{"id":74839,"date":"2022-08-06T15:32:00","date_gmt":"2022-08-06T19:32:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/?p=74839"},"modified":"2022-08-10T12:41:57","modified_gmt":"2022-08-10T16:41:57","slug":"how-do-you-get-anxiety","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/how-do-you-get-anxiety\/","title":{"rendered":"How Do You Get Anxiety? Through a Habit Loop"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

How do you get anxiety? How does anxiety become a habit?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Unwinding Anxiety<\/em> by Dr. Judson Brewer suggests anxiety is a habit<\/a> loop. To understand how to break the cycle of anxiety<\/a>, you first have to understand how anxiety works as a habit loop<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Let’s look at how anxiety forms as a habit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

How Anxiety Becomes a Habit<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

How do you get anxiety? Brewer says that whereas all organisms exhibit some form of the above behavioral cycle, the human brain has special adaptations that allow for more advanced learning techniques<\/a>. In particular, the prefrontal cortex<\/a> (PFC) allows us to generalize and make predictions<\/strong> about future situations based on stimuli we\u2019ve already encountered. This allows us to plan for future<\/a> dangers\u2014a useful survival tool indeed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Unfortunately, he says, the PFC keeps doing its job whether or not it has the information it needs. When we feel fear but lack adequate (or accurate) information, we end up with anxiety<\/strong>. In other words, anxiety is what happens when the PFC tries to plan ahead for danger, but in the absence of information, it starts making things up (\u201cWhat if this? What about that?\u201d).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Brewer also says that having too much information is just as bad as not having enough. As a result, the contemporary world has made it even easier to be anxious: With the internet at our fingertips, we easily get overwhelmed by the high volume (and often low quality) of information, which only makes anxiety worse\u2014when the PFC has too much information to deal with, it focuses on the scariest and most sensational details<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To see how anxiety works in practice, here\u2019s a simple example of how the basic survival behavior loop is supposed <\/em>to work:<\/p>\n\n\n\n