One thing I have been using my free trial of Spotify for is listening to audiobooks. The most recent book on anxiety I’ve listened to is Rewire Your Anxious Brain: How to Use the Neuroscience of Fear to End Anxiety, Panic, and Worry by psychologist Catherine Pittman and author Elizabeth Karle.
On Amazon the book is marked “therapist recommended.” Though for me the Spotify algorithm suggested it, I can totally believe therapists would want people with anxiety disorders to have this information.
As always, my reviews are offered with the understanding you’ll make your own damn choices. I blog about my experiences, and hope that’s helpful when it’s time to decide what things are worth your money and energy.
The Neuroscience of Anxiety
This book was even better than Unwinding Anxiety at explaining to me how my brain works. Particularly the two paths that lead to my experience of generalized anxiety disorder: cortex-based and amygdala-based anxiety.
Anxiety that originates in my cortex is borne of obsessive thinking, whereas my amygdala doesn’t bother with that weak-ass thinking stuff and just launches into anxious default override mode at what feels like the slightest provocation. Or even no provocation at all.
Where other aurhors I’ve read haven’t bothered with detailing this distinction, I found it immensely helpful and satisfying to have a “why” to offer myself when some techniques worked better than others at alleviating worry, panic, and anxiety.
Sometimes my anxieties knock politely, and sometimes they bust through a wall like the Kool-Aid Man.
Self-Assesments
At a couple of different points, I thought to myself, “Holy shit, you have been through it, girl.” During one of the self-assessment portions, I realized that I was having panic attacks—not just garden variety anxiety, but rapid heartbeat, dizziness, paralysis, etc—daily for most of 2024. And sometimes these attacks lasted for hours.
That’s why there were no reported changes to my brain tumor on MRIs. Anxiety was a condition I’d been unwittingly nurturing since childhood, and the brain cancer was just more fodder.
I woke up every morning for months in sheer terror. And my oncologist—bless his quite thorough, helpful, and knowledgeable heart—gave me fuel to reinforce the panic with each new biopsy until I became a shell of a human with a soft, fearful middle.
Anxiety Exercises
Knowing why the exercises would help and how I could expect to feel as a result made trying them easier.
For example, I realized that immersion therapy appealed to me for handling my fear of falling. However, by bailing on my standing at the first sign of vertigo, the amygdala wasn’t understanding I was safe.
Instead it was reinforcing what it remembered about protecting my body: don’t move and nobody gets hurt.
The realization that I need to ride out the panic coupled with the requisite mindfulness (internalizing different sensations) gives me hope that I can continue figuring this stuff out through independent study.
Anxiety Medication
The basic information I got about different anxiety meds and how they work has helped me in two ways: I know why I don’t like Xanax, and I’m not fearful of trying something else in the future.
GAD had programmed my brain to freak out over everything, including new medications. Now that my lizard brain understands the meds aren’t going to kill me, my cortex can chill out and stop trying so hard to convince myself meds are not a threat.
(Incidentally, unwinding anxiety is the best metaphor for how this junk is all tangled up in my brain like a trunk full of last year’s Christmas lights. Absolute perfection.)
Overall I found this book helpful, particularly as someone who experiences severe anxiety, disability from anxiety and cancer, and an unceasing desire to understand how things work.