Lecture 5:

Stress and Anxiety and How to Overcome It

“You should sit in meditation for twenty minutes everyday — unless you are busy; then you should sit for an hour.”

-Zen Proverb

We all experience stress to some degree, and up to a certain threshold, it can be beneficial to our survival. Animals evolved to utilize the Sympathetic Nervous System (or fight/flight/freeze response) when faced with real threats, such as being chased by large predators millenia ago. Today, we still have that same fight/flight/freeze system and it is triggered by a multitude of stressors that do not necessarily endanger our lives, such as making grades, social interactions, achieving tasks on time, etc. Stress overload has a severe trifecta of effects on our emotional health (low self-esteem, moodiness, increased anxiety and depression), cognitive health (racing thoughts, forgetfulness, pessimism), and physical health (nausea, migraines, heart disease). 

Anxiety, which is the persistent feeling of dread from too much stress, can be formed through the neural process of Long-Term Potentiation, the strengthening of neural bonds - synaptic connections in anxiety pathways. Recall the Pavlov’s dog experiment - classical conditioning. A dog may salivate to the bell because he/she knows the bell indicates that it is time for dinner. The synaptic and neural pathways activated by the bell are strengthened through learning/conditioning such that a previously neutral stimulus, the bell, activates the neural pathways for salivating and anticipation. Similarly, emotional responses, such as fear, can be conditioned - a stimulus that is neutral to one person may take on incredibly strong emotional valence in another. Perhaps you were bit by a dog, or stung by a bee, as a child. You might now have a strong emotional response to the sight of a dog or a bee - or even the conditions in which you experienced those events. You may not even remember the original traumatic event! Or, perhaps you experienced a much stronger trauma - emotional or physical abuse. Anything that reminds you of that trauma, a smell, a sound, a feeling, may trigger a full on anxiety attack - even if you don’t remember the original trauma. Your neural pathways have been conditioned - strengthened so that stimuli/conditions that are neutral to some people evoke powerful emotional responses in you. Sometimes, anxiety (and panic attacks) can appear seemingly out of no where. The neural circuits underlying anxiety are discharging abnormally, all on their own, even in situations that are perfectly safe. The feelings you are having are very real, and the result of abnormal activity in your brain’s anxiety pathways.

Our brains developed these associative mechanisms to enhance our survival - to help avoid what threatens us. But if you can recall from Lecture 4, these threats can be either real or imagined. It is up for us to determine their utility - to question our “filters” - and to move our neural pathways into a more healthy realm of being.

If you’re someone who struggles with stress and anxiety, here are some tips to weaken inappropriate associations through Long-Term Synaptic Depression (reducing the strength of synaptic neural connections) and to replace them with more skillful thought/emotional associations and thought patterns: forgive yourself for perceived or actual mistakes, have a purpose in actions and in life, lean into stress and anxiety - question why they are there, practice methods such as MBSR/CBT to become aware of your negative thoughts and replace them, meditate to calm yourself and reconnect with the moment, do acts of self-care daily (having adequate sleep, exercise, meals, social connections, time for introspection), challenge yourself without passing the breaking point, and always, always remember that everything in life is temporary.