Читать книгу The Anxiety Getaway - Craig April Ph.D - Страница 20

Your Brain’s False Fear Message Process—in a Nutshell

1.An uncomfortable experience or thought occurs.

2.You teach your brain to fear this experience or thought by either…

a.Doing what you can to avoid facing stimuli that trigger this experience or thought.

OR…

b.By fighting anxious thoughts and symptoms. (Often people do both.)

3.Following your teachings, your brain learns that this experience or thought is something to be feared. Hence, it deems it dangerous to your survival and seeks to protect you with your biological survival instinct whenever you’re confronted with this anxious experience, whether in thought or in the actual world.

4.When confronted by this experience, your survival instinct activates its fight-or-flight mechanism. This mechanism now floods your system with adrenaline, preparing your body to duel to the death or bolt like a track star to save your life.

5.You interpret your adrenaline surge as an indicator of mortal danger. Your interpretation includes an anxiety-based story. For example, “I can’t handle this. I’m going to lose my job because of this anxiety whenever I have to speak in a meeting.”

6.The more you avoid and battle your particular anxiety-inducing event, the more you solidify the lesson neurologically. In other words, you strengthen the neural pathway that connects your feared event to a question of your survival.

7.Now, whenever you approach your fearful stimuli, your brain floods your system with adrenaline and you associate this with fear. You then indulge in your accompanying fear-based thoughts. And you become anxious again!

8.It goes around and around, like a vicious feedback loop. One experience impacts the other. You become anxious and you fight or run from anxiety. This creates more anxiety as you dodge and resist, again and again.

At this point, it’s important for you to understand that anxiety is reinforced by avoidance and thrives through your fighting it. Through your battle against it. Through your resistance. If this isn’t crystal clear yet, it will be once you begin practicing the counterintuitive tools to follow. So to learn how to outsmart your brain’s false fear messages and claim your calm, just read on…