Did Your Brain Accidentally Train Itself to Be Anxious?

The Habit Healers · May 1, 2026 · 12m

Anxiety isn’t a willpower problem. It’s a habit loop your brain learned, and the thing that actually breaks it is curiosity.

In this episode of The Habit Healers Podcast, I walk you through the neuroscience of why chronic worry feels impossible to stop, and why the usual advice of “just push through” or “think positive” tends to fail at the exact moment you need it most. Drawing on the research of neuroscientist and psychiatrist Dr. Jud Brewer at Brown University, I explain how anxiety follows the same trigger, behavior, reward cycle that drives stress eating, phone-checking, and other…