Have you ever heard the saying ” Thats just the way you are” Sometimes these messages can be conveyed to us when we are younger ” Oh Mary was always the quiet one, she will never be able to shine like her sister” Not so long ago it was believed that when a child reached a certain age, their brain ceased developing and their character traits, and strenghts were largely fixed. ” Show me the child and I will show you the adult”
But this is not the case. Research in the area of neuroscience has revealed that what we think and feel actually changes the makeup of our brains. The term neuropasticity is an umbrella term to describe the ability for the brain to change. Studies are now showing that the brain is plastic enough to change not only during childhood, but throughout the course of a lifetime.
This gives us hope for those who believe that they have been born with a certain personality and limitations with no possibility of change. There is real potential, therefore, to harnass neuroplasticity, to change how you respond emotionally to the ups and downs of life or deal with whatever bumps in the road you encounter.
Professor Bruce McEwan, a Professor of Neuroscience has carried out investigate work into how the brain is affacted by stress. He found that nerve cells in a part of the brain called the amygydala, or the emotional centre of the brain, fires up when it detects threat or danger. It signals the release of hormones including cortisol. these hormones have a distructive effect on the thinking part of our brains, the hypothalmus. This is one neurological explanaion of the phenomen of people freezing under stress unable to make good decisions. But when the stress is turned off and people are given time away then the neurons will return back to normal. Scientists have discovered that the left hemisphere of the brain is associated with positive emotions and behaviour, while the right hemisphere is associated with negative emotions, avoidance and withdrawal behaviour. Those individuals affected by tragedy or trauma reside mainly in their emotional part of their brains impairing their abilities to thrive in life.
It affects our physical health when we are stuck in the emotional part of the brain, in fact it is often our bodies which tell us first that we are suffering even when we are not listening to what our minds are trying to communicate to us.
Most of us have learnt the hard lesson that not paying attention to our minds and bodies has adverse consequences where we push ourselves beyond our ability to cope. We all have heard of brain training but this is emotional brain training as distinct from intellectual training. There is great value in learning how to step out of stressful episodes and turn off that stress response and take ourselves out of our emotional part of our brain and start activitating our thinking brains. The goal is not, however, to silence our emotional brain, emotions such a sadness, anger, etc need to be expressed and not oppressed. But there are times in our lives when we become overwhelmed by our emotions, we are unable to regulate them. The consequence is often anxiety and depression.
The important quesion is whether we can teach ourselves to utilise our left hemispheres and regulate our emotions so that we can cope more effectively and more importantly how can we calm our overactive limbic system, and the answer is YES. We can, because the brain can learn and unlearn new ways of functioning. In my next blog, I will be discussing how we to cope with stress.
Susan Lindsay 