ARCHIVE
Too many people give themselves excuses to stay sick, unhappy, and anxious. You may be one of them. You may say you want to make the changes necessary to boost your brain health and overcome depression or anxiety, but you don’t do it. It’s these excuses—or “little lies”—you tell yourself that keep you feeling bad and prevent you from doing what you need to do to gain control of your life and start feeling better.
Here are the most common little lies psychiatrists hear from their patients that devastate their physical and mental health. Be honest with yourself and take note if you’re lying to yourself about your willingness to change to improve your brain health and mental health.
Little Lie #1: This will be hard.
Truth: Focusing on getting well is dramatically easier than being sick or losing your mind. The brain hates change. It likes to do what it has done. The exciting news is that you can change unwanted behaviors. Initially, change is hard, but with the right attitude and strategies, it can be very rewarding.
Practicing good behaviors, such as getting 7-8 hours of sleep, exercising, and saying no to constantly checking your social media feed (which has been shown to increase depression and loneliness) strengthens the willpower circuits in the brain. Alternatively, giving in to destructive behaviors, such as emotional explosions, mindlessly eating cookies at work, believing every stupid thought that pops into your head, or consuming excessive amounts of alcohol strengthens those particular circuits. Whatever behaviors you engage in are the ones you are likely to continue doing.
Little Lie #2: I don’t want to deprive myself.
Truth: So many people with anxiety or depression use food, alcohol, cigarettes, or marijuana as a way to self-medicate their feelings, and they don’t want to deprive themselves of these short-term mood enhancers. But these substances actually make symptoms worse in the long run, and they lead to other issues, such as weight gain and addiction, that can exacerbate problems in every area of your life.
When you make poor health decisions you are depriving yourself of what you really want—lasting energy, happiness, a sense of calm, and good health. Getting well is about abundance, never deprivation. Eating a brain-healthy diet and avoiding harmful substances will help to deprive you of mood swings, panic attacks, depression, and even dementia.
When your mindset is one of deprivation and your focus is on what you cannot have, you’re more likely to remain mired in anxiety and depression. To feel better fast and make it last for a lifetime it’s critical to develop an abundance mindset, where you focus on the high-quality foods and good habits that will build and sustain your mental health. If you’re able to change your attitude about this, everything else will be easier.
Little Lie #3: It is too expensive.
Truth: Buying high-quality foods that fuel the brain and stabilize blood sugar, paying for exercise classes that boost blood flow to the brain, and seeking treatment for your mental health issues may seem pricey. But being sick is much more expensive than thoughtfully spending your resources to get and stay well.
With a better functioning brain, you will have more money, because the quality of your decisions will be better, which means you’ll perform better at work, at school, and in your relationships.
Little Lie #4: I don’t have time.
Truth: You may think that finding time to exercise, prepare healthy meals, and practice stress-management strategies like meditation is impossible. Sure, grabbing a doughnut or ordering takeout burritos or deep-fried wings provides a speedy meal, but it’s just as fast to grab an apple or orange or to order takeout salad bowls—and they will help you feel better and stay healthier.
It takes some planning to eat food that is good for you, but healthy meal kits or spending just one afternoon a week making big batches of food you can eat throughout the week can make daily meals a breeze. And you can find ways to sneak exercise into your day by taking your dog for a hike or walking to the grocery store. And you may want to trade just 15 minutes of TV time for a soothing meditation session.
Plus, spending time and energy to optimize your brain will help you live longer and be cognitively sharper, giving you much more time overall.
Little Lie #5: Everything in moderation. Just a little can’t hurt.
Truth: This is the gateway thought of continuing anxiety and depression. It is generally an excuse to justify doing the wrong thing for your physical and mental health. “Just a little can’t hurt” leads to just one cigarette that lowers blood flow to the brain, just one piece of cake that sets you up for mood swings, and just one drink that worsens anxiety and depression.
Stop lying to yourself. You deserve the truth.
If you’re struggling with anxiety or depression and are having trouble changing your habits, Amen Clinics can help. We use brain SPECT imaging as part of a comprehensive evaluation to see if there are any other signs of brain dysfunction that might be holding you back from being able to follow through on your goals. The Amen Clinics Method takes an integrative approach to diagnosis and treatment includes looking at the biological, psychological, social, and spiritual aspects of your life to identify areas that can be optimized so you can start feeling better fast.
Take the first important step to a better life and call 888-288-9834 to talk to a specialist today or schedule a visit.
Even though we all worry at times, some of us aren’t able to turn off bothersome, intrusive thoughts. Although it may not warrant a visit to a therapist, having repetitive negative concerns circling through your mind can cause tension, stress, stomachaches, headaches, and irritability. Your day-to-day thoughts and behaviors also have a powerful effect on your brain chemistry. They can affect your moods, motivation, and ability to focus and follow through on things.
Maurie, 32, worried incessantly about his job and despite getting good performance reviews, he was sure his boss didn’t like him. The constant worry frequently upset him. He couldn’t get the thoughts out of his head—they looped over and over and over. No amount of rational inner dialog could get them to stop. The swirling thoughts filled Maurie with tension, gave him headaches, and made him feel irritable. He wanted help to make his mind stop spinning.
The Brain’s Gear Shifter at Work
People like Maurie, who get stuck on negative thoughts, often have too much activity in the brain’s frontal lobes, especially in an area called the anterior cingulate gyrus (ACG). The ACG is like the brain’s gear shifter. It helps you go from thought to thought or from action to action. It is involved with being mentally flexible and going with the flow.
When ACG activity is heightened, usually due to lower serotonin levels, people can have trouble shifting attention. They are also prone to worry and hold on to hurts from the past and tend to have cognitive inflexibility and rigidity. In severe cases, it is associated with obsessive compulsive disorder.
A brain scan using a technology called SPECT showed that Maurie had an overactive ACG. Here are some of the strategies Maurie used to help him balance his brain and gain control of those racing thoughts.
5 Strategies to Stop Getting Stuck on Negative Thoughts
1. Practice Thought Stopping
Whenever you notice thoughts looping or getting stuck in your head, imagine seeing a traffic stop sign in your head and silently say to yourself, “STOP. THIS IS MY ACG GETTING STUCK!” Some people have had success by wearing a rubber band around on their wrists and snapping it when they notice thoughts starting to loop.
2. Notice When You’re Stuck, Distract Yourself, and Come Back to the Problem Later
A primary way to overcome a busy ACG is to notice when you’re stuck on a thought and do something to distract yourself. For Maurie, every time one of these negative thoughts came into his mind, he would sing a song. This worked for him. He liked the music, and he felt that it gave him a measure of control over his bothersome thoughts.
You may find it helpful to make a list of a variety of things you can do to distract yourself when you get hit by harassing thoughts. Here are some examples:
• Sing a favorite song.
• Listen to music that makes you feel positive.
• Take a walk.
• Do a chore.
• Play with a pet.
• Do structured meditation.
• Focus on a word and do not allow any other thoughts to enter your mind (imagine a broom that sweeps out all other thoughts).
3. Write Out Options and Solutions
When you’re stuck on a thought, write it down. This helps to get it out of your head. Seeing a thought on paper makes it easier to deal with it in a rational way. After you write out a thought that has “gotten stuck,” generate a list of things you can do about it and things you can’t do about it. For example, if you’re worried about possible layoffs at work, do the following:
Write out the thought:
“I’m worried that I will get laid off and will be out of work.”
Make a list of the things you can do to offset the worry:
“I can do the best job I can at work to make myself indispensable.”
“I can make sure the boss knows I am willing to learn new skills.”
“I can update my résumé and skills just in case I do get laid off.”
Make a list of the things you can’t do about the worry:
“I can’t make the decisions about layoffs for the boss.”
“I can’t control the timing of when layoffs might occur.”
“Worrying about it will not help.”
4. Seek the Counsel of Others
When all of your efforts to get rid of repetitive thoughts are unsuccessful, it’s often helpful to seek the counsel of others. Finding someone with whom you can discuss your worries can be very helpful. Often just talking about feeling stuck will open new options.
5. Boost Serotonin to Calm Your Busy Brain
People with an overactive ACG who get stuck on negative thoughts often do better when they boost serotonin. Some helpful ways to do it include:
- Eating complex carbohydrates, such as sweet potatoes and garbanzo beans are a healthy way to boost serotonin.
- Exercising can be very helpful in calming worries because it increases brain levels of l-tryptophan, which can boost serotonin.
- Omega-3 fatty acids (the kind that are higher in DHA), 5-HTP, inositol, tryptophan, and St. John’s Wort are the most helpful supplements to raise serotonin and calm this part of the brain.
If your negative thinking patterns are impacting your performance at work or school, causing problems in your relationships, or keeping you from living the life you want, it’s time to seek help. At Amen Clinics, we have helped thousands of people change their thinking patterns and change their brain so they can feel better, perform better, and interact better.
To find out how we can help, call 888-288-9834 to speak to a specialist or schedule a visit online.
When you hear the word “hypnosis,” your brain might conjure up the image of a magician at a carnival sideshow swinging a pocket watch in front of someone’s face and saying, “you’re getting very, very sleepy.” Unlike magic show hypnosis, medical hypnosis is a holistic treatment that focuses on supporting and restoring the mind.What is Hypnotherapy?
Hypnotherapy is hypnosis that is guided by a clinical hypnotherapist. Hypnotherapy is a widely accepted tool in psychology. It is characterized by a heightened state of calmness that helps an individual quiet their emotional mind while increasing their focus. By inducing a trance-like state, a therapist can help a patient begin the recovery process. With professional guidance, individuals can focus on their pains and struggles, which allows them to implement changes or regain control of their life in targeted areas.What Does Hypnotherapy Treat?
Hypnotherapy has been used as a treatment for a variety of conditions, such as: • Addiction • Anxiety • Chronic stress • Depression • Pain management • PTSD (posttraumatic stress disorder) • Sleep management • Weight loss Additionally, hypnosis can help reduce phobias, improve digestive issues, and manage negative thoughts and behaviors. Hypnosis is a powerful tool to help you gain mastery over your own mind. Just as negative thoughts can make a body sick, promoting positive and nurturing thoughts (via hypnosis) can help heal your mind.Preparing for Hypnotherapy
Before starting your hypnosis sessions, your healthcare professional may recommend that you eliminate certain unhealthy routines or behaviors that might interfere with the treatment process. These harmful habits may include: lack of quality sleep, alcohol or drug abuse, excessive caffeine intake, and living a sedentary existence. A practitioner might also give some simple tips, like unplugging electronics before bed to allow for more restful and brain rejuvenating sleep.What Happens During a Session?
A hypnosis session is typically conducted in a quiet, relaxed environment. A clinician will make sure the patient is comfortable and then begin the session. The therapist will ask the patient to reflect on troubling events from the past or current challenges. By changing a negative thought or experience to a positive one, a practitioner can help guide the patient along a path of recovery. Unlike the frequently inaccurate ways hypnotherapy is portrayed in movies and TV, a patient is never unwillingly forced into unconsciousness or some abstract dream state. A patient is awake and in control of their thought process the entire session. The patient can hear the therapist’s direction and can choose whether or not to implement those suggestions.Hypnosis Case Study
Dr. Daniel Amen has used hypnosis with his patients for decades, and the results have been remarkable. He shares one fascinating case study from when he was an intern at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center: Many of my patients wanted sleeping pills. As you can imagine, it’s hard to sleep in a busy, noisy hospital. Before I gave them the pills, however, I asked if I could hypnotize them first. Almost everyone agreed, and it was very helpful. One of my patients, a decorated World War II hero, had Parkinson’s disease and when he was in hypnotic trance for sleep, his intensive tremors went away. When I told the attending neurologist about it the next morning, he thought I was crazy. So, I repeated the exercise in front of the doctor, and the astounding results became my first clinical paper.Find the Right Help
Since many practitioners offer hypnosis services, it’s important to identify a hypnotherapist that is properly trained in the therapy. Aside from qualifications, it’s important that you find a hypnotherapist that you’re comfortable with to ensure the effectiveness of the therapy. It might be a good idea to schedule an initial consultation to see how well you “click” with the therapist to make sure it’s a good match. Hypnosis is a tool to help you (and other professionals) understand what’s going on inside your mind. It helps identify different therapies that might be helpful for you. Hypnosis is often accompanied by talk therapy, lab tests, and doctor’s visits. If you’d like to learn more about how hypnosis can help promote better quality sleep, manage food cravings, break bad habits or just help you understand personal struggles with deeper clarity, ask your healthcare professional if hypnotherapy is right for you. At Amen Clinics, we’re committed to treating our patients with the least toxic, most effective regimen possible, which may include treatments like hypnotherapy. Not all services are offered at each Amen Clinics location. Call us today at 888-288-9834 for availability at a clinic near you, or visit us online to schedule a visit. Social anxiety is the fear of social situations and the interaction with other people that can automatically bring on feelings of self-consciousness, judgment, and inferiority. Everyone has feelings of anxiety, nervousness, and stress in their lives from time to time. Almost everyone has felt anxious in social situations. Particular popular experiences that make a majority of people uneasy include having to speak in front of a group or when interviewing for a new job. While others are anxious and nervous in almost all social situations. But social anxiety is more than just being shy or having occasional nervousness. It involves intense fear of social situations. It’s more common among introverts, and because each person has a unique chemical makeup, the intensity and frequency of the symptoms vary greatly from person to person. In the United States, studies have recently pegged social anxiety disorder as the third largest psychological disorder in the country, after depression and alcoholism. It is estimated that 7-8% of the population suffers from some form of social anxiety. Many learn to cope and overcome social anxiety through self-help methods or seek counseling. However, those who are severely impaired due to high levels of anxiety should seek professional help.Challenge Your Thoughts
Social anxiety sufferers have negative thoughts and beliefs that contribute to their anxiety. Challenging your negative thoughts is one effective way of reducing the symptom. Dr. Amen has created a powerful and effective exercise, called Kill the ANTs, that takes no more than a few minutes to complete and will help reverse your negative thought process. “ANTs” are Automatic Negative Thoughts that come into your mind automatically but are not true. Left unchecked, these ANTs can infest your mind and ruin your mood, relationships, and life. Dr. Amen says “You do not have to believe every stupid thought that goes through your head.” Whenever you feel sad, mad, nervous, or out of control, write down the thoughts that are bothering you, reveal the facts about the situation and talk back to them.Brain Healthy Tips to Help With Anxiety
Another way to boost your mood and reduce anxiety is to write down five things you are grateful for every day. Research suggests that focusing on gratitude helps to calm the deep limbic or emotional areas of the brain and enhances the judgment centers. When you focus on what you love, your brain works better, and you’ll feel better. You will notice a significant positive difference in your level of happiness in a short period! Taking supplements like fish oil will increase levels of omega-3 fatty acids that have been associated with anxiety and depression. GABA has shown to promote relaxation by increasing calming, focused brain waves, while also reducing other brain waves associated with worry. A balanced diet between protein and complex carbohydrates is also best for the anxious/compulsive brain type. An example of a balanced breakfast would be two scrambled eggs and tomato salsa in an Ezekiel wrap. Lunch would be a brown rice bowl with Tamari and grilled wild Alaskan salmon. Dinner could be rotisserie chicken with roasted brussels sprouts and quinoa. Meditation, diaphragmatic breathing, listening to relaxing music, intense exercise, hypnosis and optimizing vitamin D levels are also great ways to gain control of anxiety. Anxiety and depression are not the results of character flaws or personal weakness; they are the result of biological problems in the brain that can be balanced. If you or a loved one is struggling, contact the Amen Clinics today or call (888) 288-9834. For daily brain health updates, follow us on Facebook. The limbic system is an area known to be vastly involved with some of the most fundamental processes of being human. Through Amen Clinics SPECT imaging work, we have found that when the deep limbic system is overactive, it results in mood-related problems, especially depression. Also, we have observed that depressive symptoms can arise when the brain has low activity. Injury can cause low activity from events such as concussions, infection, loss of oxygen, and exposure to toxins. By looking at our patient’s brain function through SPECT, we can identify the underlying brain biology of a person’s depressive systems, allowing us to target proper treatment efficiently. Here are two simple yet powerful lifestyle strategies that can be helpful in reducing depression:#1. Your Brain is Happy When You Exercise
Exercise is the most important thing to do when feeling depressed. When we exercise our brain releases “feel good” chemicals that help with our sense of well-being. In fact, a study that compared antidepressant medication with exercise found that both therapies were equally effective after sixteen weeks, and after ten months, exercise was more effective.#2. Identify and Kill Your “ANTs”
ANTs are the Automatic Negative Thoughts that pop into your head, causing you to get upset, depressed, and anxious. There are nine species of ANTs:- All or nothing thinking: Also known as black and white thinking.
- “Always” thinking: Using words like, always, never, no one, everyone, every time, and everything.
- Focusing on the negative: Selectively seeing only the bad in a situation and disregarding the good things that occur.
- Fortune telling: Predicting the worst possible outcome to situations.
- Mind reading: Believing that you know what another person is thinking even though he or she hasn’t told you.
- Thinking about your feelings: This happens when you believe your feelings and don’t question them, even when there is no evidence to support how you feel.
- Guilt beatings: Thinking with words like should, must, ought and have to.
- Labeling: Calling yourself or someone else a derogatory name diminishes your ability to see situations clearly.
- Blaming: When you don’t take responsibility for your actions, you lose your power to make changes.
- ANT: No one will ever want to date me.
- ANT species: “Always” thinking.
- Kill the ANT: That isn’t true. I can meet people by putting myself in new social situations.
Challenge Your Negative Thoughts
Social anxiety sufferers have negative thoughts and beliefs that contribute to their anxiety. Dr. Daniel Amen has created a powerful and effective exercise, “Kill the ANTs.” Killing your automatic negative thoughts (ANTs) will help reverse your negative thought process.- Write it down. When those automatic negative thoughts start tumbling around in your mind, write them down to clearly identify them.
- Ask yourself, are these thoughts even true? Uninvestigated thoughts can lead us to act in harmful ways.
- Talkback. If you discover that these negative thoughts are false, talk back to them! Tell these thoughts you know they aren’t true!
What Are You Grateful For?
Another way to boost your mood and reduce anxiety is to write down five things you are grateful for every day. Research suggests that focusing on gratitude helps to calm the deep limbic or emotional areas of the brain and enhances the judgment centers of the brain. When you focus on what you love, your brain works better, and you’ll feel better. You will notice a significant positive difference in your level of happiness.Take Supplements Daily
Taking supplements every day can help support your mood and increase positivity.- Omega-3 fatty acids promote healthy mood and emotional balance, and supports heart health.
- GABA has shown to promote relaxation by increasing calming, focused brain waves, while also reducing other brain waves associated with worry.
- Magnesium is also a helpful, natural supplement that promotes calm, balanced and mentally focused demeanor.