53 pages • 1 hour read
Unwinding Anxiety: New Science Shows How to Break the Cycles of Worry and Fear to Heal Your Mind
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BetaPart 2Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Part 2: “Updating Your Brain’s Reward Value: Second Gear”
Part 2, Chapter 10 Summary: “How Your Brain Makes Decisions: Why We Prefer Cake to Broccoli”
The brain compiles emotional, sensory, and behavioral experiences in the orbitofrontal cortex (OFC), which provides a powerful means of remembering rewards for previous behaviors. To break a habit and begin a new one, people cannot rely on willpower alone but should consider how to update their brain’s reward for their behavior. Awareness can help people register how their actions actually feel. For instance, a smoker might realize they actually do not like the taste or smell of cigarettes, or an overeater might feel sickened by a bag of chips. The author insists that when people pay close attention to how unrewarding their habits actually are in the long term, they become less interested in doing them again. In Brewer’s opinion, this strategy relies on knowledge, not willpower. He explains, “You now know how your brain functions, so you can work it rather than it working you” (113). The author calls this “the gift of disenchantment” and advises the reader to take full advantage of it (113). Rather than intellectualizing the exercise by overthinking, people should simply notice what is happening in their thoughts and bodies when they ask themselves “What do I get from this?” (115).
Part 2, Chapter 11 Summary: “Stop Thinking: Dave’s Story, Part 2”
Rewards-based learning theory is the best explanation for how humans commit learning to memory. As such, Brewer argues that understanding and changing the brain’s “reward” is the best way to change your habits. Merely knowing what your own habit loops are is not enough—people must act on this knowledge by becoming truly aware of each part of the cycle. Only this acute awareness will really change the reward value in your brain, shifting a behavior from appealing to repellent.
For his patient Dave, becoming aware revealed how truly unrewarding his overeating was in the long term. By paying attention to his own thoughts and feelings, Dave was able to overcome his habit. Within 6 months, he lost 97 pounds and experienced many health benefits. Brewer was shocked to learn that Dave had a new career as an Uber driver, having now overcome his driving anxiety as well.
The author contrasts the comfort zone with personal growth, advising the reader to expect some discomfort and pain as they change their habits. The world is full of instant gratification ways to numb our discomfort, from shopping to medication. “Second gear” allows people to resist these panaceas by becoming truly aware of their drawbacks. Only repetition of this awareness can change the brain’s habit loops, since people must “groove in that new neural pathway” until it becomes as entrenched as the old habit had been (121). Brewer coaches the reader to be patient and continue carefully mapping their triggers, behaviors, and results, allowing the power of repetition to work in their own lives.
Part 2, Chapter 12 Summary: “Learning (And Growing) From the Past”
Dr. Brewer relays an example from one of his patients who struggled with a sugar addiction. Unthinkingly, she ate some honey from the jar while she made her tea, and then brought her awareness to the fact that it didn’t make her feel better and didn’t taste very good. This “second gear” awareness can also work retrospectively. For instance, one of Dr. Brewer’s patients, a binge-eater, was able to reflect on his experience of binge eating and realize how it made him feel physically sick the next day. As long as the physical sensations and mental thought patterns are still vivid, retrospective second gear is a valuable way of turning a habit loop into a learning experience.
The author refers to Dr. Carol Dweck’s work on fixed and growth mindsets. People with fixed mindsets are more likely to believe that they cannot change or learn new things, and therefore fear failure. Those with growth mindsets, however, recognize that they can always develop through effort and learning, with failure as an expected step on the way. Brewer connects this to one of his patients’ experiences of working with an alcohol addiction. Despite making incredible progress at cutting back her alcohol intake, his patient felt intense shame and dejection when she drank. Dr. Brewer regarded this as a fixed mindset and helped her recognize that as long as she reflected on these lapses and learned from them, she would continue moving forward. By taking on a more growth mindset, his patient felt more positive about continuing to work with her addiction.
The author coaches the reader to nonjudgmentally consider a past misstep and ask what was learned from that experience.
Part 2, Chapter 13 Summary: “Fixing the Fix: Dana Small’s Chocolate Experiment”
Dr. Dana Small is a neuroscientist at Yale who has used PET scanners to study brain responses to pleasurable experiences. In one of her experiments, she asked participants to eat their favorite chocolate bars, bite by bite, and rate how much they wanted to continue eating. Dr. Small noticed a pattern in responses, in which people generally ranked the chocolate as highly pleasurable at first, then neutral, until finally, they felt an aversion to it. Interestingly, the same area of the brain, the Posterior Cingulate Cortex, was activated during the most and least pleasurable moments. This shows that this region is involved in creating both cravings and aversion. The author notes that people will only register their growing aversion if they are eating mindfully and paying attention. Dr. Brewer teaches people how to eat mindfully using his app, Eat Right Now. This app coaches users to pay attention to their feelings as they eat and stop eating when they are full, and the average app user lost eight pounds. This approach can work with any habit involving overdoing something. By paying attention to when “the scales start tipping” from pleasure to neutrality and aversion, people can learn to plan, eat, and think in moderation (139).
The author believes that attitude itself can become a habit. If people attach negative attitudes to certain tasks, it makes it even harder for them to do those things and increases the chances that they’ll form a negative association around it. By recognizing how unhelpful negative attitudes are, people can learn to become more neutral or positive about daily life tasks. The author advises that people not try to fight their negative thoughts or moods, but “simply and playfully recognize them as thoughts and emotions” (141). This awareness allows people to dismantle their entrenched moods and foster more curiosity and openness.
Part 2, Chapter 14 Summary: “How Long Does It Take to Change a Habit?”
The notion that new habits can be fully formed in 21 days is a persistent myth with no real scientific backing. Habit formation depends on so many things: genetics, level of motivation, addictiveness, and circumstances. Philippa Lally’s study showed a tremendous variety in habit formation: It took participants anywhere from 18 to 254 days to solidify a habit into total automaticity. The author believes that the Rescorla-Wagner Reinforcement Learning Model got it right. According to this model, the brain always expects a behavior to be as pleasurable as the first powerfully rewarding experience. For instance, it creates a prediction that eating a whole cake alone as an adult will be as pleasurable as enjoying a birthday cake with friends as a child. Mindless eating supports the brain’s automatic predictive nature by not registering any new information.
To interrupt this cycle, Brewer added steps into his apps that encourage participants to register their craving intensity and then eat or smoke mindfully, allowing their brains to register their real reactions. Over time, being triggered and considering their cravings made users more likely to remember their negative experiences and less likely to automatically eat or smoke. The author claims that no one can out “think” a habit, since the “feeling body” is much more powerful (148). The best we can do is “hack” our brains by becoming truly aware and changing our cravings from within. Thoughts can be deceiving and discouraging. Instead, people should trust their brain’s inherent process—and use it for good.
The author acknowledges that many people, including himself, struggle with habit loops around self-judgment. It is easy to recycle negative judgments about one’s own actions, reliving the shame and regret repeatedly. When confronted with a mental trigger, people have two options: Path 1 in which they remember the mistake (trigger), look and learn at the situation and lesson (behavior), and move on (result), or Path 2 in which they remember their mistake (trigger), judge themselves (behavior), and reopen the old wound (result). To stop these harmful habit loops, the author advises becoming aware of how reopening old wounds does not help fix the past. Once people feel total “disenchantment” with self-judgment, they are finished with second gear, and ready for third gear.
Part 2 Analysis
In Part 2, Dr. Brewer continues to build on his theme on The Neuroscience of Anxiety and Addiction. By describing how the human brain is structured to make people highly habit prone, and therefore vulnerable to addictions, the author generates understanding and sympathy for people who are working with challenging habit loops. His detailed discussion of the Default Mode Network helps the reader understand the immensity of the problem and recognize why so many anti-habit tricks do not bring lasting results. According to Brewer, many people accidentally over-rely on their thinking brain, whereas mindfulness can go beyond thoughts and actually cause a shift in the brain’s reward system, decreasing cravings and eventually eliminating habits.
Brewer makes it clear that merely thinking about one’s habit problems is not enough to generate real change. The author catches the reader’s attention in his instruction to feel, not think, writing, “WARNING: This is not an intellectual training. Don’t fall into the trap of understanding how reward valuation works in the brain and then go trying to think your way out of your bad habits and into good ones” (114). To Brewer, this “intellectual” approach relies too much on willpower in the moment rather than truly changing the brain’s experience of a behavior. He implores the reader, “If it’s a habit that you desperately want to break, you can’t tell, force, or wish it to stop, because these likely don’t have an effect on its reward value…You can’t think your way out of a bad habit and into a good one” (148). Instead, Brewer instructs the reader to repeatedly pay attention to their sensations during different behaviors, thereby using their “feeling body” to register results with their Orbitofrontal Cortex (OFC) (148). This repeated instruction works to persuade the reader to tap into their own bodily sensations using mindfulness and resist the urge to merely think about their habits and anxiety.
By highlighting how awareness and self-reflection is the key to identifying and overcoming habit loops, the author advances his theme on Knowledge, Empowerment, and Self-Healing. This discussion empowers the reader to consider themselves their own main healer, and the authority of their own experience. Additionally, a critical part of this discussion is Brewer’s emphasis on kindness and cultivating a growth mindset, which he believes is more effective than self-judgment. The author argues that it is possible to create kinder thought patterns using the same awareness tools that people apply to their other habit loops. He shares an anecdote about a recurring self-judgment habit loop that he struggles with, and his experience of using mindfulness to diminish this persistent thought. When he remembers his mistake, he turns on his awareness to “notice clenching in my stomach and self-judgment start to play in my head. Give myself a mental hug and remind myself that I can’t change what I did and that I have learned from it. Result: Healed wound” (154). In addition to being a gentler approach to working with habit loops, this method is also pragmatic, as it emphasizes learning and personal growth rather than unhelpful repeated judgment. Brewer writes, “All experiences move us forward if we are aware and open to learning from them” (134). By modeling this self-compassion and desire to learn, the author encourages the reader to do the same with their own self-judgment about their anxiety or habit loops.
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