Unwinding Anxiety To Heal Your Mind

Anxiety is a mental disorder that can cause immense discomfort and disrupt everyday life. It’s the most common mental illness, with about 40 million Americans affected each year. To most sufferers, unwinding anxiety feels like an impossible quest. The good news is that you can do it.

Let’s take a look at how you can go about unwinding anxiety to heal your mind…

What Is Anxiety?

Anxiety Starts In Our Survival Brain

Deep inside our brain is a structure called the Amygdala. It is the “fight, flight, or freeze” center of the brain. It can also be seen as our “survival brain” because it triggers one of those three actions when it senses a threat to our survival.

Behind our forehead is the Prefrontal Cortex. It is the thinking part of the brain that analyzes data and makes decisions, among other things. It is our “rational brain.”

Anxiety comes from our “survival brain” when it senses a threat. It happens when our “rational brain” doesn’t have enough information to predict what will happen with the danger.

Anxiety doesn’t have any proper function. It doesn’t solve anything, like fear does when it causes us to run away or fight off the threat. It just keeps us concocting worst-case future scenarios in which we get harmed in some way.

It Can Be Addictive

Anxiety is an uncomfortable feeling that leads you to start worrying about what you feel anxious about. All that the worrying does is distract you from the awkward feeling (anxiety). The distraction numbs the uncomfortable feeling.

You feel anxious, and your brain triggers worry as a way to give relief. Your brain quickly learns that worrying provides this temporary relief. As a result, anxiety, and worry are addictive, just like drugs can be addictive. It becomes a compulsive habit.

How To Go About Unwinding Anxiety

Understanding The Psychology Is Key

We all have destructive “habit loops” where we feel a certain way and then behave harmfully.

For example, John would drink six or eight shots of whiskey every night, pass out, and then do it again the next night. Upon reflection, John discovered that his workload caused him anxiety and that his drinking provided relief. That was his destructive habit loop.

To understand your anxiety, you have to find your habit loops.

Which kinds of situations trigger anxiety in you? Which behaviors have your brain learned to use to distract or soothe you? What is the result of these behaviors?

Write down as many of these habit loops as you can think of. But don’t try to immediately fix or change your habit loops. Just identify them.

To change our habit loops, we have to discard the old methods that don’t work, like willpower. To alter our habit loops, we have to change the way we think about them.

Mindfulness Is The Key To Unwinding Anxiety

Have you ever driven down a highway and taken the right exit without thinking about it? You were on “autopilot” when that happened.

Research has shown that we operate on autopilot about 50% of the time, doing things automatically without thinking about them. As a result, we lose awareness of our thought processes.

This means we can’t interrupt destructive habit loops because we don’t even know they’re happening.

How do we fix this? By spending less time on autopilot.

When we are NOT on autopilot, we become more conscious of our thoughts. This is known as mindfulness, a vital tool in interrupting our habit loops and unwinding anxiety.

We Have To Change How We Think About Rewards

The more rewarding a habit is, the stronger it becomes. That is why, when given a choice, we’d typically take a slice of cake over a plate of boiled broccoli. The reward from the cake is more significant because it reminds us of birthday parties and fun.

The problem is that our brains often have outdated ideas of how rewarding something is. When we eat that piece of cake mindfully, i.e., really tasting it and taking note of how it makes us feel, we may discover that the reward is not as big anymore. This makes it easier to break the habit.

Mindfulness helps us discover how much reward we really get from our habits and, as a result, which habits we’re willing to let go of.

Develop A Compassionate Mindset

Untangling habit loops can be an uncomfortable process because you’ve spent years using them to distract yourself from painful feelings. It can be even more difficult if you feel you’re not making progress and start rebuking yourself. This can become a habit loop too.

This cycle of despair and beating yourself up will only keep you on autopilot.

So you need to be more compassionate with yourself. Take yourself less seriously. Say to yourself, “there goes my silly brain again,” while keeping in mind that your brain is only trying to help you.

Develop a growth mindset of wanting to learn as you go along. Start to see everything as an opportunity to learn and grow.

Be compassionate and patient with yourself.

Curiosity Is Your Superpower

Little kids have a famous stage where they ask questions about almost anything they see. This is called interest-based curiosity, which is the love of learning new things just for the sake of learning new things.

We need to reignite our childlike interest-based curiosity. It is an essential tool for breaking anxious habit loops.

The next time you feel anxious or panicky, let out the “hmmm” sound, like when you’re interested in something and trying to figure out what it is. Ask yourself, “what’s going on here?” This will help break the habit loop and take your mind out of involvement in the situation and more into an observer state.

In the beginning, your survival brain may be a little alarmed by this new terrain. Still, curiosity will feel good, and your survival brain will learn that it feels better than your old anxious state and make adjustments over time.

Unwinding Anxiety One Day At A Time

To get rid of your anxiety over time, you need to take it one day at a time, or one hour at a time, or even one anxiety episode at a time. Forget about tomorrow or next week (they exist only in your head anyway). One moment at a time.

The RAIN system is a great tool to deal with an anxiety loop. When you feel anxious:

1. Recognize that you have anxious feelings.
2. Consciously accept them and allow them to be there.
3. Investigate the sensations and emotions you feel.
4. Note what’s going on and simply observe yourself.

(Recognize, Accept, Investigate, Note.)

The process uses curiosity to help your brain transition out of its anxious, panicky state.

Another great tool is to focus on your breathing. Breathing slowly and deeply makes us feel relaxed. It tells our survival brain that we’re safe, and it starts to calm down.

Be patient with yourself during this process. One moment at a time.

Unwinding Anxiety Summary

Anxiety starts in our survival brain when it senses something to be a threat. As part of the process for unwinding anxiety, we have to figure out which types of situations trigger anxiety, how our brains distract or soothe us, and the results of those distractions. To become more aware of our thought processes, we have to practice mindfulness. This allows us to interrupt such thought processes. Become curious about your anxiety when you sense it. Act like an observer who notes what is going on without getting involved in the thoughts. Finally, unwinding anxiety takes time. Be compassionate and patient with yourself. Take it one day at a time, or one moment at a time.