How to Live Well with Anxiety: Part 4

I don’t want to bore you with too many scientific facts. So, I’ll explain as simply and quickly as I can about the differences between amygdala-based and cortex-based anxiety. They can make quite a difference when it comes to treatment of your anxiety.

Again, anxiety disorders (explained in the previous 3 blog posts) are the most common mental illness in the USA. These disorders arise from a group of different risks, including brain chemistry, genetics, epigenetics, personality and various life events and circumstances. Childhood trauma often increases your anxiety as you age. Trauma can linger and lay buried in your subconscious and cause you all kinds of worries and fears.

Just a bit about the AMYGDALA and the CEREBRAL CORTEX:

The amygdala is part of the brain’s limbic system. It is the region of the brain primarily associated with emotional processes.

The cerebral cortex is part of the mammalian brain (we humans are mammals) and the largest part of the brain. It’s the control and information-processing center. It’s responsible for many high-order brain functions, such as: sensation, perception, memory, thought, association and voluntary physical action.

AMYGDALA:

1)The amygdala tries to protect you from potential danger. Often enough, the assumption of the amygdala is predisposed to respond to certain stimuli as if they’re potentially dangerous (ie: snakes, heights, angry facial expressions). In evolution, our human amygdala has been ‘programmed’ to fear these things in order to survive (think of an attack by a saber-toothed tiger in prehistoric times).

2)Important NOTE:  the fear programmed into the amygdala CAN be CHANGED. It’s not necessary to be a prisoner of your past emotional experience residing in the amygdala. Many situations and objects aren’t naturally feared at birth but the amygdala learns to fear them as a result of direct life experience (ie: you were burned causing fear of fire, candles, lighters, etc.). You can REPROGRAM the amygdala over time to not fear certain stimuli.

3)It forms emotional memories of an experience and can attach a smell or object to it, yet you may have no conscious awareness of it. For example; if you were in a serious car accident early on and were sitting in the backseat, later on, without knowing why, you may dread sitting in the backseat of cars.

4)It’s responsible for activating the ‘fight, flight or freeze’ response and there’s an increase in neurotransmitter levels, along with the energizing of the sympathetic nervous system (SNS). This is a primary role of the amygdala.

5)Its language is based on association and emotional TRIGGERS can develop around these associations. This causes you to want to avoid these situations and this avoidance can cause you problems because, as you get older, the amount of stimuli grows and if not managed properly, you can become over-anxious.

CORTEX:

1)can produce anxiety in how it processes sensory information. It may interpret a perfectly safe sensation as threatening (ie: fighting with your partner may cause you to feel and believe that they’ll break up with you).

Also, the cortex produces anxiety by OVERTHINKING (who doesn’t recognize this?). This includes: worst case scenarios (I am an expert at this one 😊), which causes unneeded worry.

The DIFFERENCES and TECHNIQUES in the treatment of anxiety:

The difference in where your anxiety originates is important; there are different ways to manage and treat each.

-The AMYGDALA is a more ‘primal’ anxiety state; increased heart rate, physical sensations: sweaty hands, trembling voice, etc. So, here, you want to handle the anxiety by creating calmness within your body.

TIPS for reducing AMYGDALA-BASED anxiety:

-restful sleep

-regular movement/exercise

-deep breathing (learn more about Breathing Techniques in your Free Connection Call with me @www.gigiarnaud.com). Examples: 4,7, 8 technique (hold breath for 4 counts: 1 and 2 and 3 and 4), then hold for 7 more counts, then exhale slowly and strongly, for 8 counts. Do this twice, with a break in between the 2 sets & my vagus-breathing technique: start with the exhale (outbreath) and do: out,in,out,in,out. Exhale should be twice as long as the inhale. Do this twice with a break in between. This activates the vagus nerve (and the parasympathetic nervous system), causing the ‘rest and digest’ response (calming your body and mind).

-more movement (ie: shaking your body, dancing around). This can help release excess energy (also from trauma) from your body, an important step in healing trauma.

-In the CORTEX, the anxiety is based more on OVERTHINKING.

TIPS for reducing CORTEX-BASED anxiety:

-Challenge your thoughts (and your negative thinking). My first rule: don’t believe your thoughts; they’re not you and they’re (often) not true. (learn more on blog posts about Anxiety). You can ask yourself: what are the chances this will actually occur? If the worst-case scenario does occur, what could I do to remedy the situation?

Here’s a helpful worst-case scenario exercise: keep asking yourself, what’s the ‘worst that could happen?’ Keep breaking this down and repeating this question until you get to the final worst-case scenario. You will, most likely, discover that you can handle it all. This is a great exercise for us overthinkers. I use it all the time!

You will discover that approximately 95% of your worries, anxieties and fears never do happen and, if they do, they’re rarely as bad as you thought they would be.

-Reframe (use coping thoughts):

These can be affirmations or other positive statements, which replace or reframe your worry, anxiety or fear. (ie: “I’ll do badly on my work interview.” Reframe: ”I’ll do well on this work interview. I’ve done well before.”).

-Go to ACTION: Replace your worrying with a PLAN of ACTION and take that FIRST STEP, even if it’s just making a phone call. Planning and action are effective, productive and helpful replacements for worrying.

SUMMARY:

If you’re able to pinpoint the source of your anxiety (and differentiate), you can apply the suitable techniques for managing your anxiety.

Anxiety is such a common occurrence. It’s good to know that you’re not alone (not at all) and that you can do things to manage it, reduce it and even…………..live well with it!. If you have any questions or want to learn more tools and techniques for dealing with anxiety, I have lots of them. They have helped me enormously with my own anxiety, as well as many of my clients.

I get how frustrating and upsetting it is when others tell us: “just get over it” or that ‘’you should just relax”. These are what others sometimes say to us. It doesn’t help. But there are many ways to help yourself or to get help. Know this. It makes all the difference!

With smiles and love,

Dr Gigi

PS: Learn more about how to Reduce and Live Well with your Anxiety @www.gigiarnaud.com. Let’s jump on your Free Discovery (Connection) Call and to learn how I can help you to Live Well with Anxiety.

You can also reach me @drgigiarnaud on Instagram, Facebook and LinkedIn.

Change your Mind to Change your Life!