Rewire Your Anxious Brain PDF
Rewire Your Anxious Brain PDF
Rewire Your Anxious Brain PDF
Contents:
Part 1
Anxious Brain Basics.
1. Anxiety in the Brain.
2. The Root of Anxiety: Understanding the Amygdala.
3. How the Cortex Creates Anxiety.
4. Identifying the Basis of Your Anxiety: Amygdala, Cortex, or Both?
Part 2
Taking Control of Your Amygdala-Based Anxiety
5. The Stress Response and Panic Attacks.
6. Reaping the Benefits of Relaxation.
7. Understanding Triggers.
8. Teaching Your Amygdala Through Experience.
9. Exercise and Sleep Tips for Calming Amygdala-Based Anxiety.
Part 3
Taking Control of Your Cortex-Based Anxiety
10. Thinking Patterns That Cause Anxiety.
11. How to Calm Your Cortex.
Important Points:
***
Association is an essential part of the language of the amygdala.
If you want the amygdala to change its response to an object or a situation, the amygdala needs
experience with the object or situation for new learning to occur. Experience is most effective
when the person interacts directly with the object or situation, although observing another
person has also been shown to affect the amygdala.
***
Experiencing stress response symptoms (pounding heart, rapid breathing, stomach distress...)
means the amygdala has been activated. In order to decrease amygdala activation, it’s very
effective doing breathing exercises as well as muscle relaxation exercises and physical
exercise.
***
When you feel panicky, it’s important to resist the strong urge to flee the situation. This is
essential to gain control over your amygdala, since the amygdala learns from experience. If you
leave the situation, your amygdala will learn to escape the situation rather than learning that the
situation is safe.
***
Although you can’t easily erase the emotional memory formed by the amygdala, you can develop
new connections in the amygdala that compete with those that lead to fear and anxiety. To get the
amygdala to create these new connections, you need to expose it to situations that contradict the
association between a trigger and negative event. When you create a new neural path and
practice traveling it again and again, you establish an alternate route that avoids trouble. You can
establish other calmer responses as a way around your anxiety.
***
***
***
If you anticipate that a particular event or phase of your day may amp up your anxiety, a carefully
timed exercise routine (yoga, breathing, muscle relaxation) may allow you to get through it with
less anxiety. In other words, you may be able to achieve a tranquilizing effect without taking
tranquilizers.
***
***
Instead of getting stuck in worrying or ruminating, plan! If you anticipate that a situation will
actually arise, come up with possible solutions and then move on to other thoughts. If the
situation actually arises, you can put your plan into action. In the meanwhile, you don’t need to
keep thinking about it.
***