RECLAIM (WEEK 3)
DAY 21: SELF REFLECTION
On Day 21 of your workbook identify what gets your blood boiling and where your “window of tolerance” lies.
DAY 21 MICRO-SCIENCE
Name It to Tame It
Your emotional mind wants to be taken seriously and needs to be acknowledged in order to calm down. The way this becomes possible in the brain is when you put a label on an emotion by activating the language dominant left hemisphere of your mind. When a label is put on an emotion the right hemisphere feels like its done its job and starts to quiet down. This is one reason why psychotherapy is so effective because it allows the client to step back, name the problem, and identify what they are going to do about it.
- FACT: People who can accurately report what emotions people are feeling during a face recognition task, report drastically lower levels of lifetime anxiety
- TAKEAWAY: Emotional intelligence is a real thing and will increase your overall life satisfaction and quality of interpersonal relationships
DAY 21 MEDITATION
Stop and Smell the Garbage
New age mindfulness is really just old buddhist techniques repackaged to be more appealing to a western audience. Mindfulness practices really started out with a bunch of monks sitting around contemplating “vile” things, such as decomposing bodies and sewage. The point, at the time, was to help monks be more accepting of the underbelly of life and not run away from life’s downsides. Today, mindfulness is all about looking at the positive and taking the time to see what’s great in the world. While this is a great objective, this is not where mindfulness all started.
- FACT: Focusing on a stressor moves brain activity away from the rumination centers and towards the visual processing areas of the brain, therefore decreasing ratings of personal distress.
- TAKEAWAY: When you ignore or deny a stressor it actually creates a stronger hold on you. Focusing on or moving closer to a stressor helps you to better understand it and make changes that lessen your reported levels of stress.
DAY 21 MEDITATION
For today’s meditation pull out the trash can in your kitchen; hopefully it’s borderline gross but not downright repulsive. Then take a good look. I’m not saying put your head into it, just set the timer for three minutes and see if you can turn off your emotional response and accept that even “trash” is part of life. It may take a minute or two but hopefully it will help put things in perspective and you won’t be so quick next time to run from “uncomfortable” feelings.
DAY 21 MOVEMENT
Immune Neglect
The brain can be a real pain in the ass sometimes. When a problem hits, our brains tend to go to the worst case scenario. When making this simulation, however, the brain fails to factor in our natural coping skills that will make the outcomes much different than we imagine. This evolutionary hiccup in the brain is called “immune neglect” because humans have a tendency to only imagine the negative effects of a problem without acknowledging our already established coping skills that will make most problems manageable. For instance, it’s pretty normal to freak out when you’re told that a test you thought was two weeks in the future is actually happening this Thursday. However, once you take a deep breath(coping skill) or go for a run (coping skill) the problem dissipates and you come up with a plan of attack. Forgetting your coping skills exist, however, is pretty common and causes a lot of us to over react.
- FACT: An anticipated stressor that hasn’t happened yet or may not happen at all is still registered in the thalamus (stress chemical distribution) and amygdala (fear center) as currently happening.
- TAKEAWAY: Your brain will react to an anticipated stressor as if it’s already happening to prepare you for action.
DAY 21 MOVEMENT
Today’s action task is to make a list of your top five to ten coping skills (I.e running, talking to my friend Lewis, walk outside, or yoga). Save this list someplace, either on your phone or someplace you can easily access. Try to remember to check the list when your mind is in a frenzy and you forget which way is up. Hopefully a tangible document of your coping skills will remind you that you have gotten through hard things before and can do so again.