Dear Adrian Gallardo:

Can anxiety affect how a person thinks, you asked. Yes, very much so. When there is fear in your brain, that means the brain believes there is DANGER to attend to. The number one priority of any animal, humans included, it to attend to danger so to escape it and survive.

Let’s say you walk outside and a big, aggressive dog shows up- you feel fear right away- you look for a stick on the ground, anything to fight away the dog. You pick up a stick and as the dog approaches you, you hit its head with the stick, trying to get to its eyes, etc. You attended to the danger and fighting to survive.

When you are anxious, you are not aware of the danger. Where is it? What is it? You don’t know. You feel fear but you don’t know what it is that is scaring you. Next, the THINKING part of the brain is looking for the danger, so to attend to it and protect yourself. So it looks and keeps looking for it, hence the OVERTHINKING/ OBSESSING. You look around and imagine danger in the way people look at you. You hear a loud voice and your first thought: danger! You think there is danger here and there and you keep looking for it.

The fear, without a clear danger, keeps circulating in the brain, and it is wired as it exists in connections between nerve cells in the brain, and the thinking keeps looking for the danger.

anita