How are you when it comes to decision-making? Are you a clear-headed, decisive problem-solver? Or do you allow your anxiety to drive the decisions you make? Do you allow fear to rule the roost and take over your decision-making process?

As it happens, there is a specific mechanism that highlights how anxiety disrupts our ability to make sound decisions. This, according to the University of Pittsburgh (http://www.news.pitt.edu/news/just-made-bad-decision). The decision-making process is a cognitive one and when faced with a series of options your brain weighs risks and rewards, as well as consequences.

Evidence suggests that the cognitive aspect of the decision-making process requires our prefrontal cortex neurons to be functioning properly. Your prefrontal cortex, in terms of evolution, is the newest region of the brain and is found in the frontal lobes.

The prefrontal cortex has a crucial role to play when it comes to executive functions. It handles long-term planning, calculating risk, reward, and consequences, problem-solving, understanding rules, regulating emotions, and of course, decision-making. Anxiety disrupts that process. Fear disrupts that process.

How then can you make sound decisions when you are gripped by fear or anxiety?

Researchers at the University of Pittsburgh wanted to identify how fear and anxiety impact the prefrontal cortex during decision-making. To pinpoint the neurons at play, they focused on two groups of rats during the decision-making task. The rats had to choose the logical choice to receive a reward. The motivating factor behind this research was anxiety accompanies psychiatric disorders and is often one of the most debilitating symptoms, from addiction, PTSD, OCD, and MDD.

Brain imaging studies have shown that anxiety and fear are a big piece to the puzzle of decoding the impact anxiety and fear have on prefrontal cortex functions.

One group of rats was anxiety-ridden and the other group were not, both had the same task to make a decision that resulted in the reward. Since this study, the results have been validated using both monkeys and humans.

Anxiety suppresses the prefrontal cortex’s spontaneous neuron activity and weakens the encoding around our decision-making skills.

The researchers from the University of Pittsburgh noted two important observations as they monitored rat activity. The first observation was that the presence of anxiety results in poor decision-making, especially when factors such as distractions or conflict are present. The second observation was that when poor decisions were made in a state of stress it was related to specific prefrontal cortex neurons unclamping.

Anxiety negatively impacts the neuron activity that supports your ability to make sound decisions.

What does that mean for you? If you are someone who experiences anxiety and often feel fear when faced with a decision, you have a lot of work to do. Often, the reason we feel anxious or fearful when faced with decisions is that we don’t want to make the wrong one.

It’s up to you to take a proactive approach to manage fear and anxiety to improve your ability to make decisions. If you reduce your fear and anxiety overall, then you will feel them less when it comes to decision-making.

When you feel your life spinning out of control or overwhelmed, it’s even more important that you learn to manage anxiety. When faced with distress, you are likely to increase anxiety by making poor decisions which leads to more poor decisions.

While it might not feel like it, making sound decisions is within your locus of control. You have the power to disrupt negative patterns of behavior by improving your decision-making skills. Yes, easier said than done, but it starts with anxiety management.