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Zusammenfassung von Anxious

Name: Anxious
Rating: 4.3 (240 reviews)
Author: Joseph Ledoux

Joseph Ledoux

Using the Brain to Understand and Treat Fear and Anxiety

4.3 (240 Bewertungen)

27 Min.

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The Brain Trauma & Healing Mental Health

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What’s in it for me? Learn what causes anxiety – and how to regulate it.

Many of us experience some level of anxiety in our everyday lives. Whether it’s due to worrying about rent or being stressed in social situations, feeling anxious is very common. It’s especially normal in the turbulent times we live in.

But, sometimes, anxiety starts to dominate our lives and restrict what we do. It’s at this stage that people are diagnosed with having an anxiety disorder. It is one of the most common mental health concerns in America – today, 40 million people live with this diagnosis. But what does it mean to have a disordered level of anxiety? And how do anxiety disorders develop?

These blinks take a deep dive into those questions and examine the wealth of treatment options that have emerged. Drawing on psychoanalytic traditions, cognitive behavioral therapy, and cutting-edge interventions in the field of neuroscience, they show how you can develop strategies to regulate anxiety.

In these blinks, you’ll learn

how our brains try to protect us from dangerous threats;
why anxiety used to be seen as a positive emotion; and
how erasing some of our memories could cure anxiety.

Anxiety was once seen as an essential part of being human.

With headlines blaring record numbers of anxiety disorders, it may seem like anxiety is something unique to our frenetic modern age. But, actually, the concept has been around for centuries.

The word originates from the ancient Greek word angh, meaning “burdened” or “troubled.” There are references to it throughout the New Testament, which describes anxious sinners waiting for God's wrath to rain upon them. In 1844, Danish theologian Søren Kierkegaard published The Concept of Anxiety, where he argued that anxiety is a consequence of the human capacity to make decisions; it shows we are aware of the power and responsibility of free choice.

The key message here is: Anxiety was once seen as an essential part of being human.

This view of anxiety as a normal, and even necessary, emotion was very influential. It inspired a wealth of theory by existentialist philosophers like Martin Heidegger and Jean-Paul Sartre. But then, in the early twentieth century, Sigmund Freud presented a very different view of anxiety.

Freud argued that anxiety is central to a host of psychopathological disorders, and is a sign that we have been trying to repress trauma and unpleasant memories. Because we’re not actively dealing with these issues, they become toxic and, as a result, make us neurotically anxious. Freud's psychoanalytic methods involved trying to find the underlying cause of the anxiety. He believed that if the repressed trauma were dealt with, then the anxiety would disappear. Freud’s theory fundamentally changed how we perceive anxiety. It went from being seen as a normal part of being human to becoming a sign that something was wrong and needed to be fixed.

Freud’s idea of anxiety became especially popular after World War Two. In 1947, poet W. H. Auden published his famous book The Age of Anxiety, coining a catchphrase of the same name; it has been used liberally by every generation since. Filmmakers like Alfred Hitchcock and Woody Allen started featuring anxious characters in their films, while The Rolling Stones started writing songs about housewives using Valium.

Today, a simple Google search for “anxiety” will yield over 42 million hits. So, clearly, anxiety disorders are something we talk about a lot. But there is still tons of confusion about what it actually means to be anxious. In the next blink, we'll examine what distinguishes an anxiety disorder from everyday worries.

The criteria for diagnosing anxiety disorders are constantly changing.

At what point does a “normal” amount of anxiety cross over into a disorder?

The power to diagnose an anxiety disorder usually lies with a psychologist or psychiatrist. To understand how they make those decisions, we need to take a look at the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM). The DSM was released by the American Psychiatric Association in the mid-twentieth century and is now the leading guide used to classify psychiatric disorders.

We all have well-developed survival instincts to counter threats.

Wild animals are constantly on the lookout for threats. They have to be. Just a simple journey to forage for food can be fatal if they encounter a predator.

In the early twentieth century, physiologist Walter Cannon developed the famous “fight or flight” theory. The theory outlined the survival mechanisms animals employ when faced with a threat. If animals are confronted by a predator or some other danger, they will either freeze and play dead, run away, or fight back.

Having an anxiety disorder puts you on high alert for potential threats.

Imagine how terrifying it would be to walk to the corner store if you felt like each step you took could activate a hidden land mine. Other people just see a peaceful street, while you see danger at every turn.

People who have anxiety disorders are hypervigilant to possible threats. With a specific phobia, like arachnophobia, this vigilance is directed toward a particular object – a person might interpret everything they see or hear as being a spider. And social anxiety disorders put people on high alert in social settings, meaning a fun gathering could instead feel like a minefield of potential humiliations.

Fear and anxiety are feelings that humans process consciously.

Neuroscientists have learned a lot of what they know about human brains from experiments with animals. By observing how animals like rats respond to threats, they've been able to glean important insights about how human survival systems work.

In scientific literature, animals who respond to a threat by freezing or attacking have been described as displaying “fear responses.” That might lead us to conclude that animals feel fear just as humans do. But this is a misconception; there is a crucial difference between having a defensive, survival response in the face of attack and consciously feeling fear.

Cognitive-behavioral therapeutic approaches are effective in treating anxiety.

We’re all familiar with the scene of the therapist taking notes and stroking his beard while his client lies on a couch talking about her childhood.

These typical scenes are inspired by Freud-era psychoanalysis. But although Freud was one of the first to introduce the concept of anxiety to psychology, current therapeutic approaches are very different. Freud used talk therapy to get to the root of psychological problems rooted in a patient’s past. Today, most therapeutic treatments for anxiety are based on cognitive-behavioral approaches, which are more concerned with how people behave in the present. They explore the symptoms, rather than the cause.

Exposure therapy is remarkably effective, but it has limitations.

Exposure therapy has proven to have a 70 percent rate of effectiveness. But there are some shortcomings.

For one, the extinction of negative associations is very context-specific; something you learn in the therapist's office may not carry over to the real world. You may have virtually practiced entering an elevator from the comfort of a couch, but still be scared of a physical elevator you encounter in real life.

Memories can be retrieved and updated with new information.

In the cult film Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, a couple decide to erase each other from their memories after a painful breakup. The rest of the film is spent trying to retrieve those memories. The moral of the story is that while erasing painful memories might bring relief, it also involves losing vital parts of ourselves.

The idea of erasing memories makes people so uncomfortable that it's considered almost taboo as a psychological treatment. In fact, when the author and his colleagues published a paper showing that they'd identified a way to erase traumatic memories in rats, it caused an uproar.

Active coping strategies can help you to regulate your anxiety.

Millions of people live with anxiety disorders. They lead rich, full, adventurous lives in spite – or maybe because – of all the uncomfortable feelings that anxiety can bring. Research by George Bonanno has shown that people who are able to draw on a range of active coping strategies are very resilient in the face of anxiety.

For example, a socially anxious person may cope with their discomfort at a party by taking lots of bathroom breaks, or by stepping out to make a phone call. This may seem like avoidant behavior, which we've defined as being negative. But proactive avoidance can be a useful coping strategy that allows people time to regroup and come back to the party without getting too overwhelmed.

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Worum geht es in Anxious?

Anxious (2015) is an in-depth study of anxiety disorders. It explores how anxiety is diagnosed and examines how our in-built survival mechanisms can sabotage us by making us perceive danger where none exists. Most importantly, it provides an overview of the most innovative treatment options available – from reprogramming our memories to practicing meditation.

Bestes Zitat aus Anxious

We run into trouble when we label nonconscious processes with words about conscious feelings.

—Joseph Ledoux

Wer Anxious lesen sollte

Anyone living with anxiety who wants to understand more about it
Teachers and caregivers who want to support the young people in their care
Psychology buffs who want to better understand this pervasive disorder

Über den Autor

Joseph LeDoux is the Henry and Lucy Moses Professor of Science at New York University. He also directs the Emotional Brain Institute at New York University and the Nathan Kline Institute. His previous books include Synaptic Self and The Emotional Brain.

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