Learning to Worry Well

Dr. Suzuki spoke at the 2023 Aspen Ideas Festival.

You’ve encouraged people to “think of exercise as a supercharged 401(k) for your brain,” and your research shows that it is the most transformative thing we can do for cognitive health. How does exercise help us across our lifetimes, especially as we age?

Let me address the “401(k)” part of my favorite analogy first and the “supercharged” part second. The reason I say that exercise is like a 401(k) for your brain is because the more you move your body regularly, the higher the levels of a key growth factor called BDNF you will have in your brain. The more BDNF you have in your brain over your lifetime, the more you will stimulate the growth of brand-new brain cells in a key brain area called the hippocampus critical for our ability to form and retain new memories for facts and events. The hippocampus is one of the most susceptible brain areas for age-related cognitive decline. So with exercise, you are not curing dementia, but you are making your hippocampus big and fat and fluffy so it takes longer for any disease to start to affect your memory function. In this sense, regular exercise over your lifetime is like a 401(k) for your brain/hippocampal function across your lifetime. 

The reason I say exercise is like a “supercharged” 401(k) is that you don’t benefit from your typical 401(k) until far in the future. But with exercise there are significant immediate benefits for the brain, namely improved positive mood states, decreases in feelings of anxiety and depression, and improved focus and attention. So you not only get these immediate benefits from moving your body, but you get the shiny new hippocampal brain cells growing over time with regular exercise across your lifetime.

What are some common misconceptions we hold about stress and anxiety that prevent us from dealing with them in healthy, productive ways? Is it possible to worry well?

The most common misconception that I hear about anxiety is that it is a disease that we all have and is impossible to get rid of. Anxiety is not a disease, but it is part of our normal emotional repertoire — that is to say everyone experiences anxiety. The question is, can you learn something useful from your anxiety that can help you live a better life? That is the whole premise of my book Good Anxiety — our anxiety can teach us about what is important to us, what we hold dear or when our boundaries have been crossed. By leaning into our anxiety and the feelings that come up, we can learn an enormous amount about ourselves and what optimizes our mental health as well as how to better position ourselves to reduce or minimize stress and anxiety in our lives. So yes, it is possible to “worry well” and the first step is taking time to understand what that anxiety/stress/anger/worry is telling us about what we value in life.

The past years have certainly left many of us feeling burnt out, whether it’s from work, the pandemic, or just the ongoing news of the world. What’s going on in our brains when we experience burnout, and how do we overcome it?

Burnout can be thought of as work-related stress on overdrive. From a physiological perspective, high levels of stress will activate our sympathetic nervous system, also known as the “fight or flight” response. Our heart rates and respiration rates will become elevated and blood is shunted away from our digestion and reproductive organs towards our large muscle groups. In other words, our body is ready to either fight the threat or run away from the threat (even if the threat is an over-active Slack inbox). That threat also activates a brain called the amygdala that is involved in emotional states like fear. But one of the worst things that high levels of stress does is it can inhibit the function of the prefrontal cortex, the seat of our decision making and focused attention. When that brain area starts to shut down, we become even less able to deal with the stressful stimuli causing the burnout in the first place. 

What can we do to break this cycle? We have to learn to turn the volume down on our stress and anxiety. As I mention above, there is an enormous amount of science that shows that physical activity has an immediate effect of decreasing both depression and anxiety levels. Meditation and mindfulness has also been shown to have similar stress and anxiety-reducing effects. Sleep can also have a transformative effect on your mental health including anxiety levels. There are so many science-based approaches that everyone can use to turn the volume down on their anxiety. And the best news is that all or most of them are free! Go for a power walk, do a 5 minute YouTube meditation video or set a new sleep duration goal for yourself. Each one of these has been shown to decrease anxiety and stress levels that go hand-in-hand with burnout.

We’re living through some seriously turbulent and overwhelming times. Are there moments where it’s actually helpful to wallow a bit?

Yes! As someone who spent many years trying to ignore or minimize my emotional overwhelm, I am now a big proponent of really taking the time to feel my feelings. Why? Because every single “difficult” or “uncomfortable” emotion that we have (including anxiety) is a useful warning signal for us: it’s telling us something about the situation at hand. Instead of ignoring and trying to block those feelings, I say FEEL them. In exploring them more fully, you can better understand where they are coming from and learn more about the most important person in your life… YOU!

Your latest book, Good Anxiety, makes the case that one of the most powerful “superpowers” that anxiety gives us is compassion. At a time when Americans seem more culturally and ideologically divided than ever, what lessons can we take from science to channel more empathy for one another?

One of the reasons that I called my book “Good Anxiety” is that our own anxiety, if used in the right way, can become one of our biggest gifts or superpowers in our own personal toolbox. The lesson here is that everyone is experiencing higher levels of stress, anxiety and burnout around the planet. We tend to think we are the only ones experiences these challenging emotions, but everyone around us has similar challenges. The opportunity here is that we all know how our own anxiety and overwhelm feels like — we know exactly what it looks like in terms of the behaviors we exhibit ourselves when we are experiencing it. If we simply take all that information and turn it outwards, we can easily recognize it in others. All you have to do when you do recognize those same telltale signs you know so well in yourself, is reach out and give an encouraging word. It’s as simple as that. Transforming that recognition of your own form of anxiety into an act of compassion (i.e., reaching out) we know can release dopamine in your brain, turning your own experience of anxiety into a rewarding experience both for you and the recipient of your kind word. That is what I like to call a double-dose superpower of anxiety.

The views and opinions of the author are their own and do not necessarily reflect those of the Aspen Institute.

By Maya Kobe-Rundio, Associate Digital Editor, Aspen Ideas