How to Break the Cycles of Worry & Fear to Heal Your Mind with Dr. Jud Brewer

AHA Publisher — Wed, 28 Apr 2021 07:00:29 +0000

Dr. Caroline Leaf – In this podcast (episode #273) and blog, I talk to psychiatrist, professor and author Dr. Judson Brewer about on how anxiety drives our lives, what we can do to break the habit loops that keep us anxious, techniques to uproot anxiety at its source and manage our triggers, and more! Starting in the 80s, research started coming out that anxiety could be driven in a habitual way. Dr. Jud has built on this research, showing people how to overcome anxiety in their own life through the way they change and deal with negative behaviors. He discusses this in detail in his amazing new book, Unwinding Anxiety, which stemmed out of his own experiences with anxiety in residency, and how he helps his patients with anxiety and breaking bad habits. Dr. Jud’s process is based on 3 steps: learning how the mind works, learning about the reward system in the brain, and finding “bigger and better offers” to change the habit in question. Why are these steps important? We learn behaviors through trigger and result; this repeated process builds habits. When we learn how this works, we can start to learn how to use our own minds to our own advantage. We can map out all our habit loops that we have developed to cope, which is the first step to dealing with anxiety in our lives! As Dr. Jud points out, if we don’t know how our minds work, we can’t possible work with them. Our brains are driven by how rewarding/valued a behavior is. We set how rewarding a behavior is and then “forget” it, which allows us to still behave in this way while learning other things. However, we can keep doing this automatically, even if the behavior is no longer rewarding to us now, and can end up stuck in toxic habit loops. This is why we have to stop and observe our own thoughts and behaviors. We can’t force ourselves to break habits unless we become aware of them and their value to us in the “now”. We need to ask ourselves questions like, “Is this habit still serving me? Is this habit serving my health? How useful is this habit to me really?”. This kind of curious awareness is key. Becoming aware of a habit we want to change helps us reduce the value or reward associated with that habit, which makes changing our behavior a lot easier! Indeed, without self-regulated awareness, we cannot move forward in life. But awareness alone is not enough! It needs to be followed by directed and intentional action. When we see that a habit is not serving us or helping us get to where we want to be in life (based on our own reward hierarchy), then we can look for what Dr. Jud calls “a bigger, better offer” (BBO), or a new habit loop that feels better and actually helps us move forward and live our best life. This helps us realize that we often use bad habits as a coping mechanism to suppress feelings of anxiety; as a result, we can end up hiding our anxiety in a negative behavior. When we recognize this, we can start finding something that opens us up to growth in a curious, kind and non-judgmental way; we no longer let our anxiety shut us down to change and transformation. To read the original article click here. For more articles from Dr. Leaf click here.

The post How to Break the Cycles of Worry & Fear to Heal Your Mind with Dr. Jud Brewer appeared first on Amazing Health Advances.

Anxious, Moody Older Adults Are Vulnerable to Worse Cognitive Function

AHA Publisher — Mon, 28 Sep 2020 07:00:51 +0000

Northwestern University via EurekAlert – CHICAGO – Our aging brains collect tangles and sticky plaques that can interfere in our cognition and memory. But some older adults with this neuropathology have more cognitive resilience than others, reports a new Northwestern Medicine study. The reason: their personalities. Personality traits were associated with cognitive resilience, which is the ability to better live with the neuropathology in the brain that causes dementia. Individuals with a greater tendency toward self-discipline, organization, diligence, high achievement and motivation — a trait known as higher conscientiousness — was associated with greater resilience. Individuals with higher neuroticism — a greater tendency towards anxiety, worry, moodiness and impulsivity — were more likely to have worse cognitive function than expected given the amount of neuropathology detected at autopsy. The study was published Sept. 24 in Journal of Gerontology: Psychological Sciences. “These findings provide evidence that it is possible for older adults to live with the neuropathology associated with Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias while maintaining relatively healthy levels of cognitive function,” said lead study author Eileen Graham, a research assistant professor of medical social sciences at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine. “Our study shows personality traits are related to how well people are able to maintain their cognitive function in spite of developing neuropathology,” Graham said. “Since it is possible for personality to change, both volitionally and through interventions, it’s possible that personality could be used to identify those who are at risk and implement early interventions to help optimize function throughout old age.” Personality and other factors that promote cognitive resilience may be particularly important in the context of stress (like the COVID-19 pandemic) and this is an important area of future research, Graham noted. This is believed to be one of the first studies showing an individual’s personality traits are linked to how well they are able to sustain their cognitive function as they age. These findings lend credence to the idea that personality can be leveraged to help individuals maintain their cognitive function when they may otherwise be vulnerable to neurodegeneration. The data was collected at Rush University Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center. Individuals contributed annual psychosocial self-report survey and clinical data. At study enrollment they also consented to donating their brains for post-mortem autopsy. Study participants contributed years of rich data on their psychological and cognitive functioning while they were living, as well as autopsy data after they died. To read the original article click here.

The post Anxious, Moody Older Adults Are Vulnerable to Worse Cognitive Function appeared first on Amazing Health Advances.

worry Archives - Amazing Health Advances

How to Break the Cycles of Worry & Fear to Heal Your Mind with Dr. Jud Brewer

Anxious, Moody Older Adults Are Vulnerable to Worse Cognitive Function