Using Our Brains to Treat Anxiety

Can anxiety and worry be perpetuated like a habit? Anxiety levels are increasing individually and collectively in modern day. Faced with uncertainty, an overabundance of information (and misinformation), among other challenges, our minds struggle to keep up. Our brains default to old survival mechanisms to help us deal with anxiety, which can lead to the development of unhealthy coping habits (e.g., stress eating) and ironically feed anxiety as a habit itself. Drawing on his clinical work, neuroscience research studies, and development of next-generation digital therapeutics for habit change, Dr. Brewer will discuss the underlying behavioral and neurobiological mechanisms of why anxiety and other habits are formed and how we can paradoxically tap into these very processes to uproot them. He will also discuss how we can apply these insights to improving clinical treatments and to our own lives.
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