It is possible to rewire the anxious brain to change one’s relationship with anxiety, moving away from the struggle to eliminate it, and towards managing it effectively. This involves a combination of self-help strategies and, in some cases, professional guidance. The focus is not on eradicating anxiety, but on modifying how the brain responds to triggers and anxious thoughts and feelings.
Understanding the Brain’s Role in Anxiety
Anxiety is a complex response involving different parts of the brain, including the amygdala and the cortex. The amygdala is responsible for triggering the fight-or-flight response and storing emotional memories, while the cortex is involved in processing thoughts, images, and interpretations that contribute to anxiety. Understanding these pathways helps individuals target specific brain functions to reduce their experience of anxiety.
Neuroplasticity is key to changing the brain’s response to anxiety. It is the brain’s ability to reorganise itself by forming new neural connections and pathways. Through repeated experiences, thoughts and actions, neural pathways can be reshaped.
Self-Help Tools and Techniques
Many strategies can be used independently to change a person’s relationship with anxiety. These focus on building skills and confidence in managing the experience of anxiety.
- Mindfulness: This involves paying attention to the present moment without judgment, allowing a person to observe thoughts, feelings, and bodily sensations as they arise. Mindfulness can help people to detach from their thoughts and see them as mental events, rather than facts. Studies show that mindfulness can change the structure of the brain, strengthening the hippocampus and reducing anxiety.
- Acceptance: Instead of trying to control or eliminate anxiety, acceptance involves allowing it to be present. This approach acknowledges that anxiety is a normal part of the human experience and that attempting to suppress it can make it worse. When anxiety is welcomed and well situated in the psyche, it can contribute gifts and wisdom.
- Reframing: This technique involves changing how one thinks about anxiety. Instead of seeing it as a threat, anxiety can be reframed as a sign of creativity, imagination or a call to connect with values. For instance, reframing anxiety as a powerful skill, or seeing it as a natural response to thinking about the future, can shift perspective. By reframing events, instead of allowing anxiety to take over, a person can reclaim control over their own mind.
- Relaxation Techniques: Practices such as deep breathing, can help to manage the physical symptoms of anxiety. These can help to calm the amygdala when it is stressed.
- Identifying Triggers: Awareness of what situations or thoughts lead to anxiety is an important step in managing it. Understanding patterns of anxiety can help people to interrupt unhelpful responses.
- Exposure: This method involves gradually facing the things that cause anxiety in order to desensitise the brain. By experiencing the feared situations in a safe way, the brain learns that the situation is not dangerous. It is important to activate the fear circuitry in order to change it.
- Conscious Questioning: Asking questions about the focus of the anxiety, such as “What are my strengths and resources?” or “What do I need to do to prepare?”, can help to channel anxiety intentionally.
- Values Clarification: Identifying what is important to you and aligning your behaviour with your values can act as a guide and help you to take back power from your anxiety.
- Habit Change: New habits can be created by practising something different, rather than trying to get rid of old ones. It takes repetitive action or thought to form a new habit.
- Thought Records: Keeping a record of thoughts can help identify negative thinking and patterns, which can then be challenged.
- Self-Compassion: It is important to treat yourself kindly when dealing with anxiety. Self-compassion is an alternative to self-pity.
Strategies Requiring Professional Help
While many people can make significant progress on their own, professional support can be beneficial in certain cases.
- Anxiety Management Coaching: An anxiety management coach helps individuals manage their responses to anxiety by shifting perspective, encouraging acceptance, and developing coping strategies. They focus on action and empowerment to allow people to move towards meaningful goals regardless of their anxious feelings.
- Neurolinguistic Programming (NLP): NLP techniques aim to understand and change the way people organise their mental processes and thoughts. By understanding how people create anxiety, NLP provides methods for retraining the mind to choose more empowering states. The idea is to see anxiety as a skill that can be used for good, rather than a problem.
- Mindfulness Training: Professionals can guide people in deepening their mindfulness practice, by helping to focus awareness and change how the cortex responds to anxiety.
- Specialist Therapies: Some people may need specialist support to address the root causes of their anxiety and learn how to re-pattern their neural pathways.
- HeartMath: This approach uses the power of the heart to create a pattern interrupt, transforming anxiety through techniques that change biochemistry and neural patterns.
Shifting from Fighting to Living with Anxiety
A crucial part of managing anxiety is changing the goal from eliminating it to accepting and living with it. This involves:
- Letting Go of Control: Instead of trying to control anxious thoughts and feelings, letting go of the need for control can reduce the struggle and allow for psychological flexibility.
- Focusing on Values: By focusing on what matters most, people can make choices aligned with their values rather than being controlled by their anxiety. This helps to move towards meaningful goals.
- Building Resilience: The ability to bounce back from stress, and manage anxiety in a sustainable, positive way, is a key skill that can be developed.
- Understanding the Body’s Response: Anxiety creates a physical response in the body through the activation of the nervous system. Learning how to recognise, understand and safely discharge this energy through relaxation techniques or physical movement can be very helpful.
Conclusion
Rewiring the brain from anxiety is an achievable goal that focuses on a change in the relationship with anxious thoughts and feelings. It requires a holistic approach, combining self-help strategies with professional support where needed. Key to this is accepting anxiety as a normal part of life and focusing on building skills and confidence to manage its effects, whilst taking action towards meaningful goals. By understanding the brain’s role in anxiety and using neuroplasticity to your advantage, it is possible to build a life where anxiety has less of an impact.