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All of us have experienced anxiety at one point or another. Sometimes it seems like we’re at the whim of our thoughts and emotions—stuck in a negative spiral we can’t control.
The good news is, there is something we can do about it.
Today on the podcast, Dr. Loretta Breuning talks about how we all have the power to control our brain chemicals—so we can tame anxiety and actively move towards happier thoughts and feelings.
In this episode, Dr. Breuning shares her 3-step “taming tool” for reducing anxiety when it rears its ugly head. We also dive into the essential brain chemicals that govern our emotions and how they evolved to help us survive as mammals; why anxiety and emotional ups and downs are perfectly natural, how the brain wiring we created in childhood legitimately does affect our thinking patterns as adults, how to break those patterns, and much more.
When you’re stuck in an old mindset, you can’t really imagine the new mindset. So how do you activate that pathway in your brain?”
Loretta Breuning
Dr. Loretta Breuning is Founder of the Inner Mammal Institute and author of Habits of a Happy Brain: Retrain your brain to boost your serotonin, dopamine, oxytocin and endorphin levels. As Professor of Management at California State University, and as a mom, she lost faith in prevailing views of human motivation. Her search for new answers led to studies of the brain chemistry we share with earlier mammals. Then everything made sense, and she began creating resources to help people manage their inner mammal. Her latest book is Tame Your Anxiety: Rewiring Your Brain for Happiness. The Inner Mammal Institute offers videos, books, podcasts, multimedia, and a training program, to help you make peace with your inner mammal.
This is how people create their own misery, because they’re always focusing on their weaknesses in themselves and the strengths of others.”
Episode Highlights
- We have two brains, and most of our issues come from the way they communicate with each other
- Many of your neural pathways are responsible for your default behaviors have been created from a “random crapshoot” of your experiences
- The key brain chemicals that control your negative and positive emotions
- Cortisol is nature’s alarm system
- Your happy brain chemicals aren’t designed to be on all the time
- How your brain evolved to constantly assess your “place in the herd”
- The biological survival benefits of being a self-serving narcissist
- How our anxiety-coping mechanisms are often based on whatever worked when we were younger
- The 3-step taming tool you can use to combat anxiety
- How to retrain your brain to focus on the positive rather than the habit of looking for the negative
- How stimulating dopamine can help you find and “approach” rewards
Resources Mentioned
- Habits of a Happy Brain: Retrain your brain to boost your serotonin, dopamine, oxytocin and endorphin
- I, Mammal: How to Make Peace With the Animal Urge for Social Power
- Tame Your Anxiety: Rewiring Your Brain for Happiness.
- The Science of Positivity: Stop Negative Thought Patterns by Changing Your Brain
