Retrain Your Brain to Manage Your Fears

Photo by Marcelo Vaz on Unsplash

“The best way to overcome undesirable or negative thoughts and feelings is to cultivate the positive ones.”
~ William Walker Atkinson

For many of us, on any given day, there’s plenty to be anxious about. It can be overwhelming. As I explained in a previous post, worry, stress, and anxiety exist on a continuum, and it can be helpful to discern which unsettling feeling you are actually experiencing.

Have you ever found yourself fixating on one particular worry to the exclusion of most of the others?

It may be related to an upcoming event that you perceive as potentially stressful, a relationship problem that you can’t seem to resolve, or a particular phobia such as a fear of elevators that complicates a visit to a friend.

Whatever it is, what makes it confusing is that there are, of course, many other equally scary things you could be thinking about. Things that other people worry about: health concerns, security concerns, needles, bridges, spiders, or snakes. You can’t seem to explain—even to yourself—why just that one thing causes you to freak out.

Your fear feels real—it makes your heart race and your stomach churn. You know you’re obsessing or overthinking about it and it’s embarrassing, so you try to hide it. Or, worse, your friends have to make adjustments or concessions to accommodate your “deal.”

There’s a curious phenomenon—one that’s not well known—associated with anxiety that might help explain what you’re experiencing. As a therapist once explained to me, sometimes our brain moves one concern to the forefront of our minds, and it stands as a proxy for all the other worries we have.

That one big worry or fear may be crowding out other more intense worries that are so upsetting, your brain won’t allow them to reach your awareness.

Fixating to this extent may be associated with what’s called “high-functioning anxiety,” which occurs when people live with chronic worry but still function pretty well in spite of it. Here’s an article about seven things in particular that people with this tendency often fixate on. Perfectionists are more prone to this type of anxiety, and they tend to keep it hidden, fearing what others will think of this perceived weakness.

Sound familiar, my perfectionistic friends?

"High-functioning anxiety tends to migrate into fixations on certain things because our anxious feelings have to be channeled somewhere that isn't too limiting to our daily life function," trauma therapist Shannon Thomas, LCSW, author of Healing from Hidden Abuse, says in a Bustle article. "Our subconscious attempts to make us feel 'safe' and funneling our anxiety to one or two fixation areas can give our mind something to chew on and not be anxious about every single thing."

So “planting” the anxiety in one spot, so to speak, frees our minds to do the everyday tasks we need to do. Once you wrap your head around the idea that the fixating is actually a coping mechanism, you can see that there’s a kind of logic to it.

Much as we can get frustrated with ourselves for our psychological quirks, it’s important to remember that our brains are actually trying hard to help us out.

Here are some tips that might help with your overthinking:

Know that fixating is an extremely common phenomenon. We all do it at times. The more serious our concerns, the more likely we are to obsess about them. Often our brain is trying to make sense of something, or to think of a solution.

Don’t actively try to stop the thoughts. When you try to stop thinking about something, you will be sure to focus on it more. Accept that the thoughts represent a symptom of anxiety, and that as you learn more about anxiety and how to handle it, the symptoms will lessen.

Make a list of all the possible worries you could have. Even though it feels like bringing them to light may cause more anxiety, in fact, doing some reflection on them may lessen their intensity. Sometimes we don’t actually know what we’re experiencing until we write our feelings down. Think through the worst-case scenarios, all the ramifications of them, and devise a plan for handling each of the possibilities. We are so much more resilient than we think we are.

Once you’ve done the above, try to manage the worry while you are gaining skills to help relax your mind. One trick is to establish a certain time of day and tell yourself you will think about your concerns then. (Like Scarlett O’Hara says in Gone With the Wind: “I’ll think about it tomorrow.”) This trains the mind to reduce the constant habit of worrying.

The real solution to anxiety is to retrain the brain, which takes time and involves taking active steps to learn relaxation techniques.

Be kind to yourself this week, and remember to breathe.

To paraphrase Julian of Norwich, a medieval mystic who lived through the pandemic in the 1300s, “All is well. And all will be well.”

Affectionately,

Elaine