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NICABM Anxiety M9 Treating the Anxious Brain - Coggle Diagram
NICABM Anxiety M9
Treating the Anxious Brain
How people can get trapped in a cycle of anxiety
Babies who are insecure are highly anxious, and that anxiety is exhibited as attention deficit.
Insecure attachment => precursor to repair later on
Adults not securely attached to at least one other human being, not having that feeling of someone having your back => life itself can feel overwhelming
Ever-running anxiety stress system that is there especially in quiet moments, morning, at nighttime before going to sleep.
This is when people get flooded by implicit somatic memories and experiences – basically noise – coming out of the right hemisphere, and have no way, because they’re not interacting with anybody, have no way to get that down.
Huge interpersonal component to it, both in cause but also in treatment. of all the stressors, interpersonal stress is the most insidious and is the most difficult, anxiogène
Getting the support of a significant other
A simple but powerful strategy for breaking the anxiety cycle / loop of the brain: focus attention to something else for about 10 or 15 minutes. Looking in the eyes of another person prevents from thinking about triggeres because eye contact
interrupts that process because certain areas of the brain cannot operate properly in this process.
Eye contact helps jolt the brain away from internal rumination and into external connection. It brings the client back to the here and now ” by unplugging the brain s machine machine-like obsession with anxious thoughts.
Couple therapy: focus on how secure-functioning / connected, collaborative the relationship is. Can they trust each other with their lives? Do they understand they are in each other’s care? True mutual collaboration of meeting needs and soothing fears.
Techniques when the patient is isolated and has no secure attachment figure to turn to.
Touch part of your body where anxiety manifestes and simply (of course this is in private, not in front of people) say out loud what the self-talk is inside the head.
Verbalizaing makes the emotion lose its grip
By naming it, the patient becomes the observer /witness of internal world = more present
Journaling: by writing, using both hands, slows the downward spiral, externalizing thoughts.
Morita (Japanise psychotherapy): outsight meditation
where we put all of our attention to the environment
Interaction with someone to break the anxiety loop.
Imagine various people in their life and wish them well
Help the patient engage the social connection system in the brain to quiet the social cognition system that is activated with anxiety (what do other people think about me? It also judges other people; it judges the self.)
= instead of thinking of relationships with other, experience a relationship/connection with nature, animals (equitherapy), something bigger (God, spirituality)
Relationships are important but they’re not critically necessary to acquire a base of sense of self and sense of efficacy and a sense of capacity to do things that increase personal well-being.
Breathing exercices
Physical activity
Creating objects to restore sense of agency and self efficacy
Mindfulness of acceptance of experiences
Developing an internal locus of control and building from there outward
HRV exercices
For the elderly
Taking care of a plant or a pet
if we’re thinking only of themselves and their own concerns, is not as healthy as being able to reverse the flow of attention, to care for something or someone else
Writing techniques
Your Best Possible Self (Laura King)
Write for 20 minutes, 3 or 4 days in a row: if everything was to go just right in your life and your dreams were realized, how would you be, how would you feel?
To regain a sense of well-being, agency and empowerment
Self-compassion exercise (Kris Neff)
You’ve done something that makes you anxious. Write a letter to yourself as if you were your best friend. What would your best friend say to that?
Can be shared with good friends to get reassuring feedback