More often now, I find myself explaining the way anxiety and depression affect the brain’s function. My clients who are scientist or engineers, or are ‘digital natives’, find the language of neuroscience makes sense to them. We have so many more sophisticated ways now to see how the brain and the nervous system process things. Not long ago CT scans of the brain were less common; now scientists can tell us how an imbalance of our limbic system or the misfiring of our frontal lobes can lead to stress and illness.
There is still so much stigma about mental illness; I have heard about family members who act as if their loved one is contagious, or believe they are unwilling to get better. Some clients have tremendous shame about having chronic depression that they cannot seem to shake. To know that depression is part of a chemical imbalance in the brain, can take away the moralistic and judgmental attitudes of the past. Psychology and Neuroscience confirm that one’s mental state is a combination of one’s genetics, individuality, and environmental experiences. This can help explain what we do not have control over.
Your inner environment might look like a solar storm to a CT scan; every few seconds another wash of peptides (“Molecules of Emotion”, as Candace Pert called them) surge through, and your neurotransmitters are firing off information to all areas of the brain. Did you know that as well as your thoughts whirling through every few seconds, your emotions are constantly changing too? Meanwhile, your prefrontal cortex is acting as though it’s always rationally in charge; but you cannot cut your brain off from your body messages, and it is more likely that your emotions are running the show!
Sometimes your emotional processing is so unbalanced that you need medication to help reset the chemistry. But also since you have some volition and choice about what you pay attention to, you can retrain your neural pathways with various therapies. Research has shown that the best prognosis for recovering from a recurring depression is a suitable antidepressant and psychotherapy. Anxiety can be managed by mindfulness of negative thought patterns combined with learning relaxation in the body and trying different behavioral approaches. You need to make friends with your Parasympathetic nervous system again.
In a world where folks burn out their adrenals and disrupt their endocrine systems by living too much in the Sympathetic nervous systems, (“Fight, fight, freeze or faint”) it is important to educate yourself about how to manage your brain more effectively. Connecting the mind and the body through Somatic Processing and Movement therapy, and having language to understand the various areas of the brains function, can really help demystify your incredible, malleable brain. Contact me for resources.
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