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Kindle Notes & Highlights
by
Alex Korb
Just fifteen minutes of biking is sufficient to increase activity in circuits responsible for emotional control and to raise levels of the neurotransmitter serotonin.2
Exercise would help, but you don’t feel like exercising.
exercise changes the electrical activity in your brain during sleep, which then reduces anxiety, improves mood, and gives you more energy to exercise.
A dysfunctional serotonin system is responsible for the lack of willpower and motivation.
Spoons
Not feeling any motivation? It’s likely the fault of reduced serotonin in the ventromedial prefrontal cortex.
When you’re depressed, it’s a base on high alert—it has a hair-trigger response, making it difficult to relax and just be happy. Finding ways to calm the hypothalamus is therefore one of the best ways to reduce stress.
People with depression often have higher amygdala reactivity, so reducing that can help lower anxiety and relieve depression.4
Because the “context” is depression, all those happy memories that are easy to recall when you’re in a good mood suddenly evaporate. Meanwhile, all the tragedies in your life become too easy to remember.
Try to think of one happy memory before you go to sleep—write it in a journal or just reflect on it.
The anterior cingulate is like the screen on your computer. There’s lots of data on your computer’s hard drive, but the screen shows only the part you are paying attention to, and that has a huge impact on what you end up doing. In depression, anterior cingulate activity helps explains why you so often focus on the negative.
In depression, reduced dopamine activity in the dorsal striatum is primarily responsible for feelings of fatigue.
In depression, reduced dopamine activity in the nucleus accumbens explains why nothing seems enjoyable.
Increased insula activity makes you hyperaware of any problems in your body, even if they’re small, which is how molehills turn into mountains. Calming insula activity can therefore help reduce both pain and worries about getting sick.
For me, the tendencies of these two brain circuits could get me caught in a downward spiral. The loneliness makes me feel bad and could be solved by making plans, but making plans stresses me out and also makes me feel bad.
She needs to exercise every day, otherwise her mood plummets. That’s just how she’s wired. The problem is that when she feels down, she doesn’t feel like exercising.
Because all of our brain circuits interact to keep us stuck, changing activity in one circuit can have a ripple effect across the whole system.
The different tendencies of your various brain circuits mean that everyone has different downward spirals they’re likely to get stuck in and thus different upward spirals that will make them feel better.
Stressful life events throughout childhood and adolescence can alter the development of neural circuits and change the levels of various neurotransmitters.
Note that it’s not the number of friends you have that matters, but the quality of those relationships. If you have no one to talk to or do things with, or if you feel disconnected from those around you, there’s a large potential for a downward spiral.
And it explains why you feel great on some days and crappy on others. There is not always an explanation for every little variation in your mood, so don’t drive yourself crazy looking for one.
Yes, that’s a silly example of how worrying can get in the way of living your life, but then again, almost all our worries look ridiculous to a third party.
Whether a dinner party or my entire future, in each case, I was anticipating everything that could go wrong, and that made me think of more things that could go wrong, until I got stuck in a loop of worry, anxiety, and indecisiveness.
So there’s no reason to get upset with yourself for feeling anxious or worrying too much; it’s just a by-product of your brain’s evolution.
So if you tend to worry, reduce your options and make quick decisions whenever possible.
That illustrates that people with anxiety disorders have the same neural circuitry for worrying as “healthy” people. The difference between the two groups was simply that the people with anxiety problems got stuck in their worrying.
When you’re in a negative mood, almost all outcomes that your prefrontal cortex can calculate are tinged with a bit of negativity.
In essence, worrying is thinking about a potential problem, and anxiety is feeling it.
Feeling in control reduces anxiety, worrying, and even pain.7 These effects are mediated by the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, so strengthening dorsolateral activity helps create an upward spiral.8 You can do this by simply paying more attention to what is in your control, which helps modulate your brain activity and quickly reduces anxiety.
When you’re using your planning and problem-solving circuitry to worry, you can’t use that part of your brain for more important things, like excelling at your job or organizing a dinner party.
Most importantly, it can be exhausting. Anxiety makes most situations feel more difficult than they need to be, which saps your joy.
Taking a slow, deep breath—inhaling and then exhaling slowly—actually calms down the sympathetic nervous system and reduces stress (as discussed in more depth in chapter 9).
If you try to have the best of everything, you’re likely to be paralyzed by indecision or dissatisfied with your choice. In fact, this kind of “maximizing” has been proven to increase depression.9 So don’t try to make the most amazing dinner; start out by just making a good dinner. Don’t try to be the perfect parent; just be a good one. Don’t try to be your happiest; just be happy.
Worrying makes you think deeply about problems, rather than just taking the first answer that comes to mind, and anxiety helps keep you safe.
So don’t get too upset with yourself for being anxious. Your brain is trying to help you.
First, remind yourself of the more likely (and better) outcomes (“Maybe my friend is busy right now”). Second, whether or not the worst-case scenario is actually likely, make a plan to deal with it (for example, “If my friend doesn’t call me back in three days, I’ll just call again,” or even “If my friend doesn’t like me anymore, then I’ll hang out with another friend”). Planning your response to stressful situations can increase prefrontal norepinephrine, and calm the limbic system, helping you feel more in control.12
Yes, freaking out is a form of coping. But, while it gives you some semblance of control, it’s not the most effective response. Nor is eating ice cream and watching television. Exercise is a more productive form of coping, as are calling a friend or breathing calmly;
The first step is simply to recognize your anxiety or worrying when it occurs. Becoming aware of your emotional state activates the prefrontal cortex and allows it to suppress the amygdala.
if you’re feeling anxiety, doing something about it—even worrying—is better than doing nothing.
But as you might guess, worrying is not the most adaptive coping mechanism.
Pay attention to the things that are happening now, and don’t pay attention to the things that aren’t happening now.
Improving your ability to stay present, a practice known as “mindfulness,” helps enhance these activations and leads to long-term improvements in anxiety and worrying.16
the best way to calm the limbic system is to understand the underlying anxiety.
Putting emotions into words—however hokey that sounds—actually rewires your brain circuits and makes you feel better.
Another great solution is to focus on the present moment.
It’s just my brain working as it was designed.
In truth, the reality is almost certainly better than it appears: your relationships not as broken, your job not as pointless, and your abilities greater than you realize.
Some people’s amygdalas are more reactive to emotional information13 and require more effort from the anterior cingulate to avoid negative reactions. Others have a much easier time processing the negative and moving on.
Me vs. Dad
In short, try practicing nonjudgmental awareness. Nonjudgmental awareness is a form of mindfulness that simply means noticing without reacting emotionally, even when things don’t turn out as you expected.
Noticing a mistake might automatically trigger the emotional amygdala, but becoming aware of your own reaction activates the prefrontal cortex, which calms the amygdala.25
In the face of uncertainty, their brains assumed the worst.
