How Anxiety Affects Your Brain
Last week, we talked about how anxiety affects your body and exactly why it has these effects…things like why it makes your tummy hurt or why it causes cold sweats. Today, let’s talk specifically about how anxiety affects your brain.
THE NEUROSCIENCE OF ANXIETY IS COMPLICATED
As a disclaimer, there’s still a lot to learn but science now knows a lot about how anxiety works in the brain.
And it’s actually really complicated, involving lots of different parts of the brain, connections between different parts of the brain, all sorts of chemicals and receptors, and an awful lot of chemistry and physics.
It’s so complex that I can’t really do it justice in this type of article.
So I’m gonna break it down to the basics and distill it down to the information that’s gonna be most important for helping you understand and master your own anxiety.
THE FIGHT-OR-FLIGHT SYSTEM & YOUR BRAIN
Last week, we talked a lot about the fight-or-flight response.
When something triggers anxiety, fear, or panic, your brain launches an entire system that prepares you to fight your way out of danger or run away from it.
We’ve discussed how that system affects your body, but your brain is also a critical part of the response.
ANXIETY & THE FRONTAL CORTEX
There are two main parts of the brain that are involved in anxiety.
One is on the front, top part of your brain, right behind your forehead and eyes.
This is called the frontal cortex.
You can think of the frontal cortex as the boss of the rest of the brain.
It’s involved in helping us make decisions, plan for the future, use language, pay attention, store memories, and build a personality.
A particular part of the frontal cortex called the orbitofrontal cortex is responsible for worrying — it gets stuck on problems it’s trying to solve, which looks like worry.
WHAT IS THE AMYGDALA
The second part of the brain that’s critical for understanding anxiety is the amygdala.
The amygdala is buried deeper in the brain and is in the temporal lobes…which (aptly named) are behind your temples.
There are two amygdala in the brain, one on the left side and one on the right.
The amygdala is involved in processing emotions, especially fear, and it communicates with other parts of your brain to understand what’s going on around you.
It’s constantly monitoring what’s going on around you, deciding whether those things are important, and determining whether you should respond in some way to those things.
WHAT THE AMYGDALA DOES
When the amygdala detects something dangerous (which could be something that’s actually dangerous, like a fire or an angry goose….or something that just seems dangerous, like thinking someone doesn’t like you or getting assigned a difficult project), it immediately launches into action and tells other parts of the brain to do their jobs.
Like, it tells the hypothalamus to release chemicals that turn on the fight-or-flight response.
And it tells the periaqueductal gray to trigger emotional behaviors.
And it tells the stria terminalis to trigger hormonal responses that are part of how your brain and body respond to anxiety.
And the really cool thing is that this happens so fast that it’s already happening before your frontal cortex even knows it…because when you’re in real life-threatening danger, you don’t have time to be deciding whether you should respond or not — you just gotta go.
While you’re responding to the danger, your amygdala is taking notes.
It’s trying to figure out what to look out for next time that might give it advance notice that you’re in danger.
Then, it lays down memories about things that were scary….that’s why we remember scary things really clearly but only have fuzzy or no memories about other events in our lives.
ANXIETY & THE AMYGDALA
The amygdala is trying to detect danger in everyone’s brains.
That’s its job.
The problem is that anxiety makes the amygdala overreact.
People who have anxiety disorders have extra-sensitive amygdala, which makes us scared of things that aren’t actually life threatening.
And we don’t just get scared of events or situations in life…anxiety can also trigger the amygdala with thoughts and memories.
And then double whammy: the amygdala remembers those things as scary, which makes us more scared of them next time.
This is part of why anxiety can get worse over time if it’s not treated.
HOW TO REWIRE YOUR ANXIOUS BRAIN
The good news is that coping skills and therapy help us rewire our brains and correct some of the extra sensitivity, weak connections, etc. that distinguish the anxious brain from the non-anxious brain.
Next week, we’ll chat more specifically about how to rewire your anxious brain, so don’t miss it.
But in the meantime, get started with my 9 personal favorite all-natural strategies for managing anxiety or with my free 5-part course that teaches you the exact approach i use with my own therapy clients to correct anxiety.
See you next week for more details on how to rewire your anxious brain. Don’t miss it.
Talk to you soon,
Dr. Finch
P.S. Remember, this is education, not treatment. Always consult with a psychologist or therapist about your mental health to determine what information and interventions are best for you. See the disclaimer for more details.
Hayden C. Finch, PhD, is a practicing psychologist based in Des Moines, Iowa, and Little Rock, Arkansas, dedicated to helping you master your mental health.
