Dr. Hanscom's Blog Dr. Hanscom on Anxiety and Anger

From this week's newsletter. Link to more at the bottom.

The Root Cause of Societal Disintegration – Untreated Anxiety

Being trapped by relentless untreated anxiety is the core driver of destructive human behaviour. Anxiety is the sensation generated by your body’s stress chemicals in response to a mental or physical threat. It is not primarily a psychological issue. It is a gift in that it is the mechanism that permits survival of every living creature. It evolved to be incredibly unpleasant. Species that didn’t or couldn’t take action to quell the threat, didn’t survive. So in addition to “survival of the fittest,” we are also the evolution of “survival of the most anxious.” We hate feeling anxious and will do anything, at all costs, to resolve or avoid this feeling.

Anger is anxiety with a chemical kick

When you lose control or are trapped by anything, including your thoughts you will become angry. It is the body’s definitive survival response manifested by a more intense level of stress reaction to improve your chances of survival. Sustained levels of threat physiology affect every cell in the body and translate into many different mental and physical symptoms. You’ll eventually become ill or worse yet, develop a disease.

Can’t escape your thoughts

We cannot escape our thoughts, we are all chronically exposed to some level of threat physiology. Neuroscience research shows that unpleasant thoughts are sensory inputs that create similar bodily responses as other physical threats. Pleasant input yields reward chemicals and a feeling of contentment. Unpleasant input stimulates fuel consumption, stress hormones, inflammation, and excitatory neurotransmitters; and you’ll feel anxious or angry. They are not psychological issues and they are just words humans use to describe these sensations. Not only can you not escape your unpleasant thoughts, they progressively become stronger as you battle them.

Since the reaction to a threat is control, we are all are focused on gaining more it, which means we want more power. What we call “socialization” is actually a massive power struggle. These efforts to gain control play out in an infinite number of ways with horrific consequences. Why would these early patterns change even though we intellectually know that love, peace and compassion are better principles by which to live our lives? There are several reasons:

• Survival reactions emanate from unconscious brain and are about a million times stronger than the conscious brain.
• When you are upset, the blood supply to your neocortex (thinking region) of your brain decreases and you cannot think as clearly. The phrase, “losing my mind” is more true than you might think.
• Peace and love are conscious choice and are no match for survival reactions.
• Part of the anger response includes dopamine, which is addicting. People don’t want to give up the power of anger. Why would you want to feel vulnerable? There are no rewards in nature for being vulnerable, including humans. However, vulnerability is at the core of successful human relationships. It is a big problem for the human race.

The patterns of behaviour, which are established on the school ground, play out through adulthood. Every child has anxiety with it being more of a problem if he or she is from an abusive family. They are thrown into the sensory overload of the school system without any awareness of how to process it. Then they are taught that having more self-esteem is a desirable trait – except that it isn’t. Achieving self-esteem means that your self-worth is dependent on the approval of others who are also searching for an identity. You are using conscious means to solve a problem that originates in the powerful unconscious brain. It’s a mismatch and is an endless deadly loop.

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