How to rewire your anxious brain

Rewiring your anxious brain is possible through understanding how your brain creates anxiety and implementing strategies to change those patterns.

1. Understand the Brain’s Anxiety Pathways

• Two main pathways create anxiety: The cortex pathway involves thoughts, worries, and interpretations that can lead to anxiety. The amygdala pathway is more direct, triggering bodily reactions like fight, flight, or freeze responses.
• The amygdala, often nicknamed “Amy,” is responsible for processing emotions, especially fear. It can be easily triggered and can sometimes mistake normal situations for danger. The amygdala also stores emotional memories that your cortex might not be aware of, leading to seemingly inexplicable reactions.
• The cortex is involved in higher thinking, planning and interpreting the world. It can create anxiety through negative thoughts, images and interpretations.
• Understanding where your anxiety originates (cortex or amygdala) is essential for choosing the right techniques.

2. Identify Your Anxiety Triggers

• Become aware of the situations, events, thoughts, and images that trigger your anxiety. This could include specific places, social situations, or even internal thought patterns.
• Pay close attention to your cortex and the specific thoughts and images that occur when you feel anxious.
• Note both cortex-based triggers (thoughts, worries) and amygdala-based triggers (sensory experiences, emotions).
• Anxiety that seems to come from “out of the blue”, creates strong physical reactions, and feels disproportionate to the situation often originates in the amygdala.

3. Implement Strategies to Calm Your Amygdala

• Self-havening touch can activate the parasympathetic nervous system, promoting relaxation and calming the amygdala. This involves gentle touch to areas such as the upper arms, palms, and around the eyes. It can be combined with positive affirmations or visualizations to disrupt negative pathways and create new, positive associations.
• Relaxation techniques, such as deep, slow breathing, can also directly impact the amygdala by activating the parasympathetic nervous system. Slowing your breathing below your average breaths per minute can reset your nervous system. Breathing in through your nose and out through your mouth can also help slow down your brain.
• Mindfulness can help you become aware of your anxiety without judgment, allowing you to observe it from a distance, instead of being trapped by it.
• Regular exercise and sufficient sleep can also help calm the amygdala.

4. Modify Your Cortex-Based Anxiety

• Challenge negative thought patterns. Identify and question the validity of your anxious thoughts. Are they based on facts or assumptions?.
• Use Cognitive Restructuring techniques to dispute self-defeating or dysfunctional thoughts.
• Replace negative, anxiety-igniting thoughts with positive “coping thoughts”. If you notice that you’re thinking “I can’t handle this,” replace it with “This isn’t easy, but I will get through it”.
• Practice “defusion” techniques which include personifying the anxiety or using metaphors for the thinking process, as a way of shifting from the content to the process to allow yourself to choose your actions based on what is important to you, and not what your anxious thoughts are telling you to do.
• Change your internal dialogue by using language which soothes and calms you rather than alarming you.
• Focus on solutions rather than dwelling on the problems. Instead of asking “why” a problem exists, ask “how” you can create a solution.
• Practice mindfulness by observing your thoughts and feelings without judgment, which helps create a distance from them. You can think of mindfulness as training your cortex to patiently and lovingly observe your anxiety responses.
• Focus on the process, rather than the outcome. You can focus on the present moment by paying attention to what people are saying and how you would like to respond.

5. Use Exposure Therapy

• Gradually expose yourself to situations or objects you fear. This is essential for rewiring the amygdala, as it learns through experience.
• Start by imagining the feared situation then move to real life exposure.
• Create a hierarchy of feared situations and tackle them one at a time.
• Stay in the situation until your anxiety decreases, or the compulsion is reduced.
• Use relaxation techniques such as deep breathing to cope with anxiety during exposure.

6. The Importance of New Experiences

• Feed your brain with new experiences that demonstrate that your needs will be met.
• Repetition is essential for building new neural pathways. New input is necessary to get those pathways connecting in new ways. A new pathway will build and you will have a new response.
• You can’t think your way out of anxiety or into a solution. Your feeling body trumps your thinking mind.

7. Change Your Habits and Reactions

• Acknowledge that anxiety can lead to a negative cycle of negative thoughts and behaviors that should be avoided.
• Focus on what you need to do rather than what could go wrong.
• Change your reaction to anxiety by choosing to engage with it, rather than avoiding it.
• Be patient as learning to overcome anxiety is a skill that takes time to master.
• Make a commitment to stop talking about your anxiety in order to take ownership of the problem and your solution.
• Practice being in the moment to prevent your brain from racing and creating worst case scenarios.
• Practice a relaxed physical state as your physical behaviour can send signals to the fear centre of your brain.
• Learn to focus and use meditation to assist with this. Meditation teaches you to focus on your breath and let thoughts come and go without judgement.

8. Commit to Ongoing Practice and Self-Compassion

• Be consistent with the techniques you choose.
• Don’t get discouraged if progress seems slow. It takes time to create new habits.
• Be kind to yourself and avoid self-criticism.
• Celebrate your progress, no matter how small.
• Remember that you are not broken or damaged. Anxiety is simply a misaligned response that can be corrected through practice.
• Remember, you can’t talk your way out of anxiety or into new behaviours. Experience and doing the opposite of what your anxious brain is telling you to do, is more effective.

9. Seek Support

• Consider working with a mental health professional, especially if you have complex trauma.
• Discuss medications with a psychiatrist as some can assist with the rewiring process while others can hinder it.
• Be open to the help of others and share your concerns with your support network.
• Speak to your support network about the need for time to yourself, to chill out and relax, and explain that this does not mean you dislike being with people.

By combining these strategies, you can actively engage in rewiring your anxious brain, reducing anxiety and promoting resilience. Remember that change is a process that takes time, patience, and consistent effort.