Dr. Hanscom's Blog Anxiety Basics

Anxiety is the body’s neurochemical reaction to a mental or physical threat. Without it you can’t survive.







It’s the sensation created by elevated levels of stress chemicals.

Anxiety is an automatic survival response. The unconscious brain is documented to be over a million times stronger than the conscious brain.

It’s not subject to rational psychological interventions.

Decreasing your body’s level of stress hormones causes anxiety to drop.

There are two ways of accomplishing this:

• Relaxation strategies
  • Mindfulness, meditation, “active meditation”, forgiveness, play, medical hypnosis, biofeedback and many more.
• Stimulating the brain to change (neuroplasticity) so there is less reactivity to stress.
  • Learning to “be with your pain”.
  • Not discussing it with anyone.
  • Expressive writing
  • Moving forward with your life with or without your pain.
  • “An enjoyable life”

There are two more critical concepts:

Since anxiety is a deeply seated core survival reaction, you’ll do almost anything to avoid it. The basic intent of anxiety is to cause you to act in a manner to diminish a threat (control) and move on. When you can’t escape a mental (thoughts) or physical threat, your body will secret more stress hormones to increase your chances of survival. The sensation generated is anger. Anger is anxiety with a chemical kick. It is even less subject to rational interventions.

Not only are there strategies to decrease the stress hormones, there are powerful ways, to stimulate increased levels of relaxation (play) chemicals, such as:

• Oxytocin – bonding, the “love” drug
• Dopamine – reward
• Serotonin – mood elevator
• GABA hormones (the body’s equivalent of Valium).

This dramatically different chemical environment generates a deep sense of well-being.

Your capacity to enjoy your life depends on your skill in minimizing your levels of stress hormones and stimulating your “play” chemicals. Modern neuroscience has documented why, “Laughter is the best medicine.”

Wake the fun up

Related posts:

1. Anxiety Basics
2. Societal Disintegration – Untreated Anxiety
3. Anxiety, Anger, and Adrenaline