The science of anxiety

Anxiety follows the same neural pathways as learning.

If you almost got hit by a car at the intersection of 10th St. and Lincoln Ave, the next time you approach that intersection you'll feel a dose of fear. Maybe this intersection is coming off a freeway or has a stop sign obfuscated by trees so people often drive through it without looking for pedestrians. This is your brain's way of teaching you "there is danger here".

When our ancestors entered dark caves and saw their friends get mauled by a nesting bear, they developed a fear response to dark caves.

This is our sympathetic nervous system (SNS) firing. The physical manifestations of SNS firing because of a fear response include:

• abdominal pain

• dyspepsia (indigestion)

• chest pain

• fatigue

• dizziness

• insomnia

• headaches

Source: Psychiatric and Somatic Markers of Anxiety: Identification and Pharmacologic Treatment

Read more about SNS: Neuroanatomy, Sympathetic Nervous System

Fear is our most powerful biological learning tool. Anxiety, at its core, is fear turned into habitual worry.

Scientifically speaking, fear is the most painful experience for our brains. Feeling a lack of control is also very painful. In order to feel less pain, our brains aim to get some control over the fear. This "control" manifests as "worry". If we are thinking about something, then we have some control over it and can prepare for a bad outcome. This protects us.

Worrying is also painful, but it's less painful because it gives us some control. Our brains like to control our environment.

When does worrying turn into anxiety? When it becomes habitual.

When you wake up in the morning and experience racing thoughts, you're experiencing fear. If you don't explicitly acknowledge and accept that "I am afraid of ____ right now", then you're setting yourself up for an anxiety response.

Anxiety happens when you recycle "worry".

Instead of accepting and welcoming the fact that you're experiencing fear, you unknowingly suppress that emotion and bandaid it with worry. The fear didn't go away though. You might not even know what you're actually afraid of. You just slap worry-bandaids over it and those bandaids itch at your consciousness. It's like those cheap rigid plastic bandaids that don't stay on at all. They blind you to the real issue that you need to address and they just cause their own discomfort.

Worrying without addressing the underlying fear is a net loss. The fear will persist and the worry doesn't actually address it.

Congrats, you have chronic anxiety.

A note on psych drugs

Anti-anxiety drugs are most often in the "benzo-" chemical group. Benzo's decrease anxiety but in doing so they also inhibit your learning pathways. You really can't have one without the other. Taking psych drugs isn't bad, sometimes they are the only viable path, but you should know the price they come at and proceed with extreme caution.

Other types of drugs include: buspirone, TCAs, MAOIs, and SSRIs.

More info about drug types in the section titled: Traditional Anxiolytic Agents.