Tapping into our Brains to Break Anxiety Cycles and Other Habits – Judson Brewer

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Anxiety levels are increasing individually and collectively in modern day. Faced with uncertainty, an overabundance of information (and misinformation), among other challenges, our minds struggle to keep up. Our brains default to old survival mechanism to help us deal with anxiety, which can lead to the development of unhealthy coping habits (e.g. stress eating) and ironically feed anxiety as a habit itself. Drawing on his clinical work, neuroscience research studies and development of next-generation digital therapeutics for habit change, Dr. Brewer will discuss the underlying behavioral and neurobiological mechanisms of why anxiety and other habits are formed and how we can paradoxically tap into these very processes to uproot them. He will also discuss how we can apply these insights to improving clinical treatments and to our own lives.

1. Assess how anxiety forms as a habit.
2. Catalogue how mindfulness affects reward valuation in the brain.
3. Analyze how mindfulness approaches can help change addictive habit patterns.

• Current treatment paradigms for anxiety 
• How anxiety forms as a habit 
• How the brain forms habits in general 
• Key neuroscientific insights current anxiety treatments may not take into account 
• How to tap into reward valuation in the brain to affect behavior change 
• Clinical outcomes from new research studies of digital therapeutics 
• Three-step process for overcoming anxiety and other habits