Category: Anxiety

Don’t let FoMO get you down.

Fear of missing out — known by some as FoMO — is the feeling that someone else is having more fun or doing something better than you.

The fear is often aroused by seeing exciting posts on social media of what other people are up to.

The fear of missing out is linked to feelings of dissatisfaction and may lead to depression and anxiety.

Dr Darlene McLaughlin, a behavioural health specialist, says:

“FOMO is especially rampant in the millennial community because they see a peer achieving something they want, and somehow in their mind, that achievement means something is being ‘taken away’ from them.”

So it is important to fight back against it.

Try these three steps:

1. Track negative thoughts: keeping a diary of negative thoughts can help you identify ones that are not helping you.
2. Replace negative thoughts: ask yourself if the thoughts are reasonable and use milder words to describe your feelings.
3. Challenge assumptions: for example, other people present their best, most exciting side on social media. This is not the whole truth of their lives.

Dr McLaughlin said:

“The problem with FOMO is the individuals it impacts are looking outward instead of inward.

When you’re so tuned in to the ‘other,’ or the ‘better’ (in your mind), you lose your authentic sense of self.

This constant fear of missing out means you are not participating as a real person in your own world.”

FOMO may well be problematic, although it is not a mental health condition, Dr McLaughlin said:

“FOMO certainly instills anxiety and depression, but, we need to push back against framing this ‘fear of missing out’ as a mental health condition.

FOMO is an emotion — driven by thoughts — that can create the fear and anxiety which leads to a mental health diagnosis.

It’s a symptom of a larger problem at hand.”

However, FOMO can interact with other problems like social anxiety:

“Part of social anxiety is the fear of being judged by others or embarrassing oneself in social interactions.

FOMO is very damaging to someone suffering from this anxiety disorder because it fuels a lack of self-confidence and social avoidance.”

Jealousy image from Shutterstock

Why anxious people are agreeable, the supplement that reduces anxiety, dangers of anxiety drugs, the benefits of optimistic thinking and more…

Ten new psychology studies reveal why some people are anxious, how to reduce anxiety and much more.

1. Why anxious people are too agreeable

Disagreeing with others activates areas of the brain linked to anxiety in some people, new research finds.

This helps to explain why some choose to agree all the time — it spares them psychological discomfort.

Dr Juan Dominguez, one of the study’s authors, explained:

“People like to agree with others, a social default known as the truth bias, which is helpful in forming and maintaining social relationships.

People don’t like to say that others are not telling to truth or lying because this creates an uncomfortable situation.”

2. Omega-3 supplementation reduces anxiety

Omega-3 supplements reduce anxiety and even lower inflammation in healthy people, research finds.

A high quality study has shown that the supplement reduces anxiety by an average of 20%.

Professor Martha Belury, one of the study’s authors, explained:

“The supplement was probably about four or five times the amount of fish oil you’d get from a daily serving of salmon, for example.”

3. Optimistic thinking benefits the anxious brain

Optimistic thinking could change areas of the brain related to anxiety, a new study finds.

The orbitofrontal cortex (OFC) is an area of the brain important in anxiety and optimism.

Now researchers have found that people who are more optimistic have larger OFCs.

Professor Florin Dolcos added:

“If you can train people’s responses, the theory is that over longer periods, their ability to control their responses on a moment-by-moment basis will eventually be embedded in their brain structure.”

4. Being neurotic predicts anxiety

Neuroticism has been found for the first time to predict the development of anxiety and depression in young people.

Neuroticism is characterised by negative thinking in a range of areas.

It includes high levels of moodiness and worrying.

5. Get enough REM sleep

A lack of REM sleep may raise the risk of chronic depression and anxiety, a new study finds.

REM or Rapid Eye Movement sleep is when we dream.

REM sleep occurs throughout the night as we cycle up and down into deep sleep.

Typically a person might have six periods of REM sleep in a night separated by an hour or less.

During REM sleep it may be that critical emotional memories are processed and resolved.

The study found that when people’s REM sleep was disturbed, they had more trouble getting over emotional distress.

6. Online therapy for anxiety

After nine weeks of online therapy, people experiencing social anxiety disorder show distinct changes in their brains, new research finds.

Online cognitive behavioural therapy can reduce anxiety and change brain volumes in critical areas.

Mr Kristoffer NT Månsson, one of the study’s authors, said:

“The greater the improvement we saw in the patients, the smaller the size of their amygdalae.

The study also suggests that the reduction in volume drives the reduction in brain activity.”

The amygdala is an area of the brain vital to the processing of the emotions.

7. The neurocircuitry of anxiety

Stress and anxiety have been linked to the same neurocircuitry in the brain as depression and dementia.

The new study suggests people need to find ways to reduce chronic stress or they could be putting themselves at increased risk of mental health problems.

Neuroscientists have found there is an extensive overlap between neurocircuitry for anxiety, depression and dementia.

8. Brain training could reduce anxiety

Computer training can change how the brain regulates emotional reactions, a new study finds.

Researchers have found that a simple attentional training task encourages the brain to ignore irrelevant information

The task involves identifying whether arrows on the screen are pointing left or right.

At the same time people were asked to ignore other arrows on the screen placed there to distract them.

Brain scans showed that people who practised a difficult version of this task later coped better with negative emotions.

9. Stop anxiety passing from parent to child

A new study finds that a family therapy intervention can help break the cycle of anxiety from parent to child.

The study included 136 families where at least one parent struggled with anxiety.

After just one year, 31% of children of parents with anxiety who did not go to therapy or get instructions had developed anxiety.

However, in the group that received therapy the number of children that developed anxiety in one year was just 9%.

Families in the therapy group were taught to identify the signs of anxiety and how to deal with them.

One is called ‘the reality check’.

It’s all about deciding which anxieties are worth paying attention to, explained Dr Ginsburg:

“We taught the kids how to identify scary thoughts, and how to change them.

For example, if a child is afraid of cats and encounters one in the street, the child can first identify the scary thought: “That cat is going to hurt me.”

Then the child can test that thought — is it likely that the cat will hurt me?

No, the cat doesn’t look angry.

It isn’t baring its teeth or hissing, it’s just sitting there.

OK, I can walk past that cat and it won’t do anything.”

10. Dangers of anxiety drugs

Benzodiazepines carry an increased risk of dementia and even death.

Benzodiazepines include drugs marketed under the names Valium, Ativan, Klonopin and Xanax.

These drugs are often prescribed for anxiety and other mental health issues such as OCD, insomnia and post-traumatic stress disorder.

Research has now repeatedly linked these drugs to dementia and Alzheimer’s.

A recent study found that taking benzodiazepines for three to six months increased the Alzheimer’s risk by 32%.

Taking the drug for more than six months increased the risk by 84%.

Anxiety image from Shutterstock

The amygdala is an area of the brain vital to the processing of the emotions.

After nine weeks of online therapy, people experiencing social anxiety disorder show distinct changes in their brains, new research finds.

Online cognitive behavioural therapy can reduce anxiety and change brain volumes in critical areas.

The study recruited people with social anxiety disorder — one of the most common mental health problems.

Brain scans compared their brains before and after the online treatment.

Activity in the amygdala and anxiety reduced after the online cognitive behavioural therapy in comparison to a control group.

Mr Kristoffer NT Månsson, one of the study’s authors, said:

“The greater the improvement we saw in the patients, the smaller the size of their amygdalae.

The study also suggests that the reduction in volume drives the reduction in brain activity.”

The amygdala is an area of the brain vital to the processing of the emotions.

Mr Månsson said:

“Although we didn’t look at that many patients, this work provides some important knowledge — especially for all the sufferers.

Several studies have reported that certain areas of the brain differ between patients with and without anxiety disorders.

We’ve shown that the patients can improve in nine weeks — and that this leads to structural differences in their brains,”

The study was published in the journal Translational Psychiatry (Boraxbekk et al., 2016).

Network brain image from Shutterstock

Brain scans showed that people who practised a difficult version of this task coped better with negative emotions.

Computer training can change how the brain regulates emotional reactions, a new study finds.

Researchers have found that a simple attentional training task encourages the brain to ignore irrelevant information.

The task involves identifying whether arrows on the screen are pointing left or right.

At the same time people were asked to ignore other arrows on the screen placed there to distract them.

Brain scans showed that people who practised a difficult version of this task later coped better with negative emotions.

Dr Noga Cohen, the study’s first author, said:

“These findings are the first to demonstrate that non-emotional training that improves the ability to ignore irrelevant information can result in reduced brain reactions to emotional events and alter brain connections.

These changes were accompanied by strengthened neural connections between brain regions involved in inhibiting emotional reactions.”

Dr Cohen explained the results:

“As expected, participants who completed the more intense version of the training (but not the other participants) showed reduced activation in their amygdala — a brain region involved in negative emotions, including sadness and anxiety.

In addition, the intense training resulted in increased connectivity between participants’ amygdala and a region in the frontal cortex shown to be involved in emotion regulation.”

The researchers hope this could lead to new treatments, said Dr Cohen:

“It is our hope that the current work would lead to further testing and potentially the development of effective intervention for individuals suffering from maladaptive emotional behavior.

While acknowledging the limitations of this study, which was based on a relatively small number of healthy participants and focused on short-term effects of the training, this may prove effective for individuals suffering from emotion dysregulation.”

The study was published in the journal Neuroimage (Cohen et al., 2015).

Image credit: Bada Bing

Social threats are detected by the brain in just 200 milliseconds.

The brains of highly anxious people process social threats differently than those who are more laid back, a new study finds.

Anxious people process social threats with the part of the brain responsible for taking action.

This could indicate that anxiety does not lead to ‘oversensitivity’ or paralysis.

Rather, it could help anxious people to take action sooner.

Naturally, in most people the brain devotes more processing to social threats than it does to benign occurrences, the research confirmed.

Social threats are detected by the brain in just 200 milliseconds.

Less anxious people use areas of the brain involved in face recognition.

The most threatening facial expressions, the researchers found, were an angry face making direct eye contact.

Dr Marwa El Zein, the study’s first author, said:

“In a crowd, you will be most sensitive to an angry face looking towards you, and will be less alert to an angry person looking somewhere else.

In contrast to previous work, our findings demonstrate that the brain devotes more processing resources to negative emotions that signal threat, rather than to any display of negative emotion.”

The study was published in the journal eLife (El Zein et al., 2015).

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