mind management Archives - Amazing Health Advances

The Difference Between Thoughts & Memories

AHA Publisher — Wed, 05 Oct 2022 07:03:05 +0000

Dr. Caroline Leaf – In this podcast (episode #420) and blog, I talk about the difference between thoughts and memories. This podcast is part 4 of my series on the different parts of the mind. As mentioned in my previous podcasts on this topic, The Difference Between the Nonconscious, Subconscious & Conscious Mind (part 1), How to Tap Into the Nonconscious Mind to Unwire Trauma & Toxic Thinking Habits (part 2), and How to Listen to & Learn from Your Mental & Physical Warning Signals (part 3), when you consciously engage the nonconscious mind through deliberate, intentional, strategic, and proactive deep thinking, you draw your thoughts, with their embedded memories, through the subconscious mind and into the conscious mind. When these thoughts arrive in the conscious mind, they’re in a malleable state, which means you can change them and reconceptualize them—you can change the way they impact your life. But what exactly is a thought? And how is it different from a memory? The mind is made up of trillions and trillions of thoughts. A thought is a real physical thing that occupies mental real estate in the brain and mind. A thought is built into the brain as you use your mind—that is, as you think, feel and choose. Thoughts are located in three different places: your brain, your mind, and the cells of your body. Inside the thought are the embedded memories—so a thought is made of memories, and there can be any number of memories, thousands even, in a thought, just as there are hundreds or even thousands of branches on a tree. For example, the thought could be that I am concerned about my family member. Within this thought, there will be hundreds or more memories related to this concern. The thought is therefore the big picture, and the details of the thought are the memories. There are three types of memories in a thought: Informational memories are all the details: particulars, facts, data, associations, links, and so on associated with that thought. These are like the branches on a thought tree. Emotional memories are the feelings associated with the information memories. These are like the leaves on the branches of a thought three. Physical memories are the physical embodiments of the sensations experienced at the time the thought was built, which are coupled with the emotional memories and informational memories. These are built into every cell of our body and are re-experienced when we recall the informational and emotional memories, because these three parts of the thought are inseparable. Thoughts are potentially limitless. Each thought is a literal universe, because each thought is made up of limitless memories. Thoughts also keep getting updated, as well as entangled with other related thoughts, like the endless root system of a sweeping forest. And your mind is always in action, which means you’re always building thoughts, and you’re always pulling up the thoughts you have built to guide and influence your next decision. The best way to understand this is to think of a thought as a tree. The thought is the big concept: the whole tree with branches, leaves, and roots. The branches and leaves are how you express your memories as your conscious thinking, feeling, and choosing, which produce your behaviors and your communication (what you are saying and doing) and all of which manifest your lifestyle choices. The tree trunk represents the subconscious level and your perspective, which includes the physical and emotional signals you experience, such as that lurch of anticipation when you hear exciting news, that sense of happiness or joy that makes you bounce out of bed, or that nagging sense of depression or anxiety that something is wrong. The subconscious connects the nonconscious to the conscious, in the same way the trunk connects the roots to the leaves and branches. The roots represent the nonconscious roots of your memories. They are the origin of the informational, emotional, and physical memories and are the level that tells us what’s going on in our lives and why we do what we do—this is the level we have to tap into to make the changes needed in our lifestyles through mind management, as I discuss in my book Cleaning Up Your Mental Mess and app Neurocycle. In the same way that a planted seed forms roots, appears above ground, grows, and changes, so your thoughts grow and change over time. Once a thought is planted—the conversation you have, what you hear, what you read, and so on—its roots begin to grow. When “watered” with thinking, it grows into a little thought plant. If ignored, the thought tree dies. If, however, it gets lots of thinking energy, it will eventually get bigger and stronger. Whatever we think about the most will grow. So, at first it is a little plant, like a nagging worry or something at the back of your mind. Over time, if it’s watered with thinking, it becomes a “big tree” and can dominate and influence our behavior. The exciting thing is that you are the director and designer of this process! You shape what you have built into your mind, and you can change what is not working or what is having a negative effect in your life. Toxic thought trees like trauma and bad habits can be built and broken down and rebuilt—toxic trees aren’t your destiny. This is self-regulated mind-management: your thinking, feeling, and choosing are shaping, pruning, and building. And the more self-regulated you are, the more effective this process is and the more peace and meaning you’ll find in life! Indeed, it’s important to remember that although our thought-life is a stream of consciousness, with thousands of individual thoughts blending together, we can bring a level of order to our thinking by controlling what we allow into our mind and brain and what’s already in our mind and brain. We’re able to evaluate the individual frames of thought by self-regulating our stream of consciousness through mind management. We can harness the power of our thinking in tangible, sustainable ways! To do this, I recommend doing a Neurocycle, the scientific mind-management process I have developed and researched over the past three decades and discuss in my book Cleaning Up Your Mental Mess, my app Neurocycle, and in my latest clinical trials. These steps can help you learn how to reconceptualize your thinking, i.e. changing the way your thought tree and its memories look in the brain: First, calm down your brain and body by breathing deeply. I recommend breathing in for 5 counts and out for 11 counts, and repeating this technique 3 times (for around 45 seconds). Next, GATHER awareness of your warning signals, such as tension in your shoulders, indigestion or feelings of anxiety. Then, REFLECT on why you are having these feelings. Ask, answer and discuss with yourself. After this step, WRITE down what you reflected on. This will help you organize your thinking. Then, RECHECK. Look for triggers, thought patterns and “antidotes” (for example, how you would like to respond in the future and how you would like the situation to end). Lastly, practice your ACTIVE REACH. Practice using the “antidote” you came up with in the recheck step to deal with your trigger. For example, this could be as simple as practicing not raising your voice or being more aware of your body language. To read the original article click here.

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How to Become a Responder Not a Reactor + How Arguments Affect Your DNA & How to Use Mind Management to Resolve an Argument

AHA Publisher — Fri, 02 Sep 2022 07:00:10 +0000

Dr. Caroline Leaf – Think of the last time you had an argument and how it made you feel, both physically and mentally. Pretty bad, right? Well, it is not all just in your head! Unresolved arguments can be harmful to your health, and can potentially decrease your longevity! In this podcast (episode #408), I talk about the importance of resolving arguments, and the incredibly beneficial impact this can have on your wellbeing and quality of life. A recent study from Oregon State University found that when people have resolved an argument, “the emotional response associated with the disagreement is significantly reduced”, while, “in some situations, it can be entirely erased”. Why is this important? Essentially, when you work to resolve an argument, you not only improve your relationships, but also your emotional health, which, in turn, can improve your overall wellbeing. There is much research, including mine (for more on this see my latest book, Cleaning Up Your Mental Mess), showing how unmanaged minds can result in toxic stress levels that affect our mental and physical health. This makes sense with major stressors like poverty or violence, but research has shown that daily chronic stressors like minor inconveniences and unresolved arguments can also have a lasting impact on our health and mortality. When it comes to arguments, avoidance and lack of closure can increase anxiety levels, which can impact our overall health (due to the mind-body-brain connection I discuss in detail in Cleaning Up Your Mental Mess). The Oregon studymentioned above notes that this includes “avoiding an argument to ‘keep the peace’” and/or “having an argument but not resolving it”. In this study, this avoidance resulted in increased reactivity, which lead to an increase in the subjects’ negative emotions, as well as an amplified emotional “residue”, that is a prolonged negative emotional toll the day after the negative experience occurred, all of which impacted the subjects’ health and mental wellbeing. However, in that same study, if an argument was resolved, “people reported half the reactivity on the day and no residue the day after”, which resulted in better health outcomes. What does all this mean? While people cannot always control what stressors come into their lives, and while the lack of control is itself a stressor in many cases, they can work on their own emotional response to those stressors. As I always say, we cannot always control our circumstances, but we can control our reactions to our circumstances. This is mind-management in action, and leads to a host of positive health outcomes, including better ageing and better stress resilience. In fact, through mind management and self-regulation, you can learn to manage your stressors in a way that they do not have a gnawing impact on you over the course of the day, which will help minimize the potential long-term impact of negative emotions on your health. I recommend doing a Neurocycle, which is a way to harness your thinking power through mind-management that I have developed and researched over the past three decades (I discuss this in detail in my book Cleaning Up Your Mental Mess), to identify where you are at in your relationships and help resolve an argument. This process has 5 steps: First, take a break, go into another room or space and calm the brain down by breathing deeply. I recommend breathing in for 5 counts and out for 11 counts, and repeating this technique 3 times (for around 45 seconds). Next, GATHER awareness of your emotional and physical warning signals, such as tension in your shoulders, indigestion or feelings of anxiety. How has this argument made you feel emotionally and physically? Then, REFLECT on why you are having these feelings. Ask, answer and discuss with yourself what was said or done that resulted in the argument, and how it has made you feel. What do you think these feelings are telling you about the argument and about your response to the argument? What happened? What was said? Why? What assumptions may you be making? Why do you think the other person reacted the way they did? After this step, WRITE down what you reflected on. This will help you organize your thinking. Then, RECHECK. Look for triggers, thought patterns and “antidotes” (that is how you would like to respond in the future and how you would like the situation to end). Lastly, practice your ACTIVE REACH. Practice using the “antidote” you came up with in the recheck step to deal with your trigger. For example, this could be as simple as practicing not raising your voice or being more aware of your body language. To read the original article click here.

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How to Balance Your Brainwaves, the Different Brain Frequencies & How They Impact Your State of Mind + The Difference Between the Mind & Brain

AHA Publisher — Wed, 17 Aug 2022 07:00:20 +0000

Dr. Caroline Leaf – In this podcast (episode #406) and blog, I talk about what brain waves are, why they are important and how we can balance our brain waves to improve our mind and brain health. Our brain waves are active all the time because the brain is always active. The brain is active 24/7, 7 days a week! Our brain waves change in terms of how they move through the brain, which is based on what we are thinking, doing and feeling. When slower brain waves are dominant, we often feel tired, slow, sluggish, or dreamy, and are not able to process information or emotions very well. When the higher brain wave frequencies are dominant, we can feel wired or hyper-alert, like there is just too much going on in our brains. A healthy brain tries to balance these extremes. How our brainwaves function and our daily experience of the world are inseparable because the mind moves through the brain, and the brain responds to the mind. When our emotions are out of balance or very negative (like when we aren’t rising to the challenge and building new knowledge into our brains daily, or when we are responding in chaotic and reactive ways to the chronic and acute stressors of life), this will be reflected in our physiology (blood, hormones and so on) and in our brainwaves, which will be out of balance. Consequently, our self-regulation and self-assessment can be affected because we experience our mind in our brain and body. There is a corresponding relationship between the mind and brain that plays out in our mental, emotional, neurological and physical health. When we change our perceptions, however, as we observed in our most recent research study, we can potentially change our brain’s response, our physiology and our cellular health, which plays back into our minds because of the feedback loop between the brain and body. For example, stress, when managed in a healthy way, can be a real asset to how we function, and we can see this in the brain. When we use stress to our advantage, we essentially use our more aware and ready state of mind to spring into action—we see balance, coherence and connectivity in the brain. On the other hand, prolonged and unmanaged toxic stress can result in anxious, racing and chaotic thoughts in the brain, which can, in turn, affect the physiological system. This appears physically in a myriad of ways, from GI symptoms like IBS (irritable bowel syndrome) and digestive difficulties to migraines, fatigue, sleep issues, phobias, skin problems and so on. Long-term exposure to chronic stress (the day-to-day events of life) and acute stress (the unexpected stuff that blindsides us and often gets worse before they get better) can negatively affect our neurophysiology (brain), physiology (blood, hormones, immune system and so on) and mind (mental processing and emotional control). Essentially, the connectivity and balance that the mind, brain and body crave can be disrupted when we don’t manage our minds properly. Because of the neuroplasticity of the brain, if we aren’t changing our reactions to the stress, then we are reinforcing them—they don’t just go away. We are either reconceptualizing our reactions into something better or they are being strengthened into something worse, making it even more difficult for us to react well to life and make decisions. If we choose to stay in a negative state, this can create a toxic response in the brain that can impact every system in the brain and body. The converse also applies; if we choose to start developing a “possibilities mindset”, seeing every opportunity as a chance to learn, grow and overcome, and we find the positive in the negative, our hope starts coming back, and we can positively affect our brainwaves and body – down to the cellular level! With brain imaging technology like qEEGs, we are literally able to see learning taking place and healing energy moving through the brain as we do this! Why? As we think, feel and choose, the energy frequencies in the brain respond to our mind-in-action. This is the same for the preparation “work” being done just prior to the building of the thought, as well as the work done during the process of building the new thoughts with their embedded memories, which can eventually turn into habits. It is at this point that we, with our mind-management skills, need to intervene to direct our brainwaves, taking over the process of neuroplasticity (the ability of the brain to change in response to external and internal factors). Let’s look at a wave analogy to better understand how brain waves and neuroplasticity work. Imagine you are paddling out on a surfboard, far beyond the breakers, and the sea swells up around you. This is the delta wave, which has a frequency of 0-4hz (cycles per second). Delta waves are the slow, massively deep and powerful high voltage waves that are dominant in dreamless sleep, called non-REM (NREM) sleep, as well as intensely spiritual, nonconscious states. Delta is also associated with repairing thoughts and complex problem-solving. Very high amplitudes of delta are also found in people who are in touch with the nonlocal spiritual mind, even when they’re wide awake! The brains of meditators, intuitives, and healers have much more delta waves than the average brain. When we have unmanaged, chaotic minds, these swells become unmanageably huge, affecting our sleeping patterns as well as our daytime functioning. Now, back to you on the surfboard: as you turn towards the shore, the waves peak a little more and move inwards a little faster. This is the theta wave, which has a frequency of 4-8hz and is often referred to as the healing and creative wave. It is very active when we are in REM sleep – the dream state. Theta is also associated with creativity, insight, healing, and light sleep, and is a dominant frequency in healing and highly creative states. It’s also very active when we remember emotional experiences; both good and bad memories can trigger theta bursts, while theta and gamma rhythms are associated with memory processes such as retrieval and encoding, and these rhythms increase when we regulate our thoughts. As you move towards the shore, the waves start becoming almost like moving bridges, carrying you forward on their crest but also keeping you connected to the deeper swells. This is called the alpha bridge, as it bridges the nonconscious mind and conscious mind, reflecting the subconscious activity of the mind I spoke of in part one of this book. At 8-12hz, it reflects a peaceful calmness and a readiness to action. Alpha is associated with alertness, reflecting a mind in a state of peacefulness, readiness, meditation and self-regulation. Alpha connects the higher frequencies—the thinking mind of beta and the associative mind of gamma—with the two lowest frequency brain waves, which is why it is like a bridge between the conscious and nonconscious mind. As you move even closer to the shore, the waves get faster and busier—the brain is “online”, which is low beta, 8-15hz. This is the wave you stand up on with your surfboard to ride to the shore with intense, focused and sustained attention. Low beta is associated with deep processing, focus and attention. Finally, the waves crash onto the beach with a high, short and impactful burst of purpose, and you go with the flow, lying low on your surfboard. This is high beta, 15 – 40hz, and is an intense and focused wave that is paying deep attention—this is the actual choice you make. High beta are the brain waves associated with intense thinking, paying attention, and the actual making of a choice as the wave collapses, in a figurative and quantum sense. As the wave runs up the beach in very fast ripples and rolls back, it leaves a mark in the sand. This is gamma, the high speed, low amplitude learning wave, which creates, innovates, and integrates information. Gamma flows from the front to the back of the brain at 40 times a second and contributes to our subjective experience of consciousness – our self-awareness. So, when we gather awareness, as in step 1 of the 5 steps, gamma is active, which indicates introspection, memory retrieval, high level learning, deep intellectual function, association and creative inspiration, thus integrating information from different parts of the brain and encoding memories. A brain producing lots of gamma waves reflects complex neural organization and heightened awareness, which means deep, integrative learning is taking place with heightened awareness and compassion. This is why alpha and gamma rhythms are related to visual processing prioritization, and whole-scalp gamma frequency synchronization is associated with consciousness. Now, you may be thinking, all this sounds really complicated to manage, but it is something you can learn to do! I recommend doing a Neurocycle to help you recognize and manage mental stress and negative mindsets that can throw your brainwaves off balance, 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: Gather awareness of how you are feeling emotionally and physically Reflect on why you feel the way you do. Write this down to organize your thinking and observe your patterns of thinking and responding. Recheck how you can see this in a different way; what is your thought “antidote?”, Practice your new way of thinking by VENTING YOUR JOY! Maybe you are celebrating a promotion, a great meal, a wonderful chat on a walk, an exciting new adventure coming up in your life, playing with your puppies…whatever brings you joy in life! As you vent your joy, visualize yourself on that surfboard riding those waves like I described above. The visualization will speed up and stabilize the balancing of your brainwaves, which will help you manage stressful situations and challenges better! To read the original article click here.

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The Role of Co-Regulation in Building Self-Regulation Skills

AHA Publisher — Wed, 10 Aug 2022 07:00:41 +0000

Dr. Caroline Leaf – In this podcast (episode #400) and blog, I talk about co-regulation. Co-regulation is a way of helping someone develop self-regulation. The person co-regulates by staying present for the individual, helping them navigate a challenging experience and move towards greater self-awareness. This involves a supportive relationship between two or more people that is process-driven—the goal is to help a person self-regulate themselves while in a highly emotional state. Self-regulation is a skill we increasingly develop over time starting from childhood, and co-regulation is one of the ways we can develop this skill. Our ability to self-regulate can be affected when we have experienced trauma or are distressed; co-regulation can potentially help us get back to self-regulating our thoughts, feelings and choices. Self-regulation can be disrupted to varying degrees, especially during challenging life events and adverse circumstances. This is where co-regulation can be helpful: it is a way of helping someone who is struggling mentally and emotionally rebuild their own self-regulation skills, which are needed to manage their mind. When someone is in acute distress, they may find it difficult to think rationally or problem-solve. This is because since their state of mind is literally all over the place, they experience a chemical rush that can cause a type of neurochemical “chaos” in the brain. This often leads to reduced blood flow and oxygen at the front of the brain, thereby increasing impulsivity, while the two sides of the brain act out of coherence, which results in too much high beta energy activity and not enough alpha energy activity. All of this decreases a person’s ability to reason and make good decisions in the moment. When we co-regulate, we are helping to quiet the other person’s mind, enabling their active (conscious mind) and dynamic (nonconscious mind) self-regulation to work together, which brings balance and coherence back into the brain. There are two main phases of healthy co-regulation: Phase 1- Physiological: There are many strategies to deescalate/calm down a highly emotional situation in the moment, such as a 10 second breathing exercise (breathe in for 3 counts and out for 7 counts), havening, tapping, hugs, stress balls, reading out loud to someone, and movement like yoga. Phase 2 – Veto power: Once the person has calmed down physiologically, as a co-regulator, you can help them learn to use their “veto power” over their thoughts. You can literally walk them through the process of “capturing” their thoughts and, using their self-regulatory veto power, change them. As you do this, you help them override the force generated from the energy of their toxic thought or experience and teach them that they can choose to speak or act, or not speak or act, according to this thought. As the co-regulator, you are essentially doing this for the person in the distressed state, and in a sense, modeling it for them. You help them gain perspective; you empower them by showing them they have agency and control in their life. Below are some steps to help you become a better co-regulator: These steps can have a healthy and calming effect on the mind, brain and body that can help someone manage their stress response in the moment and prevent it from becoming toxic. These steps can help increase the oscillations in their brain, which help generate a healing wave through the brain and body, regulating gene expression in a way that alters gene activity in the part of the brain that is involved in emotional perceptions (the amygdala) and helping elicit a positive response in the person being co-regulated: 1. Establish eye contact This helps the person feel seen and can be very calming. It’s important that the person doing the co-regulating establishes calm and loving eye contact. 2. Create physical contact The level of contact must be comfortable for the person trying to self-regulate how they feel. This could be as simple as sitting near the distressed person. 3. Hear and validate their emotions You may need to help this person by putting words to their experience. You can do this by naming what you observe, asking if this is correct, and then offering calming decompression techniques like deep breathing as needed. Create a judgement-free environment where all feelings and emotions are allowed. 4. Model self-regulating Co-regulation involves openly modeling how you self-regulate, but only do this after steps 1-3! I recommend using the system I have created called the Neurocycle, which teaches self-regulation using a 5-step mind directed process that demonstrates awareness, acceptance and engagement of one’s internal climate, and helps people embrace, process and reconceptualize what they are dealing with. The Neurocycle, which I discuss in detail in my latest book, Cleaning Up Your Mental Mess and app Neurocycle, is a way to harness your thinking power through mind-management that I have developed and researched over the past three decades; any task that requires thinking can use it, which means everything can, because you’re always thinking! This de-stressing, self-regulation technique can really work with any issue, and can be done anywhere, any place and at any time—all you need is you! First, calm the brain down by breathing deeply. I recommend breathing in for 5 counts and out for 11 counts, and repeating this technique 3 times (for around 45 seconds). Then, GATHER awareness of the emotional and physical warning signals your body is sending you, such as tension in your shoulders, which can be a sign of fear of sleep. Embrace these signals, don’t judge them or try to suppress them (spend around 30 to 45 seconds doing this). Now, REFLECT on how you feel: ask, answer and discuss why you are feeling the way you do. Use specific sentences, like “I feel this anxiety because …”. What is happening during the day that may be affecting you? Do this for around 1-3 minutes. After reflecting, WRITE down what you feel and why. This will help you gain clarity into your thinking and behavior. Then, RECHECK what you have written, looking for your triggers and the thought patterns you may have developed that are affecting you. For example, you may notice that you start stressing before bed because of something going on in your life, which puts you in a heightened state of anxiety and increases your likelihood of having nightmares. What is your “antidote”? How will you reconceptualize this way of thinking and acting? Lastly, take action (I call this step the ACTIVE REACH). This can be a positive statement that validates your feelings, or an action, such as having more “thinker moments” in your day, where you switch off to the external and onto the internal and just let your mind wander and daydream for around a minute. These thinker moments help calm down anxious thinking and reboot your mind. When appropriate, help the person use a self-regulation technique like the Neurocycle. For example, you help them by co-regulating what they are going through using the 5 steps mentioned above. To read the original article click here.

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How Sleep Helps to Process Emotion

AHA Publisher — Mon, 16 May 2022 07:00:30 +0000

University of Bern via Newswise – Researchers at the Department of Neurology of the University of Bern and University Hospital Bern identified how the brain triages emotions during dream sleep to consolidate the storage of positive emotions while dampening the consolidation of negative ones. The work expands the importance of sleep in mental health and opens new ways of therapeutic strategies. Rapid eye movement (REM or paradoxical) sleep is a unique and mysterious sleep state during which most of the dreams occur together with intense emotional contents. How and why these emotions are reactivated is unclear. The prefrontal cortex integrates many of these emotions during wakefulness but appears paradoxically quiescent during REM sleep. «Our goal was to understand the underlying mechanism and the functions of such a surprising phenomenon», says Prof. Antoine Adamantidis from the Department of Biomedical Research (DBMR) at the University of Bern and the Department of Neurology at the Inselspital, University Hospital of Bern. Processing emotions, particularly distinguishing between danger and safety, is critical for the survival of animals. In humans, excessively negative emotions, such as fear reactions and states of anxiety, lead to pathological states like Post-Traumatic Stress Disorders (PTSD). In Europe, roughly 15% of the population is affected by persistent anxiety and severe mental illness. The research group headed by Antoine Adamantidis is now providing insights into how the brain helps to reinforce positive emotions and weaken strongly negative or traumatic emotions during REM sleep. This study was published in the journal Science. A Dual Mechanism The researchers first conditioned mice to recognize auditory stimuli associated with safety and others associated with danger (aversive stimuli). The activity of neurons in the brain of mice was then recorded during sleep-wake cycles. In this way, the researchers were able to map different areas of a cell and determine how emotional memories are transformed during REM sleep. Neurons are composed of a cell body (soma) that integrates information coming from the dendrites (inputs) and send signals to other neurons via their axons (outputs). The results obtained showed that cell somas are kept silent while their dendrites are activated. «This means a decoupling of the two cellular compartments, in other words soma wide asleep and dendrites wide awake», explains Adamantidis. This decoupling is important because the strong activity of the dendrites allows the encoding of both danger and safety emotions, while the inhibitions of the soma completely block the output of the circuit during REM sleep. In other words, the brain favours the discrimination of safety versus danger in the dendrites, but block the over-reaction to emotion, in particular danger. A Survival Advantage According to the researchers, the coexistence of both mechanisms is beneficial to the stability and survival of the organisms: «This bi-directional mechanism is essential to optimize the discrimination between dangerous and safe signals», says Mattia Aime from the DBMR, first author of the study. If this discrimination is missing in humans and excessive fear reactions are generated, this can lead to anxiety disorders. The findings are particularly relevant to pathological conditions such as post-traumatic stress disorders, in which trauma is over-consolidated in the prefrontal cortex, day after day during sleep. Breakthrough for Sleep Medicine These findings pave the way to a better understanding of the processing of emotions during sleep in humans and open new perspectives for therapeutic targets to treat maladaptive processing of traumatic memories, such as Post Traumatic Stress Disorders (PTSD) and their early sleep-dependent consolidation. Additional acute or chronic mental health issues that may implicate this somatodendritic decoupling during sleep include acute and chronic stress, anxiety, depression, panic, or even anhedonia, the inability to feel pleasure. Sleep research and sleep medicine have long been a research focus of the University of Bern and the Inselspital, Bern University Hospital. «We hope that our findings will not only be of interest to the patients, but also to the broad public», says Adamantidis. To read the original aritcle click here.

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This One Common Thing Could Be Damaging Your Brain

AHA Publisher — Fri, 29 Apr 2022 07:00:38 +0000

Dr. Caroline Leaf – In this podcast (episode #374) and blog, I talk about learning how to use the mind well and why it is important to manage our thinking, feeling and choosing to avoid “milkshake multitasking” and mental overload. The mind is more than a “machine” that runs nonstop. It is an extremely complex driving force that runs the brain and body. The mind “shows up” in the brain and body and becomes our “aliveness”. Our minds are where our identity and uniqueness are formed. It is where who we are is recognized—our consciousness. The mind runs 24/7. When we are awake, we use our minds to build the experiences of life into our brain and our body; at night, we use our mind to sort out the thoughts that we have built while awake. If our minds are unmanaged and messy, our brain and body and how we run our life (our lifestyles, our words and actions, or everything we do and say) will also be messy, and our mental and physical health can suffer. Because our mind is such a vast and intricate part of our being, we must recognize that mind management is an essential, ongoing skill necessary for life, and that there are no quick fixes or shortcuts when it comes to how we manage our minds. One thing to avoid doing if we want to train our mind and brain to think deeply and wisely is to avoid what I call “milkshake multitasking”. There is much research providing evidence of the benefit of deep, intellectual thought versus multitasking in the brain. Deep, intellectual thinking activates the prefrontal cortex (just above your eyebrows) in a positive way, resulting in increased concentration, less distraction, more effective switching between tasks, decreased emotional volatility, better decision-making and an overall increase our ability to “get things done”. On a conscious level, we should not be paying attention to everything all the time, because we cannot consciously act on everything simultaneously. Our conscious mind is not made to multi-task; it is meant to do one thing at a time because it is the part of our mind that is doing the actual process of learning new information. When we try to multitask, research has shown that our ability to develop deep insight, creativity and intelligence can decrease. The key thing here is to understand the different parts of the mind. Our conscious mind system does not have the capacity to do a bunch of important, demanding tasks at once. Our nonconscious mind, on the other hand, is much faster than the conscious mind, and goes way beyond multi-tasking into synonymous processing, which enables us to talk and drive a car, cook and talk to friends, and so on. What we are generally doing when we think we are multitasking is actually switching between tasks using the conscious mind in a very disorganized way. Doing this draws energy from our brain and creates something akin to a dust storm in our minds, which can affect our energy levels and even our mental and physical health. It also means that we are more likely to make mental errors and we cannot give what we are doing the attention it deserves. When we multitask, we end up with what I call “milkshake thinking”, which is the opposite of deep thinking and good mind management. Every rapid, incomplete, and low-quality shift of thought makes a “milkshake” with our brain cells and neurochemicals, which is the opposite of how the brain is designed to function. When we consciously try to jump rapidly from one task to another, we essentially cloud our ability to concentrate and think deeply, which impacts our ability to do a task well, leading to unnecessary levels of anxiety and stress in our life. This kind of multitasking also affects working memory, which occurs in the conscious mind. People who are multitasking will be less likely to retain information, and this can affect daily problem-solving tasks. We can, however, consciously learn how to manage our attention and choose what to pay attention to instead of jumping from one task to another. This includes learning how to mono-task quickly and effectively instead of multi-tasking ineffectively—it is possible to get more things done better in a shorter amount of time without multitasking! This can be something as simple as making a choice to put your phone on silent during a meeting or asking people not to disturb you while you are working on a deadline. Mental overload is another thing that can affect our ability to use the mind well. As mentioned above, we all need to learn how to use our mind to change and “reprogram” the brain. This kind of mind-management, however, is a lifestyle, not a quick-fix. Our mind never stops, so we need to learn how to constantly manage our minds. The more we do this, the more self-regulated we become. My research and clinical experience have shown that to prevent going backwards into previous states of toxicity and mental overload, we need to develop healthy mind-management routines. Behavior change doesn’t happen in 1 day or 4 days or 21 days, as is often stated. It occurs daily in cycles of 63 days, which I have demonstrated in my clinical research and applied therapeutically over more than three decades. In chapter 14 of my book Cleaning Up Your Mental Mess, I explain how to use the system of mind-management called the Neurocycle that I developed as a daily routine to clean up the messy mind and reprogram the neural networks of the brain, which includes 7-15 minutes of directed self-regulation each morning. (I also walk you through this process in my app Neurocycle.) The Neurocycle is a great way to deal with the root of the toxic cycles causing mental overload in your life, reconceptualizing them and how they impact your genetic expression. It is done in 5 steps: Gather awareness of what you are feeling emotionally and physically as you work on a toxic cycle in your life. Reflect on why you feel the way you do—be as specific as possible. Write this down—this is way to help organize your thinking and gain clarity. Recheck what you have written. Look for patterns in your work life, your relationships, your responses, your attitudes and so on. Take action. I call this step an “active reach”. It is essentially an action you take to reinforce the new, reconceptualized pattern of thinking you want in your life (which is replacing the old, toxic cycle). As you go through the five steps of the Neurocycle, you can learn how to reverse engineer toxic issues by tracking backwards from the signals these produce (emotions, behaviors, physical feelings and perspectives) to the thought behind them (the root or origin story they came from). You can also use the Neurocycle to be proactive in building new healthy lifestyle habits and managing day-to-day challenges. This is both empowering and hopeful! To read the original article click here.

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A Neuroscientific Approach to Setting Sustainable & Attainable New Year Resolutions

AHA Publisher — Thu, 27 Jan 2022 08:00:45 +0000

Dr. Caroline Leaf – In this podcast (episode #345) and blog, I talk about New Year’s resolutions, including what they are, how to think about and make New Year’s resolutions, and how to use resolutions to bring about sustainable change in your life. First, let’s be honest with ourselves: many of us don’t stick to our New Year’s resolutions. And we are not alone! Several studies show that around 80% of people abandon their resolutions very early in the new year. So, why do we keep on making resolutions? What drives us to make changes in the new year? Is this a bad thing? Not at all! We should be excited to start the new year with new goals and resolutions. A New Year’s resolution means setting a goal for ourselves, which we should all do on a regular basis, and not just in the new year. From a neuroscientific perspective, it is good to set goals. When we set goals, we are using our executive functions, — thinking, feeling and choosing — in a more coordinated way, which generates coherence and healthy changes in the brain. For instance, the amygdala is arranged to respond like a library, which means that when we set a goal, it evaluates how important that goal is for us based on past goals we have set and achieved (or not achieved). Our frontal lobe responds when we think, feel and choose, which helps us problem solve, introspect and figure out the details of how we will accomplish our goal or resolution. Both of these parts of the brain function coherently together when we are focused on a specific goal. As we start focusing on this goal, these areas in the brain get higher beta and gamma energy across the left and right side in a more coherent way, which helps support healthy cognitive function. In fact, when the frontal lobe works with the amygdala to achieve our goals, we will start to perceive obstacles that might hinder the goal as less significant! But resolutions can be hard to keep, even with all these great things happening in the brain—we all know this. I think a great way to see a New Year’s resolution is to imagine it is a cake. There are certain ingredients that make this “cake” bake well: 1. Be kind to yourself and grateful for what you did achieve this past year, or even over the past two years! Celebrate your achievements, no matter how small or big they are. One great way to do this is writing down all the things that happened in the last year that brought you joy. Note what has changed in your life for the better—what happened over the past year that got you here? Celebrate these achievements! And, when you do this, try to focus on the positive and reframe the negative. You may feel a sense of peace when you write this list. Embrace this feeling! Take that list and try to surround yourself with the people who made you happy, the things that brought you joy and the places that made you feel at peace. Next, write down all the things you are looking forward to in 2022. Is there a vacation you are looking forward to taking? Are you visiting a friend/family member you haven’t seen in a while? Is there a new movie or TV show you want to watch, or a book you want to read? Are you starting a new job, or plan to start a new job? Do you want to achieve something specific? Why? How will this improve your life? As you write these lists, you will feel more encouraged and develop your sense of hope for the future. 2. Remember that the biggest thing about goals is the TIME it takes, whether it’s a new lifestyle habit or changing something that is stealing your peace. Changes in thinking and behavior occur in 63-day cycles, which is how long it takes to build a new thought network that influences how we think, feel and choose. (I discuss this in detail in my latest book Cleaning Up Your Mental Mess, my app Neurocycle and my blogs and podcasts.) Essentially, for a thought network ormemory to be usable (which is how a goal starts in the mind), it needs lots of energy. It gets lots of packets of energy when you repeatedly think about and practice it daily, especially during the first twenty-one-day cycle, which facilitates the required neurochemical and structural changes in the brain that make it a usable and useful thought. Then, for the next forty-two days, you need to continue to consciously practice using the new thought, which allows a useful habit to form. This means that we can all realistically achieve 5 to 6 major goals or resolutions each year! (Just do the math: 365/63=5.8) This may not seem like a lot, but it actually is! Can you imagine making 6 major changes to your life each year? The transformation would be incredible! However, I do not recommend trying to figure out 6 different things all at once when the clock strikes midnight on New Year’s Eve. Rather, find 1-2 specific goals/resolutions and break them into 9-week segments that you can start working on. A large group of different studies indicates that new year’s resolutions tend to fail because they are often quite overarching and not specific enough. We tend to give ourselves a big task when we see the whole year ahead of us—it seems like the perfect amount of time to achieve our resolution. Indeed, it is easy to look at the big picture and say, “By the end of the year, I will have changed this!” However, when we start doing the work as the year goes on, it seems like a lot more effort is needed—definitely more than we anticipated! Consequently, our motivation tends to wane as we see all the days stretch out ahead of us. When we do this, we are essentially treating what should be a marathon like a quick sprint. If you start a marathon by sprinting, you will be completely worn out by the first mile! It is far better to measure your pace so you don’t tire out too fast. So, instead of sprinting towards your resolution, try setting increments of tasks every 7 days to achieve a specific goal at the end of the 9 weeks. For example, you may wish to be more adventurous. This is the big picture goal. Now, you can break that down and say something like, “Each month I will think of something new that I want to do that will fulfill my needs in that moment and make me feel like I am adventurous.” This will help you focus on the present moment while keeping your bigger goal in mind. When you set a goal/resolution in increments like this, on January 1st all you need to focus on is your incremental goal for the month of January. February will come when it comes; you are in the “here and now” and just need to focus on the first part of your goal. As a result, the small changes that you make each month won’t feel so intimidating, and you won’t feel as worn out by achieving them! 3. Practice daily mind management and self-regulation to achieve your overall goal. Make sure you stay focused on what you want to change each day by building your goal into your mind, brain and body in little bits each day. To do this, I recommend using the mind management technique I have researched, developed and applied clinically over the past three decades: the Neurocycle. The kind of self-regulation that is achieved using the Neurocycle is a great way to deal with the root of the toxic cycles in your life and reconceptualize them and how they impact your wellbeing. It is done in 5 steps: Gather awareness of what you are feeling emotionally and physically as you work on a negative cycle/habit in your life. Reflect on how this is impacting you and why—be as specific as possible. Write this down—this is way to help organize your thinking and gain clarity. Recheck what you have written. Look for patterns in your life, your relationships, your responses, your attitudes and so on. What is the antidote? What do you want to change and how? Take action. I call this step an “active reach”. It is essentially an action you take to reinforce the new, reconceptualized pattern of thinking you want in your life (which is replacing the old, toxic habit). For more on the Neurocycle method and how to use it to break toxic cycles, check out my latest book Cleaning Up Your Mental Mess and my app Neurocycle. 4. Set a time for when you are going to build this goal into your life, and pick a theme for the year. This could be any word, idea, or concept that speaks to you. For example, my theme last year (which I am going to use this year again!) was to have a possibilities mindset, and my mantra is that every failure is knowledge gained—when something doesn’t work out, this is a possibility to grow, because now I know something doesn’t work, and I am one step closer to achieving my goals! As you face the start of a new year, give yourself space, compassion and grace to achieve your goals. Don’t rush the process—take things moment by moment. Remember to enjoy life while trying to achieve your goals. Don’t try to sprint through the marathon! Pace yourself, and you will be able to finish. You got this! To read the original article click here.

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The One Mind-Management Technique Required for Sustainable Healing

AHA Publisher — Tue, 28 Dec 2021 08:00:25 +0000

Dr. Caroline Leaf – In this podcast (episode #344) and blog, I talk about the importance of self-awareness and how it is a key part of the healing process. Without awareness, we cannot change or move forward. To make changes in our thoughts and subsequent communication, we need to be strategic, proactive and deliberate about our thinking. We need to try to be aware of what we are thinking about every day. This is called self-regulation. Self-regulation means that we don’t need to be held captive to our thoughts. Instead, we can capture our thoughts and change the way they impact our lives, and this begins with awareness. Awareness means tuning into the messages coming from ournonconscious mind into the conscious mind, where they can be changed. Once a thought is in the conscious mind, directed neuroplasticity(the ability of the brain to change) kicks in, and the protein branches holding the memory information in vibrational frequencies weaken. That’s when the thought is at its weakest and can be reconceptualized. This is why I keep talking about embracing our issues. We need to face what is bothering us and become aware of it—that is, be conscious of it—by gathering an awareness of the signals our mind, brain and body are sending us, such as feeling anxious, depressed, upset, sick, overwhelmed and so on. Once we do this, we can draw out the toxic stuff in our nonconscious mind and bring them into the conscious mind, where they are malleable. Only then can we process and reconceptualize what is bothering us and move on. Questions that can be helpful to ask as you do this are: 1. What keeps popping back into your mind? What thought(s)seem urgent? 2. What are you experiencing through your five senses? How are these thoughts making you feel physically? Gather awareness of these physical warning signals emerging from your body. 3. What is the information in the thoughts bubbling up from your nonconscious mind into your conscious mind right at this moment? Gather awareness of this information, noting how many thoughts there are and what they are. 4. What feelings are attached to the information the thought contains? Every thought has emotions as part of its structure—they’re stored in the nonconscious mind. When thoughts move into the conscious mind, we feel the emotions of them. How are these thoughts making you feel emotionally? Gather awareness of the feelings attached to each thought. The key thing to remember as we practice self-awareness is that we need to manage what we are aware of, or the thought can go back into our nonconscious mind even more toxic than before. Self-awareness is one part of the mind-management, as I discuss in my latest book Cleaning Up Your Mental Mess, my app Neurocycle and my blogs and podcasts. The easiest way to understand the whole process of mind management is to imagine a thought tree. Look at it from the branches to the tree trunk to the roots. The first thing you need to do is gatherawareness of the branches and leaves, which are your behaviors and their attached emotions. Then you need to focus on the whole tree to try to make some sense of it—the branches, trunk, and roots, or the detail of your behaviors and emotions, what perspective they bring, and where they come from. This is a very revealing process—you are bringing the memories of the thoughts out into the open and into your conscious mind so that you can work on pruning and grafting the leaves and branches based on your process of self-awareness and self-discovery. This, in turn, will help you work towards stabilizing and consolidating the growing branches and leaves, much like those posts that are often tied to a tree or part of a tree to help it grow. Then you should allow the new branches to settle a little before you do more work on them to change the way this thought plays out in your life on a long-term basis. All of this first starts with awareness! To read the original article click here.

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How to Make Healthy Decisions Under High Pressure & Anxiety

AHA Publisher — Fri, 26 Nov 2021 08:00:00 +0000

Dr. Caroline Leaf – In this podcast (episode #334) and blog, I speak about the link between anxiety, stress, and decision-making. Often, when we are in an anxious state, we cannot seem to make a decision, or, if we do, we end up making a choice we regret. I know this has happened to me many times! What should we do when this happens? Is there a way out of this mental swamp? Thankfully, yes! To make healthy decisions, our brain needs optimal blood, oxygen and energy flow, especially in the front of the brain (the frontal lobe). When we are in toxic stress, this flow is constricted, which can impact how and what we choose to say or do in the moment, as well as our overall wellbeing. However, we can learn how to make our stress work for us instead of against us. The key point here is to see our anxiety as a signal telling us something is going on in our lives that needs to be addressed. Anxiety is not something we should suppress or ignore. It is designed to get our attention in a focused way, so we can deal with the disequilibrium we are experiencing in our life. If we ignore this signal, it can affect our wellbeing, putting us in a toxic stress state that can impact our ability to make decisions and increase our impulsivity. It can also impact our mental and physical health due to the mind-brain-body connection (known as psychoneurobiology). We need to learn how to tune into these signals and manage them before they take over our thinking. This includes nothing our unique red flags: how anxiety and stress show up in our life, how we feel emotionally and physically, and how we can manage these signals to make healthy decisions. Self-regulation is key! When we make a decision, we should try to get into the habit of observing ourselves. Why did we choose this? What impacted our choice? Why did we feel this way? How did this impact our ability to decide? One way I like to do this is by practicing pausing just before I make a decision. During this pause, I breathe in deeply for 3 counts, and breathe out for 7 counts, and do this a few times depending on how I feel and how important the choice I am about to make is. As I do this, I am better able to observe what I feel in the moment because I am getting my neurophysiology under control, which, in turn, helps me better understand my anxiety signals and stress state, bringing back balance into my brain so I can make a good decision. This really is a great way to calm down the mind when things are difficult! If, after doing this, you still feel you need more time and information (as often happens with really big decisions), this is totally okay! Just say you need more time to think about it (if possible)—never be ashamed of needing more time or asking for more space to think something through. If you feel a lack of confidence in the moment, remind yourself of all the times you made a good choice in the past. Give yourself a little pep talk: remember when you made a choice under pressure and managed to successfully overcome a challenge. If you still feel stuck, work on what I call the “possibilities mindset”. Think of all the possibilities in each situation. How will this choice play out? How did this play out in the past? What if you made a different choice? What if this happened? What have you learned? This is a great brain exercise and a reminder that life isn’t linear—we can never truly grasp all the threads that lead us to where we are, or where we will be. If you are not sure how to do this, use the 5-step mind management system I developed based on my clinical practice and research, called the Neurocycle (for more on this, check out my latest book Cleaning Up Your Mental Mess and my app Neurocycle). First, gather awareness of the information you need and your past choices. What is the data telling you? What worked? What didn’t? Now, reconceptualize all “failures” as “I haven’t failed; I have learned x things that now I know don’t work, which is great to know!” Reflect on what these lessons are by asking, answering, and discussing them to find the information, emotions, and physical responses in your brain and body. Write down what you have been reflecting on, in as much detail as possible, to help organize your thinking. Then, recheck what you have written to add more insight and look for patterns. Now, practice looking at what you have written and use it to make good choices. During this time, watch how this carries over into your day-to-day life; observe and write how this mental exercise helps you, especially during tough times. To read the original article click here.

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