By Terence Watts, psychotherapist and founder of The International BWRT Institute
Have you ever grabbed something falling off a shelf before you even knew you were doing it? You didn’t think about it. You didn’t decide to do it. Your hand just moved. That moment, that split second of automatic action before conscious thought kicks in, is the key to understanding anxiety. And it’s the reason most attempts to fix it don’t work.
Most anxiety advice targets the thinking mind. Breathe slowly. Challenge your thoughts. Reframe the situation. And none of that is wrong, exactly, it’s just aimed at the wrong place. Because anxiety doesn’t live in the thinking mind. It lives somewhere much older, much faster, and completely unimpressed by logic.
My new book, Anxiety Gone!: with BrainWorking Recursive Therapy®, begins from a premise that I hope offers some immediate relief: anxiety is not a malfunction. It is not evidence that something is broken in you. It is an ancient survival mechanism, and in evolutionary terms, it exists to keep you alive.
Your brain doesn’t forget
Central to everything I write about, and indeed, central to the therapy I developed, is the reptilian complex. This ancient part of the brain sits at the base of the skull and acts as the brain’s first responder to the world around us. When I created BrainWorking Recursive Therapy (BWRT®) back in 2011, this structure became the neurological foundation of the entire approach: anxiety isn’t generated at the conscious level, but far deeper, in a part of the brain that reacts to threat before conscious thought even gets a look in, with one overriding priority – survival.
Here’s the thing that changes how most people understand their anxiety: this part of the brain doesn’t “do” time. If something felt dangerous when you were five years old, it may still treat it as dangerous decades later. It doesn’t distinguish between a genuine threat and a memory of one. It evolved long before phobias, money worries, or social embarrassment existed; it evolved to fight, run, or make a split-second decision – and it’s very good at its job!
That’s not weakness or irrationality. It’s simply how the brain works and it’s why so many people find that even when they logically know something is fine, their body refuses to believe it. The conscious mind says there’s nothing to worry about. The reptilian complex disagrees, and in that moment, the reptilian complex wins. Every time.
The good news is that this part of the brain is not fixed. It is capable of change, and that’s precisely what BWRT® works with.
Questioning something we’ve accepted without thinking
In the book, I also look at a concept most of us have absorbed without much scrutiny: the subconscious. The term was coined by psychologist Pierre Janet in the 1890s, a time before planes flew or women were allowed to vote, and yet it has quietly shaped almost every therapy model developed since.
My proposition is that what Janet called the subconscious is actually the physical brain itself, and working with something real and biological is far more effective than working with an abstract concept. BWRT® doesn’t try to talk the brain out of anxiety. It goes straight to the source.
More than a collection of tips
What I wanted Anxiety Gone! to be, and what I hope sets it apart, is a book that doesn’t stop at explanation. Structured exercises appear throughout, guiding you step by step through techniques adapted from professional BWRT® practice. One of the most distinctive involves a visualisation I call the Blanket Stop, a way of interrupting the brain’s automatic anxiety response at the neurological level, essentially freezing the pattern before it takes hold.
The range of issues covered is broad. Whether you’re dealing with a fear of flying, exam nerves, social anxiety, phobias, health anxiety, generalised anxiety disorder or PTSD, there is likely something in these pages that applies. I’m also candid about the book’s limits: for more complex presentations such as severe panic attacks, addiction, or eating disorders, I point readers clearly towards a registered BWRT® practitioner rather than overpromising what self-help alone can achieve.
A different kind of reassurance
At its core, the message of Anxiety Gone! is this: anxiety is not evidence that something is wrong with you. It is the brain doing exactly what it was designed to do. And if the brain learned those patterns, it can learn new ones.
That’s not a platitude. It’s the principle that BWRT® is built on and the reason it’s now used by trained practitioners in more than 20 countries, including psychologists, psychiatrists, counsellors, and several police forces and military units for the rapid resolution of PTSD.
You don’t have to be trapped by patterns you didn’t choose. The brain that learned them can unlearn them too.
About the author
Terence Watts has conducted over 40,000 therapy sessions during a career spanning more than 35 years. A Fellow of the Royal Society of Medicine, author and founder of BrainWorking Recursive Therapy® (BWRT®), he created one of the most innovative neuroscience-based approaches to anxiety and trauma in contemporary psychotherapy, now practised by trained therapists in more than 20 countries, including psychologists, psychiatrists, counsellors and several police forces and military units. His new book, Anxiety Gone!: with BrainWorking Recursive Therapy®, draws on decades of clinical experience to offer readers a genuinely different way of understanding and overcoming anxiety. Learn more at www.bwrt-professionals.com
- About the Author
- Latest Posts
Our Editorial Team are writers and experts in their field. Their views and opinions may not always be the views of Wellbeing Magazine. If you are under the direction of medical supervision please speak to your doctor or therapist before following the advice and recommendations in these articles.
