negative emotions Archives - Amazing Health Advances

How Does Your Brain Process Emotions? Answer Could Help Address Loneliness Epidemic

AHA Publisher — Tue, 09 Mar 2021 08:00:18 +0000

University of California – San Diego via EurekAlert – Research over the last decade has shown that loneliness is an important determinant of health. It is associated with considerable physical and mental health risks and increased mortality. Previous studies have also shown that wisdom could serve as a protective factor against loneliness. This inverse relationship between loneliness and wisdom may be based in different brain processes. In a study published in the March 5, 2021 online edition of Cerebral Cortex, researchers at University of California San Diego School of Medicine found that specific regions of the brain respond to emotional stimuli related to loneliness and wisdom in opposing ways. “We were interested in how loneliness and wisdom relate to emotional biases, meaning how we respond to different positive and negative emotions,” said Jyoti Mishra, PhD, senior author of the study, director of the NEATLabs and assistant professor in the Department of Psychiatry at UC San Diego School of Medicine. The study involved 147 participants, ages 18 to 85. The subjects performed a simple cognitive task of determining which direction an arrow was pointed while faces with different emotions were presented in the background. “We found that when faces emoting anger were presented as distractors, they significantly slowed simple cognitive responses in lonelier individuals. This meant that lonelier individuals paid more attention to threatening stimuli, such as the angry faces.” “For wisdom, on the other hand, we found a significant positive relationship for response speeds when faces with happy emotions were shown, specifically individuals who displayed wiser traits, such as empathy, had speedier responses in the presence of happy stimuli.” Electroencephalogram (EEG)-based brain recordings showed that the part of the brain called the temporal-parietal junction (TPJ) was activating differently in lonelier versus wiser individuals. TPJ is important for processing theory of mind, or the degree of capacity for empathy and understanding of others. The study found it more active in the presence of angry emotions for lonelier people and more active in the presence of happy emotions for wiser people. Researchers also noted greater activity to threatening stimuli for lonelier individuals in the left superior parietal cortex, the brain region important for allocating attention, while wisdom was significantly related to enhanced happy emotion-driven activity in the left insula of the brain, responsible for social characteristics like empathy. “This study shows that the inverse relationship between loneliness and wisdom that we found in our previous clinical studies is at least partly embedded in neurobiology and is not merely a result of subjective biases,” said study author Dilip V. Jeste, MD, senior associate dean for the Center of Healthy Aging and Distinguished Professor of Psychiatry and Neurosciences at UC San Diego School of Medicine. “These findings are relevant to the mental and physical health of individuals because they give us an objective neurobiological handle on how lonelier or wiser people process information,” said Mishra. “Having biological markers that we can measure in the brain can help us develop effective treatments. Perhaps we can help answer the question, ‘Can you make a person wiser or less lonely?’ The answer could help mitigate the risk of loneliness.” The authors say next steps include a longitudinal study and an intervention study. “Ultimately, we think these evidence-based cognitive brain markers are the key to developing better health care for the future that may address the loneliness epidemic,” said Mishra. To read the original article click here.

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How To Help Your Anxious Child + Tips For Raising Mentally Strong Children

AHA Publisher — Mon, 24 Aug 2020 07:00:34 +0000

Dr. Caroline Leaf – Being a parent can be challenging, especially when it comes to teaching your child how to handle the hard stuff in life. There is a thin line between being overprotective and being overcritical, and often there are situations where doing or saying the right thing seems impossible. In this week’s blog and podcast, I speak with child psychologist and best-selling author Dr. Tina Payne Bryson about why we need to let our children experience negative emotions like anxiety and irritation, how to show up when your child is struggling, common parenting mistakes we all make and how we can avoid them, the importance of modeling behaviors as a parent or guardian, the difference between discipline and punishment, and what it means to take a mind-based approach to parenting. Over the past several decades, more and more research on the mind and brain has shown us that we have a lot more power to change our lives than we ever thought we did, even when it comes to parenting. As Dr. Bryson points out, when we start using our mind to think about the way we interact without children, asking more “why” questions and trying to figure out how to teach our child to regulate their feelings and responses, this can help us avoid common parenting mistakes like: 1. Just focusing on the behavior. One of the biggest mistakes we make as parents is that we focus too much on the behavior of the child and not enough on the mind behind the behavior. We should always be chasing the “why”. We need to investigate what is going on so we can treat the issue correctly; we need to peel the “layers” back. 2. Confusing punishment and discipline. We need to rethink discipline, and recognize that most of the time kids are doing the best they can. When our children are not doing well, then we need to approach the situation with curiosity, not just anger. What is going on? Why are the acting that way or saying those things? A disciplinarian should be a teacher and skill-builder, not a punisher. We shouldn’t punish kids for things they cannot help. The big question is, do they have skills to deal with this situation? What is their behavior telling us? It is important to remember that behaviors communicate the skills they need to learn. We need to stop punishing kids for things they don’t know how to do differently, which only makes them more anxious and upset. When it comes to discipline, we are so focused on behavior that we forget to pay attention to regulation, or what strategies we can teach children so that they can do better next time. Compliance through punishment or rewards does not mean success. Regulation means success—it gets to the “why” behind certain behaviors and teaches the child to cope and builds resilience by addressing the root of their feelings and behavior. 3. Not being on the same page. It is rare that two parents or guardians have an intentional and similar philosophy when it comes to discipline; most parents react in the moment. However, it is important that we take the time to get on the same page when it comes to how we choose to discipline our children. When there is a lot of conflict and confusion, it can undermine a child’s overall happiness. If you are parenting in response to the other parent’s reactions, you are not responding to the needs of the child. That does not mean you need to say and do the exact same thing as your partner or spouse. As Dr. Bryson notes, it is good for kids to learn how to manage different reactions and personalities. On the other hand, it is helpful if you talk to your co-parent about your discipline philosophy and get on the same page in terms of what you want for your kids and what you want your kids to become. This also means facing and dealing with your own childhood experiences. Are you repeating patterns from your own childhood, or trying to do things different without really examining your past experiences and what they mean? How has your childhood impacted you? How is your background affecting your parenting style? What is the mind behind your situation? When you can answer these questions, then you can learn how to resolve issues together as parents. 4. Pathologizing negative emotions and experiences. In our society, we tend to pathologize normal human emotions like grief and sadness, which has made us more fragile. We need to give ourselves and our children permission to feel and be uncomfortable, because life is full of uncertainty and challenges. Indeed, if we try to protect our children from negative emotions like sadness or anxiety, rather than teaching them that this is part of life and building up their resilience, we send them signals that we don’t trust that they can handle the situation, which will undermine their view of themselves and set them up for failure in the future. When your child is struggling, show up in the moment and allow them to feel what they feel. Don’t minimize how they feel, punish them or criticize their experiences. Say things like “I know this is hard” and “we will figure this out together”. Celebrate these feelings; teach your child that these emotions are normal and are telling them that something needs to be addressed in their life. This will help them build up their resilience and teach them how to cope with the ups and downs of life. As Dr. Bryson notes in her book The Power of Showing Up, being present in this way creates a safe environment where the child can learn how to be independent. It is important to remember that kids move towards independence when they feel safe enough to do so. If most of their experiences teach them that they are “safe, seen, soothed and secure”, this will help them build up their mental capacity and resilience, teaching them to cope and soothe themselves and others during hard times. It also affects what they seek out in a relationship, because their repeated experiences have taught them the value of feeling safe and secure in a relationship. This kind of parenting style does not mean that we won’t make mistakes from time to time. As parents, we don’t have to be perfect all the time. We need to look at the big picture: what are the majority of our child’s experiences teaching them? In fact, when we mess up and apologize, this is a good thing! We can model the real life “messiness” of relationships for our children, so the they too can model it in their own relationships. To read the original article click here. For more articles from Dr. Leaf click here.

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Mental Stress and Anger May Worsen Heart Failure

AHA Publisher — Fri, 14 Aug 2020 07:00:18 +0000

Yale University via News-Medical Net – Mental stress and anger may have clinical implications for patients with heart failure according to a new report published in the Journal of Cardiac Failure. Heart failure is a life-threatening cardiovascular disease in which the heart is damaged or weakened. This can lead to a reduced ejection fraction, in which the heart muscle pumps out a lower amount of blood than is typical with each contraction. In this study of patients who had heart failure with reduced ejection fraction, the authors — including researchers at Yale — evaluated the effects of stress and anger on diastolic function. Diastolic function describes the ability of the heart to relax and refill between muscle contractions and is predictive of mortality risk. For one week, participants completed daily questionnaires about their experiences of stress, anger, and negative emotions during the previous 24 hours. Participants then completed a standardized “mental stress” protocol in which they solved challenging arithmetic problems and described a recent stressful experience. Echocardiograms were performed to assess diastolic function at rest and during the stress task. Patients who reported experiencing anger in the week prior to the laboratory mental stress protocol exhibited worse baseline resting diastolic pressure, the researchers said. Furthermore, most patients demonstrated stress-provoked changes in diastolic function, including decreased early relaxation and increased diastolic pressure. “Mental stress is common in patients with heart failure due in part to the complexities of disease self-management, progressively worsening functional limitations, and frequent symptom exacerbations and hospitalizations,” said the lead author Kristie Harris, a postdoctoral associate in cardiovascular medicine at Yale. “We have evidence that patients who experience chronically elevated levels of stress experience a more burdensome disease course with diminished quality of life and increased risk for adverse events. Clarifying the relevant behavioral and physiological pathways is especially important in the era of COVID-19 when the typical stressors of heart failure may be further compounded by pandemic-related stressors,” Harris said. “Factors such as mental stress and anger often go unrecognized and are under-addressed. This study contributes to the extensive literature showing that stress and anger affect clinical outcomes for patients with heart disease, adding chronic heart failure to the list that includes ischemic heart disease (narrowed arteries) and arrhythmic disease.” (Matthew Burg, Yale clinical psychologist and senior author of the study) Burg said that while stress management and related techniques have been shown to reduce risk for adverse events among patients with ischemic heart disease (narrowed arteries), further work is needed to identify factors that increase vulnerability to the effects of stress in heart failure, and to determine whether stress management can improve outcomes for these patients. To read the original article click here.

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