I'm Maura Erin Smealy, and this is The Anxious Achiever.

We look at stories from business leaders who've dealt with anxiety, depression, or other mental health challenges, how they fell down, how they pick themselves up, and how they hope work can change in the future.

Today, we're talking about the bread and butter of our show, anxiety.

That's right, you love it.

Look, it's still a bit before the new year and all the resolutions,

which we know don't work. But it's never a bad time to think about habits, why we do what we do,

what is and isn't healthy for us, and what we can do to improve our lives. Later in the show,

we'll talk to journalist and author Charles Duhigg, who talks about habit loops, changing habits, and interestingly, how habits relate with ADHD. But first, Dr. Judson

Brewer, who will call Judd. He is an addiction psychiatrist, neuroscientist, and associate professor

at the Brown University School of Public

Health. He's also written the book, Unwinding Anxiety and the Craving Mind. Here's my conversation

with Judd about how and why your anxiety might be a habit, and you're worrying too, and why

it's a good jumping off point to reframe our anxieties.

You literally write that anxiety hides in our habits.

How?

Well, unfortunately, these last couple of years, we've seen that on steroids. So, you know, our survival brains, they are set up to help us, you know, avoid danger.

And so when something is unpleasant, our brain says, ooh, that's unpleasant.

Let's make that go as quickly as possible.

And so we do all sorts of things and anxiety is not pleasant so when we're anxious our

brain says do something so we do a number of things it typically I see people

will they'll distract themselves so whether they'll eat or they'll drink

alcohol or you know in my addiction, you know, in my addiction

...