How the Reptilian Brain Causes Anxiety and How to Retrain It

Key points

Learning to assess perceived threat versus tangible threat can help us to control physical anxiety responses.

Psychological threats are not necessarily soothed by animalistic physical anxiety responses.

The brain can be retrained to more accurately respond to perceived danger.

When I was a social work graduate student, one of my professors had the class perform an interesting exercise. For five minutes, she instructed us to clench our fists, close our eyes tightly and sit with our muscles tensed. She then had us observe our physical and emotional feelings. After that, she had us sit for another five minutes with our palms open, our eyes closed gently and our bodies relaxed and untensed. Needless to say, there was a significant difference in the physical feelings following ea