● How do brains work?

• Download model

• How brains work generally

● How your anxious brain works specifically

Think of an anxious time and notice your thoughts, feelings, and behaviour

• Behaviour

  ■ Fight Flight Freeze

• Thinking

  ■ What do you think when you feel anxious?

• Feelings

  ■ What do you feel at anxious moments?

● Questions you asked

1. How do brains work?

Download model - there are three factors - Thinking, Feeling and Behaviour

https://www.cbtabudhabi.ae/blog/2021/10/28/you-and-your-brain

All three factors are interconnected and interactive.

Interactive means that if you change one factor, you change all 3.

You needn't ever get stuck - because you will learn many strategies for each of these three factors.

Principle: You need to understand how your brain thinks, feels, and behaves

• Thinking

Thinking is the most important of three factors.

Here's what happens: "You feel the way y.ou think."

So, the question to always ask is this:

What is going through my mind?

What is my head telling me?

What did you say to me, Brain?

• Behaviour

You can't control anxious thinking

You can't control anxious feelings

BUT, you CAN control your behaviour (most of the time)

When everything is going pe,ar-shaped, don't try to control your thinking or feelings; instead, control your behaviour.

Walk somewhere, get a drink, start a task, talk to someone, call a friend, do five pushups, clean something, tidy up, build something, fix something, listen to music, watch TV - just DO something.

You are reminding your brain that you have control and that you can manage what you're thinking and feeling.

• Feelings

Ask yourself, "What am I thinking?" to figure out why you feel as you do.

Know that feelings come and go, and often they don't tell us much.

2. How your anxious brain works specifically

Let's add a specific situation to the model.

Think of a time when you have felt particularly anxious.

Think of a recent time - say in the last month or two - so your memory is relatively straightforward.

Find five minutes in that anxious time and put yourself back into that specific time.

Pay attention to where you were, what you were doing and who was around you.

You can write them onto the model as we describe your behaviour, thoughts, and feelings.

I'm going to talk about Phoebe as an example.

Phoebe says that she panicked in university exams and panicked last month.

She was most anxious in the middle of the exam (rather than before), so we will picture her sitting in the exam room and being anxious.

I ask Phoebe to go back to this memory and answer this question:

What were you feeling at that moment?

Here's what Phoebe says: I felt fear, panic, embarrassment, frustration and hopelessness

I ask Phoebe:

How do you manage these feelings? What do you do when they rise and feel powerful?

Here's what Phoebe says:

I get panicky (and I feel stuck)

I overthink and overanalyze

I fight the fear

I push away most of the feelings

I can't focus or concentrate

Here are some other behaviours you might do:

Call or text someone

Problem-solve

Drink or eat

Distract yourself - with TV, phones, computer

Shut down and go quiet

Talk too much

I ask Phoebe:

What were you thinking? What was your mind telling you?

Here's what Phoebe says:

It's happening again

I musn't panic

I can't stop panicking

Everyone else is working - except me

Why'm I like this?

How come I can't do this exam?

I'll never make it

I won't get my degree

I'll fail

My parents will be disappointed

I'm a failure

Let's look at these responses (thinking, feeling and behaviour).

Behaviour

Since we used this model with an anxious moment in time, your behaviour will be Fight, Flight or Freeze responses.

Go here to know more about Fight, Flight or Freeze

https://stillmind.net/blog/what-is-fight-flight-freeze/

Phoebe is doing Flight behaviours (which most of us do).

People Fight against or Flight away from only ONE thing - do you know what this is?

Ah, yes - it's the FEAR :(

Here are Phoebe's Flight responses:

I get panicky (and I feel stuck) - High levels of fear moving into a Freeze response

I overthink and overanalyze - Lots of thinking rather than feeling

I fight the fear - Fighting hard so as not to feel the feeling

I push away most of the feelings - Trying to suppress feelings

I can't focus or concentrate - Thinking so much there's no room to focus

Fight responses could be:

Taking control by yelling, fighting, or arguing

Needing to have rules, regulations, and systems for everything

Becoming irritable (even angry) when your 'rules' or 'expectations" are broken

Wanting to win at all costs

Refusing to pay attention to feelings inside of you

Being hard, harsh, and self-critical (also with others)

Being unable to adjust to changes, unpredictable happening and unplanned excursions

Overthinking, analyzing, and needing reasons for everything

Thinking - We'll do Thinking in the Next Group Call on April 5

Feelings - We'll do Feelings in the Next Group Call May

3. Questions you asked:

How to process negative feelings?

We'll talk about feelings in greater depth when we get to them.

Here are a few quick, short ways to manage negative feelings.

• Notice your feelings. If you want to manage your feelings, you need to know where they are and how they are expressed in your body. So spend time noticing when you feel, for example, sad, angry or disappointed and notice where these feelings are for you. Often the act of noticing feelings (which most people avoid) can calm feelings

• Label your feelings. Again, pay attention to when the feelings arise, notice them, and label them. You can label them for what they are (Here's a sad feeling) or just label them 'Yukky' since Brains don't care. The act of noticing and labelling feelings will often help difficult feelings soften.

How to balance the demands of life when anxiety is out of control?

The demands of life are often outside our control.

The anxiety you feel is usually within some of your control (even if not completely).

Therefore focus on being less anxious to better deal with life's demands.

Here are some starting steps to manage anxiety:

• Do breathing exercises daily to calm your anxious brain

• Write out your worries and concerns

• Check you are sleeping, eating and moving enough

• Be gentle and kind to your scared brain

• Learn more about your brain so you can manage it

How to stop living on autopilot?

Brains live on autopilot because this is the best use of limited brain resources.

If you live on autopilot, the chances are that your old brain is running the show and using outdated thinking and old feelings - which have all been automated.

That's why we try to use Mindfulness - which is paying attention to the present and being immersed in it rather than in our head's thoughts and judgements.

We'll come to Mindfulness later on, but know that when you can shift from living in your head to living in the world - you'll get good at moving away from autopilot.

You can get good at moving out of your head and into the world by paying close attention to what you see, taste, touch, hear and smell.

How to deal with issues that make me sad and disappointed?

CBT is about changing how we think and feel about what is happening around us.

• Some issues we face in life can be changed because we can problem-solve them.

• Some issues we face in life can't be changed because we can't control them.

We can change and manage how we think about and feel about these issues.

It's helpful to sort the problems you face into things you can control and those you cannot.

Focus your efforts on situations where you can manage the outcomes - that is, some of the issues and always your thoughts, feelings and behaviours.

When the situation is outside of your control, then use brain strategies to manage your emotions and help you cope with difficulties.

See you next month :)

Book a Quick Chat or a CBT session here.