Tame Your Anxiety Read online

  To spark oxytocin, create a moment of reciprocal trust. Give and receive support for one moment. Make careful decisions about which support meets your needs instead of grasping at any enmeshment available. You can start by either offering support to someone else or noticing the support that someone offers you. Make an effort to close the loop by accepting goodwill after you offer it, or returning the goodwill you receive. Then be satisfied. A moment of reciprocal trust triggers that good feeling of oxytocin and builds the pathway. Don’t ruin it by expecting endless all-embracing support. It’s natural to want that because the vulnerability of youth is the foundational circuit in your brain. That urge motivates the quest for oxytocin, but it can also lead to disappointment. Instead of condemning the world for inadequate support, enjoy tiny moments again and again.

  To spark dopamine, find a new way to step toward an unmet need. Find a goal you can actually step toward rather than a dream that is always out of reach. You need to see yourself approaching a reward to stimulate dopamine. For example, if you hate your job, an approachable goal would be to shift 20 percent of your workday into a project you find more interesting. You may need a new skill to get such a project, and you can start building that skill today. If you dream of being rich instead, you may get a moment of dopamine, but it stops when the progress stops.

  You may think you don’t have the time, money, or peace of mind for this. But when you define a step that’s small enough, a good feeling starts now, and that helps illuminate another do-able step. The regular flow of good feelings trains your brain to expect good feelings by finding the step you can take.

  Does it feel dangerous to want something? You may have gotten wired to think you are bad if you want something. Or that everything will go wrong if you want something. Or that you will always be disappointed if you want something. You may even pride yourself on not wanting anything for yourself. You can get an “A” in Philosophy 101 with that strategy, but it leaves your mammal brain feeling threatened. Wanting and seeking is the job your brain is designed to do. It’s the job happy chemicals are designed to reward. You may get disappointed when you want and seek, but in the long run you will enjoy more happy chemicals.

  The clock is ticking. Don’t wait for the wind to carry you. Define your needs in the next sixty seconds.

  Jan’s Story

  Let’s see how a woman named Jan used this tool. Jan was gripped by anxiety about her daughter. She wanted her child to be happy, but things never seemed to work out that way. Recently, Jan’s daughter was left out of a party that her friends were invited to. The news upset Jan tremendously. She was surprised at her reaction but couldn’t stop herself from feeling her daughter’s pain over and over. She realized she needed to do something so she set a timer for one minute and asked herself what she wanted.

  She wanted her daughter to be happy, of course. She didn’t want her daughter to suffer the way she suffered. The memory of her own suffering was dim. She liked to think she was past all that. She couldn’t believe that her anxiety was just old pain in new bottles. She hated the way her mother wallowed in old pain when she was young. It felt like she was surrounded by her mother’s pain all the time. Suddenly she realized with horror that she was surrounding her daughter with her own pain. This is not what she wanted at all. Good intentions didn’t make it good. She urgently wanted to give her daughter a happy model rather than the unhappy model that she had. Jan had no idea how to do that since she wasn’t feeling happy and sort of dismissed happiness as selfish and disloyal. But she knew it was precisely what she wanted.

  Joe’s Story

  Joe feels anxious at work. He hates the politics. Everything seems unfair. He starts feeling bad about work before he arrives in the morning and he keeps feeling bad about it when he goes home at night. Joe is tired of feeling bad and decides to do something. He sets his timer for sixty seconds and asks himself what he wants.

  He wants those idiots to grow up, of course. Why can’t they just obey the rules and do their share? He had this problem growing up and he’s tired of it. His brother was always breaking the rules and leaving the consequences to others. Joe often picked up the pieces—partly to do the right thing and partly to avoid getting punched. It made him so mad. Now he steers clear of his brother’s tornado, so he thought the bad times were over. But these jerks at work are doing the same thing to him. Suddenly Joe realizes that he is doing the same thing as well. He is cleaning up other people’s messes to avoid getting punched. He doesn’t want to do that. Suddenly he knows what he wants: to stop being the fix-it guy for other people. But if he’s not the fix-it guy, who is he? He doesn’t know, but he’s determined to figure it out.

  Step Two: Distract Your Inner Mammal from Threat Signals in Healthy Ways

  Set a timer for twenty minutes and do something you like that fully absorbs your mind.

  Your body will eliminate half of its cortisol in twenty minutes as long as you don’t release more. It’s natural to release more, alas, because cortisol tells your cortex to find threats. To prevent a cortisol spiral, engage your brain with something you like.

  When cortisol is flowing, you see the worst in everything. If you try to plan your next step at this time, you will only see the bad. But after twenty to forty minutes of distraction, you can be open to a wider range of possibility.

  Distraction has a bad image because it can be misused. But it can also be a valuable skill. You can tame anxiety when you can shift your attention from threatening to unthreatening pathways. Daily practice makes it easier to do that in a moment of distress. Practice staying positive for a whole twenty minutes.

  Let’s say you love to play the saxophone, but you get distressed over a wrong note. You love private time with a special someone, but you worry about their displeasure. You love cooking, but you overeat. Anything you love comes with the risk of frustration. But with practice, you can stay in a neutral or positive mind-set for twenty minutes. You can’t force yourself to be happy, but you can force yourself to focus on something other than potential threats. If one activity isn’t working for you, shift to another—even during the twenty minutes.

  Maybe you’re already a world-class distracter. In that case, be sure to limit your distraction time to forty minutes. This time is your reward for Step One and your preparation for Step Three—the important challenge of facing your true desires and shifting into action.

  Unhealthy distracters are all around us. “Everything I like is illegal, immoral, or fattening” goes the old saying. Healthy distracters are everywhere too. You may not notice them because they must be cultivated. The difference between immediate pleasures and cultivated pleasures is neural pathways built from experience. Immediate pleasures are biological while cultivated pleasures are learned. Biological pleasures have consequences. They evolved because of their consequences. Anxiety often results from these consequences. You’re in a mess if you can only feel good from activities that lead to feeling bad. Cultivated pleasures are the answer. Find an activity you like and invest twenty minutes a day. The goal is not to be “good at it.” The goal is to be fully absorbed in it, so your mind is not looking for threats.

  With repetition, you will build a happy circuit that’s big enough to compete with your unhappy circuits.

  When you see other people enjoying cultivated pleasures, you may think they were born that way. In fact, they are activating circuits built from repetition. Do not feel left out when you see someone making music or baking a cake or building a robot. Just find something that appeals to you and invest twenty minutes.

  Start by listing the activities you already love and wish you had more time for. Then cross off the ones that are inaccessible or bad for you. Now think about new activities you might add to the list. Chapter 7 is full of suggestions for engaging distracters.

  It helps to recognize the dopamine, serotonin, and oxytocin aspects of possible choices. Oxytocin is stimulated by soc
ial activities as you build trust and anticipate support. Serotonin is stimulated when an activity builds pride in your skill. Dopamine is stimulated when you seek and find, which includes athletic goals, creating things, collecting things, and learning things. Music stimulates dopamine because your brain anticipates patterns and then seeks and finds patterns that confirm its expectations.

  This is not the time for things on your “good for you” list. It’s not for sit-ups or steaming broccoli, or cleaning closets unless you actually like that. You need to give yourself twenty minutes of something you like to build your anxiety-taming circuit.

  Find a way to make your activity accessible in small chunks of time. You may think it’s impossible, but you will find a way. You can assemble a painting kit that’s small enough to use at work. You can research your dream trip to the Galapagos Islands without spending money. You can use headphones to play an electric keyboard while your baby is napping. You can read recipes and plan your next gourmet dinner. I have even learned to watch movies in twenty-minute chunks. As much as I hate to stop after twenty minutes, I love having something fabulous to go back to the next time I need a lift.

  Double-check that the activity meets these anxiety-taming needs:

  you don’t brood about threats while you’re doing it because your mind is busy;

  there are no harmful long-term consequences;

  you enjoy it, despite occasional frustration.

  It’s best to have more than one of these activities. Then you will always be prepared with an alternative when one activity is not accessible or stops exciting you. Imagine stocking a whole pantry full of activities you enjoy!

  Jan’s Story

  Jan thinks she’s far too busy to spend twenty minutes on something fun. And with all her stress, she can hardly imagine something fun. She struggles to remember the last time she had fun. She pulls out her photos to help her remember. It reminds her how much she likes taking pictures and how proud she is of some of them. She has always wanted to do something with them. She could make something beautiful if she had the time. Suddenly, she realizes that she could give herself twenty minutes right now. It’s not a lot, but refining her photos for twenty minutes a day would be more fun than waiting for a day of unlimited time that may never come. She would love to spend a few minutes each day molding her photos in the way she’s always dreamed of, and this is something she can actually have. She would have wasted the time on anxiety anyway, she realizes.

  Joe’s Story

  Joe is eager to take his cortisol-relieving break and knows exactly what he wants to do. He will make a lasagna. He has always wanted to make some of the cool things he sees on cooking shows. He can’t make a lasagna every day, of course, but he also wants to make the moussaka he saw, and the cheesecake, and probably all five of the cheesecakes. He has thought of a way to make this practical. He will do the prep one day and the assembly the next day. Instead of overeating, he will cut it into modest daily portions and freeze whatever he doesn’t give away. He knows his diet will actually improve because fresh, healthy ingredients will replace processed food. His friends groan when he talks about cooking, but he knows they’ll change their minds when he hands them a slice of cheesecake. And he doesn’t really care because he is so glad to be doing instead of watching.

  Step Three: Take a Step That Triggers Happy Chemicals to Wire in the Expectation of Feeling Safe

  Set a timer for one minute and zero in on a step you can take right now.

  You may think there are no possible steps. You may insist that you have done everything and now it’s up to others. When you believe this, you are like a trapped animal with no options. Anxiety results.

  When cortisol says “do something!” you have to find something to do. Your next step is your power. The step may feel risky for a moment, but doing nothing feels more threatening in the long run. Here’s how to get into gear.

  1. Define Goals You Can Step Toward

  Dopamine is released when you see yourself one step closer to a reward. Of course you can’t guarantee progress toward your goal, so it’s useful to give yourself three goals—a short-run goal, a long-run goal, and a middle-term goal. Then you can always shift between goals when one seems stuck. You can always be stimulating the joy of dopamine.

  It’s important to remember that progress is not always visible. Most human achievements came from efforts that did not get immediate visible rewards. This makes life complicated. It’s hard to keep investing in steps that do not make visible progress. Disappointment wires you to expect more disappointment. What keeps you going is the expectation of reward. How do you sustain this expectation without immediate rewards?

  Old dopamine circuits do the job. A person who invests tirelessly in a goal was somehow rewarded for that activity as a child or adolescent when myelin was abundant. Research the childhoods of famous people and you will see where their expectations came from. So where does that leave you today? What if you focused on becoming a rock star or a brain surgeon and only got disappointment? What is your next step from there?

  Consider the animal perspective. An elephant may have to walk fifty miles to find water in a drought. It takes a big risk when it chooses its first step. The choice comes from neural pathways built by past successes. With every step, the elephant scans for patterns of sights, smells and sounds that match past successes. The great dopamine feeling of being on the right track is triggered by those matches. But there is no actual track—there is only that trickle of dopamine. Sometimes the elephant is on the wrong track. Then it has to start over, exhausted and dehydrated. It goes back to scanning the world for patterns that match past experience. Giving up is not an option. Choosing its best next step is the survival tool it has.

  The truth about elephants is more complicated. Female elephants stick with a herd to protect their young from predators. They line up in strict age order and follow the steps chosen by the eldest. A female elephant does not choose her steps until everyone in front of her is dead. This illuminates the paradox of human choice. We get upset when we have to follow and we’re quick to criticize the choices of anyone in a leadership position. But when we have to choose our own steps, we get upset about that too. We get water so easily that we have energy to waste on this kind of lose-lose thinking. But you can enjoy a win-win feeling instead if you celebrate your power to step and also celebrate the help of those in front of you.

  We all fear stepping in the wrong direction. But every great success in history has come after multiple failures. We would not have flush toilets or adequate food if our ancestors limited themselves to steps that got immediate visible rewards. We are designed to build a path in our mind instead of just relying on paths that already exist. You can develop a clear mental image of the path you need, and keep scanning for clues to your best next step. Your dopamine circuits will build.

  Define your goal in a way you have control over. For example, if your goal is to have a loving partner, you cannot control the love of others. Many people fail to take steps as a result. They just wait for Cupid’s arrow to find them. Instead, you can identify steps toward that goal that are within your power. You can invest a set amount of time every day building relationship skills and dating purposefully. You can meet that goal every day regardless of what others do. You can enjoy the good feeling of approaching a goal instead of wallowing in cortisol.

  Goals involving weight and finances also trigger widespread frustration. Many people lack energy for other goals because they’ve spent it all on body and/or money goals that never feel rewarding. You can escape this trap by introducing a new short-term goal that gives you a sense of accomplishment. You can conquer the technology that drives you crazy or make peace with the person who gets on your nerves. You can set a goal of relieving an irritant that bugs you each day instead of focusing on grandiose abstractions that never reward you. You can produce good feelings regardless of your curre
nt weight or financial position.

  Sometimes I feel bad about a need I’ve failed to meet. But when I stop to think about it, I see that I haven’t invested much in seeking it because I was focused on other things. Usually there’s a good reason. We all have limited energy. So instead of dwelling on disappointment, I focus on my power to meet a need when I choose to make it my priority. Until then, my brain will make social comparisons because I’m a mammal. But I can stop myself from spewing cortisol over the rewards of others by focusing on my own steps. (More on social comparison in chapter 8 on pitfalls.)

  2. Celebrate the Power of Small Steps

  Big steps are exciting, so they attract your attention. You see a lot of big steps in the movies so they come easily to mind. Small steps may seem worthless or boring. In the real world, grand steps rarely happen, but small steps can happen all the time. Small steps are the power you have.

  Watch a video of a mountain goat climbing a cliff. It’s hard to believe a sheer cliff can be climbed, but the goat does it with grace and speed. It doesn’t do it by focusing on the mountain, but by scanning for its next tiny foothold.

  Small steps work when you commit to repeating them. I conquered my clutter in small steps because I kept stepping until the job was done. If you dream of a new life, define a path that can lead there and take the first step. You will climb your mountain in steps that are small enough to take.