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Full Mental Jacket: Chapter 2: The brain and counselling

Clint Adams

Senior HR Professional. Suicide Prevention advocate and author of Lighting the Blue Flame.

发布日期: 2021年5月20日

In my first chapter of the series I covered off what happens when we have a thought and how that thought leaves an impression on the body and how we create a lot of our thought patterns unconsciously. In this post I really want to focus on how we break negative thought patterns once the person is already stuck rather than focus on preventative strategies.

There are obviously a number of ways we can end up with negative thought patterns and being stuck in those patterns. Some of these patterns can be mildly negative and others can be catastrophic for the individual and others around them. When someone is in that mindset where they are ruminating about the same thought or memory, they are essentially firing neurons in their brain because it is a thought.

In my previous post I covered a small component of what happens in the body when we have a thought. I will take is a small step further, and again I’m trying to keep it simple, so any clinicians out there I know there is more neuroscience and biology behind this. In a nutshell when we have a thought or recall a memory we fire neurons in the brain. If we rethink that same thought or memory we fire the same neurons. If we repeatedly rethink that thought or memory over and over, those same neurons fire together repeatedly. Dr. Joe Dispenza in his book You are the placebo, states that in relation to neurons, “What fires together wires together.”

In a nutshell if you do it enough times you effectively create a “thought shortcut” and that thought is now almost automatic and requires a lot more effort to change than if it was not hardwired. Our brains are designed to be able to create shortcuts, so we can learn and then do things with less mental effort. To illustrate this, think back to when you learnt to drive, how hard you had to concentrate on what you were doing. You were thinking and concentrating on the road, your hands, your feet and the rules of the road. While you are learning to drive, you usually come home quite mentally drained. Fast forward to my age and you have been driving over 30 years and you can drive for hours and not even be aware of things, especially not the driving part, because our brains are cognitive misers.

We are designed to try to save energy and we create these shortcuts, which in essence is just a pattern of thinking. Most of the time this is a good thing for us, but when we set up shortcuts which can lead to destructive thought patterns it can be a problem. When I worked with people with PTSD, where a single event has caused them to develop a destructive thought pattern. It is evident that by “reliving” a memory, that the body has quite similar physical reactions to the memory or thought, which is what makes it so destructive.

Let’s say you were shot at, like one of the police officers I dealt with when doing counselling work. The event was very real and very scary for him, and probably most of us. In that moment his “Fight or Flight” instinct kicked in and this starts a cascade of events almost immediately and quite automatically with no conscious thought being required. That cascade involves adrenaline being released into the body, you take a deep breath to get quick oxygen into the body and your blood starts to be dispersed to your muscles to get ready to either run or fight. Your heart rate increases dramatically to distribute the blood quickly. There are some other physical components to this cascade, but this is designed to get you out of trouble quickly and avoid whatever threat is there.

In this officer’s case it kept him alive because he ended up not being shot and was able to shut down the threat. End of story you think? Unfortunately for him after the event and in the confines of his own head, he replayed the event over and over and basically he tricks his own brain into turning this thought into a shortcut because he has “practiced” this thought repeatedly and the brain being the cognitive miser it is, turns it into a habit requiring less energy and accessing it a lot easier and quicker. To go with that, each time he has the thought it sets off the same physical cascade that is associated with the memory.

Dr. Neil describes it this way:

When our fight or flight response is activated, sequences of nerve cell firing occur and chemicals like adrenaline, noradrenaline and cortisol are released into our bloodstream. These patterns of nerve cells firing, and chemical release cause our body to undergo a series of very dramatic changes. Our respiratory rate increases. Blood is shunted away from our digestive tract and directed into our muscles and limbs, which require extra energy and fuel for running and fighting. Our pupils dilate. Our awareness intensifies. Our sight sharpens. Our impulses quicken. Our perception of pain diminishes. Our immune system mobilizes with increased activation. We become prepared—physically and psychologically—for fight or flight. We scan and search our environment, “looking for the enemy.”

When our fight or flight system is activated, we tend to perceive everything in our environment as a possible threat to our survival. By its very nature, the fight or flight system bypasses our rational mind—where our more well thought out beliefs exist—and moves us into “attack” mode. This state of alert causes us to perceive almost everything in our world as a possible threat to our survival. As such, we tend to see everyone and everything as a possible enemy. Like airport security during a terrorist threat, we are on the lookout for every possible danger. We may overreact to the slightest comment. Our fear is exaggerated. Our thinking is distorted. We see everything through the filter of possible danger. We narrow our focus to those things that can harm us. Fear becomes the lens through which we see the world.

So back to my officer, every time he thinks about this memory it sets off that same cascade. This is only designed to last less than 10 seconds, but when our thoughts make us relive the same event and create that shortcut, it has implications in terms of energy usage, the amount of hormone and other chemicals in the body like cortisol. These can be physically damaging to the body. Even just having the blood shunted from the digestive tract repeatedly means nutrients aren’t going where they need to go. It is not hard to see visible signs of physical effects on someone who is going through this for prolonged periods.

When I was dealing with someone with PTSD, my focus was pretty much on what we can do to change the neurons that are wiring and firing together when he has this thoughts or memories. Essentially, we are trying to initially interrupt the thought pattern and replace it with another. To simply illustrate, let’s say 100 neurons (a trivial number I know) are fired when he has the thought and it sets off the stress response and it leads him down a path that leads to him feeling shamed for reacting the way he does (this is what this officer did). With him I got him to first do a thoughts diary, where all he did was write down the time he had that thought and write something about how it made him feel, with specific focuses on his physical feelings and sensations.

The purpose of this was to interrupt his previous pattern even just a little, so as an example maybe only 90 of the initial 100 neurons were firing, so it created some small change. As well as cutting the numbers of neurons firing, by making him do analysis work, it means he needs to use a different part of the brain (Blue Brain from my last post). This helps the interruption, but because that part of the brain is so large, it requires more blood which also interrupts the Fight or Flight cascade, because he needs to send more blood to the brain rather than to his limbs, so it actually helps him at that physical level as well.

In just 1 week, he actually decreased the number of times he would enter having that thought in the diary, just by doing that analysis work. Naturally this doesn’t work for everyone, but the point is that any intervention can work if it gets the person to somehow interrupt and or change the repeated wiring and firing of those same neurons that takes the person to a bad place.

Even though I have studied psychology, I don’t really have a preference for which type of psychology theory or therapy strategy is used, as long as it interrupts the neurons firing. This is why many strategies can work. Even talking to someone or doing something physical can help. Some people find religion and that works for them, because they have a Blue Brain focus rather than a Red one. Meditation also has a calming effect and actually slows the brain waves, which again is giving the person an opportunity to alter their original thought pathway.

The key for helping anyone in that kind of pattern is figuring out ways to get them to do something, anything to change those neurons and keep doing it with whatever helpful methods you can come up with. Asking them high level questions also forces that blue brain to think and come up with answers. Obviously sending them to a professional would help, but if they are not the type of person to seek that help, then do whatever you can. There are lots of things on the internet and various mental health organisations that give information on strategies that they have used and that you can try.

Also remember from my previous post which includes the Dialogue Model, that to get someone to talk about these kind of issues is to create the “Safety” to have that conversation. If someone doesn’t want to talk about it, then there is something that makes them feel “unsafe” to have that conversation with you, so it is important to figure out what that is. often it is them feeling shame for not being able to deal with the issue. Pointing out that this is quite a common problem may help them feel less shamed and then feel that you aren’t going to judge them. There are various methods to try to create that safety and finding out what they may be afraid of in having that conversation is a key to getting them to open up and start talking about helping strategies.

Clint Adams Biography

Website:

Blue Flame Projects – Helping with Mental Health and Resilience.

I am a former Victorian police officer who studied psychology and later, Rehabilitation Counselling. My police, counselling injury management, senior HR roles and working with asylum seekers have made me develop insights into the psychology and social interactions of individuals in trying conditions.

I have developed various behavioural and leadership programs to help people deal with various issues from PTSD to bullying and harassment. I am a keynote speaker on Suicide Prevention and Diversity and runs programs on mental health and wellbeing for corporate organisations and sporting organisations for teens.

I am the author of a book called Lighting the Blue Flame. The book is written as a story of a teen who commits suicide because of being bullied, but wants his death to at least have an impact to change things so it doesn’t happen to others. So he decides to send those he believes are responsible for him being bullied, those who watched and laughed and the school for not doing enough. Ultimately the school gets me involved as a character in the book to help them and the students deal with the suicide, but also look at how they can prevent it from happening again. I also help the mother deal with her grieving process.

The book has a lot of QR codes throughout for more information and also just random things teenagers would send each other on social media, so it is a little more interactive than other books. It also has it’s own soundtrack as I wanted to add that extra layer of depth to the experience as music can emphasise how people feel and experience things.

Below are some links to interviews, podcasts, articles and videos I have done

Interview on the Informer:

https://theinformer.tv/education/saving-kids-lives-one-page-at-a-time/

Book review and interview: Employ health

https://blog.employhealth.com.au/book-review-lighting-the-blue-flame

Luke Mathers: Podcast Reset Season 2

https://open.spotify.com/episode/30gjrWHjuE4q4nXDgRsXt5

T2T: Podcast on Mental health

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UCm8_8caLDw&t=3s

Dr. Isabel: Podcast on mental health

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RQau_5Dzd7Y

https://doctoronamission.com/2021/03/24/what-the-is-a-crucial-conversation/