Shifting perspectives: understanding your mental health through a biological lens

Your perspective on emotional well-being significantly shapes your actual emotional health. For instance, labeling your condition as "I have depression" may lead you to view your emotional struggles through the lens of disease. This common but oversimplified understanding of mental health, including depression, can hinder effective coping and healing by suggesting that these issues arise in isolation, akin to catching a disease or inheriting it without context. This viewpoint may inadvertently foster feelings of helplessness by stripping the experience of depression of any meaning or reason.

However, a deeper appreciation of how our bodies and nervous systems interact with emotions, thoughts, and behaviors can profoundly alter our self-perception and emotional health. Consider the well-known nervous system responses: fight, flight, or freeze. These automatic reactions to perceived threats impact our physiology and psychology in complex ways, altering everything from blood flow and organ function to thoughts, feelings, and behaviors.

Take the "freeze" response as an example. This reaction, characterized by a metabolic slowdown, is often accompanied by fear, helplessness, detachment, and a reduced capacity for action—symptoms that closely resemble depression. When the freeze response is interrupted and fails to resolve, it can manifest as depressive symptoms, which, though they may seem unrelated to any specific event, actually stem from an incomplete biological reaction to perceived danger. Recognizing these connections can illuminate the meaningful origins of our emotional experiences, offering new paths for understanding and addressing our mental health.

The three pillars of mental health change

Memory, Completion & Mindfulness are the three pillars for deep and lasting change in mental health and the thing that ties them all together is emotions.

Memory

Our brains love to automate tasks to save energy. But sometimes, in tough situations like trauma, the solutions we learn aren't really solutions at all. Instead, we cope to get through. While coping helps us survive, it doesn't fix things. Our brains then remember this coping as the solution. So, when similar situations arise, our brains automatically activate this coping mechanism. This means we feel and react the same way we did during the trauma. Luckily, memories can change. By recalling and feeling them, they change back into a form where we can alter how they affect us*. This is crucial for changing trauma reactions, whether from past hurts or sudden shocks.

Completion

When we feel threatened, our instincts kick in with fight, flight, or freeze responses. But often, these responses don't get a chance to finish. All that energy gets stuck in our bodies, waiting to be released. Releasing this pent-up energy is essential for our nervous system to regain its balance. This can lead to improvements in anxiety and depression.

Mindfulness

Mindfulness helps us distinguish between the present and the past. It allows us to observe tension without reacting impulsively. By practicing mindfulness, we can slow down and become our best selves. This skill improves with practice and repetition.

Emotions tie all these elements together. They start as physical sensations and evolve into conscious feelings like fear, joy, or anger. Emotions tell us how important a moment is for survival and give us insight into our current state of being.

In conclusion, memory, completion, and mindfulness are vital for deep and lasting change in mental health. By understanding and working with our emotions, we can unlock new levels of well-being and resilience.

*This process is called Memory Reconsolidation and it became known widely from the lab of the famous neuroscientist Joseph Le Doux It was his student Karim Nader who discovered this.

The Hidden Link to Mental Health: Memories and Your Body's Response

When we talk about mental health, we often focus on things like taking care of ourselves and finding ways to cope with stress. But there's a deeper issue that we don't always address: our memories and how they affect us.

Imagine you're in a situation that makes you feel threatened, whether it's something scary or just really stressful. Your natural instinct is to feel safe, but sometimes that feeling of safety doesn't come easily. So, your body and mind kick in to help you cope. They basically try to make you less aware of how upset you are, so you can deal with the situation without feeling overwhelmed.

But here's the catch: even though you might feel better for a while, those feelings of threat stick around in your body. You might notice physical signs like a tight chest or tense muscles, and those uncomfortable feelings can hang around, even when the threat is gone.

This constant state of stress takes a lot of energy and can make you feel exhausted. It can also lead to long-term issues like depression or anxiety. And sometimes, it's hard to understand why you feel the way you do, which can be really confusing.

The key to feeling better isn't just about changing your mindset or talking about abstract ideas like ego. It's about dealing with those memories and helping your body finish its response to the threat. This means acknowledging how you feel physically and emotionally, and making sense of what you've been through.

By taking this approach, you can start to break free from the grip of past traumas and move towards a happier, healthier life. Healing isn't just about fixing your thoughts – it's about reconnecting with yourself and finding peace in both your body and mind.