How and Why our Brain Causes Anxiety

One night I was relaxing at home during a bad lightning storm.

Suddenly there was a loud “BANG”, followed by another loud “BANG!” I quickly jumped up and ran for safety, not even knowing what happened. 

The storm continued, but the loud bangs stopped. It got quiet. I started thinking how scared I was and how the house could get destroyed or crushed by a falling tree and who knows what else. 

Then, as I looked around, I saw what really happened. Lightning struck a tree, and it landed on the cars, crushing them. I continued to be scared, thinking how it could have fallen on the house and we could have been crushed!

What I experienced, in those few moments, was both pathways of anxiety - the amygdala and the cortex pathways. In counseling for anxiety, we usually address the cortex pathway. Today, though, we are going to look at the amygdala pathway, since it’s important to know the difference and be able to recover from both. In that moment, I was experiencing fear. 

What the Amygdala Pathway is:

The amygdala pathway describes anxiety that is triggered automatically through the amygdala, a small, almond-shaped bundle of cells in the brain. It takes milliseconds for our amygdala to react and activate the fight, flight, or freeze response. 

In my story about the storm, within milliseconds, my brain, through the amygdala pathway, reacted to the sound of the bangs and caused my body to run for safety. I didn’t know what the danger was, but my amygdala picked up danger and set the alarms off in my body.

Although the amygdala is small, it has a huge responsibility in our survival. It’s there to cause the alarm to help protect us, and it’s the source of many of our emotional reactions - both positive and negative. It automatically activates the fight, flight or freeze response. We can’t control when the amygdala is activated. However, once we are aware it is, we can work to calm it down and get ourselves under control. 

How to Help the Amygdala Calm Down

What is unique about our amygdala pathway of anxiety is that changing our thinking doesn’t help us calm down. The automatic reaction for survival and protection (the job of the amygdala) doesn’t use words. Below we have several suggestions that you can try to help calm the amygdala, which in turn calms our bodies. Try one and see how it can help. When the amygdala is calm, our bodies are calm.

 1. Deep breathing - This slow deep breathing is called diaphragmatic breathing. We inhale through our nose for 4-5 seconds and exhale through our mouth for 4-5 seconds. We will be posting a video on our blog page about how to do this, so keep an eye out for that.

2. Muscle relaxation -There are a few ways to relax our muscles. One common way is to tighten a muscle group for 5 seconds, then relax. Then tighten another muscle group, then relax. Another is to focus on and relax our core. The rest of the body then relaxes. This helps to calm the amygdala so we can think clearly.

3. Walk or exercise - Walking and cardio exercises help burn off the excess energy that was created when the amygdala was activated. This is a great way to calm ourselves to lower our blood pressure and think clearer

4. Sleep-Sleep is an important part of overall health and wellbeing. Getting at least 6-8 hours of sleep a night is helpful in being calm.

5. Identify triggers - Sometimes there are sights, smells or even something we touch that can “trigger” the amygdala to activate. Remember, the amygdala wants us to survive, so it protects us. If it senses potential risk or harm from past experiences, it activates the fight or flight response.

6. Grounding - At Light the Way our counselors teach grounding by using the 5 senses. When feeling anxious to help ground you, look around and describe 5 different objects you see. Then describe 4 objects you can touch, 3 sounds you can hear, describe 2 smells and then, if possible, 1 object to safely taste. After doing this you will notice you are feeling calmer and able to think clearly.

7. Meditation - Meditation is helpful in helping us be calm and in the moment. It may be focusing on something positive, reading, thinking about something calming, or praying.

Later that night, after I was able to calm down my amygdala, I took action to get the tree off the cars. My amygdala calmed down, but to fully recover from the event, I still had to deal with the cortex pathway of anxiety. I’ll tell you how I did that—and how you can, too— in the next blog post.

Written by Cindy Picht, LPC, Director