Life Kit - How to deal with anxiety from the news

Episode Date: February 28, 2022

The news is overwhelming right now. Neuroscientist Judson Brewer shares tips on calming your nerves when the headlines won't stop. Take a break and learn about how to better process worry. (This episode originally aired in October 2020.)Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

This is NPR's Life Kit, and I'm TK Dutess. The news can be a lot. Russia has sent troops into eastern Ukraine. Is this an act of war or the continuation of the same conflict that's been happening there for the past eight years? Russia has, in fact, increased its troops by as many as 7,000 within the last several days. Russia says the U.S. is just whipping up hysteria and spreading lies, while the U.S. says it's offering...

That's what it sounded like in Kiev this morning as Ukrainians faced down the reality of a Russian invasion. It seems like there are two options when faced with all this information. Either you're oversaturated, totally plugged in, can't stop thinking about it, and stressed out by it all. Or you're checked out and completely ignoring it because it's all too much. Me, I'm a little bit of both. Yeah, I think we should just find a nice hole and, you know, dig ourselves and just bury ourselves in the dirt for a while. That's Dr. Judson Brewer. He's the Director of Research and Innovation at the Mindfulness Center

at Brown University and the Executive Medical Director of Behavioral Science at Sharecare. If you can't bury yourself in a hole, don't worry. He has some mindfulness tips to help you cope with the stress and anxiety of the never-ending news cycle. This comes down to understanding how our minds work. This episode of Life Kit, what's actually happening in your brain when you feel overwhelmed? How to combat the feeling of restriction and some practical breathing techniques that can bring you back to the moment. Hey, Dr. Judd. Hey, TK.

Nice to be with you today. And I really need your guidance on a couple things. Okay. So the news, I'm scared. My nerves are frazzled. It's all coming at me in waves. And it seems like a really impossible time to start talking about or thinking about mindfulness is this even possible right

now so I would say one thing that we haven't been great at as a society is knowing how our own minds work we don't know how our minds work we can't possibly learn to work with any of these things that you're talking about. So worry is actually a maladaptive mechanism of our brain that's kind of built on two components. One is kind of fear. And fear is generally helpful for survival, right? So if we learn to fear, I don't know, our ancient ancestors learned to fear the saber-toothed tiger, whatever the proverbial animal was, it helped us survive for the future. So if we weren't afraid, we became lunch. So fear is actually helpful.

Yet, and that's kind of our ancient survival brain. You can think of on top of our ancient survival brain, we've layered this new brain, literally called the neocortex. And it helps us survive in a different way through thinking and planning. Okay. Now, in order to think and plan, we need accurate information. Ah, yes. Ah, that's the piece that's missing. Yeah. So our brains simulate future scenarios based on past scenarios that we've been in and pair that with information. If we don't have accurate information, that thinking and planning part of the brain, it's still active. It's still saying, I'm going to do this. I'm going to do this. And we can say to our brain, what are you going to do? You don't know what to do. Yeah.

And what it's doing is it's starting to spin out and worry. What does that do to our ability to remember? Because I'm finding I'm so scattered, more so than ever before. Is that part of we're so filled with worry thoughts that we don't have space to remember? Yes, I think there are two pieces there. We've got a part of our brain called the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex. It's involved in working memory.

So working memory is like keeping things in mind if you're trying to remember a grocery list or something like that, okay? So you can think of that as analogous to a computer processor. So your computer has a certain amount of working memory space, right? RAM, right? Random access memory. And when that gets filled up, it can't take any more information. It can't hold any more information and it tends to freeze. You get that spinning circle of, oh my goodness, this is not good. Our brains are like that too.

So if our brains are filled up with a bunch of worry, then trying to hold any other information in that space is not gonna, it's not gonna go well. Okay, so my solution to all of this is to check out and not participate. Lately, I've definitely been closing all the tabs on my computer, turning off, and maybe just watching, like binging a show on TV. without spiraling into this anxiety and fear and clogging up our brains with all this random access memory that isn't helpful to us. So you can think about this. The first step is being able to map out these processes. And it's actually relatively simple. From a survival standpoint, it only has three core elements, a trigger, a behavior, and a result. So if the trigger is

not feeling good, which can be any negative emotion, right? Because it doesn't feel good, the behavior is this tendency to go and check out because our natural response is, oh, this is unpleasant, make it go away. Okay. So that tendency then has a result. And if that result is rewarding in the sense of it feels better than sitting with that emotional oomph or that stuff that doesn't feel good, then we're actually going to get in the habit of doing these things. That's the first step is just understanding the process. So if we can see how our minds work, only then can we start to work with them. The second step would be to really tap into our brain's reward-based learning system in itself and say, okay, well, if the brain is going to do things that are rewarding, then let's find how rewarding this thing actually is. So we can feel into this, not in a way to judge ourselves,

because we're all great at judging ourselves and great at judging each other too. But we can look at this and say, oh, wow, did that serve me in a kind way and curious? And be like, oh, that probably wasn't that helpful. And feel into that because it's the feeling body that drives future behavior. It's not the thinking brain. So this feeling body is going to be like, oh, that wasn't that great. And when that happens, that's a critical point because our brain has just updated that reward value for that behavior. And if we can bring that to mind, the next time we're about to do that behavior, we might be less excited to do it in

the future. And with as few as 10 or 15 times of people really paying attention, that reward value significantly drops. Yeah. So I guess you could do that with the news you take in too. It's just a lot. So I can say, okay, well, I've watched this amount of news and how do I feel? And now I'm escaping from this news and how does that make me feel? And I need to know how both of those things make me feel so that I can decide whether I need to, I want to participate, right? Absolutely. And you're actually touching on this third step. So after we see how unrewarding the old behavior is, we can then bring in what I call the BBO, the bigger, better offer. All right. And that BBO can be as simple as not watching as much news. So simple, simple experiment that anybody can do. What's it like to constantly be checking the news all day and setting our phones so that we get an update with any breaking news and all that? How does that compare to checking the news maybe once or twice a day. All right, Doc, let's kind of get into what's the real big ticket item. And maybe you can give me a BBO for that, right? Do you have any stress reducing tips for folks who want to be

engaged, but also not be too overwhelmed? Here, we can bring in think of it as the the fire extinguisher, so to speak, if we're going to use that analogy. I like some simple mindfulness practices. For example, there's one called five finger breathing. And it's basically like this. You want to do it together? Yeah, let's do it. Okay, so take one hand and hold it up, spread your fingers apart, and then take the index finger of your other hand and place it at the outside base of your pinky. Okay. And as you breathe in, just trace up your finger and feel what your finger feels like and feel your breath at the same time. And pause at the tip.

And as you breathe out, trace down the inside of your pinky. Pause at the base. As you breathe in, trace up the outside of your ring finger. Pause at the top. As you trace down, breathe out. As you trace up the outside of your middle finger, breathe in, pause. And as you breathe out, trace down the inside of your middle finger. Okay, we're going to stop there. But you can imagine we could do all five fingers for five breaths. We could do back from our thumb to our pinky for 10 breaths.

And what that does, well, you tell me, what did that feel like just to do that? I feel extremely relaxed already. And we only did three fingers. And I'm imagining if I was online somewhere, even at the post office, I could do this if I can catch myself. But to get to the five finger breathing, how do we know that we have to do it? Like, how do we know in our bodies that we have to go from, I just snapped, or I'm about to snap, to I need to fix it? Yeah, so there's a common element there, which is this feeling of contraction or closed downness, right? And I say it's common because this is common to frustration, it's common to anger, it's common to anxiety, to all these things. We just feel

contracted. It's like, I'm going to explode. So at any level of contraction, we can kind of think of that as a mindfulness bell that says, ding, oh, I'm feeling contracted or I'm closing down, right? Even that act of closing down can be an awareness bell that says, hey, this might be a good time to bring in an awareness practice. And it can even be, it can even start with something as simple as just anchoring our awareness in the present moment.

So if we're feeling so contracted or feeling so anxious that our body just feels red hot, we can actually anchor ourselves in simply hearing sounds and get curious. Oh, what do I hear around me? And that anchoring externally is still anchoring us in the present moment, but helps us anchor in a place where it's not that raging forest fire. Thank you so much. Thank you. So to recap, step one, notice how you feel when you get riled up or feel anxious about the news or really anything. So trigger, behavior, result. What is it?

So if it's anxiety, what's the trigger? Worry thinking tends to be the behavior. What's the result of that? Step two, ask yourself what you got from that behavior. What's it feel like to get riled up? What's it feel like to get frustrated? How does this feel? And we can start to update that reward value on our brain. What's it feel like to get riled up? What's it feel like to get frustrated? How does this feel, right? And we can start to update that reward value on our brain. Step three, and I love a prize.

We got to find that BBO, the bigger, better offer. Just use the example of divisiveness versus connectedness. We can just feel into and remind ourselves, what's it feel like when I'm divided? Whether it's my own family or community or country, what's it feel like when I'm divided, whether it's my own family or community or country? What's it feel like when I'm connected, when we're all here together with a common cause, which is, you know, health and happiness. And finally, remember your five finger breathing. For more NPR Life Kit, check out our other episodes. We have an interview with meditation rock star Tara Brock

and another on how to start a creative habit. Plus tons of other episodes on parenting, personal finance, and health. You can find those at npr.org slash life kit. And if you love Life Kit and want more, subscribe to our newsletter at npr.org slash life kit. And if you love Life Kit and want more, subscribe to our newsletter at npr.org slash life kit newsletter. This episode was produced by Claire Marie Schneider. Megan Cain is our managing producer. Beth Donovan is our senior editor. And I'm TK Dutes. Thanks for listening.