Anxiety

From OptimalScience

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.