Great Minds: How is anxiety similar to other addictions?

Plus, some good news stories from around NZ [NZ Herald]( [Matt Heath] Matt Heath Happiness Editor Hi {NAME} Welcome to part two of our Great Minds newsletter. I recently had a chat with American psychiatrist and neuroscientist Dr Judson Brewer for a Herald Premium story. He believes anxiety can be a habit similar to cocaine and smoking addiction. I wanted to share the interview with you today, along with some uplifting stories to boost your mood. If you haven’t already, try our [interactive wellbeing test]( to take a few moments to reflect on how you’re doing. Dr Brewer, what is anxiety? Well, our brains don't like uncertainty. If you can think of information as food for our brain. When we don’t have food in our stomach, our belly rumbles until we eat; when we have uncertainty happening, our brain rumbles until we get that information. Anxiety is our mind spinning about the future. What if this, what if that, what if this? Nowadays, there’s too much information for us to process. There’s always more we don’t know. When our ancient ancestors saw a tiger, they could trust that that was a tiger, and they’d run away. They weren't thinking it might be a fake tiger. Now not only do we have access to a tonne of information, but we also have to figure out for ourselves what information to trust and believe. How is anxiety similar to other addictions? Anxiety can be driven through negative reinforcement, just like any other habit or addiction. You need three elements to form a habit: a trigger, a behaviour, and a result. The feeling of anxiety can trigger the mental behaviour of worry. That feeling of worrying makes us feel like we’re doing something. That’s rewarding enough that it feeds back to the next time we get anxious. Our brain says, oh, do that again, so we get into anxiety and worry loops that drive each other. So there's a buzz of enjoyment in worrying that gets rewarded? I wouldn’t say enjoyment. Dopamine gets mischaracterised as a happiness or bliss molecule. Dopamine is anything but bliss. It’s actually there to get us to do something. So when we have that urge to get some food from the refrigerator or go on social media, that urge is not pleasant. It’s itchy. It says I’m going to make you uncomfortable until you do this. You get the dopamine hit for worrying even though it did no work to help your situation. That means you are being rewarded for doing an unhelpful thing. You naturally think that we’re evolved to do the right thing, but that’s not the case. We have to decide what the right thing is. The natural instinct to jump when we hear a loud noise that’s probably not something we want to unlearn. At the same time, we can be learning unhelpful habits. It’s really helpful to know how our minds work so we can learn to see which habits we’re forming are helpful for us and which ones are not. So how do we stop this habit of anxiety and worry? Through the mechanism of being aware. If we can pay attention and see very clearly what the result of a behaviour is, we can either reinforce a helpful habit or let go of an unhelpful one. That’s why this process is called reward-based learning. If something’s really rewarding, we’re going to keep doing it. If it’s not working, we can stop. Awareness can help us pay attention and see how unrewarding some of these habits are. So you teach your brain that worrying doesn't help, and as a result, it stops handing out the dopamine reward for worrying? Yes, I ask patients to be really curious about the worry. Curiosity feels better than worry. Use that curiosity to explore every physical sensation that comes up when you worry. That helps them not only foster the habit of being curious but also helps them step out of the habit loop of worrying. Finally, it helps them see that these physical sensations pass. If you simply be aware and curious of them, they will go away. 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