9 Powerful Tips for Rewiring an Anxious Brain: Neuroplasticity Secrets

Hey there, everybody, and welcome to this presentation on nine tips to rewire your anxious brain. I'm your host, Dr. Donnellice Snipes. In this presentation, we're going to start by understanding a little bit more about what anxiety is. Then we'll talk about the influence of experience and the stress response. And we'll finish up by identifying those rewiring strategies. Anxiety is an emotional label we apply to a particular set of physical reactions like rapid breathing and increased heart rate that can be triggered by a variety of things. Physical stress, like exercise, can trigger the HPA axis, which is our stress response system. Threat can also trigger the HPA axis. Our cognitions or our thoughts can also trigger this physiological reaction. If we tell ourselves there's a impending danger, then it's going to trigger that fight or flight reaction. Relationship dynamics are another example of something that can trigger a. A stress response. If someone starts interacting with you in a way that reminds you of an unpleasant interaction in the past, it'll trigger that memory and your brain may respond with activating that stress response system. Anxiety is an emotion. It is there to help protect us. The fight or flight system, the anger and anxiety are designed to give us energy, to tell us that there might be a threat, not that there is a threat. So this fight or flight system is designed to help us survive. It's designed like a fire alarm, to alert us to the fact that there might be a problem. And I know I already said that, but it bears repeating. Anxiety is a feeling which may or may not be based on accurate facts. Feelings are not facts. Feelings tell us to check the facts. When you experience something that causes anxiety, your brain encodes it as a threat. So think about if you are walking down the street and an aggressive dog just runs up to the fence and starts barking like crazy. Well, if that's your first experience with a dog or if you felt too threatened, then your brain's going to encode that and it's going to make it really prominent. High winds are another example that I'll use throughout this presentation. We live on a farm and we've had occasions where the winds have gotten so high that is not that it has knocked down significant portions of of our fence, which not only is inconvenient, but it means the animals can escape. And it is not a cheap endeavor in order to repair the fence. So whenever we have high winds, there's a part of me that may get a little bit anxious that, oh my gosh, I hope it doesn't blow down the fence. So we'll talk about how I've dealt with that over the years. It's important to remember that in order to protect us, your brain gives more weight or more prominently displays information about threats. So instead of remembering the 15 nice dogs that you've met in your life, it's going to remind you of that one aggressive dog. Or instead of remembering the 50 times that we had a storm come through, that there was no damage, my brain, as soon as the wind starts picking up, goes to that one time, well, actually three times, but whatever, those few times that the fence blew down. So probability is that nothing bad is going to happen. But my brain focuses on those distressful events because it's trying to keep me safe. When your brain perceives a threat based on prior experience or lack of experience. So if you've never encountered a situation, many times that's going to trigger a feeling of anxiety in you because your brain's like, I've got no data, I don't know what to expect. So it could be bad, it could be good, but let's just err on the side of caution and be a little anxious. So it triggers the HPA axis, which causes your body to dump adrenaline. We know that that's stimulating norepinephrine and glutamate. Those are also stimulating. And all of those things work together as well as your thyroid, causing blood sugar to be dumped into the system to create that feeling of anxiety. When we are anxious, when our fight or flight system has kicked off, I mentioned earlier, our heart rate increases, our breathing increases, our GI tract says, you know, it's not the time to rest and digest, so let's clear out the system. So a lot of times we get stomach cramps or an uncomfortable feeling in our belly, or all of that is just a normal reaction to our body getting prepared in case we need to fight or flee. But we assume that since we're feeling that way, then there must be a problem and we'll talk about emotional reasoning in a minute. When we have this physical reaction, we start feeling anxious. Thoughts about our ability to keep ourselves safe and to cope with the situation can really affect whether it spirals and gets worse into a panic attack or we're able to cope with it. So if we start feeling anxious and we believe that, oh my gosh, I'm feeling anxious, this is going to be out of control, I'm going to feel overwhelmed, I'm powerless over these feelings, then we're going to have increased anxiety, which is going to cause more adrenaline, more glutamate, More blood sugar to be dumped because our body's going, ooh, there must be a big problem if our thoughts, on the other hand, are that of safety, curiosity, and empowerment. I'm looking around, I recognize that I'm pretty safe. And I think I can handle what, whatever life throws at me. Okay, so let me get curious. I wonder why I'm feeling pinky right now. I wonder why I'm feeling anxious right now. So let me explore it so I can figure out how to handle it. That's the empowerment part. Well, when we approach a situation like that, then it promotes functional responding. We can assess the situation accurately, decide, is this something I need to address? Or can I turn on that rest and digest and down regulate my stress response? All right. Easier said than done. So when we talk about rewiring the brain, it's important to start out with mindfulness. And I know we talk about mindfulness a lot, but it's so important when, when you're on autopilot, then your brain is just pulling from data that it already has and not taking into account anything in the present. Mindfulness encourages us to become aware of things. We become mindful of what I call our pacer triggers for anxiety. That means our physical triggers for anxiety when I feel a particular way. For example, if you've got health anxiety, then maybe if you have start having pain, that triggers anxiety in you. Okay, write it down. What other physical sensations may trigger anxiety in you? Maybe when your blood sugar starts to get low, you start to get really shaky. And you can't necessarily differentiate that from a panic attack. So you assume that if you're shaky, it must mean a panic attack. So write down shaky. That's a trigger for anxiety. Some people tend to be more anxious in certain situations when they have certain feelings. If they feel angry, that also may trigger their anxiety. In other videos, we've talked about that as dirty discomfort because we rarely have one isolated feeling. So if we get angry, we may feel anxious that people are going to get angry with us because we got angry. Or if we feel depressed, it may trigger our anxiety that we're never going to feel any better. So what feelings, what affects trigger your anxiety? And then cognitive what thoughts trigger your anxiety? When you're having an anxious moment, what are you telling yourself? And sometimes you may not be aware of these right now. So the first part of rewiring your brain is starting to become mindful and become aware. When I'm feeling anxious, what am I telling myself when I'm feeling anxious? What in the environment Might be triggering my anxiety. In the book the Body keeps the Score, Vessel, Van der Kolk talks about how a lot of times when we've experienced trauma, we may re experience it not as a thought so much as a reaction. So if there are stimuli in the environment, sights, smells, sounds in the environment that remind you of a past trauma, it may trigger your anxiety. And you may have that anxious reaction, and you don't know where it's coming from. It's like, oh, I really don't like how I'm feeling, and I don't know why I'm feeling anxiety. I'm looking around, and objectively, everything's fine. So it'll be important to be aware of triggers in your environment and start becoming aware of things that trigger reactions from the past so you can process that and recognize in the present are you safe and not even necessarily related to trauma. I remember one of the places I worked was the walls were kind of this pukey blue green color, and it felt very institutional, and it felt very depressing and overly rigid, and it felt uncomfortable to be in there. And I couldn't exactly tell you why. And to this day, I can't exactly tell you why that color paint and the. The environment in that particular building triggered that feeling. But it did. And I recognized that when I started. When I see that color, it triggers a emotional reaction in me. It's not anxiety. But people may have similar reactions when they see particular colors or environments. And relationally, what people or interpersonal behaviors trigger anxiety in you? Maybe particular people that you've interacted with may trigger anxiety, but also people that look like those people can trigger anxiety in you. And it's important to note that it could be that they look physically like that person, or it could be that they are in a similar role. So maybe all doctors trigger your anxiety. It's important as you become more aware of your triggers to also encourage yourself to open your mind and become aware of facts in context in the present moment. So I notice that when I'm in this environment, I feel icky. Facts in context in the present moment. Is there something going on that is distressful, or is it triggering a reaction from the past? You know, there are two completely different things. Another important step is what I call reducing stress sensitivity. If your body machine is hyperactive, hyper vigilant, then you may tend to respond with anxiety more easily or more strongly than if it's not. So what can we do in order to create a sense of safety and empowerment? Well, part of it is sleep. When you Are sleep deprived, your HPA axis becomes more active, which means, and remember, your HPA axis is your stress response system. When that system is more active, then you are more likely to respond with more anxiety. Think about it. When you're sleep deprived, is it just as easy to deal with life on life's terms or do things stress you out more easily? I think most of us have the answer there. Good quality sleep is important. Also with that, recognize some of your natural rhythms. In the morning, there is the cortisol awakening response. And that is when your cortisol, your stress hormone and other hormones, as well as your blood sugar tend to be high. Your body is saying, hey, wake up, get ready for the day. That is your body's awakening response. It's not anxiety. It's not designed to make you feel stressed out. It's designed theoretically to make you feel excited. But sometimes we label it differently. Sometimes our system is overly eager and it secretes too much cortisol. And it's important to take a look at that. So if you wake up in the morning and the first thing is you feel anxious, get curious, examine what thoughts am I having that are contributing to this anxiety? What physical sensations? Did I not sleep well? What might be contributing to this besides something that's actually threatening? So sleep is important. Pain management is important. When we're in pain, that triggers that stress response system to stay more active. The primitive parts of our brain say, hey, if we're in pain, that means we're vulnerable, which means we are in more danger from that hungry lion that might be chasing us. Manage pain, you may not be able to eliminate it completely, but be aware that pain may increase your anxiety just because it triggers the HPA axis. Pain may also trigger your anxiety because of health anxiety. And that's a different video. But being aware of that and managing your pain can be helpful. Nutrition is important. If you're eating a lot of simple sugars, then your blood sugar is doing this. And that can contribute to feelings of anxiety and jitteriness. Same thing with if you drink a lot of coffee, you can have surges and crashes that can feel very anxiety. Like getting enough protein throughout the day to keep your blood sugar stable can be really, really helpful. And paying attention to insulin resistance is also important. When we become more insulin resistant, that our body has more difficulty managing our blood sugar. Grossly oversimplify it, some people have found that dietary changes can help with their anxiety. Additionally, making sure that you're getting a relatively healthy diet so your body can make the neurochemicals it needs to like GABA in order to moderate your anxiety can be important and then reducing, minimizing, eliminating, if possible, stimulants. If you're already anxious, then adding stimulants is just turning up the volume of that stress response system. It's giving it more energy. Environmentally, create safety in your environment, in your house, in your car, in your workspace, so you're not hypervigilant, so you're not on edge a lot of the time. Turn down any unnecessary sources of distress and develop a safety plan to identify aspects within your control to respond to common threats. If X happens, then I will. So going back to the aggressive dog, if the aggressive dog charges me, I will respond with pepper spray. You know, maybe I have pepper spray that keeps me safe when I'm on my, when I want, when I'm on my runs, or if we get a bad storm and it does blow the fence down, then I will call my neighbor and I have T posts that I can use in order to put the fence back up. So I have a plan that helps me feel safer. So I know that if this bad thing happens, I'm not saying that it will, but if it happens, I can cope with it. It's not going to have catastrophic consequences. Many people with anxiety get caught in the emotional reasoning trap. I feel anxious. Therefore something bad must be getting ready to happen. Emotional reasoning causes you to seek out and focus on information that confirms your feelings. It's not necessarily confirming the facts. It confirms your feelings and it dismisses contradictory information. If you wake up and you're feeling anxious and you say, oh, something bad's gonna happen today, it's gonna be an awful day, then you're going to pay attention and you're going to notice the bad things that happen and you're not going to pay attention or notice as much of the good things. Another example, I feel anxious about this test, therefore I am going to fail. So the person starts looking for confirmatory information. They're taking the test, and every time they get to a question they don't know, they're just like seeing, I knew I was going to fail. And they can actually create a confirmation bias. They tell themselves enough that they're going to fail that they actually do fail, or I feel vulnerable and anxious in this relationship, therefore this person must intend to abandon me. So I feel anxious, maybe based on prior abandonment experiences. Therefore, I'm going to look for any clue, anything this person may do that may indicate that they're getting ready to abandon me Now I don't know for certain whether that's what their behavior actually means, but I'm assuming based on other people's behaviors that that's what's going on here. So there's. We're not talking about facts, we're talking about assumptions. Examine your relationship with anxiety. And I know that sounds really weird, but anxiety is there to protect you. Think about how it has protected you in the past, and in what ways is this current anxiety maybe dysfunctional, but trying to protect you in the present? You know, it's sort of that hyperactive or overprotective friend that wants to make sure that you stay safe. How are you different now than you were in the past? What was dangerous or overwhelming or whatever in the past? Things that caused you anxiety in the past? How are you different? How can you handle them differently? How are you safer and more empowered? Or how is the situation different now in the past than in the past? Maybe in past situations, people that you dealt with were unkind or caused you distress in some way. How are these people in the present different than those people? Sometimes people find it helpful to treat anxiety like a nervous friend. Think of Piglet from Winnie the Pooh and set good boundaries. If your nervous friend tells you that there might be a problem and they're really anxious about something, okay, thank you for alerting me. I'll check it out. Just because they feel anxious doesn't mean you need to take the information. Thank them for letting you know and then figure out for yourself what you think and what your perception of the situation is. Then be willing to explain to them why they don't need to be anxious in your perception, or why you don't feel like you need to be anxious. So thank you for letting me know. However, these are the actual facts in the situation as I see them. How are you safe and empowered if they persist? If your anxious friend persists in saying no, you need to be anxious, you need to be anxious. You can also set boundaries and tell them to go home. And that's where those cognitive boundaries come in. If you treat anxiety as something separate from you, as a person or an entity separate from you, then you can more easily set boundaries. It's hard to set boundaries with yourself sometimes and consider what are you afraid will happen if you don't dwell on anxiety all the time? If you're not constantly scanning for the next shoe to drop, what are you afraid will happen? Think back to times when you haven't been anxious. Moments, hours even. Not necessarily days or weeks, but moments or hours. When you haven't been anxious, has something bad happened? A lot of people are afraid if they let go of their anxiety, they then they're going to be caught unawares by something bad. But think about it. Times when you haven't been hyper vigilant, overanxious, when you've actually felt calm for a moment, did something bad happen and catch you unawares? A lot of times you're going to be able to say no. So Rewiring the Brain Develop distress tolerance tools for emotional regulation when you are in your fight or flight mode, your cognition is impaired. You're not going to be able to effectively evaluate the situation and alter your brain's shortcuts, alter your brain's understanding of the situation. When you're in fight or flight, your brain is focused on just that, fight or flee. Not let's check it out. In order to get into the place where you can effectively evaluate what's going on and potentially rewire what's going on, you need to be able to get into what Linehan called your wise mind using distress tolerance tools like distress tolerant thoughts, telling yourself that you won't be consumed by anxiety or that you are able to handle this situation. Activities like slow breathing, breathe in for four, hold for four, exhale for four, hold for four. So that's what we call square breathing or engaging in relaxation activities or even exercise. I know that's the opposite. But sometimes when your fight or flight system is revved and dumping energy, some people find that the best way to manage that is to actually start moving their body in sync with their heart. So if their heart is beating fast, then they start moving and then when they stop moving, their heart naturally decreases. They kind of get it recalibrated or re synced between their their physiological reaction and what their body is doing. Guided imagery can be helpful as well as sensations like sounds and smells and even things that you feel like splashing cold water on your face. And I have lots of videos on distress tolerance tools on the YouTube channel, so I'm not going to go into that a lot here. But it's important to find tools that work for you so you can get into your wise mind and engage in using some of the following tools. When you're confronted with a stressful situation and you manually override your stress response, you use those distress tolerance tools. Then your brain actually says wonder what's going on here? I guess maybe I might not need to be nervous about this. I'm not sure you manually override it. You get into your wise Mind, you can start adjusting the beliefs and your brain also associates that anxiety, formerly anxiety provoking situation, with low amounts of physiological distress. FCP is another technique that I really like. Once you're into your wise mind, examine the facts in the present context. I feel anxious. Okay? That's a fact. I'm mindfully aware that I feel anxious. What thoughts are contributing to my feeling of anxiety? What are the facts for and against those thoughts in this context at this time, not when I was eight, not last week, not three weeks from now, but right now in this context at this time, what are the facts for and against my belief that there is a threat? What else might be contributing to my feeling of anxiety? Did I have a little too much coffee in the past few hours? Is my blood sugar low? Am I under chronic stress? So, you know, I already was like that pressure cooker that was at max capacity. And this one thing that came at me normally wouldn't bother me, but it's just I don't know how to deal with it. I don't know that I have any more energy to deal with it. So I feel overwhelmed and I feel anxious. Or as I mentioned earlier, are there sensory triggers around me right now that might be contributing to my feeling of anxiety? There's no actual facts, there's no actual threat in the environment, but there's sensory stimuli that are triggering reactions based on prior experiences. C stands for what's within your control. We've already evaluated the facts. We've identified what may be contributing to what's going on. And if there's a threat, what's within your control? What can you do to address the situation? And if you do what's within your control, if you do what you're empowered to do, what is the probability of the worst case scenario? What is the probability that catastrophe is going to happen? I have teenagers, older children now, and one example can be letting them go out and drive by themselves. When they go out in the car by themselves, I feel anxious. Yes, I do. What thoughts are contributing to it? They could get into a wreck. Da da da da da. What are the facts for and against those thoughts? They have a license, they are in a safe vehicle. So even if they do get into a wreck, it's probably not going to be catastrophic. My daughter is a very good driver and she's been driving for years and never had an accident. So therefore, what are the facts supporting my feeling, my anxiety? Do I have information that says, yeah, it's pretty likely that she's going to get into an Accident? No, I don't have that information. So what is within my control with her driving? With the exception of taking away her keys, not a lot. Therefore, I have to rely on her being smart and I cannot control other drivers and I cannot control her when she is out driving. I did my best leading up to this to make sure that she was a safe driver. And again, what is the probability of the worst case scenario? The probability of her getting into a catastrophic car accident? Probably pretty small. She doesn't drive on the interstates. We live in a very small town, so there's not a whole lot of traffic. Probability of the worst case scenario is pretty slim. Another technique that can help in rewiring is rewriting cognitions or your thoughts in your core beliefs. And I emphasize rewrite. And rethinking about it is one thing, but if you actually hand write it, not type it, handwrite solidifies the new memory or the restructured memory in a different way than if you just think it or even if you type it or talk about. When you start feeling anxious. Write down what you're thinking and then write down a restructured version or a more accurate version of what you're thinking. All or nothing thinking. This happens every time. Every time there's a storm, the fence blows down. Every time I get into a relationship, I get abandoned. Those are all or nothing thoughts. So what are the exceptions? Write down the exceptions to the rule mental filtering. And that is when you focus only on the negative. So again, you want to look for the positives. I'm always getting in trouble at work or at school, or my child is always getting in trouble at school. Look for the exceptions. Okay, maybe they've gotten in trouble a lot, but not always. So what's different during the times when they're not getting in trouble? Personalization. People don't like me because I'm a bad person, or people are going to abandon me because I'm not lovable. And what are some alternate explanations? Maybe it's because they've got stuff going on. Now that doesn't necessarily mean you're not going to get abandoned by a person. But if you personalize it, if you think it's about you, then you expect that henceforth and forevermore everybody's going to abandon you because you're the one that's not lovable. If you look at the big picture, find alternate explanations why something may have happened. Yes, it's unfortunate and you've got to grieve that loss. But you can also recognize that that doesn't Always have to happen. Magnification of the negative or minimization of the positive. Look at the facts. Assuming or jumping to conclusions without all of the information or mind reading, get the facts. You don't know what somebody's thinking. If you're anxious, if you feel anxious that somebody's angry with you, instead of assuming that you're interpreting their nonverbals correctly or their mood correctly and it's about you, ask them. Get the facts. And availability is another thing that contributes to anxiety. We tend to remember and react based on the things that are either most recent or most emotionally charged. So plane crashes, for example. We hear about plane crashes on the news, and those are devastating. Those are very emotionally charged. When we hear about it, we feel awful for those people, and we may empathize and think how awful it would be to be in that plane crash. We don't think about the 20,000 flights that took off that day that landed successfully. So it's important to get the facts. If you start thinking flying is dangerous, what are the facts? How many planes actually crash? Driving, you know, how many cars actually crash? How many people you know actually have problems? It's important to. If there's something that's making you anxious, if there's something you're afraid of, get all of the facts about it. Snakes, for example. You know, when I was growing up, a lot of people talked about how snakes were dangerous. And in my mind, that's all I heard. Snakes are dangerous, therefore all snakes must be dangerous. And that's a false premise. When I started doing the research, I learned that yes, there are six snakes in Tennessee that are dangerous, but there are literally hundreds of other species that are not. So. Looking at the availability of information, I needed to broaden my awareness of the whole picture, not just the sliver of information that I was presented. Rewiring and retraining can also be done through experience. The first step is to be willing to be open to the experience and challenge our inaccurate beliefs. Which means I've got to be able to look at this snake or whatever it is that's causing me anxiety. Use my distress tolerance skills to get into my wise mind, and then examine the accuracy of my facts in the current context. Data collection can also be helpful. Write it down again. Handwrite whenever possible. How often does this actually happen? How likely is it to happen? Does it happen? Literally every single time? So start keeping notes for the storms. I started keeping notes. How frequently do we have storms? And how frequently during those storms does my fence get blown down and the preponderance of the time it didn't happen. So it's important to get data to understand how often does this happen versus how often does it feel like it happens? What are other possible outcomes and how often do they happen? So let's take relationships and abandonment for example. Move away from the fence. What are other possible outcomes? I get into a relationship and it works out. How often does that happen? How often does it happen that people get into not necessarily just me, that other people get into relationships, that they get abandoned, that other people get into relationships and it works out. It's important to recognize that how frequently you you could expect something to happen and how accurate are your expectations? Do you expect a gale force wind and it's only a gentle breeze? Do you expect to fail a test and okay, you get a B minus? What were your expectations going into it? Rewiring can also be done through guided imagery. Envision yourself successfully navigating a concern that you're having, going to the doctor or asking somebody out on a date, or your kid going out driving and coming home safely. Envision the positive scenario. Envision the positive solution. Envision prior times when you've experienced something similar and it's gone okay. Remind yourself of other times when it's gone okay. See that happening? And repetition repeating to yourself the distress tolerant thoughts and those more accurate cognitions are really helpful at reducing anxiety. So instead of saying everybody is dangerous or nobody is trustworthy, repeating to yourself that some people are untrustworthy and some people are trustworthy, repetition, repeating it to yourself over and over again and stopping, using the extreme thoughts or the thoughts with the cognitive distortions that trigger your anxiety can help you approach a situation and feel more in control and empowered. Your brain learns from experience and uses those experiences to help you predict the future. Information from past experiences often only provides part of the picture that is what happened in the past. It doesn't take into consideration what's going on right now. When in fight or flight, cognition is impaired and prior information is often unable to be modified to include new data. So if you expect something to be distressful and you maintain your anxiety, even if the situation ended up being no big deal, your brain isn't going to process that because you were in that anxiety haze, if you will. Rewiring the brain requires learning tools to calm the stress response than identifying new information that may help you feel safer, more empowered. That's based in facts in the present context, integrating that new information training the brain to have new expectations. I've mentioned in Other videos that when I was very, very little, I had a bad experience with a nurse giving me a shot. And from then on, I was terrified of needles. And I talked about it with my doctor one time when I was much, much older. And she said, I'm gonna give you this shot. Trust me, it's not going to hurt. And every fiber of my being said, oh, she's lying. But I did trust her, and I was willing to be open to a new experience. And sure enough, she gave me the shot, and it didn't hurt. So now I go into the doctor's office, different doctor now. And I don't automatically expect it to be painful or distressful because I know that I can get shots without having it be. Be awful. So I've trained my brain to have new expectations. Now, there are certain phlebotomists, for example, that you may go to, and you may know from experience that they have difficulty finding a vein. So your anxiety may go up when you see that particular phlebotomist, whereas if you see a different one who gets the vein every time, you may not have any anxiety at all. And in that way, you've trained your brain to be more selective and not expect that every time you get your blood drawn, it's going to be a painful situation. The brain's desire for survival may cause it to cling to the distressful expectations until it is proven wrong. Or multiple times. You can't just have this fear and then have an experience that contradicts that fear. And your brain goes, oh, I was wrong. Never mind. Your brain's automatic response is to say, maybe that was just an exception. Let's see if it happens again. And so it may take several repetitions of something, several times. Experiment experiencing something or doing something, like get public speaking or asking somebody out on a date before. It doesn't trigger the extreme anxiety response. So it takes practice. What you want to look for is a reduction in the intensity of the anxiety each time you repeat it. Now see if you feel it feels a little bit easier each time. I hope this has given you a few tools to consider exploring in rewiring your brain. Basically, what you're trying to do is reprogram your brain by providing it new information. But in order to get that new information, it can't be in fight or flight mode.