“Worrying doesn’t take away tomorrow’s troubles. It takes away today’s peace.” – Andy Armstrong, musician

My last couple of posts arose in response to Dr. Judson Brewer’s book Unwinding Anxiety. They covered Brewer’s research regarding the use of mindfulness to overcome bad habits. Before moving on to another scholar’s work, it’s worth taking a few moments to examine the titular subject of the book – anxiety.

We define anxiety as a feeling or worry, nervousness, or unease in the face of upcoming events or circumstances with uncertain outcomes. It arises because our survivalist brains want to predict the future accurately; uncertainty threatens our safety and engenders fear.

Common sources of anxiety include health, safety, job security, finances, politics, and personal relationships. The prospect of public speaking can also send most folks into a tizzy. Even happy occasions can prompt a bout of anxiety, such as impending nuptials, birth of a child, or dream vacations.

Anxiety urges action. We may attempt to satisfy the itch for certainty by seeking more information or developing contingency plans. (Warning: Fake news on the Internet spreads 6x as fast as real news and may exacerbate anxiety!) We may try to ward off undesirable outcomes by clinging to or grasping for that which feels safe. We may have a go at distracting ourselves from worry by indulging in our favorite addiction (although worry may come back with a vengeance after the distraction has run its course). We may even work ourselves up into a full-blown panic attack because that feels as though we are doing something in response to our anxiety, crazy though that might sound!

Brewer identifies anxiety (worry) as a harmful habit that often hides in other bad habits:

Worrying can trigger more worrying, perhaps resulting in a generalized anxiety disorder. We can even worry because we don’t know why we’re worried! Even though worrying doesn’t work, our old brain keeps doing it because action (however misguided) seems rewarding in the moment.

We need to be able to name anxiety in order to work with it and break the habit loop. Note that it may not manifest as a clear and unambiguous signal. (“Oh, no! I’m worried!”) It could show up as anger, irritability, impatience, fear, craving. The tell-tale sign might be an impulse that takes the prefrontal cortex off-line and with it rational thought, decision making, and planning.

Whenever we feel a bout of anxiety coming on, Brewer recommends that we pause and take a deep breath to stop the downward spiral. Give the prefrontal cortex the chance to come back on line. Use curiosity to take note of the bodily sensations that are taking root, the emotions that are surfacing, and the stories that might be cropping up alongside them. Curiosity helps us process the anxiety rather than distract ourselves from it. It also has the effect of quelling the sensation as curiosity serves as an appropriate action and reward for the initial trigger

Brewer reminds us that what we make of this moment creates the bead that adds to the necklace of life experiences. If we’re anxious, we create a bead of anxiety. If we are anxious a lot, we create an anxiety necklace. But we can step out of the worry loop and create a calming, compassionate, supportive string of pearls.

In my last post, I introduced the concept of using mindfulness to break bad habits – even the intractable ones like overeating, smoking, and substance abuse. Dr. Judson Brewer, PhD, MD demonstrated its efficacy in scientific experiments as well a clinical practice and documented findings in Unwinding Anxiety: New Science Shows How to Break the Cycles of Worry and Fear to Heal Your Mind.

Brewer’s methodology consists of three steps as follows:

• Map your habit loops.
• Update the brain’s reward value.
• Make your brain a bigger, better offer.

Let’s say that I feel stressed habitually at the end of my work day. My trigger might be sitting in front of the TV after work at night to unwind. By force of habit, I grab my favorite chips and start eating. I tell myself, “You deserve to have something savory to eat after a hard day.” Here’s a map of my habit loop:

I may have read enough to know that I shouldn’t be eating unhealthy snacks (plus they aren’t good for my waistline!) Willpower eludes me at the end of a tough day. I’ve tried substituting a short walk after work for stress relief, but the snack habit may rear its ugly head later that evening when I turn on the TV. And I’ve tried emptying the pantry of chips to avoid temptation, but then I’ll just find something else on which to snack. As Dr. Brewer would say, all of these strategies rely upon a discerning cerebral cortex which tends to go off-line under stress in favor of the primal rewards-based learning.

Mindfulness starts the change process by paying attention to the behavior and examining the actual reward that gets delivered as a result. With mindless eating, it’s often the case that we don’t really savor what we’re eating. As there is lag time between the filling of our bellies and the hormonal signals to tell us that we’ve had enough, we often pass the point of satisfaction and head into disgust before we actually stop. Then we’re left with that uncomfortably full sensation that lingers through the evening and may even disrupt our sleep that night. And, of course, we feel all the more stuffed should we try to eat a regular meal on top of our snacks. Does that sound rewarding to you?

Oddly enough, our “old brains” are wired for action. So, when we first laid down the snacking habit with a favored treat, the brain said, “Great! We’re doing something to address this stress thing. I’ll count that as a win.” Unless we update that value with new data, it’ll keep feeding the habit loop!

The data that matters is not cognitive; it’s somatic. We need to slow down and take note of what it feels like to continue with this behavior – not just in the moment, but in all the moments that fall thereafter. We need to notice that we aren’t really tasting our food. We need to feel into the fullness and the physical and emotional discomfort that comes with it. We need to remember how it felt the following day. That input helps reset the reward value so that the habit loop ceases to have the allure it once held. (Note: When a long-time smoker availed herself of mindfulness, she realized that smoking “smells like stinky cheese and tastes like chemicals. Yuck.”)

While these insights may prove sufficient to break the hold of a bad habit, we can seal the deal by giving the brain a bigger, better offer in response to the trigger – one that doesn’t feed the habit loop. So, what works?

Brewer suggest that we simply bring a kind, curious, nonjudgmental awareness to the sensations and feelings that triggered the loop in the first place. We needn’t rush to fix them; we can simply observe the experience. We might say to ourselves, “Hmmm. What name would I give this sensation? Where do I feel it in my body? What emotion seems to go along with it? What stories am I telling about it?” We’re not dissecting it or trying to answer the why of it all. We’re just describing what is happening.

Curiosity has a calming influence. It open us up to insight and learning. It brings out our childlike wonder. It effortlessly pulls us in because it feels good and rewarding. And in all likelihood, the sensation or emotion that triggered the old habit loop simply dissipate of its own volition.

These three steps take practice, but they’re not hard to institute. Map habit loops. Make space to look at the real results of the behavior. Practice riding out urges. Learn to be with whatever thoughts and emotions arise. Have faith that you can do it.

I marvel at the human brain’s capacity to function on autopilot, navigating hundreds or thousands of routines with no (or minimal) conscious thought. The first few times we perform a new task – like tying our shoes – it’s a bit effortful. But once we’ve mastered a skill, we can execute it while thinking about other things.

Habits largely live in the realm of the unconscious. We encounter a trigger that sets forth a behavioral routine which results in some form of reward. The reward generally draws us toward something pleasant or away from something unpleasant/harmful.

See donuts.
Eat donuts.
Savor the delicious flavor and survive.

Hear rattling sound in forest.
Move away from sound with all due haste.
Avoid poisonous snake bite and survive.

We find this survivalist wiring in all sentient life. The degree to which we’re drawn to a particular behavior in response to a cue or trigger lies in the reward value that we’ve assigned to it. The higher the reward, the easier it is to trigger the behavior.

So, how do we get stuck in bad habits?

If we’re uncomfortably and unhealthfully overweight, we know we should eat less and focus on healthier food choices, but we can’t seem to avoid the allure of salts, sugars, and fats. If we smoke cigarettes, we’ve been bombarded with all kinds of messaging about how bad it is for us (and may even experience life-threatening symptoms), but we still light up. A similar logic goes along with alcohol and drug addiction. Our higher order thinking may know that our behavior is not life sustaining, but we have real difficulty changing it.

Dr. Judson Brewer, MD, PhD has devoted his life’s work to helping people break the cycle of addiction. He tells us that willpower and self-discipline alone are not sufficient to overcome this seemingly intractable foe. They rely upon the faculties of the newest part of our brains – the prefrontal cortex – to exercise control. Regrettably, that’s the first part of our brains to go off-line when we are under stress, which is when bad habits are most likely to engage. They spring forth from ye olde reward-based learning that triggers behavior based on a cue in anticipation of a reward.

CUE: I feel anxious, upset, bored…
BEHAVIOR: I eat chocolate, light up a smoke, down a drink, take a pill…
REWARD: I avoid having to feel anxious, upset, bored… in this moment

Dr. Charles Duhigg served up the Golden Rule of Habit Change to address this circumstance: Keep an old cue, deliver an old reward, but insert a new behavior. For example, go for a brisk walk in nature the next time you feel anxious, bored, upset… While that’s a healthier alternative to overeating, smoking, or substance abuse, it keeps the old habit loop intact, making it easy to revert to the old behavior. Besides, do we really think a habit loop designed to avoid feelings is a good thing?

As a long time meditator, Dr. Brewer wondered to what extent the practice of mindfulness might benefit those struggling with addiction. He identified several factors favorable to its use:

• Mindfulness takes behaviors that have been unconscious and brings them into awareness with compassion and without judgment. It creates the space for making different choices.
• Mindfulness recognizes that physical sensations, mental states, and feelings rise and fall away. Whatever impulse drives undesirable behavior, it’ll go away.
• Mindfulness brings curiosity to impulses and reward systems. Impulses feel less compelling when examined from an interested but dispassionate stance. Rewards may not be so rewarding when taking a longer view. (“Mmm. The chocolate tasted good for the few minutes that it took to eat it. But then I felt bloated and guilty. It also disrupted my sleep, and I felt lousy the next day.”) If you reset the reward value, the habit loop may die on the vine.

Dr. Brewer tested his theory with smokers who were highly motivated to quit. Half of the group got the prevailing gold standard treatment protocol for quitting smoking; the other half received mindfulness training along with a related app for their Smartphones. The mindfulness group demonstrated a success rate 5x that of the gold standard group! He applied the technique to overeating and witnessed a 40% reduction in craving-related eating.

Want to learn more? Read my next post or watch Judson Brewer’s TED Talk entitled A simple way to break a bad habit.