conscious mind Archives - Amazing Health Advances

3 Ways to Boost Your Mental Energy When You Are Tired & Overwhelmed

AHA Publisher — Wed, 23 Mar 2022 07:00:58 +0000

Dr. Caroline Leaf – In this podcast (episode #364) and blog, I talk about three tips to boost your energy when you are tired and overwhelmed. Why do we get tired? Our nonconscious mind never stops. It’s always trying to make us aware of issues that are damaging our resilience and causing neurophysiological disruptions in our brain and body. However, the conscious mind and brain do get tired because they work on energy, like our phones. This is kind of like when we have a whole lot of apps open, the brightness is on full and we are constantly using our phone—very soon the battery will die. And, like you need to recharge your phone, you also need to recharge your brain and conscious mind. It’s best we do this in a regular way, by incorporating periods of rest into our daily schedule to keep the brain charged all day long. This will also help us better know when to switch off at the end of the day. If we go for too long without rest, we may think we are okay, but the next day we won’t feel as rested as we should, and may notice our creativity or ability to think clearly is off because we didn’t recharge regularly the day before and pushed the conscious mind and brain to the limit. As we go through our day, everything we experience is processed by our conscious mind, nonconscious mind and brain. During this time, a lot of neuroplasticity (brain change) is occurring—we will have built about 8000+ new memories in thought tree clusters into our brain. This activity makes our brain, conscious mind and body pretty tired because they have limited energy, but the nonconscious mind never gets tired because it operates at a different level. The conscious mind and brain will get tired even if we can have a lot of good stuff happening in our lives. This is often why, even when things are going well, we can feel a loss of drive and creativity, and maybe even a little depressed. This is completely normal! The key to managing this activity is to become very self-regulated so that you don’t burn out. You can start practicing this by: Pausing every 30-45 minutes and going into what I call a “thinker moment” for a few minutes, when you switch off to the external and onto the internal and just let your mind wander and do a bit of daydreaming. (I discuss this in greater detail in my book Cleaning Up the Mental Mess.) Just stare out the window or sit outside and close your eyes—just let your mind wander. The great news is that the more you do this the more you will sense when you need to do it! Taking a longer break after every three hours of work. Eat something, grab a coffee or cup of tea, go for a walk, do some push-ups or yoga, play with your pets, chat with a loved one—whatever works for you! Limiting the intensiveness and length of your work. This could mean purposefully going to bed a little earlier, working out a little longer or shortening your work day. Be as deliberate about switching off as you were about switching on. Schedule in periods of “off time”, such as taking a hot bubble bath or shower or watching your favorite TV show. Remember, you can just “get away with it”. You can’t escape the way your mind and brain works—there are no tricks to “hack” the system. Overworking yourself will result in poor quality sleep and thinking the next day, which can have a ripple effect in your life and on your health. I personally find that I am more edgy, get more frustrated, and become more reactive when I am tired versus when I have more energy, patience and peace. To read the original article click here.

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The Sneaky Signs of Mental Exhaustion + A Neurocycle to Heal Mental Fatigue

AHA Publisher — Tue, 03 Aug 2021 07:00:52 +0000

Dr. Caroline Leaf – Have you ever experienced that feeling of utter mental exhaustion, where your brain feels so tired but your just mind won’t stop? And, even though you have slept for the recommended number of hours, you just feel like you are dragging yourself around through the day? You may have even heard of the terms like “pandemic fatigue” or “election fatigue”—really, the word fatigue can be added to any major event and I am sure at least one person will understand what that feels like. I personally have experienced this, and so many people have asked me about how to manage this, which is exactly what I am going to talk about in this podcast (episode #304) and blog: how to manage mental fatigue and exhaustion. According to experts like Dr. Suzy Russell, mental fatigue happens when we experience prolonged periods of demanding, conscious cognitive activity. This kind of activity will be different for everyone because of what is uniquely happening in their environment, but it’s more pervasive than just having an “off day”. Mental fatigue is a normal response to an accumulation of challenging events and circumstances that affect the mind, brain and body. The mind has three parts. The conscious mind is awake when we are awake and gets tired. The nonconscious mind works 24/7 and never tires. The subconscious mind, which is the bridge between the conscious and nonconscious, also never tires. The brain and body have limited energy and need to be regenerated, which is why we need to sleep. When we sleep, the conscious mind, brain and body are regenerated in preparation for the next day. The nonconscious mind never stops, but the conscious mind does because it gets tired, as does the physical brain and body. We have a limited amount of energy in the day, which means we need to be wise in how we use it. So, for example, if you ruminate on something you can’t change, get stuck in a “would have, could have, should have” mindset, or try to understand why someone did something to you when you really can’t see into their heads, you will drain your battery dry very quickly, which is where mental fatigue can set in and make us feel flat, depressed, anxious and upset. Mental effort and mental fatigue are closely related, especially when we look at the neural or brain response. Each time we pay attention to something, we process it with our minds and build it as memories onto a thought tree in the brain. This requires sustained attention, and emotions are activated during the process, which can be quite tiring. As a result, we may be having a great creative run at work and then suddenly feel mentally and physically tired. This is quite normal and needs to be recognized as a signal that we need to recharge. This can be a few seconds to a couple of minutes of what I call a “thinker moment”, where we just close our eyes, daydream, and let our thoughts wander. If we don’t regularly take these little breaks, we can upset the balance in the brain and start draining its energy, similar to when we have too many apps open on our phones and the battery starts going fast. Add to this the many uncertainties and challenges of life (such as the pandemic and family issues), and we can experience a cumulative effect, which will elevate our levels of mental fatigue. Managing the demands on our cognitive abilities and resources is therefore an essential skill; we cannot just keep going and going and going without a break. I have experienced this in my own life. I love what I do and can spend hours in a creative mode, researching, writing and doing back-to-back interviews. These activities demand a high level of cognitive activity, which I also need when I swing back into family mode after work, sorting issues, doing lots of talking, and then rushing off to exercise and take care of my own body and mind. After all this, I tend to feel a bit down, kind of like my brain is sore and sad. I really feel my perspective shift to the negative, and my creativity and clarity tend to drop. I even start getting a bit irritable, while my body even feels sick and my nose blocks up. I can describe these with such clarity because I found this happening a lot, and I have realized that these are warning signals telling me that I need to reevaluate my thinking and behavior. Instead of priding myself of being an “energizer bunny” all the time, I need to get better at recognizing and managing my mental fatigue and giving myself permission to rest. Mental fatigue can be insidious. It tends to creep up when you least expect it, and, wham!, you realize that you are in a pretty bad place. It is no surprise that mental fatigue shows up in brain scanswith reduced blood flow in the brain, which, over time, can reduce our decision-making ability, increase our impulsivity, and reduce our cognitive flexibility. When we are mentally tired, we also observe an increase in theta and delta activity in the brain, which has been associated with decreased intellectual performance and suppressed toxic memories. Mental fatigue can also result in high levels of anxiety, depression and even outbursts of aggression, all of which are warning signals that we need to pay attention to what is going on in our minds and bodies. To this end, I recommend doing a Neurocycle to help you recognize and manage mental fatigue, which is the 5-step mind-management system I have developed over the past 38 years and is based on my research and practice. (I discuss this in detail in my book Cleaning Up Your Mental Mess, my app Neurocycle and in my recent clinical trials.) The 5 steps are: 1. Gather Awareness Gather awareness of the warning signals of your mental fatigue: What are your emotional warning signals? Frustration? Depression? Anxiety? Irritability? What are the physical warning signals in your brain and body? Does your brain feel tired, but your mind doesn’t want to stop? Are you feeling flu-like symptoms? Do you feel congested? Are you battling with GI issues like bloating? What are your behavioral warning signals? Are you experiencing bursts of aggression? Are you more irritable than normal? Are you battling to concentrate for long periods of time? Do you keep feeling like you need to sleep, but don’t ever seem to feel rested? flu 2. Reflect Now, go through each of these warning signals and ask yourself “why?”. Dig deep and be honest with yourself: Why these emotional warning signals? For example, ask yourself questions like “Why am I frustrated? I’m frustrated because…” Why these physical warning signals in your brain and body? An example could be: “I know that my mind doesn’t want to stop even when I am at a workout class; I keep running through the problem over and over again and then I feel sick…” Why these behavioral warning signals? You can ask yourself questions like, “Do I get irritable about little things and perseverate on them?”. What are your mindset/perspective/attitude warning signals? Do you, for example, say things like “everything is awful” and “I don’t like what I’m doing!”? Why? 3. Write Write this all down to help organize your thinking and get more insight into what is going on in your life. 4. Recheck Take each of the warning signals you have gathered, reflected on, and written down above, and see them for what they are: signals that you are in mental fatigue! Then, work out an “antidote” (new thought pattern/behavior) for each one. Here are some examples: Emotional warning signal = frustration; the antidote = I need to change my work routine so I have time to do my creative work uninterrupted. Physical warning signal = feeling congestion; the antidote = I need to relook at my rest times. How much mental rest am I having a day? How can I improve this? 5. Active reach Create a summary statement that combines your warning signals into an “all-systems-alert mental fatigue warning”, and set it to pop up every day on your reminders or write it on a card and leave on your desk so you can’t miss it! This will remind you to practice using the antidotes you came up with above. Mine for example says the following: “When I feel frustrated, fluey, irritable and am perseverating on something, then I know I am mentally fatigued and need to rest by doing something I love, like reading a novel…”. To read the original article click here. For more articles from Dr. Leaf click here.

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The Neuroscience of Dreams & Nightmares + How to Have Better Dreams

AHA Publisher — Mon, 24 May 2021 07:00:57 +0000

Dr. Caroline Leaf – In this podcast (episode #278) and blog, I talk about dreaming and mental health. This topic was inspired by an email I recently received: “Since dreams come from our busy minds, can we slowly over time change our dreams in some way? I do not always remember dreams obviously but when I am awakened by dreams (often) or remember the next day, I do have a recurring pattern of always hurrying or being super frustrated, anxious! I cannot help but think this is part of why I get so tired some days as I do not rest peacefully at night. I’m just thinking dreams must be all part of the mental mind and I would love to have my dreams peaceful, pleasant, restful, whether I remember the dream or not, I feel like not having all the anxiety and frustration in the dreams would be very helpful to my awake hours.” This is a great question, and one I think applies to a lot of people (including myself!). Why? We need to remember that detoxing the mind and brain doesn’t just take place when we are awake. We also detox our thoughts when we are asleep; in fact, our dreams can help us sort out our thoughts and clean up our mental mess. They have a purpose—recurring dreams may even indicate an unresolved issue in our lives, so it is important that we try and pay attention to what we dream about. But how? Isn’t it hard to remember your dreams? People often tell me they can’t recall what they dreamt about or that they don’t dream. But the fact is that we all dream; it’s a neuroscientific process. Dreams are generally forgotten because either they have been processed or they are suppressed by the nonconscious mind because they are too hard or painful to deal with. Dreams occur during rapid eye movement (REM) sleep. We start with non-REM sleep (NREM), where the mind and brain stop processing the outside world, which then progresses into REM sleep, where the mind and brain starts processing our inner thought life. Thoughts with their embedded memories are stored in three places: the mind, the brain and the body. The strong emotions that are tangled with the data of these thoughts can create an imbalance and disruption to homeostasis of the mind brain and body if they are toxic or undealt with. When we are asleep, the nonconscious mind steps to sort out these imbalances and tries to restore order and balance to your thinking. But the nonconscious can only fix things to a point; it requires the interaction of the consciousmind to resolve issues. To get the attention of the conscious mind, the information is released like “bubbles” and the content is expressed in your nonconscious mind as stories complete with a plot and characters in the language of your everyday awareness. This does not always appear in ways that allow you to immediately or easily understand things, which is why dreams can often be confusing. During the day, we process our experience with active and dynamic self-regulation. This means that the conscious and nonconscious mind work together, and we process from the concrete to the abstract. At night, on the other hand, we process the other way around, because just the nonconscious mind is involved, which operates outside of the space-time environment. This contributes to the strangeness of our dreams. Some dream experts even suggest that our perceptions are processed in dreams in a backward way – that is we don’t see things quite the same way as we do during the day, although the science regarding dreams is still in its infancy. Since all thoughts are made of data, feelings and choices, dreams can have a strong emotional impact, as I am sure you well know. I myself have woken up crying or in pain, and couldn’t even remember what I dreamt about! Dreams involve thinking about abstract ideas that are represented visually, which is another reason they can be so confusing mentally and emotionally. Neurochemically, when we are awake, the neurotransmitters serotonin and norepinephrine help us line up our thoughts, apply logic and process what we are experiencing; we only get burst of acetylcholine (another neurotransmitter) as something grabs our attention. At nighttime, acetylcholine is active, which helps us consolidate our thoughts with their embedded memories, while serotonin and norepinephrine shut down. The firing of acetylcholine without the “logic power” that serotonin and norepinephrine bring can also make our dreams feel strange or odd. As we fall into REM sleep, a host of signals fires up from the pons (part of the brain stem) into the cortex but not the frontal lobe, so the reasoning and rational explanations that happen when we are conscious don’t occur. This means we don’t have a rational explanation of the mix of thoughts that make up our dreams. The signals then move to the amygdala, where our emotional library of perceptions is woken up, creating a busy dream characterized by feelings that may not make much sense. But all this strangeness doesn’t mean that dreams are not important. When we are dreaming, different parts of the brain and body are exchanging information to clean up our memory networks and prepare us for the next day. The nonconscious mind sweeps through your “thought forests”, while the detail of the memories on these thought trees are being pulled out by the mind with the help of the glial cells (support cells in the brain), which are stimulated to get to work to prepare you for the next day. This process includes sorting out unresolved issues that threaten balance and coherence in the brain. Dreams are the result of all this intense “housework”. The poorly built, incompletely processed or toxic trauma thoughts with their embedded memories are a part of the process of cleaning up our mental mess. The other part of the equation that is equally important is our conscious involvement with our dreams, i.e. us thinking about and analyzing our dreams when we are awake. Dreams are also important in helping stabilize new information we have learned during the day. Thoughts with their embedded memories become physically stronger as we dream. If we learn something new during the day, after a good night’s sleep, we will have better understanding of what we learned, so “sleeping on a problem” can be a good thing! On a physiological level, the dream state allows the psychosomatic network to retune itself and get ready for the demands of our waking life. Shifts occur in our brain’s reaction chains, and chemicals and energy “spill” into the networks of the brain, binding to receptors on the thought trees and allowing for activities necessary for homeostasis. All these “readjustments” also enter the mind as we dream; essentially, the stories of our dreams are these readjustments trying to send our conscious mind information that something in our thought life needs attention. Brain scans show that the part of the brain that processes emotional perceptions, the amygdala (or “library”), becomes very active. However, the part of the brain that responds to balance the amygdala, the PFC, is less active. As a result, toxic blocks or suppressed thoughts/traumas may be hidden from the conscious mind and only come out when we are asleep, which is why responding to the patterns in our dreams as warning signals and messengers, or becoming what I call a “thought dream detective”, is so important. Dreams can have patterns that can tell us about ourselves and what we are going through. But it’s important to note that just as each of us are unique, so are our dreams. As the person above mentions in her question. “I do have a recurring pattern of always hurrying or being super frustrated, anxious! I cannot help but think this is part of why I get so tired some days as I do not rest peacefully at night.” These patterns are messages or clues that the dynamic regulation occurring in your nonconscious mind is trying to send you, often telling you to actively pay attention to and embrace, process and reconceptualize what you are experiencing. By doing this, you will help bring order and coherence back into your mind and improve your quality of sleep and mental wellbeing. For more on ways to do this though mind management, I recommend checking out my latest book, Cleaning Up Your Mental Mess. There is, however, a difference between nightmares and night terrors. Nightmares are unpleasant or frightening dreams that can cause emotional distress, and usually occur during REM sleep. In most cases, these nightmares don’t involve physical or vocal behaviors. Night terrors, on the other hand, are caused by an over-arousal of the central nervous system (CNS) during sleep. Sleep happens in several stages. We have dreams, including nightmares, during the rapid eye movement (REM) stage, as mentioned above. Night terrors happen during deep NREM sleep, and are often associated with deep seated trauma and long-term, unmanaged toxic stress. When it comes to dealing with the mental and physical ramifications of night terrors, therapy is really important, along with lifestyle changes such as a regular relaxing routine before bedtime. When it comes to children and nightmares, it is important not to invalidate their experiences by telling them “it’s just a dream” or “it’s not so bad”. Remember, dreams are often messengers; their nightmares could be a sign of a trauma response to something that is going on in their lives. So, sit with them or let them sleep in your room—comfort them and listen to them. When they are ready, you can also help them process their dreams through drawing and pictures. It may even be a good idea to take them to therapy, especially if the nightmares are recurring. To read the original article click here. For more articles from Dr. Leaf click here.

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