Author of Anxiety Rx: A New Prescription for Anxiety Relief from the Doctor Who Created It, Russell Kennedy offers a refreshing and integrative perspective on anxiety and the process of healing from it. Drawing from the pioneering work of Daniel Siegel (interpersonal neurobiology) and Bessel van der Kolk (how the interlinked mind/body system responds to trauma), Kennedy argues that anxiety is not really a “thinking disorder” as is so commonly portrayed. Instead, he contends that anxiety is linked to moments of early childhood trauma when the nervous system becomes dysregulated by overwhelming feeling states. Repeated experiences of emotional dysregulation, especially when the child is not comforted by the relational world, accumulate and become “housed” in subcortical structures of the child’s brain. To keep them safely stored away, the child organizes cognitive and behavioral coping strategies; by thinking and acting in certain ways, the child gains protection from remembering these feelings states and from the possibility of accumulating more of them.

Anxiety conditions that emerge in adulthood, Kennedy believes, are due to experiences and situations that activate a person’s “younger, wounded self” when these subcortical structures are stimulated. Kennedy emphasizes that “the amygdala never forgets” and so the mind “reads” the body, signaling uncertainty, fear, and the expectation of trauma once again. Referring to Daniel Siegel’s view that the brain is an organ that anticipates the past, Kennedy suggests that ongoing, repetitive experiences of anxiety and other mental health conditions are possible if original, primary emotional trauma remain unresolved.

In the next in-person meeting of the Men’s Group Seminar on Saturday, September 9, 2023 (10:15 to 11:30 AM), we will explore Kennedy’s view of anxiety and how he sees it as particularly relevant for men. Two interviews of Kennedy (ManTalks Podcast and The Story Box) will serve as our major focus. In our discussion, we will also pursue the role of interoception in anxiety conditions; Kennedy’s depiction of “the alpha child”; and Kennedy’s ideas on how men re-traumatize themselves through ongoing loops of judgment, self-abandonment, blame and shame.

*Registration Directions: If you would like to attend the next in-person meeting of the Men’s Group Seminar on Saturday, September 9, 2023, 10:15 AM to 11:30 AM, please RSVP to me at 949-338-4388 or jt@jamestobinphd.com no later than Thursday, September 7, 2023. The seminar will be held at 15615 Alton Parkway, Suite 450, in Irvine, CA.  The fee is $30.00 and informed consent for participation must be completed prior to the seminar. Please note that the Men’s Group Seminar is psychoeducational in nature, not therapeutic, and does not constitute psychotherapy or counseling.