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Anxious brains redirect emotion regulation

nature.com

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Re: Anxious brains redirect emotion regulation

#131

Post by mindwok »

lazide wrote: post #124
mindwok wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I see your point but I’d argue that if you feel bad about this it means your core value is actually financial stability over sticking to your principles at any cost, and in that case your actions and intentions didn’t align with what you truly value.

Easy to say when you aren’t homeless or at risk of being made homeless. For some folks, unfortunately, lying at times is a necessary survival mechanism.

I'm not disagreeing with you at all. If you value financial stability over taking a stand about things you might disagree with, then lying for survival is aligned with your values. Using the ideas I described above, this would be completely acceptable for the person doing that.

Re: Anxious brains redirect emotion regulation

#132

Post by yasman »

chrbr wrote: post #128
smeej wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interestingly, Internal Family Systems therapy, which applies techniques from family systems therapy to the internal world, treats this as a "both-and." You do have a core Self, but one of the primary things it does is lead and direct and serve as the primary attachment figure for all the other parts of you, which are conceptualized as individual, separate characters with their own history, needs, desires, wounds, an…

Is there a commonly-recommended introductory text for IFS? I've always found it interesting, and it resonates with me, given my internal monologue(s).

No Bad Parts - Richard Schwartz

Re: Anxious brains redirect emotion regulation

#133

Post by Aeolun »

yard2010 wrote: post #113
Aeglaecia wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

CBT is the gold standard solution for this kind of problems[0]. [0] - https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5797481/

It’s not really different from asking people to remember how things didn’t go wrong in earlier situations though. It’s weird how giving it a specific name and repeating it often enough in a variety of different ways makes it actually work.

Re: Anxious brains redirect emotion regulation

#134

Post by DrThunder »

BoxFour wrote: post #115
Aurornis wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 time…

> The assumption that strong medications are the default response. Every medical professional I know prefers lifestyle interventions and therapy modalities to prescribing medications Moreover, these two aspects nearly always coincide: Every credible institution will require you to engage in therapy in tandem with commencing medication. Often, once your condition improves, the discourse shifts towards the possibility…

This is the wrong approach imo. Therapy, lifestyle changes, learning to cope with it without meds should always be the first line treatment. More and more, you see the approach of just handing out meds like candy with a small mention that you should also seek therapy AFTER you get the meds. You can go to a general doctor and they'll write you up a prescription for an SSRI with hardly and convincing at all, there is no requirement for therapy so I'm not sure where you're getting that from.

The side effects of meds for anxiety issues are far too downplayed imo. Benzos, ssri's etc. all have very detrimental side effects and are very difficult to get off of.

Re: Anxious brains redirect emotion regulation

#136

Post by Aeolun »

kdmccormick wrote: post #103
Aeglaecia wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

> institutionalized gaslighting Quite an accusation. Have you done CBT?

I can sort of see how you get there?

“I know you are afraid of walking through a crowd of people, but think of how many people do that every day. Think of all those times when you were 15 when you did it without any problem.”

E.g. your problem isn’t real, it’s all in your mind. Which of course it is, that’s kind of the point :)

Re: Anxious brains redirect emotion regulation

#137

Post by otikik »

ajani wrote: post #109
otikik wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 plac…

> Physics can't deal with the brain. No equation can be written.

There are many many many physics simulations out there that cannot be "written with an equation". Climate Modelling, for example. You cannot write a single equation to model all that. You need a big complex piece of software, made of many equations, a lot of hardware, and a lot of processing time. Any of those was simply inconceivable mere decades ago.

It's possible that it's as you say, and the brain is inscrutable if we attack the problem from the physics point of view alone.

I think that you may be right. With what we have now. But decades from now? I'm not so sure.

Re: Anxious brains redirect emotion regulation

#138

Post by Aeolun »

otikik wrote: post #64
impulser_ wrote: post #13

So from my understanding. Anxious people are so anxious that they overload the part of the brain that typical deals with anxiety so the brain routes it to another part of the brain to deal with it and that part of the brain isn't what you want dealing with it so it cause problems. So the key is too limit overloading the part of the brain that deals with anxiety, which probably means doing things you are fearing to do…

> 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…

Actually seeing a tarantula made them a lot less scary. Hard to be afraid of something so fluffy.

Re: Anxious brains redirect emotion regulation

#139

Post by DrThunder »

bluepizza wrote: post #71
impulser_ wrote: post #13

So from my understanding. Anxious people are so anxious that they overload the part of the brain that typical deals with anxiety so the brain routes it to another part of the brain to deal with it and that part of the brain isn't what you want dealing with it so it cause problems. So the key is too limit overloading the part of the brain that deals with anxiety, which probably means doing things you are fearing to do…

As a life long anxiety sufferer, I identify with your interpretation. My anxiety devolves into panic attacks if I try to deal with it consciously - self talk, rumination, avoidance. But it goes into a dormant state when I don't engage with it consciously and just let it be.

Yeah I had a couple rough years with panic attacks, high anxiety state (always been anxious but not to that level). What you start to realize is that you are actually scared of the anxiety itself, not the situations so much. So, you sort of get caught in loop of being scared of your own emotions. The treatment is simple, but takes work and a lot of habit forming through time... but essentially you just stop thinking of the anxiety as an emotion you shouldn't have or should fear.

Like you said, just let it be and stop caring about it. Anxiety can be a good thing, it's a normal emotion. Any attempt to stop it or control it will end in disaster. Let your body/mind do it's thing. Emotions are fleeting and they will always come and go. Over time you sort "re-wire" your brain to stop panicking every-time it feels a fleeting anxious feeling.

Re: Anxious brains redirect emotion regulation

#140

Post by DoreenMichele »

Cthulhu_ wrote: post #108
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.

Also: Not necessarily the best means to work on your health. Sometimes you need dietary changes or to ferret out an unrecognized allergy -- allergy being another thing that promotes adrenaline -- and/or other changes to figure out what went wrong and how to walk it back.
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