YOUR MIRACULOUS BRAIN/MIND: OPERATING INSTRUCTIONS What you need to know about your brain/mind. 1. It’s all connected: Your brain/mind is not separate from your body, it’s a physical part of you. It requires feeding and care, just like the rest of you does. Having regular, meaningful conversations with yourself is the best way to understand your own mind. Ask your own opinion of whatever is going on. Talk over your day’s agenda with yourself. Work through the confusing or troubling issues of your daily life and relationships with yourself before trying to work them out with others. Nutrition, sleep, and regular periods of exercise and relaxation are all helpful to your brain/mind. Of course, alcohol, narcotics, and other brain-affecting substances are also affecting your mind, so be thoughtful about what you ingest. Seek out time with people who stimulate you mentally, learn a language or play intellectual games, like crosswords, chess or other kinds of puzzles. Mental stimulation apparently wards off brain deterioration like dementia and Alzheimer’s. In other words, “use it or lose it” applies to your brain/mind as well as to your body. 2. Emotions and thoughts are physical and chemical. Your feelings, reactions and thoughts are not just floating in the ether; they are chemical reactions in your mind and body. Stimulus (what is happening around you) creates hormonal responses in your body, which produce chemical and electrical reactions in your brain, which you feel as feelings, thoughts and ideas. You also create your own reactions when you think: for example, if you’re worrying about something, your body and brain will flood with stress hormones, which has profound physical effects on your body and mind. If you are thinking happy thoughts, your body and brain are flooded with endorphins, which cause you both to relax and to be energized in a positive way. Happiness also increases your immune response. Problem-solving and productive work slow body processes down and speed up brain work, which is beneficial for limited periods of time, but becomes counterproductive if you do it non-stop. “All work and no play” is not good for either your body or your mind. 3. You received a lot of indoctrination and training as a small child; some of it good and essential, some of it harmful and unnecessary. Although you were not really aware of it, the training and belief systems you were introduced to as a child have a profound effect on both brain and mind. If you grew up in a dysfunctional, drama-ridden family, you were trained early on, to be in constant “flight or fight” mode, with the accompanying hormones. On the other hand, if you grew up in a calm and loving environment, you absorbed the tendency to feel secure, to assume that problems could be solved, and to focus on solutions when problems arise. The relationships of your childhood create brain patterns that can run your relationships as an adult, if you don’t become aware of them and take charge of them. The good news is that your brain is very malleable and you can make changes relatively easily. 4. Your brain/mind belongs to you; you need to take charge, manage and care for it. Once you make it to adulthood, the responsibility for training and maintaining your brain/mind becomes yours. If you don’t like some of the things that are happening in your life, if your relationships aren’t working, the causes may be in your mindset: ideas you acquired early in life that are now creating problems. Mindset can create relationship problems, money problems and general satisfaction or dissatisfaction with life. Taking charge of your thoughts and feelings, and making new choices can greatly affect the outcomes in your life circumstances. Be aware that exposure to violent movies and games, negative song lyrics and angry people and atmospheres all produce stress hormones and have an effect on your brain/mind. 5. You need to connect all the parts of yourself, which is called integration. Once you have a good connection with yourself you won’t feel loneliness; and you’ll understand yourself and other people better. This is what the conversations with yourself are all about. In addition to a lot of body management processes, your brain has two main sections that control your emotional and mental well-being. The Limbic brain is your emotional center, and it’s very connected to your past experience. It also has the power to take over your whole brain and body in times of high stress. This power can cause you to inadvertently revert back to old feelings and thoughts, which is when you react in ways that surprise you, and are often problematic. The Pre-Frontal Cortex is your thinking brain; the part you identify with as “me.” When you have discussions between your thinking self and your emotional self, you can update the Limbic brain with new responses, so you will feel more in synch with your emotional self. These conversations can feel like a discussion between an adult (Pre-Frontal Cortex) and a small child (Limbic brain) and may be uncomfortable at first. Therapy is often about managing these conversations to change your habitual emotional responses to something more productive. Taking responsibility for your emotional and mental companion, your brain/mind, will greatly improve your satisfaction and happiness, which is my wish for you. ©Tina B. Tessina, 2023. Adapted from: 52 Weeks to Better Mental Health: A Guided Workbook for Self-exploration and Growth Author Bio: Tina B. Tessina, Ph.D. is a licensed psychotherapist in S. California since 1978 with over 40 years’ experience in counseling individuals and couples and author of 15 books in 17 languages, including Dr. Romance’s Guide to Finding Love Today; It Ends With You: Grow Up and Out of Dysfunction; The Ten Smartest Decisions a Woman Can Make After Forty; The Real 13th Step , How to Be Happy Partners: Working it Out Together; How to Be a Couple and Still Be Free, Money, Sex and Kids and her newest, 52 Weeks to Better Mental Health. She writes the “Dr. Romance” blog, and the “Happiness Tips from Tina” email newsletter. Online, she’s known as “Dr. Romance.” Dr. Tessina appears frequently on radio, TV, video and podcasts. She tweets @tinatessina.
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