Have you ever thought your brain was conspiring against you? 

“I hate my brain!”

I hear this a lot from my clients. 

They’ve learned how NOT to respond to fears in one area. and, all of a sudden, their brain spits up fears about something else. What do they make of this? They think they’re taking steps backward, maybe their brain is conspiring against them, the brain needs something to worry about, they can’t catch a break, something is wrong, this worry will never end, that there will always be something, they’re just a worrier. The list goes on.

And how do they respond to these thoughts? With more worry! Which makes the distress go down temporarily, but, in the long, run reinforces the cycle. 

So, what’s going on? How we learn learn to not hate your brain?

Operant Conditioning and Behaviors

Let’s take it back to Psych 101 when we learned about operant conditioning. (This is not Pavlov’s dogs, that’s classical conditioning.)

In simple terms, operant conditioning explains how behaviors are strengthened (with reinforcers) or weakened (with extinguishers). 

The basic formula is: Trigger > behavior > result/reward.

The more a behavior is reinforced, the more likely it is to happen. 

The more it happens, the more automated it gets, eventually becoming a habit. 

This also explains, in part, why it’s hard to change behavior. 

The less it’s reinforced, the less likely it is to happen. That’s why parents are told to ignore temper tantrums (and other “negative” behaviors) because any attention is still attention.

I’ve heard lots of clients approach their worrying as if their brain was a tantruming child. The more 

they engage, the longer the process will last. The faster they can disengage, the quicker it will pass. 

Worry Is a Behavior

How does worrying (or ruminating or being anxious) become a habit?

Here’s the basic formula for how the brain learns: there’s a trigger which leads to a behavior and then a result. For instance: when you go to the gym (trigger), you exercise (behavior) and then feel better (result).

Without realizing it, we often make worrying — or self-judgment, avoidance or anything — a habit. Let’s say you’re worried about an upcoming project. You wake up in the middle of the night, filled with dread. Logically, you get that there’s nothing you can do about the situation, especially in the middle of the night. Still, you keep thinking and worrying about it because it “feels wrong to stop worrying.” You feel like, if I just think about it some more, maybe I’ll figure it out.

Trigger: feeling anxious

Behavior: worrying and overthinking

Result/Reinforcer: anxiety around the situation may be temporarily decreased because it feels like you’re doing something. 

Since the behavior “worked” (you feel better about the work situation), it makes the association in our brain. We’ve taught our brain to remember it the next time we feel anxious. Depending on how anxious someone is, this association could last from seconds to minutes. While this behavior may have worked, it may trigger another worry loop about not sleeping at night. If you start worrying about your sleep at 8 am, you may be training yourself into yet another worry loop.

This all happens in the most primitive part of the brain, which is our threat-detection system. Remember, our brain’s first job is survival. When this primitive part of the brain is online, the more evolved part (the prefrontal cortex) responsible for thinking, logic and reasoning is offline. 

Your brain responds to what you show it. In order for it to calm, it needs to know you’re safe. It doesn’t respond to language, so you can’t think your way into feeling safe. 

How to Show Your Brain You’re Safe

The answer is to change how you respond to the situation. 

Change the behavior in the moment. 

All the time and attention you spend worrying is making the behavior stronger. In order to extinguish the behavior, we want to change how we’re responding to the situation. Be intentional about not thinking or worrying about it. 

The first is to get off autopilot, and notice when it’s happening. I often say to myself something like “it doesn’t serve me to continue down this path” and then intentionally shift to something else. That something else, ideally, needs to hold your attention. And then I go back and forth until my brain gets the message that I’m not giving in. 

The key is to be on the offense and not defense. This goes back to being intentional. It’s hard to do at the moment, and having a plan can help. Decide how you’re going to respond before you need to. Be intentional about the change BEFORE you get into the situation so when you get in it, you’re prepared to do it differently. 

Don’t Give Up

Practice, practice, practice.

Your brain needs reps. Anytime we’re learning something new, we need lots of practice to tweak the process. Be patient, curious, compassionate, and kind to yourself.  New behaviors take time.