Should I be worried about how much I am worrying?

Should I be worried about how much I am worrying? I should, should I?

Lying in bed thinking this is something probably something around 1 in 3 of us are doing nightly.

That’s a lot of brains doing the busy work of worry, instead of the vital restorative work of sleep.

When we are worrying about anxieties during our waking hours as well, we are ploughing through our busy lives actually missing so much of the wonderful LIFE of each day too.

There are far more effective things to do each day and night, and we know it.

Problem is, when we worry too much, the visible structure and the way our brain functions changes. Day-by-day, night-by-night, we design it to create, feed and fuel worry, stress and anxiety. The very architecture of the brain becomes a home for agonising anxiety, instead of a calm abode for appropriate action.

A better architecture analogy for anxiety would be the heart of your house – your kitchen.

Let’s say you feel your kitchen is frustratingly dysfunctional, no matter what you change or rearrange it still never works right, the basic functional design of the kitchen doesn’t work. Every surface is cluttered, there is nowhere to put anything, you have good appliances - but they are not in the right places, in fact, it feels downright dangerous at times. The kitchen has all the parts, but they just don’t work well the way they are together. You get to the point where a redesign is the only way forward. In a way, this can be the same for anxiety and the brain.

Worry is a normal and necessary human emotion. Concern about something, when your brain is functioning appropriately, leads to constructive thought and then action to remedy the worry. Frequently though, currently an estimated 29.6% of us, can’t seem to effectively take this worry and do something with it. It becomes stuck somewhere in the process and is no longer functional or helpful. It becomes so jammed, all you seem to be doing is just worrying, with no solutions in sight, and the feeling of it just becoming worse.

The reason it can get stuck is that some key areas of your brain are not working in a helpful way individually, and as a group of brain areas that are responsible for the thinking, feeling and doing parts of worry, well, they are not communicating effectively with one another either. The functional architecture of your brain needs a renovation.

What is so amazing is that your brain, and the way it functions, can handle makeovers – in fact, it loves them, works on them every day. Your brain is change-able or ‘plastic’. We just need the right tools and professional advice to make sure we are rebuilding real solutions, not creating more problems for ourselves down the track.

There are several areas of the brain we need to know more about individually and collectively when it comes to anxiety, these are commonly:

The areas for feelings and emotions: the limbic brain, particularly the amygdalae and hypothalamus.
The areas for thinking about the feelings: the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC); and the dorsolateral (DLPFC) and ventrolateral prefrontal cortex (VLPFC).
The areas for thinking and doing something about the feelings: the frontal and prefrontal cortex.

The structure and the functioning of these parts of the brain can change with persistent worry or anxiety. These dysfunctional areas and how they connect to each other can be seen not just with real-time functional neuroimaging, but at a cellular level as well. When this has happened the functional architecture of your brain is in need of some serious remodelling.

But, how do we change the anxious brain?

And if we are going really invest in a renovation, shouldn’t we make our big plan and do it all!

Neurofeedback training is a proven targeted and effective way to not only retrain the specific areas of your brain that are not doing their jobs quite right when it comes to worrying, but also alter how these areas are communicating and acting functionally together. Changes to the connectivity results in changes to the functionality. Neurofeedback can beneficially change the way parts of your brain involved in the feeling, thinking and doing parts of anxiety work, both by themselves and together.

Biofeedback is another active treatment option that works with the deep ways your brain and body communicate with one another. The vagus nerve, the long wandering nerve, that runs from your brain right through your body (even through your diaphragm muscle that controls your breathing), is a vital part of this brain-body network. You can influence the deep feeling and thinking parts of the brain by acting on this nerve. You can change what your brain is doing through this nerve, and other paths, in a rapid and positive way using biofeedback techniques.

Learning changes the brain. If you take what you learn and then put into action it can profoundly change your brain and the way you experience life each day. It can be challenging to take on board new information and then harder still to actually do something with it, especially if we have been behaving the same way for a long time. When you think about it, taking new learning and putting it into action is the basic formula for lasting brain change. Neurofeedback and biofeedback techniques are ways of teaching the brain to do things differently.

Online learning tools and ‘self-help’ programs are being developed at a rapid rate in this current global climate. They are accessible, user friendly and some are remarkably well supported at a professional level. Australian programs including those provided by: This Way Up; Smiling Mind; and Beyond Blue. International open university level programs (or MOOC’s) work well for some, you could try: Berkeley - Greater Good Science Centre; Coursera – A Life of Happiness and Fulfillment; and The University of Reading – Understanding Anxiety, Depression and CBT.

So, with a bit of time and dedication to the change, your brain will be working just like your dream kitchen. Loads of bench (brain) space; heaps of room for storage (of new memories); easy to clean (away stress and over-thinking); durable surfaces (life-long resilience); appliances working a treat (all brain regions working well). The calm joy of the space will be back again. You’ll be proud of your renovation.

About the author - Ms. Emily Goss (Occupational Therapist, Senior Clinician, The Perth Brain Centre).