53 pages • 1 hour read
Judson BrewerUnwinding Anxiety: New Science Shows How to Break the Cycles of Worry and Fear to Heal Your Mind
Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 2021A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Summary
Background
Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Key Figures
Themes
Index of Terms
Important Quotes
Essay Topics
Tools
BetaKey Figures
Dr. Judson Brewer (The Author)
Dr. Judson Brewer is an American neuroscientist and psychiatrist who specializes in habit formation and addiction. Dr. Brewer teaches as an associate professor at Brown University’s School of Public Health and Medical School. In addition to his psychiatry practice and teaching career, Dr. Brewer also provides guidance to athletes and business leaders. He has also shared his knowledge in the form of a TED talk entitled “A Simple Way to Break a Bad Habit,” which has reached millions of viewers.
Brewer’s first book, The Craving Mind: From Cigarettes to Smartphones to Love – Why We Get Hooked and How We Can Break Bad Habits, explains the neuroscience behind habit formation and explains why negative habits are so difficult to undo. This successful book was published in 16 languages and received many positive reviews. He reveals in his work Unwinding Anxiety that a negative review of his first book was part of what inspired him to write his second one, in which he aims to more specifically guide the reader through how to apply mindfulness concepts in their own lives. Dr. Brewer’s decades of experience as a researcher and psychiatrist ground his work in scientific evidence, which he makes more engaging by sharing real-life anecdotes about himself and his patients.
Dr. Carol Dweck
Dr. Carol Dweck is an American psychologist who teaches and researches at Stanford University. Dr. Dweck is best known for her work on the concepts of a “growth mindset” and “fixed mindset.” Dweck argues that people with a growth mindset interpret failures as learning opportunities and are able to use these experiences to their advantage. People with growth mindsets are curious, open-minded, and believe that they are capable of learning and gaining new skills. In Unwinding Anxiety, Brewer uses Dr. Dweck’s research on the growth mindset to encourage the reader to react to their failures with curiosity, rather than judgment. This way, they will be able to reap all the benefits of a growth mindset and continue making progress in their habit journeys, rather than falling into cycles of self-judgment and negativity.
Dr. Yael Millgram
Yael Millgram is a psychologist at Tel Aviv University. Millgram specializes in studying emotional regulation, especially in people who self-harm. Brewer cites Millgram’s study that shows that the more a person feels a certain mood, the more familiar it becomes to them, and the more likely that they will continue to experience that emotion. The author uses this research to suggest that feelings themselves can become habit loops, which people can change using mindfulness.
Dr. Dana Small
Dr. Dana Small is a psychologist who studies behavior, metabolism, and conditions such as obesity, diabetes, and more. After managing her own research lab at Yale for 20 years, Dr. Small became the Canada Excellence Research Chair in Brain and Metabolism. She currently works at McGill University in Montreal.
In Unwinding Anxiety, Brewer refers to Dr. Small’s study, which used neuroimaging to scan participants’ brains as they ate their favorite chocolates. This study showed that people experience these rewarding foods as highly pleasurable foods before then finding them neutral, and finally, sickening. Brewer uses this study to support his theory that mindfulness allows people to tap into their real experience of foods or other sensory experiences and register their aversion. This helps them stop craving these experiences and prevents them from overdoing it next time.
Phillippa Lally
Dr. Lally is a British psychologist at the University of Surrey. Lally’s research focuses on habit formation and health. Brewer references Lally’s study on habit formation as evidence that habits are notoriously complex and highly individual, and therefore difficult to study and make broad claims about. Dr. Lally’s study used mathematical modeling to claim that habits can take anywhere from 18 to 254 days to become an automatic behavior. Brewer encourages the reader to recognize the great diversity in how people experience habit loops and not fall for myths with rigid timelines for setting or losing habits.
Dave
Dave is a pseudonym for one of Dr. Brewer’s patients who consulted him about his problems with severe anxiety, overeating, and panic disorder. Brewer explains how Dave’s chronic anxiety had escalated into intense panic attacks, and how the fear of these panic attacks prompted Dave to stop engaging in normal everyday activities, like driving and going to restaurants. Brewer helped Dave learn how to map out his habit loops and use awareness to cope with triggers and reflect on his behavior. He writes, “It was clear to me that Dave had learned to avoid fearful situations (and to stress-eat) because it was rewarding. And these rewards, even though they were irrational and profoundly unhelpful over the long term, were keeping him stuck in those habit loops” (77).
By sharing Dave’s story, Brewer provides the reader with an illustration of how to apply the first, second and third gear of his program, just as Dave did. By tracing Dave’s journey from sudden, severe panic attacks and poor health to living a confident, productive life, Dr. Brewer shows how simple mindfulness tools can have a dramatic effect on one’s mental health:
Just by understanding his mind and observing habit loops in a systematic way (first gear), Dave had managed to create an amazing transformation for himself, but that’s only part of the story. He had also managed to hack his reward-based learning and was using the hack to help him literally get back in the driver’s seat (second gear) (119).
Dave’s story of childhood trauma and mental and physical health issues aim to inspire the reader to consider how they could apply mindfulness to address their own unique challenges.
