14 Feb Rewiring the Anxious Brain – Neuroplasticity and the Anxiety Cycle (Anxiety Skills #21)
Anxiety is a challenge faced not only by individuals with autism, but by the people in their lives as well. Discover how to deal with anxiety by changing the way your brain reacts to it.
Learn from licensed marriage and family therapist Emma McAdam as she describes the process of rewiring your brain to reduce your anxiety in any given situation.
What We Learned from this Video:
- Neuroplasticity is your brain’s ability to rewire itself.
- Anxiety exists to keep us out of danger.
- Disordered anxiety can be one of two things:
- Feeling in danger when you’re safe.
- When anxiety interferes with your ability to function.
- When you feel disordered anxiety, it can prevent you from living your life.
- If you encounter a situation that causes you anxiety and run away, it will train your brain to make you even more anxious the next time you run into that situation.
- If, when you feel anxiety, you don’t run away and experience the situation, you can train your brain to realize that situation is safe.
- Another method for reducing anxiety is changing the way you think about the situation. Create an exposure hierarchy, listing the different magnitudes of that particular situation from least to most dangerous.
- Instead of doing something until it makes you anxious, pick a set amount of time to do it for, even if you’re anxious.
Neuroplasticity can help you change the way you approach situations that would have previously given you anxiety. Training your brain to understand that there is no danger in a situation will allow you to live your life to the fullest. Check out our blog post on managing overstimulation to allow yourself even more freedom in your life, or our blog post about exercising to relieve anxiety.