I have a question about your anxiety threads. Do you differentiate between mental and physical anxiety? If so are there some supplements that work better for one kind? I think physical anxiety is more my problem although sometimes it's a combination of both.
The brain certainty has the "anxiety circuitry" to produce an anxiety state in our minds.
This "anxiety circuitry" is located in certain areas of the brain that create the normal anxiety response; the main anxiety area or "anxiety circuit" of the brain is the
amygdala (but the
prefrontal cortex and the
locus coeruleus are also involved in anxiety).
Mental anxiety, as you term it, arises when external life circumstances and life situations trigger this anxiety circuitry and switch it on. Usually this anxiety is a normal, healthy and appropriate response. For example, if you had a job interview to go to tomorrow, then today you would likely be feeling anxious about it. This anxiety is a healthy and appropriate response, because some anxiety ensures that you properly prepare for your job interview.
What you term "mental anxiety" always has psychogenic causes; that is to say, it arises from stressful
external situations you face.
Physical anxiety (what is medical called
generalized anxiety disorder) I believe arises when there is a dysfunction in the brain or the body, which causes the anxiety circuitry of the brain to be inappropriately permanently switch on, even though there is no
external reason for this — there are no stressful
external situations that you face to provoke any anxiety response.
This thread (plus the other threads I started on this subject) is all about physical anxiety (generalized anxiety disorder), which arises from
physical dysfunctions of the brain's anxiety circuitry.
The muddle comes when you have both
physical anxiety and
mental anxiety occurring together. So if you already have physical anxiety, such that your anxiety circuits are switched on to a high level, and then you also start experiencing mental anxiety (psychogenic anxiety) due to some stressful external situations, this is going to raise your anxiety levels even higher still, as now you have two driving causes of anxiety, one physical and one mental.
Since you have physical anxiety already (and physical anxiety might not only switch on your anxiety circuits, but perhaps also make them more sensitive to stressful external stimuli), then when mental anxiety from an external situation hits, it becomes very difficult to cope with.
So most people with physical anxiety will tend to minimize or avoid stressful external situations (which is a good thing to do if you have anxiety disorder); but these external situations are not the cause of their extreme anxiety, they just further add to the already high anxiety burden.
When you hear stories of high-flying business executives suddenly having a nervous breakdown out of the blue, although it is popularly believed that this occured because they "pushed themselves too hard", thereby causing burnout, I think what in fact happens is that the unfortunate executive suddenly develops a dysfunction in his anxiety circuits (perhaps triggered by a viral infection or toxic exposure, for example) leading to of physical anxiety, and from then on, all the demanding situations in his business life — situations which were once a great "buzz" and a thrilling adrenaline ride for that executive — now suddenly become a nightmare to cope with, because now that executive's anxiety circuitry is physically malfunctioning, such that his anxiety state is permanently switched on, and may also be over-sensitive to any form of external stress.
The popular public perception, and the view among many psychologists (who as we know often get things wrong), is that the demanding high-flying career itself caused the burnout; but I suggest the opposite is true: that their anxiety circuits became dysfunctional due to some physical damage or biochemical imbalance (such as from a virus or toxin), and
only then does this physical damage/imbalance make a once fabulously exciting high-flying career now seem extremely stressful — stressful enough to make the executive resign.
All the remedies and medications in this thread are focused on reducing the physical damage and biochemical imbalance of the brain's malfunctioning anxiety circuits. Once you have treated the physical dysfunctions of your anxiety circuits, and your brain's anxiety circuits are functioning more robustly, then you will likely find that mental anxiety arising from stressful situations will be easier to deal with.
There is of course no reason why you should not also try to train your mind to better deal with mental anxiety arising from stressful situations. Though research has shown such mental training tends to work OK for panic disorder, but does not work so well for generalized anxiety disorder.
