Why trying to think your way out of anxiety doesn’t work and what you can do instead

Why trying to think your way out of anxiety doesn't work and what you can do instead

Have you ever tried convincing yourself that you shouldn’t be anxious? That what you are worried about is not logical or rational?

How well did that work?

For most of us, it is difficult – or even impossible – to think clearly and rationally once we start spiraling down the anxiety rabbit hole.

To understand why, it helps to know a bit about the neurobiology of anxiety.

Fear response + Worry about the future = Anxiety

Fear is the automatic reaction to an imminent threat or danger. The amygdala is part of the limbic system, a set of structures in the middle of the brain that have to do with memory and emotional processing. The amygdala operates below the level of conscious awareness and one of its jobs is to scan the environment for threat and danger. If it perceives a threat (an angry dog or a car not slowing down when you are in a crosswalk), your body’s fight-or-flight response kicks in to get you out of danger. This is part of our innate survival response.

With anxiety, the fear is driven by what we worry about or imagine might happen in the future – worrying that a loved one might get hurt, fearing that we will be judged if we are less than perfect, believing that if we make one mistake people will find out we are a fraud. We can feel like we are being chased by a tiger, but the tiger is often an internal one.

Unlike the fear response that calms when the danger has passed (the dog’s owner calls him away or you get safely to the other side of the street), there is no end to the number of things we imagine could happen in the future. As a result, anxiety can take us down a rabbit hole of disaster thinking and what-if scenarios, decreasing our ability to accurately assess what is happening right now or most likely will happen in the future.

When we are experiencing anxiety, we are often most aware of our worried or fearful thoughts. Since we are such a head-focused society, we believe that if we can use logic and reason to convince ourselves that what we are worried about is not rational, the fear response will calm down.

1. Your survival response is stronger than logic

When we perceive a physical or emotional threat, the limbic system and brain stem work together to activate our instinctive “fight-or-flight” survival response to get us out of danger. Our heart rate increases. Our muscles get tense. Our eyes widen. Our perceptions narrow to focus our attention on what we need to do to survive. All of this happens automatically, often before we are even conscious of what is happening.

Imagine that you are walking along a path in the woods, and you see a squiggly thing lying across the path in front of you. What happens? For many people, the amygdala says “Snake!” and activates the fight-or-flight response. The response is automatic – adrenaline is released, your heart beats faster, you suck in your breath, your muscles tense, and you take a step backwards.

This automatic fear response causes us to act first and ask questions later and is essential for our survival.

Part of this response is to inhibit the flow of information to the parts of the brain responsible for logic and reason (the cortex). This is by design. If you have to respond to a real threat you need to be acting automatically and instinctively to get out of danger (fast track), not thinking about a solution (slow track).

Now imagine what happens when you look a little closer and realize it is not a snake, but a piece of vine that looked like a snake. Once you have accurate information the fight-or-flight response calms down. Your heartbeat slows, your breathing normalizes. You can think more clearly. Your muscles relax and you continue on your way.

This is exactly how the fight-or-flight system is supposed to operate – it mobilizes the resources and activates the systems in the body that are necessary to get us out of danger. Once the danger is past, the fight-or-flight response calms down and the nervous system returns to normal.

When the fight-or-flight response is activated, it overrides logic and reason. Rational thought is simply no match for the instinctive survival response – the survival response will win out every time.

The problem with anxiety is that since it is often fear about something that is not physical and imminent, but something that we are imagining might happen in the future, that sense of the danger being over may never happen.

2. An anxious brain perceives things as more threatening than they may actually be

When the fight-or-flight response is activated, our brains are wired to be attuned to more danger. Our threat-detection system is heightened. If we are walking through the jungle and a predator appears, our brains need to be alert to the other dangers, like the possibility of another predator. The bigger the threat, the more focused on danger our brains become.

But the same thing can happen when we get anxious about an upcoming presentation or social situation. The more anxious we get, the less able we are to accurately assess a situation. The more threatened we feel, the more anxious we become, and the more dire the situation seems. This anxiety loop can cause us to quickly spiral into the rabbit hole of worst-case scenario or disaster thinking.

If you struggle with anxiety when you have to give a presentation for work, it might go something like this:

I will mess up the presentation -> my colleagues will make fun of me behind my back -> I will lose my job -> I won’t be able to pay my mortgage -> My life will be a disaster

And this downward spiral can happen quickly and for things that are far less important. In an anxiety state, even something trivial like leaving our grocery list at home can feel like a life-or-death situation.

When we get into an anxiety spiral, it is as if we have lost the brakes on the system. Your body is telling you that you are not safe. But because the information flow between the cortex and the parts of the brain that are perceiving and responding to the threat is disrupted, you lose the ability to look at things objectively and no amount of rational thinking is going to be able to convince it otherwise.

3. The higher the anxiety, the fewer options we can see

The fear response is designed to get our attention. One of the ways it does this is by giving us “tunnel vision,” limiting our ability to make decisions or come up with creative solutions.

The higher the anxiety, the more convinced we become that this is the only way to perceive the situation, that what we are perceiving is absolutely true. In a less anxious moment our reactions might seem illogical or unlikely, but the more anxious about the situation we become, the more convinced we become that the outcome is the only one that could possibly exist.

A high anxiety state also limits our ability to connect with others, shutting us off from the very support that can help to restore balance to our systems. It makes us feel alone and isolated, which only exacerbates the anxiety.

4. Your brain has a negativity bias

The human brain has a “negativity bias.” It notices and remembers information associated with negative emotions and events more than those associated with positive ones. Why? Because the human brain is wired for survival. Remembering the sound that a predator makes was more important to our safety than remembering the taste of a ripe piece of fruit.

We remember the negative

In his book Buddha’s Brain, Richard Hanson writes that negative thoughts and emotions are like Velcro; they stick in our brains. Positive emotions are like Teflon and slide right through.

For example, if you had nine things happen during the day that went well and one thing that went great, but you also had one judgmental comment from a co-worker about how you handled a situation, what are you thinking about at the end of the day? The nine things that went well? Or the comment from your colleague?

If you are like most people, the negative thing is the one that we remember the most. We replay it over and over, imagining how we could have handled the situation differently.

The more we ruminate about these events, the more unbalanced our view of ourselves and our lives becomes. It consumes a lot of our time and energy. The more we allow this negativity bias to run unchecked, the more habitual our focus on negativity becomes.

It also means that our brains are less likely to notice or remember when we are feeling neutral or successful than when we make a mistake. This can create a narrative that we are not competent, when in fact we are, we are just not noticing when we do things well.

So… if thinking your way out of anxiety doesn’t work, what can you do?

When your brain perceives a threat, one of the things that happens is your body releases neurochemicals to help us respond to the threat and we feel a sense of urgency to act. All of these are essential if we are being chased by a tiger, but not so helpful if the threat is something we think might happen.

Working with the body – not the mind – to reduce the stress chemicals is the first step in interrupting the body’s anxiety response. The next step is increasing the feel-good brain chemicals to shift your mood. Try these simple exercises. Over time they can help to repattern your baseline stress and anxiety response.

Get moving
Movement, especially vigorous movement, helps to reduce the stress chemical cortisol in the body. Movement is doing what the cortisol is trying to get your body to do – take immediate action. Otherwise, it stays in your body and makes you feel like the threat is not going away.

Going for a walk or a run and paying attention to the color of the leaves or the clouds in the sky can really help. If you are walking, swing your arms vigorously and exaggerate your steps. If you can’t go for a walk, bounce up and “jiggle” your body.

Head Hold
Place one hand on your forehead with your index finger at your hairline. With the other hand, cradle the back of the head. Slow down your breathing, breathing in and out to the count of 5. On the inhale, imagine your breath flowing from the base of your spine to the top of your head and on the exhale, from the top of your head to the base of your spine.

Create a Positive Feeling
Once your body has calmed down, place your hands in the center of your chest, one on top of the other. Breathe slowly and deeply and remember a time when you felt at peace, accomplished, or happy. The stronger you can feel it, the more you shift your neurochemistry. This may take some practice and it is helpful to try it at times when you are not so anxious, so when you do get anxious, it will be easier to do.

Anchoring in the Positive
You can build a “habit of positivity” by noticing when something positive, delightful, or satisfying happens and “anchoring in the feeling” by placing your hands in the center of your chest, one on top of the other and breathing in and savoring the experience. This does not have to be a big thing – a delicious cup of coffee, someone smiling at you, successfully completing a task. The idea here is to balance out the negativity bias by actively “anchoring in” moments of positivity that are already occurring in your life.