High Anxiety And Your Brain Health

Our response to looming threats.

Danger from beyond. Perceived or real. No clear path to a safe solution. Rising blood pressure. Eyes narrowing. An overwhelming urge to fight or flight.

This is our oldest survival mechanism. Fear.

A desire to protect your tribe or consolidate possessions. Minds racing to compute the necessities of immediate survival. Anxiety starts to overwhelm. Has enough been done should the worse scenario become a reality?

Anxiety and its cousin panic both come to visit when fear is a real concern.

These are protective measures built into our DNA. They’ve helped us to survive as a species because they also help us learn how to avoid danger. A cavewoman’s stern warning to her children not to put their hands into the fire have become a mother’s loud exclamation to “keep your hands away from the hot stove!” As children we see the burner, notice the heat, process the warning and file it away as behavior to never repeat.

Anxiety is a warning sign to our body and mind. It developed over years of evolution to notify us that immediate action is or will soon be required.

Blame it on your prefrontal cortex. As our brains evolved from primitive to advanced, we gained an ability to get creative and plan by balancing input from the past into the likely scenarios for the future.

As threats also evolved from Saber Toothed Tigers to plummeting 401Ks, we have become a people who still get the signal to action but find there is no definitive way to combat or escape our foreshadowing of impending doom.

The way our evolved mind copes with this lack of information is by processing different scenarios from similar events in the past and predicting which are most likely to occur.

That ladies and gentleman is anxiety. It builds up, without a pressure valve. Worry or unease intensifies when our prefrontal cortex doesn’t have enough similar experiences to accurately predict the future. It acts like a disconnected wifi signal on your phone frantically searching for any connection. We are experiencing this real time with the coronavirus.

Scientists are still compiling the information to know exactly how the virus spreads, how contagious and how deadly it can be. Compound that with the knowledge that there is no vaccine or treatment and that governments are conflicted on the best way to keep a lid on the crisis and you have a recipe for high anxiety.

Here’s the thing, anxiety may be fueled by uncertainty and fear but it’s also spread by the anxiety of others. psychologists even have a term for this—social contagion. Our own anxiety can be triggered or peak just by coming in contact with someone who is acutely anxious.

And that’s where panic can become overriding. Panic is sudden, uncontrollable fear or anxiety that often leads to wild or irrational behavior. The prefrontal cortex helped create the anxiety, but it logs off when the brain perceives that the time for planning is over and immediate action is required. Suddenly focus narrows. You see a shelf with a dwindling supply of toilet paper and someone stacking their cart. Others are rushing in around you.  Your own survival and protective mechanisms kick in.  Safely clutching a 24-pack of squeezably soft Charmin offers reassurances that you’re gathering tools to fight off an unknown enemy and a fear of the unknown.

So, panic buying temporarily soothes people’s fears. But there are more constructive and healthy ways to deal with anxiety and uncertainty. Sheer force of will is not one of them.

Anxiety is difficult to suppress or plan around. With potential loss of life, jobs, financial security or a familiar way of life to steady us, the prefrontal cortex and its ability to provide reason and willpower tends to take a back seat to the brain’s more immediate survival reactions.

Anxiety can also decrease or depress our overall immune response. Something to even be more anxious about? It becomes a vicious circle.

Here’s how to break out. Understanding how the brain works can give you the information to help execute that plan. When feeling particularly anxious, you’ll want to do some brain-hacking so that your prefrontal cortex comes back online. Recognize anxiety when it starts to occur. See panic in others and press pause. Before springing into action, first evaluate the results of your instinct or desire for immediate reaction. Be aware that anxiety is weakening you both physically and mentally.

Will acting on your first impulse actually help your survival or move you further from a real solution? Will there really be a lasting shortage of toilet paper weeks into the future? Is there another way around a temporary shortage? Can the money you save from overbuying now, be utilized later for more important needs as the coronavirus pandemic plays out over the next months?

Just running these questions in your mind engages the reasoning and planning part of your brain and allows creative solutions or a better offer to be considered. Our brains like to feel good and trend toward more rewarding behaviors so it usually has no problem replacing habitual impulses like anxiety when a rational alternative proves fruitful.

There’s a reason that washing your hands for 20 seconds and not touching your face are messages being repeated so often. It is the best way to avoid the virus AND it’s easy advice to remember and follow. As your hygiene habits demonstrate reinforcement to your brain— catching the virus isn’t catching up to you—your brain reduces anxiety levels with each wash.

These aren’t just theories. They are lab-tested awareness training mechanisms that have been studied for decades and proven to significantly reduce anxiety and surge productive behaviors.

Remember, the prefrontal cortex specializes in balancing input from the past into the likely scenarios for the future. The more we consciously engage it to evaluate the comparisons between an anxious or panicked decision and a calm, reasoned course of action, it will lead us to the “better offer” every time.

And you can breathe a sigh of relief.