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Breaking Free from Anxiety: The Neuroscience Unveiled
Ever wondered how the intricate pathways of our brain influence our feelings of anxiety? What if the very organ that processes our fears also holds the key to breaking free from them?
In this enlightening episode of "me&my health up", host Anthony Hartcher delves deep into the world of neuroscience to uncover the secrets of anxiety. Discover the pivotal role of the amygdala, the brain's "emotional centre", and how its reactions shape our feelings of unease.
As we journey through the brain's complex architecture, we explore the groundbreaking concept of neuroplasticity and its potential in breaking free from anxiety. With insights drawn from both science and holistic health practices, this episode offers a comprehensive guide to understanding and managing anxiety.
If you've ever felt the weight of anxiety or simply wish to understand its origins better, this episode promises a wealth of knowledge and strategies to help you break free.
About me&my health up & Anthony Hartcher
me&my health up seeks to enhance and enlighten the well-being of others. Host Anthony Hartcher is the CEO of me&my health up which provides holistic health solutions using food as medicine, combined with a holistic, balanced, lifestyle approach. Anthony holds three bachelor's degrees in Complementary Medicine; Nutrition and Dietetic Medicine; and Chemical Engineering.
Don't miss out on these life-changing tips – tune in now!
Podcast Disclaimer
Any information, advice, opinions or statements within it do not constitute medical, health care or other professional advice, and are provided for general information purposes only. All care is taken in the preparation of the information in this Podcast. [Connected Wellness Pty Ltd] operating under the brand of “me&my health up”..click here for more
Welcome back to another insightful and exciting episode of me&my health up. I'm your host, Anthony Hatcher. I'm a clinical nutritionist and lifestyle medicine specialist. The purpose of this podcast is to enhance and enlighten your well being. And today, I'll be doing that. And we're going to be discussing the neuroscience of anxiety and how you can unravel it. How can you unwind this? How can you reprogram re-engineer your thinking so that you're less anxious. So we've got to start with what is anxiety, because you could probably relate to anxiety and feeling a bit anxious, a bit uncertain, a bit unsure, but it serves a purpose, we do get anxious for a reason. And it puts us on alert to danger perceive more negative or more downside, in what's happening to us, our ratio of perceptions are skewed towards the negative, we have a confirmation bias to the negative and a disconfirmation bias to the positive. So we're very consciously aware of the negative and the effect and impact on our life. However, we're unconscious of what's positive in terms of what's just happened, these events obviously serve a purpose. And the purpose is to get us away from a threat, that rate of survival and how our chances of survival. So if it's a threat to our chance of survival, and the higher the threat, the more anxious we are. And the quicker we respond and react, the less of a threat, we still have a skewed towards the negative. And we still go into that fear mode. So it's a fear response in our body, that our life is threatened. Yes, we under threat. And we our survival is at risk. And so what happens is our mind then starts doing things to help us survive. So our blood glucose and oxygen go to the midbrain, which is what often referred to as the limbic system, okay, or the emotional center or the desire center, this center of the brain or system of the brain, the midbrain is our mammalian brain, right. So it's what mammals have, and it helps regulate homeostasis in the body. And it also is has the association with the amygdala, which is the fear center or the stress response center. And that linked to the amygdala drives us in one direction. Okay, so if we have a threat coming to one side, our amygdala kicks into action and gets us away from that threat towards safety, it's also triggered the fear of loss. So the fear of gain which we don't want, such as a gain of a predator, or in some cases, it could be an x, or it could be an event that's happened to it that we perceive more negatives to us than positives. And so we want to get away from it, we want to avoid it. Okay, so it's an avoidance response. So when we're avoiding something, it's that survival part of our brain kicking in, when we want to gain something, when we're pursuing something, when we really desire something, immediately, we want the immediate gratification, the immediate pursuit, the short term gratification is linked to this survival part of the brain. And that's like chasing food, okay, I need this hamburger, I want that chocolate and I need that chocolate. Now, that's your survival part of the brain kicking in to keep you alive. Yes, we need calories to keep us alive. And so it's wired to take us towards calorific foods such as fat and sugar, okay, so when you're anxious, you're going to have a desire towards pleasure and away from pain. So you want to avoid the pain, which could be the exercise the association with exercise and the pleasure towards eating. That's how we're wired in our survival part of the brain. And that part of the brain can run our lives, it is responding to the environment, you know, we respond to our sensory perceptions of the environment. So if we perceive more negatives, or again, in this emotional center, we can perceive way more positives and negatives, that's us desiring that so we could desire a person we want to consume a person because they're just so good and there's everything is good about them, there's nothing bad about them, and I just want them I want them and so what can happen is we can fit then create a fear of loss of that person because we want them so much. We don't want to lose them. Okay, then. So that kicks in this fear response, this anxiety around losing that person. So we can have it in relation to too much positive and, and not understanding the full picture not seeing them as a full person or a whole person and just seeing them as all good. Or an event or an association with a euphoric events that was just all good. Okay, it was just fantastic. There was nothing bad about it. Okay, that's one side of thinking. That's very much survival thinking. And so the survival thinking associated with anxiety is the negative one. It's the fear one, it's the fear of your life, whether you're gonna survive or not, we have that hardwired into us. And we have strong wiring to it to keep us alive, so we can get away from a threat when it comes. However, most of the time, when we're living our life, we're not under threat 99% of the time, there's that 1% occasion where you will need to jump out of the way or avoid this or miss this or whatever, most of the time, we aren't under threat. But we have a perception of threat. These, we have new threats, we have the modern threats in our life, which can be people that we don't want to hang out with, or people that we perceive have done more bad to us than good, okay, and hence, we have a negative association with them. So this will drive an anxious response of wanting to get away from them wanting to avoid the pain. And what happens is the body then creates a stress response. So we then create neurotransmitters that trigger a stress response in the body. And in that process, we will up regulate or turn on or make more of the stress ones, which is epinephrine and norepinephrine. So they're part of our sympathetic nervous system, our stress response, and that's going to drive us into action towards something or away from something, okay. And so what happens is they like the epinephrine reacts on the Vita cells of the heart, for example, it makes it pump harder, pump harder, okay. And then the norepinephrine reacts or, you know, binds to the alpha receptors of the arteries, and it makes them contract, okay, so the blood flows through there quicker, okay, so we increase our blood pressure. So as a result of being anxious, our blood pressure goes up, our heart rate goes up, we pump more blood to our extremities, to get our muscles in motion to get away, okay, to get away from the threat. Hence, the blood and the oxygen go away from digestion, they go away from our immune system, they go away from our reproductive system, because we don't need them to get away from a threat, and it turns on our muscles, we need them, we need our lungs working well. So we can bring in the oxygen, we need our heart beating well, so we can pump the blood around to get the oxygen to the muscles, and we need to get the glucose to the muscles. So the blood needs to work harder. And we need our arteries to constrict the blood that goes faster to these areas. And so it gets us ready for action. Essentially, that's what's happening. And so as a result of that, you can sweat your you know, perspire, because you're producing more energy and more energy results in more heat being produced. And our body liberates heat through sweat. And so we can feel sweaty, we can get sweaty palms sweating underneath our armpits when we're anxious, because it's part of the stress response to keep you safe. We can also feel our heart flutter a bit faster beat a bit harder. We feel our heart rate Galois, we feel a sense of uncertainty. Now in our mind, we're uncertain because we're uncertain whether we're going to survive or not, we're unsure we lack confidence as well, in terms of our decision making, it's all black and white, it's I can only do this, I can't do that. I can only do this because you've got one side of thinking and that one side is all about survival. It wants to get your way from that threat. That's one side of thinking you go towards just getting away from that threat, you're not thinking about our take this path because it's a bit more scenic, you're just thinking you're gonna take the shortest cut. So we become very impulsive, we want to get there just fast. It's all about the destination when we're in this animal center, or our animal part of the brain is running us, which is our midbrain. And what happens is we downregulate the serotonin and the dopamine, okay, which are more associated with happiness, contentment, because we don't want to feel happy. We want to feel disgruntled in order to drive us away from it. If we're feeling happy with the threat at hand, then I think there's a disconnect there. Because if we're feeling happy, we're going to want to hang around that threat to our life, which doesn't make sense. So we don't need serotonin, we need less of it. And we don't need dopamine. Dopamine means to reward us that we've got away from the threat and thing. Now that's how you do it. That's that's a shortcut you take next time, therefore, I'm going to up the dopamine so you feel good. And you think yeah, I'll take that path next time to get away from that threat. Okay, so dopamine serotonin there downregulated so you're not feeling happy or content? Of course, you can't feel happy. I'm content when you're anxious. Because if you were you wouldn't run away. Would you sit there think? Yeah, this is good. I like these animals eating me. That's, that's crazy, right? So it makes sense. It makes logical sense that you're going to produce more of the stress hormones, stress neurotransmitters, and you're going to produce less of that feeling contentment and satisfied. Okay, so, you are you're going to be this satisfied with life when you're anxious because it's driving you towards one side, one side of this, it's driving you away from something, when you're dissatisfied you you want to get away from dissatisfaction, you want to go towards something, which is safety, which is getting away from that threat. Okay? Now the issue is, is not that it's bad, it's not bad, it serves a purpose, right? It helps us in that 1% of times to get away from the threats. What it's not great for is if it's running our lives, so we're constantly reacting to the environment, we essentially it's that Newtonian principle of cause and effect that someone reacts, you know, behaves this way, I react this way they say this, I react like this, and it's the same cause and effect each time. And then you think, why do I always get angry? Why do I always get frustrated and irritated with that person, you know, in your ask yourself, why? It's because you're in that being run by that midbrain, you've been run by that desire, that emotional center is running your life, and it's just reacting to the environment, you're not thinking strategically or objectively about the situation, your subjective because you're under threat so it's all about I when you are perceiving this threat, it's all about your survival. You don't think about anyone else. Okay? So you can't have gratitude in this survival thinking mode, right? How can you be grateful when you're about to die, you know, like, you're just seeking to die. Anyway, you just, you're not thinking you're just reacting right when you're in that survival mode. And that's what happens. That's why we respond to people's comments. And we just respond the same way each time when we hear that same comment or that see that same behavior that really irritates you, or keeps triggering you and you keep responding the same way. And they say, you know, if you expecting a different result in that situation, well, that's the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different response. And that's what anxiety does to us. We keep responding in the same way and getting the same outcome, cause and effect. But we can change this, we can rewire our thinking, so that we no longer respond to the environment. So we can see things as they are, as opposed to just one side of what's happened or one side of that person. So let me share how you can unravel this feeling anxious all the time and allowing anxiety or triggers from the environment dictating how you respond. They're essentially running your life, you're not running your life, you're not running the life that you want to live, you're not living that desired life, that meaningful life because you don't see any meaning. When you're trying to when you feel that you're under threat of dying, it's Don't look for that higher level thinking. It's all about surviving in that moment. It's all about getting away from that threat. So what do we do? How can we get in charge of our life? How do we calm these emotions have that higher level thinking in terms of seeing it as it is having gratitude for what's happened? Having gratitude for that person in my life having gratitude for the event that's happened? How can I express that higher level thinking? You're probably thinking, you're mad Anthony? You know, if you're anxious, of course, you gotta think I'm mad, right? Because you're thinking that's not possible. It's all or nothing thinking you're thinking not that you can't do that. When we have high level thinking we have unlimited possibilities, we tap into unlimited possibilities. When we've got lower level thinking. It's one sided, it's all or nothing, it's I the predators here, I run this way. I don't need any other Association, more connections in the brain. I just need the hard wiring to get me away from that events. In order to get these associations, we need to calm the emotion in that moment, okay, we need to, you need to calm down, okay, you got to calm down. And the way in which you want to calm down is because what happens is when we get anxious, our breathing becomes disordered, our minds disordered. Our physiological becomes disordered, it's not in rhythm, it's not rhythmic. Okay. It's, it's essentially, once it's really wanting to keep you alive, it's just drawn to like the pendulum has swung to one side, it's all about survival. Okay, we want to get it back to being centered, we want to get you centered, so that you can then find the more associations in your brain as to why this is happening to you as to what you can do about it and how you can rewire the, you know, trim the old associations and rewire new associations, you've probably heard of neuro plasticity and that's what I'm about to share is something neuroplasticity is how you can rewire use these other pathways that so the more we use a pathway so you know, neurons that fire together, wire together, the more they fire together, the more they become hardwired together. Okay, in order to disassociate those connections between the neurons. We use that less and we trim it we start thinking, Well, you don't need that anymore. Anthony. Now it doesn't say If you anymore, it's not going to help you survive. Let's trim it we, we want to drive the direction the activity to the new association. So how do we create these new associations? Let's get back to the underlying fundamental as to what's driving the anxiety. And it's fear, okay? It's fear, fear, the gain of something or fear the loss of something, and that turns on the amygdala. And that triggers a stress response within the body. So how do we calm down that fear? Well, what we need to do firstly, is to get the breathing back in order. So what I want you to do is draw attention to your breath when you start feeling anxious. And I want you to start noticing your breath. Okay, yeah, you're breathing in a lot, not breathing out much, you really, you know, long inhale. And, you know, a short exhale is essentially what's happening. When you're trying to get away from something, you need the oxygen, in order to create the entity to get away, what you want to do is change that breathing. And we can, we can change the autonomics, we can shift them from that pendulum of sympathetic dominance, to more balanced state by shifting our breath, and we can control our breathing, it's the one way in which we have governance over our autonomic nervous system is through our breath. So go to your breath. And what first of all, notice how you're breathing. And I want you to notice how you're breathing, then you want to change it by consciously changing it. And so what you want to start to do is, you want to shorten your inhale and lengthen your exhale. And that starts shifting the pendulum from one side to the other side, okay, you start to calming yourself down. And again, we don't want to stay super calm, we want to get centered, right? And so once you've calmed yourself down, and you're feeling that you're a bit calmer now and that your life isn't under threat, and you can think, well, yeah, I can start rewiring my brain then you want to look at or not look at notice and work on getting your breathing to be centered, and that's the box breath or the square breath, right and the square breath is essentially the inhale equaling the exhale. That's when we have complete resilience where adaptable because we're in the middle, we're in the center line, okay, we're centered now. Okay, once you've got your in breath equally outbreath. US centered. You are poise. You are ready. Okay, ready to go forth in the way you want to, you've got control over your emotions, your emotions going to drive you away from something or towards something, that's, it puts energy in motion. Now, in order to get in governance information, you need to center your breathing, you need to become centered, and that neutralizes your emotions. Once you've neutralized your emotions, then we can go to the next step, which is rewiring your brain.
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Anthony Hartcher:And so as I said, what's driving it is the fear. Okay, so you fear the gain or something or the loss or something. And what that is negative associations, right? You've got more negative associations, so you're very conscious of the negatives, but unconscious of the positive. So in order to start finding the associations, we need to ask ourselves a question. So we want to disassociate with the negatives, or have less focus on the negatives and more focus on the positives. And so now we want you to start looking for how is what has been done to you is serving you how's it benefiting you? So how is what that person said to you benefited you in terms of what's important to you? What's a priority to you, in terms of your areas of life, in terms of your career, in terms of your family or relationships, in terms of your intellect, in terms of your physical ability in terms of your looks in terms of your internals, how's it served you and then keep looking for benefits of what that person's done? Or what that event in terms of what's happened? What are the benefits of that event? And how has it served you since that event up until today? Look for the best benefits, keep looking for the benefits until you feel the emotions just totally go away. There's no emotion associated with that event anymore, or no emotion associated with that person. In doing that action, once you get to that neutrality, so you see both sides, you see, okay, I can see the positives of what they're doing. And I can also see the negatives before, you're only conscious of the negatives, and you're unconscious of the positives. Now you're conscious of both, you're conscious of the negatives and positives, and you neutralize the emotion. And you transcend your thinking, you actually get higher level thinking, you can see the person as a whole person, you can see the event objectively, as opposed to subjectively that you were the victim, but you see the events as just an event, okay, and you can be grateful for it, because you can see how it served you, you can see both sides of it, you can see the disadvantage and the advantage, but you just see it as an event and as something that's taking you forward in your life in some ways. And and these are the ways that you're looking for, you're asking yourself, how has it served you, because up until now, you've only had negative associations with that event or that person. Now I'm asking you to find in your brain, the neurons that are associated with the benefits, and then you start firing those two neurons together, and they wire together. And that's forming new associations. And the more associations you find with the positive, the more you have a balanced perspective, and you neutralize the emotions. It's as simple as if it's an event that's happened to you that you're always reacting to, and you're always triggered and reminding you of your event and taking you back into the past and you're feeling all the associated memories and feelings are linked to that event, we can start unraveling that by looking at how that event has served you and what you value, and what's important to you. And what's a priority to you. How's it served you? How has it served you? How's it benefited you? What are the advantages? And how has it served you in the areas of life? How has it served you financially? How has it served you intellectually? How's it served you relationships? How has it served, you spiritually, start looking at all these different areas of life has it served you physically okay? I can. There's an event that happened in my life that's taking me to where I am today. Also, as a sick kid, I only had negative associations with being sick. And then I was thinking I don't want to be sick again, then I pursued a path of of wellness, right. But at the time, I didn't have this higher level thinking at the time, I just had a negative association with being sick as a kid. But now looking back on it, it is has been a triggering point as to where I've arrived today, it initiated my path. It's initiated my interest in health at an early age. And I've always invested ever since that point, time and education into bettering my health and my health has transcended as a result of that experience. So I could have always had a negative association as being a sick kid. But now I have a balanced Association. I see the drawbacks. Yes, I spent time in hospital I had painful is you know, ear aches or ear infections. I had all that glue for years and yakking here and there and stopped me going in the water. And I love being in the water. All these things. They were negative associations. But now I can see the positive of what's come out of that. And now I've got a balanced perspective. And I see it for what it is as opposed to judging that event. We only judge things when we have a subjective view. When we have an objective view, there's no judgment, we transcend judgment, we see it for what it is we can have gratitude for what it is, as opposed to wishing it would be something else. And living in the past or living being attached to a fantasy of how it should have been we can disassociate with these and be present by neutralizing the emotion associated with not allowing those triggers to then run us to run our lives because then otherwise, we're constantly running away from things when we're anxious, right? We're constantly avoiding things. But I'd much rather you on a meaningful path and to extract the meaning we need to be centered, we need to go to that breathing to calm us down. Once we're calm, we can look for new associations and how it served us. And then once we start connecting those new associations, and tapping into it and keep looking at pathways in that positive direction until we can see it as it is and for what it was as opposed to wishing it was something else. Once you lose that emotional association with that event, you've got a balanced perspective. So it means you've balanced the positive and negatives. It's like a seesaw. Initially, you had polarized perceptions towards the negative so you had the negatives far greater and what you're doing now is rewiring the brain to bring the positives into your conscious mind and then you essentially see it for what it is. This is how we can have equity with people equanimity with people we can see them for who they are as opposed to judging them and looking down on them and risk planting them in our life, we no longer look down at them, we can see how what they did has served us the way they behave towards us has served us when we start looking for the answers. So we need to ask ourselves questions to find the answers, and to trigger the neurons so that they buy it together, and then they wire and then we keep finding linked associations with that. So once you find an association, how is that served you further service and you're finding more and more associations with that one benefit, and you keep finding more and more linkages to balance the equation so that you feel they're just who they are. They're a whole person, you don't want to judge them, you just see them for who they are. And so whenever you're passing judgment, you can ask yourself, What am I judging this person for? And what are the benefits? How is it serving me also own it yourself, so that you can have greater love for yourself that you think you can ask yourself? When is it that I've done what they just did to me, whenever I've done it in my life, whenever I've done it, either to them or someone else in my life and keep finding times when you've done it, then you can own that. So then you no longer judging as you have that reflective awareness, you realize that you do it just as much as other people. And that serves a purpose, you found the purpose that serves so you're not shameful for it anymore. It's, there's always a reason why people do something. There's an underlying reason, we just need to ask ourselves the question. So we bring it to our conscious awareness. I hope that helps you. And I'd love you to provide any feedback if you have if you go about trying this and and if you need any help, I'm happy to obviously coach you through this process to really help you rewire your brain so that you can be the master your destiny and not a victim of history so that you can go on a meaningful path and live the life that you want to, as opposed to feeling like you're a victim of circumstance, okay, and you're constantly reacting to the environment. That's what we have this forebrain for this prefrontal cortex is this executive function allows us to see things for what they are objectively, and seeing them for the whole, both sides, and then be able to make decisions to mitigate the risk strategic decisions that are rational decisions as opposed to irrational decisions. When we're in that animal, that midbrain, we make irrational decisions. They're just a decision to get away from that threat. And that keeps us alive. But it doesn't serve us if that thing, or person is not a threat to our life. And they're constantly and they're not going to go away, right? Because that behavior is seeing them you'll see and others too, right? Because you're judging them for it, you're going to be judging others because you haven't owned it in yourself. And I just showed you how you can have that reflective awareness by asking yourself when have you done that behavior so that you're no longer judging others for it, I hope this has been really beneficial in terms of giving you some insight into the neuroscience of anxiety, and how you can unravel it and how you can break it down. And so that you no longer walking around anxious and uncertain, you can walk around with confidence presents with certainty. And that's when we're in the higher level of thinking, okay, that's when we can see things for what they are. And we have foresight in terms of the vision of how we want to live our lives, as opposed to living a life and allowing hindsight to run us that is what I wanted to share with you today. Please share it with others that you know that could be experiencing anxiety on a constant basis. So short term anxiety is okay. It's when chronic anxiety is running us it's a problem. So short term anxiety to get us away from the threat serves us, but long term anxiety so that it's running our lives deteriorates us that breaks us down it creates physiological symptoms of decay we start to degenerate because of the oxidative state that we're constantly under because of the stress. So if you know anyone chronically stressed or chronically anxious, please share this episode with them. It may give them insight as to how they can Ravel that thinking and rewire their brain so that they can go in a meaningful direction and live a meaningful life thank you for listening and until next time, keep healthy enough bye for now.
Podcast Disclaimer:This podcast and any information advice opinions or statements within it do not constitute medical healthcare or professional advice and are provided for general information purposes only. All care is taken in the preparation of the information in this podcast. Connected Wellness provides you unlimited operating under the brands me&my health up does not make any representations or give any warranties about his accuracy, reliability, completeness or suitability for any particular purpose. This podcast and any information advice, opinions or statements within it are not to be used as a sign Institute for professional medical, psychological, psychiatric or any other mental health care or healthcare in general, me&my health up recommends you seek the advice of a doctor or qualified health provider with any questions you may have regarding a medical condition. Inform your doctor of any changes that you make to your lifestyle and discuss these with your doctor. Do not disregard medical advice or delay visiting a medical professional because of something you hear in this podcast. This podcast has been carefully prepared on the basis of current information changes in circumstances after publication may affect the accuracy of this information to the maximum extent permitted by the law me&my health up disclaims any such representations or warranties to the completeness, accuracy merchantability or fitness for purpose of this podcast and will not be liable for any expenses losses damages incurred indirect or consequential damages or costs that may be incurred as a result of the information being inaccurate or incomplete in any way. And for any reason. No part of these podcasts can be reproduced or redistributed, published, copied or duplicated in a form without prior permission of me&my health up.
