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

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.

Learn the skills of slowing your breathing and relaxing your muscles in order to turn off your sympathetic nervous system and activate your parasympathetic nervous system, as discussed in chapter 6.

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).

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.

Also use positive imagery, exercise, sleep, and music to calm your amygdala, as outlined in chapters 6, 9, and 11.

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.

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

Another approach is to deliberately engage the right hemisphere in an activity that’s incompatible with negative mood states. Listening

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