Book Review: Rewire Your Anxious Brain
How to Use the Neuroscience of Fear to End Anxiety, Panic & Worry - by Catherine M. Pittman, PhD and Elizabeth M. Karle, MLIS
One of the most powerful learnings in my own experience of anxiety was understanding the physiology of anxiety. Anxiety and panic attacks can be incredibly scary because we feel totally out of control of our own body and emotions.
The power of understanding where the fear/anxiety response comes from in our brain and how the body produces the symptoms of racing heart, sweating, tingling, nausea, the overwhelming desire to escape and all of the other physical symptoms we can experience, cannot be underestimated. When you know that your body is having a natural response to what it perceives to be a dangerous situation and that there are things you can do to calm this physical response, you no longer have to be anxious about feeling anxious.
This book explains the science behind the two pathways to anxiety in our brain, in an understandable way. It details how our cortex (the ‘thinking’ part of the brain) can create anxiety through our thought processes and conscious memories and how we can begin to take control of, and calm, cortex-based anxiety.
The other pathway bypasses our thought processes and reacts to unconscious memories that we may have been too young to remember or we have suppressed them in our subconscious. These are often our phobias or relate to post traumatic stress. The book outlines what can be done to help with these anxiety and panic attacks.
It’s easy to feel helpless when we don’t know what’s happening, why it’s happening or what to do about it. The more information and understanding we have about the function of our brain and the body’s response, the more empowered we are to help ourselves. This book is a great way to gain that knowledge and there are some helpful exercises to assess the origin of your anxiety and to practice calming techniques.
In my view, anyone who experiences anxiety (and even those who support someone who experiences anxiety) needs to know this information so I highly recommend this book. You can find it on Book Depository.