Unwinding Anxiety: New Science Shows How to Break the Cycles of Worry and Fear to Heal Your Mind

Unwinding Anxiety: New Science Shows How to Break the Cycles of Worry and Fear and Heal Your Mind is a bestselling 2021 book by Dr. Judson Brewer. In his work, Brewer, an award-winning neuroscientist and psychiatrist, explains how anxiety can become entrenched in people’s behavior as habit loops. Using scientific evidence and engaging examples, Brewer coaches the reader on how to identify their own anxiety-related habits and offers tools to help them develop new thinking patterns and change their life for the better.

This guide refers to the Kindle edition of this work.

Content Warning: This guide discusses anxiety, depression, and addiction.

Summary

In his introduction, Brewer defines anxiety as a kind of harmful habit that people can learn to identify and change. He reveals that he experienced panic attacks as a medical student but learned to manage them using mindfulness, and that his work will share these tools with the reader. In Chapter 1, Brewer explains that anxiety can produce an array of physical and psychological symptoms, manifesting differently in everyone. In Chapter 2, the author introduces the reader to the basic neuroscience behind anxiety. While fear responses are adaptive and help us survive, anxiety is a maladaptive result of the brain’s ability to generate worry and trigger physiological fear responses that are harmful to our mental and physical health. In his third chapter, Brewer defines addictions as habits that have adverse consequences; these are closely tied to people’s anxiety because most people try to escape anxious feelings by pursuing pleasurable activities. In Chapter 4, Brewer explains that this cycle of trigger, behavior, and reward entrenches anxiety into people’s thought patterns and inadvertently perpetuates their addictions, too.

In Chapter 5, Brewer guides the reader on how to map out their own habit loops by identifying their triggers, behaviors, and results. In the following chapter, he analyzes different classic anti-habit tools, concluding that mindfulness-based tools are the most effective at helping people understand, and break, their habit loops. In Chapter 7, Brewer reveals that his first step with his patient Dave was encouraging him to map out his habits around anxiety and avoidance or overeating. Cultivating awareness around one’s habit loops is the best way to begin, and this is a free and accessible tool for everyone.

In Chapter 8, the author contrasts the heightened awareness of mindfulness with the unthinking autopilot of the brain’s Default Mode Network, noting that mindfulness is scientifically proven to minimize the ruminative thinking that is associated with depression and habit formation. In the following chapter, Brewer explains that people can be broadly divided into three personality types: approach, avoid, and freeze. Understanding these basic personality traits can help people gain insight into how their own social behavior fosters certain thought patterns and daily habits.

In Chapter 10, Brewer explains how awareness can help people to change their brain’s perception of a behavior, helping them register how unrewarding it really is. In the following passage, he discusses how, over many repetitions, this acute awareness changes the reward value in your brain, shifting a behavior from appealing to repellent. In Chapter 12, the author shows how habit mapping and awareness can be applied retroactively after a trigger, behavior, and result is complete. He encourages a growth mindset, seeing every experience as a learning opportunity, rather than a failure. In Chapter 13, Brewer points to evidence that pleasure and aversion register in the same area of the brain; mindfulness allows people to tune into the aversion and recognize the downsides of their addictions. In Chapter 14, the author refers to his Eat Right Now and Craving to Quit apps, in which users register their craving levels, and then record their mental and bodily experiences as they eat or smoke, decreasing the sense of reward value in their brains. The author points to self-judgment as its own negative habit loop, which can also be cured with awareness.

In Chapter 15, the author recommends developing mindful curiosity as a way to make a “bigger, better offer” to your own brain instead of its usual reward (163). In the following passage, he calls curiosity an “innate superpower” because of the way it fosters discovery, joy, and living in the present. In Chapter 17, the author concludes the story of his patient Dave, revealing that he successfully used mindfulness to address his crippling anxiety. In Chapter 18, Brewer introduces the reader to the RAIN practice: “Recognizing” one’s feelings, “Accepting” what they are, “Investigating” sensations, emotions, and thoughts, and “Noting” how it changes (202). In Chapter 19, “All You Need is Love,” Brewer guides the reader through a loving kindness meditation in which they extend compassion to themselves and others, undoing self-judgment habit loops.

In Chapters 20-21, the author discourages the reader from questioning the reason behind their anxiety, telling them to focus instead on building their mindfulness skills. He explains how RAIN, especially the “noting” step, is very effective for coping with panic episodes. In his final two chapters, the author encourages the reader to trust both the scientific evidence on mindfulness and their own personal experience. He advises the reader to take their journey one day at a time and address their long-term goals by maximizing their experience in the present. In his Epilogue, Brewer relays an inspiring story about a young man who used the Craving to Quit app to successfully quit smoking, and he urges the reader to continue to use mindfulness skills to better their own lives.