Basic principles of physics govern our natural world, and we take them for granted. Our vehicles have accelerators and brakes we use to gain speed, slow down, and stop. Along with physical principles, such as inertia, friction, and gravity, we integrate mechanisms of volitional and habitual control to increase, decrease, and modulate motion. We exercise such control over external devices and within our bodies.
Routinely, however, many people don’t maintain adequate or reliable control over the “brakes and accelerators” in their own brains and bodies. This can result in a variety of upsetting symptoms that slow down or speed up the body and brain against one’s conscious wishes or an appropriate adaptation to the situation.
Slowdowns result in lethargy, poor concentration, low motivation, or difficulty in getting going or sustaining focus and effort. Accelerations lead to anxiety, racing thoughts, insomnia, panic, heart palpitations, and so forth. These events, when temporary or intermittent, may result from physiological reactions to illness, medicines, foods or supplements, or organ malfunction (such as thyroid conditions).
When the body’s brakes and accelerators are in constant dysfunction, it is typically due to some form of brain disregulation: the brain’s deficient or inconsistent management of central nervous system functioning. This involves the autonomic nervous system that controls and regulates fight-or-flight responses, calming and self-soothing mechanisms, sleep-wake regulation, and the smooth shifting of gears within these required state management functions.
Though an individual’s genetics, constitution, habits, and condition may predispose and augur speedups, slowdowns, or instabilities, the majority of neurological disregulation problems lead to faulty “brakes.” The individual’s brain simply can’t slow down. In many cases, this condition of overarousal is mixed with periods of fluctuation and down times (as in bipolar disorder); yet problematic brain irregularities are typically and overwhelmingly characterized by not being able to effectively put on the brakes. Thus, intrusive thinking (sometimes with obsessions or paranoia), distractibility, disorganization, and anxiety tend to overtake and intrude upon functioning. The brain habituates to a default state of high alert, vigilance, and fight-or-flight mode.
Why should this be the case?
We are biologically built to perceive and respond to danger and threat. It’s wired into our brains for survival. We have instinctual awareness and adrenal responses to aggressive attacks, both actual and perceived, as well as defensiveness against abandonment, negative social exposure, and other perceived threats to survival and well-being.
This wiring alerts and prepares us to defend against or flee from situations that can cause harm. Without such preparedness, we would be much more vulnerable. Unfortunately, our sensitive nervous systems can be hijacked to habituate to a fight-or-flight default mode by intrusions such as early neglect, learned experiences, and trauma.
Observing that overarousal resulting in accelerated nervous system response is the more common manifestation of dysfunction, we may note its following aspects:
It also stands to reason that a brain in a hypervigilant mode is more keenly aware of intrusive thought patterns, perceptions that may signal potential threat, and a more overwhelming “noise factor” that pummels with racing thoughts, obsessions, distractibility, and a lack of control. Consequently, the accelerated brain hurtles in fear and danger of collision and impact with circumstances not meant to greet such heightened activity.
When the mind is overactive, the imagination does take flight and may easily depart from reality.
There is a Yiddish saying that illustrates this:
Vos der mensch ken alts ibertrachten, ken der ergster soyna im nisht vinchen.
(What people can think up for themselves, their own worst enemies couldn’t wish upon them.)
And, as Mark Twain wryly observed:
“I’m an old man and have seen many terrible, horrible things in my life—only most of them never happened.”
Actually, many terrible things do happen in life, and they cause enduring traumas, as well as worrying and imaginary anticipated scenarios. The combination of historical bad events and projected future problems can loosen the brakes and controls that the brain needs to keep intact.
The unchecked brain induces an overaroused state dominated by anxiety.
Anxiety is a terrible emotion to experience, and it is worsened when it seems there is no apparent cause for it. The anxious person not only feels bad due to the anxiety, but he also feels embarrassed about feeling bad, because he often cannot identify any source for this emotion. If an anxious person can take something or do something that blocks awareness of the anxiety, he feels tremendous relief—temporarily.
In the brain without brakes, the adrenal response that elicits fight-or-flight mode is a biological instinct that responds to deal with threat or danger. However, this arousal response gets out of hand when the nervous system perceives threat or danger repeatedly in situations where they do not exist. An anxiety disorder is a condition in which this misappropriated response happens continually, relegating its victims to a lifestyle decimated by tension, nervousness, fear, panic, physical symptoms, sleeplessness, impaired social relations, poor concentration, and diminished performance—often without conscious awareness of what is making them feel so distressed.
The acceleration and seeming “mutation” arousal of the nervous system that constitutes persistent anxiety results in a nervous system habit caused by various traumas (including experiences, perceptions, illnesses, foods), genetic predisposition, and “perturbations”—disturbances in the coding processes of the nervous system—triggered to the point where the person cannot calm the chain reaction phenomenon down. Persistent anxiety is a condition in which the normal self-soothing mechanisms have essentially become ineffective.
In addition to the obvious subjective discomfort anxiety causes, it is also a stealth cause of other pernicious conditions and habits. All addictions have anxiety as a common denominator. It underpins the vicious cycle of craving, indulgence, temporary soothing and relief, and inevitable withdrawal that characterize additive patterns and cycles.
Anxiety also is the root of many types of avoidance, such as fears, phobias, and procrastination. It is also the quintessential feature of obsessions and compulsions. Constant negative thinking or forecasting, nervous habits (such as nail biting, hair pulling, and body picking) are hallmarks of an underlying anxiety condition. More severe manifestations of uncontrolled anxiety are eating disorders and self-injurious behaviors, such as cutting.
Anxiety is a pervasive and chronic problem for millions of people. It affects all ages, ethnic groups, socioeconomic brackets, and both men and women.
Anxiety can range from being extremely disabling (where a person cannot leave the house or be around other people) to being a persistent nuisance that detracts from quality of life and limits the range of activities that a person can enjoy. Legions suffer from simple phobias (i.e., fears associated with certain stimuli, such as heights, driving, flying, public speaking, meetings or presentations, tests, doctor visits, diseases or germs, closed or tight spaces, bugs, etc.). Others have periodic panic attacks, leaving them afflicted with alarm, confusion, physical symptoms (such as heart palpitations and shortness of breath), and the terrible burden of wondering when the next panic attack will strike.
Many people (including quite a few of my patients before undergoing my care) have been taken to hospital emergency rooms, fearing they were having heart attacks, only to discover that they had a panic attack. Such experiences are traumatic, leaving patients embarrassed, confused, and told that they must take (habit-forming) medicines indefinitely.
Though the etiology of overaroused and disregulated brain function has primary genetic roots, there are arguable environmental influences that exacerbate these conditions in predisposed individuals, as well as pushing others over the edge of self-control.
The globalized digital world, with its 24/7 incessant bombardment of electronic stimulation, is a trigger for many millions of brains unprepared to filter and regulate excessive information, stimulation, and covertly calculated algorithmic messages that hook the brain into repetitive and obsessive attention. Repeated intermittent exposure habituates the brain to routinely revisit sources of conditioned and novel events, digitally transmitted and reinforced to addict people to messages and images. Online portrayals invite, reward, and can enslave participants with the mixed reinforcements of news, validation, and emotional stimulation. (Whether pleasant or unpleasant, the emotional “hit” provided via the internet becomes powerfully reinforcing.)
Self-discipline or environmental controls to limit access to phones, internet, or media may be helpful; but ultimately, the precipitating problem lies in the disregulated brain’s inability to put on the brakes routinely, automatically, and where obviously necessary.
Social environments can easily overwhelm with news, data, informational and physical crowding (traffic) that lead to psychological and neurological overexposure with a resultant propulsion into overaroused states. For a brain with marginal brakes, the sheer volume and constancy of stimulation can be simply too much.
Entertainment violence, salaciousness, and vulgarity may not, by themselves, cause violent or predatory behavior—but they surely lower the threshold for vulnerable individuals to capitulate and act out. Overstimulation and video gaming do not cause ADD—but they certainly may exacerbate the symptoms.
For brains without good braking controls, environments crowded with intrusions and temptations raise the likelihood of damaging encounters. It’s just harder to navigate the vicissitudes of mental instability in the midst of more things to run into.
Good personal care, healthy habits, structure, proper sleep, diet, and exercise are all vital. Opportunities for “reboot” may also be helpful: respite, nature, hobbies, sleep, good social encounters can recharge and immunize the nervous system to some extent. However, vulnerable brains need targeted interventions and strategies to repair the neurological brakes.
Among the available treatment options for anxiety, the predominant method remains pharmaceutical: prescriptions to calm (and dull) the brain and nervous system, so that the fight-or-flight response is chemically blunted and restricted.
Unfortunately, this medically advocated method—drugs—is only a temporary palliative and has many untoward side effects, including addiction! These medications are not only habit-forming, but they make you foggy and sluggish, and often lead to cognitive impairment and memory loss. Their rebound effects include agitation, irritability, sleeplessness, and cravings—high prices to pay for temporary relief.
The prevailing “scientific” explanation for anxiety (and depression and many other conditions) is that chemical imbalances in the brain are responsible, thereby “requiring” a daily infusion of chemicals that help the brain bind certain receptors and facilitate uptake of other neurotransmitters in the synapses. Such explanations are technical-sounding misnomers—straw men of sorts that miss the point, which is: our entire nervous system and biochemistry runs on chemical imbalances! Fatigue, hunger, joy, irritation, sexual desire, ambition, and other states are all “imbalances” managed by a brain that must be flexible. When these imbalances are insufficiently managed or are over-corrected or under-corrected, symptoms such as anxiety escalate above thresholds of “binding.” When this happens, anxiety symptoms abound, inducing a state of perceived emergency and causing reactions of panic and misery. (See Steinberg & Othmer, ADD: The 20-Hour Solution, 2004, chapter 8, for a fuller explanation)
Trying to solve the anxiety problem by dousing the nervous system with toxic chemicals is a marginal solution, at best.
Other treatment approaches include cognitive behavior modification and various forms of psychotherapy (usually “talk” therapy). In cognitive behavior modification, the patient is taught to “reframe” anxious thoughts and feelings by using logic and reassurance to prove that there is no actual threat or reason to be anxious. Despite its current popularity, cognitive behavior modification is largely ineffective in maintaining anxiety reduction, and this is so for good reason: feelings do not have reason! They exist in a domain independent of reason. Although feelings and reason can be integrated (and usually are in healthy functional individuals), you can no more tell the nervous system not to be anxious by logic than you can will a stomach-ache to disappear, or to reason yourself into love with a particular person.
Another conventional (and extreme) form of therapy for anxiety-reduction is systematic desensitization. In this “treatment,” the anxious or fearful person is encouraged to gradually expose himself to the feared stimulus in order to desensitize the anxiety. Patients are assisted by cognitive behavior modification scripts and sometimes by the presence of a therapist. It is, in my opinion, an elaborate and barbaric method of toughing it out. It often leaves patients more anxious and less confident. Proving that you can withstand pain does little to resolve so-called “chemical imbalances” or to keep anxiety from returning.
I speak from experience. I practiced these methods for years before I discovered more humane and effective treatment methods.
For decades, I have employed a combination of Voice Technology Thought Field Therapy and EEG neurofeedback to defeat anxiety. The success rate is very high and these treatments are safe and natural.
Thought Field Therapy (TFT) is a powerful treatment for dealing with psychological disturbances. TFT provides a code that, when applied to a psychological problem the individual is experiencing, eliminates perturbations in the thought field that are the fundamental cause of all negative emotions. (A perturbation is a disturbance in the encoding of information that connects a thought with a feeling. TFT acts upon these perturbations to collapse them and render them inactive.) Voice Technology is a very advanced form of Thought Field Therapy that uses the human voice to determine the codes that keep anxiety and other negative emotions in place.
I test the person’s voice and, using the revealed information, prescribe tapping sequences that the person self-administers on his own body. In a matter of minutes, the anxiety and other negative feelings disappear! This procedure works 97% of the time and can be done over the phone.
In cases involving phobias or trauma-based anxiety, one or two treatments are often sufficient to eliminate the anxiety and keep it at bay. Some people need more treatment, and a significant percentage of these people are sensitive to individual energy toxins—foods, supplements, toiletries, materials—that they encounter regularly without knowing that these contribute to and trigger anxiety. By voice-testing for toxins, patients are empowered to identify and avoid substances that can trigger anxiety.
There are also self-help versions of Thought Field Therapy that enable many people to effectively treat their own anxiety (See Steinberg, Living Intact: Challenge and Choice in Tough Times, 2011, for a fuller description and step-by-step self-help guide).
EEG neurofeedback is a highly effective method of gradually reducing anxiety and training the brain and nervous system to remain calm, even in the face of provocation. Using this method, patients train their brainwaves using computers. This process takes advantage of the brain’s natural neuroplasticity by providing feedback that allows the person to alter the brain’s flexibility for integrating the timing mechanisms underlying states of arousal, self-regulation, and the sensations and control of emotions and physiological states.
Neurofeedback is essentially a brain exercise that has pervasive and lasting effects. It enables the brain to find, develop, and restore its own “comfort” levels for maintaining calmness and equanimity. Neurofeedback is effectively used for many conditions. Because it directly influences nervous system control, it almost always enables the reduction of anxiety and exerts a calming influence on the nervous system. After a training regimen, the brain continues to exercise the control it has learned. Anxiety is rendered benignly to non-interference because the brain learns to maintain self-regulation.
I use a combination of these treatment methods to achieve both rapid and lasting effects in the elimination of anxiety. These treatments are natural, effective, and enduring because they address the root causes of anxiety.
The metaphor of “brains without brakes” immediately resonates with many who read this. They recognize the problem and suffer mightily. Perhaps they now have more knowledge about how to tackle and resolve the problem.
Others may live with lower level symptoms: occasional anxiety, periods of mounting stress and overwhelm, or a general malaise and lowered satisfaction in life.
Every person needs a regulated brain in order to function, heal and maintain health, and withstand realistic impositions and threats that arise in the course of daily life. Without an adequate immune system, we would easily succumb to the myriad of microbial invaders. When the brain lacks intact self-regulation for accelerating and braking, we become at the mercy of natural forces that can plunge us headlong into crisis or catastrophe.
As with many aspects of self-care, health maintenance, and assessment, it’s important to periodically take stock and review of one’s functioning, limitations, and resources.
How are your brain’s brakes? Are you able to get going, move at speeds conducive to the conditions (no road rage or overwhelming frustration), and slow to a stop without trauma, crisis, or emergency.
Take the self-administered tests on my website (https://marksteinberg.com/register.do) to assist you in this process. If needed, reach out for help to repair your brain’s brakes and control mechanisms.
— Mark Steinberg, PhD
