Unfuck Your Brain: Using Science to Get Over Anxiety, Depression, Anger, Freak-outs, and Triggers

by Faith G. Harper

The prefrontal cortex (we’ll call it the PFC), essentially the front part of your brain, is the part that is in charge of executive functioning, which includes problem-solving, goal-oriented behaviors, and managing social interactions according to expectations of what is “appropriate.” Essentially, executive function is just straight up thinking.

There is a region of the PFC called the anterior cingulate cortex. The job of this region is to manage the dialogue between the PFC (think-y brain) and the limbic system (feely-y brain). The ACC manages the convo in the brain between what we know and what we feel…and then make suggestions on what we should do about the whole mess.

In order to think more, we have to feel more. And then take both into account when making decisions. Emotions are just as important for our survival as thoughts.

The amygdala’s function is to manage episodic-autobiographical memory (EAM). Essentially this is the storage of event-based knowledge. Times, locations, people. Not your great-aunt’s banana pudding recipe. Your stories about the world and how it works. The shit that happens to you.

The amygdala’s job is to make sure you don’t forget things that are very important.

Stimulus discrimination is a thinking thing, not an emotions thing. Which means it happens in the prefrontal cortex, and once the brainstem gets into freak-out mode, it’s really hard to get the prefrontal cortex up and running again. But we can do it. And we are going to talk about how we retrain our brain to respond in ways that better suit life as it is now instead of life as it was in the past.

Other Medical or Emotional Symptoms: Stomach upset, trouble eating, only craving foods that are sugary (therefore more comforting to a stressed out body) Trouble falling asleep or staying asleep. Or sleeping a lot but for shit. Either way, feeling fucking exhausted all the time. Not having enough fucks in your pocket to take care of yourself in important ways (exercising, eating healthy foods, getting regular health care, safer sex with chosen partners). Soothing symptoms away with substances (e.g., drugs, alcohol, nicotine use, food) or behaviors (e.g., gambling, shopping, or dumb endorphin-producing shit like playing chicken with trains). Getting sick more frequently, or noticing that chronic physical health issues are getting worse. Anxiety, depression, guilt, edginess, irritability and/or anger. (A HUGE number of mental health diagnoses are really just a trauma response that is not being properly treated, sadly.)

So the easy diagnosis is PTSD. But trauma responses, like I mentioned above, can wear a Halloween mask of other stuff. Depression and anxiety are two big ones. Sometimes trauma responses can even hide themselves as bipolar disorder and schizophrenia.

And yes, behaviors and thinking patterns can TOTALLY have addictive qualities.

Your work will be more about pattern recognition and clarity rather than a deeper rewiring response.

Telling someone what they should be doing, feeling, or thinking, won’t help. Even if you are right. Even if they do what you say…you have just taken away their power to do the work they need to do to take charge of their life. There are limits to how much better they can really be if they are continually rescued by you.

Emotions last longer than 90 seconds because we continue to fuel them with our thoughts. We do this by telling ourselves the same stories about the triggering situation over and over. This is when they stop being emotions and start becoming moods.

We also continue to fuel them with our behaviors. My favorite definition of crazy is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. So

Rumination is a way of insisting on making sense of an experience, but doing it in a nonsensical way. And avoiding is just refusing to acknowledge it at all, at a conscious level. Rumination and avoidance are ways of trying to control our experience, rather than taking it as the information that it is meant to be and finding ways to process through our responses.

Both rumination and avoidance are ways our brain reacts in an attempt to get control back. If I fixate on it, I can figure out a way to keep it from happening again. If I avoid it, I can erase it from existence in the past, present, and future. It feels way safer than remembering something, recognizing it for the event that it was, and then letting it go.

I also found that if you’re able to do the work now, you are far less likely to struggle with chronic mental illness as a result of your trauma, or at least it will be less severe/more manageable.

It is amazing to realize you can feel something and not have it overwhelm you. That right there? That is what taking your power back really means.

Try setting aside five minutes to sit with the anxiety you’re feeling instead of fighting back. All this means is being mindful of your present emotional experience. You can free-write as you are processing. You can practice your breathing. You can do anything other than avoid or distract from the feeling. The point is to retrain yourself that it won’t last forever. You may be this feeling’s bitch for a few minutes, but this is not a permanent state of being.

Amateurs practice until they get it right, experts practice until they can’t get it wrong.

Carnegie Hall is practice, practice, practice. Proving you can do something once is easy, getting so good at it that it becomes your second nature is way harder.

Trying good coping skills out while you are NOT in freak-out mode will make it easier to access them when you are. Having people around you that feel safe to you and that can help prompt you to use your positive coping skills can be invaluable.

All of these mental grounding activities are a way to remind your brain of where you are in the moment and that you have more control than you realize over what is going on inside you when your panic button has been tripped.

Cuddle with your boo. Touching and being touched releases oxytocin. Touch is also good for the heart and the immune system.

Meditation is when you intentionally set aside time to do something that’s good for you. There are all kinds of meditations (prayer, exercise, art, etc.). Mindfulness is both a general awareness of the world (noticing your existence and the existence of everything else around you) AND formal meditation practice. It’s two things, not one. So you can meditate without being particularly mindful and you can be mindful without meditating. But meditation and mindfulness overlap when we do mindfulness meditation, which means that we are setting aside time for that intentional focus on our awareness of the world…which includes the workings of our own mind.

Meditation is the process of quieting ourselves down enough to hear what’s going on inside us.

Speaking to ourselves or something bigger than ourselves about our wants, needs, desires, and intentions. Remember the storytelling brain? Prayer is a natural mechanism of the storytelling brain. Talking through our situation in this manner can be far more powerful than talking to a friend, family member, or therapist. It’s a grounding experience that helps us be more aware of our thoughts, feelings, and behaviors.

When we are stressed we crave sugar like whoa. The brain needs glucose to maintain willpower and energy…which is why dieting is so hard. You are deprived of the glucose you need for willpower. Typically, the more stressed and busy we are, the worse we eat. So it’s a vicious fucking cycle and ridiculously frustrating.

the adrenals (and all other glands) don’t secrete anything until the pituitary gland (in the brain) says so. The adrenals (among others) may play the heavy, but it’s under complete control of the pituitary. They may give the pounding but they didn’t give the order for the pounding. And who does the pituitary take orders from? Boom, back to square one. The brain (specifically, the hypothalamus) is the actual master gland, the head coach. The head coach coordinates with the start quarterback, the pituitary gland, which then calls the plays for the whole rest of the team (hey there, body). The hypothalamus and the pituitary gland control the hormonal system AND the nervous system through their constant convos. All physical body regulation starts back in the brain.

we have to focus on better stress coping so we can manage our business without losing our minds and trashing our bodies.

Anxiety covers a lot of ground: It can be the experience of unease at its most chill. Distress at medium heat. Straight up panic at a full boil.

Anxiety is a state of full body disequilibrium at a level of intensity that demands immediate attention and corrective action on your part. It can be in the face of a real or perceived threat, either present or anticipated.

(http://tinyurl.com/jnubjvx)

Short version: We are wired to have strong emotional responses because those responses keep us alive. Feeling anxious is absolutely an important survival skill. Longer version: If something triggers an anxiety response, your body gets flooded with norepinephrine and cortisol. Here’s what those do: Norepinephrine is released through your central nervous system (Hah! Nervous!) in order to prepare your body (which includes your brain) for action. It increases your focus and attention as well as your blood flow, blood pressure, and heart rate. Cortisol is the classic stress hormone. It increases blood sugar and suppresses the immune system. Many people with chronic stress also gain weight, specifically as “belly fat,” due to the constant cortisol production. The important thing to know here is that when cortisol is released with its partner in crime, norepinephrine, it creates strong memory associations with certain moods, to create warning signals of what you should avoid in the future.

thing? Anxiety means the body is still fighting back. This is fundamentally different from depression, which is essentially a wired response of learned helplessness

Interested in figuring out which way you wire? You can take the Learned Optimism test at http://tinyurl.com/hpwls4m Understanding what makes an optimist gave Seligman an idea. If we can learn helplessness and pessimism, then why can’t we learn optimism and a positive outlook?

anger is an out-movement instinctive response. That makes sense, right? At its core, anger is an instinctive response designed to protect us from harm by pushing us into concerted action.

Anger triggers the fight/flight/freeze response. Feeling some serious fucking anger is a normal part of being a human being. Losing your shit is not. As I tell my clients…you are allowed to BE crazy, but you aren’t allowed to ACT crazy.

Many common health problems (heart disease, high blood pressure, food allergies) as well as many common mental health issues (depression, anxiety, PTSD) are related to a continued heightened response.

Buddhist expression, anger is like holding onto a hot coal and expecting the person we are angry at to get burned.

ANGER is triggered by Hurt Expectations not met Needs not met

“Addiction is any repeated behavior, substance-related or not, in which a person feels compelled to persist, regardless of its negative impact on his life and the lives of others.

Addiction involves: 1. Compulsive engagement with the behavior, a preoccupation with it 2. Impaired control over the behavior 3. Persistence or relapse despite evidence of harm 4. Dissatisfaction, irritability, or intense craving when the object—whether it be a drug, activity, or other goal—is not immediately available.”

Addiction is the domain of the sensitives. The empaths. The people who notice early on what is dark, hidden, and broken in society. We learn that pointing out these discrepancies is grounds for punishment. We are told that good boys and girls don’t notice such things. And if they do, they CERTAINLY don’t talk about it. So we start taking on responsibility for all this shit that is dark and broken. We swallow it down and it starts eating us alive. Everything must be our fault. We clearly aren’t good people. Relationships aren’t safe. The only way to get through is with a mechanism of coping and support.

Figure out your triggers. If you squeeze your eyes shut, you will continue to bump into shit. If you keep your eyes open to the terrain, you can start putting together a map. When you catch yourself doing the thing, ask yourself to retrace what led to it. The HALT acronym is a big one in addiction treatment…am I hungry? Angry? Lonely? Tired? If you pair awareness triggers with accountability for your actions it becomes increasingly hard to stay on the addiction path.

Forgiveness isn’t about them, it’s about how much bullshit you want to carry around with you.

We either win or we learn.

Just like anxiety, depression is related to the biochemistry of stress.

Anxiety is an over-response to stress hormones. It’s the body trying to go into survival mode to protect itself, based on what it thinks to be true. Anxiety is a biochemical over-response to stress. Depression is the body’s way of saying nothing I do is going to help anyway, it all sucks ass no matter what. Depression is a biochemical learned helplessness response to stress. Depression is the body’s way of saying if nothing I do makes any difference, there is no point in enjoying ANYTHING. Robert Sapolsky defines depression as “a genetic-neurochemical disorder requiring a strong environmental trigger whose characteristic manifestation is an inability to appreciate sunsets.” I define it as a clinical case of the fuck-its.

An actual diagnosis of Major Depressive Disorder requires that anhedonia be present every day for at least two weeks. Other symptoms that are also really, really common are: Low energy/fatigue Low level chronic pain Jacked up concentration, difficulty making decisions Feeling guilty and/or worthless Sleeping a ton or sleeping for shit (whether not sleeping at all, or sleeping badly) Feeling either super restless, or really slowed down (like moving underwater or brain wrapped in cotton) Intrusive thoughts of death (morbid ideation) or suicide (suicidal ideation) Change in eating habits (and five percent or more change in weight either up or down because of it) Irritability, anger, low distress tolerance

Trauma Proofing Your Kids by Peter Levine)