We live in anxious times. From wars and rising autocracy to pandemics and climate change to pick-your-own-nightmare-scenario, it’s a wonder any of us can keep our heads straight.

I’ve struggled with anxiety at various points in my own life. Most of the time it lies dormant, but then something happens – a trigger – and it wakes up and prowls around my mind like a restless caged leopard. On a couple of occasions, it’s broken out of its cage into full blown panic attacks.

Over time I’ve learned that mindfulness meditation helps me stay calm and balanced. I don’t meditate every day – I probably should – but when I wake up in the dead of night with a racing mind, or something triggers it during the day, I find meditation very helpful.

All this to say that I read Unwinding Anxiety: New Science Shows How to Break the Cycles of Worry and Fear to Heal Your Mind by Judson Brewer with more than just ordinary curiosity.

Judson Brewer is an associate professor at Brown University’s School of Public Health and at its Medical School. He’s an addiction psychiatrist and neuroscientist.

Unwinding Anxiety:
New Science Shows How to Break the Cycles of Worry and Fear to Heal Your Mind
By Judson Brewer
Avery, New York, 2021

In Unwinding Anxiety, Brewer presents a helpful framework for dealing with anxiety though I found some important details to be unclear or confusing.

Brewer claims that anxiety is a habit, a learned behavior. He says we learn to be anxious through the same reward system that’s evolved in our brains to help us learn any beneficial behavior, except that anxiety is harmful.

Brewer highlights one common way we learn the anxiety habit: dealing with uncertainty.

In prehistoric times, uncertainty could be fatal. Was that rustling in the bushes a lion waiting to pounce or just the wind? The fear of getting eaten would trigger heightened alertness, rapid breathing, a pounding heart – anxiety in other words. Our response would be to carefully scout the area, get more information, solve the problem. OK, no lion. Phew! We can relax. What a great feeling of relief!

Fast forward to today. An essential survival mechanism has, for many people, become a habit with serious negative impacts.

Most of the book is dedicated to Brewer’s three step method for dealing with anxiety. He calls them “gears” rather than steps. His core idea is to hack your brain’s reward system to reduce or eliminate anxiety. At a high level, it goes like this:

1^st gear: Map out your anxiety habit loops. These maps follow a trigger –> behavior –> result format. Here’s an example.

• Trigger: Something causes fear, stress, or anxiety.
• Behavior: Get more information. Find a solution. Worry.
• Result/reward: Problem solved, relief (sometimes)

The slippery thing about anxiety is that it can be both a trigger and a result/reward.

2^nd gear: Update the reward value that you get from your behavior. To change behavior, you first need to understand the reward value the behavior gives you. Brewer says you need to become aware of what your behavior really feels like, what the actual reward value is right now.

How? Brewer says ask yourself in the moment, “Hmm … what do I get from this behavior?” To prime yourself for behavior change, you want to allow yourself to become dissatisfied with the reward you’re getting. You might come to realize it’s not much of a reward after all. Brewer calls this the “gift of disenchantment.”

3^rd gear: Give yourself a bigger, better offer. Brewer says mindfulness is that bigger, better offer.

“In third gear, simply bringing a kind curious awareness to those sensations and feelings will help you move from habitually feeling like you have to do something to fix a situation to simply observing your experience, watching the problems lessen and disappear on their own.” [p. 172]

In Brewer’s 3^rd gear, we move from problem-solving to observation, from fixing it to feeling it. Brewer says the “why” (the reason or cause from the past) doesn’t matter. Only the “what” (our feelings and sensations in the moment) matters.

This resonated with me. I’m definitely the analytical, problem-solving type. I want to find rational explanations. But maybe there is no rational explanation. And even if there is one, it won’t help to break a habit that’s out of control.

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Despite its subtitle, I didn’t find much in-depth science in Unwinding Anxiety. Yes, Brewer describes various studies that he and his lab have conducted over the years. And he does talk about the prefrontal cortex doing this and the posterior cingulate cortex doing that. But if you’re looking for a detailed explanation of the physiology or neurochemistry of what happens inside the brain when you’re feeling anxious, it’s not in this book. The Deepest Well by Nadine Burke Harris contains more of that.

I also found some parts of Brewer’s writing to be frustratingly imprecise. In the early chapters of the book, he defines terms like worry and anxiety, but the definitions were vague and circular. It confused me and made some of the larger ideas in the book harder to understand.

So I asked ChatGPT, the artificial intelligence chatbot, to define and compare anxiety and worry.

After warning me that it was an AI language model and not a licensed psychiatrist, ChatGPT responded, in part: 

“Anxiety refers to a general feeling of unease, fear, or apprehension, often accompanied by physical symptoms such as increased heart rate, muscle tension, and restlessness. …

Worry is a cognitive process characterized by repetitive and often negative thoughts about potential future events or outcomes. …

In summary, anxiety is a broader emotional response that includes both physiological and psychological components, while worry is a specific cognitive process involving repetitive and often distressing thoughts about potential future events. Worry is a common component of anxiety, and excessive or uncontrollable worry can contribute to the development or exacerbation of anxiety disorders. It’s important to note that both anxiety and worry can have a significant impact on an individual’s well-being, and seeking professional help is recommended if these experiences become overwhelming or interfere with daily functioning.”

That helped. But I am still unclear from the book how anxiety can possibly be a “reward” for anything.

Despite these concerns, Unwinding Anxiety gave me some useful tools and ideas for handling anxiety, building on what I already knew. If you’re just starting to explore this topic you might get even more from the book than I did.

And there was a bonus.

Sometimes a book contains one little nugget, a glittering gem, that makes the whole thing worthwhile, over and above anything else it may contain. Unwinding Anxiety had one of those for me.

“Forgiveness is giving up hope of a better past.” [p. 154]

Why would anyone hope for a better past? It’s absurd, right? The past can’t be changed or fixed or made better in any way.

Yet too often we cling to anger, resentment or hatred because of actions, slights, and wrongs committed in the past. Those feelings can be directed at others or even at ourselves.

You can only make the future better and that takes incredibly hard work. So why burden yourself with anger or resentment or hatred about the past?

Stop hoping for a better past. Let it go. Forgive.

I haven’t tried Brewer’s anxiety management techniques yet, but 2024 already looks like it will bring plenty of opportunities to practice.

On that note I wish you a happy, healthy and calm New Year!

And as always, thanks for reading.

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Thanks to Molly @ Silver Button Books for recommending this one.

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