Anxiety Relief - Change Your Brain to Treat Anxiety

The plasticity of your brain can either create new thoughts and new neural pathways, or it can create a deep groove or rut from habits that are difficult to change. When your brain is forming as a fetus and in early childhood, pathways and neural connections are laid down in your body. These neural pathways incorporated what you were experiencing at that time. For example, if your mother was anxious when you were very young, that anxiety would become part of your neural programming. If you had an abusive and angry father when you were a child that too would become a part of your neural programming.

As you grow up, every time this neural pattern is stimulated it gets stronger. Over time a large bundle of neurons group together. A seemingly unrelated event can then stimulate this large bundle of neurons and the old pattern gets further embedded. Usually all these connections are unconscious, and you don’t realize the underlying cause of feelings of fear, panic, anxiety, anger, depression or sadness. Neurological impulses that were formulated very early on trigger these emotions.

Over time, more and more neurons are added to this bundle of nerves, so that at times something totally unrelated will fire the entire bundle. Fear is a prime example. Fear is an important mechanism in the brain to keep you safe. Once fear gets activated, it takes over all other parts of your brain, including rational thought; that is how your body is designed.

The media continually adds on to this fear response with news of death, tragedy, pain and suffering. Over time, the bundles of neurons continue to enlarge and the fear response gets stronger. What was originally intended for your safety, has been added on to so that is it a huge conglomeration of neurons. The fear response gets blow out of proportion. When this happens, logical thinking is abandoned, since the hard-wiring of your body always responds to fear first over reason.

Neurons are prone to being entrenched by force of habit. These neural circuits, once established become self-sustaining. The habit or pattern becomes more difficult to break. You might be doing well reducing your anxiety, but when faced with a stressful situation, your body will revert to the old ways. This is your neural circuitry at work.

The good news is that all of this can change. When these old patterns arise the process of thanking them starts to release the bundles that are wired together. Nerves that are wired together, fire together. The process of thanking your anxiety, thanking these bundles of nerves, and thanking whatever you are feeling, helps to separate the nerve bundles. As each one is thanked, it is freed from the old stuck together bundle. Over time, the pattern shifts as the neurons that fired together start to create new pathways and connect to other neurons in your brain and body.

As you bring gratitude and thanks to your anxieties, your brain can start to shift. The innate intelligence of your body directs which nerves to unwire and reconnect in new ways. The amazing aspect of gratitude is that the good gets strengthened, while the unwanted and totally unacceptable energies and neural patterns shift. Bring gratitude to everything and watch your body transform.