The Anti-Anxiety Toolkit
Rapid Techniques to Rewire the Brain
Melissa Tiers
The Anti-anxiety Toolkit: Rapid Techniques to Rewire the Brain
By Melissa Tiers
Copyright 2012 Melissa Tiers
Smashwords Edition
This book is available in print at most online retailers.
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To all my anxious clients, students, and friends who trusted me enough to let me into their minds. Thank you.
Table of Contents
Become the Director (Take One)
Become the Director (Take Two)
Self-hypnosis to Rewire the Brain
My goal for this little book is to allow the reader to be able to get relief within ten minutes of opening it. With that in mind, I’ll keep this introduction short.
When I work with my clients to overcome anxiety, my approach is two-fold. First I teach them different techniques to address the cognitive, emotional/biochemical, structural and energetic aspects involved. For many people, just learning about these things decreases the intensity of episodes.
Then we work together to systematically neutralize the triggers and reprogram the responses. So even though they have many techniques to stop anxiety, the reprogramming process makes it so they rarely have to use them.
It’s like learning a martial art. First, you learn how to kick ass. Then you learn how to never need to use it. It’s interesting how the more skilled you get, the less you have to fight.
So, think of this book like that.
This book’s preliminary chapters cover quick ways to interrupt the anxiety pattern. Once you get this you will be in a much more receptive state of mind to practice the more in depth processes that come later on.
Think of anxiety as a network of neural clusters in the brain that create an area of association—as some neuroscientists like to say, "the cells that fire together, wire together." For instance, a violin player will have an area of association that correlates to the hand she uses to finger the instrument. The more she practices, the more robust the area becomes. If she stops playing for a while, the cluster shrinks back to normal size.
This corresponds to research on London taxi drivers that shows more density in the area of the brain associated with navigation. (Because unlike New York, London cabbies actually have to know the city.)
As you can see, the more we reinforce the pattern the thicker and stronger the cluster of neurons becomes. And as that happens, it becomes much more difficult to control them. My friend John Overdurf refers to these clusters of neurons as “the bully on the block who is strong, thick and overly sensitive. This makes it easily triggered.”
But new research in neuroscience tells us that the brain is malleable and capable of changing even the most ingrained patterns. So, each time you stop the pattern of anxiety, you are working to rewire the brain. Google neuroplasticity if you want to learn more.
Luckily the brain can be rewired more easily than most people imagine, and by practicing all the techniques in this book you will become an expert in neuro-plasticity.
That’s because if you can interrupt the anxiety and then connect that cluster to a more resourceful state like relaxation, you will be cross connecting those neurons and loosening up the area of association that had been keeping that cluster strong.
So not only do you get immediate relief, you are slowly but surely dismantling the neural network that used to keep that anxiety active.
And this book will give you many different ways to calm, inform, and change the bully in your brain.
Here’s another way to think about it. Anxiety has a structure. Some people will see something external and then say something inside their heads and then feel anxious. Others will hear something or tell themselves something and then make an internal image and then feel anxious.
Other people will remember something as an image and then react to it by feeling anxious. There are many different combinations of the above.
Once you understand that you are generating the anxiety and that it doesn’t just descend out of nowhere, you can begin to change it. This book will show you how to do that by changing the internal images, dialogue and feelings associated with it in the body.
We will start with quick and easy techniques to interrupt those patterns; we will then move towards all the different ways you can manipulate and change your internal strategies.
I suggest playing with and practicing these techniques as you read them. If you become familiar with them before the anxiety is in full swing, then you will be armed and ready when you need to be.
Bi-Lateral Stimulation
This technique involves stimulating both sides of the brain to stop anxiety. It is absurdly simple yet amazingly effective. Grab a ball (or apple or anything you can toss) and think of something that is causing you some anxiety.