Rewiring Anxiety- The role of the amygdala in learning to be anxious - The Anxiety Cycle 3/30

Hi there. I'm Emma from Therapy in a Nutshell.  Today you'll learn how you accidentally feed anxiety.

I'm going to break down the amygdala's  role in determining whether something is safe or dangerous and how you can leverage that  to rewire your brain to be less anxious. And I've got some great stories to tell, including  how I was nearly killed by a herbivore. This is day three from my 30-day online anxiety  course.

So let's dive in. [Music] Your brain is wired to adapt to circumstances. It can  physically rewire itself based on how you think and the experiences you have.

The human  brain is one of the most complex and brilliant and amazingly powerful creations in the world. So  why the heck does it make so many people anxious? Why does it make so many anxious thoughts?

Why can  it make us so miserable sometimes? There are some ways we accidentally teach our brain to be more  anxious. So let me show you how.

Okay. So your your brain and your body like to have an internal  sense of safety. I think that's their default mode.

And when we feel safe we can relax. Our  body can rest and digest, heal, connect, feed, and breed. So let's say that you're happily walking  down a trail while you're listening to music, when all of a sudden a huge person jumps out at  you from behind a bush.

Like, Ahh! " You yell, like you jump backwards, you your body surges with  adrenaline And what happens is when we perceive a threat our body triggers the fear response.  But let's say then you realize it was just your friend pranking you, then you realize that you're  actually safe.

And your body has this built-in way to restore that sense of safety in your body.  So you laugh it off. This actually burns off adrenaline.

You talk about it, like, "Hahaha, did  you see your face? " Right? And you both tell the story to your friends, you connect with other  people, and your heart rate and your breathing rate return to normal and your internal sense of  safety is restored.

So what happened here? Your brain quickly processes that sensory information  and sends it to the amygdala, which is like your brain's fire alarm. When your amygdala perceives a  threat it sounds the alarm.

It triggers a fear or an anxiety response. And this is like your brain  saying, "Hey, there might be a bear," and this response activates your body's fight-or-flight  system. It gets you ready to either face the threat or escape from it.

So you jumped backwards  - that's flight - and you yelled - flight. Right? These are both adaptive ways to deal with a real  threat.

And when you saw that it was just your friend, your amygdala reassessed the situation and  realized, "Okay. Phew. I am safe.

We can turn off battle mode. " Right? The parasympathetic response  kicks in, you laugh it off, you shake it off, you tell the story, you connect, right?

Your  sense of safety is restored. Your brain and your body have this natural hardwired ability to  resolve fear and stress. So now let me tell you how this system can get hijacked, how we can end  up feeling like this constant state of anxiety.

But let me tell you a story. So I was once working  with this group of teenagers. We went camping and hiking in the Tetons.

And one of these girls,  who we'll call Megan, was terrified of bears. So even in our large group camp surrounded by  literally hundreds of other campers, she was constantly terrified. She was afraid to sleep in  a tent, so she slept sitting up in a car.

She was afraid to go to the bathroom, so she didn't drink  very much water so that she didn't need to go to the bathroom as often. She was constantly like  worrying about bears, and she was constantly like clinging to a like a gaggle of girls and and  thinking about bears and talking about bears. And every time she heard like a rustle in the bushes  near our camp, she would freak out, she would cry, she would like run away from the sound and like  go cling to her group of girls.

So again, let's look at the brain. What was happening? There was  a stimulus - the rustle in the bushes.

There was a perception - "This is dangerous. " The amygdala  would fire off a quick alert, and the body would go into fight/flight/freeze mode. And Megan did  everything she could to flee.

She'd run away, she'd cry for help, she'd cling to others. And  when she was running away and clinging to others she felt a sense of relief. It felt better,  right?

These are all avoidance behaviors. And then guess what? She survived.

Nothing physically  bad happened to her. But here's a really important thing to understand: your brain is plastic.  It physically and chemically changes based on how you think and how you act.

So when she avoided  the rustling sound, her brain essentially learned, "Phew, I could have died. I have to keep  avoiding rustling sounds to keep my human alive, so I'm gonna make my human more anxious, right,  to keep my human avoiding these these things that seem to be dangerous. " Now, your brain is  not designed to make you happy; it's designed to keep you alive.

And this is how we accidentally  make ourselves more anxious. Your avoidance trains your brain to increase anxiety. It keeps you stuck  in the loop where, instead of addressing a danger, which allows your amygdala to reassess and restore  a sense of safety, avoidance keeps you frozen in a state of ongoing anxiety.

So your confidence  in your ability to face a threat decreases, and your anxiety increases. So now whenever you  hear a rustling sound your brain is going to pair it associated with bears, and your amygdala is  going to activate that fear response. Okay.

So now let me tell you the rest of the story. We  took that group of girls on a hike. It was a beautiful hike through the Tetons to Amphitheater  Lake.

I mean, it was gorgeous. Um Megan did not want to go. She was scared that there might be  bears there.

But when she realized that if she didn't come she'd be alone at camp, she decided to  come. So she faced her fears. And we were hiking in a large group along a popular trail.

We took  reasonable precautions. We brought food, water, bear spray, and we knew to stay clear of wildlife  (unlike many dumb tourists in Yellowstone). Now, some of the other hikers on the trail told  us that bears had been spotted in the area, but this isn't uncommon in the Tetons, and so  we determined that it was safe to continue.

And because of my decades of experience in the  wilderness we knew how to stay safe and how to choose acceptable risk. So we hiked our hike,  and on the way up we even saw a bear from the distance of a couple hundred meters. And guess  what?

It ignored us. We kept hiking. The lake was beautiful, the sky was clear, it was awesome. 

When we hiked back to camp, like we were singing and laughing - even Megan. Right? The girls had  this incredible experience, and for many of them it was a once-in-a-lifetime experience.

And  interestingly enough, for the rest of the trip Megan did not feel scared about every rustle in  the bushes anymore. She would hear a rustle and go look for a squirrel or a small bird. And she would  tell that story of the bear on the hike like over and over again.

And she was more relaxed, and she  enjoyed herself through, like, for the rest of the camp. And so you can see how her sense of safety  was strengthened by facing her fear. Okay.

So what happened here? When Megan faced her fears and  she survived, her brain learned to re-categorize rustles as most likely being safe, and she even  learned to downgrade bears from, like, extreme danger to, like, oh, manageable danger. Right? 

Her amygdala stopped firing off the fear response, and she felt less anxious. So when you face your  fears, your anxiety decreases and your confidence increases. Your sense of safety is restored. 

Now, if you constantly avoid any situation where you might encounter a rustling sound, then your  brain never gets a chance to learn that not every rustling sound means there's a bear. Avoidance  makes your brain increase your anxiety levels. So what can we do instead?

Let's explore the other  option, the approach response. So let's say you you're afraid of public speaking, and you've been  avoiding it for a long time. Maybe you have to, you're expected to do it work, but you uh make  excuses.

You call in sick, you make other team members do the presentations. And maybe you've  declined any promotions that require you to do more presentations. And the longer you go  without presenting, the more you avoid it, the more anxious you feel when you think of any form  of public speaking.

And by the way, even worrying and rumination are types of avoidance. And we're  going to talk more about that later. But now let's say a new job has come up, a job that requires  public speaking, and you decide it's time to face your fear, and you tell yourself that anxiety is  just a sign that you care about doing a good job, and you convert that energy into preparing for the  presentation.

You start practicing, like carefully preparing presentations and sharing them with  like your spouse, your kids, your mom, right? And you start practicing in front of them, and  gradually you start to feel more confident. Maybe you still feel really anxious about presenting  in front of your your business, but you feel a little bit more confident.

So then you decide to  lead a presentation for your small team at work, right? Like, and of course you still feel nervous,  but you do it anyway, and it goes well enough, right? You don't die.

You survive, right? As you  approach the situation instead of avoiding it your amygdala starts to recognize that you're not in  immediate danger, that you can survive giving a presentation, and your brain begins to update  its associations. It begins to update what it's paired, and it learns that public speaking is not  as dangerous as you originally thought, right?

And eventually it re-pairs public speaking with  something that you can do, you can handle, right? And eventually you're able to give a presentation  to the entire company, right? With each successful experience of approaching the fear, your anxiety  levels start to decrease, and your amygdala starts to realize that the situation isn't as threatening  as it once believed.

Essentially, your sense of safety gets restored. The more you approach  public speaking and have positive experiences, the more your brain adjusts its fear associations,  which - leading to decreased anxiety over time. It's just important to remember that, you know,  initially you're going to feel quite a bit of fear or anxiety, right?

You can't wait for that fear  or anxiety to go away first before facing your fear because that leaves you helpless. We can't  directly force feelings to change. So instead you need to allow the anxiety to be there, face your  fear, and then afterward your brain learns like, "Oh, phew, that was safe.

I can decrease my  human's anxiety in that area. " Right? The intense emotions you feel, that anxiety, ahead of time  actually primes your brain to be more plastic, to rewire, to be more flexible, right?

The other  really cool thing about facing your fears is that you learn you can handle feeling anxiety. You  become confident that it's safe for you to have feelings. So essentially, what's happening here is  that you are rewiring your brain.

You're teaching your smoke alarm, your amygdala, to be more  accurate, to know when it's actually in danger and when it's actually safe. So a healthy person  still has some fear responses, right? They're just much more accurate and knowing which ones to  believe.

By facing your fears you're fine-tuning your threat assessment system while at the same  time increasing your belief in your own abilities. "But Emma," you might say, "What if you're facing  a real threat or a real danger? Or what if you've had trauma, like you've actually been harmed  in the past?

" That is a great question. What if that rustle in the bushes is actually a bear? Or  what if you actually lose your job because you're such a bad presenter?

Let me tell you about the  time I nearly got killed. Right? And this video is already getting too long, so I'm gonna split  this video up into two parts.

And for those of you on YouTube you can find the whole video on the  paid course on my website, therapyinanutshell. com. Okay.

So let me tell you about the time I nearly  got killed by a herbivore. So I had recently finished grad school. And I was in the backyard  of my parents' house, and I was brain-tanning a deer hide.

It's a process that takes about  eight hours. And I was working this hide, and all of a sudden, like, the hair is on the  back of my neck went up. You know that kind of funny feeling, like that sense that you have  that you're in danger?

Right? And I turn around, and there, standing like 50 feet away from me, was  this huge moose. And my dog, Geneva, she starts running straight at the moose, barking her head  off, like, "Bark bark bark bark!

" And I'm like, "Geneva, no! Come! " But Geneva got there super  fast.

And that moose, like, did not move an inch. He just picked up his huge foot and went goosh.  Like he tried to crush her.

And she like turns, and she's like - and she dodges. And literally  that moose missed her by like an inch, and its its hoof left like a six-inch deep hole  in the lawn where he nearly like crushed my dog. So then Geneva comes, turns around, comes running  toward me, and the moose is like chasing her down.

So the moose is chasing my dog straight at me.  So we dive under a sheep camp, which is like a trailer. Right?

And the moose is just right  outside, like just like inches from my face, like pawing and pounding the ground. And me and  my dog, we're just like frozen, like hiding under that trailer, like hoping to not die. So yes, we  ran.

We avoided that real and immediate threat. Um eventually the moose wandered off into the  neighbor's yard. We called Animal Control.

The cops came. They cornered it into the other yard  so that they could get someone with a tranquilizer gun and like a big trailer to haul it up the  canyon. Um in the meantime I'm like telling the cops like, "Just leave it alone.

It'll go away on  its own. " And they're like, "No, we can't leave it alone because we're responsible for everyone's  public safety. " So I put the dog inside, and I go back to working on my hide because  this is a process, you can't stop in the middle, right?

And about 20 minutes later the hair on  the back of my neck goes up again, and I look, and in the same place in my yard I see that huge  moose staring at me. And I just say to the moose, like, my dog's not there to antagonize the  moose, and I just say to the moose, "Hey, moose, like go that way. Like run up the canyon and  you'll be safe.

" And it does. It like turns away and trots up the canyon, like the road toward the  canyon, and the cops like literally follow like the moose with their lights blazing. Right?

So so  what happened here? Right? Um with this fear cycle I was initially feeling safe, and then I perceived  a threat, and yes, it was actually dangerous, um and I actually ran away, froze, and survived. 

And now I'm telling this story to everyone I know. I'm talking about it and laughing about it, right?  And this is literally the body's way to resolve that pent-up fight/flight/freeze response and  return to a sense of safety.

Right? We literally shake it off, right? Our our body physically  shakes to burn off that adrenaline.

And we laugh, and we tell stories, and our body returns to  that parasympathetic state, that that state of feeling safe, safety, like rest, where you can  relax and rest and heal and eat and connect with other people. So how does that work with the  anxiety cycle, right? Like what happened to my anxiety around mooses?

Right? It definitely went  up. Like our amygdala learns from our experiences, including traumatic ones.

And when I'm - and  I wouldn't consider that necessarily to be a traumatic experience; just a genuine threat  experience. When I'm in moosey areas, when I'm in areas where I know moose are around, like near  water, near willows, I am on high alert for moose, and I will avoid them whenever I can. Because I  avoided that moose and survived, my anxiety went up.

But the other interesting thing is because it  was a real threat and I handled it the right way, my confidence also went up. I know that I can  probably escape a moose the next time. Like I think my threat assessment system is pretty well  tuned, that I, like, we can learn what to do with real danger.

Or we can at least know what we can  and can't do about real danger. We can take action to fight or flight or even freeze briefly. We can  handle real danger by choosing to actively avoid it.

The key here is choice and action. So the  thing that causes disordered anxiety is really when we, number one, feel like we're in danger  when we're actually safe, or number two, when we avoid danger while being physically immobilized,  when we're stuck feeling frozen and anxious. And that keeps that anxiety loop open so that we don't  return to safety.

Let's do another example. Let's say you have anxiety about an upcoming test. And  this test is really important to your grade, which is really important to your future success.

But  it's not physically dangerous, right? But instead of using that anxiety you feel about that test to  motivate you to study, you want that anxiety to go away so you distract yourself with TikToks, right?  That anxiety response about your test is stored in your body, and your body is immobilized, and you  never feel that return to safety.

Your anxiety just builds and builds, and your confidence  in your ability to handle that test decreases. So the key to to breaking the anxiety cycle -  and we're gonna - obviously this whole course teaches how to break this process down. But the  key to breaking the anxiety cycle is choosing to re-evaluate threats and choosing action that  increases confidence, because confidence is what restores your internal sense of safety. 

And to do this you've got to face your fears. The tricky thing is that we humans are super  good at avoidance. We are experts at using mental gymnastics to avoid our feelings.

And this  is the sneaky way that we actually make our brain more anxious. So in the next video we're going to  explore how avoidance makes you more anxious and the sneaky things that you don't even realize  you're doing that are keeping you anxious. And then in the video after that you'll learn the  antidote to avoidance.

So in this course you're going to learn how to relate to anxiety, how  to break the cycle of anxiety so that it's not running the show anymore, and you'll stop doing  the things that make your anxiety grow. You'll learn to gradually and safely face your fears  so that your confidence grows and your anxiety decreases. If you want to purchase the entire  course with all the extra exercises, with the workbooks and with access to me in Q and A's where  we can learn how to face anxiety, please check it out on my website, therapyinanutshell.

com.  Okay. Thanks for watching.

Take care.