5 Ways To Rewire Your Anxious Brain

“Neuroplasticity” refers to your brain’s capacity to restructure itself when it needs to adapt. In other words, it can continue growing and developing throughout your life.

For example, if you suffer a traumatic brain injury after a bad car accident and affect your ability to talk, you haven’t necessarily lost the ability permanently. Rehabilitation and therapy can help the brain relearn how to speak by restoring old pathways and creating new ones.

Rewiring your brain might sound pretty complex, but it’s something anyone can do at home. Here are a few specific examples of how you can rewire your anxious brain.

1. Play video games.

If you like playing video games, good news: Research has proven that this hobby can provide you with plenty of cognitive benefits, which include:

• motor coordination
• visual recognition and spatial navigation
• memory and reaction time
• reasoning, decision making, and problem-solving skills
• resilience
• cooperation and team participation

In other words, playing video games teaches your brain new skills. So not only will you improve your gaming skills, but you’ll reap the benefits in your mental health, as well. Here’s how:

• When you learn how to recover from losing in a game, you strengthen your resilience in real life. 
• Video games help you look at situations differently when you need to explore different solutions to accomplish a task. This promotes creative thinking, like reframing worrisome thoughts when it comes to anxiety.

2. Practice Visualizing 

To rewire your brain in the long term, try visualization for a few minutes a day.  Before you start the visualization method, ask yourself the following questions:

• What is my unique talent?
• Who will benefit?
• What is my passion?
• What is my higher calling?
• What are my goals?

It’s essential to imagine who you want to be or what you want to accomplish in your life. For example, you might want to deliver a fantastic presentation that will impress your boss. Imagine yourself walking up to the front of your office and speaking with confidence.

With this image in mind, now you must match your “memory” or “vision” of it occurring. If you want to get a stellar review from your manager, write down your goal on a note and read it aloud every morning. You’ll then move throughout the day with this intention in mind.

3. Challenge your anxious thoughts.

Rewiring anxious tendencies in the mind takes some time, but persistence allows your brain to strengthen new ways of approaching anxiety.Start to identify the things that trigger your anxiety. Think of anything that scares, worries, or makes you nervous. Now, rather than treating them as facts, treat them as a hypothesis you’re testing. As you continue to challenge those thoughts in this way, your perspective becomes more balanced. 

 4. Meditation

Meditation has been studied and scientifically proven to reduce anxiety and depression. Being anxious all of the time can rewire the brain to be in a constant state of stress. How long that takes to develop is different for everyone. Meditation, on the other hand, rewires the brain to a calm state of peace. The meditation practice helps you build those muscles and pathways, putting you back into the driver’s seat of your mind. 

 5. Capitalize on the power of the environment

Clutter is distracting, and having a disorganized space can be stressful. And when you’re in a stressful state, it’s easier to let things slip. Start by looking at one room at a time, whether it’s your bedroom, your office, or your car.  Sometimes just rearranging things a little can help the frantic mind find a new place to settle in.

You may also want to Implement all of your senses in the environmental upgrade. Think about scents, sounds, and pleasing visuals. Whatever that looks like for you, remember to design your environment in a way that calms and soothes you. You may find that your brain will respond instantly

The bottom line

You’ll gain a greater understanding of how anxiety is built in your brain, and as a result,  feel empowered and motivated to overcome it. Your brain is a powerful tool, and the more you work to change your responses to anxiety, the more resilient you will become.

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If you struggle with anxious, self-critical, racing thoughts and consider yourself an overthinker then don’t worry..I’ve got you…Check out The Overthinking Toolkit.