On Brain Chemicals

 

Loretta Breuning, author of Tame Your Anxiety: Rewiring Your Brain for Happiness, talks about tiny chemical loops in the brain. We are wired by our past experiences. We grew, like an onion. with experience — either with happy chemicals from our brain that made us feel good and safe and so we want to explore more or unhappy chemicals that made us feel frightened or untrusting and made us want to recede and hide. Whatever tripped our dopamine when you were young is how you expect to get it today. Early experiences set our course.

One big idea: both happy chemicals and unhappy chemicals are short-lived. They metabolize quickly in your body. Cortisol’s half-life in your system is 20 minutes. So, in terms of the happy chemicals, you have to do more to get more. How can you continue to get hits? You can do it by helping others or making something and sharing it. How to avoid falling into a cortisol spiral?  Occupy your mind and hands.  Play guitar.  How do we help others that seem to be in the spiral?  Distract them -- again -- mind and body.  In 20 minutes, 50% of the chemical should be gone.

We have ideas about how we get our oxytocin needs met. But we might not be right. You need to set about learning what your resources are.  We should have a goal of trying to expand the ways that we can do that. We should have short term, mid term, and long term goals.

You have to be ready for a cortisol hit. Like, when we’re trying to diet, we must stock our cupboards with healthy foods. On the one hand, we have to stay away from a cortisol cycle. We should remember that it will be half gone in 20 minutes; 75% gone in 40 minutes. When you get a hit of cortisol, you can only focus on the threat. Like the gazelle being chased by a cheetah. No thinking about eating when you are running for your life.

from an interview of Breuning on the AOM podcast #606.