Unwinding Anxiety with Mindfulness Training
But he tried everything to quit. He tried medication. He tried quitting cold turkey and nothing worked. The problem was that he didn't know how his mind worked.
The first thing we did was to help him start paying attention and understanding this habit loop process. It might seem strange that paying attention to your behavior would actually change it, yet this is right at the crux of how mindfulness works.
I'll give you another example. As you pay attention when you smoke a cigarette, you start to notice new things. I had a client do a mindfulness smoking exercise and really pay attention as she smoked. She commented, “It smells like stinky cheese and tastes like chemicals.”
I bring this forward because this is at the heart of reward-based learning systems. Reward-based learning is based on rewards, not on the behavior itself. If behavior change were as simple as focusing on the behavior, we’d simply tell ourselves to stop smoking and then we’d stop, or we’d tell ourselves to stop eating cake and we’d stop doing it.
That's not how our brains work. Our brains work based on how rewarding a behavior is. If we can see clearly how unrewarding it is, then we start to re-evaluate that process.
For example, unpleasant thoughts or emotions, like fear and anxiety, can trigger worry that makes us feel like we're in control. Yet when we realize worry doesn't solve problems, give us control, or even feel good, the reward value drops. It can then spiral out and feed more anxiety, which then feeds more worry.
Now, you might ask yourself, how can anxiety be treated in the same way as other habits or addictions? It turns out there's quite a bit of literature showing that anxiety can be negatively reinforced just like any other behavior...
See how mindfulness training can help clients understand their destructive behaviors and step out of this cycle:
*This is an adapted excerpt from Tapping into our Brains to Break Anxiety Cycles and Other Habits by Judson Brewer. You can purchase the full digital seminar here.
Grounded in the science of mindfulness, each exercise harnesses your brain’s innate power to create new responses to anxiety triggers, so you can:
- Form new habits that interrupt your anxious cycles
- Focus on what works instead of trying to control your anxiety
- Explore the misleading “payoff” of anxious habits
- Step out of worry and rumination and into healthy, fulfilling experiences
- Create bigger, better habits that build kindness, curiosity, and gratitude
Jud Brewer, MD, PhD (“Dr. Jud”) is a New York Times best-selling author and thought leader in the field of habit change and the “science of self-mastery,” who blends over 20 years of experience with mindfulness training and a career in scientific research. He is passionate about understanding how our brains work, and how to use that knowledge to help people make deep, permanent change in their lives – with the goal of reducing suffering in the world at large.
Dr. Brewer is the director of research and innovation at Brown University’s Mindfulness Center, where he also serves as an associate professor at the Schools of Public Health and Medicine at Brown University. Additionally, he is the chief medical officer at Sharecare, a digital health company, and a research affiliate at MIT.
As a psychiatrist and internationally known expert in mindfulness training for treating addictions, Dr. Brewer has developed and tested novel mindfulness programs for habit change, including both in-person and app-based treatments for anxiety, emotional eating, and smoking. Based on the success of these programs in the lab, he co-founded MindSciences, Inc. – acquired by Sharecare in 2020 – to create app-based digital therapeutic versions of these programs for a wider audience, working with individuals, corporations, and health systems to put effective, evidence-based behavior change guidance in the hands of people struggling with unwanted behaviors and “everyday addictions.”
Dr. Brewer has published numerous peer-reviewed studies, trained U.S. Olympic athletes and coaches, foreign government ministers and corporate leaders. His research has been funded by the National Institutes of Health and American Heart Association, among others.
He is the author of The Craving Mind: From Cigarettes to Smartphones to Love, Why We Get Hooked and How We Can Break Bad Habits (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2017) and Unwinding Anxiety: New Science Shows How to Break the Cycles of Worry and Fear to Heal Your Mind (Avery/Penguin Random House, 2021).
Speaker Disclosures:
Financial: Dr. Judson Brewer has an employment relationship with Brown University and is a consultant with Sharecare. He receives funding from Tiny Blue Dot Foundation, Peter G. Peterson Foundation, Richard King Mellon Foundation, and the NIH. Dr. Brewer receives royalties as a published author. He receives a speaking honorarium and recording royalties from PESI, Inc. He has no relevant financial relationships with ineligible organizations.
Non-financial: Dr. Judson Brewer serves as an associate editor for Frontiers in Psychology and is a reviewer for several publications, for a complete list contact PESI, Inc.
