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Anxious brains redirect emotion regulation

nature.com

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Re: Anxious brains redirect emotion regulation

#141

Post by BoxFour »

DrThunder wrote: post #134
BoxFour wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 n…

> there is no requirement for therapy

As I mentioned before, reputable establishments typically mandate concurrent therapy, particularly when dealing with conditions like depression and anxiety. Your therapist and psychiatrist will often work together and share notes to better treat you. Reputable psychiatrists will often ask if you want to try therapy alone first: The good ones have no lack of patients, so it’s not in their interest to even take you on immediately especially if you’re not committed to getting better through therapeutic means.

Sure: Just as you can unquestionably locate primary care physicians who readily prescribe large quantities of Vicodin, naturally, you can also come across psychiatrists and PCPs who readily prescribe SSRIs without much supervision.

Re: Anxious brains redirect emotion regulation

#142

Post by dboreham »

My understanding of this is illuminated by (stay with me here...) blockchains.

Most blockchains use a kind of time-traveling/holographic data structure where a given tree root can be used to lookup state values in a big trie, for some block in the past. Different root, potentially different value for the state you're interested in.

The brain seems to be operating a similar data structure where the answer to your query depends on some sort of "neural net root" value. This value seems to come from primitive structures (HPA?) and depends on basic things like fight/flight anxious/relaxed.

The upshot is that people can believe/think/know different things depending on their current emotional state.

Re: Anxious brains redirect emotion regulation

#143

Post by psychphysic »

fellowmartian wrote: post #110
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…

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.

I think that's just the type of problem CBT practitioners love to work on.

Re: Anxious brains redirect emotion regulation

#144

Post by lolinder »

voisin wrote: post #8
NayamAmarshe wrote: post #5

It's always fear, isn't it? We're afraid to approach people, afraid to ask for help, afraid that someone might react in the worst possible way or something really bad might happen. But obviously, it never happens the way we imagine. Reality is 100% of the time, different from our imagination and yet, many of us still fail to remember that. Every good opportunity that I ever got, was from me coming out of my comfort z…

“I've lived through some terrible things in my life, some of which actually happened.” - Mark Twain

This was first attributed to Mark Twain in a Singapore newspaper 13 years after his death, so was probably not actually said by him. It looks like it's just one of those things people say:

https://quoteinvestigator.com/2013/10/04/never-happened/

Re: Anxious brains redirect emotion regulation

#145

Post by dboreham »

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…

Don't understand the downvotes because I get exactly what you're saying -- it's like poking around in the data for an LLM and expecting to find a written language algorithm. Taking things further -- I think it's unlikely that much of the brain's operating software came via DNA. It's mostly machine learned from the environment and other humans. We call this child development.

Re: Anxious brains redirect emotion regulation

#146

Post by riazrizvi »

petesergeant wrote: post #80

If you suffer from anxiety, and haven't tried any of the following yet, worth giving a go: escitalopram (with medical supervision, also 10mg did nothing for me, 20mg was life changing), ingesting silexan / lavendar oil, L-Theanine with your coffee, less coffee, less alcohol, propanalol (see a dr) instead of benzos for break-through anxiety, ashwagandha.

I personally have tried and agree with L-Theanine to reduce coffee anxiety without killing its alertness power, and anxiety certainly spikes a day after a night out drinking. But I think we are missing here the most important levers; 1) a steady regimen of well-scheduled exercises and injury-preventing recovery work, 2) a well-scheduled nutritionally balanced diet free of inflammatory products. Julia Ross’s The Mood Cure goes into specifics for the latter, for example sufficient L-Tryptophan is important for a feeling of well-being. I think scheduling is key because stress increases with energy unpredictability.

Re: Anxious brains redirect emotion regulation

#147

Post by tacker2000 »

Aurornis wrote: post #107
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 time…

I also see that some of these types of people you mention wear this (imagined or not) ADHD “status” as some kind of badge of honor, so that they may feel superior to or more special than “normal” people. Weird times.

Re: Anxious brains redirect emotion regulation

#148

Post by isykt »

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…

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

Is it possible for an individual to do ET, or indeed other therapy in combination with medication, to study the change in this response? I tend to agree that we (collectively) should not look at these results and immediately look for a drug to change it; after all, that’s how we arrive at a popular culture that thinks depression is a chemical imbalance (it’s not), so it would be nice to be able to use these findings in conjunction with therapies that focus on a person’s ability to change their own mind.

Re: Anxious brains redirect emotion regulation

#149

Post by 121789 »

Aeolun wrote: post #136
kdmccormick wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 :)

No not really. Gaslighting has an intent to deceive someone to pull them away from reality. CBT starts with the assumption by both people that the patient is away from reality and gives them tools to bring them closer. Gaslighting is like trying to convince a healthy person they’re fat (and giving them an eating disorder in the process) while CBT is like giving a fat person practices to manage appetite.

Re: Anxious brains redirect emotion regulation

#150

Post by isykt »

mindwok wrote: post #25
NayamAmarshe wrote: post #5

It's always fear, isn't it? We're afraid to approach people, afraid to ask for help, afraid that someone might react in the worst possible way or something really bad might happen. But obviously, it never happens the way we imagine. Reality is 100% of the time, different from our imagination and yet, many of us still fail to remember that. Every good opportunity that I ever got, was from me coming out of my comfort z…

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…

>I've realised this entire calculus is broken, because you feel good or bad based on people's reactions which is something you cannot control.

Yes. A thousand times this. It has taken me years to create a situational intuition around this. Another thing that I have had to learn is that people aren’t thinking about you nearly as much as you think they are. Like, take whatever amount of time that you think someone is thinking about you in any social situation, and divide that by 10. That’s still more than they are thinking about you.

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