Fighting Stress with Neuroscience

Rayngler · Aug 11, 2018

It's 7:45am and you are finally relieved by the oncoming day shift as you pick up your starved, sleep deprived scrapped together body who now must face the woes of the morning hour traffic on your way to your beloved bed. All you can think about is grabbing a few McDonald's sausage biscuits and carb crash into eternity for several hours. You get home, open snapchat and see your night shift coworker entering a yoga studio with hash tags saying something about meditation, being organic, or something about Jamba Juice. Just before your tension filled face hits the pillow, you feel a tinge of envy that you cannot be that coworker right now who just seems to have it all together.

Is it even possible to be this person of envy? How do you get there? Where do you even start? The truth is, Jamba Juice girl has her own problems and anxieties that you aren't seeing on snapchat. But at least she is doing something about her daily struggles that we all endure. There is no "magic cure" to reducing stress. We have set ways that we are unaware of to guide us to a more stress free life, we just have to walk those avenues to find them. For some, its yoga and a smoothie. For others, it's simply driving with the windows down or going for a nature walk. So which one do we choose? Well, here are a few proven science backed methods to rev up your amazing resiliency building machine in your brain.

Mindfulness

Mindfulness has gained lots of traction recently and for one good reason, it works. Mindfulness is essentially a type of meditation that allows a person to simple be aware when done correctly. There are no fancy mantras, positioning or clothing. Mindfulness is being aware of the sensations that you see, hear and feel around you. We take for granted the sounds of the air conditioning, bird chirping, or the texture of a keyboard beneath your fingers. All these play into a person being wholly present in a given moment. If a person focuses on these sensations, the mind no longer wonders to the fears that are often not based in reality.

It's natural for our brains to come up with stuff that bother us, it's what it does. But when I am in an anxious state and my brain decides to bring up that one time in eighth grade 15 years ago when Sarah Anderson rejected me, does not mean it's a healthy response. We know that the amygdala plays a role in fear and stress response. We also know that by reducing stress, we can actually change the structure of the amygdala itself, therefore changing our stress response-incredible! Take that Sarah, you have no power over me. When these types of thoughts do occur, mindfulness can teach us to bring it forthright in our minds, but just recognize it as a thought and only a thought-nothing more. The thought has not power of you and therefore is not worth being anxious about. This is when you focus back to the sensations around you.

Power-Posing

This sounds silly and is pretty much what you are imagining it is but is a personal favorite. I learned about this one in college while getting my degree in neuroscience. It's actually a TedTalk and totally worth checking out. The study had participants perform a powerful pose such as standing with arms raised as if you had just crossed a finish line and another group do a more timid pose with arms closer to chest and hunched over. The power posers (Cue Richard Simmons dancing) showed a large decrease in cortisol and an increase in testosterone compared to the timid folks. This means that the stress hormone decreased and gave the participants more confidence. They only struck the pose for one minute, that's nothing. I personally did this before my shifts on the psychiatric ICU and even speeches, and feel it helps tremendously.

Affect-Labeling

This one is fairly new to western culture but promising and also just as easy as power-posing because all you need is a pen. It's been around for ages with those old school philosophers with the killer beards. Anytime you feel an emotion filled with anxiety or fear, write one word down that describes that emotion. This method seems to affect the fear pathway in our brains that involve that pesky amygdala again. Researchers believe it allows our brains to actually "see" the fear rather than just imagining it. We can face it and be comfortable with it. Combined with mindfulness, this is a useful tool.

Overall, you have to choose what you think works best for you. Your work is not your life and your life does not just start when your workday ends. We need to learn to be comfortable no matter where we are during the day. It is no easy task, but our brain does respond to certain methods that have been proven to work. So grab a pen, strike a pose, and listen to those annoying birds and appreciate them in the moment. I am not paid by Jamba Juice for this article. Cheers.