Reporting in the journal Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, psychology researchers recorded the brain activity of people looking at disturbing pictures immediately after meditating for the first time. These participants were able to tame their negative emotions just as well as participants who were naturally mindful. "Our findings not only demonstrate that meditation improves emotional health, but that people can acquire these benefits regardless of their 'natural' ability to be mindful," said Yanli Lin, an MSU graduate student and lead investigator of the study. "It just takes some practice."
Depression is this “body budgeting” gone awry. Many illnesses are body budgeting gone awry. But in depression’s case, what usually happens is you’ve overspent. So either you’ve spent too much of your resources or you haven’t replenished them. Maybe you’re not sleeping adequately. Maybe you’re not eating properly. Maybe you’re not exercising well. Maybe you’re under constant stress, meaning that your brain believes that you need more glucose than you actually do. So it’s flushing your system with cortisol so you can get glucose into your system as fast as possible. But you don’t really do anything with it. So it’s kind of like impulse buying. Your brain is predicting that you need this glucose. But then it’s predicting a threat, so it’s predicting that you need to run, but then you don’t. You just sit there like you’re in a meeting and you’re being criticized by someone or you feel threatened by someone. You’re flushed with cortisol, you’re flushed with glucose, but you’re not using the glucose. So you’ve squandered your resources, essentially. If this kind of thing goes on for long enough, where you’re spending extravagantly and you’re not replenishing, you’re gonna go into debt, just like you would with money. But when you go into debt, biologically into debt, then your immune system starts to get involved because your brain thinks that your body is sick. Once your immune system kicks in and believes that your body is sick when it isn’t really, then any number of diseases can manifest themselves. Lisa Feldman Barrett
This site http://atlasofemotions.org is a good mean to baptize your emotions, train them and train your control muscles in the process. or EQ
When I was in grade school and we learned all about drugs, I remember them basically being characterized as uppers or downers. Cocaine, meth, and things like that are uppers because they excite your nervous system and get you raging hard. Heroine, benzos, weed, and alcohol are downers because they slow down your central nervous system and get you super chilled. Another name for downers are depressants, because they depress the arousal and stimulation levels within your nervous system. So, if you are regularly deciding to ingest depressants and then get surprised that you are feeling depressed … you’re gonna have a bad time. Seriously though, people often neglect to recognize the impact of the things that you ingest on your mood and physiology.
If you have rampant anxiety, it’s probably a good idea to lay off the coffee. If you are a depressed person, you should probably be careful with the booze. Think of it like a threshold similar to water’s temperature. With water, you reach a certain threshold temperature and you start to boil - that is kind of like anxiety, where you get more and more worked up until you feel downright anxious or even have a panic attack. On the flip side, you also have the freezing point of water, where once you dip below that point things start getting slower and slower until they freeze entirely. That’s like depression. Once you dip below that threshold, you start to feel legitimate depressive symptoms like lethargy, painful feelings of sadness, and a sense of being hopeless. By putting depressants like alcohol into your body, you are basically starting yourself off a few steps closer to that threshold. That means it only takes one or two shitty things to set you off on the path of feeling really lousy and depressed. While you may still be susceptible to depression without the alcohol, you would at least have a little more of a buffer before reaching that threshold. Does this mean that you can’t ever have some alcohol? Of course not. It’s just something to keep in mind. Sometimes having a beer with a friend and talking about life can be really helpful for your mood. Other times, when you have a few drinks, you are basically setting yourself up to feel sad by giving your depression a kickstart.
Know thyself and don’t be stubborn. I know that drugs are fun … that’s the whole point. Just don’t pretend that it doesn’t make a difference. It’s something that personally pisses me off when people with anxiety are like, “Oh, caffeine doesn’t do anything to me. I can drink an espresso and go straight to sleep!” Or when people with depression are like, “Man, I can put down a 6 pack and not feel a thing. That’s definitely not what’s making me feel lazy. I’ve written a whole paper after drinking before!” Gahh! Sorry for getting a little aggro, but it drives me crazy. It’s not like a willpower sort of thing. These substances were designed to directly have an effect on your nervous system. That’s their whole point. You’re lying to yourself if you say that they don’t make a difference. Sure, you can have a tolerance. Bodies are great at habituating to things, but that doesn’t mean the substance suddenly becomes inactive. Again, I’m not saying don’t drink or whatever it is you kids do these days. Shit, I’m sipping a beautiful glass of Basil Hayden’s as I write this. Just like my advice in pretty much every other chapter in this book. Be realistic.
I listen to a lot of podcasts as a means to feed my hungry multitasking brain. As I’m writing this chapter, some words that I heard from Joe Rogan (yes the comedian that commentates the UFC fights) keep popping into my head. He said, “The people that I know who have the hardest time emotionally are people that don’t work out. And the people that I know that do work out, especially the ones that work out hard, they expel these big giant bursts of energy where your body is like almost dying, you’re heaving, your heart is pounding in your chest, you’re barely able to lift this piece of metal up again, you’re barely able to jump up on this box again, and by putting yourself in that intense form of stress, it makes regular life more peaceful.” Now Joe is on the extreme side of this camp. I’m certainly not practicing what he preaches every day. I do exercise, but I’m not pushing myself to vomit peak every day. Though I can say that the times when I have pushed myself that hard have indeed brought about some very special mental clarity.