We know that the brain learns as a result of experiences. Fearful experiences are remembered and stored in particularly vivid ways. When fearful pathways are triggered frequently, they become automatic. (Neurologists like to say, “Nerves that fire together, wire together.”) Just as we associate two things together, like “up and down” and “left and right,” a well-worn pathway in the brain associates two things that follow each other, and they become connected (what psychologists call “conditioned”). If a thought is followed by an anxious experience, the pathway from thought to fear gets
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