Tim Maude Hypnotherapy

Category: Amygdala

  • The Anatomy of Anxiety

    The Anatomy of Anxiety

    Somewhere near my clinic lives a pair of doves, who occasionally land in the tree outside my window. They sit there without a care in the world. They do not know where their next meal is coming from, or even whether they will survive the rest of the winter, and yet I can see no signs of anxiety or stress. They appear calm and peaceful.

    Now, the thing that human’s have that makes us what we are is a powerful and imaginative brain. Unlike the doves, we can imagine what the future will be like. And we are very good at imagining the future to be a dismal place. We are very good at imagining all the things that could go wrong.

    This is our survival instinct. If we can anticipate the things that might kill us, we might just be able to avoid them. Unfortunately, even though we live in a relatively safe world, our survival instinct can still be put on high alert – and our survival instinct does not care how we feel, it only cares that we survive.

    So our survival instinct makes us worry about what might go wrong. It can create stress and anxiety, but it doesn’t care about that – it only cares that we survive.

    The very organ that makes humans so distinct from the animals also creates worry, stress and tension. The general term for this is anxiety. Anxiety takes on many forms, whether it is worry about things going wrong, fear of certain situations, flashbacks to past situations and so on.

    The part of the brain that is responsible for this survival instinct is the Amygdala. This has two parts – one in each side of the brain and each is about the size of an almond. When the amygdala recognises something as a threat, it reacts. It can react in a number of ways, but the one many people will be familiar with is anxiety.

    Anxiety makes us focus on anything that might go wrong. Our ancestors, who lived in a far more dangerous world than we do today, would need that anxiety when they went out searching for food. Their anxiety would keep them focused on the possibility of being attacked by wild animals or enemy tribes. It is this focus that would have helped them escape before they were noticed.

    In today’s world, those people who suffer from anxiety can find themselves focusing on the negative, anticipating the things that might go wrong, and worrying about the future. This is all a primitive survival instinct coming into play.

    Do the doves on my tree suffer from anxiety? Of course they do when they see a cat stalking them, but the anxiety last a few seconds while they fly on to another tree, whereas in humans the anxiety stays around for a much longer time.

    And finally …

    If you have difficulty coping with anxiety on your own, you might consider seeing your doctor or attending therapy. I help people with anxiety using hypnotherapy in my clinic in Fleet, Hampshire. You are welcome to Contact Me if you would like to discuss the help I might provide.

  • Overthinking, Anxiety & Table Tennis

    Overthinking, Anxiety & Table Tennis

    Overthinking is both a cause and a result of anxiety. We overthink things we are anxious about, and that overthinking creates more anxiety. You want to know how table tennis is involved? … Then read on.

    Overthinking means being caught in that state of mind where you are going over and over the same thing in your head. Maybe something happened that you did not like, and you go through what happened time after time, trying somehow to square it all away. Or maybe you are concerned about something that is coming up, and think about what might happen over and over again. This is overthinking.

    What Is Wrong With Overthinking?

    The problem with overthinking is that no matter how many times you go over something that has already happened – you cannot change it. It is gone … learn from it and then move one. Thinking about it again and again will not change what happened and will not change how you think about it.

    If you are overthinking something that is coming up – something you are worried about – it does not change the fact that it is going to happen. Worrying about a work meeting, say, doesn’t stop the meeting happening – it just gets you more stressed about it.

    How Does Overthinking Effect the Brain?

    All the overthinking adds stress to your “stress bucket” – and more stress means that the fight-or-flight centre (the amygdala and other parts of the brain’s limbic system) are more likely to be triggered.

    The amygdala is not an intelligent part of the brain – it is quite primitive. It is not capable of thinking up new ideas. So when the amygdala starts to take control of your thinking, it will simply repeat patterns that it already knows. If you have thought through a situation a couple of times, the amygdala learns this as an “appropriate” response, and so it encourages you to repeat it. The more you repeat it, the more embedded the response gets … and so the vicious cycle repeats.

    How Do You Overcome Overthinking?

    Overthinking is all about repeating patterns of thinking. So you have to practice changing those patterns. When you catch yourself out overthinking, force yourself to think something else. This is a basic distraction technique.

    Simply doing something else that absorbs your thinking, like playing table tennis, will do it. Playing table tennis is something you have to concentrate on. You cannot play table tennis while you are overthinking something else.

    Of course, it doesn’t have to be table tennis. You can read a book, talk to someone (about something other than what you are overthinking), browse the Internet, bake a cake … anything that will absorb your mind into something else.

    And Finally …

    I help people who are only just coping with stress and anxiety. I use hypnotherapy to help them regain control of their lives and return to a state of normality. I work out of my clinic in Fleet, Hampshire as well as online. Contact me if you would like a chat about it.

    Photo courtesy of the Mental Health Foundation / Catherine Williams

  • The Worry-Anxiety Vicious Circle

    The Worry-Anxiety Vicious Circle

    There are many reasons why people have anxiety. One of them is worry. Worrying is there for a purpose – it’s there to make us think things through so we are prepared to tackle the bad things that life throws at us. However, it is easy to worry to excess.

    Worry happens when we imagine something bad is going to occur. We start to imagine all the possible things that could go wrong. The reason humans have this ability is because when you can imagine something going wrong, you can imagine what to do about it if it does. Then you can prepare for it.

    The trouble is that worrying can backfire on us in a number of ways – ways that lead to anxiety:

    • Worrying about the same thing over and over again
    • Worrying about something that is very unlikely to happen
    • Worrying about things that we can’t do anything about and cannot prepare for
    • Catastrophising – worrying about things getting bad, then worse, and then worse than that

    Worry Can Lead to Anxiety

    The problem is that the primitive part of our brain hasn’t caught up with the intelligent part. The primitive part of our brain (the limbic system) is very simple and is all about survival. It contains the basic functions that most mammals have – including fight-or-flight. It does not understand that we have also got a highly intelligent cortex surrounding it that is capable of imagining things.

    So when we worry, we imaging things going wrong and the fight-or-flight centre triggers into action. It is as if it assumes that things are going wrong right now. It’s reaction is to create anxiety, because anxiety is the thing that makes us be hyper-aware of danger.

    Anxiety Can Lead to Worry

    When we feel anxiety, our thinking process starts to focus on possible danger. It is a survival mechanism used to protect us when there may be something life-threatening. It was very useful in days-gone-by when the world was a more dangerous place. Most of the world is relatively safe these days, and so the feeling of anxiety is less useful.

    But when we do feel anxious, our imagination is drawn towards the things that could go wrong – that is, we start to worry about the problems that may (or may not) occur.

    The Vicious Circle

    So worry can lead to anxiety and anxiety can lead to worry, and so the cycle continues. We need a way to break the vicious circle, which will enable us to calm down. I will leave you to explore other articles in my blog to find suggestions.

    And Finally …

    If you find yourself unable to break the worry-anxiety vicious circle on your own, or your anxiety manifests itself in a different way, you might consider hypnotherapy. I help people who are only just coping with anxiety from my hypnotherapy clinic in Fleet, Hampshire, as well as online. Contact me if you want a chat to see how I might help.

    Photo by Johannes Plenio on Pexels

  • All about anxiety?

    All about anxiety?

    This is a brief description of anxiety and why we have it. I do not cover in any detail what to do about it. I will leave that for other posts.

    Signs and Symptoms

    When we experience anxiety, we usually notice a number of signs and symptoms in our body and mind. People will typically notice one or more of the following:

    • An uncomfortable feeling in the chest or stomach
    • Increased muscle tension
    • Increased breathing rate
    • Increased heart rate and blood pressure
    • Increase in adrenaline and cortisol in the body
    • Inability to stop worrying that something bad will happen (overthinking)
    • Inability to stop reminding themselves or re-living something bad that happened in the past
    • Inability to think clearly
    • Increased jumpiness at sudden noises or movements
    • Panic attacks

    Anxiety comes in different degrees – from mild anxiety to full blown panic attacks.

    Anxiety and Excitement

    The feeling of anxiety is similar to the feeling of excitement. This is why some people get excited when they go on a rollercoaster or one of those scary rides, and others get panicky and scared. The body gets a similar reaction in both cases – a burst of adrenaline and cortisol. Some people love it and others hate it.

    What anxiety is for

    Anxiety is basically nature’s way of getting you to focus on potential danger. It is getting ready for the fight-or-flight-or-freeze response to danger. Imagine our ancestors who lived day-to-day by hunting and gathering. If they noticed signs of a pack of dangerous animals hunting in the area, they would become anxious as they went about their daily activities. The anxiety made them focus more of their attention on the possibility that they might be attacked by predators. They would be more aware of noises and movement that they might catch out of the corner of their eyes.

    Their anxiety would increase if the danger was imminent. The brain would focus more on the potential danger than on gathering food. And as the danger lessened, the brain would focus more on gathering food than on the danger. Getting the balance right is key.

    How the brain gets it wrong

    In modern society, in most (but not all) parts of the world, we do not experience life-threatening dangers on a regular basis. But the part of the brain that deals with anxiety (the amygdala) is very primitive, and does not understand the modern world. It is the same brain structure that our hunter-gatherer ancestors had many years ago, and now has to deal with a society that has moved on. So the amygdala sometimes gets it wrong. It creates anxiety when there is no life-threatening event happening around us.

    And what is more, once it learns a pattern, the amygdala tends to stick with it. So if someone starts to get anxious when going into a crowded supermarket, say, the amygdala will attempt to repeat the pattern of anxiety next time they go into a crowded supermarket. This pattern then becomes reinforced. Sometimes we can recognise the triggers that give rise to anxiety, and sometimes we cannot. In some cases anxiety is a constant presence.

    Everyone had moments of anxiety at sometime in their lives. Even the most calm people will feel a twinge of anxiety if they see a car speeding towards them as they start to cross the road. This is normal. But some people suffer from a large amount of anxiety all or most of the time. Their amygdala has somehow learned to become over-sensitive, creating anxiety when it’s not needed.

    Classification of anxiety

    Doctors will classify anxiety disorders, but they are all variations on the same thing. The main classification of anxiety disorders are

    • Generalised anxiety disorder (GAD)
    • Social anxiety disorder (SAD)
    • Panic disorder
    • Obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD)

    Doing something about it

    There are three main approaches to doing something about anxiety. I am not going to cover these in any detail in this post:

    • Self-help – there is a lot of advice available to help you help yourself – including such things as mindfulness, breathing techniques, distraction techniques and so on
    • Therapies – there are many talking and other therapies that can help
    • Medication – prescribed medication can include anti-anxiety medication and antidepressants (which also help with anxiety)

    As a hypnotherapist – of course, I would recommend hypnotherapy. But I know that hypnotherapy is not for everyone. You need to make your own decisions about what is best for you. The first step is to decide whether or not your anxiety impacts your life sufficiently for you to want to do something about it. The next thing is to recognise that there are things you can do about it – you are not stuck with it forever. It is at this point that you can start to turn it round.

  • Who Hijacked My Brain?

    Who Hijacked My Brain?

    You are eating in a restaurant having a pleasant conversation, when you hear a sudden loud crash behind you. Immediately, you you feel your chest tighten and your heart seems to jump into another gear. You might cry out or swear. You turn towards the noise. Maybe you raise your arms to protect yourself, or throw whatever you have in your hand at the source of the noise. You do all this without thinking, because your conscious mind has been hijacked.

    Of course, it is just the waiter who has dropped a tray. He apologises for disturbing you, picks up the tray and walks off. Somewhat embarrassed by your reaction, you turn back and try to pick up the conversation, but forget what you were talking about a few seconds ago.

    So who hijacked your brain?

    Because it was hijacked … you did not consciously decide to react like that, something hijacked your conscious mind and took over. Different people have different reactions; some will recover control in a second or two; others will have a panic attack or start swearing in anger.

    Some people notice that their reaction gets worse when under a lot of stress, or when short of sleep. And it doesn’t matter if they have the intelligence of Einstein or the determination of an Apollo astronaut, everyone’s conscious mind gets hijacked sometimes.

    So what was it that hijacked your brain?

    Well, to start with, it wasn’t all of your brain that got hijacked, only the conscious part. The culprit is a very primitive part called the amygdala. The reaction we all have is called the “amygdala hijack”.

    The amygdala is the brain’s security officer. It checks everything that goes on to see if it is safe. If it thinks that there is some kind of emergency, it takes over control – that’s the amygdala hijack. The amygdala isn’t clever, so it picks something that you’ve done before and reacts by doing it again – sometimes totally inappropriately.

    So when you find you loose control, even if only for a second, it’s the amygdala hijack. The amygdala is trying to protect you, but sometimes leaves you red-faced or increasingly stressed. This happens to everyone sometimes, but if it causes you problems in your life, contact me at timmaudehypnotherapy.co.uk/contact, and we will see what hypnotherapy can do for you.

    Footnote: The term “Amygdala Hijack” was coined by Daniel Goleman in his book Emotional Intelligence.