{"id":74837,"date":"2022-08-08T09:10:00","date_gmt":"2022-08-08T13:10:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/?p=74837"},"modified":"2022-08-10T12:41:53","modified_gmt":"2022-08-10T16:41:53","slug":"anxiety-is-a-habit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/anxiety-is-a-habit\/","title":{"rendered":"Anxiety Is a Habit\u2014And It Needs to Be Broken"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

What is anxiety? Why is anxiety a habit?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In Unwinding Anxiety<\/em>, Dr. Judson Brewer explains that anxiety should be seen as a bad habit. This is because it creates a vicious cycle of behaviors that is difficult to break.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Continue reading to learn why anxiety is a habit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

The Habit of Anxiety<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Brewer\u2019s guidelines for overcoming anxiety<\/a> are based on his reasoning that anxiety is a habit. To understand how to break the cycle of anxiety<\/a>, we first have to understand how a habit loop<\/a> works and how anxiety in particular spins off into other habit loops.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What Exactly <\/strong>Is <\/em><\/strong>Anxiety?<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Brewer never formally defines anxiety\u2014in fact, he argues that it\u2019s hard to define and that you might not even realize you\u2019re experiencing it. That\u2019s because it can show up with explicit symptoms like worrying, a racing heart, jittery sensations, or panic attacks\u2014but it can also manifest as seemingly unrelated physical complaints like stomachaches or as behavioral issues like overworking. But still, it seems worth knowing exactly what we mean by anxiety before we set about trying to treat it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In Emotional Intelligence<\/em><\/a>, author and psychologist Daniel Goleman offers a more in-depth definition of anxiety that might help us here. According to Goleman, anxiety is chronic worrying<\/a>\u2014and while the point of worry is to help us anticipate problems, in anxiety, the worry spins out of control and we either worry about everything <\/em>or about nothing in particular. (As we\u2019ll see, this definition lines up nicely with Brewer\u2019s description of anxiety as a habit loop.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Goleman says that anxiety is generally either cognitive (consisting mostly of worrying thoughts) or somatic (consisting mostly of bodily symptoms). He says that chronic anxiety tends to be fear-based (meaning you fixate on a specific situation), obsession-based (meaning you fixate on preventing <\/em>certain situations), or panic-based (meaning you have panic attacks<\/a>\u2014episodes where you think you\u2019re dying and experience symptoms similar to those of a heart attack).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

How Habits Form<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

According to Brewer, our brains rely on a basic behavioral cycle to learn<\/strong>. The cycle consists of three parts:<\/p>\n\n\n\n