Anxiety

Key Claims

• The brain is the organ most responsive to behavior.
• Anxiety is caused by consistently avoiding a trigger.
  • Avoidance trains your amygdala to label things as threats.
  • The amygdala detects threat labels.
  • The amygdala sounds the alarm upon detection.
  • The amygdala watches your response.
• Approach retrains the amygdala to be less triggerable: habituation.
  • While approaching a threat trigger, the anxiety level will increase, peak, and decrease as long as the approach behavior is maintained.
• The time scale for habituation is 90 seconds to 90 minutes.
  • The difference between the top of the curve and the bottom is called within-session habituation.
  • On the next approach session, the peak will be less if sufficient time has passed from the first trial.
  • The difference in peak between the curves, e.g., from day to day, is called between-session habituation.
• How long habituation takes in a given exposure is a function of how much you are welcoming the experience (reframing and mindfulness).
• Further avoidance trains your amygdala to be more triggerable: sensitization.
  • With sensitization, you will have a higher starting point for the curve
• Anxiety disorders all involve having a phobia of anxiety or a component of the threat response.
• Adrenaline is the ideal stimulant for the brain.
• Adrenaline increases IQ, fluency of speech, connections to others, executive function.
• The Yerkes-Dodson curve shows the relationship between abilities and arousal.
  • Arousal here refers to the amount of adrenaline present.
  • Abilities refers to the performance of the task.
• There are actually two curves, one showing high performance with high adrenaline, and one showing low performance with high adrenaline.
• Yerkes-Dodson originally posited that the high curve is for easy tasks and the low curve for difficult tasks.
• Adrenaline is essential for flow.
  • Adrenaline can be experienced in high performance states, low performance states, and paralysis/freeze reaction.
  • The appraisal you make of your adrenaline determines its function, for high performance or fight-or-flight response.
• Anxiety is simply adrenaline with a negative appraisal.
• Excitement is adrenaline with a positive appraisal.
• Beliefs about adrenaline are self-fulfilling prophecies (like all self-concepts).
• Reframing flips you from low to high performance.

Other Claims

• Emotions are best processed when felt in the chest.
• Feeling an emotion or urge sends a “message received” signal through the same vagus nerve back to your amygdala.