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Anxious brains redirect emotion regulation

nature.com

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Re: Anxious brains redirect emotion regulation

#101

Post by Cthulhu_ »

lynx23 wrote: post #58
jh00ker wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This book by David Burns [1] taught me that ACTION comes first, AND THEN motivation arrives. If you lay there and wait to be motivated, it will never happen. Specifically: 1. Action 2. Results 3. Motivation 4. Repeat! Anti-pattern: 1. Motivation 2. Action 3. Results 4. Does not work When I notice myself using self-talk like "ugh, I just don't feel like it" I thing of A-R-M and it helps. 1: https://amzn.to/3shnZlg

I am assuing this is in the context of some kind of mental health issue? Because this reads and feels backwards to me. Maybe it is a recipe for people without motivation, and that is fine. But I, for one, am mostly driven by motivation. I dont do things just because they are written on a list, or because someone told me it is supposedly good. I do things because I am intrinsically motivated to do so, or not. Just per…

It's not necessarily a "mental health issue", it's just fairly common procrastination.

Also, there's motivation and there's (self-) discipline. You get up in the morning or do things either because you feel like it, or because you have to. Of course it feels better if you feel like it (you're motivated), but if you're not motivated then discipline has to take over.

Re: Anxious brains redirect emotion regulation

#102

Post by anon373839 »

poszlem wrote: post #56
nottrobin wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How so?

Fear is an immediate, emotional response to a known or definite threat. Anxiety is a more prolonged emotion that arises from an anticipated or potential threat or a situation that's uncertain. Unlike fear, the source of anxiety might not be real or immediate.

Fear is a response to a perceived threat. For example, in a panic attack you fear dying, but you are in no more danger than anyone else.

Anxiety is a kind of fuzzy term because it encompasses an overall pattern and cycle as well as the associated feelings. But a useful distinction is that anxiety is driven by avoidance of fear of some uncertainty, and exposure and acclimation to that fear (without avoidance) is what extinguishes the anxiety.

Avoidance can take almost any form, but common examples include worry and rumination, procrastination, compulsive rituals like hand-washing or internet research, self-medicating, and superstitious behaviors. And of course, literal avoidance.

Re: Anxious brains redirect emotion regulation

#103

Post by kdmccormick »

Aeglaecia wrote: post #96
psychphysic wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The paper suggests rTMS to disrupt the disruptive activities. The emotional challenge in this study was that you had a joystick and sometimes you pulled that joystick towards you when you saw an unhappy face. That's what was paralysing emotional challenge was for highly anxious people. Meaning it's unlikely their PFl could have any control in real life scenarios. It's important to note that in both anxious and non-an…

[flagged]

> institutionalized gaslighting

Quite an accusation. Have you done CBT?

Re: Anxious brains redirect emotion regulation

#104

Post by hoseja »

anon373839 wrote: post #97
otikik wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> doing things you are fearing to do so that you no longer fear doing it. Careful with that assumption. I can see it completely backfiring. Doing the thing repeatedly can end up increasing the anxiety. If this route is taken, then "the thing" must be introduced very gradually and from a place of security. As an example, for an arachnophobe, it would starting with something like "draw a dot. Draw a line coming out of…

This isn’t quite accurate. Graded exposure can be a more manageable way to get to the end result (fear extinction), but reminding yourself that the threat isn’t real is a fear-neutralizing behavior that will limit the effectiveness of the treatment. The point of exposure therapy is to feel the fear and to do nothing about it other than let the feeling (eventually) climax and dissipate. (In fact, “lean in harder” can…

Only I will remain.

Re: Anxious brains redirect emotion regulation

#105

Post by mindwok »

Cthulhu_ wrote: post #98
mindwok wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As an anxious person with people-pleasing tendencies, something I've been trying to focus on is reframing the situation and removing fear entirely. For me, fundamentally the fear of social interactions comes from the fear I'm going to do something wrong, that person will react badly, and I'll feel bad about myself. I've realised this entire calculus is broken, because you feel good or bad based on people's reactions…

But your actions may have good intentions but still end up getting a bad reaction. Think codependency; you may have good intentions dealing with the other person's bad behaviour, but you're still encouraging the bad behaviour that way, and you may still resent your own actions despite your good intentions.

That's the idea though, if your intentions are sound but you're not getting the reactions you expect, then you need to re-evaluate how you're acting. The important part is not to beat yourself up about it - bad reactions are just a way for you to learn and correct your actions, fundamentally you are still the person you think you think you are.

Re: Anxious brains redirect emotion regulation

#106

Post by fellowmartian »

Aeglaecia wrote: post #96
psychphysic wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The paper suggests rTMS to disrupt the disruptive activities. The emotional challenge in this study was that you had a joystick and sometimes you pulled that joystick towards you when you saw an unhappy face. That's what was paralysing emotional challenge was for highly anxious people. Meaning it's unlikely their PFl could have any control in real life scenarios. It's important to note that in both anxious and non-an…

[flagged]

I think it’s the other way around, CBT and SSRIs is not the last resort but the first. These techniques can help acquire the basic life skills of operating in anxious situations, but they’re a prosthesis.

You can use this prosthesis to tackle the underlying deeper issues.

But I do agree reliance on CBT and SSRIs as the be-all and end-all of therapy is bad and inhumane. They’re the most commodifiable techniques, but they’re Pavlovian and reduce human beings to machines you can train through a chat bot (really?).

Re: Anxious brains redirect emotion regulation

#107

Post by Aurornis »

riazrizvi wrote: post #76

So, heightened anxiety triggers alternate emotional regulation, with traits like pro-avoidance behavior. To me this is not necessarily dysfunctional. It may also go hand-in-hand with motivating heightened deliberation. I can see how one can fall into regressive patterns like distracting ourselves away from critical path actions, especially if a particular person only uses one of two strategies, 1) try going on as bef…

> To me this is not necessarily dysfunctional.

If it wasn’t dysfunctional, it wouldn’t be a diagnosed with mental health condition to begin with.

I think this is a concept that is getting lost in mainstream mental health discourse: There is a big difference between anxiety the emotion and anxiety the mental health disorder. Similar story for depression and concentration struggles.

It’s normal to feel anxious at times. It’s not healthy when anxiety becomes so dominant as to interfere with normal activities of life, manifesting as the type of pervasive avoidance behavior described in this study.

This is becoming a huge problem among the young people I’ve mentored recently; They will go through phases where they become convinced, often by TikTok or Reddit, that they have ADHD, anxiety, and/or depression because they aren’t perfect robots who do marathon study sessions with a smile every day. I feel like I’m always explaining to them that it’s normal and healthy to feel some discomfort as they learn and grow. It’s not reasonable to expect everything in life to come easy. Of course, there are students who struggle with mental health issues as well, but the difference between someone struggling with lifelong ADHD and someone who just learned about ADHD through a serious of TikToks a few weeks ago and now thinks they have it is obvious when you’ve been working with them both for a long time.

> I take a more neutral approach on the finding and don’t yet assume this is something that is best medicated out of.

The study doesn’t say that this is “best medicated out of”. It specifically highlights exposure therapy as being effective in normalizing this in individuals who respond to it:

> and exposure therapy has been shown to restore frontopolar function in those PTSD patients that benefit from treatment.

I think this is another issue permeating pop culture discussion of mental health issues: The assumption that strong medications are the default response. Every medical professional I know prefers lifestyle interventions and therapy modalities to prescribing medications, but patients often arrive convinced that they need medication. If the provider recommends therapy or lifestyle interventions they often get angry that at the perception that the provider is being dismissive or not taking their problem seriously.

Re: Anxious brains redirect emotion regulation

#108

Post by Cthulhu_ »

DoreenMichele wrote: post #45

If you suffer from serious anxiety, I highly recommend you work on any health issues you have. Low blood sugar in particular is known to promote anxiety by increasing the amount of adrenaline in your system. I used to suffer a lot of anxiety. Getting physically healthier helped mitigate that enormously. Proviso: n=1, "anecdata" and the usual dismissals that random internet strangers desperately try to apply as if I s…

Eat regularly, do physical exercise, go to bed at the same time, etc etc. All good advice of course, but when you're in that situation they're not easy. It takes self-discipline.

Re: Anxious brains redirect emotion regulation

#109

Post by ajani »

otikik wrote: post #70
ajani wrote: post #10

This is just tedious. The electro-chemical map of the brain that is built and used to study it, is so primitive. Almost certainly, "the brain" tunes itself to its environment and inner states from a preformed inner structure through evolution. A lot of what is in the brain, is not actually to be found in the brain, or by studying it materially. The "formwork" that formed it, is lost in evolutionary time. Unfortunatel…

The brain is absolutely physical. > A lot of what is in the brain, is not actually to be found in the brain, or by studying it materially. You are talking about consciousness (and perhaps the non-conscious processing that the brain does as well). That is indeed a non-physical phenomenon, but it still has physical underpinnings. > The "formwork" that formed it, is lost in evolutionary time. You can't lose something th…

"The brain" is made up of matter, yes.

"The brain" is not physical like columns or iron. Those are simple objects. The kind physics likes to deal with. Things that are easily measured to describe its properties quantitatively and the relations of these properties as a placeholder for qualitative aspects (equations). Physics can't deal with the brain. No equation can be written.

If a bud's seeds were to sprout in place, instead of in the ground, you would have every single ancestor plant in a very long chain. Every brain is the result of this kind of structure. A mother buds and sprouts a new human. If the umbilical cords remain attached, we have a very similar kind of long chain of human brains. Not like any other physical object.

Physics is inadequate at studying "the brain". So, "the brain" is not a physical object.

Re: Anxious brains redirect emotion regulation

#110

Post by fellowmartian »

psychphysic wrote: post #84
riazrizvi wrote: post #76

So, heightened anxiety triggers alternate emotional regulation, with traits like pro-avoidance behavior. To me this is not necessarily dysfunctional. It may also go hand-in-hand with motivating heightened deliberation. I can see how one can fall into regressive patterns like distracting ourselves away from critical path actions, especially if a particular person only uses one of two strategies, 1) try going on as bef…

The paper suggests rTMS to disrupt the disruptive activities. The emotional challenge in this study was that you had a joystick and sometimes you pulled that joystick towards you when you saw an unhappy face. That's what was paralysing emotional challenge was for highly anxious people. Meaning it's unlikely their PFl could have any control in real life scenarios. It's important to note that in both anxious and non-an…

One potential problem with this approach is that a person might not actually fear driving a car but dying in general, and this fear spills over into all parts of life. I don’t think you can CBT your way out of it.
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