Note to listeners: This is an unofficial summary of Unwinding Anxiety by Judson Brewer designed to enrich your reading experience. Life Lessons is wholly responsible for this content and is not associated with the original author in any way

Dr. Brewer explains that anxiety has come to dominate our lives. He had a lightbulb moment when he realized that one of the reasons so many people fail to see that they have anxiety is how it hides in bad habits. When he started medical school, he was fascinated by the complexity and beauty of human physiology and cognition and wanted to learn how this human system of hours worked. While he loved most of his other ward rotations, nothing called to him quite as much as psychiatry.

He started having panic attacks, fueled by a lack of sleep during his residency. Toward the end of his residency, he realized that virtually nobody was researching the science of meditation. So over the next decade, he threw himself into creating a program to help people overcome their harmful habits - which are strongly connected to and even driven by anxiety. The important connection that he has made between anxiety and habits has answered why we worry, which has satisfied some of his scientific curiosity about anxiety. Still, more important, it has been critical for helping his patients understand and work with their anxiety. Seeing this connection, he could now help his patients understand how they had formed habits around everything from drinking too much alcohol to stress-eating to procrastinating as a way to deal with anxiety.