Week 8

Every week just keeps getting betting in the things I am learning. This week we talked a lot about stress and the fight, flight, freeze response. 

To start off we talked about how we don't value stress enough, and what it does for our bodies not only physically by psychologically. Typically when we think of stress we think of distress, and super negative experiences. However, there is good stress (Eustress) which effects you in a positive way. In order to survive we need to have a good balance of both. 

There is also external stress and internal stress. External stress is stress that is caused by something or someone physical. Internal stress is often mental and is caused by something mental/emotional. We looked at some studies done on people during times of crisis and how they reacted/ what happened to them. If the situation was just a stressor then the family would bounce back just fine. However, if the situation was a crisis then it would change the family. Crisis is something that will necessitate change in a family or a person.

The Chinese symbol for Crisis is the symbol for danger and opportunity. 

Stress is good for us. Some examples are: Astronauts. When in space there is no stress on their bones and muscles from earths gravity, so their bones and muscles literally deteriorate. In order to combat that they have machines they use to cause stress on their muscles and bones. The principles happens for body builders. In order to gain muscles you have to challenge/stress your muscles in order to grow. 

Stressful situations are hard, but often they are what bring us together as human beings. If you like to go camping it is not just because you get to be out in nature. You have to work for everything you've got. That is why food tastes good while camping it has to do with the effort put in, and the people who brought it all together. 

A psychologist was very interested in the effects of crisis and stress on families and came up with a model that formats the outcomes of how well a family/person will bounce back from situations.

ABCX model

1. Actual stressor event

2. Both resources, and responses (the way they applied the resources)

Resources: (extended family, Community(food and food storage, shelter, jobs), church, social welfare programs, money, )

Two families may have the same resources but not apply them the same

3. Cognitions (the way we define/think about our problem)

Permanent vs temporary 

“Why!?” Vs “That’s okay/why not”

As soon as you perceive something your brain thinks it is real.

—----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

      X.   Total Experience 

When you plug the situation into the formula you can almost always show how the family will recover. Which lead into the next thing that we talked about which I found very fascinating. Anxiety and why we even have it in the first place.

In order to understand anxiety we have to understand how the brain works.

Frontal lobe

• Higher reasoning

• Problem solving

• Decision making

• Creative 

Limbic system

• Sometimes called the mammal brain

• The brains auto pilot that takes over in crisis

• Fight or flight response

• Emotional

• Anxiety is a normal, natural, and healthy response to perceptions of dangers. It isn’t a disorder. It is natural. Depression is what our response is when we loose all hope about escaping the danger.

Brains stem

• Sometimes called the lizard brain

• Regulates metabolic responses (heart rate, breathing, digestion, blood pressure, circadian rhythms, etc...)

• Blood pressure goes up it makes your reflexes stronger. Turns up the speed of reaction. 

  Blood pressure goes down slows down. Light headed, tingling sensations in fingers and toes, helps to not bleed out, Freeze response.

All of these things play a part in how we respond to things. When we are in situations that are perceived as dangerous our limbic system turns on and takes control. Our reasoning and conscious decision making goes out the door because our frontal lobe it now turned off. Our heart rate increases and we go into our fight or flight response. The only thing you can think about when the limbic system is activated is the potential danger detected and/or how to get away from the danger.  This is called Anxiety. Anxiety is the limbic system taking control.

When people have lets say General Anxiety Disorder they really just have a problem with interpreting a lot of things as dangerous then triggering the limbic system to activate. Which luckily can be treated with the power of our mind. The greatest way to overcome fear is to face it, and to think calmly through it. When we introduce a calm thought to the situation to evaluate, our brain then starts to let the frontal lobe take control again. It is a gradual thing, but with practice we can literally treat anxiety and help it to go away and not be triggered by all of these things. 

Lets say you were hiking in the mountains and you're chatting to your buddy about the girl/boy you like in your class. Then all of the sudden a bear walks onto the trail you both are. What happens? You immediately freeze, your heart rate goes up, your digestion stops, your blood pressure either increases or decreases, your breathing increases (causing more oxygen to get into your blood which helps with reaction time), and you are no longer thinking about your crush. That is because the limbic system has activated and your frontal lobe is no longer on. You are then on edge for the rest of your trip back to your car. (limbic system is still on for a while....the on edge feeling is the limbic system)

Now lets fast forward a couple of weeks and you are on another hike with a friend and you hear rustling in the bushes. Immediately you stop and your heart starts racing because you are anticipating another bear. All of those same symptoms come again. Then a bunny comes out of the bush. Your brain goes...oh what a relief! Your frontal lobe is able to be a little active again. The reason why that happened was something called a learned response. Which means your brain stored that experience with the bear in order to prepare you for if it happens again as a protective reaction. That way you won't have to think, you can just act. The same thing happens with situations causing anxiety. What would have happened if the bunny didn't come out, and you just ran for your lives. You would probably never want to go on another hike again and have an irrational fear of bears. However because "you faced your fear" by having the rabbit come out, it no longer has that learned response.

As soon as you perceive something as real your brain believes it. If you perceive this one this will cause danger, your brain believes it. However, with the power of our minds we can choose what we think. When we change how we perceive things it changes how we act and behave. We can literally change if we have an anxiety response or not, and if we do have anxiety we can realize that it is completely normal. It is literally built into us as a protective mechanism. It isn't that we are wrong in the head.

This goes into the gospel of Jesus Christ. He teaches us to watch our thoughts and our actions. He teaches us to become our own masters. He mastered being in control of his own brain and that is incredible to me. Going off of that the next day we talked about this very thing. How to recognize and regulate our thoughts, actions, and emotions. (cognitive thinking). I have never believed the saying "Mind over Matter" more in my life until right now!! 

He showed us something called the Daily Mood Log invented by David Burns a psychologist. It shows us how to recognize our thoughts when they are being truthful and when they are being distorted and how that effects our emotions.

Events, feelings, and thoughts are all separate and different. Sometimes a thought is just a thoughts, and sometimes a feeling is just a feeling. How this works is you list the event that is troubling you. then you circle all of the feelings that you are feeling and what percentage out of 100 you are feeling them. Then you write the negative thoughts you are having and write on the percentage how much you believe those thoughts. Then you go down to the bottom and look over the checklist of cognitive distortions and see if your thoughts have any distortions in them. You list which ones it has, and then to the right of it on the positive thoughts you have to come up with a statement that is 100% true. Then after that you go back through and write down how much you feel the emotions that you were feeling, and how much you believe those thoughts you were telling yourself. Then you rate yourself on how much you believe the new statement/thought. 

The results were incredible. We practiced in class and always want to use this now, because it helps me regulate my own emotions, and also recognize when I might not be thinking the complete truth. My teacher said that everyone he has ever used this with especially to treat major depression has gotten better. Not only gotten better, but rapidly too. It helps eliminate those distortions and tell ourselves truth. Remember whatever we tell our brains we will believe. You could say our brains are very gullible. So if we think positively our brain will believe it. If we believe there is hope, we will believe it. That is why these principles are so powerful. That is why the principles of the Gospel of Jesus Christ are so encouraging and empowering. They are absolute truth! Absolute truth gives us power. Power over our bodies, and minds. Power to overcome anything that life throws at us! Who wouldn't want that?