Unwinding Anxiety: New Science Shows How to Break the Cycles of Worry and Fear to Heal Your Mind

by Judson Brewer MD PhD

Sometimes I get the question “What happens if I’m not curious?” My response: “Use the mantra to drop right into your experience. Hmm, what does it feel like to not be curious?”

If you noticed that by being curious you just gained even a microsecond of being able to be with your thoughts, emotions, and body sensations more than you have in the past, you’ve just taken a huge step forward.

That’s third gear: it’s a process of stepping out of your old habit loops and into the present moment. When you use hmm as a mantra, you bring out your childlike fascination, especially if you haven’t used it in a while. Hmm helps you drop right into your direct experience, instead of getting stuck in your head trying to do something about those pesky habit loops or to fix yourself.

Dave realized that as a consequence of his abuse, his brain had been on constant alert since childhood—always looking out for danger. His brain had never been able to determine which environments were safe and which were legitimately dangerous, because his dad slapped him randomly, not systematically.

To combat this, I gave him a simple practice. I told him that when he felt as though he were on high alert, he should take a moment to get curious about what he was feeling, and he should also check to see if there actually was danger.

The high alert habit mode could be seen for what it was: sensations associated with danger. In the absence of danger, by simply getting curious about what those sensations felt like, Dave could see for himself that these sensations not only were inaccurate (signaling danger when there was none) but would fade on their own.

Over time, Dave learned that he didn’t need to be anxious all the time. Ironically, while he was enjoying significant calm stretches, which felt strange and different, his brain would chime in, wondering if there was something wrong (wearing those old habit glasses), whether he should be anxious. Dave was demonstrating classic “savannah behavior.”

We can relax only when we’ve mapped that territory over and over and haven’t found any sign of danger. This is where the modern notion of comfort zone comes from. When we’re in a place that is safe and familiar, we feel comfortable. This can be a physical place that feels safe (like our home), an activity that we’re good at (e.g., playing a favorite sport or musical instrument), or even a mental space we inhabit (e.g., teaching seminars on habit change is my sweet spot, math not so much).

we see the world as either safe or unsafe, the only options are comfort or danger: we’re either in our comfort zone or in the danger zone (which many of my patients call the panic zone, because it feels so uncomfortable that they start panicking). That’s how Dave described it to me: not being anxious was making him anxious because it was unfamiliar to him.

Yet, there is actually another option. Going back once more to Carol Dweck’s fixed vs. growth mindset, we can add a zone between comfort and danger: the proverbial growth zone.

Whether we are exploring a new idea, an unfamiliar place, or a person we’ve just met, we can approach new areas with fear or we can employ an attitude of curiosity. The more curiosity we have, the more open we are to learning and growing from exploration, as compared to closing down or running back to our safe space at that first hint of discomfort.

The more we can learn to lean into the discomfort of difference—recognizing that we might be nervous simply because something is new to us—the more we make ourselves at home in our growth zone. This is how we learn and grow, after all. As a bonus, the more comfortable we feel in our growth zone, the more this zone increases in size.

Dave could bring awareness to this as well, noticing that because of its familiarity, anxiety had strangely been a comfort to him, yet he had outgrown it now.

All this curiosity can help us break free and step out of our old habit loops (it’s amazing how comforting worrying is, isn’t it?) as we learn to explore sensations in our bodies and minds and see them for what they are: thoughts and sensations that simply come and go.

Also, curiosity naturally moves you from a fixed mindset into a growth one. The greater your curiosity and openness to your experiences, the greater the reserves of energy you have to explore.

Your breath is always available. Paying attention to your breath helps you step out of your old habit loop. Breathing doesn’t feed the habit loop process itself.

Mindfulness in Plain English, by Bhante Henepola Gunaratana.)

not close your eyes, or everyone will think you are sleeping. Ask yourself the question How do I know I’m breathing? and get curious to see where you feel the physical sensations (a silent hmm is appropriate here).

To apply the breathing practice to moments of anxiety, urges, and other things habit loop–related, try this variation. Use your curiosity to check in and see where that anxious feeling or the urge to correct your coworker’s last statement feels strongest in your body. Now slowly breathe in through your nose, right into that body part (don’t worry about being anatomically correct here, just go with it). Let that breath go right into that feeling of anxiety or urge and hold it there for a few seconds before letting your breath out. If it doesn’t sound too woo-woo to you, when you exhale, some of that feeling flows out with your breath.

You might also wonder why paying attention to your breath is not also just another distraction. Well, it’s because paying attention to your breath keeps you in the present moment in an embodied way. In other words, you are staying with your direct experience, in the moment, rather than trying to escape it by going outside of yourself.

RAIN Recognize what is happening right now. Allow/Accept it: Don’t push it away or try to change it. Investigate body sensations, emotions, thoughts: Ask, “Hmm, what is going on in my body right now?” Note what is happening in your experience.

Let’s pause and map out what’s going on: Trigger: Unpleasant emotion Behavior: Binge-eat Result: Brief relief in the form of numbing herself

Trigger: Feel guilty about bingeing (unpleasant emotion) Behavior: Binge-eat (again) Result: Brief relief in the form of re-numbing herself

More important, as part of this healing process, she recognized another habit loop: one of self-judgment.

Loving Kindness Loving kindness practice (also known as metta, from the ancient Pali language) can help us start to soften and to accept both others and ourselves as we are. This helps us let go of what has happened in the past and learn from it so we can move forward in the present.

There are three parts to the loving kindness practice: The use of some loving kindness phrases to help you stay centered Seeing the image of the being to whom you are sending loving kindness Recognizing a feeling of kindness that arises in your body as you do the practice

Now—and as a contrast to loving kindness—bring to mind a situation that made you stressed or anxious recently. Notice what it feels like in your body. Does it feel contracted or expanded? Note the sensations that arise for a few moments. Now imagine a dear friend coming through the door—someone that you haven’t seen in a long time. What does this feel like?

Now think about their loving qualities and kindness toward you. Notice if there is a feeling that arises in your body. Warmth, expansion, perhaps in the chest/heart? (If you don’t notice anything immediately, that’s okay too—just keep checking in with your body as we do this exercise.) Now pick a few phrases of well-wishing to offer to this figure. Here are some suggestions (but be sure to pick phrases that really speak to you, or drop the phrases altogether and simply anchor in the feeling in your heart):

Also, if your mind wanders, just note where it has gone off to and return to repeating the phrases and anchoring on the feeling of unconditional love if it is there in your chest.

First, a phrase to myself, “May I be happy,” and then a phrase to the driver, “May you be happy.” This helped break the habit loop cycle of self-righteousness and the contracted feeling that went along with it. Trigger: Get honked at Behavior: Offer a twofer of loving kindness: one phrase to myself, one to the driver Result: Feel lighter, more open

but after a while, she started using it as her go-to when she would be triggered and tempted to judge herself. More often than not, she was able to pull out of her depressive rumination, and eventually she stopped binge-eating almost entirely, to the point where I discharged her from my clinic because she didn’t need my help anymore. She came back to my clinic for a follow-up visit about four months later, just to make sure everything was still going well. She had lost forty pounds, but more important, she told me this: “I’m grateful for this approach because I feel like I have my life back. I can eat a single piece of pizza and actually enjoy it.”

She also said that though she liked her job and it wasn’t stressful, just the thought of driving to work made her anxious. With her increasing anxiety, her to-do list was becoming mountainous because instead of ticking things off, she’d get worried looking at the list, feel exhausted from the stress, and find herself napping a good bit of the day—only to wake up and repeat the process all over again.

In that session, Amy made a comment that gave me a big clue as to where she was stuck: “I feel anxiety come over me and I keep wondering why I’m anxious,” she said.

Amy said anxiety would just pop up randomly, not triggered by anything in particular. On top of this, her well-meaning husband and friends would ask what was wrong, and then say, “Aren’t you seeing a psychiatrist?” I asked her, “Are they saying, ‘Why aren’t you fixed yet?’” “YES!” Amy continued, “If I could just figure out why . . .” Amy had fallen into a mental trap, just like way too many other people. They think that if they can just figure out why they are anxious, that discovery will magically fix their anxiety. This works just fine when it comes to fixing cars and dishwashers, but our minds can’t be fixed like appliances.

That’s the trap. We get stuck in this mindset that psychiatrists are like mechanics: we go to them to get our anxiety fixed. More often than not, that “fixing” comes in the form of trying to figure out what caused the problem....

Trigger: Anxiety Behavior: Try to figure out why she’s anxious (and fail) Result: Get more anxious

I asked, “What if the why doesn’t matter?” “What?” she said, looking confused. It doesn’t matter what triggers worry or anxiety, but it does matter how you react to it. If Amy gets caught up in a why habit loop, she just adds fuel to the fire, making it worse. If she can learn to step out of the loop, she can not only put out that anxiety fire, but at the same time learn how to avoid starting another in the future.

gave Amy some homework. “Whenever you notice a why habit loop developing, take three deep breaths. Breathe in deeply, and on the exhale, say to yourself, Why doesn’t matter.” The aim of this was to help her notice when anxiety was coming on, focus on what was happening in that moment, and not get caught up in that why habit loop.

Yet trying to fix something from the past that set up a habit loop will never work, because the past is the past. This is where that adage about forgiveness that I mentioned in chapter 14 comes in: “Forgiveness is giving up hope of a better past.”

We have to learn to let go of the past and focus on the present, because we can work only with what is here right now: habit loops that we are acting out in the present moment.

Your Eyes Are a Window into Your Soul (Or at Least Your Emotions) Have you ever wondered why many professional poker players wear dark sunglasses during tournaments? It’s so that their eyes don’t give away their schemes. The worst thing a poker player can do is have a tell—a change in behavior or demeanor that provides clues to the cards being held in a hand.

When we’re afraid, our eyes instinctively open really wide.

Eye widening, when combined with other facial expressions of fear, also serves as a social signal to let others know that we are afraid.

In fact, this involuntary widening of the eyes can increase the cognitive processing of environmental events in both the person widening his/her eyes and the person seeing this happen.

What the researchers found was that posing as though afraid, in particular, enhanced the participants’ ability to accurately perform a perceptual cognitive task, while posing as though disgusted (which narrows the eyes) thwarted their ability to do the task.

Opening our eyes really wide isn’t just out of fear—it happens with other types of information gathering as well. When we’re really interested in learning something, our eyes tend to get big and wide.

Let’s start with associative learning. This is how we learn to pair body sensations and positions with emotions. From a survival standpoint, if you are in danger, you instinctively tuck in your body, making yourself as small as possible and also using your arms and legs to shield and protect your head and vital organs.

In other words, it’s hard to have one without the other. For example, if you tighten your shoulders and raise them toward your ears, you might notice that this makes you feel a little stressed.

Stop and simply name the emotion (e.g., “Oh, that’s X emotion”). Check to see how narrow or wide your eyes are. Open your eyes wide (and perhaps add in a hmm) as a way to jump-start your curiosity. Keep them wide for ten seconds and notice what happens to the anxiety (or whatever difficult emotion you’ve just identified). Does it get stronger or weaker? Does it change in character, or shift in some other way? Once you get the hang

Can you find mental and physical exercises that you actually enjoy doing, paying attention to their rewards so that they lock into your brain as a BBO? For example, my wife, when not motivated to go for a run, reminds herself of how good it felt after the last time she ran. That