Rewire Your Anxious Brain: How to Use the Neuroscience of Fear to End Anxiety, Panic, and Worry

To take charge of your life, identify triggers for anxiety in situations where anxiety or compulsions are blocking your goals, as discussed in chapter 7. Then target those triggers with exposure, as outlined in chapter 8, to reduce the limiting effects of anxiety.

Using distraction to change the channel can immediately reduce anxiety in a given situation.

When you listen to music you enjoy, you directly engage your right hemisphere in positive emotional responding.

But beyond that, the more you deliberately direct your attention to other topics when you notice you’re focused on anxiety-igniting thoughts, the more you increase activity in new circuits and reduce activity in circuits focused on anxiety-producing topics or images.

Try it now: On a separate piece of paper, list several situations in which you feel anxiety. Then, for each, see if you can identify the interpretations that lead you to react in an anxious manner.

The nucleus accumbens is a pleasure center in the brain that’s involved in hope, optimism, and the anticipation of rewards. It’s where the neurotransmitter dopamine is released, and studies have shown that when brain levels of dopamine are higher, negative expectations are reduced and optimism increases (Sharot et al. 2012).

Next, spend some time brainstorming alternative interpretations for each anxiety-igniting interpretation you identified. If you play with this a bit, you can probably see how different interpretations could lead to a wide range of emotional responses.

In essence, mindfulness means understanding that all you ever really have is the present moment, and practicing a new way to inhabit and observe that moment: with a focus on allowing, accepting, and being fully aware of whatever you’re experiencing. This may sound simple, but it takes practice.

scientist John Lubbock (2004, 188) noted, “A day of worry is more exhausting than a week of work.”