The Fear and Anxiety Solution by PhD Friedemann MD Schaub Read Free Book Online Page A

determined to fend off the intruder if he or she should dare to enter your bedroom. After what seems like hours of agonizing anxiety, you tiptoe downstairs—and discover that the intruder turns out to be your cat, which has knocked over a vase.
    Like most medical students who immerse themselves in the study of diseases, I went through a phase of suffering from devastating afflictions, all of which had two things in common: I’d just learned about their specific symptoms, and they all mysteriously disappeared as quickly as they came. Because of the Internet, this phenomenon seems to be no longer limited to medical schools. Many of my clients report having sleepless nights after consulting “Dr. Google” and “finding out” they have an incurable disease.
    Mark Twain said, “I have experienced many catastrophes in my life—most of which never happened.” It is our active imagination that turns cats into burglars and an upset stomach into cancer. If just a tiny fraction of people’s anxieties were to come true, Planet Earth would have ceased to exist a long time ago.
    Remember, fear is supposed to function as the inner alarm signal, a little red warning light that gives you a heads up if there is something you need to be aware of. However, if you’ve been dealing with fear and anxiety for an extended period of time, this warning system often becomes too sensitive and is then set off by even the slightest detail. For example, you might interpret a frown onyour boss’s forehead as a sign that you’re one step away from being fired. Or you might believe your spouse’s purchase of a new pair of sunglasses means you’re doomed to financial ruin. If friends don’t call you over the weekend, it’s a sure sign they’ve stopped caring about you or that you’ve done something terrible to upset them. Over time, you may become so used to these constant warnings that they feel completely normal to you.
    You may be thinking, “But how do I decide if a situation is truly dangerous or just a frightening interpretation of my mind? How can I know whether my
what ifs
are founded in reality or in fantasy?” In other words, how can you know if the alarm is real or not?
    You can’t tell—at least not right away. At first you need to reset your internal alarm system so it will respond appropriately. And then you need to do a bit of relearning and build a new inner foundation of confidence and true self-empowerment. While this may sound like a long and complicated process, it isn’t if you know how to work directly with the source of fear and anxiety: your subconscious mind.
    Before we probe deeper into working with the subconscious, let’s have a look inside your brain to give your intellectual side something to chew on.
WHAT HAPPENS IN OUR BRAIN?
    Although anxiety is often based on nothing but our imagination, the feeling of anxiety is always real to our minds and bodies. To better understand why, we need to delve a little bit into the neuro-physiological pathway of fear and anxiety.
    Imagine you’re walking in the forest on a warm summer day. Suddenly you spot a long, thin object hanging from a branch that stretches right above the trail. Your eyes direct this visual information to the optic nerve, which sends it to the thalamus region, one of the most important relay stations of the brain (see Figure 1 ). The thalamus sends signals to the amygdalae, almond-shaped groups of cells that are part of the brain’s limbic system and play a significant role in emotional responses and long-term memory.
    The amygdalae evaluate the input by determining whether the image of the long, thin object has any emotional relevance. Could this object mean danger or pleasure? Another part of the limbic system, the hippocampus region, becomes involved. It helps scan the cortex, or outer part of your brain, for memories that may provide further information about what this long, thin thing might be. The resulting thought: it could be a