If You ’re Feeling Anxious, Try This 2,000-Year-Old, Neuroscience-Backed Hack

Some 2,000 years ago, in the throes of a targeted chase to his death, a Roman philosopher named Seneca had a thought: “what’s the worst that can happen?” Today, a growing body of research finds that a Seneca-inspired exercise—inviting the worried brain to literally envision its worst fears realized—is one of the most evidence-based treatments for anxiety. In scientific terms, that exercise is called imaginal exposure, or “facing the thing you’re most afraid of” by summoning it in your mind, says Dr. Regine Galanti, the founder of Long Island Behavioral Psychology, and a licensed clinical psychologist who regularly integrates imaginal exposure into her therapy. [time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”] As a subset of cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT), imaginal exposure relies on simple logic. Just as anxiety is created in your head, it can also be squashed in your head. And even though the most effective anxiety treatment is administered by a mental health professional over a long period of time, a growing brigade of psychologists are finding ways to help people do imaginal exposure in their own homes, on their own terms. Two thousand years before imaginal exposure would be proven one of science’s strongest anxiety treatments, dozens of Greek and Roman philosophers had the same intuition about the theoretical value of putting worry in perspective. In a letter to his friend Lucilius, around 64 A.D., Seneca wrote: “...
Source: TIME: Health - Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Tags: Uncategorized healthscienceclimate Mental Health Source Type: news