Change Your Brain Every Day - 22 Symptoms Of Anxiety Dr Amens Solutions

Episode Date: January 11, 2026

Many of us are feeling anxiety right now, which shouldn't be surprising in such an anxious time. But it's important we keep in mind that while appropriate anxiety is healthy, too much of it can do damage to our health. So how much anxiety is too much? In this chat, Dr. Daniel Amen gives you 22 symptoms of anxiety, so you can count off which ones apply to you and determine where you're at with your anxiety levels. He then gives you 4 simple solutions to help get your anxiety in check.

Every day you are making your brain better or you are making it worse. Stay with us to learn how you can change your brain for the better every day. When we do an evaluation at AIMON clinics, I have people fill out the answer to 300 questions. You fill about 25 pages of information. So when we do an evaluation at AIMON clinics, yes, we're famous. infamous for the brain imaging work we do. And it's really important, but we never make diagnosis from brain scans. We get to know you really well. And in the process of getting to know you, I have something called a brain system checklist where I'm looking. How do your frontal lobes work?

Are you flexible? Is your anxiety centers working too hard? Is your limbic brain, your emotional brain, working too hard? What's going on in your temporal lobes? Very important. So tonight I want to talk about your anxiety centers. And is it the pandemic or were you anxious before all this happened? Anxiety disorders are the number one common cause, the number one cause of mental health issues.

Now, I'll call them brain health issues and do in the end of mental illness. But how do you know? And the pandemic's made almost, not some, but almost all of us, more anxious. In fact, I would say your stress level, your baseline stress level, went up at least 30%. All right.

So I'm going to go through the symptoms and then we're going to talk about what to do about it. So number one is you have frequent feelings of nervousness or anxiety. You just feel revved up inside. Two, you might have panic attacks. Those are discrete periods of time where you get flooded or overwhelmed with anxiety. And during the panic attacks, three, you have symptoms of heightened muscle tension. Headaches or muscles, hand tremor. I remember when I was first giving lectures in public and I'd hold a piece of paper.

The paper would move like I had a tremor. But it was nervous. Four, your heart pounds. You have chest pain. or your heart rate goes up. When you get anxious, there's something called a sympathetic or fight or flight response

that happens in your body, that adrenaline, your brain sends a signal to your adrenal glands that sit on top of your kidneys, danger, danger, danger. They produce both cortisol and adrenaline, and all of a sudden

your pupils, dilate, your breathing becomes shallow and fast, your heart rate goes faster, your hands start to sweat, they get cold, your muscles get tense, and in some ways that describes a panic attack. So the next one, five is trouble breathing, feel like you're being smothered, trouble catching your breath. I went to visit my mom today. And today was a good day for her yesterday. She had trouble breathing,

and I think some of that could have been grief from losing my dad. Six is you have periods of feeling dizzy, faint, or unsteady on your feet. Now you have to make sure that's not low blood sugar or that's not orthostatic hypotension, where when you change positions, your blood pressure doesn't change with you and you feel dizzy.

Seven periods of nausea and upset stomach, very common. From your mouth, down your esophagus, through your stomach and your intestines and your colon, all of that is wrapped with smooth muscle. So the tube from the front end to the back end, about 30 feet, is all wrapped in smooth muscle. So when you get upset, like when my mom called me and said my dad wasn't breathing, all of a sudden all of that begins to tighten.

And that's why you get nausea or an upset stomach. Also eight periods of sweating, hotter cold flashes. Nine, tendency to predict. the worst. So it's your mind doesn't just predict what's worse. It then makes that worse still. So it's like

the ants, the automatic negative thoughts, especially with anxiety, they're the fortune-telling ants where you predict that things are going to go and turn out badly and then you make it worse. So you predict the worst.

10 is you fear of dying or doing something crazy. So many of my patients who've never done anything crazy and never will do anything crazy. They worry about it and that stresses them out. 11, you avoid places for fear of having an anxiety attack, and that can get so bad. People end up with this thing called agoraphobia, where they won't leave their house. And during this pandemic, I bet the incidence of agoraphobia is going to skyrocket. I mean, when you hear the government over and over saying, stay at home, It's dangerous, stay at home, socially, distance, physically distance, actually a better word.

It's going to trigger agoraphobia for a lot of people. Number 12 is your conflict avoidant. You hate conflict so you can't be assertive, and it's really important that you teach other people how to treat you. So what you tolerate is generally what you're going to get. So being conflict avoidant can actually hurt your relationships. Don't be a jerk. Being angry and we're going to do something on anger this week. It'd be assertive in the two words to always remember are firm and kind.

Firm and kind. My wife has a very very very. very strong personality. And I know if I just, like, rolled over, her personality would get stronger and maybe not quite so nice. And I try to always be kind to her. But when she does something I don't like,

I say something. And I think it's assertiveness is so important. 13. excessive fear of being judged or scrutinized by others. Excessive fear of being judged or scrutinized by others. This is the cause of so much pain. And let me just tell you, most of the time I'm thinking about you. I have a rule called the 1840-60 rule that says when you're 18,

you worry about what everybody's thinking of you. And when you're 40, you don't give a damn when anybody thinks about you. and when you're 60, you realize no one has been thinking about you at all. People spend their days worrying and thinking about themselves, not you. And I mean, having my dad die just about three weeks ago tomorrow,

you know, you're here and then you're not. And you have all these worries about what other people think and then you're not here anymore. That is such a massive waste of time. Care what you think about you. 14 persistent phobias, whether it's elevators or spiders or snakes,

although I'm not a big fan of snakes. Germs, my goodness. You want to use healthy, cleaning products is really important. The toxins in a lot of cleaning products are not good for you. What goes on your skin goes in your body. Your skin is the largest organ in the body, and whatever goes on your skin goes in your skin.

That's why we did a podcast with Kelly Blahakis, who's the CEO of Earth-friendly products. They make great cleaning products that do. not have poisons in them. 15, low motivation. The anxiety just sucks out the dopamine in your brain. And so you have trouble focusing and you're more anxious. 16, quick startle, 17, and some of I saw it on the live chat,

tendency to freeze and anxiety-provoking situations. I used to do that. And then I drove an ambulance and I'm like, okay, can't do that. I'm not, can never be a firefighter. There's some people that run toward fires. I have that little hesitation that goes, it's hot in there. And then I'll do the right thing. But when you have some baseline anxiety, you do tend to freeze

in anxiety-provoking situations. 18 is you lack confidence in your abilities. 19, you can seem shy or timid. 20, easily embarrassed. 21, sensitive to criticism. I used to be really sensitive to criticism. I wonder if that's why I'm the boss. It's not a bad position to be in.

And 22, goodness, I used to do this. Bite your fingernails. or pick your skin. All of these are symptoms of anxiety. And there your basal ganglia or your amygdala can be working too hard. And yes, after an anxiety episode, people,

they're just worn out because it's taken so many energy from them. Okay, so what to do? And I have taught you on these live chats how to do diaphragmatic breathing, but it's this one pattern. If you just do it 10 times, a couple of times a day,

less than two minutes each, take a big breath, three seconds in, and hold it for a second. And then take six seconds. to breathe out and then hold it out for a second. And then repeat that 10 times, less than two minutes. It triggers the opposite of a sympathetic fighter flight response.

It triggers something called a parasympathetic response. You do that 10 times. You will feel so much better. And then as you're breathing, I want you to think about what you're really thinking about. I call them ants, automatic negative thoughts. These are the thoughts that come into your brain automatically and ruin your day. Automatic negative thoughts. Ants. During a pandemic, you get infested.

And the ants link. stack and then they attack. And while you're breathing, I just want you to like, what am I thinking about? And then when you're done, write them down and then kill them. You have to develop an internal anteater.

And we're going to work more on that in upcoming live chats. But basically, if I have any negative thoughts today, So last time I had a negative thought. I think maybe over some estate stuff with my siblings. And I adore them all and we'll work on it. But when you have a stressful thought, write it down.

Oh, I told you about my nieces, 10, 15. Now they live with us. There's six of us in this house. Well, tonight I met a potential. boyfriend for the older one. And so will I like him? Will he be good enough? Is this okay?

It's a pandemic. He was actually very sweet. But whenever you feel sad or mad or nervous or out of control, write down what you're thinking. And then ask yourself, is it true? Can I absolutely know that it's true? And sometimes you have negative thoughts, and they're true. He's a jerk.

I'm not okay with this. I have to supervise you more. But more often than not, the thoughts that torture you are not true. And just learning accurate thinking. So I'm not a fan, a positive thinking. positive thinking so you know I could have four brownies tonight

I'll feel great for the 10 minutes I'm eating them that would be awesome and then I'd feel terrible and then I'd be overweight and I've said before many times that obesity runs in my family

that I have the genes I tested that said like I have a two-thirds chance of being obese but I'm not Why? Because I don't give in to the behaviors making it likely to be so. And I have a greater chance in being obese

because my grandfather was a candy maker. And my best memories growing up were standing at the stove, making fudge, pralines. I have a terrible sweet tooth. But when I realize I'm getting ready, like in a week, to submit a paper for publication on 35,000 scans, world's largest imaging study on obesity. And it's very clear.

As your weight goes from normal to overweight to obese to morbidly obese, the blood flow and function of your brain goes down in a linear fashion it should just scare the fat off anyone and so when i realize that i'm like okay you got to get really serious about your weight and for me it's quality and quantity it's you got to start counting your calories but but you know You know, rather than eating 800 calories of Twinkies a day, which is why I'm not a fan of Nutrisystem and other diet programs,

because you'll eat less calories, but most of the food is just artificial. So healthy food and then start counting your calories. And it works for me virtually every time. I was with one of my siblings who had back issues, and I'm like, okay, how much weight to you? And she's like, 30 pounds. And I'm like, this isn't hard, it's math.

It's not algebra. It's third grade math. It's really addition. And it's like, you know, you need to overeat 3,500 calories, and you gain a pound, which means you have to under, 3,500 calories based on what you spend, and you'll lose a pound. And I'm a fan of losing like half a pound a week because I want you to eat in a way

where you learn how to eat. And I have a rule. I only love food that loves me back. That's what I want for you. Love food that loves you back. All right. So killing the ants, get rid of the negative thoughts. Write them down.

Get them out of your head. Meditation, hypnosis, huge fan. On BrainFit Life, our online app, MyBrainfitLife.com. We actually have meditation audios, hypnosis, audios. We have 200 recipes. brain-enhancing music and music to counteract anxiety, music to relax. Our album, Music for Bright Minds, was on Billboard's New Age Top 10 for 45 weeks. Spectacular album.

Oh, I love this. Giving up bread, pasta, rice, potatoes, processed food. You're going to get healthy. I mean, that's sort of the answer. Meditation, hypnosis, and then certain supplements can help. I was horrified when I read Benzos, Xanax, clonopin, went up 35% because you know what that means?

Addictions are going up because they're addictive. Once you start them, you are not going to want to stop them. Of course, I believe in acquired traumatic brain injury. If you ask me, hey, Dr. Eamon, single most important thing you've learned from 160,000 scans, mild traumatic brain injury ruins people's lives, and nobody knows about it because they don't scan people. All right, not a big fan of anti-anxiety drugs. I'm not. I'm a huge fan of natural supplements. I mean, that's why I created Brain MD. We have a supplement called GABA. calming support because GABA is the neurotransmitter that helps calm over firing of the amygdala, of the basal ganglia, of the emotional structures.

Eight energy drinks a day. That's a bad idea. All right. Supplements I like, not energy drinks. Magnesium, huge fan. High percentage of people deficient. magnesium, GABA, lemon balm, and theanine from green tea. I love theanine.

My patients love feigning. So if you go to Brain MD, GABA calming support, one of our bestsellers during the pandemic because anxiety for people just shot through the roof. you know, how do you get off Xanax? Let me scroll through and answer some of these questions. They're just really great. How you get off Xanax is slowly. And I think work with your doctor really important.

And I might do 10% a week. I mean, I just go on cold turkey. If you've been on it a long time, bad idea. And even if it takes you a couple of months to get off of it. And then have something like Gabba calming support that will really help you. You know, I am just so amazed at people from all over the world on here. Bless you all. Chicago, we have a clinic in Illinois that's just doing amazing.

People freeze in social situations. Thank you for all the... Kind words. Anxiety 24-7 means that's your job to lower the anxiety. Somebody's going to turn 60 this week. Happy birthday. You are welcome for these live chats. Anyways, wow, so many.

Great comments. Somebody said 5HTP doesn't work, but L-Tryptophan does. And that's sort of the cool thing. How to get off Ambien. We make something called put me to sleep. You should have seen the marketing meeting. I'm like, what do people want? Put me to sleep.

And it has become one of our biggest sellers. If B12 is low, you're going to have problems with anxiety. and depression. All right. And feel better fast and make it last. There is a section called mind medicine versus nutraceuticals. And I love this section because for anxiety, depression, addiction, bipolar disorder, ADHD, insomnia, I have a list of what to do before you go on medication. And for anxiety disorders, check for hypoglycea. anemia and hyperthyroidism. Blood tests are important.

You can't change what you don't measure. So check for low blood sugar, and often that will require a glucose tolerance test. Anemia, also check your ferretin levels when it's a measure of iron storage. When iron is low, people can't sleep and they get anxious. And they're tired. And then check your thyroid.

eliminate artificial dyes, preservatives, and sweeteners from your diet. Just do it for a month. And I've had so many people. They're just sensitive to MSG or they're sensitive to red dye. And, you know, the traditional medical people, they'll never tell you that. I have no idea why. But hello, Brazil. Stay safe.

we talked about prayer, meditation, hypnosis. There's something called heart rate variability training. You can actually train the beat-to-beat variability of your heart to go up, which actually has a calming effect, just like the breathing I taught you. Kill the ants, calming exercises like yoga, really good, chigan, tight-chi. And then we talked about theanine, gaba, magnesium, also check your omega-3 index. Don't think of medicine as the first answer.

There are so many things you can do to calm your anxiety. And getting a playlist, there's actually a brand new research on this that certain music can just calm things down. We also have an album called Feel Better Fast and Make It Last, It's another one called the Brain Warriors Way, so you can listen to those, and it will help calm you do.