Introduction: The Mind

 

We all face challenges in our lives. My grandfather used to say, “Life is an exam. It is always going to be a struggle.” At times a colossal problem for you is perceived as trivial by others. It’s all relative. In the end only you can decide how big that matter is for you, and how best to tackle it.

I found and still find myself facing many adversities, which sometimes I find difficult to accept. The world does not make sense and I feel I am going down a rabbit hole. If you think about it we actually have no control over anything in this world, except our emotions, the way we act and react to situations. I realized I needed to learn how to make peace with both, the outside and my inner world. I needed to learn how to take care of myself so that I could offer my services to others; either as a medical student, a physician in the future or as a good samaritan.

The ‘Mind’ is probably the most powerful entity in this world. Many times physical ailments are manifestations of one’s emotional and mental well being. For example when we are studying for an exam or have a job interview we get anxious or scared. The amygdale, which is part of the limbic system (the emotional part of our brain) switches on. It is responsible for memories and emotions (such as fear, anger) related to survival. It coordinates with the sympathetic system, aka the fight or flight system, to release hormones such as adrenaline and cortisol, to combat the task at hand. The physical manifestations that are seen as a result of this could be heart palpitations, nausea, stomach ache, headache, insomnia etc which are also known as psychosomatic symptoms. Once we complete the task, our hormone levels return to normal and the physical symptoms decrease. However leading stressful lives, encountering difficulties every day and living in fear, our amygdala is known to do something called fear conditioning.
According to a science educator Regina Bailey, “Fear conditioning is an associative learning process by which we learn through repeated experiences to fear something. Our experiences can cause brain circuits to change and form new memories.” In short, our brain automatically creates neuropathways such that every time we face a stressful situation, we manifest psychosomatic symptoms similar to the time when we first faced an adversity. This leads to a constant release of high levels of cortisol that do not return to normal. This in turn can lead to both chronic mental and physical illnesses such as depression, anxiety, hypertension, diabetes etc. This mechanism that is supposed to save us from harm starts to become harmful; therefore being counterproductive. We get caught in a vicious cycle: for example stress leads to high blood pressure which in turn stresses you, leading to yet another spike in your blood pressure and so it continues. I know this from firsthand experience. We need to break this cycle. But how?   

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We will always face stressors. However we can learn how to cope with them healthily by making our ‘mind’ our friend. The mind, just like any other muscle in the body, needs exercise to make it stronger. Thus we will explore different therapies and tools aka ‘mind exercises’ that will help us build new neuropathways, memories in the amygdala that will hopefully lead to positive outcomes and aid us in battling chronic thought processes and diseases.

Along my journey I continue to come across many therapies: conventional, alternative, integrative etc. I am still experimenting with some tools that I will present and will tell you what I learn.
I encourage all of you to try at least one exercise presented here to help you with a challenge you are facing. It may take some time to see desired results but I hope that if you put your ‘mind’ to it you can find at least one resource to help you.

 

References:

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Amygdala: Fear and the Amygdala by Regina Bailey

 https://www.thoughtco.com/amygdala-anatomy-373211

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Psychosomatic Disorders
https://patient.info/health/psychosomatic-disorders

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Psychosomatic Symptoms & Anxiety

by Michelle Bolyn

http://www.livestrong.com/article/73262-psychosomatic-symptoms-anxiety/

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A great, informative article by the American Psychological Association:

http://www.apa.org/monitor/2013/07-08/symptoms.aspx