Brain Strategies

We know that the brain’s integration plays a significant role in our mental health. I’d like to share two strategies for how to integrate our right and left hemispheres as described in The Whole Brain Child by Drs. Siegel and Payne Bryson.

1) Connect & Redirect: Often times, we will respond to emotional reactivity with logic (trying to “fix” the emotion with a solution to the feeling) but based on how the brain works, it’s more effective to connect with emotions BEFORE redirecting behavior.

• Ways to connect with the right which provides COMFORT:

  • touch

  • tone of voice

  • facial expressions

  • empathy

  • pausing

• Ways to connect to the left which helps SOLVE:

  • solutions

  • words

  • planning

  • logical explanations

  • boundaries

This approach allows for empathy with a boundary. For example, in our distress of feeling hurt, we may lash out and say something cruel to someone we love. The behavior is not appropriate but correcting it before connecting emotionally may cause more reactivity. Acknowledging the hurt through compassion can then be followed up by holding someone accountable who will likely be more receptive.

2) Name it to Tame It: I’ve written about this previously and educate clients on this strategy often especially for trauma. This strategy integrates the brain as we name our story and experiences. This is why trauma informed therapy contributes to healing; it provides space for clients to name things in a safe, non judgmental environment. We all need a coherent narrative of our experiences. It isn’t necessarily what happened factually but how we made sense of what happened to us. Brain integration can help us understand our experiences in a new way.

• Telling your story with the brain:

  • L Brain- explain, put things in order, and assign words

  • R Brain--autobiographical info, whole context and emotional info (our sense of self, where our stories receive texture and meaning)

    *EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing) allows for integration of both hemispheres of the brain and is one of the top modalities for treating trauma.

• Our stories should have at least 3 things:

  • Facts/details (L brain)

  • Feelings/child’s actual internal experience, emotional meaning (R brain)

  • Empowerment/strategy/resilience. The happy ending is you survived. You are not the victim to circumstance or yours or rothers’ emotional responses.

When hard things happen, we share our stories.

Jayber Crow

I was gifted this book by Wendell Berry and within the first chapters understood why this book and especially this character is so beloved.

This story offers profound insights from the vantage point of this man’s reflections and observations. One in particular stood out to me:

“The world doesn’t stop because you are in love or in mourning or in need of time to think. And so when I have thought I was in my story or in charge of it, I really have been only on the edge of it, carried along. Is this because we are in an eternal story that is happening partly in time?”

The humility that we are part of something bigger can be overwhelming and even scary. That the world carries on and moves forward even if we aren’t ready or don’t like the pace. I often find the therapeutic space to be one where things can slow down if even for a bit out of the week and we receive what we need to rejoin the world around us that needs us to partake and give what we can and our role in it.

Brain Matter

Several years ago, I had the privilege of learning from Dr. Tina Payne Bryson and have used her and Dr. Siegel’s research in my practice.

I’ll often share with clients that we all have early blueprints shaped by our early experiences, what was modeled to us (directly and indirectly) which informed the way we see the world, relationships and ourselves.

Research shows that the brain (how we think, feel, act) is shaped by genes and experience. This means that we hold tremendous power to create new experiences for the brain! Dr. Bryson calls parents, educators, clinicians, etc. “brain architects” (what a privilege and honor that we should approach humbly). As children’s brains are forming, these brain architects impact how the brain becomes built and can impact how it shifts over time.

HOW DOES THE BRAIN CHANGE? THE 5 LAWS OF NEURAL PLASTICITY

-Mass practice: doing something over and over, events that are longer in duration and more frequent in time; if we don’t use it, we lose it (for example, 2 hrs of tennis 1x/week for 6 months vs 3 hrs of teens 2x/week for 3 months) This is often why I often encourage weekly sessions for the consistency and constancy it provides to relearn and unlearn.

-Novelty: this is why trauma is so significant in its impact even if it is a single incident. The brain is not familiar therefore it pays attention evaluating whether it is safe or not.

-Focal Attention: “Where attention goes, neurons fire, and where neurons fire, they wire.”-Dan Siegel; this is an effective way in changing the brain. This is a crucial contribution of therapy in helping change the brain. Repeated experiences of attention through empathy over time changes the brain.

-Unlearning old way: the brain takes the past of least resistance which means it will choose neuronal networks that are familiar even they are not helpful. Bringing awareness and insight into these old ways/familiar patterns offers a chance to choose a different way that is more beneficial.

-Sleep, exercise: cannot be minimized how important these are to brain health!

When the brain’s two hemispheres (left: logic, literal and right: whole picture-context, senses emotion and body info) works together, it allows differences to be honored while also promoting connection. If not, we are totally disconnected from ourselves (body and emotion) or overly flooded.

Integration is important because without it we are disintegrated and experience the world with chaos or rigidity. When we are integrated, we are Flexible, Adaptive, Coherent, Energized, Stable (FACES) which is a good definitely of mental health. These are things that I seek to help build for my clients in their daily lives.

The wonderful thing about learning about how our brains work is that we can identify things we can improve upon and know it is possible! Nothing is sealed in stone.

The Peace of Wild Things

When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

Wendell Berry

from The Peace of Wild Things And Other Poems (Penguin, 2018)

The Only Life You Could Save

The Journey

Mary Oliver

One day you finally knew

what you had to do, and began,

though the voices around you

kept shouting

their bad advice-

though the whole house

began to tremble

and you felt the old tug

at your ankles.

“Mend my life!”

each voice cried.

But you didn’t stop.

You knew what you had to do,

though the wind pried

with its stiff fingers

at the very foundations-

though their melancholy

was terrible.

It was already Late

enough, and a wild night,

and the road full of fallen

branches and stones.

But little by little,

as you left their voices behind,

the stars began to burn

through the sheets of clouds,

and there was a new voice,

which you slowly recognized as your own,

that kept you company

as you strode deeper and deeper

into the world,

determined to do

the only thing you could do-

determined to save

the only life you could save.

Our Work

Yes! No!

Mary Oliver

How necessary it is to have opinions! I think the spotted trout lilies are satisfied, standing a few inches above the earth. I think serenity is not something you just find in the world, like a plum tree, holding up its white petals.

The violets, along the river, are opening their blue faces, like small dark lanterns.

The green mosses, being so many, are as good as brawny.

How important it is to walk along, not In haste but slowly, looking at everything and calling out

Yes! No! The

swan, for all his pomp, his robes of glass and petals, wants only to be allowed to live on the nameless pond. The catbrier is without fault. The water thrushes, down among the sloppy rocks, are going crazy with happiness. Imagination is better than a sharp instrument. To pay attention, this is our endless and proper work.

---

“What do you notice?” “What is/was that like for you?” “What is happening right now as you share this?” Our inner world tells us much and insight allows us to know ourselves and this awareness creates the ability to make choices. This work is endless because we have much to see and hear and learn and understand. This work is proper because it brings us home.

Our Ladder

“State creates Story.” -Dr. Stephen Porges

Over the last several years, I have begun to educate my clients on Dr. Stephen Porges’ Polyvagal Theory. This theory shows how our Autonomic Nervous System (ANS) shapes our experiences of safety and impacts our ability for connection. Having this information through mindful attunement to our bodies allows us to be active in our Nervous System response to situations which allows us to feel empowered.

A ladder is a helpful picture for the daily movements our ANS makes. The top of the ladder is when we feel safety and connection. If we experience something threatening like a frown on a stranger’s face, we may move down the ladder to a “mobilized” state. The goal of our ANS is to get back to safety so we may flee the situation by avoiding the stranger or become aggressive and frown back so they know not to continue their “threatening” behavior. If we do not feel like those actions have brought us back to feeling safe (the top of the ladder), we move further down into an “immobilized” state which might involve freezing. Each part of the ladder requires different responses to get back to the top.

Stories of who we are and how the world works begins in the ANS. We take in information from our environment through our body and then our brain which translates/encodes the information into beliefs.

information from environment —> body —> brain —> beliefs

If we bring in information that seems threatening, the message/belief is “I am unsafe” “I am in danger”. If we have information that tells us there is no threat, the message/belief is “I am safe” “I can be at ease”. As Dr. Porges teaches, “State creates story.”

Sometimes we may interpret information as dangerous when it is not because of previous experiences and trauma. We may become hypervigilant and be primed to see things that are dangerous when they aren’t. Our brain and NS job will always be to keep us safe. When our safety has been threatened, our NS response to keep us safe may unintentionally negatively impact our sense of being in the world and with other people.

There is hope! We can work with our nervous system to bring it back to feeling safe (getting back to the top of the ladder) so we can evaluate situations and people with more accuracy and trust we have the capability and capacity to care for and protect ourselves while being in the world and in relationships.

Radical Acceptance

“Reality is your friend and sometimes your friend is ugly.” My friend Jeremy says this often. Sometimes reality suits us and other times it’s a nightmare. One of the most impactful skills in my own life and the lives of my clients is learning to radically accept what is happening. (The following is from a training I attended led by Lane Pederson, Psy.D, LP, DBTC)

We all have choices to make when life is painful including:

• Change painful situations when you can

• Shift your perspective of the situation

• Radically accept the situation

• Continue to suffer

What does it look like to radically accept? You have a choice (taking responsibility for your situation even if you did not cause/create it) to meet reality exactly where its at. Acceptance does NOT mean I have to 1) like the situation or 2) agree with it. It means I do not fight reality.

Radical Acceptance:

• Freedom from suffering requires acceptance of “what is”

• Acceptance may still mean tolerating pain

• Acceptance frees psychological and emotional resources to move forward

If we refuse to accept reality, we expend much energy in our resistance. Acceptance is about empowerment to free up psychological resources in order to heal. The gift we can all give to ourselves.