Celebrating miracles...
If you struggle with depression, anxiety, or everyday challenges of being human, I want you to know there are some wonderful advantages to being alive right now. I believe we are at an incredible intersection where brain science, mindfulness, mental health and faith practices are interacting in a way that is more knowledgeable, helpful and hopeful than we have ever known. Certainly in our lifetime.
And although I’m not “fully cured” or “fully healed” from my struggles with ptsd, I am good enough. Thank God. And I have crawled out of enough chasms to be willing to say I know some routes out that are helpful and I’d like to share them with you.
To get better, I continue to study brain science and how the brain works. My current understanding is that the brain evolved by adding more complex brains over the earlier versions. The “lizard” brain is the oldest part of our brain. This is where fear and anxiety are activated. A scan of a brain that is locked in fear, lights up the amygdala, the lizard brain. When I’m stuck in a place of fear, I now know that my lizard brain is lit up and sometimes the lights feel like they won’t ever go out. This is part of being locked in fear. It can feel paralyzing even though we now know, thankfully, that that feeling of forever is temporary.
How do I make my time in fear shorter in duration?
The higher functions of the brain are activated when we feel thankful, creative, expansive.
I now know my fear brain is myopic. I focus on one threat. Lock on. Sometimes I switch, focus on another threat, then another one. Brain scientists are now saying that staring at a cell phone for an extended period of time activates the fear brain because the eyes are so specifically focused that the brain believes there must be a danger somewhere….
Stop. Look around. Take a deep breath and then another.
Fortunately, there are many ways to exit the fear brain~
Looking out.
Seeing the big picture.
Taking a deep belly breath. And another.
And being thankful.
Gratitude is like a ladder from my fear brain to my creative brain. When I can find one tiny thing that I’m thankful for and focus on it, I create a rung on the ladder and sit there for a moment.
I breathe. I smile. Even if it isn’t a real smile yet, I know my brain doesn’t know the difference and a smile means I’m not threatened, I’m safe.
And when I’m safe, I can be creative… another rung up.
Here’s another cool part about brains… we have old “maps” in our brains. This is a science word brain experts are using and I don’t know as much about “maps” from a science perspective as I would like to. But I now know I can identify and feel “maps” in my brain ~ old, familiar ways of thinking and reacting. The simple act of noticing an old “map” can be a profound act of freedom from decades of hard thinking and even from generations of experiencing life a certain way.
I’m starting to see myself as a trailblazer in the wild frontier of the brain, the heart and the soul. I don’t speak science like the brain people. I’m what’s known as a “sensitive.” I feel things deeply ~ emotionally and physically. I can feel in my brain when it’s lit up and stuck. This means, thankfully, I can feel when it starts to shift.
And I can feel my heart fill with warmth and hope.
Because I have a lot of old maps in my brain that lead to my fear brain, every day I work to be intentional and choose to chart new paths with beautiful thoughts, emotions and prayers. I now understand that repetition of new helpful brain paths eventually creates new “maps” that lead to the higher brain functioning more easily.
Many of my unconscious meanderings of thinking and feeling can lead me to a dungeon of darkness and woe. Truly.
This is why I work everyday to correct my path, to chart new maps in my brain and body. To get my cells used to being oxygenated instead of running on adrenaline. To notice when my heart is racing and breathe. To notice when I’m focused on a negative memory or a familiar hard old emotions and instead change to something beautiful right in front of me.
I consciously make time to stop, look out and smile.
I try to make time to celebrate miracles everyday… food for my dog showing up at my door, air conditioning, fresh strawberries, a friend’s smile, my husband’s humor….
When I remember to switch, like a train running on new tracks, I now have the added incentive and benefit of knowing that “neurons that wire together fire together.” This means my new, conscious thoughts are physically building new roads, new paths, new maps in my brain that lead to higher brain function (brain scans show this to be true!) and a more joyful, creative and thankful life.
Thank God!
I love this. I love this. I love sharing this with you. If it helps you at all, it makes my journey worth it to me. To reduce your time in a dungeon, to help you find more freedom, more love, and to live with more connection, creativity and gratitude.
Try it. Sit for a moment and find one thing you’re grateful for and let it wash over you and fill your heart with love. Breathe, smile and say, “Thank you.”
May Peace be with you,
Kathleen
Here is a song that our beloved caterpillar Butter sings to MissyAnn called “Celebrating Miracles!”
