Help For Anxiety

The word anxiety can bring up a lot of, um…anxious feelings for people. Have you ever wondered why anxiety exists? What purpose does anxiety serve? And why does it get to the point where it no longer serves us? How can therapy for anxiety help?

To begin to answer this question, we have to turn to neurobiology. Anxiety is our biological response to threat. If we think of our brain as our sensory control center, we can start to understand how our brain senses and responds to threat. To understand what is happening with anxiety we can think of our brain as having three main regions; the reptilian brain, the emotional brain and the cognitive brain.

The reptilian brain is our brain stem. It controls heart rate, breathing, movement and body temperature among other things. When there is an external stressor, our reptilian brain gets us ready for movement through increased heart rate, rapid breathing and sending energy to our limbs. This biological response sends signals to our emotional brain to register fear.

The emotional brain is also referred to as the limbic system. This is the part of our brain that allows us experience a range of emotions and is essential in our ability to create emotional connections with other people. An important piece of our emotional brain is buried deep inside and called the amygdala. When the amygdala senses a potential threat, it sets off alarm signals. These alarms produce reactions in all parts of our body, including the production of cortisol (the stress hormone) that send out messages to the brain to the cognitive brain to evaluate and plan for the threat, and also helps our reptilian brain get our body ready to respond to threat.

The other section of our brain, the cognitive brain, is located in the frontal lobe. This is where our thoughts and emotions come together and make “sense” of our experience. This section of our brain helps with long term planning, decision making and moderating social behavior. This is also the section of the brain that helps with production of language.

Neuroscientists used to believe that anxiety stemmed from the amygdala alone setting off too many signals, however, now we know that it is more complicated than that. We have discovered a fear network that works between the emotional brain and the cognitive brain which has the function of ramping up our fear signals (oh no! There IS a Tiger), or calming our fear signals (never mind, it’s just a house cat). The gas and brakes of our fear network are located in our cognitive brain (frontal lobe) and a major player in this network is called the anterior cingulate cortex.

So how does this information help us? We know that we can’t stop the emotional brain from sending us signals all together. We wouldn’t want it to! It gives us important sensory information. In fact, studies show that although suppressing emotions may decrease our ability to feel negative emotion, it actually leads to an increase in activity in the amygdala. This is part of the reason why as therapists, we encourage people to talk about their emotions. It appears that when we suppress emotions, our emotional brain just tries harder to get us to pay attention. What therapy for anxiety encourages us to do is to let our emotional brain know we are paying attention.

This begins to explain why mindfulness activities decrease anxiety. Brain imaging shows that bringing our minds and bodies into the present moment through mindfulness activities increases activity in the anterior cingulate cortex. Noticing what is happening in the here and now tells the emotional brain and our reptile brain that we are getting the messages. “Hey partners! I’m paying attention! No need for more signals, I got this.”

In therapy for anxiety, you learn mindfulness skills. The practice of mindfulness is taking a nonjudgemental stance while paying attention to the present moment. Bringing your attention to your breath, listening for the sounds of nature, using a guided meditation to notice sensations in your body, all of these will bring you into the present and activate your anterior cingulate cortex.

Now that you know how anxiety works and why mindfulness helps decrease anxiety, keep and eye out for our next blog with some specific mindfulness activities. If you want to learn more about the neurology of anxiety and mindfulness, I have posted link to some sources below.

Anterior Cingulate Cortex: Unique Role in Cognition and Emotion

Mindfulness-based training attenuates insula response to an aversive interoceptive challenge

Anxious? Activate your anterior cingulate cortex with a little meditation

What Part of the Brain Deals With Anxiety? What Can Brains Affected by Anxiety Tell us?