Unwinding Anxiety: New Science Shows How to Break the Cycles of Worry and Fear to Heal Your Mind

Dr. Judson Brewer is an American psychiatrist, mindfulness advocate, and best-selling author of two books. After graduating with an undergraduate degree in chemistry from Princeton, he earned his MD from Washington University of Medicine before completing his PhD in immunology. Dr. Brewer then completed postdoctoral work at Yale University in the Neuroscience Research Training Program. Following this, he completed his residency in psychiatry at the Yale School of Medicine, becoming a psychiatrist in 2009.

Dr. Brewer has an extensive academic resume. As an academic researcher, Dr. Brewer has co-authored over sixty academic papers on mindfulness, anxiety, and habit formation, and his work has been cited over 140,000 times by other scholars. He currently serves as an associate professor at the Brown University School of Public Health. He also contributes to the Mindfulness Centre at Brown, where he is the director of research and innovation.

However, Dr. Brewer has not limited his work to academic spheres, as he has also made a significant effort to share his findings directly with the public in a variety of mediums. In his work as the executive medical director of behavioral health at the digital health brand Sharecare, Brewer has helped to design several mindfulness apps to help people address different addictions. His app “Craving to Quit” is designed for smokers who aim to decrease or stop smoking, while his “Eat Right Now” app is intended for people who want to develop healthier eating habits. His third app, “Unwinding Anxiety,” also uses mindfulness tools to address anxiety and habit formation more broadly. These digital platforms share Brewer’s mindfulness tools in an accessible, practical way, which encourages user consistency.

Dr. Brewer is also known for his TED Talks in which he has shared his research on neuroscience and mindfulness. His first talk, “You’re already awesome, just get out of your own way!”, discusses the benefits of paying attention and the concept of a flow state. His second talk, entitled “A simple way to break a bad habit,” has been viewed over 12 million times. Dr. Brewer also explored the topics of addiction and mindfulness in his first book, The Craving Mind: From Cigarettes to Smartphones to Love – Why We Get Hooked and How We Can Break Bad Habits, which was praised for its understandable explanations of brain function and human behavior. In his follow-up work, Unwinding Anxiety, Dr. Brewer hopes to provide a clear guide for how readers can apply these mindfulness concepts to transform their own habitual behaviors. Using his extensive experience as a psychiatrist and researcher, and weaving scientific evidence with personal anecdotes, Dr. Brewer persuades the reader to incorporate mindfulness techniques into their own lives.