How Stress and Our Emotions are Connected

Last week I talked about stress and the fight/flight state, how to identify the signs of the state and how to neutralize the negative reactions associated with it.

But, there’s more to think about – namely, humans have an emotional response to everything that happens to them.

Every second of every day, we respond both mentally and emotionally to everything that happens to us. Here is why: everything that happens is processed in the subcortical part of the brain (also known as the limbic system or stream of emotion). Everyone responds in this way; it’s the way humans are wired.

At the base of the subcortical part of your brain is the hypothalamus. The hypothalamus governs the Autonomic Nervous System (fight/flight response) and basic functions of the body. It also controls sympathetic firing – whether or not you go into that fight/flight state.

So an event happens – let’s say a driver runs a red light and narrowly avoids hitting you. Your reaction is processed in the emotional part of the brain. As you silently (or not) curse the other driver’s carelessness your brain is busy. Chances are you found the incident stressful. Your hypothalamus reacts, you go into the fight/flight state and your hands get cold (remember if your hands are cold - and you’re not outside in very cold weather or have a medical condition that causes it - then you are in the fight/flight state).

The above is an obvious example of how you respond emotionally to events. But we also respond emotionally when we are stuck in traffic or grocery lines that are too long – or when we wake up in the morning and realize that our “to do” list is longer than we have time for. Remember we have a mental and emotional response to everything that we encounter.

Reversing the fight/flight state isn’t difficult if you practice self-calming techniques (please see last week’s blog for some simple techniques).

Be aware that there are thousands of different relaxation/meditation techniques. Some will work better for you than others. However, deep breathing is the basis of any relaxation or meditation technique. A good basic book on the subject is called “The Relaxation Response” by Herbert Benson M.D. To read further, go to http://www.massgeneral.org/bhi/basics/rr.aspx.

Next week I’m going write about how stress affects your memory.

Taking a Tiger by the Tail

Human brains are hard-wired to survive in jungles and grasslands. The Autonomic Nervous System (ANS), which is part of the Peripheral Nervous System, is designed to handle acute stress - such as a tiger trying to eat us for dinner. We meet the tiger and either fight, get away, or get eaten. One way or another, the stress is over in a few minutes.

If we  meet a tiger occasionally, our brains can handle the associated stress (if we get the recovery time). However, our bodies are not built to have tigers on our doorsteps for days, weeks, or months. When this happens, our bodies break down.

When you meet a tiger, your brain puts your body into a fight/flight state. The fight/flight state can be recognized if you know what to look for. Why look? Because, if you can train yourself to reverse the state, you can decrease the stress on your body.

Symptoms of the fight/flight state include:

Exercise: Even a 10-15 minute brisk walk can have an effect comparable to a tranquillizer.

Relaxation response: There are many techniques that can help you relax, and this “deep relaxation” makes a great contribution to rebuilding your resources.

Self talk: Say calming and reassuring things to yourself.

Calming imagery: Imagining yourself in a situation in which you would be calm.

Listen to calming recordings, music or voice.

Connecting with the energy of calming people. When stressed, try to be around people who help you rebuild your resources and avoid those who make things worse.

Go into predictable calming routines, e.g. something habitual that you love to do.

• Pupils dilate to let more light in
• Air pathways dilate to let more air into the lungs
• Saliva becomes sticky so it doesn’t flow into the lungs
• Blood vessels in the skin constrict so the blood can coagulate, therefore your hands and feet get very cold.
• Blood leaves the intestines and goes to the skeletal muscles to prepare you to fight or flee for your life.
• Heart pumps and blood pressure rises
• Breathing becomes shallow
• Palms of hands become sweaty

One of the ten facets of resilience is the ability to self-calm. If you can identify the symptoms of stress and learn self-calming techniques, you will be able to reverse the fight/flight response and recover quickly from stressors.

Some of the best ways to self-calm and replenish yourself:

Are You Resilient?

Do you ever wonder why some people keep their cool, bounce back and recover quickly in the face of criticism, daily hassles and major life changes?

What do they have in common?

What makes them truly great at what they do, at how they handle life?
They are resilient

Resilience is what great minds have in common; it is the differentiator between good and great, the human variance that allows some to achieve enduring success. It is the new mandate for personal success.

For the next ten weeks, I’m going to share some resilience tips with you. In this series you will learn applicable, daily exercises to help you achieve resilience and greater personal balance, enhance creativity, increase effectiveness on the job and in personal relationships, and attain greater physical health.

What can you expect to gain by improving your resilience?
You will:

• Think more clearly
• Concentrate more easily
• Become more intuitive – better able to trust your gut
• Feel more committed and in control of your life
• Feel more in control of your emotions
• Feel less critical of yourself and others
• Find more meaning in your life experiences
• Be hopeful
• Become more optimistic
• Be happier
• Have more fun
• Be able to handle anything that comes your way
  
  Stay tuned – more to come next week!
  
  Moira
  

Nutrition Programs for Parents and Children Living with Type I Diabetes

Turning Point has always strived to meet community needs while not duplicating the services of other organizations. Recently a group of mothers in a coffee klatch reached out to Turning Point to gain additional resources, support and knowledge. These mothers all have something in common. They all have a child with Type I Diabetes. Turning Point was invited to attend the coffee klatch and from then on there has been a flurry of ideas that have transformed into programming for children and families affected by Type I Diabetes.
Diabetes is not the only common denominator between these families. These parents possess knowledge, the innate ability to advocate for their children and a desire to learn more about managing their disease - Turning Point is happy to help foster these traits.
Turning Point now offers monthly nutrition based programs facilitated by Nan Borchardt, RD, LD, CDE, and Medical Biochemist. In addition to all the letters behind her name Nan also wears the hat of someone living with Type I diabetes for the past 44 years. As a result, the parents attending these programs are able to explore ideas through the personal and professional experience of the facilitator. Comments from participants include: "Great, real world info"; "I am new to Type I nutritional needs that are this intense - this is a must have class for all parents!"; "I learned more in these two hours than I have in the past 5 years! Nan = AWESOME!!!"
We are also excited to be offering "Kids Cooking up Fun", for the children with Type I Diabetes. This is a summer series in which children will have the opportunity to participate in hands-on cooking. The program is facilitated by Leslie Stullken, a healthy eating food coach and owner of My Healthy Table. Kids will create fresh, seasonal recipes that meet their nutritional needs but, most importantly, kids will be in a supportive environment surrounded by their peers.
If you are a parent of a child with Type I Diabetes, consider registering for some of these upcoming programs. See the programs listed in our Community Calendar (on our website) and give us a call to register.

MULTIPLE SCLEROSIS OPEN HOUSE

Turning Point is pleased to highlight our programming for people living with MS at an MS Open House on Thursday, July 23 from 4:30 to 7:30 pm. Informal tours of Turning Point’s comfortable living room and group rooms will be available and light refreshments will be served. Wendy Booker, our featured speaker, will offer her presentation from 6:00 to 7:00 pm. A bit about Wendy:
In June of 1998, the mother of three was diagnosed with relapsing-remitting MS (RRMS) after experiencing balance problems, blurred vision and numbness on her left side. With her sights set high, Wendy committed to a healthy diet, exercise and drug therapy in an effort to one day complete her conquest with the summit of Mt. Everest, the highest mountain in the world.
Wendy believes that, by leading through example, she may eventually inspire others to also take charge of their own obstacles head on. In 2004 Wendy became the first woman with MS to ever conquer the 20,320-foot summit of Mt. McKinley and proved to the world that her disease would not keep her from living her dreams. Wendy relates her experience of scaling Mt. McKinley, saying that it typified her experience with MS; "it’s hard, it’s steep, it’s scary, we don’t always get to the top (and sometimes) we have to do things more than once."
To date, Wendy has scaled 6 mountains and hopes to complete her mission of the seven summits in 2009 with Mt. Everest. Since her diagnosis, Wendy has also participated in nine marathons and has served as captain of the Marathon Strides Against MS team for the Boston-Area National MS Society.
Today, Wendy travels frequently to share her inspirational personal story with others living with MS and is a testament to the power of positive attitude and determination.
Turning Point is grateful to Teva Neuroscience for making this MS Open House, Wendy’s presentation and the MS programming that Turning Point offers possible. See our Community Calendar on our website for upcoming MS programs.

News You Can Use: Increasing Resilience through Relaxation and Meditation

One of the ways you can train resilience and increase performance is through learning and practicing relaxation or meditation techniques.

There are four different brainwave states that we experience. The beta brainwave state is our cognitive, thinking state. Alpha waves are the daydream like state. We are most likely in the alpha state when we are relaxing, staring out the window, visualizing or participating in a more active kind of meditation. The theta brainwave state is that place in between sleep and awake. It is that spontaneous, dreamlike state, also called the reverie state. It is the state that meditators are looking for. And, the delta brainwave state is when we are asleep.

If you watched Jill Bolte-Taylor’s video (mentioned in my last blog), she describes the right brain state. We access the right brain when we are in the reverie state. We are also accessing the limbic system, or emotional brain which only speaks to us in the form of images. This is where our dream images come from. This is also why we experience dreamlike images when we are meditating. It is a state of “knowing” not thinking (the left brain thinks, the right brain knows). Complex understandings can be grasped, worries are relieved and healing messages are sent to the body. We lose our “ego” and the true self is revealed. This is the state that keeps meditators coming back for more. You are accessing the emotional part of the brain (the limbic system) where you may experience feelings of bliss or have powerful, emotional experiences.

This deep meditative state is a very powerful, restorative state. Endorphins are found in high concentration in the limbic system (emotional brain). When endorphins are released they kill pain and cause euphoria. Accessing the limbic system also releases polypeptides (stored energy) which energizes the immune cells and helps them replicate to attack invaders.

This deep meditative state also connects us to our higher self. Have you ever been working on a difficult problem or situation only to find the answer in a dream? Or as you are waking up or falling asleep? Complex understandings are brought to consciousness, things we don’t realize we know come to mind. These messages come from our deep unconscious mind. We access this state to create art, music, any right brain activity.

If we stop and listen and allow the “self” to speak, we learn so much about ourselves and others. Our intuition is heightened and we become more in tuned with what is going on inside of us and around us. If someone is searching for their life purpose, fulfillment, or new and different ways to view their world, this is the state to strive for.

The following exercises are first steps to deeper meditation. For many people who are just starting, it is difficult to practice the longer, deeper relaxation exercises. Try these exercises for a few weeks and next time I will talk about deeper relaxation exercises.

Brief Relaxation Technique
· Take a deep breath and exhale while mentally saying “reeeelaaax”. Do this several times. You can do this while you are talking with someone, walking, waiting in line.
· Say to yourself, “A wave of relaxation is passing from the top of my head to the tips of my toes”. Picture the wave of relaxation as it progresses.
· Check for bodily tension and tell tense body parts to “reeelaaax” as you exhale.

Brief Relaxation Technique
· As you breathe deeply, imagine that you are breathing in and out from your heart
· Now imagine someone or something that you really appreciate, picturing all the details, who/what, where you are, etc.
· Then go back to breathing in and out through your heart

Using Brief Relaxations
· Identify cues that remind you to do brief relaxations. Examples of cues could include a ringing phone, when you have to stop for a red light or when something distressing occurs. Or, put a sticker or dot on your mirror, refrigerator, etc. to remind you to take deep breaths or do a quick visualization.
· Remember to think something like “That’s my cue to do a brief relaxation” whenever the cues occur.
· Practice many brief relaxations each day.

News You Can Use: Your Emotional Brain

In Turning Point’s Using the Mind class, we talk a lot about the mind, brain and emotions. The next time we offer the class, I will be adding some additional information on neuroplasticity and the brain – so for those of you who have taken it before, it is new and improved. But for now, I will give you a short lesson on the emotional part of your brain.

Did you know that for every outside event that you experience, you have a mental and emotional response? Every second of every day, you are responding mentally and emotionally to everything that is happening to you. Here is why: everything that happens is processed in the subcortical part of the brain, also known as the limbic system or stream of emotion. There is nothing you can do about this; it is the way you are wired. The only way around it is if you were somehow disconnected from that part of your brain.

We also know from research done by J.W. Papez, that the brain can be separated into three sections. The stream of cognition governs your intellectual functioning; the stream of emotion governs your emotional functioning; and the stream of motion governs your movement and speech.

The three sections are not very well connected to each other. In essence, there is a lot of communication within each section, but not much between each section. For instance, let’s say you decide to go on a diet. You know all of the intellectual reasons why you should diet - so you start with a healthy breakfast, lunch and dinner and then at 10:00 at night, you eat a pan of brownies or bag of potato chips. You think to yourself, “I know I need to do this, why can’t I make myself diet!” What has happened is that your stream of cognition decided you need to do this, but your stream of emotion said “No, I’m not dieting”. And guess which part of your brain is more powerful? The stream of emotion.

So, how do you deal with this? You need to get the stream of cognition and stream of emotion on the same path. And how do you get the stream of emotion agreeing with the stream of cognition? Through right brain activity. Right brain activity is the only way to access the emotional part of your brain.

Some of the best right brain ways to access the emotional part of your brain:

· Relaxation response: There are many techniques that can help you relax, and this “deep relaxation” is great for accessing your stream of emotion. To read further, go to www.mbmi.org/benson or check in next time and I will walk you through the process.
· Repetitive prayer – the repetition of a simple prayer over and over.
· Repetitive physical exercise – running, elliptical, treadmill, etc.
· Mindfulness meditation – Jon Kabat-Zin or Jack Kornfield.
· Breathing techniques – Thousands to choose from!
· Self talk: The repetition of simple language over and over again. More on this later.
· Imagery: Imagining yourself reaching your goals, picturing everything exactly as you would like to be.
· Listen to calming recordings, music or voice.

For a wonderful description of how the right brain functions, I recommend viewing a video of a scientist named Jill Bolte Taylor. Go to www.ted.com/talks/view/id/229 - it is worth the 18 minutes!

See you next time.

Moira