Anxiety Disorders… This is your brain, on even more brain.

                So this is my break from working on the psychoanalysis of terrorists and researching the fundamental impact that harassment over social media can have... Now I am not working to write this I HOPE YOU’RE HAPPY INTERNET!

               

                Anxiety’s a normal emotion, we all get it from time to time, like everything else it comes and goes along with the world we find ourselves in. “Did I leave the gas on?” is the classic example that people like to use when they picture unwelcome anxiety, however it becomes a disorder for a different reason, as a side note if anyone uses this article to self-diagnose, I will find you and fill your anal cavity with chillies. Just sayin’.

               

                The human brain is a fantastic hodgepodge of a learning machine, as our brains got bigger we didn’t so much as “evolve” as we did “develop” different bits of our minds that countermanded other bits. An example of this is that we breathe automatically, however it is possible for us to override this and breathe manually. Parts of your mind do a lot of the work for you that you don’t even realise, a further example is you can deliberately attempt to recall something (say: the last time you were sick). That’s your memory on manual. Your memory on automatic is working away even now, as you’re reading this it is thanklessly providing you with the context and meaning of the words on this screen without you having to actively think about it.

                This is related to anxiety because our minds are designed to make sense of the world around us, it’s why we are fascinated by optical illusions, because they cause our minds to go into mini-meltdowns as they try to interpret something that is impossible to perceive in its entirety. Its why we often can’t look at images that are impossible as a whole, and instead view them as either one thing (a vase) or the other (two faces). For human interactions we have a specific part of our brains that’s sole function is to recognise and identify a face for us, as well as a part that provides passive intuitive knowledge of different objects and their significance. Our mind exists to make sense of reality for us, which is why when they are defective they can screw us up soooo badly… I’m looking at you prominent inbred pork-porking politicians.

                Anxiety becomes a disorder when our brain has too much brain, everything that usually ticks away unconsciously bleeds into the conscious, and we begin over-analysing everything around us to the extent that it becomes a disaster waiting to happen. Getting nervous about a gas bill is normal, having a fully-fledged panic attack about a brown envelope is not.

An example: Upon seeing a dog.

Brain: Dog, four legs, wet nose, likes to lick a lot usually friendly, best ask the owner before petting.

Brain on too much Brain: Dog, Wolf, Canine, Four legs, lots of teeth, teeth, rabies, RABIES! Remember that story about the person with their face bitten off? Probably unfriendly, be safe, be secure, avoid, don’t make eye contact, it’s a challenge for dominance! Probably has fleas and ringworm, contagious! Also poop, licks own butt, will lick you too with butt-juice, disease, invisible plague, tapeworm, dog poop blinds kids.  

                A lot of that information by a heathy brain would not have been filtered through to the conscious, it would have been disregarded as irrelevant and surplus data. But as I said, our minds didn’t evolve so much as they developed, the conscious mind can’t override the unconscious mind in this case because the unconscious mind was here first and it is directly feeding that uppity pre-frontal zone everything it can!

                Can it be cured? Yes and no… As we age we gradually lose something called “Neuroplasticity,” the capacity for our minds to adapt and overcome any challenges we encounter as well as interpret new information. It’s why we have the “Old dog new tricks” saying, we can slow the degradation of neuroplasticity by keeping our minds active and attempting to learn and experience new things, but ultimately it’s a losing game. If somebody suffers from an anxiety disorder and they retain enough neuroplasticity they can attempt (through careful therapy) to retrain their mind to greater handle the information being pumped into it by the unconscious mind. The flip-side to this is it can actually get worse as the brain develops maladaptive responses that can flourish thanks to the brains neuroplasticity! So the remedy (as always) is get help, sooner rather than later.

                As a final thought; the world for somebody with this disorder is not permanently scary, it’s just unpredictable, it’s imposable to determine when an anxiety attack will happen (though long-term sufferers can sometimes recognise the signs), and it won’t generally happen all the time. Yes, it can be crippling some days, but if handled with care an individual may be just fine and dandy a lot of the time. If you hear the argument that somebody cannot function as an adult because they have self-diagnosed anxiety disorder and they can’t leave the house EVER and you must do everything for them, that isn’t a mental disorder, that’s just arrested development and/or lack of any kind of self-discipline. But thankfully, there is usually still time for that person to grow up, provided their brain maintains enough neuroplasticity.