IN my last column, I explored how an anxious person will see the world very differently to a non-anxious person, and how this is partly driven by how the anxious brain processes and interprets information.
A very quick recap: anxiety is associated with selective attention towards threats and with biased information processing. As I noted in my last column, ‘selective attention is about where your brain looks, and biased processing is about what it sees’.
Selective attention towards threats means that anxious people tend to be vigilant. Often scanning for danger, anxious people are very alert to the possibility of something going wrong even in seemingly non-threatening situations.
Biased processing refers to how information is interpreted in a biased way, with neutral or ambiguous information being interpreted in a negative or fearful way.
To give an example: Jane suffers from social anxiety. Hyper-vigilant in company, she scans the room for unfriendly faces and is on the lookout for any signs of criticism or rejection (selective attention). She notices a cross-looking person and thinks: ‘She looks irritated, I must have done something to upset her’ (biased processing).
Attention
How can one break free from this vicious cycle of vigilance and fear? Since selective attention can make you hyper-focused on potential threats, one helpful technique is attention training. Here, the goal is to train the anxious brain to broaden its focus, moving away from threats and becoming more aware of neutral or positive things in your environment.
You can practice deliberately shifting your attention. For example, when you feel anxious in a particular setting, consciously focus on aspects of the environment that are neutral or positive.
If you’re in a crowded room and feel anxious, instead of focusing on potential threats (like people who might judge you), direct your attention to things like the decor, the music playing, or a friendly face in the room. This exercise helps retrain the brain to stop honing in solely on perceived threats.
Another option is to use cues or reminders to help shift your attention. For example, you could wear a bracelet or set a phone reminder that prompts you to periodically check whether you’re focusing on threats unnecessarily and encourages you to refocus your attention on something else.
Over time, attention training helps break the habit of automatically fixating on anxiety-provoking details.
Safety behaviours
Secondly, anxious people routinely develop safety behaviours to cope with anxiety, such as excessive checking (double-checking that doors are locked, rereading emails multiple times before sending, and so on), seeking constant reassurance, avoiding eye contact, rehearsing conversations, and so on.
Safety behaviours are an understandable attempt to manage anxiety, but they don’t alleviate anxiety – they worsen it.
Safety behaviours maintain fearful cognitive biases by reinforcing the belief that threats are real and need to be managed.
For example, if you often seek reassurance from others (‘Do you think they’re mad at me?’), this habit may be reinforcing the belief that the threat (someone being upset) is likely. Additionally, if you often seek empty reassurance – for example, routinely asking your partner to reassure you about a possible medical issue, even though they know no more about medical matters than you do – you undermine your belief in your own coping abilities.
Consequently, instead of repeatedly checking if someone is upset with you, or asking for reassurance that a routine blood test won’t turn up anything sinister, you could practice tolerating the uncertainty without seeking reassurance. Aim to identify and eliminate this and other safety behaviours.
Over time, reducing safety behaviours weakens the anxious brain’s focus on threats.
Thirdly, be more aware of the biased processing that characterises anxious thinking. Instead of going with your anxious thoughts, ask yourself: what evidence do I have that this thought is true? Is there evidence that suggests it’s not true? Am I jumping to conclusions? What would an impartial judge say?
As we learn to question our anxious thoughts and shift our focus, we open ourselves to a world that’s less defined by fear, breaking out of the thinking and behavioural traps that underpin anxiety.
