And anxiety and your brain, imagine you're enjoying a nice walk through the woods when you encounter
a slither thing on the ground like that's reflected off the object will enter your eyes and fall on
your retinas, leading to signals that travel through the brain's delay station, the slums and into
the primary visual areas located at the back of your brain.
That information's then relayed to other parts of the brain, including memory areas that match the
object with the concept snake.
The fact that you're seeing a snake is then passed along to the other areas, including the amygdala
down deep inside your brain, which is central to feeding and expressing fear and other emotions.
How does your brain know to fear a snake next to your food on the ground, but not the one behind the
glass at the zoo?
The amygdala also gets inputs from the hippocampus, which is crucial for understanding context.
Thanks to your hippocampus, you may even start to feel afraid the next time you walk through the woods,
even if you don't run into us any signals from the amygdala, then activate a brain area called the
hypothalamus, which will activate the fight or flight response of the sympathetic nervous system.
Through the release of stress hormones like epinephrine adrenaline.
The hypothalamus also triggers the Reglan to release hormones into your bloodstream that tybalt your
adrenal glands, which sit on top of your kidneys, causing them to release additional stress hormones
like cortisol.
Your existence on this planet has dependent on this coordinated response.
Allowing us to recognize and respond to threats like moving away from the snake just acts as it's important
for our survival to learn to fear certain stimuli.
It also adaptive to learn when danger is minimal, so we are not overly overly fearful.
This new learning depends on providing our brains with new information which an anxiety driven avoidance
can prevent.
For example, if I always avoid dogs because a big dog knocked me down when I was a little kid, I will
never learn that my early encounter won't be my typical experience with dogs.
When we practice mindfulness and cognitive behavioral techniques for dealing with fear and anxiety,
we are retraining these brain areas to change the response to things that scare us.