Your brain chooses between different behaviors based on their reward levels. Next, begin to explore how rewarding these habit loops actually are. Is it in a certain context or at a particular time of day? Once you identify your typical anxiety-distraction habit loops, map out when they show up. This involves noticing the trigger (anxiety), the distraction behavior (eating, drinking, watching TV), and the reward (feeling better because you are distracted from the trigger). If you’re stuck in an anxiety-distraction habit loop, you need to map out the trigger-behavior-reward process that creates and perpetuates your unwanted habits. Only when you begin to understand how your mind works can you begin to work with it. Reading this article is a good first step. Sadly, your survival brain is just trying to lend you a helping hand, yet can’t see that it is driving you toward habits, and even addictions, that could become hard to break. You eventually will begin to need more and more of them to get the outcome you’re accustomed to. You brain will become habituated to these behaviors. No one can binge on food, booze, or Netflix forever. ![]() The problem is that, often, distractions are not healthy or helpful. Your brain quickly learns that distraction is a pretty solid alternative. Yet, when no new information about the pandemic is available, checking the news doesn’t make you feel better. In theory, that urge is there to drive you to gather information. Think of it like this: Distraction is the modern day equivalent of avoiding the dangerous or unknown in ancient times. To you, looking at cute puppies on YouTube (again) may seem like a strange choice when you still have a big project to do. Your brain says “do something!” and the action, or the distraction, makes you feel better. That restless contraction in your stomach or chest. Anyone who gets an urge to eat a snack, check their news feed, or go on social media when they’re bored or anxious can relate to this this feeling. ![]() Whether addicted to a substance or a behavior, they have learned to associate a particular action with an outcome. In response to the pandemic, my patients are demonstrating exactly this same process. Once your ancestors knew where their food source was, they had to be prodded to go and get it. Once a behavior is learned, it has been most consistently associated with cravings and urges to act.įrom an evolutionary perspective, this makes sense. Dopamine is far from a “pleasure molecule” as it has been characterized by popular literature. ![]() Instead of firing when you eat food or spot danger, for example, dopamine fires in anticipation of those events. Shifting back to what this means for the present day, and for you: when you become more certain, your brain uses dopamine differently. This means that only after your ancestors revisited a territory again and again were they able to relax. Once a place becomes familiar to people, whether it is dangerous or not, that uncertainty decreases. There is a caveat, however - and this is important to understanding the relationship between anxiety and distraction. Uncertainty helped them, and therefore people, as a species, survive. ![]() When your ancestors explored new places, they had to be on high alert, scanning for movement so that they didn’t become a food source themselves. They then formed a memory about where the food was located to help them understand how to find it in the future. When your ancestors found a new food source, their stomachs sent a cascade of signals to their brains that resulted in dopamine firing. Biologically, your survival brain was set up to scan territory for both food and danger. Whether your vice is food, alcohol, social media, work, or television, when faced with increasing anxiety, why does your brain urge you toward distractions?Īnxiety is defined as “a feeling of worry, nervousness, or unease, typically about an imminent event or something with an uncertain outcome.” Understandably, that feeling has increased on a societal level right now. Others still are concerned about the “quarantine 15,” or gaining weight because they turn to food for comfort. Several other patients have been joining the growing ranks of Netflix binge-watchers as a way to distract themselves. During our newly minted telehealth visits, he told me that he has been working 70+ hours a week. One of my patients works at his family-owned liquor store (considered an “essential” business by the state of Rhode Island). To get all of HBR’s content delivered to your inbox, sign up for the Daily Alert newsletter.Īs a psychiatrist specializing in anxiety and habit management, I’ve seen a lot of change over the past two months, and very little for the better. In these difficult times, we’ve made a number of our coronavirus articles free for all readers.
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