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Can anxiety and worry be perpetuated like a habit? Anxiety levels are increasing individually and collectively in modern day. Faced with uncertainty, an overabundance of information (and misinformation), among other challenges, our minds struggle to keep up. Our brains default to old survival mechanism to help us deal with anxiety, which can lead to the development of unhealthy coping habits (e.g. stress eating) and ironically feed anxiety as a habit itself.
Drawing on his clinical work, neuroscience research studies and development of next-generation digital therapeutics for habit change, Dr. Brewer will discuss the underlying behavioural and neurobiological mechanisms of why anxiety and other habits are formed and how we can paradoxically tap into these very processes to uproot them. He will also discuss how we can apply these insights to improving clinical treatments and to our own lives.
Planning Committee Disclosure - No relevant relationships
All members of the PESI, Inc. planning committee have provided disclosures of financial relationships with ineligible organizations and any relevant non-financial relationships prior to planning content for this activity. None of the committee members had relevant financial relationships with ineligible companies or other potentially biasing relationships to disclose to learners. For speaker disclosures, please see the faculty biography.
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| File type | File name | Number of pages | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Manual - Unwinding Anxiety (6.7 MB) | 43 Pages | Available after Purchase | |
| Transcript - Unwinding Anxiety (115.9 KB) | 21 Pages | Available after Purchase | |
| Manual - Unwinding Anxiety - French (6.7 MB) | 43 Pages | Available after Purchase | |
| Manual - Unwinding Anxiety - French (6.7 MB) | 43 Pages | Available after Purchase | |
| Manual - Unwinding Anxiety - Italian (6.7 MB) | 43 Pages | Available after Purchase | |
| Manual - Unwinding Anxiety - Italian (6.7 MB) | 43 Pages | Available after Purchase |
Jud Brewer, MD, PhD (“Dr. Jud”) is a New York Times best-selling author and thought leader in the field of habit change and the “science of self-mastery,” who blends over 20 years of experience with mindfulness training and a career in scientific research. He is passionate about understanding how our brains work, and how to use that knowledge to help people make deep, permanent change in their lives – with the goal of reducing suffering in the world at large.
Dr. Brewer is the director of research and innovation at Brown University’s Mindfulness Center, where he also serves as an associate professor at the Schools of Public Health and Medicine at Brown University. Additionally, he is the chief medical officer at Sharecare, a digital health company, and a research affiliate at MIT.
As a psychiatrist and internationally known expert in mindfulness training for treating addictions, Dr. Brewer has developed and tested novel mindfulness programs for habit change, including both in-person and app-based treatments for anxiety, emotional eating, and smoking. Based on the success of these programs in the lab, he co-founded MindSciences, Inc. – acquired by Sharecare in 2020 – to create app-based digital therapeutic versions of these programs for a wider audience, working with individuals, corporations, and health systems to put effective, evidence-based behavior change guidance in the hands of people struggling with unwanted behaviors and “everyday addictions.”
Dr. Brewer has published numerous peer-reviewed studies, trained U.S. Olympic athletes and coaches, foreign government ministers and corporate leaders. His research has been funded by the National Institutes of Health and American Heart Association, among others.
He is the author of The Craving Mind: From Cigarettes to Smartphones to Love, Why We Get Hooked and How We Can Break Bad Habits (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2017) and Unwinding Anxiety: New Science Shows How to Break the Cycles of Worry and Fear to Heal Your Mind (Avery/Penguin Random House, 2021).
Speaker Disclosures:
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