Anxiety is in your body, not your mind

Descartes and his duality strike again.

I wish there were a little more examples of how this methodology deals with the stress/anxiety response.

The article seems to spend more time talking about why it thinks "thinking brain" CBT/talk therapy doesn't work rather than "surival brain" techniques which do work. It also brings up "mindfulness" as one solution, which I consider almost analogous to CBT, or at least a close relative.

It also seems counter-productive (to me) that the solution for one subject was to "strike out and defend himself within the safety of a therapy session". What is that person supposed to do in the moment? Ball up their anxiety and wait for therapy?

I noticed as young adult that I didn’t really worry or consciously stress, but my body had somewhat predictable reactions to situations that I would realize, in hindsight, were highly stressful. Those physical reactions sucked, and as they got worse over time, it really concerned me.

At some point I was encouraged to go to CBT, which I did, but honestly it made things worse. I became hyper aware of how anxious I was at any moment, and the more I noticed the more it worried me.

Years later I tried mindfulness meditation and found that it helped. But also, I finally hit a kind of turning point where I just realized that there was nothing I could really do about anxiety or the physical symptoms that came along with it. I decided to mostly try to quit noticing and thinking about it. And that really helped.

I still feel stress and anxiety symptoms sometimes. They still suck. My conscious mind is still the last to recognize what’s going on. But, overall, I feel I can handle a lot more stress now than I could ten years ago without it ruining my quality of life, and more importantly I can recognize the stress, not worry too much about it so I can get through it, and then rest and recuperate (as soon as possible) and recover much quicker than when I was younger.

I’ve concluded that the best advice is to learn not to worry about things. Unfortunately that’s easier said than done, and I’m not sure I have any advice on how to learn to do that :/

One other thing to consider, that I rarely hear anyone talk about, is that anxiety can sometimes be a symptom of an underlying physiological condition or disease. For example, hypoglycemia-related anxiety is a common complaint.

> Anxiety Is in Your Body, Not Your Mind

Yes, and, your mind is in your body, not just your brain.

That's why human consciousness is different to any common conception of computer consciousness. The difference between computers and humans is that human thoughts are driven by the needs of the body - to respirate, to eat, to defecate, to reproduce, to sleep, and to avoid being predated.