May
28
Earlier this week, a few things weren’t going too well for me – nothing too tragic, in the scheme of things, but enough that I felt mildly depressed.
I decided to try a technique that I’d stumbled upon with the help of a colleague. I was going to be doing something that reminded me of a very bad time in my life, and he suggested using a “trauma reversing” NLP technique. Now, I have only basic knowledge of NLP and he was giving me this in a quick Facebook comment, so I probably didn’t practice the technique “correctly”. As so often happens, ignorance created the possibility of coming up with something new.
 photo credit: jurvetson
What I did was think of the feeling that you get when you get bad news or something goes badly wrong, that sudden drop in your gut – and run it backwards. Instead of a drop, a lift – such as you get when the news turns out not to be so bad after all, when hope is restored (or when you’re going up in an elevator). Create this feeling very deliberately, and use it a few times, until you’re feeling better. That’s what I call the “gut bump”.
Probably some NLP expert will come along and tell me that they’ve known about it for years and they call it something much, much fancier, but whatever you call it, it works.
I can even hazard a guess as to why. The human gut produces large amounts of serotonin, a chemical which the gut uses to control its functioning. Serotonin is also a key neurotransmitter used by the brain, and a shortage of it is one of the possible causes of depression. This is why many antidepressants, the so-called SSRIs or Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitors, work by preventing the serotonin from being taken back up by the neurons that release it so that its concentration in the brain is increased.
Now, I could be completely wrong about that mechanism. All I know is, the “gut bump” sorted me out when I needed it to. Next time you’re feeling down (or anxious – it should work for that as well), give it a try.
Technorati Tags: serotonin, NLP, depression, anxiety, technique, non-drug alternatives
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May
12
Part of what I do with smokers who want to stop is teach them emotional management and stress management techniques, and the reason that I do it is to improve their chances of remaining smokefree. I’ve been basing this on anecdotal evidence – that is, most people who come to me to stop smoking have stopped before, and most of them report that they went back to smoking because of a stressful time in their lives. A recent study provides some further backing for the idea.
It’s a University of California study into nicotine and aggression by Jean Gehricke and colleagues, published in Behavioral and Brain Functions 2009, 5:19 (Nicotine-induced brain metabolism associated with anger provocation, doi:10.1186/1744-9081-5-19). It was a small study (20 participants), but it included brain scan data. This showed that the parts of the brain related to anger and aggression were affected by nicotine patches, but not by a placebo patch, in a within-subjects study on nonsmokers. (“Within-subjects” means that all the participants experienced both conditions – nicotine and placebo – in a random order.)
The researchers’ theory is that at least some smokers are using nicotine to normalize the balance of their brains when it is disturbed by an anger reaction. It’s well-known that people with mental illnesses often use nicotine to self-medicate, and many smokers also claim to smoke to calm themselves down (despite the fact that nicotine arouses the body’s stress response). Irritability is a common complaint among people giving up smoking, and is reduced by nicotine patches.
photo credit: Jan Tik
The researchers found correlations between the behaviour of the participants in a simulated anger/retaliation task and the measured effects of the nicotine on the activation levels of particular brain areas related to emotion. This suggests that they are on the right track with their theory that nicotine contributes to emotional management for at least some smokers. They concluded, “Novel neurotherapeutic and behavioral treatments (e.g., anger management training) that affect the cortical and limbic brain areas may aid smoking cessation efforts in anger provoking situations that increase withdrawal and tobacco cravings.”
“Secondary gains” – what you get out of continuing the behaviour that you want to stop – are always important to look at any time you approach behaviour change. If emotional management is a common secondary gain from smoking – and it seems that it is – then teaching non-chemical emotional management techniques is a useful thing to do for people who want to stop smoking.
(That’s why my free stop-smoking ebook, How to Stop Smoking, recommends my free stress management course, Simple Stress Management Techniques.)
Technorati Tags: anger management, smoking, smoking cessation, nicotine, emotional management, stress management, brain scan, PET
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May
6
I’m a science fiction fan from way back, and have always been interested in the idea of brain-computer interfaces. So when the BBC reports that a musical piece has been performed in part controlled by brain waves, I sit up and take notice.
The Multimodal Orchestra included several performers fitted with EEG caps and leads. “There is a first violin, a second violin and so on, except that instead of violins they are brains,” explains Dr Anna Mura, the producer. Some of them watched a screen for a particular letter and when they saw it, it triggered a measurable change in their brains which launched a sound or recorded instrument. Others, directed by the conductor, switched their attention between several flashing lights at different frequencies. As their brains synchronized with the lights, the detected changes in their EEG changed the sounds that the audience heard.
photo credit: Spigoo
There was also an “emotional conductor”, who was watching images while having her heart rate and skin conductance – measures of emotion – monitored. The changes in her mood led to changes in the measures, which in turn blurred and changed the images (I assume these were visible to the audience as well).
All of which sounds gimmicky, one of those geeky science demos, combined with the kind of art that most people don’t understand. Right?
But here’s why I think it’s important. When science matures, it becomes technology – it becomes something that we can use to do things we want to do. This is the beginning of a technology. And it’s based on the fact that what you pay attention to changes the state of your brain.
This is a very important point that underlies a lot of what I talk about here at Living Skillfully. What you pay attention to changes the state of your brain, and what you pay attention to long-term changes the structure of your brain. This isn’t just philosophy, it’s science which is rapidly becoming technology. In fact, the “technology” of using attention to change your brain has been around for centuries, except we usually call it meditation. The difference here is that the technology is now being used to control things outside the brain.
So it pays to put some thought into what you pay attention to, am I right?
Technorati Tags: brain, orchestra, attention, EEG, Multimodal Orchestra, emotion, technology, meditation, brain-computer interface
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