Category: Anxiety

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).

No sleep image from Shutterstock

Anxious parents tend to pass on their anxiety to their children — but this doesn’t have to be the case.

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.

They were split into three groups, which received either:

• a year’s therapist-directed family therapy,
• or written instructions,
• or nothing.

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

Dr Golda Ginsburg, a psychiatrist and first author of the study, said:

“The finding underscores the vulnerability of offspring of anxious parents.

If we can identify kids at risk, let’s try and prevent this.”

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

In the instruction group, 21% developed anxiety.

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.”

The family therapy consisted of eight one-hour sessions, but Dr Ginsburg wonders if this is enough.

Just as you might go for a medical check-up, there could be value in having a psychological check-up from time-to-time.

Dr Ginsburg said:

“I’d say we need to change our model of mental health to a checkup method.

Like going to the dentist every six months.”

The research was published in the American Journal of Psychiatry (Ginsburg et al., 2015).

Anxious child image from Shutterstock

Anxiety is reduced and the brain grows with this type of thinking.

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.

The neuroscientists were inspired by studies that suggested a smaller OFC was linked to anxiety.

Dr Sanda Dolcos, who led the research, said:

“We wanted to go in the opposite direction.

If there can be shrinkage of the orbitofrontal cortex and that shrinkage is associated with anxiety disorders, what does it mean in healthy populations that have larger OFCs?

Could that have a protective role?”

Brain scans of 61 people identified the size of the OFC and levels of optimism, anxiety, depression and emotional states.

The results suggested that it’s optimism that links OFC size with anxiety.

Dr Dolcos said:

“You can say, ‘OK, there is a relationship between the orbitofrontal cortex and anxiety. What do I do to reduce anxiety?’

And our model is saying, this is working partially through optimism.

So optimism is one of the factors that can be targeted.”

Ms Yifan Hu, one of the study’s authors, said:

“Optimism has been investigated in social psychology for years.

But somehow only recently did we start to look at functional and structural associations of this trait in the brain.

We wanted to know: If we are consistently optimistic about life, would that leave a mark in the brain?”

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.”

The research was published in the journal Social, Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience (Dolcos et al., 2015).

Brain image from Shutterstock

Social anxiety can be crippling, leading to lost opportunities at work and in romantic relationships. A simple tip can help, new study finds.

Performing acts of kindness can help people with social anxiety mingle with others more easily, a new study finds.

Social anxiety is about more than just being a little shy.

For sufferers, social anxiety can be crippling, leading to lost opportunities at work and elsewhere.

It can be difficult for people who are socially anxious to get close to others.

Naturally they tend to have fewer friends and can lose out on that vital source of pleasure and support.

Social anxiety and acts of kindness

Canadian researchers Jennifer Trew and Lynn Alden wanted to see if performing acts of kindness might be beneficial to the socially anxious.

People recruited into the study were put into one of three groups for four weeks:

• One group performed acts of kindness, like doing their roommates’ dishes.
• Another group were exposed to various social interactions without the acts of kindness.
• A third group who did nothing special acted as a control.

At the end of the study it was those who’d performed the acts of kindness who felt more comfortable in social interactions.

The acts of kindness seemed to help people deal with worries about rejection.

Dr Jennifer Trew said:

“Acts of kindness may help to counter negative social expectations by promoting more positive perceptions and expectations of a person’s social environment.

It helps to reduce their levels of social anxiety and, in turn, makes them less likely to want to avoid social situations.”

Professor Lynn Alden said:

“An intervention using this technique may work especially well early on while participants anticipate positive reactions from others in response to their kindness.”

The study was published in the journal Motivation and Emotion (Trew & Alden, 2015).

→ 10 Signs of Anxiety Everyone Should Know.

Drugs commonly prescribed for social anxiety could be making the problem worse.

Social anxiety disorder is linked to higher levels of serotonin in the brain, not lower as previously thought.

People with both social anxiety actually produce more of the neurotransmitter serotonin in their brains.

The more serotonin they produce, the more anxious they become.

The result is a surprise as social anxiety are often treated with SSRIs like Prozac, Paxil and Zoloft.

SSRIs actually increase the levels of serotonin in the brain.

Mr Andreas Frick, the study’s first author, said:

“Not only did individuals with social phobia make more serotonin than people without such a disorder, they also pump back more serotonin.

We were able to show this in another group of patients using a different tracer which itself measures the pump mechanism.

We believe that this is an attempt to compensate for the excess serotonin active in transmitting signals.”

For the study, 18 people with social anxiety disorder had the serotonin levels measured in their brains.

These were compared to people without the disorder.

Mr Frick said:

“Serotonin can increase anxiety and not decrease it as was previously often assumed.”

The findings follow on studies questioning the link between depression and low serotonin.

The research was published in the journal JAMA Psychiatry (Frick et al., 2015).

• Read on: Social Anxiety Disorder: Impressive Study Reveals The Very Best Treatment

Anxious woman image from Shutterstock

Survey asked 7,000 people whether they watched online videos of cute cats.

Watching cute videos of cats online can boost energy and positive emotions, a new study finds.

Not only that, but they can decrease negative emotions like sadness, annoyance and anxiety.

The survey asked almost 7,000 people about any cat videos they viewed and their moods.

Dr Jessica Gall Myrick, the study’s author, explained the results:

“Even if they are watching cat videos on YouTube to procrastinate or while they should be working, the emotional pay-off may actually help people take on tough tasks afterward.”

The pleasure people gained from watching the videos outweighed any guilt they felt about procrastinating, the study found.

The survey also revealed that:

• 36% were exclusively ‘cat people’, while 60% liked both cats and dogs.
• Shy, agreeable people were the most likely to watch cat videos.

Dr Myrick is aware some might scoff at the research topic.

She said:

“Some people may think watching online cat videos isn’t a serious enough topic for academic research, but the fact is that it’s one of the most popular uses of the Internet today.

If we want to better understand the effects the Internet may have on us as individuals and on society, then researchers can’t ignore Internet cats anymore.

We all have watched a cat video online, but there is really little empirical work done on why so many of us do this, or what effects it might have on us.

As a media researcher and online cat video viewer, I felt compelled to gather some data about this pop culture phenomenon.”

The study was published in the journal Computers in Human Behaviour (Myrick, 2015).

Cute cate image from Shutterstock

Part 1: Psych tips for how to promote change in yourself.

Interested in a psychological tune-up — either for yourself or someone else?

Here are 8 tips from recent psych studies covered here on PsyBlog.

The first four tips below are about how to promote change in yourself.

Click through to page 2 to find out how to change other people (link at the bottom).

1. Self-affirmation opens the mind to change

When given advice about how to change, people are often automatically defensive, trying to justify their current behaviour.

A very simple exercise — self-affirmation — can open up people’s minds to behaviour change.

A self-affirmation exercise simply involves thinking about what’s important to you — it could be family, work, religion or anything that has particular meaning.

When people feel self-affirmed, they find it easier to accept the possibility of change.

2. The growth mindset

Believing it’s possible to grow and change is a vital step in promoting change.

Read about this study in which researchers found that adolescents who believe people can change cope better with the challenges of attending high school.

In addition the researchers found that those who more strongly endorsed the idea that people can change also reported:

• less stress,
• lower anxiety,
• feeling better about themselves,
• and they were also in better physical health.

Psychologists call this a ‘growth mindset’.

3. Can your personality really change?

For many years personality psychologists gave the same answer as any pessimist: no, people’s personalities don’t change.

In the last 15 years, though, this view has shifted.

Instead of personality being set in stone at 30, now evidence is emerging that there is some change.

This study confirmed that people’s personalities do change, even over a two-year period.

Indeed the degree of personality change in those two years was equivalent to shifts in other demographic variables such as marital status, employment and income.

4. Just say ‘stop’

Here’s a little habit-change tip…

It may be possible to deliberately ‘forget’ long-standing habits, according to recent experiments carried out at Regensburg University in Germany.

They found that merely telling yourself to forget about a habit after performing it may prove helpful.

For more on habit change, check out my book “Making Habits, Breaking Habits…”

→ Continue reading: How to Change Other People

Two paths image from Shutterstock

Two intense emotions that are linked to massive increase in heart attack risk.

The risk of a heart attack increases by at least 8.5 times in the two hours after the intense emotions of anger and anxiety, a new study finds.

The effect of an anxiety attack is even more pronounced, the study found, increasing the chances of having a heart attack by 9.5 times.

The study’s lead author, Dr Thomas Buckley, said:

“Our findings confirm what has been suggested in prior studies and anecdotal evidence, even in films — that episodes of intense anger can act as a trigger for a heart attack.

The data shows that the higher risk of a heart attack isn’t necessarily just while you’re angry — it lasts for two hours after the outburst.”

Intense anger was classified in the study as at 5 or above on a scale of 1 to 7.

A score of five refers to ‘very angry, body tense, clenching fists or teeth, ready to burst’, while 7 means ‘enraged, out of control, throwing objects’.

Dr Buckley said:

“The triggers for these burst of intense anger were associated with arguments with family members (29 per cent), argument with others (42 per cent), work anger (14 per cent) and driving anger (14 per cent).

The data also revealed that episodes of anxiety can also make you more likely to have heart attack.

High levels of anxiety were associated with a 9.5 fold increased risk of triggering a heart attack in the two hours after the anxiety episode.

Increased risk following intense anger or anxiety is most likely due to increased heart rate, blood pressure, tightening of blood vessels and increased clotting, all associated with triggering heart attacks.”

The researchers interviewed 313 patients who had had heart attacks about any intense emotions in the previous two days.

The results are published in the European Heart Journal: Acute Cardiovascular Care (Tofler et al., 2015).

Dr Buckley cautioned that the absolute risk of suffering a heart attack from intense emotions is low:

“Although the incidence of anger-triggered heart attacks is around 2%, of the sample, those people were 8.5 times more likely to have a heart attack within two hours of the emotional episode.

So while the absolute risk of any one episode triggering a heart attack is low, this data demonstrates that the danger is very present.”

Avoid intense emotions

Professor Geoffrey Tofler, the study’s lead author, said that avoiding intense emotions was particularly important for those at risk:

“Potential preventive approaches may be stress reduction training to reduce the frequency and intensity of episodes of anger, or avoiding activities that usually prompt such intense reactions, for instance, avoiding an angry confrontation or activity that provokes intense anxiety.

Additionally, improving general health by minimising other risk factors, such as hypertension, high cholesterol or smoking would also lower risk.

For those at high risk, it is possible that medication such as beta-blockers and aspirin taken at the time of a trigger may interrupt the link between the stressor and the heart attack.

We are currently recruiting subjects for a study examining this option.”

Heart attack image from Shutterstock