Tame Your Anxiety Read online

  Tame Your Anxiety

  Tame Your Anxiety

  Rewiring Your Brain for Happiness

  Loretta Graziano Breuning

  ROWMAN & LITTLEFIELD

  Lanham • Boulder • New York • London

  Published by Rowman & Littlefield

  An imprint of The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc.

  4501 Forbes Boulevard, Suite 200, Lanham, Maryland 20706

  www.rowman.com

  6 Tinworth Street, London SE11 5AL, United Kingdom

  Distributed by NATIONAL BOOK NETWORK

  Copyright © 2019 by Loretta Graziano Breuning

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote passages in a review.

  British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information Available

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Breuning, Loretta Graziano, author.

  Title: Tame your anxiety : rewiring your brain for happiness / Loretta Graziano Breuning.

  Description: Lanham : Rowman & Littlefield, [2019] | Includes bibliographical references and index.

  Identifiers: LCCN 2018047271 (print) | LCCN 2018047913 (ebook) | ISBN 9781538117774 (electronic) | ISBN 9781538117767 (pbk. : alk. paper)

  Subjects: LCSH: Happiness—Physiological aspects. | Neurotransmitters—Popular works. | Self-care, Health—Popular works.

  Classification: LCC QP401 (ebook) | LCC QP401 .B75 2019 (print) | DDC 612.8/23342—dc23

  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018047271

  The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992.

  Printed in the United States of America

  For my grandchild,

  Josephine Lorraine Breuning Evans

  Contents

  Contents

  Introduction: My Close Encounter with Cortisol

  1 What Is Tame?

  2 What Is Anxiety?

  3 A Taming Tool That Works

  4 Your Power over Your Brain

  5 Design the Tool That’s Right for You

  6 Keeping It Tame in the Long Run

  7 Stock Your Pantry with Anxiety Tamers

  8 Avoid These Six Pitfalls

  9 Food and Anxiety

  10 Help Others Tame Anxiety

  Epilogue

  Bibliography

  Keep in Touch

  Introduction

  My Close Encounter with Cortisol

  I changed a powerless feeling to a powerful feeling by focusing on the power I had.

  Anxiety can start from something small and spiral into something big. This happened to me recently, and it helped me build new skills.

  The spiral started when I tried to clean up a messy pile on my desk. I had ignored the pile for months because I was busy with a project. Now the project was finished and the pile started to bother me. I decided to invest time cleaning it up. I picked up the paper on the top of the pile, but it required a decision I wasn’t ready to make. So I pulled a sheet from the middle of the stack. That one stymied me too. After a few minutes of frustration, the pile didn’t get any smaller and I decided to do it “tomorrow.” The next day, just looking at the pile gave me a bad feeling. Those old papers held reminders of old frustrations, disappointments, and failures.

  The same thing happened with my sock drawer. It jammed when I tried to close it because it was too full. I ignored this when I was busy with the project, but now that I had time, I stopped to fix it. I picked up a sock that I rarely used and thought about where to put it. I wondered why my life no longer required this sock, and whether that would change. I couldn’t answer that question, so I moved on to another sock. A bad feeling turned on that was curiously familiar. I grew up seeing my mother rage when she tried to shut an overstuffed drawer. I felt powerless and scared when my mother raged. Now my socks were triggering that feeling despite my good intentions.

  Decluttering became a fad around this time. Everyone seemed to be reading a book about “tidying up.” I didn’t aspire to be “tidy,” but there were junk zones in my house that upset me whenever I passed them. Everyone else seemed to be enjoying the decluttered life, and I wanted it too. I set the intention and read the book.

  But each time I tried to winnow my clutter, bad feelings surged. I am usually decisive, but when I entered my junk zones, I couldn’t even decide where to put a paper clip. Would I need paper clips in the future? I didn’t think so, but I wasn’t ready to give up the possibility of such a future either. Each item raised uncomfortable questions about my future. The bad feeling got worse when I saw dust bunnies beneath the clutter. They gave me a sense of urgency that I kept failing to relieve.

  I seized on the idea of giving stuff to my kids so I could happily imagine my stuff having a future. But my kids rejected the offer with an absolute “no!”

  I was stuck. I accepted that I had a problem and needed help.

  So I turned to the wisdom of the internet. I searched on the words “decluttering services,” and stumbled on a blog post called “Why Your Kids Don’t Want Your Stuff.” The author of the post seemed to understand me. She was a local home-organizing consultant, so I called for an appointment. I told her I just wanted a one-hour chat rather than the full OCD treatment. Her minimum was two hours, so I went with that.

  Those two hours changed everything. She asked me what I love to do but never make time for. I said I wanted to read the books that were piled up everywhere. She told me to spend a half hour decluttering and then a half hour reading. She pushed me to schedule these decluttering sessions on my calendar. I chose to do three a week. As I typed it in my calendar, I was excited about the books I would read.

  The consultant wanted me to continue until the whole house was done, but I only wanted to clear up my junk zones. She strongly advised against that, and I strongly refused her advice. Suddenly, I had a sense of clarity about my future. I liked having a project. I did not want to be a neatnik. I couldn’t wait to relieve the clutter so I could start on my next project. I had been stalled because I was waiting for support. I realized that I needed to start a new project with or without support. I would start as soon as I cleared up those junk zones, with or without the consultant’s approval. Suddenly, I was eager to clean them up.

  I defined the goal precisely: to clear up my desk, sock drawer, and five other disaster areas around the house. Clearing up means emptying them entirely so they could be cleaned, and then refilling them 90 percent so I’d always have some free space. I imagined the serenity I’d enjoy when it was done.

  I disagreed with the consultant on another issue: recycling. She wanted me to throw things in the garbage and I couldn’t stand to do that. I hired her with the assumption that she’d know good places to donate items. But the more I raised the issue, the more she insisted that I would never get it done unless I put things in the garbage. The more she said that, the more I realized that I needed to find a good home for my stuff in order to feel good about decluttering. It might slow me down, but I would finish, and I would enjoy knowing my junk had a future.

  I invited my husband to the sit-down with the consultant. I had mixed motives, I confess. I could say I was being considerate, since it was his home too. But I was also hoping for help. My husband was kind enough to jo
in the conversation, but he did not pull out his calendar. He was busy with his own projects and the mess in my closets was not his problem. As much as I longed to be rescued from this burden, I realized that I could do it faster without him. It was my junk, and my anxiety about the junk.

  Two months later, I finished! I felt pride instead of fear and shame whenever I looked at those junk zones. I loved having a clean place to put things. I loved my new tool for tackling junk the next time it accumulates. Best of all, I could use that tool any time a little irritant spiraled into big anxiety.

  What Worked?

  The bad feeling I had when I looked at my clutter was caused by cortisol. This chemical is the brain’s signal that your survival is threatened. Of course I didn’t consciously believe my survival was threatened, but cortisol makes it feel that way. Surprisingly big cortisol surges can spiral from surprisingly small triggers. Threatened feelings are easier to manage when you know how this happens. Let’s take a closer look.

  The first trigger was free time. When you are busy putting out fires, small cortisol trickles are easy to ignore. But when nothing big is going on, these drips get your attention.

  The second trigger was old pain. I was constantly exposed to my mother’s pain growing up. Early cortisol experiences build the neural pathways that turn on bad feelings later on.

  Social comparison was the third trigger. I imagined everyone else tidying up successfully. I wanted the decluttered life I believed everyone else had.

  Existential fear was the next trigger. We are all aware of our own mortality and we usually manage the fear by avoiding it. But it tends to creep in when you think about the future and squarely face decisions about how to allocate the time you have left.

  Taking responsibility was the last trigger. I longed to shift the burden to my kids or my husband or even a stranger. That might not solve the long-run problem, but it can relieve the cortisol of the moment. When my burden-shifting strategies failed, I had to face my own reality.

  Cortisol is an ancient chemical found in mammals, reptiles, fish, mollusks, amoeba, and even plants! It evolved to do a job: to alert you to potential threats so you can act in time to protect yourself. It tells your brain to scan for potential threat signals, and prepares your body for action. Cortisol does its job by making you feel bad, so you do what it takes to make it stop. But you don’t always know how. So there you are flooded with threat signals ready to act without a plan that works. That can lead to more cortisol, more evidence of threat, and more cortisol. Soon you’re in a bad loop.

  I knew the junk on my desk was not a big threat, but each failure to manage it boosted my cortisol. This fit the pattern of my early cortisol circuits, which led to more cortisol. That triggered social fears and mortality fears, and more cortisol. The chemical created a sense of crisis in my body even though my verbal brain didn’t think it was a crisis.

  I turned the ship around by imagining a solution and stepping toward it. Each step was small, but I felt good as soon as I saw myself approaching a goal. Old frustrations were still there, but they didn’t feel like crises when I had a sense of where I was going. Decluttering was suddenly a step toward a goal instead of a threat.

  At first, the new steps were hard to take, so rewarding myself with downtime was very motivating. I looked forward to my half hour of reading tremendously. I knew my decluttering session would end with a relaxed feeling. But that wasn’t enough sometimes. After a hard day of work, I didn’t always feel calm enough to sort through old albatrosses. On those days, I did a half hour of reading before the decluttering. Sometimes I did it before and after! You may think it’s cheating, but life is not a race against the clock. It’s a quest to feel good in the short run while doing things that are healthy in the long run. Eventually, my brain learned to associate decluttering with a good feeling rather than a bad feeling.

  On a deeper level, I changed a powerless feeling to a powerful feeling. My power is limited, of course. I don’t have the power to transcend mortality, or push my junk onto others, or change my past, or force people to support my projects. Instead of dwelling on powerless feelings, I focused on the power I have. I can clear the decks for my next project and get excited about it. I can take a new view of past failures that my junk reminds me of. I can celebrate my freedom to make my own decisions.

  We all long for free time, but cortisol often seeps into free time. Small irritants cascade as your brain zooms in on potential threats. It’s hard to find the exit when you’re in this loop. This is why people resist taking the free time they need.

  There is a better way. You can train your brain to shift from a cortisol loop to a happy loop. This book describes a simple tool for doing that, which rests on the same basic elements as my decluttering strategy. You will learn to

  focus on meeting your needs

  break challenges into small chunks

  reward yourself for your steps

  Anxiety is a cortisol spiral. Once you’re in it, it’s hard to take the steps you need to get out of it. But if you practice this taming tool every day, it will come to you automatically in moments of distress. You will define your needs and step toward them, and your good feelings will flow. Your brain will learn to expect a good feeling instead of a bad feeling. You will tame your anxiety.

  1

  What Is Tame?

  You can tame the relationship between your horse and rider.

  The word tame has many negative associations. I think of a “lion tamer” with a whip and a chair. That is not how I want to treat my brain! “The Taming of the Shrew” is another unattractive image. Where can we find a positive image of “tame”?

  A tame animal, like a pet, may seem appealing at first. But pets lack basic survival skills as a result of domestication. They do not use their brain for the job it evolved for—finding food, avoiding threats, and managing social alliances. They spend their adulthood in childlike dependence, often at the expense of their reproductive system. You do not want that kind of tame.

  Philosophers often compare the mind to a rider struggling to tame a horse (or elephant or donkey). It’s tempting to think of anxiety as a wild horse. But this analogy suggests an acrimonious relationship between horse and rider. The horse resists the rider’s harsh control. The horse blames the rider and the rider blames the horse. You cannot tame your anxiety by pitting your horse and rider against each other.

  But you can tame the relationship between your horse and rider. This is the positive approach to anxiety.

  We humans have two brains. On the outside, we have a spaghetti of neurons that is unique to humans, but on the inside, we have the same core structures that all mammals have in common (the amygdala, hippocampus, thalamus, and so on, collectively called the limbic system). Your two brains must get along in order to have a good quality of life. Tame the relationship between your verbal brain and your mammalian operating system and you will enjoy the ride wherever you go.

  Here is a simple example. Imagine a rider frantically flailing at a horse that refuses to budge. Now imagine a steep cliff on the trail ahead. The rider doesn’t see it because it’s not on the trail map. The horse sees it, so the pair will survive if the rider accepts the horse’s knowledge. They’re in trouble if the rider focuses only on the map and ignores the horse.

  But sometimes the horse is wrong. Imagine a horse running wild after seeing a snake. Survival depends on the horse accepting guidance from the rider. But the rider must communicate in a way that the horse understands instead of just in words.

  Communication between the verbal brain and the animal brain is a huge challenge. Let’s say the rider offers a carrot to the agitated horse. Carrots are like candy to a horse. A big reward builds a big connection in the mammal brain, wiring it to seek more rewards in the ways that worked before. So, the next day, the horse acts frenzied in the spot where it got the carrot. The well-meaning rider offer
s another carrot. A day later, it takes two carrots to stop the frenzy. The animal brain is just doing the job it evolved for—repeating behaviors that get rewards.

  Taming the relationship between your horse and rider is a challenge when your horse runs wild, but if you soothe it with sweet rewards it might make things worse. How can your big spaghetti of neurons guide your inner mammal through a world full of snakes?

  You have to communicate with your inner mammal in a way that it understands. This book shows you how. You will learn about the brain chemicals that motivate it, and the neural pathways that control these chemicals. You will discover your power over these neural pathways so you can guide your inner mammal from unhappy to happy chemicals. To do this, you will have to blaze a trail that’s not on your map.

  Sometimes there’s a cliff on your path and your horse’s agitation can save you. Other times, the agitation is just a bad carrot habit. You must constantly interpret your horse’s responses in order to choose your best next step. The more you know about the mammal brain, the better you can choose.

  Tame in Nature

  If you were a gazelle, your cortisol would be triggered by the smell of a lion. That would motivate you to run, and escape would relieve your cortisol. If you were a gazelle, hunger would trigger your cortisol, and finding food would relieve it. In nature, bad feelings are tamed by meeting needs and avoiding harm. But a gazelle is never completely safe from predator threat and hunger. Why doesn’t it surge with cortisol all the time? Because natural selection built a brain that promotes survival. Constant anxiety would not promote a gazelle’s survival. The brain built by natural selection is always analyzing the situation and deciding when cortisol would promote survival.

  A gazelle doesn’t do its analyzing with words and abstractions. It does it with neural pathways. The cortisol spurts of its youth built pathways that turn on its cortisol today. The happy-chemical spurts of its youth likewise built pathways that turn on happy chemicals in similar future circumstances. In each moment, a gazelle is weighing its options with the pathways it has.