Millions of people across the globe struggle with anxiety, so I'm in good company when I say I've struggled as well. I still struggle, but I have made some great personal strides in dealing with it, and that is what I'd like to write about today. This is not a scientific survey, even if I am a scientist, this is my personal learning about these things over a long span of study.
Anxiety is a complex problem, mostly because it's both a medical condition and something that appears to happen when we are on overload naturally. I am a big advocate of seeking both mental and physical health providers when it comes to anxiety. Be it corrective actions with medication or changes in lifestyle. The ladder is what I focus on here today.
As of late, I have been reading clinical research and books that point towards chronic anxiety that many of us face but don't even know it's there, let alone what the causes could be. Chronic stress is a buildup of anxiety that becomes rooted in our reactions and way of life, most likely due to an accumulation of persistent and intense emotions. Basically, throughout life, letting emotions swing wildly and hit high peaks is pointing towards being a culprit for chronic anxiety. Uncontrolled emotions are literally reducing our cognitive processing, which in turn creates a loop of more anxiety. Stress (adrenaline) results in cortisol being released in the body to balance out the adrenaline from stress. Cortisol appears to build up over time and block critical-thinking centers of the brain.
Your brain is making a lot of connections in its network of neurons when our emotions are swinging, we multitask, we work on a project, whatever we may be doing, our neuro-networks are firing and connecting. This is fatiguing to us because of the energy required for the brain to connect and pull up all the various networks we have for living life.
Let us talk a little about how scientists think the brain works today. We have a thing called the Prefrontal Cortex, an area behind your forehead. This acts like an operating system, where already created networks in the brain are making connections. Mind you, memories are held all over the brain but are also attached to neuro networks. When you string memories or a process for doing something together, it's happening in the Prefrontal Cortex. When the connections are made, they go elsewhere in the brain. Some are automatic, and some come to your mind as a connection is made. The catch is, the Prefrontal Cortex has limited bandwidth. It's like a stage with actors on it. You can't crowd the stage with too many actors, or the play ends in chaos. Lots of research today is pointing to the fact that we can hold on to about four things in our Prefrontal Cortex before we start to feel the effects of too much going on. This is all very taxing on the brain. (Rock, David. Your Brain at Work, Strategies for Overcoming Distraction, Regaining Focus and Working Smarter All Day Long. Harper Collins, 2010)
Ok, basically, swinging emotions cause a buildup of cortisol and leads to anxiety. Overstimulating the brain and its limited stage also leads to emotions, cortisol, and anxiety.
At this point, you are asking, how do we fix this? We will get there, but lets briefly describe what overtaxing the brain feels like, or how it manifests physically, so we can recognize we may be causing something.
We often call the anxiety we feel like we are "not coping well." Coping is the skill we have to develop to deal with the randomness the world throws at us. Often you may feel all or some of these, which are symptoms of not coping well:
Fatigue
Rapid breathing
Sweating
Nausea
Muscle tightness
Panic
Desire to flee
Not calm and focused
Ever feel a few of those at once? Yup, anxiety. Also known as not coping well. Also known as stress. Yet, also known as a thing called "not having agency." Agency is a concept around the feeling you have when you have control over the randomness of life. To not feel you have agency, which can be imposed by bosses and companies, can feel like shackles. (Napper, Paul, and Rao. The Power of Agency: The 7 Principles to Conquer Obstacles, Make Effective Decisions, and Create a Life on Your Own Terms. St. Martins Press, 2019.)
In the books The Power of Agency and Your Brain at Work, the authors argue that limiting what we take in as stimuli is helping the Prefrontal Cortex not get into overload. Limiting the stimuli we show to the brain is overall the best solution to focus on when the brain is taxed, or you have to need to use your critical thinking power. Remember, above, I mention that chronic stress and emotions cut down our brain's ability to critically think.
So, what have I done to limit stimuli and keep things as even as possible?
Regular practice of meditation, specifically Buddhist style meditation called Vipassana. The practice of being able to move thought away from the Prefrontal Cortex and not be tied to every thought we have. They are just thoughts, they mean nothing until you string them into a line of thinking. But we have a tendency to take them to heart and spin ourselves up over a thought.
A task and project process that attempts to limit what I can think about at one time. David Allen of Get Things Done fame talks about a trusted system that, by being trusted, your brain doesn't have to worry about forgetting things. I use parts of the David Allen way and pieces of other processes. I'll write more about them in the future. But the basics are that it's a system of clearing notes, tasks, ideas, and the like, each week at the same time and putting them in categories of projects that allow me to only focus on essential things right now. It's a continual work in progress, but it has been as profound as regular meditation.
I limit stimuli constantly. Both the books The Power of Agency and Your Brain at Work offer some great tactics for limiting stimuli. However, I came across this little gem of a book called Make Time, which is nothing but a book about tactics to limit stimuli and make time for things in life. Well worth a read and a commitment to pick up some tips. Some of the very useful that I have adopted are varied, but one, in particular, reaps excellent benefits daily: removing all notices from popping up on your computer or phone.
Purposefully and intentionally not multitask. I used to believe I could multitask and the concept is just wrong today. There is enough scientific evidence that the Prefrontal Cortex is limited and multitasking just crowds the stage and diminishes the effectiveness of all the things we are doing. We switch between two main networks, awareness network (when your ear hears a noise behind you and perks up while you are reading a book) and focus network (the reading the book network).
In the end, there are a lot of people who deal with anxiety, some need to be medically treated, and some are creating their own issues by not working with how the brain works. Wild emotions, lack of agency, stress, are all ways we buildup cortisol in the brain, and that leads to anxiety and a host of physical responses that feel awful. Tactics such as meditation and limiting stimuli have shown by example, in my life to treat specific moments of stress and anxiety and have had a lasting effect when these moments pop up. I call it walking gracefully through life. Try some you might just like them.
Books mentioned: