Why anxious humans can’t always ride it out…

Wednesday, December 13, 2023. I love writing on a train! This one is for a dear client, MG.. look how far you’ve come!

Researchers have often wondered why anxious humans find it so profoundly challenging to ‘ride’ their powerful emotions, and consequently tend to avoid potentially rewarding situations.

Anxious humans sometimes find it difficult to rein in their emotions, so they often resort to avoiding anxiety-inducing situations as a fall-back plan.

New research has discovered that this this tendency to avoid fretful situations in the first place is directly related to an overload in an area of the brain crucial to the control of emotional behaviors, the magnificent lateral frontopolar cortex.

The problem is that the lateral frontopolar cortex becomes overstimulated. It then recruits and compels another region of the brain to exert a different sort of control, instead of the “take action” motor cortex, and that is often counter-productive.

This research helps explain why anxious humans are challenged in their efforts to ‘ride’ their intense emotions and push themselves to perform behaviors that may be rewarding to them.

For example, asking out a potential lover, standing up to a bully at work, or making your feelings known to your life-partner.

Dr. Bob Bramson, the study’s first author, explained:

“Anxious people use a less suitable section of the forebrain for this control.

It’s more difficult for them to choose alternative behavior, so they avoid social situations more often.”

How the study was conducted

The study involved comparing the brains and nervous systems of around 50 anxious humans with a similar group of non-anxious humans.

Dr. Bramson explained the design of the study:

“Our trial subjects were shown happy and angry faces and had to first move a joystick towards the happy face and away from the angry face.

At a certain point they had to do the reverse: move towards an angry face and away from a happy face.

This demands control over our automatic tendency to avoid negative situations.”

Although the anxious human’s performance was the same as non-anxious humans, the results showed, a completely different part of the brain was recruited for the task!

Dr Bramson explained:

“In non-anxious people we often see that, during emotional control, a signal is sent from the foremost section of the prefrontal cortex to the motor cortex, the section of the brain that directs your body to act. In anxious people a less efficient section of that foremost section is used.”

The likely reason the normal section of the brain is not used in anxious people is that it has become overloaded.

Dr Bramson elaborated:

“This could explain why anxious people find it difficult to choose alternative behavior and thus avoid social situations.

The disadvantage of this is that they never learn that social situations aren’t as negative as they think.”

Final thoughts

I’m impressed with how neuroscience can gently point us in another direction.

As a couples therapist, I’m particularly curious about what my anxious client, and their partner might notice as they shift from an overloaded lateral frontopolar cortex to an less useful section of their forebrain, instead of to their motor cortex, (with it’s bias toward preferential action).

Perhaps a useful idea here is to focus on noticing the shift, that is to say, the moment when the decision is made to socially retreat from an opportunity for self-advocacy?

Could that shift be made more concrete in my client’s present-moment awareness?

It is possible to reframe the social situation as an opportunity to engage in a little neuro-plasticity by trying something new? Is it possible to notice, or surmize brain shifts, and have interventions planned in advance?

Be well, stay kind, and Godspeed.

RESEARCH:

Hogeveen J, Medalla M, Ainsworth M, Galeazzi JM, Hanlon CA, Mansouri FA, Costa VD. What Does the Frontopolar Cortex Contribute to Goal-Directed Cognition and Action? J Neurosci. 2022 Nov 9;42(45):8508-8513. doi: 10.1523/JNEUROSCI.1143-22.2022. PMID: 36351824; PMCID: PMC9665930.