Anxiety and the Brain: Understanding and Treating Anxiety with Havening

What Happens in the Brain During Anxiety?

When a person experiences anxiety, several areas of the brain are involved, notably the amygdala, which plays a key role in the stress response. The amygdala is a part of the brain that is responsible for processing emotions, particularly fear. It can be activated by thoughts, images, or memories, leading to the physiological symptoms of anxiety, such as a racing heart, muscle tension and shortness of breath.

The Role of the Amygdala

The amygdala is always involved in creating an anxiety response, whether that response begins in the cortex or the amygdala. It is activated when the brain perceives a threat. When the amygdala is triggered, it initiates the body’s stress response, also known as the fight-or-flight response. This response involves the release of hormones like adrenaline and cortisol, leading to the physical and emotional sensations associated with anxiety.

Encoded Trauma

Traumatic experiences can become encoded in the brain, particularly in the amygdala, creating a ‘trauma filter’. These encoded memories can cause the amygdala to overreact to stimuli that are similar to the original trauma. In this way, past experiences can continue to trigger present-day anxiety. The amygdala can become oversensitive to threat, causing the individual to experience anxiety even in situations that are not inherently dangerous. When traumatic memories are triggered, they can activate the entire physiology of fight, flight, or freeze, causing the individual to reach for coping mechanisms like food, alcohol, or drugs.

What is Havening for Anxiety?

Havening technique is a psychosensory method that uses touch to eliminate negative feelings associated with distressing memories, thus reducing anxiety and promoting well-being. It works by engaging the amygdala and releasing emotional memories, helping the body to move out of a fight-or-flight response into a state of relaxation. Havening is thought to disrupt negative brain pathways and create positive associations through touch, attention and positive visualisation.

The Core Elements of Havening

• Havening Touch: This involves gentle, repetitive touch on the face, arms and palms. This touch calms the brain and produces feelings of ease and relief.
• Attention: Being mindful of the experience that is being worked on.
• Positive Visualisation: Positive imagery helps to activate the brain’s reward region, which is responsible for pleasure and motivation.
• Distraction: Simple distracting tasks are often used during havening to further disrupt the emotional memory being worked on.

How Havening Works on a Neurobiological Level

Havening is believed to create delta waves in the brain, associated with deep sleep and safety, which have a depotentiating effect on the encoded memory. Havening is thought to directly target the neurons that hold traumatic experiences in the amygdala, enabling the brain to release these experiences and remove the emotional content. It is proposed that receptors on neurons in the amygdala are removed. This helps to change the way the brain responds to the traumatic memory and reduces the intensity of the anxiety response.

Why is Havening more Effective?

Havening is considered by some to be more effective than traditional approaches for several reasons:

• Targets the Root Cause: Havening addresses the root of the issue by working directly with the encoded traumatic memories in the amygdala. It does this by depotentiating the traumatically encoded experiences.
• Rapid Results: Havening can produce fast and lasting results, offering relief from anxiety symptoms relatively quickly.
• Safety and Gentleness: The technique is gentle and does not re-traumatise the individual. It helps people feel safe going into difficult emotional spaces.
• Content-Free: Havening can be effective without the need to discuss the specific details of a traumatic event. This is helpful for individuals who find it difficult to disclose their experiences.
• Enhanced Effectiveness of Other Modalities: Havening can remove the amygdala filter from traditional approaches making them more effective, and supporting deeper levels of healing.
• Addresses Pre-Verbal Trauma: Havening does not rely on cognitive memory and can be effective even for individuals with no conscious memory of a trauma, perhaps a pre-verbal trauma.

Havening as Self-Havening and with a Therapist

Havening can be performed as self-havening, or can be done with a Havening therapist.

Self-Havening

Self-havening involves applying the techniques to oneself. It can be used for self-care, stress reduction and to help manage day-to-day anxieties.

• Touch: Select a Havening touch that feels relaxing. This might be touching your face, arms or palms.
• Attention: Focus on the experience or emotion that you want to address.
• Visualisation: Use positive imagery.
• Distraction: Use a distraction such as counting or humming a tune.

Havening with a Havening Therapist

A trained Havening therapist can guide individuals through the process, providing support and helping to identify and resolve deeper issues. Working with a therapist can be particularly beneficial for more complex trauma, where a more personalised approach is needed. The therapist can facilitate the process and can help to track down seed events that may be driving the symptoms.