ANXIETY & THE AMYGDALA

The emotional brain

The Amygdala
AMYGDALA FACTS: When the threats aren't real
The real reason for anxiety
Your amygdala. Your anxiety. Your distortions.

Amygdala Re-training
summary: "GAARP"
When you exasperatedly claim "I FEEL so scared", you're not
kidding. Sometimes, the feeling of anxiety is just about all there is to
anxiety.

The physical symptoms can be downright unbearable. As an HSP,

you are even more likely to “feel the symptoms” because of greater
sensory sensitivity.

What is causing your body to experience such debilitating

symptoms? Your thoughts? Sure. But if you know your thoughts are
exaggeratedly irrational, then why are you still feeling afraid?

The answer lies in the Amygdala.

The amygdala is a tiny, almond shaped structure deep inside the

emotional part of your brain (the limbic system).

To understand why the amygdala does what it does, we need a little

basic information about why the emotional brain does what it does.

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WHY AM I SO EMOTIONAL?
anxiety-amygdala-emotional
The emotional brain is the oldest, most primitive part of our brain,
which was only ever designed to ensure physical survival. Why?
Because in early times, it was only about physical survival. You
were a good ol' fashioned caveman in a jungle and your only call to
action was to watch out for snakes, bears, foxes and other cavemen
fighting for your meat and fruit. You needed a kind of brain that is
quick, hyper-vigilant and out of consciousness, because
consciousness would have been capable of wiping you off the face
of the earth.

"Ohhhh....I see...this is indeed a snake..hmmm...let me think...what

should I do? It appears that I need a sophisticated plan to handle
this...Oh, and by the way, I'm speaking from my grave."

You needed a visceral and autonomous brain for physical survival.

And nature gave it to you. This is your emotional brain.

Can you see why our innate, basic emotions like fear are so
automatic?

Over the course of evolution, the emotional brain wasn't really

replaced. Thank goodness! Even today, I really need it to be quick
and automatic if I run into that snake again. Or an axe murderer. Or a
falling tree branch. Or my mother-in-law.

Our emotional brain wasn't replaced, but nature somehow figured

that in this new, modern world, your needs are different. You no
longer need to fight so much for physical survival, but more for

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social and psychological survival.

"My home keeps the snakes away, but god save me from my son of a
bitch coworker trying to screw me over at work!!"

NOW you need a slower, more deliberate, purposeful and rational

brain. One that can override your emotional brain's instant impulse
to punch the 2-year old screaming bloody murder on your train
commute to work. You need an adult brain that tells you to move
over to a different compartment.

So nature recently gave you another layer of a brain called the

neocortex. Other terms commonly used for it are the "rational" brain
or the "higher" brain. This is supposed to be the "wise" brain.

Being wise and strategic about modern world issues requires you to
usually pause, reflect, weigh pros and cons and proceed. These are
deliberate actions. They're not automatic and visceral like our
emotional impulses. They become second nature to us with time and
practice, but at some initial point, the practice of accessing
rationality by slowing down, pausing, reflecting and choosing
appropriate action is new.

Slowing down and reflecting instead of acting on emotional

impulses requires time and effort. Unlike automatic emotional
reactions which are more or less handed over to you.

For example, the impulse to yell at that screaming child is automatic.

But reflecting on that impulse and deciding not to is more deliberate.
It takes longer. You deliberately access your reserves of wisdom,
spend a few seconds there and make the wisest decision.

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Thus, given the mechanics of its job, combined with its relatively
new age in human evolution, it takes your rationality take much
longer to kick in than your emotions.

Now geared with this understanding, let's come back to the

amygdala.

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THE AMYGDALA: HOW IT WORKS

The amygdala is not just in the emotional brain. It is deeeeeeep
inside it. Meaning? It is operating unconsciously. You cannot control
its immediate, instinctive, automatic reactions because they happen
much before your consciousness kicks in.

What is it reacting to? At a high level, we can say that the amygdala
reacts to new or threatening objects in the environment. When its
triggered, it sends immediate rapid fire signals (how?) to your brain
and body. To do what? To make your body ready to fight or flight the
situation.

Heart beats faster. Muscles tense. Blood pressure rises. Adrenalin is

pumped into your bloodstream. More sweating. Lungs take in more
O2. And many, many more reactions.

This is excellent news. Without your body prepared like this, you are
simply not equipped to protect yourself in the face of genuine
danger. How can you run away from a snake if your body doesn't
"feel" like you'll be dead if you don't?

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Another excellent news is that amygdala triggering is so incredibly
quick, automatic and visceral, that "consciously", you have to do
nothing to prepare your body to fight or flight. The bodily reactions
from a triggered amygdala just "show up in your life". One second
you're a beach bum on a hammock sipping his Pina Colada and the
next second you're sprinting for your life when a lizard falls on you.

Be thankful that your amygdala exists. It can save your life when the
dangers are real.

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WHEN THE THREATS AREN'T REAL

“Ok, so the amygdala produces fear-like symptoms, but why do non-
fearful things trigger it? I can understand that if I see a snake, fear is
expected. But what about things I know AREN’T supposed to be
fearful? Why does that amygdala react to them? Like my own
irrational thoughts which I even know are irrational.”
This is the anxiety sufferer's question.

Amygdala Facts in the following table should be every anxiety

sufferer's bible.
AMYGDALA FACTS: 8 THINGS TO KNOW
(source: 2)
FACT 1: What triggers the amygdala?
Sensory Input. “I see a snake” “I hear a creepy sound”. “I feel a
tingling on my skin”

Novelty. When you experience something out of your zone of

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predictability, familiarity or comfort.
A quick startle response. Experienced that? "Something just moved
around the corner of my eye". "Walking into what I expect to be an
empty room but see someone in it."
In social situations. “These people weren’t supposed to be here”
“First day of college in a new town” “New job, new coworkers, new
boss”

Input more associated with contexts than senses, e.g. having a

thought or having conflicts

Memory

Input coming in from the higher brain, called prefrontal cortex.

"It's a rope, not a snake" vs. "It's a rope, what if it becomes snake?"
"It's a thought, you can't control it." vs. "It's a thought, you better
control it"
FACT 2: Amygdala triggering happens very quickly. In less than a
fraction of a second. This is because its part of the emotional brain.
That means you 'feel' fear before you can understand what you fear
and why you are fearing it. You cannot control this.

FACT 3: The amygdala switches off its alarm when it believes that
there is safety. Once the amygdala alarm is switched off, symptoms
reverse themselves to normal. Your heart rate's normal. Your
breathing's normal. Your focus, concentration and coordination is
back.

FACT 4: Some people have a more sensitive amygdala. Roughly

20% of the population

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FACT 5: Those with a sensitive amygdala are more likely to be
triggered.

FACT 6: Did you show up with a sensitive amygdala from the birth?
Maybe. But the next point is the one to remember.

FACT 7: Not everyone with a sensitive amygdala develops anxiety.

In Jerome Kagan's longitudinal study, 55% of those born with a
sensitive amygdala ("high-reactives") did not show signs of anxiety.

FACT 8: The amygdala can be trained. The way to do that is to work

with FACT 1's #5. Train and use your prefrontal cortex to support
recovery, not anxiety.

-BACK TO TOP-

THE REAL REASON FOR ANXIETY

When you show up to the table with anxiety, you are suffering with
fear and fear symptoms from stimulus that aren't real threats. Even
you know that.

What are these triggers?

These are thoughts you don't like (#3) and memories you don't like
(#4).

"Why did I think this thought?" "Why do I remember this?"

Because thoughts and memories trigger your amygdala, you are also
stuck with bodily sensations you don't like. Anxiety symptoms.

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What have you concluded from your history with anxiety? "My
thoughts and memories make me anxious."

But the real reason you have an anxiety disorder is because #5 is

your real problem.

Your prefrontal cortex (rational brain) is not able to switch off the
false alarms raised by an amygdala that has been triggered by these
thoughts and memories.

THIS IS WHERE ANXIETY IS DEVELOPED.

The prefrontal cortex is the part of the higher brain that is supposed
to be the rational one. It assesses the situation rationally, interprets it
rationally and follows it up with aligned action. It's not just about
"thinking" wisely but also correspondingly "behaving" wisely.

Snake? Danger. Run

Rope? Harmless. Stop running.
Crazy thought? Terrible. Whatever. Can't control it.
Memory? Painful. Don't fear it.
Perfectionism? Impossible. Trying my best.
Shamed for being imperfect? Not my problem.
Failure? Painful. Learned good lessons. Starting over.

The question marks are the potential triggers. For anyone. Not just
someone with anxiety, or predisposed to anxiety. The question marks
are the conflicts.

BUT everyone has a rational brain that has the power to resolve

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conflicts in way that are healthy, thereby overriding the amygdala's
emergency alarm. Once overridden, fear dissipates and the body
returns to balance.

In other words, the higher brain has the power to not lead you to an
anxiety disorder.

-BACK TO TOP-

YOUR ANXIETY. YOUR AMYGDALA.

At every stage of life and mental health, every person has the means
to resolve his inner psychological life by himself. What is the only
thing he can rely on? His own mind.

How does his mind guide him to navigate his internal life? When we
ask this question, what we are really asking is "How mature and wise
are you?"

When anxiety is our reality, it usually means that our own wise mind
is not working very well to solve our problems. Its because our
rationality itself is distorted. In psychological language, we call these
Cognitive Distortions.

What are these? Common distortions for the anxious person include
thought suppression, magical thinking, mind-reading, perfectionism,
black-and-white thinking, should-thinking, foreclosure and
emotional reasoning.

And because these are distortions instead of healthy thinking, they

fail to solve our fears while we are confronting them internally in

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our heads. And because (usually) behavior follows thinking, the
actions we end up taking externally are also distorted.

If you are fully merged with the thought that predicts your death
unless you do "this", how can you not do "this"? That would be
insane, right?

Witnessing our own powerlessness over these triggers makes us fear

them more. The cycle continues.

anxiety - thinking error

Take Sam's example:

"You are going to die if you don't wash your hands 17 times every
17 minutes."

This kind of thought triggers the amygdala because it's new, it's
sudden, it's automatic and it's talking about "death" for pete's sake.

But the amygdala's alarm to treat it as a real danger is a false alarm.

Sam needs his rationality to tell him that.

But if his own rationality is telling Sam that he can only be safe if
this thought either goes away (Pure-OCD) or he listens to it (OCD),
how screwed is he? What his rationality was supposed to say is
"Leave the thought alone. Some thoughts are random. Don't fight the
wrong battles."

Instead, not only is his rational mind giving the wrong message to
suppress thoughts, but it's also paving the way for a deeper and
darker bottomless hole.

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Sam (and every single person in his place) saw that the more he tried
to rid the thought, the more it forced its way back. Instant failure.
But unlike the other person who will willingly admit and accept
human powerlessness over the randomness of some thoughts, Sam
takes this as a matter of life and death.

He concludes "This thought must really mean something if it's

attacking me like this and I have no power over it. I have to listen to
it". So there you go. Behavior follows. He washes his hands 17
times, every 17 minutes. For?

He did this for the whole day, then the whole week, then the year,
then the next 10 years. He stopped going to college, lost his friends,
worried his family sick, is in-n-out of psychiatrists' offices and
mental hospitals, is on disability, feels insane, is hopelessly
depressed that he couldn't achieve his dreams because of his illness.

Think about Sam's amygdala by now. It is through the roof. It never

got safety. It kept getting the message of every increasing threats,
dangers, troubles and failures. Sam is still plagued by "irrational"
thoughts. Now they have multiplied to new ones. But not just
thoughts. Sam's memories of himself, his anxiety and his life are all
fearful and negative. All of his reality and emotional histories around
dealing with thoughts and memories keep him chained to anxiety.
His amygdala never got a message of safety.

What was described above was a dramatic example of OCD. Now

replace it with less dramatic cases, but where you're still dealing

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with distressing thoughts.

What does your rationality tell you about how to deal with issues
that rock your boat?

(GAD, Depression) How do you deal with thoughts about your past
failures and regrets? With compassion, flexibility and hope, or
nihilistic surrender?

(Trauma and PTSD) How do you deal with painful memories of the
past? Recycle them into empowerement or haunted by them?

(Panic Disorder) How do you deal with the fear of having a panic
attack? Face the fear anyway or chose to experientially avoid life?

(Social Anxiety) How do you deal with the fear of meeting new
people and facing the possibility of not being approved? Take the
risk or isolate yourself from the world?

What you rationally think and choose is how your amygdala is

getting trained.

In anxiety, we end up selecting distortions - both cognitively and

behaviorally - which train our amygdala to raise louder alarms. The
louder alarms need more help. More distortions. And the spiral is
downward.

Follow these distorted patterns for too long in your life? From too
early in life? In too many areas of life? The stress response is

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perpetually active in your body. Soon enough these are what you
accept as a labels for yourself:

Worrier. Neurotic. Hyper. Type A. Crazy.

This becomes your conditioning.

HAVE YOU BEEN SILLY TO PICK UP THESE DISTORTED

THINKING STYLES?
No, you are not silly. You just didn't know that you do them. They
are out of conscious awareness. It wasn't like you went to school one
day, learned about these and then decided "Hey, I'd like to cause me
a little suffering from now on. Let's do these!"
Just like the amygdala is unconscious, cognitive distortions too are
picked up unconsciously. Usually in childhood. Strange no? Isn't the
rational mind supposed to be smart enough to be..well..rational?

Sorry, but rationality too is developed. It doesn't just show up in your

life all of a sudden. It is developed in your formative years based on
what you see, and how you're getting trained to see the world,
including yourself.

Again, you're not aware of your unconscious learning. It's just

something that happens. Your rational mind iS unconsciously being
developed by a whole lot of what is going on around you.

Maybe you're still unsure or unaware that you respond to life

distortedly. Maybe you don't see them as distorted. "Perfectionism is
distorted? Get outta here!" Maybe you don't know alternatives.

All in all, for one reason or another, you keep them. And these guys

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are the whole deal. The make or break deal. The ones which get to
decide whether you move on or go down.

-BACK TO TOP-

AMYGDALA RE-TRAINING
The good news is that once cognitive distortions are recognized and
their destructive potentials brought to the surface, one becomes
deeply motivated to learning new ways of thinking and being.

Because it is only here, in the area of thinking and behavior, that we

have any degree of conscious control. That can influence our
amygdala.

The amygdala can only be trained with behavior and memory.

It cannot be trained by language. I can't borrow from my high school
principal and just command my amygdala to "better listen to me
when I'm talking to you!". The amygdala cares jack. All it wants is
"Prove that you're not scared by behaving without fear and I'll buy it.
Until then, my alarm bells are ringing".

Of course, behavior is guided by thinking. What thoughts and

philosophies will guide you to behave correctly to cure your
anxiety?

Here, the rule of thumb is: Drop the distortions but don't force them
to disappear from your head. Knowing that your conditioned
thinking has been distorted is correct, but forcing your brain not to
produce old thoughts will be making the same mistake as before.
You cannot manipulate thoughts (no one can), but you can develop

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new thinking alongside the distortions.

If you expect that your anxiety recovery can only start when the
thoughts "Check the stove again" or "People don't like me" or "I
have wasted my life thinking distortedly" never appear in your head,
then you will fail again. Your amygdala will never see your success
over your fears.

But when the amygdala sees that despite the thoughts, you are safe,
it will have no evidence of a threat.

Remember the amygdala is not out to get you.

Quite the contrary. It's trying to protect you. YOU have shown the
amygdala in the past that your triggers have taken you down. If that
is your only honest, factual, in-the-face, can't-deny-or-defend
absolute truth, then that's all your amygdala knows and cares about.

You cannot "tell" it that things are different unless you create a
memory that things are different.

This means that unless you behave un-anxiously for that first time
and create that god-forsaken positive memory for your amygdala,
you cannot go far.

Now this sounds like a real catch-22 doesn't it? You need to behave
properly to calm your amygdala, but you really need a got-damn
calm amygdala to behave properly in the first place. Right?

Wrong.

You don't need a calm amygdala to make your behavior happen. You

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may prefer one, but you don't as hell need one. Screw it. Not at this
stage of your life (and anxiety). You have to make peace with your
amygdala being what it is by now- "A highly sensitive brain part that
triggers needlessly."

Despite the suckiness of the symptoms in the beginning, remember

it's just in the beginning. The amygdala is one heck of a trainable,
mold-able piece of work. You show it a little bit of what it wants to
see, and it dutifully backs off.

Ask Charles Linden.

Charles is now a global leader in Panic Recovery. Charles was all

kinds of intense anxious from age 5 until 30. Read his story. He tried
everything: all kinds of medications and assorted therapies. He
found little to no relief from anything. His treatment almost led him
to financial bankruptcy. His anxiety became excruciatingly more
terrifying with each passing day. At one point, he was experiencing
hallucinations while awake. Can you imagine what his amygdala
would have looked like in a brain scan?

Charles eventually cured his lifelong anxiety over a period of one

week. How did he do this? He heard about the amygdala and what it
really wants. He decided that if that's what it wants, that's what he'll
give it. He started behaving without anxiety. That's all. He put into
action different strategies, all of which involved behaving as if there
is no threat.

Charles has been fully cured for almost 2 decades, has a wife and
kids, is extremely successful and is a global guru in anxiety
recovery. He couldn't have done that if his amygdala was still raising

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false alarms. His amygdala isn't. Because it got re-trained withe
Charles behavior.

Yes, the symptoms will be a real bitch when you first start out, but so
what? Not once have anxiety symptoms killed anyone. Hold on to
that truth and weather the symptoms. Let the amygdala do what it
wants, and still do the right thing, anyway.

What is the right thing to do?

This you will have to figure out as it depends on the kind of issues
that rock your boat.

Sometimes it's clear what to do. As in panic disorder, agoraphobia,

and OCD. It is allowing the negative thoughts to continue, and
despite them consciously deciding to face you fears. If your
amygdala symptoms make you feel the dread, let it. Let it ride its
own storm while you continue to watch your TV show. Unfazed.

Other times, it really, really depends. I'm not a fan of articles which
lists steps like "get proper sleep", "exercise", "don't worry", "think
less". What if you can't do any of this because of the circumstances
in your life? Then you need a more creative plan. Find it.

That's why it all depends. Because it's circumstantial.

Is it quitting your job or not?

Getting married or not?

Going to the party because society tells you to? Or is it going

because you'll enjoy it? Or is it not going because you fear a panic

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attack? Or is it not going because you prefer watching TV and you're
okay with that?

Which one?

In the end, you have to decide because they're your own triggers.
Not mine. You have to figure out what to do so you suffer less.

These aren't always black or white answers. Who says any "one"
person has the right answer nailed down which applies for all of us?
Screw that. Only you can finally decide this.

If you need to start building the self-confidence to trust your

decisions, that's a different matter. There you can get help. But the
final behaviors will always be yours to make. If that freaks you out,
figure out why.

With the right kind of tools and support, you can solve the mystery
of your anxiety and head off in the direction of your own values and
goals. Decided by you.

THIS IS AMYGDALA RE-TRAINING.

And it's possible even for Sam. At this stage of his life. With all his
prior life spent in anxiety.

Start getting educated and informed on what are the healthiest ways
of thinking and behaving for you. Not for anyone else. But for you.
At this stage. When you come with all of your unique anxious
baggage. The pain and suffering that you've gone through, and the
misguided messes you created for yourself because you didn't know

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any better.

-BACK TO TOP-

ARTICLE SUMMARY:

"GAARP"
GENERALLY ACCEPTED ANXIETY RECOVERY PRINCIPLES

Your amygdala is sensitive. You may have genetically acquired a

sensitive amygdala, or it has become sensitive over time with your
anxiety episodes, or both.

A sensitive amygdala does not automatically equate to anxiety.

Remember, 55% of children born high-reactive did not develop
anxiety. "Each adult profile was influenced by the child’s
temperament, but neither was predetermined by it.", says Kagan. So
what else can influence your current position? Environment,
conditioning, and if neither has been supportive, then in the end, your
own choices and free will.✉

The amygdala can be trained. If Charles Linden (and thousands of

others) can do it after living with the worst forms of anxiety for decades
of their life, you can too.

The way to re-train the amygdala is by producing positive memories of

yourself dealing with your triggers.

These positive memories cannot be built without action. You need to

start somewhere. Where is that? It's with behavior. You need to behave
in a way that "shows" the amygdala that this conditioned stimulus is not

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a threat to you.

Behavior is guided by thinking. If your old thinking was faulty, don't use
it. Use new thinking. But don't force old thoughts to go away, including
the thought that tells you how crazy you've been. Watch those thoughts
from a distance instead of merging with them.

Limit your "creative" google research and "doctor hunting" to find

something that's more wrong with you than just a triggered
amygdala.
That would be a distorted behavior. Want to cure anxiety? Question why
reading this article is not enough for you. Question how all possible
good news is never enough. Question why you are so vested in finding
bad news. Question why you can't sit with good news.

The brain can and does change. Theamygdala can and does do both -
sensitize as well as desensitize. Neuroscience is showing that we can
change our brain's wiring at any age. Consider two opposite real-life
cases:
Charles had anxiety everyday for 26 years. He cured it in a week and has
stayed cured since then. How can that be possible without a rewired
brain and a de-sensitizedamygdala?

Leonardo di Caprio voluntarily walked into OCD for his job. Yes, that's
right. After his role in 'The Aviator', Leonardo developed OCD for about
a year. To put this context, it means that he sensitized his own
amygdala.
That's how plastic the human brain is. Then, after getting treated with
mindfulness, he again re-wired his brain to cure his OCD. He then de-
sensitized hisamygdala. His experience was like a switch to alter his
brain - on-off, on-off. Self-directed neuroplasticity.

Conclusion? NEVER tell youself that anxiety is lifelong

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-BACK TO TOP-

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Footnotes:

1. Video showing theamygdala and parts of the brain involved in the

creation of the Stress Response, other names for which are flight-fight
symptoms, fear symptoms, anxiety symptoms. The answer to the
question: "HOW something scares the bejesus out of you". back

2. The Long Shadow of Temperament: Jerome Kagan.

Jerome Kagan is a Daniel and Amy Starch Professor of Psychology at

Harvard University. His research on the cognitive and emotional
development of a child during the first decade of life (upto adolescence)
are longitudinal studies on studying the biological basis of behavior and
the origins of temperament.

He investigated the temperament dimension of behavioral inhibition by

measuring changes in heart rate when infants were exposed to various
stimuli or situational conditions. Kagan and his associates sorted
children into "inhibited" and "uninhibited" children based on

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temperament assessment, then compared the results of their changes in
heart rate. He concluded that certain areas of the brain, primarily the
amygdala, were important centers in the expression and regulation of
behavioral inhibition. back

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