The impact of anxiety on the brain is enormous. Cortisol, adrenaline and norepinephrine make us alert and defensive, in this way our mind becomes a fertile breeding ground for irrational thoughts, for the fear that devours and paralyzes, for those emotions that, like a cold night, without moons or stars, completely obscure. our reality. The truth is that few psychological states can become as intense as anxiety.
Demographic studies show that many people live with chronic anxiety, are unable to perceive that there is another way to feel and face reality, they get carried away with it, not knowing how to react. On the other hand, some experience what is called situational anxiety, speaking in public, in the face of a job interview, a test or even in relation to others, are examples of times when the red flag of danger that limits us so much is high.
“Fear sharpens your senses, does anxiety paralyze you? -Kurt Goldstein-
We’ve all experienced anxiety. This human response is so natural that, at appropriate doses, it can act as a valuable engine to stimulate our goals, often beyond our control. He’s taking over our lives without us nodding. And when that happens, everything is distorted and deformed. , as in a painting by Kandisky.
To better understand the impact of anxiety on the brain it is necessary to know how to differentiate it from stress, for example, stress is a process of physiological activation that results from multiple external factors, that is, there is always an element that triggers pressure at work, excess tasks, family problems, etc. Stress arises when we are aware that we lack the resources to deal with all these stimuli.
Anxiety is more complex than stress. While it can often be the result of stress itself, we can say that we often feel this emotion without knowing why, it is something internal, something that appears from time to time, at different times and situations, we face a physiological response that prepares us to flee or fight a threat (real or not).
All of this makes anxiety inherently different from stress and, in turn, much harder to manage because of the way it’s structured in our brains.
The amygdala is a small structure located in the deepest part of our brain, it processes and interprets all sensory signals that come from our environment, and alerts the brain that there is a threat, a danger from which we must defend ourselves. Is it this instinctive (and sometimes even irrational) sensor that makes us react to common fears like spiders, darkness, height?
The hippocampus is the part of the brain related to our emotional memory, if the impact of anxiety on the brain is intense and sustained for a long time, this structure will be one of the most suffered, its size is small and we will suffer serious effects related to this change, so memory loss, concentration problems or even post-traumatic stress are very common , this effect is common in children who have been abused, the devastating burden of constant fear, anxiety and the continued sense of danger?
However, a few months ago, an interesting and expected discovery was published in the journal “Neuron”: it was found that the cells responsible for anxiety were exactly in the hippocampus. Based on this discovery, experts hope to develop more accurate drugs. to regulate their activity.
Agitation, alarm sensation, tension in muscles and tachycardia are the result of the action of very specific neurotransmitters. The impact of anxiety on our brains is due to the foolproof (and frightening) combination of cortisol, norepinephrine and adrenaline
So, while the amygdala is responsible for identifying the danger, these neurotransmitters lead us to react Does the brain want the person to defend, flee and react?And something like this is achieved by bringing more blood to the muscles, accelerating the heart, absorbing more air in the lungs?
This alarm state can help us at a specific time, as long as the threat is “real”. However, when this does not happen and physiological activation is constant, problems arise: poor digestion, headaches, high blood pressure, risk of stroke ?
As we said at the beginning, anxiety is a physiological response. There’s no point in saying something like “calm down, everything’s going to be okay. “If our brain thinks there’s a danger, our reasoning is of little use. to start with the physiological, the organic, the body.
Finally, do not hesitate to consult a professional if your state of anxiety is out of control, no one deserves to live in fear, no one should live permanently in the prison of a chronic anxiety that eclipses everything.