Anxiety is the rust of life, destroying its brightness and weakening its power.

— Anonymous

Recently, I’ve been reading another book about how our brains work.  In Dr. Daniel Amen’s book Change Your Brain, Change Your Life, he describes the chemical interactions that occur as a result of our thoughts.  Putting these various pieces of research together, I have learned that I can affect how my mind behaves and I can create an outlook that serves me. With that comes greater freedom from anxiety and depression and that makes it worth working at understanding the science, and developing the skills that conform with the research.

In some of my most recent posts, I’ve written about the effect of thoughts on the shape and structure of our brain.  Repetitive thoughts or actions become imprinted in our brains and the more repetitive they are the deeper the imprint.  The deeper the imprint, the harder it is to change them.

With the addition of Dr. Amen’s research, we start to understand how the chemical interactions in our brain affect our mood.  In his book, he describes the chemical interactions that occur as a result of our thoughts.  Every thought generates chemicals which can make us feel better or feel worse – both in our heads and in our bodies.  Using brain scans, Dr. Amen has proven that our emotions are tied to the activity in the deep limbic system.  People who suffer from depression and anxiety have a high level of activity in their deep limbic system.  People who have lower levels of activity in their deep limbic system tend to be calmer and more optimistic.  Because our bodies are one giant feedback loop, if we don’t pay attention to what we’re thinking, we can significantly increase our anxiety and depression.

Another Piece of the Puzzle

In previous posts, we’ve written about Dr. Martin Seligman’s approach to coping with adversity.  In short, his methodology is to:

• Be aware of the Adversity
• Determine what Belief comes out of that adversity
• Project forward to what the Consequences of accepting that belief are
• Dispute the belief or Distract yourself from the unpleasant feelings
• Energize to move forward

Dr. Amen approaches the problem from the physical brain chemistry side.  His studies show that when the deep limbic system is highly active thoughts tend to be more negative then when it is calmer.  In other words, you may wake in a positive or negative state, your starting set point, based on your deep limbic system.  Your set point for the day leads you to interpret events with a predisposition determined by the activity in your deep limbic system.  So you don’t need an adversity to head down the path to pessimism and depression.  Your deep limbic system provides the context which places the circumstances in a negative perspective.  It may not look negative to someone else, but it looks negative to you.

So, That’s How It Works

This answers a question that Dr. Martin Seligman himself had after many years of working on creating a more optimistic view of life.  He reported in Authentic Happiness:  Using the New Positive Psychology to Realize Your Potential for Lasting Fulfillment, that despite years of working at being more optimistic, he still found that he woke with a negative expectation for the day.  He could work himself out of it, but most days he started out negative.  Dr. Amen would say that the reason for this is that Dr. Seligman’s deep limbic system is overly active when he awakes.

One of the solutions for this problem is medication which can calm the deep limbic system.  The other solution involves paying attention to your thoughts.  Control your thoughts.  Notice them.  Notice how you feel when you are thinking positive thoughts.  Notice the body’s reactions and take steps to deliberately change the negative thoughts.

An overly active deep limbic system generates Automatic Negative Thoughts or ANTS.  ANTS are very similar to the thoughts that Seligman documented occurred when a pessimistic person faced adversity.  The difference is that there doesn’t need to be an adversity for the ANTS to appear.  The similarity is that, unchecked, ANTS can make your life very uncomfortable and reduce your effectiveness.

Kill the ANTS

Healing the deep limbic system means that the ANTS must be eliminated.  The objective is to notice them when they appear and kill them.  Amen categorizes nine types of ANTS.

Thinking in absolutes

This happens when you think that something will always happen or you will never get what you want.

Focusing on the negative

When you can only see the negative in a situation and ignore the good, you activate the deep limbic system.

Projecting into the future

You project that whatever you have planned will turn out poorly.

Mind reading

Believing that you know what the other person is thinking – and it’s not good.

Thinking with your feelings

Believing that because you feel something that it’s real.

Beating yourself up

Creating guilt around something you think you should, must, ought, or have to do.

Negative labeling

Labeling yourself or someone else negatively.  This reduces your ability see situations clearly and to deal with the person you labeled.

Personalizing

Adding a negative meaning related to yourself to an event that is neutral on its surface.  This is similar to mind reading.

Blaming

Blaming someone else for your own problems makes you a victim and is part of what Seligman would call learned helplessness.

Using Seligman’s terminology, these Automatic Negative Thoughts are beliefs that you have assigned to an outward stimulus.  They are an interpretation that you “automatically” place on people and situations because your deep limbic system is overly active.  By monitoring your thoughts, you can identify these ANTS and take steps to neutralize them.  For example, if you notice yourself thinking in absolutes, you can change “always” or “never” to “sometimes” or “often”.  This seemingly minor change reduces the level of activity in the deep limbic system and replaces your negative filter with a more neutral one.

Let me give you a personal example.  When I am heading into deadline for a post and I don’t know what to write, I start to think, “This will never get done.  I always wait to the last minute.”  In reality, I usually get it done (and we have a backup plan if something happens to prevent that) and it’s not that I wait to the last minute, it’s that I couldn’t come up with a post before this.  Trust me when I say that this type of thinking significantly raises my anxiety level and until the problem is resolved, I’m also depressed.

There is great promise in both Amen’s and Seligman’s work.  They both are showing us how our brains work with the wonderful benefit that we can choose to take more control of our thoughts and our moods.

For me, it is a great relief to know that I don’t always have to be at the mercy of my mind.  I can affect how it behaves and I can create an outlook that serves me.  Sometimes I do it well and sometimes not so well, but I’m getting better at recognizing and dealing with ANTS.  With that comes greater freedom from anxiety and depression.  That freedom is worth working for.