Understanding Anxiety

Learn how your smoke alarm brain can be a hero and sometimes a villain!

We all need anxiety! It is very useful when we are in danger as it provides us with rapid reactions with whatever the dangerous situation may be. For example, if you light your gas stove and suddenly a huge flame erupts, this fear helps you to jump back and turn off the gas burner in fast record speed – faster than you can think! Also a small dose of anxiety can help you with that performance that you do whether it’s for work, on the sport’s field or for that job interview. That fear / protector part of our brain (known as the amygdala) is very useful and can be likened to a smoke detector. It lets us know when there is danger ahead giving us a burst of adrenaline and energy when needed (known as the stress response) to fight or flee the danger ..... It truly can be a 'hero'!

So what's the problem with this Smoke Detector

Even though this smoke detector part of the brain is a much needy ally in times of real danger, the problem is that this part of the brain can over-react and become vigilant to anything that has been associated with a negative or painful experience ......

As an example.....

Perhaps as a child you were bitten by a black dog with a white stripe on it's ear. Now you are an adult and you are walking through a park with a few dogs playing and one is very similar looking to that one that bit you as a child. You don't really notice this dog too much but you do notice starting to feel quesy, feeling tense and your heart starts beating more rapidly and you can't understand why. Once you're out of the park things start settling down. You then decide, hey that was scary, I'm not going to walk through that park again.

Understanding this smoke detector

This smoke detector part of the brain has a great emotional memory, it loves associations and is always on the lookout to protect you. In this case it remembered

painful bite event + dog with white stripe on ear = danger when next see this or similar dog.

Even though you're now an adult and the dog bite was a long time ago, the smoke detector still emotionally remembers that time and the dog as dangerous. It's your protector and wants to keep you from a repeat experience. So when it notices the similar looking dog, it starts the stress response to give you that much needed energy to fight or flee this dog even though logically there is no danger present as you're much older now and this dog isn't at all dangerous....

However, the smoke detector part of the brain isn't that logical but works through associations with negative emotional experiences. That's why there can be so many things, places, people, and experiences that if once or over a period of time were paired with a negative emotional experience, they can become a trigger and a source of anxiety where many problems may arise. Avoidance is one of the strategies people use to stop the anxiety provoking feelings, eg they can leave jobs, careers, avoid interaction with certain people, don't drive, stop going to school, won't fly on aeroplanes etc etc....

By stepping into counselling one can learn, understand and experience strategies that can help to calm down this smoke detector part of the brain. With this rewiring of the anxious brain then anxiety symptoms can also be reduced.

Please note: The above is a brief overview of one aspect of the brain that contributes to anxiety. There are other parts of the brain that also contribute to anxiety and I'll place some posts on this in the future.

References:

Pittman. C., & Karle, E. (2015). Rewire Your Anxious Brain. USA: New Harbinger Publications, Inc.