Here's How Anxious People Handle Emotional Situations

Anxious people while handling an emotional situation use a less active section of the forebrain than people who are not anxious. This was demonstrated in brain scans used in the new study conducted by the researchers at Donders Institute of Radboud University. The findings are published in the journal Nature Communications. Putting a non-anxious person in a socially difficult situation may allow them to choose a behavior, leaving emotions aside (1^✔ ✔Trusted Source
Emotional control, reappraised

Go to source). Whereas, anxious people use a less suitable section of the forebrain for this control. It is more difficult for them to choose alternative behavior, so they avoid social situations more often.

Anxious Individuals Shift Emotion Control from One Brain Area to Another

Decisions like this demand a balancing act between a possible threat and a reward, a decision that non-anxious people make in the prefrontal cortex. Researchers at Radboud University have now shown that socially anxious people use a different section in the forebrain for decisions like this.

They studied brain scans to see what happens in anxious and non-anxious people in a simulated social situation. The trial subjects were shown happy and angry faces and had to first move a joystick towards the happy face and away from the angry face.

At a certain point they had to do the reverse: move towards an angry face and away from a happy face. This demands control over our automatic tendency to avoid negative situations.

Anxious people proved to perform just as well as non-anxious people in this simple task, but the scans showed that a completely different section of the brain was active.

In non-anxious people, we often see that, during emotional control, a signal is sent from the foremost section of the prefrontal cortex to the motor cortex, the section of the brain that directs your body to act.

In anxious people, a less efficient section of that foremost section is used.” Other scans showed that the reason for this is probably because the ‘correct’ section becomes overstimulated in anxious people (2^✔ ✔Trusted Source
Anterior prefrontal brain activity during emotion control predicts resilience to post-traumatic stress symptoms

Go to source).

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This could explain why anxious people find it difficult to choose alternative behavior and thus avoid social situations. The disadvantage of this is that they never learn that social situations are not as negative as they think.

For the first time, brain scans have now shown that the forebrain of anxious people works differently from that of non-anxious people regarding control of emotional behavior. Researchers think that the results could be used to develop new treatments for people with anxiety.

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References:

1. Emotional control, reappraised - (https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0149763418301672?via%3Dihub)
2. Anterior prefrontal brain activity during emotion control predicts resilience to post-traumatic stress symptoms - (https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-021-01055-2)

Source-Eurekalert