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Welcome to Episode 157 of the Non-Anxious Leader Podcast. Before we get into today's episode, I want to remind you that there is still time to qualify for the Live Q and A that takes place on Wednesday, January 19 at 01:00 p.m.. Eastern. This is your chance to ask questions about family systems theory, habit formation, productivity, anything that you want to ask about how to grow as a non-anxious leader, you'll have an opportunity to submit your questions in advance and the session will be recorded. If you can't make it live.

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The only way to qualify is to refer somebody to my email list. And to do that, you need to be a subscriber yourself. So if you are already a subscriber, you get your own link in the two for Tuesday emails in the blog post I send out. And if you're not go to thenonanxiousleader.com and subscribe to my list, the next email that comes out, you will get your own link. You refer somebody, they sign up and you qualify for the Live Q and A on January 19.

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Okay, that's enough. Shameless self promotion without further Ado. Here is Episode 157, Your Brain on Anxiety. In today's episode, I'm going to share concepts from the book Unwinding Anxiety: New Science Shows How to Break the Cycle of Worry and Fear to Heal Your Mind by Judson Brewer, MD, PhD. Dr. Brewer is an internationally renowned addiction psychiatrist and neuroscientist, and he is an associate professor at the School of Public Health and Medical School at Brown University. I will say at the outset that I did not read the book, but I read a summary of the book.

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I recently subscribed to a service that provides book summaries for nonfiction books, and I've been reading about one a night. I have a coaching client who says that most nonfiction books can be condensed down to just a few pages with the main concepts, and this is definitely one way to do it. I don't mean to say you shouldn't read books, but this is a way to access a lot of information in a shorter period of time. Regardless, this book got my attention because of its title.

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Anything with anxiety in the title is going to cause my ears to perk up, and I would say that if you find today's concepts helpful, you might want to consider reading the book itself. I was mainly looking for the conceptual view of what the author was trying to say. So that's what I'm sharing with you today, especially as it relates to family systems theory. I talk a lot about the Amygdala Hijack. This is when we encounter a perceived threat, and our brain bypasses our prefrontal cortex and immediately goes to the amygdala, a primitive part of our brain.

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This is so we can automatically respond with a fight, flight or freeze response to protect us. If we had to think about it, we would not be able to respond as quickly. This is an evolutionary development in our brain that helped our species survive. According to Dr. Brewer, anxiety occurs when the prefrontal cortex doesn't have enough information to predict what will happen. The interesting part about this is that it comes from the primitive part of the brain, but it has no evolutionary function. Anxiety is a response to an uncertain future.

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It is an automatic response generated by the primitive part of the brain, but the imagined uncertainty or even threats are not necessarily going to come true. Fear, which also occurs in the primitive part of the brain, does have an evolutionary purpose because it's designed to keep us safe from actual threats. But there's a fine line between anxiety and fear, and the biggest difference is that fear is designed to occur in the present, whereas anxiety focuses on the future. As Seth Godin says, anxiety is experiencing failure in advance.

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That's not to say that in the present we might not experience perceived threats, but oftentimes they are not real threats, but they still kick in that automatic response. So while anxiety might be connected with fear, it is more likely to be connected with worry, which is more future oriented. We know from studies that 85% or more of the things that we worry about never transpire. And what Judson Brewer contends is that anxiety and worry are connected. He maintains that worry is actually generated when we are feeling anxious, and that is because it becomes an antidote to anxiety.

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That is, when we are feeling anxious, we immediately start worrying, and worrying makes us feel better about it because we think we are doing something. Worry gives us temporary relief from anxiety, but it is also addictive. What this means is that worry and anxiety becomes self reinforcing. They become a habit forming loop that kicks in any time we are dealing with an uncertain future. Worry and anxiety become an addiction in the same way that any other addiction might grab ahold of us. To prove his point, Brewer notes that the part of the brain that kicks in when we are on autopilot is the so called default mode network, or DMN.

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The DMN engages when we're daydreaming or worrying. It also kicks in when we engage in what is called perseverance thinking, which is having obsessive, disturbing thoughts. This activates a part of the DMN, called the posterior cingulate cortex, or PCC, which is also the part of the DMN that is activated when we are craving an addiction. What does all that mean? Well, it basically means that the anxiety worry habit loop is an addiction and functions in the same way in our brain. I think it's also important to note that reactivity or adaptivity are responses that also become habit forming.

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They get developed in the primitive part of our brain, which forms habits, which is why it is difficult to self regulate, which is why we automatically respond to a perceived threat. So whether you are in an interaction with someone else or you are ruminating and worrying, understanding that there is a connection between uncertainty, anxiety, and worry that can become a habit in its own right is the first step to managing it. Of course, there are forms of clinical anxiety that cannot be managed in this way.

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But Brewer himself suffered from anxiety, and so this book, in some ways, is a story about how he learned to deal with it. What he shares can help us, too. The first thing that Brewer recommends is mindfulness. He notes that this is the opposite of autopilot. This is exactly what I have recommended before, and I love the idea of mindfulness because it accepts the present without judgment. It allows you to take in what is going on without responding. Brewer notes that one thing you can do when you're being mindful is to try to determine what the reward is for your worrying.

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I already mentioned that worrying in itself makes us feel like we are doing something, but if it is a habit loop, we want to understand where the reward is coming from. I also wonder how often worrying about something actually helps us to avoid doing something. Regardless, being mindful of our own anxiety and the people and situations that trigger it can help us to self regulate. The second thing that Brewer recommends is to use curiosity. If you are experiencing an anxious moment by yourself, you can ask yourself what is going on in the situation and what is being triggered inside of you.

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Follow that trail to really understand what it is about other people and situations that affect you in this way. By asking these questions, you can unpack the behaviors, the emotional patterns, the chronic conditions that will enable you to start to deconstruct the habit loop. If the anxious moment is occurring in an interaction with another, the use of curiosity by asking questions gives us perspective about what is going on with the other while at the same time regulating our own response. As you probably know from listening to this podcast, listening is a key competency in selfregulation and selfdifferentiation.

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A third thing that Brewer recommends is to get playful. By using your sense of humor, you can lighten the mood inside of you and in the room. As Edwin Friedman would say, excessive seriousness is one of the key components of turning a challenge into a problem. So if you can lighten the mood, if you can get playful, you can help yourself be less anxious about a situation and you can do the same for others around you. Finally, Brewer recommends a standard mindfulness technique using the acronym Rain R stands for recognized feelings.

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A stands for accept them and allow them to be there. I stands for investigate the sensations in your body and the emotions that are bubbling up and N stands for note what's going on and observe yourself in the process. This is all about self awareness, and if you have listened to this podcast, you know that I think self awareness and intentionality are keys to being able to self differentiate. So if you can do the selfawareness part, if you can recognize that there are habit loops going on in your brain and you can just accept them and let them be and then start to unpack them, then you can be intentional about how you respond.

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Whether that's a loan and you figure out a positive way to deal with your anxiety and break it down or whether you are in another situation and you can just take a moment to pause and get a grip on yourself and a grip on the situation. Then you can be intentional. I often note that being a nonanxious presence doesn't mean you don't feel anxious inside the ability to manage that anxiety, the ability to break it down. The ability to respond intentionally is the key to being selfdifferentiated and a nonanxious presence.

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This is what nonanxious leaders do. That's it for episode 157 don't forget to go to thenonanxiousleader.com and subscribe so you can refer somebody and qualify for the Live Q and A on January 19. I look forward to seeing you there until next time. Thanks and goodbye.