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Unwinding Anxiety
A step-by-step plan clinically proven to break the cycle of worry and fear that drives anxiety and addictive habits
We are living through one of the most anxious periods any of us can remember. Whether facing issues as public as a pandemic or as personal as having kids at home and fighting the urge to reach for the wine bottle every night, we are feeling overwhelmed and out of control. But in this timely book, Judson Brewer explains how to uproot anxiety at its source using brain-based techniques and small hacks accessible to anyone.
We think of anxiety as everything from mild unease to full-blown panic. But it's also what drives the addictive behaviors and bad habits we use to cope (e.g. stress eating, procrastination, doom scrolling and social media). Plus, anxiety lives in a part of the brain that resists rational thought. So we get stuck in anxiety habit loops that we can't think our way out of or use willpower to overcome. Dr. Brewer teaches us map our brains to discover our triggers, defuse them with the simple but powerful practice of curiosity, and to train our brains using mindfulness and other practices that his lab has proven can work.
Distilling more than 20 years of research and hands-on work with thousands of patients, including Olympic athletes and coaches, and leaders in government and business, Dr. Brewer has created a clear, solution-oriented program that anyone can use to feel better - no matter how anxious they feel.
We are living through one of the most anxious periods any of us can remember. Whether facing issues as public as a pandemic or as personal as having kids at home and fighting the urge to reach for the wine bottle every night, we are feeling overwhelmed and out of control. But in this timely book, Judson Brewer explains how to uproot anxiety at its source using brain-based techniques and small hacks accessible to anyone.
We think of anxiety as everything from mild unease to full-blown panic. But it's also what drives the addictive behaviors and bad habits we use to cope (e.g. stress eating, procrastination, doom scrolling and social media). Plus, anxiety lives in a part of the brain that resists rational thought. So we get stuck in anxiety habit loops that we can't think our way out of or use willpower to overcome. Dr. Brewer teaches us map our brains to discover our triggers, defuse them with the simple but powerful practice of curiosity, and to train our brains using mindfulness and other practices that his lab has proven can work.
Distilling more than 20 years of research and hands-on work with thousands of patients, including Olympic athletes and coaches, and leaders in government and business, Dr. Brewer has created a clear, solution-oriented program that anyone can use to feel better - no matter how anxious they feel.
287 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 2020
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 1,093 reviews
April 10, 2021
This was actually a lot more about addiction than anxiety, so not what I was looking for. The author might argue that anxiety is addiction, but eh. I also was not taken with the technique of curiously examining your feelings when you're feeling anxious...I can pretty well describe what I'm feeling, particularly physically, but that doesn't help me. The author would likely argue that I'm not going far enough, but again, eh. I can see this working for some people, but I didn't find it useful. Also, be prepared to learn more about smoking/alcoholism/binge eating and maybe procrastination than anxiety.
July 30, 2021
According to the National Institute of Mental Health, almost one out of every three US adults will suffer from some form of anxiety disorder at some point in their lives. In addition, among US adults who have experienced an anxiety disorder, around 23 percent report serious impairment and 34 percent report moderate impairment in the normal activities of daily life, work, or school (based on data last updated in 2017).
This makes anxiety disorders the most common group of mental disorders in the US, affecting tens of millions of individuals each year. But that’s not the worst of it; these numbers represent only the reported or documented disorders. Even if we cannot officially classify our anxiety as severe or chronic, most of us will nevertheless face anxiety in some capacity over the course of the year. In other words, virtually everyone can benefit from learning more about the causes and management of anxiety.
In Unwinding Anxiety, psychiatrist and professor Judson Brewer distills into a single volume over 20 years of research and practice in the diagnosis and treatment of anxiety and addiction. It turns out that, while anxiety is highly treatable, most people are taking the wrong approach. Let’s take a closer look at the science of anxiety and how it can be managed more effectively.
Anxiety manifests itself in habits
Dr. Brewer’s first key insight is that anxiety manifests itself in habits, and, as such, some people may not realize they are struggling with anxiety at all. But whether we realize it or not, we all tend to self-treat our anxiety by creating habits, some of which are positive, but most of which are detrimental to our health (e.g., overeating, smoking, or drinking alcohol). The first step to overcoming anxiety, then, is to understand the origin of the habits we want to eliminate or replace, and this requires understanding how the brain works to create anxiety in the first place.
Crudely speaking, the brain can be divided into the older, instinctual part and the newer, higher-level thinking and planning part (prefrontal cortex). Our older brain (in evolutionary terms) is the seat of fear, which is differentiated from anxiety in the immediacy of its response. For example, if a car is barreling down on you, you will experience an immediate fear response and will jump out of the way before consciously thinking about your actions. The fear response is quick and automatic and comes with the standard physiological responses (rapid heart rate, tightening of the stomach, high blood pressure, etc.)
The fear response in the above example comprises three elements: the environmental trigger, the behavior, and the result or reward.
Trigger: the threat of being hit by a car
Behavior: jumping out of the way
Result: avoiding injury or death
Fear is our body’s automatic, evolutionary method to quickly take action to avoid harm. It is therefore quite useful in a variety of situations; problems arise, however, when our newer, thinking brains co-opt the fear response to create longer lasting anxiety about potential future events that could be harmful.
Because our thinking brains can run simulations of the future—and because the future is uncertain—we map out scenarios in our minds about future disastrous events and then worry about the possibility of their realization. This results in the basic formula for anxiety:
Anxiety = Fear + Uncertainty
Because there are a multitude of things to fear, there are a multitude of things to be anxious about, which we can see in the myriad types of anxiety disorders that exist. We each have our own fears and anxieties, and these all manifest in the habits we form as self-treatments. These self-treatments, however, simply create habits based on short-term fixes that often have long-term negative consequences. Then, these habits (smoking, overeating, etc.) become the parts of our lives we most want to change.
But change is, while not easy or quick, within our reach. In fact, Brewer has developed a three-step approach in his clinical practice (and based on his research) that has been shown to be highly effective, and that runs counter to the idea that we can simply use willpower to overcome our urges. In the battle between the old brain and new brain, the old brain usually wins, unless we can learn to leverage how our minds naturally work—using the principles of rewards-based learning—to our own advantage.
Unwinding anxiety in three steps
Briefly, the three steps to the effective management of anxiety are as follows:
Identify your habit loops
Update the reward values of the behaviors you want to change
Replace your old habits with new, healthier habits
Let’s review each in turn.
Step 1: Identify your habit loops
If our anxiety manifests itself in habits, the first step to treating your anxiety is the identification of your problematic habit loops. To see how this works, let’s use the example of smoking, which, by now, almost everyone can agree is a habit that offers no actual benefits and several negative consequences. Smoking is the quintessential bad habit that is both addicting and disastrous for your health.
If you’re a smoker, you might notice that you tend to get cravings most intensely after a stressful event, maybe after a tough day at work, for instance. Here’s what the habit loop looks like:
Trigger: stressful day at work
Behavior: smoke a cigarette
Result: temporary relief of stress and anxiety
Of course, the act of smoking brings only temporary relief. The anxiety will return, which will require another cigarette, ad infinitum. This short-term self-treatment of stress and anxiety is no long-term fix, and, on top of that, it creates its own long-term health consequences.
While identifying the relevant habit loops is a critical and necessary first step, simply recognizing them is not enough to quit. Your new brain cannot outbid your old brain when it comes to updating the rewards of behaviors. You can tell yourself that smoking is bad for you; you can reprimand yourself for every cigarette you smoke; and you can remind yourself that smoking increases your risk of developing cancer. You can even tell yourself that you will never smoke another cigarette again. But it’s just not that easy. Faced with significant stress, the reward centers in your older brain will compel you to reach for that pack of cigarettes and your new brain will have to concede.
As Brewer explains, while a select few individuals have the brute willpower to change habits on a whim, the majority of us require a different approach—one that takes advantage of how our brains naturally respond to rewards.
Step 2: Disenchant your old habits
We saw in step one that it is nearly impossible to override the reward centers of your brain. If cigarettes temporarily relieve severe stress and anxiety, the temptation is too great for your thinking brain to override. You can’t simply think yourself out of old habits; instead, it’s far more effective to use two critical tools that can help you update the reward value of the behavior you want to change: mindfulness and curiosity.
Using our smoking example, instead of reprimanding yourself for smoking a cigarette, instead pay close attention to the actual experience of smoking. You might notice, for example, how the act of smoking makes your lungs feel contaminated and short of breath, or how the smell or taste is very unpleasant. Rather than mindlessly smoking as a way to relieve stress, you can focus instead on the negative aspects of the experience itself, including any associated negative feelings you experience during and after smoking.
As a quick recap, if you’re a smoker, remember that in step one you identified your habit loops. You will have mapped out the environmental triggers (most commonly stress) that create cravings. In step two, you become curious about the way your mind works and about the actual experience of smoking. You’ll identify smoking as an ineffective means of relieving anxiety, and will further recognize that the experience itself is not rewarding. Over time, the negative aspects of the habit will be internalized, and the behavior will become disenchanted. Here’s what your new habit loop can look like:
Trigger: stressful day at work
Behavior: smoke a cigarette
Result: Feel contaminated and short of breath; experience the unpleasant taste in the mouth, foul smell, etc.
The same process can apply to any habits. If you struggle with overeating, focus on the full and bloated feeling you get when you’re done eating. Force your old brain to relearn and re-associate negative feelings with the habits you want to change, and over time your brain will come to stop seeing these behaviors as inherently rewarding. That’s when you can move on to step three.
Step 3: Replace your old habits with new, healthier habits
Continuing with the smoking example, now that you’ve disenchanted the act of smoking, you can begin to deal with the anxiety itself. But first, a word of caution.
You’ll notice that Brewer is not recommending immediately replacing one habit with another in step one or step two. Several of his patients that went the replacement route directly have either failed or simply established new habits that need replacing. For example, if you substitute eating candy for smoking, you’ve just replaced one bad habit with another. Even if you successfully quit smoking, you now have a candy addiction you need to resolve.
The more effective approach—confirmed by several of Brewer’s own patients—is to first spend time mapping your habit loops and working on the process of disenchantment. That way, when your old habits become less rewarding, they also become easier to replace with newer, healthier ones.
But again, not just any habits will do. What we’re looking for are habits that are readily available, inexhaustible, and capable of reducing anxiety in the long-term, rather than just in the short-term. Two behaviors fit the bill, and are the very same things we encountered in step two: curiosity and mindfulness.
If you think about it, there really is no escape from the things that cause your anxiety. The habits we typically create (smoking, drinking, avoidance) in response to our anxiety provide temporary relief, but even if we replace them with other habits (eating candy), this doesn’t resolve the underlying source of our anxiety. We have no choice but to face the things we fear. The alternative is to suffer from constant anxiety due to the possibility of their eventual realization.
Let’s take social anxiety as an example. If this is the reason we smoke or drink or overeat, none of these habits have the capacity to resolve our fear of social events in the long-term. There is only one way to overcome the source of your anxiety in this situation: retraining your brain to view social situations as rewarding rather than threatening. We know that social situations themselves are not inherently threatening, or else everyone would suffer from social anxiety. The fact that some people seek out socialization and some do not tells you that the problem is psychological.
How can we overcome social anxiety in this situation? Only through mindfulness and exposure to social situations. While it won’t be easy, there really is no alternative, other than medication (another bad habit?)
So instead of running away from our fears and anxieties and coping with them through unhealthy habits, we face our fears with full awareness and the motivation to overcome them directly through repeated exposure. This is the basis of exposure therapy. Patients focus on the situation and its positive aspects through mindful awareness and curiosity rather than dwelling on their internal anxieties and fears.
Overcoming our fears feels good, and over time, this consistently positive feeling, if we pay attention to it, updates the reward centers of our brain. Using the brain’s natural reward-based learning process, we can begin to associate social situations (in the case of social anxiety) with positive outcomes.
The benefits of mindfulness and curiosity
We’ve seen the benefits of mindfulness and curiosity throughout the three-step process. We used mindfulness in step one to analyze how our brains work and how to map out our habit loops. We then used mindfulness in step two to focus on the negative aspects of the behaviors we wanted to change, in the process disenchanting them. Finally, in step three, we used mindfulness to confront our underlying fears through exposure, focusing on the positive aspects of the situations we fear and the positive feelings that come with having overcome our fears.
Since mindfulness is the key to all steps, training the brain to become more aware is an important step in the process. That’s why meditation—which is effectively mindfulness training for the brain—has been shown to be so effective in reducing anxiety. But we should remember that we can’t just practice meditation and expect our fears to vanish—we must also have the motivation to conquer them, and we must seek out challenging situations as tests to overcome. Only then can we rewire our brains to remove the fear once and for all.
This makes anxiety disorders the most common group of mental disorders in the US, affecting tens of millions of individuals each year. But that’s not the worst of it; these numbers represent only the reported or documented disorders. Even if we cannot officially classify our anxiety as severe or chronic, most of us will nevertheless face anxiety in some capacity over the course of the year. In other words, virtually everyone can benefit from learning more about the causes and management of anxiety.
In Unwinding Anxiety, psychiatrist and professor Judson Brewer distills into a single volume over 20 years of research and practice in the diagnosis and treatment of anxiety and addiction. It turns out that, while anxiety is highly treatable, most people are taking the wrong approach. Let’s take a closer look at the science of anxiety and how it can be managed more effectively.
Anxiety manifests itself in habits
Dr. Brewer’s first key insight is that anxiety manifests itself in habits, and, as such, some people may not realize they are struggling with anxiety at all. But whether we realize it or not, we all tend to self-treat our anxiety by creating habits, some of which are positive, but most of which are detrimental to our health (e.g., overeating, smoking, or drinking alcohol). The first step to overcoming anxiety, then, is to understand the origin of the habits we want to eliminate or replace, and this requires understanding how the brain works to create anxiety in the first place.
Crudely speaking, the brain can be divided into the older, instinctual part and the newer, higher-level thinking and planning part (prefrontal cortex). Our older brain (in evolutionary terms) is the seat of fear, which is differentiated from anxiety in the immediacy of its response. For example, if a car is barreling down on you, you will experience an immediate fear response and will jump out of the way before consciously thinking about your actions. The fear response is quick and automatic and comes with the standard physiological responses (rapid heart rate, tightening of the stomach, high blood pressure, etc.)
The fear response in the above example comprises three elements: the environmental trigger, the behavior, and the result or reward.
Trigger: the threat of being hit by a car
Behavior: jumping out of the way
Result: avoiding injury or death
Fear is our body’s automatic, evolutionary method to quickly take action to avoid harm. It is therefore quite useful in a variety of situations; problems arise, however, when our newer, thinking brains co-opt the fear response to create longer lasting anxiety about potential future events that could be harmful.
Because our thinking brains can run simulations of the future—and because the future is uncertain—we map out scenarios in our minds about future disastrous events and then worry about the possibility of their realization. This results in the basic formula for anxiety:
Anxiety = Fear + Uncertainty
Because there are a multitude of things to fear, there are a multitude of things to be anxious about, which we can see in the myriad types of anxiety disorders that exist. We each have our own fears and anxieties, and these all manifest in the habits we form as self-treatments. These self-treatments, however, simply create habits based on short-term fixes that often have long-term negative consequences. Then, these habits (smoking, overeating, etc.) become the parts of our lives we most want to change.
But change is, while not easy or quick, within our reach. In fact, Brewer has developed a three-step approach in his clinical practice (and based on his research) that has been shown to be highly effective, and that runs counter to the idea that we can simply use willpower to overcome our urges. In the battle between the old brain and new brain, the old brain usually wins, unless we can learn to leverage how our minds naturally work—using the principles of rewards-based learning—to our own advantage.
Unwinding anxiety in three steps
Briefly, the three steps to the effective management of anxiety are as follows:
Identify your habit loops
Update the reward values of the behaviors you want to change
Replace your old habits with new, healthier habits
Let’s review each in turn.
Step 1: Identify your habit loops
If our anxiety manifests itself in habits, the first step to treating your anxiety is the identification of your problematic habit loops. To see how this works, let’s use the example of smoking, which, by now, almost everyone can agree is a habit that offers no actual benefits and several negative consequences. Smoking is the quintessential bad habit that is both addicting and disastrous for your health.
If you’re a smoker, you might notice that you tend to get cravings most intensely after a stressful event, maybe after a tough day at work, for instance. Here’s what the habit loop looks like:
Trigger: stressful day at work
Behavior: smoke a cigarette
Result: temporary relief of stress and anxiety
Of course, the act of smoking brings only temporary relief. The anxiety will return, which will require another cigarette, ad infinitum. This short-term self-treatment of stress and anxiety is no long-term fix, and, on top of that, it creates its own long-term health consequences.
While identifying the relevant habit loops is a critical and necessary first step, simply recognizing them is not enough to quit. Your new brain cannot outbid your old brain when it comes to updating the rewards of behaviors. You can tell yourself that smoking is bad for you; you can reprimand yourself for every cigarette you smoke; and you can remind yourself that smoking increases your risk of developing cancer. You can even tell yourself that you will never smoke another cigarette again. But it’s just not that easy. Faced with significant stress, the reward centers in your older brain will compel you to reach for that pack of cigarettes and your new brain will have to concede.
As Brewer explains, while a select few individuals have the brute willpower to change habits on a whim, the majority of us require a different approach—one that takes advantage of how our brains naturally respond to rewards.
Step 2: Disenchant your old habits
We saw in step one that it is nearly impossible to override the reward centers of your brain. If cigarettes temporarily relieve severe stress and anxiety, the temptation is too great for your thinking brain to override. You can’t simply think yourself out of old habits; instead, it’s far more effective to use two critical tools that can help you update the reward value of the behavior you want to change: mindfulness and curiosity.
Using our smoking example, instead of reprimanding yourself for smoking a cigarette, instead pay close attention to the actual experience of smoking. You might notice, for example, how the act of smoking makes your lungs feel contaminated and short of breath, or how the smell or taste is very unpleasant. Rather than mindlessly smoking as a way to relieve stress, you can focus instead on the negative aspects of the experience itself, including any associated negative feelings you experience during and after smoking.
As a quick recap, if you’re a smoker, remember that in step one you identified your habit loops. You will have mapped out the environmental triggers (most commonly stress) that create cravings. In step two, you become curious about the way your mind works and about the actual experience of smoking. You’ll identify smoking as an ineffective means of relieving anxiety, and will further recognize that the experience itself is not rewarding. Over time, the negative aspects of the habit will be internalized, and the behavior will become disenchanted. Here’s what your new habit loop can look like:
Trigger: stressful day at work
Behavior: smoke a cigarette
Result: Feel contaminated and short of breath; experience the unpleasant taste in the mouth, foul smell, etc.
The same process can apply to any habits. If you struggle with overeating, focus on the full and bloated feeling you get when you’re done eating. Force your old brain to relearn and re-associate negative feelings with the habits you want to change, and over time your brain will come to stop seeing these behaviors as inherently rewarding. That’s when you can move on to step three.
Step 3: Replace your old habits with new, healthier habits
Continuing with the smoking example, now that you’ve disenchanted the act of smoking, you can begin to deal with the anxiety itself. But first, a word of caution.
You’ll notice that Brewer is not recommending immediately replacing one habit with another in step one or step two. Several of his patients that went the replacement route directly have either failed or simply established new habits that need replacing. For example, if you substitute eating candy for smoking, you’ve just replaced one bad habit with another. Even if you successfully quit smoking, you now have a candy addiction you need to resolve.
The more effective approach—confirmed by several of Brewer’s own patients—is to first spend time mapping your habit loops and working on the process of disenchantment. That way, when your old habits become less rewarding, they also become easier to replace with newer, healthier ones.
But again, not just any habits will do. What we’re looking for are habits that are readily available, inexhaustible, and capable of reducing anxiety in the long-term, rather than just in the short-term. Two behaviors fit the bill, and are the very same things we encountered in step two: curiosity and mindfulness.
If you think about it, there really is no escape from the things that cause your anxiety. The habits we typically create (smoking, drinking, avoidance) in response to our anxiety provide temporary relief, but even if we replace them with other habits (eating candy), this doesn’t resolve the underlying source of our anxiety. We have no choice but to face the things we fear. The alternative is to suffer from constant anxiety due to the possibility of their eventual realization.
Let’s take social anxiety as an example. If this is the reason we smoke or drink or overeat, none of these habits have the capacity to resolve our fear of social events in the long-term. There is only one way to overcome the source of your anxiety in this situation: retraining your brain to view social situations as rewarding rather than threatening. We know that social situations themselves are not inherently threatening, or else everyone would suffer from social anxiety. The fact that some people seek out socialization and some do not tells you that the problem is psychological.
How can we overcome social anxiety in this situation? Only through mindfulness and exposure to social situations. While it won’t be easy, there really is no alternative, other than medication (another bad habit?)
So instead of running away from our fears and anxieties and coping with them through unhealthy habits, we face our fears with full awareness and the motivation to overcome them directly through repeated exposure. This is the basis of exposure therapy. Patients focus on the situation and its positive aspects through mindful awareness and curiosity rather than dwelling on their internal anxieties and fears.
Overcoming our fears feels good, and over time, this consistently positive feeling, if we pay attention to it, updates the reward centers of our brain. Using the brain’s natural reward-based learning process, we can begin to associate social situations (in the case of social anxiety) with positive outcomes.
The benefits of mindfulness and curiosity
We’ve seen the benefits of mindfulness and curiosity throughout the three-step process. We used mindfulness in step one to analyze how our brains work and how to map out our habit loops. We then used mindfulness in step two to focus on the negative aspects of the behaviors we wanted to change, in the process disenchanting them. Finally, in step three, we used mindfulness to confront our underlying fears through exposure, focusing on the positive aspects of the situations we fear and the positive feelings that come with having overcome our fears.
Since mindfulness is the key to all steps, training the brain to become more aware is an important step in the process. That’s why meditation—which is effectively mindfulness training for the brain—has been shown to be so effective in reducing anxiety. But we should remember that we can’t just practice meditation and expect our fears to vanish—we must also have the motivation to conquer them, and we must seek out challenging situations as tests to overcome. Only then can we rewire our brains to remove the fear once and for all.
February 13, 2021
Information is power
As you read the book title it says "how to break the cycles of worry and fear to heal your mind" and you have to know that I tried listening to a lot of podcasts, read self-help books and interact with my peers on the internet about our swirling darkness of depression, anxiety, and impending death. I must say it helped a bit but it didn't last long. It wasn't the solution I was truly looking for.
This book dwells in science and relies on facts about how our minds are wired and how it works. It bought clarity to the wonderments I had which were comforting and reassuring. Not only does this book answer our questions but also gives a detailed guide to maneuver or control our mind to reshape or relearn our habitual behaviors concerning anxiety and depression. I hope it gets attention and serves its purpose in helping people who are suffering from anxiety and depression.
As you read the book title it says "how to break the cycles of worry and fear to heal your mind" and you have to know that I tried listening to a lot of podcasts, read self-help books and interact with my peers on the internet about our swirling darkness of depression, anxiety, and impending death. I must say it helped a bit but it didn't last long. It wasn't the solution I was truly looking for.
This book dwells in science and relies on facts about how our minds are wired and how it works. It bought clarity to the wonderments I had which were comforting and reassuring. Not only does this book answer our questions but also gives a detailed guide to maneuver or control our mind to reshape or relearn our habitual behaviors concerning anxiety and depression. I hope it gets attention and serves its purpose in helping people who are suffering from anxiety and depression.
May 13, 2021
This whole book could have been an email. Or an article.
May 24, 2021
Great book but I still remain hopeless
January 8, 2024
When it comes to behavioral change, it often helps to re-frame the issue at stake, and that is exactly what Brewer does: Here, anxiety is defined as a behavior, and people suffering from it are encouraged to identify its triggers and re-evaluate its effects (not very different from behavioral therapy relating to addiction). The point is, says Brewer, that rather than counting on self-restraint, becoming aware of the triggers and then pondering the outcome helps to rewire the brain, for example: A person gets anxious before exams, but most of the time passes, so stupid monkey brain learns: Trigger exam, behavior anxiety, outcome success (although of course the success does in reality not stem from the anxiety, but happens instead of it). The author counters this with strategies to re-wire the automatic thinking.
Brewer relies heavily on the teachings of Jon Kabat-Zinn when it comes to heightening self-awareness (and frankly, this guy's mindfulness mission is often a little too much for me), but I'm always intrigued when neuroscientists and psychiatrists challenge learnt behaviors that are hard to overcome. It's also true though that the book is slightly meandering and a little repetitive, the pacing could have been a lot more stringent and the relationship between anxiety and addiction could have been portrayed in a more nuanced way.
Still a quite interesting read, best seen in the context of the work of Martin E.P. Seligman (who is a much better writer and also has better insights, but oh well).
Brewer relies heavily on the teachings of Jon Kabat-Zinn when it comes to heightening self-awareness (and frankly, this guy's mindfulness mission is often a little too much for me), but I'm always intrigued when neuroscientists and psychiatrists challenge learnt behaviors that are hard to overcome. It's also true though that the book is slightly meandering and a little repetitive, the pacing could have been a lot more stringent and the relationship between anxiety and addiction could have been portrayed in a more nuanced way.
Still a quite interesting read, best seen in the context of the work of Martin E.P. Seligman (who is a much better writer and also has better insights, but oh well).
March 12, 2021
I found many parts of this book insightful and helpful (and dare I even say enjoyable, thanks to Brewer’s self deprecating humor?). He frames the book by starting off with different examples and levels of anxiety, illustrating what a common and widespread issue this is. The rest of the book is divided into 3 sections: how does your brain work/why fear on some level is “good,” how your brain makes decisions and then lastly, how to update your reward system with a bigger, better offer.
Here are some of the one liners that I found interesting:
-Mindfulness is not about stopping, emptying, or ridding ourselves of anything...mindfulness is about changing our relationship to those thoughts and emotions.
-Attitude is everything. Trigger: start to struggle, Behavior: think it will suck (e.g. fixed mindset), Result: increased likelihood of it sucking.
-It doesn’t alter what triggers worry or anxiety, but it does matter how you react to it...”why” doesn’t matter.
Lastly, I really appreciated his explanation of the book dedication.
As for the criticism, it’s pretty universal with “these types” of books. Depending on how many books you read on the topic, this could come across as too “basic” or over simplified.
Here are some of the one liners that I found interesting:
-Mindfulness is not about stopping, emptying, or ridding ourselves of anything...mindfulness is about changing our relationship to those thoughts and emotions.
-Attitude is everything. Trigger: start to struggle, Behavior: think it will suck (e.g. fixed mindset), Result: increased likelihood of it sucking.
-It doesn’t alter what triggers worry or anxiety, but it does matter how you react to it...”why” doesn’t matter.
Lastly, I really appreciated his explanation of the book dedication.
As for the criticism, it’s pretty universal with “these types” of books. Depending on how many books you read on the topic, this could come across as too “basic” or over simplified.
August 1, 2021
I did as I was instructed and read through the book without skipping to the final chapters to get the real secret to managing anxiety, but I'll admit I began skimming by ⅔ in. And sure enough, the best bits were the RAIN practices and Loving-Kindness Meditation detailed near the end- neither of which were new to me, but still a good reminder and reinforcement.
This is lovingly and clearly written and the early chapters on mapping triggers and resulting anxious behaviors were very helpful. I had a week of potentially triggering events ahead of me when I began reading and found myself taking a few steps back and looking at the triggers and my usual responses with greater clarity. It was good fodder for journaling.
Another review suggested this would make a better long-form essay. I did find value in the full book, but skipped the repetitive bits and skimmed to find the golden-ish nuggets.
This is lovingly and clearly written and the early chapters on mapping triggers and resulting anxious behaviors were very helpful. I had a week of potentially triggering events ahead of me when I began reading and found myself taking a few steps back and looking at the triggers and my usual responses with greater clarity. It was good fodder for journaling.
Another review suggested this would make a better long-form essay. I did find value in the full book, but skipped the repetitive bits and skimmed to find the golden-ish nuggets.
March 22, 2021
Key insights for me were: 1) everyone suffers from anxiety because we all have unhealthy habits which arise as a stress response to anxiety, which is basically fear of an uncertain future; 2) we have habitual “loops” - trigger, response, and result (reward); 3) mapping our habit loops helps make us mindful of them; 4) if we update our reward values using mindfulness and curiosity, we can replace old with new healthier habits; 5) Will Power Isn’t enough or reliable; 6) use meditation as mindfulness training for the mind; 7) think of the habit change as a BBO - Bigger, Better, Offer.
April 19, 2021
If you’ve read The Craving Mind or used any of Brewer’s apps, you will find this book to be a meandering, rambling regurgitation of those resources. It feels like he copied and pasted the transcripts from the videos in his apps and expanded them into chapters. Also, if you’ve ever spent any time in meditation or other mindfulness practices, you will find the contents of this book incredibly dull, elementary, and redundant.
It also reads like an autobiographical commercial. Worst of all, Brewer doesn’t explain how to “unwind anxiety.” The book talks more about breaking habit loops, and gives a minor nod to anxiety as a type of habit loop.
Another nuisance of this book is the use of profanity—that really knocked Brewer’s credibility down a few notches for me.
It’s a shame this book was so disappointing and poorly written because the ideas have so much potential and science to back them up.
It also reads like an autobiographical commercial. Worst of all, Brewer doesn’t explain how to “unwind anxiety.” The book talks more about breaking habit loops, and gives a minor nod to anxiety as a type of habit loop.
Another nuisance of this book is the use of profanity—that really knocked Brewer’s credibility down a few notches for me.
It’s a shame this book was so disappointing and poorly written because the ideas have so much potential and science to back them up.
August 28, 2022
Un libro perfecto para leer un poco cada mañana y ahondar en los recovecos del funcionamiento del cerebro humano. En este libro encontrarás una definición clara sobre cómo funciona el cerebro humano y unas pautas para reconocer tus propios bucles de pensamiento que te llevan a vivir la vida con una preocupación ansiosa. Así, una vez reconocidos esos patrones podemos intentar hacker la función cerebral de bucle que hemos aprendido y resolverla. ¿La principal clave de todo? El mindfullness, la estrategia que te permitirá entrenar tu mente para salir de esos bucles de pensamiento y de esa función de ansiedad permanente que tanto nos preocupa y nos influye hoy en día.
Yo ya se lo he recomendado a mis amigas. Un libro para releer y aprender de él una y otra vez.
Yo ya se lo he recomendado a mis amigas. Un libro para releer y aprender de él una y otra vez.
February 8, 2023
Super disappointing. His followup book "The Craving Mind" is a better book imo.
I was following Judson Brewer's app "unwinding anxiety" and "Eat Right Now". They're pretty good apps (a bit expensive) that go through the logic of addiction habits and how to break them.
This is a much more affordable option to get similar information. Unfortunately, it's pop-sci and has a lot of Brewer's life story and fluff. It would be nice to have just had the information he presents in the apps down in print (especially for people like me -probably lots of Goodreads users- that learn better from reading than from listening).
Ultimately I found his logic good for breaking habits, but poor for actually addressing the underlying issues. In fact, he never talks about the issues that initially cause bad habits. For example, perhaps you overeat due to stress (caused by 'something') - Brewer skips over that 'something' to deal exclusively with breaking the habits and outcomes (over eating, smoking, being stressed). This is perhaps good for people that have causes they can't really deal with but for others lots of stress comes from things they could address and deal with.
*****Here are some unedited notes from this book and the corresponding apps. I believe you can get the first 2 weeks for free. Perhaps these notes can help someone*****
Unwinding Notes
WEEK ONE
Mind mapping for behaviours that have become habits. Learn about our emotions and ourselves. Need to take it one day at a time- and build momentum. Break cycle of worrying or panic attack and the need to create a distraction habit. Anxiety eventually leads to losing track of your core-self.
Mindfulness training - strength training for your brain, change habitual modes of thinking
Set Goals - long term goals to stay on track and daily goals.
Understand what Anxiety is
Understand how your body should be so you can identify when something is wrong
Habit loops - we may be habitually dealing with anxiety in ways that don't fix it in the long term. Getting caught in habits that keep stress going.
Mindfulness - curious awareness to the present moment. Add a different fuel (curiosity - turn towards the anxiety) to treat anxiety.
Stress Test - See what anxiety is for us at any one moment and build curiosity muscle
Triggers - external, internal (thoughts, body sensation). Clearly recognize trigger and behaviours as part of my stress and anxiety habit loops when they come up.
Body scan - kind curious awareness to sensation in your body can lead to relaxation. Become more familiar with territory of your experience and improve ability to concentrate. Train minds to bring awareness to specific thing when it wonders.
Contraction/Expansion - mindfulness cools down the brain regions activated during anxiety. Tell the difference in my own experience.
Selfless Love - Loving Kindness - be kind to others and ourselves as well. Naturally rewarding. Offer the phrases up and rest in the feeling of kindness. Warm and expanding with no other conditions necessary. No need to beat yourself up. Notice self-judgement and instead of feeding it step back and offer myself some kindness.
Screaming child in myself - Learn the difference between needs and wants to avoid getting sucked into the habit loop. Giving into short term fixes feeds the habit loop.
Check in with yourself
Learn how to pay attention before, during and after you do something to see the results of what you're doing.
Recognize habit loops, kind curious awareness about the outcomes. What do we get from feeding the habits. Can we go from contraction to expansion?
WEEK TWO
3 Gears
First Gear: Notice the Trigger/Behaviour/Reward. Map out habit loops.
What triggered this?
What behaviour am I doing?
What is the result of the behaviour?
Awareness lets us step out of autopilot.
Second Gear: What do I get from this? See how rewarding old habits are. More clearly seeing the outcomes of this habitual reactions.
Pay attention when worrying or overthinking
Ask "What do I get from this?"
Notice habit loops around beating yourself up and what you get from this as well.
See the effects or results of our habitual actions
Third gear: Discover something better than anxiety. Now we're in growth mindset. Curiosity is key.
Hack our reward based learning process in our brains. Let anxiety trigger curiosity. Hold our anxiety in kind, curious awareness. This is rewarding!
Ride out our urge to do something to fix or make our anxiety go away
RAIN
Recognize that stress is coming on and relax into it.
Accept it and don't distract or do something about it.
Investigate what is going on in my body right now. See what arises in your awareness most predominately.
Note what is happening (clenching, restlessness, urge to do something). Nurture.
Breathing into anxiety
Noting - practice when not anxious
loving kindness
Resting in awareness - hearing, thinking, feeling etc while sitting (Meditation). Observe and note thoughts. Don't resist or get caught up in them. Thoughts are just thoughts.
Short moments many times throughout the day form good habits of awareness
Substitution Strategies don't work in the long run. Keeps anxiety fires burning. If we see that we're fuelling our fires, we can stop. Simply pay attention, be aware when walking around or brushing your teeth. Don't resist or try to change your experience. Build curiosity.
In first and second gear we aren't doing anything. Just observing.
Don't force 3rd gear. We should feel expansive / eyes wide open in wonder before second gear. Drop back into 2nd and ask "What do I get from this?"
Week Three
Staying on Track
Driving a car on a long trip. Make sure we're pointed in the right direction!
Paying attention lets us see if we're on the right direction. Use our long term goals as direction.
Thinking vs. Knowing
Thinking Mode is the habitual mode of "I have to fix this"
Knowing Mode is a relaxed awareness that helps us see that simply being with our experience we don't need to feed those fires of anxiety. No need to distract ourselves (youtube, to do lists etc.)
If stuck in "Review and Regret" or "Fear of the Future" modes -- bring a kind curiosity to these thoughts steams (being with them instead of doing something to fix things)
Thinking leads to trying to control something we can't, while knowing is resting in our experience.
(Un)resistance
We typically live our lives resisting things that we don't like or don't want to happen. Force them to be the way we want them to be!
Mindfulness is not resistance, we relax into our emotions and our urges to do something. Get out of our own way! Just let the urges go.
Frees ourselves up to deal with things we can deal with and let go of other thoughts.
Anxiety is like a hot coal
When we realize that eating ice cream doesn't actually solve our anxiety we can move towards things that actually do help.
That Committee in our head
We have lots of thoughts in our head telling us things. We give them power every time we give in.
"Should" "Guilty" "FOMO" "Worryier" "perfectionist" "Angry" "Critical" "Judgmental" committee members
Radio Thoughts
Short moments many times throughout the day form good habits of awareness
Hard to understand why we need to meditate (pay attention to our thoughts) without first mapping out our minds
Now we can see why it's super helpful
Thoughts are just thoughts! Observing thoughts carefully we realize thoughts can trigger body sensations and urges to do something... and body sensations can trigger thoughts. So it's hard to untangle and thoughts can feel like they're never ending. Mind is set to a radio station that we can't turn off. But we don't have to believe everything the radio host says. The committee members that are really loud can take control.
But thoughts have no power on their own... they're not tangible. They can't prod you with a stick! So don't give them power. Each time we listen to the thoughts we give them power and we're more likely to listen to them more in the future. We get sidetracked from our long term goals.
So what do we do instead? We note that thought as "Thinking". We can let is pass without acting on it. It's like looking the committee member in the face and saying "I heard you... but that doesn't sound like a good idea" and then we can move on. We don't ignore them, but we answer them with a kind "Thanks but no thanks" like the annoying salesman at the door. Saying "No thanks" makes them much less likely to come calling again.
This opens the space more other committee members to speak up like "Kindness". Now it doesn't take any effort, we remember the reward we get from allowing "Kindness" to have control.
You are not your thoughts. Thoughts are powerless unless you add fuel to the fire.
Week Four
Tripping on Thoughts
Abstinence violation effect - Falling back into pit of worry, so why bother trying to get out? Anxious that we are anxious. Bring kind curious awareness to what's happening to easily pick ourselves up.
Note our thoughts and emotions to climb out of hole. Not easy to do.
Change is Scary
our brains are set up to form habits
our brains don't like change - on the look out for what's different in our environment. naturally resist even good change
our brains are good at association things. (Needing to be anxious in order to get a project done)
Mindfulness can help with all 3 of these things.
Taking a Break
Change is difficult, so take a break until we get the hang of mindfulness.
Don't force the practise. Try to find the natural effortless quality of mindfulness
If we need a break, don't feel guilty. Enjoy what we're doing in the moment.
Finding Our Flow
find the right conditions for unwinding.
Each time you notice what it feels like to become contracted... and feel what expansion of awareness feels like... move in the direction of flow.
Notice what the joy of expansiveness feel like
Motivation
instead of fanning the flames, find a sort mantra to regain our balance.
Get a mantra or mental mindfulness bell for when stressed. (We're always moving forward)
Faith
See how we can take a leap of faith and try something new. Then gather evidence to see if it works or not.
Move from understanding some knowledge to knowing it in our bones
Notice habit loops, explore outcomes of behaviour, getting curious, breathing, RAIN, loving kindness, noting, noticing committee members.
We're moving forward in 1st, 2nd and 3rd gears.
I was following Judson Brewer's app "unwinding anxiety" and "Eat Right Now". They're pretty good apps (a bit expensive) that go through the logic of addiction habits and how to break them.
This is a much more affordable option to get similar information. Unfortunately, it's pop-sci and has a lot of Brewer's life story and fluff. It would be nice to have just had the information he presents in the apps down in print (especially for people like me -probably lots of Goodreads users- that learn better from reading than from listening).
Ultimately I found his logic good for breaking habits, but poor for actually addressing the underlying issues. In fact, he never talks about the issues that initially cause bad habits. For example, perhaps you overeat due to stress (caused by 'something') - Brewer skips over that 'something' to deal exclusively with breaking the habits and outcomes (over eating, smoking, being stressed). This is perhaps good for people that have causes they can't really deal with but for others lots of stress comes from things they could address and deal with.
*****Here are some unedited notes from this book and the corresponding apps. I believe you can get the first 2 weeks for free. Perhaps these notes can help someone*****
Unwinding Notes
WEEK ONE
Mind mapping for behaviours that have become habits. Learn about our emotions and ourselves. Need to take it one day at a time- and build momentum. Break cycle of worrying or panic attack and the need to create a distraction habit. Anxiety eventually leads to losing track of your core-self.
Mindfulness training - strength training for your brain, change habitual modes of thinking
Set Goals - long term goals to stay on track and daily goals.
Understand what Anxiety is
Understand how your body should be so you can identify when something is wrong
Habit loops - we may be habitually dealing with anxiety in ways that don't fix it in the long term. Getting caught in habits that keep stress going.
Mindfulness - curious awareness to the present moment. Add a different fuel (curiosity - turn towards the anxiety) to treat anxiety.
Stress Test - See what anxiety is for us at any one moment and build curiosity muscle
Triggers - external, internal (thoughts, body sensation). Clearly recognize trigger and behaviours as part of my stress and anxiety habit loops when they come up.
Body scan - kind curious awareness to sensation in your body can lead to relaxation. Become more familiar with territory of your experience and improve ability to concentrate. Train minds to bring awareness to specific thing when it wonders.
Contraction/Expansion - mindfulness cools down the brain regions activated during anxiety. Tell the difference in my own experience.
Selfless Love - Loving Kindness - be kind to others and ourselves as well. Naturally rewarding. Offer the phrases up and rest in the feeling of kindness. Warm and expanding with no other conditions necessary. No need to beat yourself up. Notice self-judgement and instead of feeding it step back and offer myself some kindness.
Screaming child in myself - Learn the difference between needs and wants to avoid getting sucked into the habit loop. Giving into short term fixes feeds the habit loop.
Check in with yourself
Learn how to pay attention before, during and after you do something to see the results of what you're doing.
Recognize habit loops, kind curious awareness about the outcomes. What do we get from feeding the habits. Can we go from contraction to expansion?
WEEK TWO
3 Gears
First Gear: Notice the Trigger/Behaviour/Reward. Map out habit loops.
What triggered this?
What behaviour am I doing?
What is the result of the behaviour?
Awareness lets us step out of autopilot.
Second Gear: What do I get from this? See how rewarding old habits are. More clearly seeing the outcomes of this habitual reactions.
Pay attention when worrying or overthinking
Ask "What do I get from this?"
Notice habit loops around beating yourself up and what you get from this as well.
See the effects or results of our habitual actions
Third gear: Discover something better than anxiety. Now we're in growth mindset. Curiosity is key.
Hack our reward based learning process in our brains. Let anxiety trigger curiosity. Hold our anxiety in kind, curious awareness. This is rewarding!
Ride out our urge to do something to fix or make our anxiety go away
RAIN
Recognize that stress is coming on and relax into it.
Accept it and don't distract or do something about it.
Investigate what is going on in my body right now. See what arises in your awareness most predominately.
Note what is happening (clenching, restlessness, urge to do something). Nurture.
Breathing into anxiety
Noting - practice when not anxious
loving kindness
Resting in awareness - hearing, thinking, feeling etc while sitting (Meditation). Observe and note thoughts. Don't resist or get caught up in them. Thoughts are just thoughts.
Short moments many times throughout the day form good habits of awareness
Substitution Strategies don't work in the long run. Keeps anxiety fires burning. If we see that we're fuelling our fires, we can stop. Simply pay attention, be aware when walking around or brushing your teeth. Don't resist or try to change your experience. Build curiosity.
In first and second gear we aren't doing anything. Just observing.
Don't force 3rd gear. We should feel expansive / eyes wide open in wonder before second gear. Drop back into 2nd and ask "What do I get from this?"
Week Three
Staying on Track
Driving a car on a long trip. Make sure we're pointed in the right direction!
Paying attention lets us see if we're on the right direction. Use our long term goals as direction.
Thinking vs. Knowing
Thinking Mode is the habitual mode of "I have to fix this"
Knowing Mode is a relaxed awareness that helps us see that simply being with our experience we don't need to feed those fires of anxiety. No need to distract ourselves (youtube, to do lists etc.)
If stuck in "Review and Regret" or "Fear of the Future" modes -- bring a kind curiosity to these thoughts steams (being with them instead of doing something to fix things)
Thinking leads to trying to control something we can't, while knowing is resting in our experience.
(Un)resistance
We typically live our lives resisting things that we don't like or don't want to happen. Force them to be the way we want them to be!
Mindfulness is not resistance, we relax into our emotions and our urges to do something. Get out of our own way! Just let the urges go.
Frees ourselves up to deal with things we can deal with and let go of other thoughts.
Anxiety is like a hot coal
When we realize that eating ice cream doesn't actually solve our anxiety we can move towards things that actually do help.
That Committee in our head
We have lots of thoughts in our head telling us things. We give them power every time we give in.
"Should" "Guilty" "FOMO" "Worryier" "perfectionist" "Angry" "Critical" "Judgmental" committee members
Radio Thoughts
Short moments many times throughout the day form good habits of awareness
Hard to understand why we need to meditate (pay attention to our thoughts) without first mapping out our minds
Now we can see why it's super helpful
Thoughts are just thoughts! Observing thoughts carefully we realize thoughts can trigger body sensations and urges to do something... and body sensations can trigger thoughts. So it's hard to untangle and thoughts can feel like they're never ending. Mind is set to a radio station that we can't turn off. But we don't have to believe everything the radio host says. The committee members that are really loud can take control.
But thoughts have no power on their own... they're not tangible. They can't prod you with a stick! So don't give them power. Each time we listen to the thoughts we give them power and we're more likely to listen to them more in the future. We get sidetracked from our long term goals.
So what do we do instead? We note that thought as "Thinking". We can let is pass without acting on it. It's like looking the committee member in the face and saying "I heard you... but that doesn't sound like a good idea" and then we can move on. We don't ignore them, but we answer them with a kind "Thanks but no thanks" like the annoying salesman at the door. Saying "No thanks" makes them much less likely to come calling again.
This opens the space more other committee members to speak up like "Kindness". Now it doesn't take any effort, we remember the reward we get from allowing "Kindness" to have control.
You are not your thoughts. Thoughts are powerless unless you add fuel to the fire.
Week Four
Tripping on Thoughts
Abstinence violation effect - Falling back into pit of worry, so why bother trying to get out? Anxious that we are anxious. Bring kind curious awareness to what's happening to easily pick ourselves up.
Note our thoughts and emotions to climb out of hole. Not easy to do.
Change is Scary
our brains are set up to form habits
our brains don't like change - on the look out for what's different in our environment. naturally resist even good change
our brains are good at association things. (Needing to be anxious in order to get a project done)
Mindfulness can help with all 3 of these things.
Taking a Break
Change is difficult, so take a break until we get the hang of mindfulness.
Don't force the practise. Try to find the natural effortless quality of mindfulness
If we need a break, don't feel guilty. Enjoy what we're doing in the moment.
Finding Our Flow
find the right conditions for unwinding.
Each time you notice what it feels like to become contracted... and feel what expansion of awareness feels like... move in the direction of flow.
Notice what the joy of expansiveness feel like
Motivation
instead of fanning the flames, find a sort mantra to regain our balance.
Get a mantra or mental mindfulness bell for when stressed. (We're always moving forward)
Faith
See how we can take a leap of faith and try something new. Then gather evidence to see if it works or not.
Move from understanding some knowledge to knowing it in our bones
Notice habit loops, explore outcomes of behaviour, getting curious, breathing, RAIN, loving kindness, noting, noticing committee members.
We're moving forward in 1st, 2nd and 3rd gears.
May 24, 2021
Have you ever gone through bouts of anxiety without any reason? Do you feel that your anxiety keeps getting worse and worse? Maybe your habits have something to do with it!
In Unwinding Anxiety, Dr. Judson Brewer explores the idea of how we're addicted to anxiety and how we have turned it into a habit. He talks about doing daily chores mindfully, and not making anything into a habit because it has the ability to turn into an addiction, such as stress-eating, substance abuse, and anxiety. He has also mentioned how different parts of the brain are triggered by different moods and events, and how they can help us discover our triggers and train our brains to be better.
The book starts quite promisingly, but I ended up with a LOT of issues with this book. Firstly, he just can't stop bragging about his lab. It eventually became a game for me to see how many times he's mentioned his lab on a page. I understand that his lab made some groundbreaking discoveries, but... get over it???
Secondly, he keeps repeating a lot that is mentioned in the book over and over. At some points, the repetition was necessary, but it just became a pain to read at others. Third and most important, he mentions some of his patients that he tested his theory on. I understand that they had a good experience but he's literally saying that patients come into his office and within like 10 minutes, they have an answer to everything and they're miraculously cured. It just did not make sense.
Lastly, he mostly talks about anxiety about the abuse of food, substance, smoking, etc. Anxiety is so much more complex than that and has so many other reasons, and it just felt a little too bland.
All in all, I didn't really like this one, and honestly wouldn't recommend it.
In Unwinding Anxiety, Dr. Judson Brewer explores the idea of how we're addicted to anxiety and how we have turned it into a habit. He talks about doing daily chores mindfully, and not making anything into a habit because it has the ability to turn into an addiction, such as stress-eating, substance abuse, and anxiety. He has also mentioned how different parts of the brain are triggered by different moods and events, and how they can help us discover our triggers and train our brains to be better.
The book starts quite promisingly, but I ended up with a LOT of issues with this book. Firstly, he just can't stop bragging about his lab. It eventually became a game for me to see how many times he's mentioned his lab on a page. I understand that his lab made some groundbreaking discoveries, but... get over it???
Secondly, he keeps repeating a lot that is mentioned in the book over and over. At some points, the repetition was necessary, but it just became a pain to read at others. Third and most important, he mentions some of his patients that he tested his theory on. I understand that they had a good experience but he's literally saying that patients come into his office and within like 10 minutes, they have an answer to everything and they're miraculously cured. It just did not make sense.
Lastly, he mostly talks about anxiety about the abuse of food, substance, smoking, etc. Anxiety is so much more complex than that and has so many other reasons, and it just felt a little too bland.
All in all, I didn't really like this one, and honestly wouldn't recommend it.
June 13, 2021
This book is a good supplement to guided mindfulness apps. It includes details on techniques to combat anxiety but more so describes the scientific evidence it is based on. Further, it's peppered with personal experiences from the author and his patients, many of which I found easy to associate with.
An important aspect of this book is the connection between anxiety/stress and the formation of habit loops like procrastination and addiction of various sorts. The book is an easy read and I'd recommend it to anyone wanting to be more mindful, aware and curious in their daily life.
An important aspect of this book is the connection between anxiety/stress and the formation of habit loops like procrastination and addiction of various sorts. The book is an easy read and I'd recommend it to anyone wanting to be more mindful, aware and curious in their daily life.
April 5, 2021
Deeply disappointed by the final chapter. While I am sure it was personally enjoyable to the author to inject his political affiliation into the book and implicitly claim moral high ground for his "side" (because all kindness obviously resides on that side) and I am equally sure he gained feel-good pack bonding from doing so, he has damaged his opportunity to bridge the divide with information which should be free of such self gratification and implied superiority in order to reach the widest possible audience. I went from intrigued with the intent of going back through the book to mine out steps and processes that I did not retain on the first pass to feeling icked all over from being dragged back into the politicized quagmire of judgmental tribalism we are subjected to 24 hours a day 365 days a year. The final chapter is self-serving virtue signaling that is not compatible with the kindness that the author is promoting. It is not compatible with shedding tribalism which the author decries. It is not compatible with seeing people as people rather than as the "other," as "extremists." There is actually such a thing as an extremist out there and we are far too absorbed in hating people who like red-blue purple because we like blue-red purple to be able to identify the real extremists.
I strongly suggest not reading past the header "Taking Extremism to the Extreme" in chapter 23. We don't need another burden of duty to be "kindness extremists" with people we don't agree with; we need to do the internal work of being okay with the fact that others don't agree with us. To use the parlance of the book, we need to stop rewarding the habit of tribalism evidenced in this very book. What do we get from tribalism? How about we get curious about what the other side thinks? How about we get curious about the real effects of virtue signaling?
When we have done this work and learn that it is okay for people to hold opinions that we don't hold, that we do not need to jump up and down shouting our values so that we are not *gasp* possibly confused with the other side (which would obviously ruin our lives), and that kindness can look like many different things, then we will be able to identify the real extremists among us. They will be far fewer than we think right now and instead of a burden, a duty of kindness, kindness will already have bloomed, because after all, as the author notes, it's much more rewarding than meanness.
I can recommend the other 22.5 chapters of the book.
I strongly suggest not reading past the header "Taking Extremism to the Extreme" in chapter 23. We don't need another burden of duty to be "kindness extremists" with people we don't agree with; we need to do the internal work of being okay with the fact that others don't agree with us. To use the parlance of the book, we need to stop rewarding the habit of tribalism evidenced in this very book. What do we get from tribalism? How about we get curious about what the other side thinks? How about we get curious about the real effects of virtue signaling?
When we have done this work and learn that it is okay for people to hold opinions that we don't hold, that we do not need to jump up and down shouting our values so that we are not *gasp* possibly confused with the other side (which would obviously ruin our lives), and that kindness can look like many different things, then we will be able to identify the real extremists among us. They will be far fewer than we think right now and instead of a burden, a duty of kindness, kindness will already have bloomed, because after all, as the author notes, it's much more rewarding than meanness.
I can recommend the other 22.5 chapters of the book.
April 29, 2021
I have people in my life who are anxious—about school, work, business, you name it! Being the non-anxious type, I picked this up to help me understand what anxiety-ridden friends and family are going through, what triggers it, what they can do for themselves, and how I can help. The author, Judson Brewer, is an addiction psychiatrist and neuroscientist with a 2016 TED Talk, “A Simple Way to Break a Bad Habit,” with 16 millions views to his credit. Brewer presents a four-part approach, beginning with understanding your mind, then moving through 1st-3rd “gear” approach. One bit of advice from 2nd gear that I found especially pointed, and useful—“Watch your thoughts. They become words. Watch your words. They become actions. Watch your actions. They become habits. Watch your habits. They become character. Watch your character. It becomes your destiny.” Brewer also intertwines the story of Dave, as he works through the gears to find ways to control his anxiety, which helps readers identify with the struggle, and eventual success. Includes notes and index.
July 6, 2021
This book has very little to do with reducing anxiety. It has more to do with addictions and habits.
April 15, 2021
DNF (70/30%). Redundant. Contradictory ("You cannot think your way out of anxiety" vs. "mindfulness is the key and "stay curious" as the TLDR; solution). Despite touting scientific basis, most cited work is fluffy at best.
September 13, 2023
Oficialiai man diagnozuotas nerimo sutrikimas, padidėjęs nerimastingumas (nors šiais laikais turbūt retas gali pasigirti nepriekaištinga psichine sveikata), pamačiau nerimukų grupėje postą apie šią knygą, kaip neurologo išgliaudyti mechanizmai padeda atsikratyti nerimo. Kai skaitau ramybės būsenoje- tai žaviuosi psichoterapeutu tai turiniu, trimis pavaromis kurios smulkiai išdėstytos knygoje, su pavyzdžiais, su paaiškinimais, kad iš tikro palengvintume savo kančias užklupus nerimui. Nepastebimai pūčiasi krūtinė, jau viską žinau, parodysiu nerimui kur vėžiai žiemoja ir kad jis eitų šėko pjaut, juk dabar man viskas aišku kaip ištrūkt iš nerimo spąstų, šalin antidepresantus. Bet! Vos užeina nerimo ataka, tai mažiausiai norisi dalyvauti smegenų dvikovoje, jauti kaip užplūsta nerimo banga, visi žingsniai, patarimai, mechanizmai nueina velniop, tu tiesiog nori bėgti lėkti laukais, miškais... Belieka susitaikyti kad mano gyvenimas yra neatsiejamas nuo nerimo arba galiu pagalbos ieškoti dar ir dar. Ko gero imsiuos antro plano- nes smalsumas pagal knygos autorių veiksmingas priešnuodis nerimui.
July 7, 2022
Had a lot of focus on addiction/cravings but it did have some concrete strategies for helping with anxiety loops. Listened to the audiobook, I imagine reading it could get a bit dry/repeatitive.
August 12, 2021
This book was OK but there was a lot in it about food, alcohol and cigarette addiction and less about anxiety than I expected. It's really about breaking bad habits (including excessive worrying and anxiety) but comparing this book to some of the other books I've read about breaking bad habits and developing good habits, it definitely was not one of my favorites. The habit loop Brewer describes as Trigger, Behavior, Result and how to break out of the loop was interesting. Turning inward with a sense of curiosity about assessing how your body is reacting to stress, anxiety and panic attacks was interesting as was the recommendations for how to develop mindfulness. Brewer writes about how to replace bad behaviors with a BBO (bigger better offer) and then consciously choose the better behavior for a better result in order to break out of the bad habit loop. While there were certainly some interesting parts of this book, I was not really impressed with it.
July 21, 2021
Update (7/20/21): After some consideration...I updated the rating to 3/5.
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This one has me torn. While I only rate it a 2/5, it has a ton of useful and interesting information. I'd probably recommend it to others as a result of all that info.
I think I rated it 2/5 based on his writing style, which I found to be a bit distracting. I feel his editors did him a disservice. Example: he should use his own advice to break his addiction to parenthesis usage (which, more often than not, are not useful and tend to distract the reader). His writing is more blog-ish than book-ish, if that makes sense to anyone other than myself.
The author seems like he would be a cool therapist to have, though. He seems to have effective ways to manage anxiety, all of which he has tried on himself. I can respect that.
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This one has me torn. While I only rate it a 2/5, it has a ton of useful and interesting information. I'd probably recommend it to others as a result of all that info.
I think I rated it 2/5 based on his writing style, which I found to be a bit distracting. I feel his editors did him a disservice. Example: he should use his own advice to break his addiction to parenthesis usage (which, more often than not, are not useful and tend to distract the reader). His writing is more blog-ish than book-ish, if that makes sense to anyone other than myself.
The author seems like he would be a cool therapist to have, though. He seems to have effective ways to manage anxiety, all of which he has tried on himself. I can respect that.
August 19, 2022
To paraphrase Yoda, stress leads to worry, worry leads to anxiety, and anxiety leads to suffering.
I'm a middle aged middle class cis white male with no real problems, so why was I waking up in the middle of the night every night with a knot in my stomach and my mind racing, realizing sleep would once again be elusive?
This book helped me understand the "habit loop" that led to this anxiety. For me, just understanding what was happening was often enough to be mindful, relax, and overcome the anxiety. But the book also gives some solutions and exercises to help, which I'm trying as well. This is literally the first time I ever read a self-help book, and while a lot of it seemed a bit ooey-gooey, and the author often seems extremely proud of himself, it was certainly not a bad reading experience.
I'm a middle aged middle class cis white male with no real problems, so why was I waking up in the middle of the night every night with a knot in my stomach and my mind racing, realizing sleep would once again be elusive?
This book helped me understand the "habit loop" that led to this anxiety. For me, just understanding what was happening was often enough to be mindful, relax, and overcome the anxiety. But the book also gives some solutions and exercises to help, which I'm trying as well. This is literally the first time I ever read a self-help book, and while a lot of it seemed a bit ooey-gooey, and the author often seems extremely proud of himself, it was certainly not a bad reading experience.
February 19, 2022
This book was ACTUALLY helpful. So many books have great information but are not applicable in daily life. This is one of the few that are.
I could have done without the last little bit of social commentary as it was misplaced, not that I had issue with the content itself. This was my only area of issue with the book and a small issue at that.
Highly recommended to not only those who struggle with anxiety but also those who have relationships with loved ones who struggle.
I could have done without the last little bit of social commentary as it was misplaced, not that I had issue with the content itself. This was my only area of issue with the book and a small issue at that.
Highly recommended to not only those who struggle with anxiety but also those who have relationships with loved ones who struggle.
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April 21, 2021Psychiatrist Judson Brewer says anxiety is a habit, and habits can be broken and replaced by other habits. Brewer explains how to practice habits of mindfulness, curiosity, and kindness to “unwind” anxiety.
December 3, 2021
بشكل عام ، يبدو أن المزيد من المعلومات يجب أن يكون شيئًا جيدًا (عندما يمكنك الحصول عليها). في النهاية ، يجب أن تساعدنا معرفة المزيد على أن نكون أكثر سيطرة ، لأن المعلومات قوة ، أليس كذلك؟
مع ظهور الإنترنت ، لا يوجد نقص في المعلومات ، ومع ذلك يتم دفن الدقة تحت حجم المحتوى. عندما يتمكن أي شخص فعليًا من نشر أي شيء يريده ويتم مكافأته ليس على الدقة ، ولكن بدلاً من ذلك على روح الدعابة أو إثارة الغضب أو الصدمة ، فإن شبكة الويب تمتلئ بسرعة بمعلومات كثيرة لدرجة أنه يصبح من المستحيل تقريبًا الخوض فيها جميعًا. (الأخبار الكاذبة تنتشر أسرع بست مرات من الأخبار الحقيقية). هذا يفعل عكس مساعدتنا على الشعور بأننا في موقع السيطرة. من وجهة نظر علمية ، فإن تأثير وجود الكثير من المعلومات لاتخاذ الخيارات عند التخطيط قد أُطلق عليه اسم "عبء الخيارات الزائدة''.
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Judson Brewer
Unwinding Anxiety
Translated By #Maher_Razouk
مع ظهور الإنترنت ، لا يوجد نقص في المعلومات ، ومع ذلك يتم دفن الدقة تحت حجم المحتوى. عندما يتمكن أي شخص فعليًا من نشر أي شيء يريده ويتم مكافأته ليس على الدقة ، ولكن بدلاً من ذلك على روح الدعابة أو إثارة الغضب أو الصدمة ، فإن شبكة الويب تمتلئ بسرعة بمعلومات كثيرة لدرجة أنه يصبح من المستحيل تقريبًا الخوض فيها جميعًا. (الأخبار الكاذبة تنتشر أسرع بست مرات من الأخبار الحقيقية). هذا يفعل عكس مساعدتنا على الشعور بأننا في موقع السيطرة. من وجهة نظر علمية ، فإن تأثير وجود الكثير من المعلومات لاتخاذ الخيارات عند التخطيط قد أُطلق عليه اسم "عبء الخيارات الزائدة''.
.
Judson Brewer
Unwinding Anxiety
Translated By #Maher_Razouk
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March 29, 2023The book descriptor is what drew me in - 'train your brain to heal your mind'. Dr. Judson Brewer attempts to do this with a three act structure - set up, confrontation, resolution. In this context, identifying the triggers, understanding the why behind the cycles and updating the brain's reward networks, and then tapping into the brain's learning centres to break the cycles.
The book begins on point with the dictionary definition of anxiety - 'a feeling of worry, nervousness, or unease, typically about an imminent event or something with an uncertain outcome', born when our brain doesn't have enough information to predict the future. Fear + Uncertainty = Anxiety. An early example of the author's mother-in-law manifesting anxiety in the form of snapping (irritability) was something I could relate to (in my own behaviour!)
In the first part, the book also covers why the typical weapons against habits don't work- willpower, immediate substitution, environment priming, and mindfulness. In the second part, I found the idea of changing behaviour by addressing 'the felt experience of the rewards' useful. This is different from thinking our way out of a behaviour, something that has failed for me in the past. Another reinforcement was about how reliving the past doesn't really fix it, what we have is the present. In this section, the twenty one day habit-building timeframe is also debunked. The third section has useful frameworks like RAIN (Recognise, Allow/Accept, Investigate, Note) and a little part on meta worry - worrying about the next time you'll worry. A final useful bit was not focusing on the 'why' of the anxiety, but instead on resolving it.
While the title says anxiety, I felt that a lot of the book was about addiction and bad habits (smoking, overeating, alcoholism etc) and the habit changing methods that you would find in other books like The Power of Habit, or Atomic Habits. If it's specifically anti-anxiety tips that you're reading this for, I am not sure how useful it would be. It is arguable that anxiety is a habit, and what works for changing other habits can work for this as well. Somehow, I think that might be a superficial cure, and we don't really know how to fix the real problem yet.
The book begins on point with the dictionary definition of anxiety - 'a feeling of worry, nervousness, or unease, typically about an imminent event or something with an uncertain outcome', born when our brain doesn't have enough information to predict the future. Fear + Uncertainty = Anxiety. An early example of the author's mother-in-law manifesting anxiety in the form of snapping (irritability) was something I could relate to (in my own behaviour!)
In the first part, the book also covers why the typical weapons against habits don't work- willpower, immediate substitution, environment priming, and mindfulness. In the second part, I found the idea of changing behaviour by addressing 'the felt experience of the rewards' useful. This is different from thinking our way out of a behaviour, something that has failed for me in the past. Another reinforcement was about how reliving the past doesn't really fix it, what we have is the present. In this section, the twenty one day habit-building timeframe is also debunked. The third section has useful frameworks like RAIN (Recognise, Allow/Accept, Investigate, Note) and a little part on meta worry - worrying about the next time you'll worry. A final useful bit was not focusing on the 'why' of the anxiety, but instead on resolving it.
While the title says anxiety, I felt that a lot of the book was about addiction and bad habits (smoking, overeating, alcoholism etc) and the habit changing methods that you would find in other books like The Power of Habit, or Atomic Habits. If it's specifically anti-anxiety tips that you're reading this for, I am not sure how useful it would be. It is arguable that anxiety is a habit, and what works for changing other habits can work for this as well. Somehow, I think that might be a superficial cure, and we don't really know how to fix the real problem yet.
July 26, 2022
Suština je u praktikovanju svesnosti tj. mindfulness. Autor nam daje tehniku Tri brzine kao vežbu za razvijanje svesnosti. U prvoj brzini mapiramo svoje cikluse navika (okidač, ponašanje, rezultat) i to radimo bez osuđivanja, dozvoljavamo onom delu mozga koji je najprimitivniji deo nas tj. najstariji da uradi svoje, ne razmišljamo, ne koristimo prefrontalni korteks. Zatim, pitamo se Šta ja dobijam od ovoga, a u trećoj brzini pružamo sebi VBP - Veću Bolju Ponudu, a to je radoznalost i ljubazna dobrota.
Njegova metoda svesnosti (mindfulness) ima pet puta veću stopu uspešnosti u lečenju zavisnosti nego zlatni standard u psihologiji. Tako da vredi pokušati praktikovati svesnost (što je slično meditaciji)...
Njegova metoda svesnosti (mindfulness) ima pet puta veću stopu uspešnosti u lečenju zavisnosti nego zlatni standard u psihologiji. Tako da vredi pokušati praktikovati svesnost (što je slično meditaciji)...
August 27, 2021
From every book on the topic of anxiety that I read (well, the good ones at least) I can take something to apply in my own life. That principle certainly applied to "Unwinding Anxiety", as it helped me look at the mind's reaction to uncertain situations and what can be done to make that less of a negative or terrible experience.
Truth be told, a lot of this book comes across as perhaps more relevant to those struggling with addictions to food, alcohol, or other destructive substances. While some might call this a flaw or weakness, I tended to see it more as an equivalence, seeing as how author Judson Brewer is sort of making the case that anxiety is essentially an addictive behavior in and of itself. As such, probably the main positive takeaway I had from this book is that behaviors (binge eating, alcohol, procrastination, etc.) often used to placate anxiety in the short term only serve to reinforce and strengthen the negative feedback loop in the long term. Realizing this and playing the "long game", so to speak, is key to getting back on track.
I also really enjoyed how Brewer speaks to the concept of not trying to "think one's way out of anxiety". Very much akin to Dr. Claire Weekes' "floating" technique, Brewer recommends many solutions to skirting anxious thoughts and scenarios without falling down the proverbial rabbit hole of trying to solve the mind's own mysterious and often divorced-from-reality problems.
Like with any self-help book, some material will "hit" better than others, and the reader will take from the experience what they put into it. In "Unwinding Anxiety", Brewer often uses the metaphor of the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd gears of the brain in combating anxiety. Such stages never 100% clicked for me, but all the information presented to make his case was compelling and informative enough for me to still rate this a very solid self-help tome.
Truth be told, a lot of this book comes across as perhaps more relevant to those struggling with addictions to food, alcohol, or other destructive substances. While some might call this a flaw or weakness, I tended to see it more as an equivalence, seeing as how author Judson Brewer is sort of making the case that anxiety is essentially an addictive behavior in and of itself. As such, probably the main positive takeaway I had from this book is that behaviors (binge eating, alcohol, procrastination, etc.) often used to placate anxiety in the short term only serve to reinforce and strengthen the negative feedback loop in the long term. Realizing this and playing the "long game", so to speak, is key to getting back on track.
I also really enjoyed how Brewer speaks to the concept of not trying to "think one's way out of anxiety". Very much akin to Dr. Claire Weekes' "floating" technique, Brewer recommends many solutions to skirting anxious thoughts and scenarios without falling down the proverbial rabbit hole of trying to solve the mind's own mysterious and often divorced-from-reality problems.
Like with any self-help book, some material will "hit" better than others, and the reader will take from the experience what they put into it. In "Unwinding Anxiety", Brewer often uses the metaphor of the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd gears of the brain in combating anxiety. Such stages never 100% clicked for me, but all the information presented to make his case was compelling and informative enough for me to still rate this a very solid self-help tome.
July 27, 2022
Great book
This book recommended to me by my therapist. As someone who didn't struggle with anxiety until my 30s, I found this book so helpful. Mindfulness was already a practice I was experienced with in the classroom as we tried to help students understand their fixed vs growth mindset. So when I learned this could actually help me with my anxiety, I jumped right in. I still have my training wheels on but I can tell a difference when I start to get my bubble of anxiety brewing to greet it with curiosity instead of fear. I'm finding more and more triggers and battling them out through my gear shifting. (All of the analogies will make sense once you read the book). So whether you're a seasoned anxiety vet or just getting started, this book is a good place to start.
May you find your peace.
This book recommended to me by my therapist. As someone who didn't struggle with anxiety until my 30s, I found this book so helpful. Mindfulness was already a practice I was experienced with in the classroom as we tried to help students understand their fixed vs growth mindset. So when I learned this could actually help me with my anxiety, I jumped right in. I still have my training wheels on but I can tell a difference when I start to get my bubble of anxiety brewing to greet it with curiosity instead of fear. I'm finding more and more triggers and battling them out through my gear shifting. (All of the analogies will make sense once you read the book). So whether you're a seasoned anxiety vet or just getting started, this book is a good place to start.
May you find your peace.
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