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The emotion may have been justified then, but now it might be just getting in the way. Work stress or day-to-day life stress (such as having an argument or being stuck in bad traffic) can trigger enough emotion and intrusive thoughts to influence important, unrelated decisions.В Anxiety can also stem from past incidents.

Understand where the anxiety is really coming from.

(Here you go вЂ“ this articles explains it in more detail.)

It limits the influence of the things that donвЂ™t matter,В so you can focus on the things that do. Mindfulness strengthens the brainвЂ™s capacity to filter out distractions to make more grounded, relevant decisions.

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Without the full capacity of the pre-frontal cortex to weigh in on decision-making, decisions are more likely to become fixed and rigid and driven by intrusive emotions that donвЂ™t deserve the influence.

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Mindfulness strengthens the pre-frontal cortex, which is the part of the brain that can be sent offline by anxiety.

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How to Stop Anxiety Intruding on DecisionsД«e mindful. It seems that when it comes to making decisions at least, anxiety selectively shuts down certain connections, making it more difficult for the brain to screen out irrelevant information and makeВ better decisions. This new finding challenges the conventional theories that anxiety intrudes on life by overstimulating circuits within the brain. But this study shows that anxiety disengages brain cells in a highly specialized manner.вЂ™ Bita Moghaddam, lead author and professor in the Department of Neuroscience, University of Pittsburgh. We have equated it with fear and have mostly assumed that it over-engages entire brain circuits. вЂWe have had a simplistic approach to studying and treating anxiety. Anxiety interrupts the brainвЂ™s capacity to ignore these distractions by numbing a group of neurons in the pre-frontal cortex that are specifically involved in making choices. Distractions can be physical, as in things in the environment, or they can take the form of thoughts and worries. What the research means.ДЄnxiety rolls good decision-making by reducing the brainвЂ™s capacity to screen out distractions. Both groups of rats were able to make sound decisions, but the anxious rats made a lot more mistakes when there were more distractions in their way. The researchers compared the behaviourВ and brain activity of two groups of rats вЂ“ one that received a placebo and one that received a low dose of a drug that induced anxiety. Rats share many physiological and biological similarities to humans which is why they are often used in these sort of studies. Researchers looked at the activity of brain cells in the PFC of anxious rats while those rats were encouraged to make a decision about which behaviour would get them a sweet reward. It helps to take the emotional steam out of a decision by calming the amygdala, the part of the brain that runs on instinct, impulse and raw emotion (such as fear). The PFC is the part of the brain that gets involved in weighing up consequences, planning, andВ processing thoughts in a logical, rational way. The area is the pre-frontal cortex (PFC), at the front of the brain, and it is the area that brings flexibility into decision-making.

Research published in The Journal of NeuroscienceВ explains how anxiety works to disengage the part of the brain that is essential for making good decisions. Scientists at the University of Pittsburgh have discovered what happens when anxiety rules a heavy hand over decision-making and persuades decisions that arenвЂ™t the best ones. Given too much say-so, anxiety can stand in the way of a lot of life. Sometimes moving cautiously is definitely the best way to go. When itвЂ™s there, anxiety tends to direct behaviour towards the safest option. One of ways anxiety interferes is by leading decision-making astray. AnxietyВ has many ways of injecting itself into life and causing trouble.