Anxiety attacks and OODA loops - 2015

Short-Circuiting "NO" Spirals through TAPs (21/30)

One of the many flaws with the human brain is that it can sometimes be reduced to panic, hyperventilating, tears, and huddling in the fetal position over something like a broken crayon.

[content warning: anxiety/panic attack narrative]

The sequence can go something like this. Let's say I notice that the crayon I was going to use on a birthday card for my friend is broken in half, and I feel kind of upset. That's going to make it harder to color in the card well! And what if they notice that the card is messed up, and then they think less of me, or think that I don't care about our friendship as much anymore? That would be even worse than the crayon being broken in the first place.

And *then* I notice that I'm making a big fuss over something simple like a broken crayon... who does that? How much of an anxious, worry-stricken loser am I that I'm freaking out about a kindergarten-level problem? Am I freaking out? Is this the start of an actual panic attack? Of course it is, I'm already feeling anxious about my emotions, that means it's practically in full swing... I can feel my heartbeat going fast, I'm breathing shallowly, I need to sit down on the floor and get this card and this crayon out of my sight, because now I'm definitely not going to get it done and my friend's going to *know* that it's because of my *anxiety* and they'll *say* it's fine but it's *not* and they'll *hate* me and they *should* because I'm a *mess* and this is *never* going to get *better* AAHHHHHHH!

[content warning over]

It's not a fun pattern to be familiar with.

One way to describe what's happening in an anxiety attack like this is that the normal interaction cycle that we engage in with the world is being overridden. When we're interacting with the world, we notice something in external reality, think about it, make a plan for what we want to do, and then execute on that plan -- this is the NODA loop I talked about in a previous post. Someone who's entering an anxiety attack is engaging in a form of metacognition: taking their own thoughts and modeling processes as the objects of their noticing.

Under the model of the NODA loop, this means that their cognition is going from the "notice" step to the "orient" step, and then back to the "notice" step. This pattern of metacognition has a quality of "spiraling upwards", of noticing our orienting and then starting a new loop at a higher meta level, using their thoughts as the data for the next. Since this kind of thinking isn't constrained by external reality, these "NO" spirals can go very quickly: they don't need to wait the time it takes to find, pick up, and throw a rock, and they don't have to wait for the rock to plunge through the surface of the lake. The spiral can just keep going up, and up, and up.

This suggests that one way to help end or defuse an anxiety attack is to *do* something, rather than thinking about things. Indeed, this is advice that's given in some places: breathe, get up, go for a walk, get a glass of water. This leads to getting your attention turned toward your body and the world, rather than your thoughts: getting "out of your head," becoming more "grounded."

A big problem sometimes though is when someone knows that they're supposed to get up and do something when they're in a "NO" spiral, but they haven't decided beforehand what that something is. This means that, in order to get the action accomplished, they have to notice their thinking is getting out of hand, then model what actions are available and which ones are likely to be the most effective, then decide on one, and then do it. This leaves a lot of time between the noticing step and the action step, in which the only new data coming in is their orienting and deciding. That means that without preparation, the advice to "do something" often leads to just another layer of metacognition in the spiral.

Rather than trying break out of a "NO" spiral into a full NODA loop, it's probably more reliable to go straight from noticing to acting, skipping out on the thought-cycle heavy steps in between. Instead of trying to figure out what to do in the moment, it's better to take some time when you're feeling okay and establish a TAP, or a "trigger-action plan". This is a kind of plan that you make up when you're in a cool cognitive-emotional state, so that you don't have to spend any time modeling or deciding what to do when you notice you're in a "NO" spiral: you can go directly to taking the action.

An example TAP might be one that says "if I'm going around in circles about my thoughts, I'll stand up and walk somewhere," or "if I feel scared about the way that I'm thinking about something, I'll go get a glass of water".

(Actually installing the TAP is a matter of building up your skill at noticing the trigger, and then moving from there to doing the action when you successfully notice it, which is a process that Brienne talks about more on her blog here: http://agentyduck.blogspot.com.)

Anxiety attacks like the kind I've talked about here are a large source of suffering and hopelessness for a lot of people. Practicing the habit of noticing when one is happening and taking a physical action is a path that may help.