Michelle: A Harvard study found we spend about 50% of our waking lives with our minds wandering. And another study found that a wandering mind is an unhappy mind. Mark: Wow. So for half the day, many of us are just practicing being unhappy. That’s… bleak. Michelle: It is, but what if that's not a fundamental flaw in our design, but simply a habit? Mark: A habit of being unhappy? That sounds even worse! Michelle: Well, that's the core question behind the book we're diving into today: Unwinding Anxiety by Dr. Judson Brewer. Mark: Right, and Brewer isn't just a self-help author. He's a serious psychiatrist and neuroscientist from institutions like Yale and Brown. He spent decades studying addiction before he had this lightbulb moment—realizing that anxiety works in the exact same way. It's a habit loop our brain gets hooked on. Michelle: Exactly. And he published this book right when global anxiety was peaking, offering a surprisingly practical, science-backed way out. He argues we don't need more willpower; we need to understand how our own brains work. Have you ever felt like worrying was basically a full-time job? Mark: Oh, absolutely. It feels productive, right? Like if I worry enough, I can prevent bad things from happening. Which, of course, never works. Michelle: That feeling of productivity is the key. That's the illusion that gets us hooked. And it’s the first, most fundamental idea we need to unpack: anxiety as a habit.

Michelle: Brewer breaks it down into a simple, three-part loop that our brain has been using since we were cave-people: Trigger, Behavior, Reward. Mark: Okay, I think I get that for something like eating a cookie. Trigger: I feel stressed. Behavior: I eat the cookie. Reward: Sugar rush, momentary bliss. But how does that apply to anxiety? Michelle: Let's use one of the powerful stories from the book. Brewer talks about a patient named John, a man in his sixties who was a self-employed professional. John’s trigger was the overwhelming feeling of anxiety about his massive to-do list. Mark: I know that feeling. It’s a pit in your stomach. So what was his behavior? Michelle: Procrastination. He’d feel that wave of anxiety and instead of working, he’d find something else to do. And to really numb the feeling, he started drinking. Six to eight drinks a night. Mark: Whoa. And the reward? Michelle: In the short term, it was avoidance. He got a brief moment of relief from the anxiety about his work. His brain learned: Anxiety about work? Drink. Feel better. That connection gets stronger every time you repeat it. The problem is, the next day, the work is still there, plus now he's hungover, so the anxiety is even worse. Mark: It’s a vicious cycle. But what about the anxiety itself? The worrying part. How is that a behavior with a reward? Michelle: This is the most counter-intuitive part. The trigger might be an uncertain thought, like, "What if my boss is mad at me?" The behavior is to start worrying. You spin through all the worst-case scenarios. Mark: And the reward is… more anxiety? That makes no sense. Michelle: The perceived reward is a sense of control. Your brain thinks, "At least I'm doing something about this problem! I'm planning!" It feels more productive than just sitting with the uncertainty. It’s a terrible deal, but to a panicked brain, it feels slightly better than doing nothing. So it gets reinforced. Trigger: uncertainty. Behavior: worry. Reward: a false sense of control. Mark: Huh. So my brain is basically tricking me into thinking that my frantic worrying is a useful activity. It’s like getting addicted to doomscrolling. The reward isn't that you feel good, it's that you feel like you're staying informed, even though you're just making yourself miserable. Michelle: Precisely. Brewer argues that anxiety, in this sense, is as much of an addiction as smoking or overeating. The same reward-based learning process is at play. And that's why just telling yourself "don't worry" is as effective as telling a smoker "just quit." It doesn't work because it doesn't address the loop. Mark: Okay, so if it's a habit, a deeply ingrained one, how on earth do you break it? You can't just tell yourself to stop. My brain is clearly not listening to reason. Michelle: You don't. You don't fight it with reason or willpower. You do something much more subtle and, according to the science, much more powerful. You make the old habit less appealing. You become… disenchanted with it.

Mark: Disenchanted? That sounds like something out of a fairy tale. What does that mean in practice? Michelle: It means you start paying very close attention to the actual result of the behavior. Not the perceived reward, but how it really makes you feel. This is what Brewer calls "Second Gear." And the best story to illustrate this is of his patient, Dave. Mark: I'm ready. Let's hear about Dave. Michelle: Dave came to Brewer with severe anxiety, panic attacks, and he had gained a significant amount of weight. His primary coping mechanism for anxiety was stress-eating. He’d feel anxious, he’d eat, and he’d feel a momentary distraction. Classic habit loop. Mark: Been there. The pantry calls to me when I'm stressed. Michelle: So Brewer didn't give him a diet plan or tell him to use willpower. He just told him to do one thing: the next time he stress-ate, he should pay really, really close attention to what it felt like. Mark: Just pay attention? That’s it? Michelle: That’s it. So Dave does this. He feels anxious, he eats, but this time he’s mindful. And he has this revelation. He tells Brewer, "You know, when I eat to distract myself, my stomach feels tight, I feel bloated and gross afterwards. It's actually… yucky." Mark: Ah, so he’s updating the data. His brain had this old file labeled "Eating = Relief," and he was finally creating a new file labeled "Stress-Eating = Feels Terrible." Michelle: Exactly! That's the core of it. He updated the reward value. In our brains, the orbitofrontal cortex is constantly maintaining a reward hierarchy. Cake is high up, broccoli is lower down. Willpower is trying to force yourself to choose broccoli. Brewer's method is about paying so much attention that your brain realizes, on a gut level, that the cake is actually making you sick. Suddenly, the broccoli doesn't seem so bad. Mark: So instead of forcing yourself to eat the broccoli, you should just pay attention to how bloated and regretful you feel after eating a whole bag of chips. Michelle: You got it. Dave did this over and over. He became disenchanted with stress-eating. And over the next few months, without a formal diet, he lost ninety-seven pounds. Mark: Ninety-seven pounds? That's incredible. Just from paying attention? Michelle: It sounds too simple, but it's grounded in how the brain learns. Brewer has this fantastic anecdote about teaching smokers to do the same thing. He tells them, "Go ahead and smoke, but be really curious about it." And they come back and say, "You know, I never noticed this before, but smoking smells like stinky cheese and tastes like chemicals. YUCK." Mark: Yuck! That word is powerful. It’s a visceral, emotional re-evaluation. It’s not an intellectual decision. It’s a feeling. Michelle: That's the disenchantment. You're not fighting the urge. You're seeing it clearly for what it is—unrewarding. And once the brain sees that, it naturally starts to let go. Mark: Okay, that’s a huge shift in perspective. But what do you replace it with? If you take away the worry, or the stress-eating, there's a void. The brain still wants something to do. Michelle: And that is the final, and most elegant, part of the process. Your brain needs a "Bigger, Better Offer" to move towards.

Michelle: This is what Brewer calls "Third Gear." Once you see how unrewarding the old habit is, you need to give your brain a new habit that feels genuinely better. A Bigger, Better Offer, or BBO. Mark: So, like, instead of stress-eating, I should go for a walk? Or call a friend? Michelle: You could, but Brewer points out a problem with simple substitution. Let's say you replace your anxiety with scrolling through cute puppy videos on Instagram. It works for a while, but your brain gets used to it. It's called habituation. Soon you need more puppies, cuter puppies, to get the same little dopamine hit. You're still stuck in a loop of seeking external relief. Mark: Right, you're just feeding the same craving monster, but with a different snack. So what’s a real BBO? Michelle: A real BBO is intrinsically rewarding. It comes from within, and you can't get habituated to it. And the most powerful one he proposes is something we all have access to: curiosity. Mark: Curiosity? That sounds… soft. How does curiosity fight off a full-blown panic attack? That seems like bringing a feather to a sword fight. Michelle: It's surprisingly powerful. Brewer shares his own story of having panic attacks during his medical residency. The stress was immense, and he'd wake up in the middle of the night with his heart pounding, tunnel vision, the whole nine yards. Classic panic. Mark: That sounds terrifying. What did he do? Michelle: His first instinct was to panic about the panic. "Oh no, it's happening again! What if I can't breathe?!" But his mindfulness training kicked in. Instead of fighting it, he got curious. He started mentally noting the sensations, like a scientist observing a phenomenon. "Oh, there's tightness in my chest. Huh. Heart is racing. Interesting. Vision is narrowing." Mark: He was observing it instead of being consumed by it. Michelle: Exactly. And what he discovered was that curiosity feels better than panic. It’s an open, engaged state, whereas panic is a closed, contracted state. By simply shifting into curiosity, he was giving his brain a Bigger, Better Offer. The panic was still there, but he wasn't feeding it with more fear. He was just watching it. And eventually, it would burn itself out. Mark: Wow. So curiosity creates distance. It lets you step out of the storm and just watch the rain. Michelle: That's a perfect way to put it. And it's always available. You don't need an app or a cookie. You can just ask, "Huh, what does this anxiety actually feel like in my body right now?" That simple question is the BBO. It shifts you from being a victim of the feeling to being an explorer of it. Mark: And the other BBO he mentions is kindness, right? How does that fit in? Michelle: Kindness is the antidote to the self-judgment loop. The "I'm so stupid for worrying" or "I'm so weak for eating that cake" loop. Just like with panic, self-judgment feels terrible. It's a contracted, painful state. Offering yourself a moment of loving-kindness—the simple wish to be happy and well—feels better. It's more rewarding. It breaks the cycle of self-criticism.

Mark: So the whole process, if I'm getting this right, is a three-step dance with your own mind. First, you see the habit loop clearly—the trigger, the behavior, the fake reward. Michelle: That's First Gear: Mapping your mind. Mark: Then, you pay close attention and realize how unrewarding that habit actually is. You get that "yuck" feeling. The disenchantment. Michelle: Second Gear: Updating the reward value. Mark: And finally, instead of fighting the old urge, you offer your brain something better—you get curious about the feeling itself. Michelle: Third Gear: Finding the Bigger, Better Offer. And the profound shift here is that you're not trying to control your anxiety. You're becoming a scientist of your own experience. Brewer calls this "evidence-based faith." You're not taking his word for it; you're building trust in the process by seeing it work in your own life, moment by moment. It reframes recovery not as a battle of willpower, but as an act of discovery. Mark: I love that. It takes the pressure off. You don't have to be perfect. You just have to be curious. It makes me wonder… what's one small habit loop in my own life I could get curious about today, instead of just judging myself for it? Michelle: That's the perfect question to end on. Michelle: This is Aibrary, signing off.