive for?
Well, what the hell am I paying you for, then?! Might be the look on their face!
To be clear, I do want my clients to feel less anxious. But it’s a strange paradox of anxiety that trying hard to be less anxious now usually has the side-effect of making you more anxious later.
Like trying to force yourself to fall asleep, frontal assaults on anxiety almost always backfire.
Trying to be less anxious teaches your mind to be anxious about being anxious.
Deep inside your brain is a cluster of neurons that acts as your threat-detection system whose overarching goal is to keep you safe from death and terrible injury.
This inner threat-detection system has three main jobs:
1. Vigilance. It’s constantly keeping an eye out for potential new threats and dangers.
2. Battle Stations. If your threat detection system identifies something it thinks might be a threat, it sounds the alarm by releasing a little adrenaline and activating your sympathetic nervous system (i.e. your fight or flight response) so that you will be prepared to deal with the threat by fighting or fleeing.
3. Feedback. Now, thankfully, our threat detection systems are humble enough to know that they don’t always know for sure if something is actually dangerous or just looks/feels that way—Is it a poisonous snake or just a fallen tree branch? So, after sounding the alarm on a potential threat, it watches how you respond to either confirm or deny that initial assessment. If you attack or run away from the potential threat, it’s going to assume its initial assessment was correct and classify that thing as a threat for the future. This means that the next time you encounter it, your threat detection system will give you an even stronger jolt of adrenaline to prepare you to deal with it. On the other hand, if you approach the potential threat, you might learn that it wasn’t actually dangerous after all, which will make you less fearful in the future.
To make all this a little more concrete, let’s use an example…
How to give yourself a fear of flying. You’ve been invited to a hen that’s a plane ride away. The day before you read a news article of a plane that skid off a runway on tape off.
Your threat detection system kicks in thinking, Hey, this could have been me, I’m flying tomorrow! So it releases a little adrenaline and revs up your fight or flight response a bit just in case there’s a threat.
As a result of the adrenaline and general sympathetic nervous system response (increased heart rate, muscle tension, perspiration, etc.), plus some worries on your part (oh my God, if that happened to me it would be terrifying. I could die!), you find yourself feeling rather anxious. And understandably, you would prefer not to feel that way.
And what would be the quickest way to not feel so anxious anymore?
That’s right: avoid that potentially terrifying situation by deciding not to go.
But here’s the problem…
While you would undoubtedly feel less anxious right now if you immediately ran away from the threat, the more important question is this: What am I teaching my brain? Specifically, What am I teaching my brain’s threat detection system about the reality of the threat?
By immediately avoiding that threat, you’ve taught your brain that flying is dangerous. And even though it led to some temporary anxiety relief in the moment, this will make you more anxious about flying in the future.
For example: The next time someone suggests a holiday, you’ll be more likely to remember this incident and feel nervous. Then, even if you do decide to go on the flight, your brain will be increasingly vigilant (which is stressful). And if you do see another story about a flying disaster, it will release an even bigger adrenaline dump, making you feel even more anxious. As a result, you’ll feel an even bigger pull to immediately avoid that experience and relieve your anxiety.
See where this is going?
Avoidance teaches your brain that something is dangerous.
Avoid something a lot and you’re teaching your brain that that thing is very dangerous.
Now, this is a good thing if that something is truly dangerous. If flying on a commercial plane is taking on a 50:50 chance on your life, avoiding that place is a good idea!
But here’s the thing…
There are lots of things in life that look and feel dangerous but aren’t.
Flying, for example, in modern day is one o f the safest modes of transport.
But because you immediately avoided it (in order to get instant anxiety relief) you never gave your brain the opportunity to learn or critically analyse the actual threat and see that flying is incredibly safe.
On the other hand, let’s say that instead of immediately deciding not to fly, you decided to read up on flying and think calmly about it.
In the very short term, your anxiety is likely to go up a little because you’re moving toward this thing your brain just said might be dangerous. But like we just discussed, there’s a big potential benefit to this willingness to tolerate some anxiety in the moment: You give your brain the chance to learn that something that looked and felt dangerous was actually is okay (you are 19 times safer in a plane than a car, for example).
And even if it was an issue with the plan e, is that necessarily a danger to your survival? Most planes have super advanced systems in place for multiple different scenarios.
Here’s the general takeaway:
Many things in modern life look and feel dangerous but aren’t actually a threat to your day-to-day survival. But if you get in the habit of avoiding them, you’re teaching your brain that they are dangerous, which means your long-term anxiety will steadily increase.
Critically, this applies to worry and anxiety as much as potential problems with a plane…
While uncomfortable, the emotion of anxiety isn’t actually dangerous. But if you get in the habit of reacting to it like it is—running away from it or “fighting” with it in an attempt to eliminate it—you’re going to train your brain’s threat detection system to see it as a danger.
So, while trying to get rid of anxiety or distract yourself from it feels good in the short-term, the long-term consequences are, paradoxically, ever-increasing anxiety about anxiety.
Like any addiction, short-term relief leads to long-term suffering.
The Thrive Programme® is one of the best treatments for anxiety out there and we can help you overcome anxiety, explore more options here.
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