Enhance Brain Wellness – Your Best Asset
Your brain is the hard drive of your soul and can be compared with a computer. You cannot maximize your computer without the necessary programs.
Your brain patterns help you (or hurt you) with coping with life challenges like stress management, with your marriage, parenting skills, work, religious beliefs, along with your experiences of pleasure or pain.
Coping with the impact of the COVID -19 on your personal life requires a healthy brain with the correct software and an anti-virus firewall program. You cannot be who you want to be unless your brain works healthy.
If you are anxious, prone with anger, experience situational depression, are distressed and overwhelmed by your circumstances, you most probably need to have a relook into your brain’s “software” and do some network updating.
The hard drive of your brain – the limbic system.
The brain’s hard drive lies near the center of the brain and it is called the limbic system. It is almost the size of a walnut and power-packed with functions. It is critical for all human survival and behavior.
This part of the brain is responsible for the setting of the emotional tone. Strange, but proved through scientific research and “Single Photon Emission Computed Tomography” (SPECT), that when the deep limbic system is less active and cooled down, the mind is generally more positive and hopeful.
More positive thoughts will then flow through the brain. When the limbic system is heated up, or overactive, negativity can take over.
Functions of the deep limbic system.
The deep limbic system can be referred to as the “data basis”, along with the deep temporal lobes. It involves the storing of highly charged emotional memories, both positive and negative.
The more positive storage we have, the more positive we are likely to feel. The more trauma we have experienced, the more negative we tend to think about things. These emotional memories are involved in the emotional “tagging” and “filing” of our daily experiences.
The deep limbic structure also affects your drive and motivation. It helps you to get through the day.
Overactivity (overheating) in this area is associated with a depressed mood and a lack of motivation. The deep limbic system, especially the hypothalamus at the base of the brain, is responsible for translating our emotions into physical feelings of relaxation or tension.
A simple example would be that of our fight-or-flight response. It immediately is activated when seeing an emotional or physical threat: The heart beats faster, breathing rate and blood pressure increase, the hands and feet become cooler to shunt blood from the extremities to the bigger muscles.