Stress Brain
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What are three good reasons to relax and quiet your mind every day? The average person thinks over 6000 thoughts per day (Tseng & Poppenk, 2020). If you get 8 hours of sleep each night, that means in 16 awake hours, you think more than 375 thoughts every hour. Many of those thoughts are negative and repetitive. Your thoughts can be causing you stress.
In A Clinical Guide to Information about the Brain and Stress (4th edition), Everly and Lating (2019) suggested the brain has three attributes that correlate to stress.
1. The brain has a natural inclination toward negativity. It tends to give precedence to bad news, shaping our expectations for the future. If you think the future looks bleak, your actions may follow suit, leading to a pessimistic future. By understanding this tendency, you can become more aware and in control of your thoughts and actions.
2. The brain wants to worry. The undisciplined mind will obsess about problems. A worried, ruminating brain is like a hamster on a wheel, circling the same worrisome thought. Thought patterns can become neurologically reinforced through repetition, which contributes to anxiety.
3. The brain is wired for laziness. It’s easier to respond with emotional intuition than logical evaluation. Stress consumes a lot of energy, and a stressed mind is likelier to lean into emotional, intuitive responses because they require less energy when the mind is already low on resources.
It is a good idea to learn how to relax and quiet your mind every day and take a break from stressful, repetitive negative thoughts that can fuel pessimistic emotional responses. Relaxation as a stress intervention is not all that is needed. Relaxing and quieting the mind through sound meditation provides relief. But it is also crucial to cultivate positive thinking. Coaching helps develop a positive mindset. A positive mindset not only encourages elevated emotions but also motivates and instills hope. Relaxing and quieting your thoughts and disciplining your mind towards positive thoughts and emotions fosters motivation and hope.
References
Everly, G. S., & Lating, J. M. (2019). Advances in neuroscience: Implication for stress. In A Clinical Guide to the Treatment of the Human Stress Response. Springer.
Tseng, J., & Poppenk, J. (2020). Brain meta-state transitions demarcate thoughts across task contexts exposing the mental noise of trait neuroticism. Nature Communications, 11(1), 3480–3480. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-020-17255-9
Video: Stress Brain
Stress Brain
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