Healthy Habits: Habits of a Healthy Brain

Since April is Stress Awareness Month, it’s the perfect time to manage our anxiety so we can lower our stress.  Dr. Loretta Breuning, who studies how chemicals effect our brains and behavior, has discovered seven habits of a healthy brain.

I had a chance to interview her to find out more.

What are the 7 habits of a healthy brain? 

1. Turn on your dopamine by taking a small step toward a goal, and then another.
Give yourself a long-term goal, a short-term goal and a middle-term goal. Then you can always shift to a different goal when one of them is blocked, so you will always be stepping ahead and stimulating dopamine.  

2. Stimulate your oxytocin by taking small steps of social trust.

We mammals long for safety in numbers, but we get tired of following the herd. Oxytocin is stimulated by social trust, but trusting everyone everywhere does not promote survival. Misplaced trust can be a survival threat, so our brain learns to fear trusting where our trust was disappointed before. That fear can deprive you of oxytocin. To overcome it, offer trust in small steps, wait for reciprocal trust, and take another small step.

3.  Enjoy serotonin by focusing on what you have instead of what others have. 

Mammals make social comparisons because it helps them spread their genes. The mammal brain rewards you with serotonin when you see yourself in the position of strength. The good feeling of serotonin is soon metabolized and you want more, which is why we keep seeking social power. But the quest often leads to frustration. Instead, find small ways to feel good about yourself without putting others down.

 

4. Spark endorphin with laughter. 

Endorphin masks pain with a good feeling. It evolved for emergencies only, but you get a little bit when you laugh because it jiggles your innards. Laughter is an important part of your life so you may just have to plan it in. Upload comedy so it’s ready in a moment of need, and avoid angry comedy. What your friends think is funny may not work for you, so make time for your own sense of humor.

5. Build a new happy-chemical pathway by feeding your brain a new experience repeatedly.

Your brain controls the happy chemicals with pathways built from past experience. Old pathways are never a perfect guide to happiness because they were built from the random experiences of youth. You can wire in new pathways by carefully designing a new behavior and repeating it for 45 days.

6. Save your energy for building new happy habits.

Blazing a new trail through your jungle of neurons is hard work. The electricity in your brain flows effortlessly into the old roads in your brain, but it doesn’t flow easily into new trails. And it’s scary to blaze a new trail because it’s not connected to your accumulated knowledge of pleasure and pain. We’re tempted to fall back on our old roads, even though they lead to bad habits. You need new habits to enjoy life, so save your energy for this challenge instead of squandering it elsewhere.

7. Take a break when your stress chemicals turn on.

Cortisol is your brain’s signal that you face an urgent survival threat. When your life is safe, it is triggered by small disappointments. Cortisol creates a full-body sensation of urgent danger even though you know you’re safe. Everything looks bad when your cortisol turns on. Fortunately, most of it is metabolized and excreted in an hour— unless you trigger more. So take a break and do something unthreatening.

No one has happy chemicals all the time. We all struggle to feel good with a brain that saves good feelings for survival action. We all strive to meet our needs with a brain wired by past experience. Nothing is wrong with you! Nothing is wrong with “our society.” We’re big-brained mammals! And we have the power to update our wiring in small steps.

How can people manage stress and anxiety in healthy ways?

Think like a gazelle. It doesn’t get angry at the lion. It focuses on the path in front of it. It has confidence in its own steps. It takes one step after another, and soon it is back enjoying the fresh grass.

You have power over your perceptions! You don’t have power over the lion. So instead of imagining that the lion is blocking your path, imagine that there are many possible paths and you are skilled at choosing and stepping.

When you are stressed, it’s because you have let yourself see them as the gatekeeper of your well-being. Instead, imagine that you have many possible paths to well-being and you can navigate them as skillfully as a gazelle.

How does brain chemistry affect happiness?

The brain chemicals that make us feel good are inherited from earlier mammals. Dopamine, serotonin and oxytocin reward an animal with a good feeling when it finds a way to meet a survival need. Then the good feeling stops and it has to do more to get more. Our brain evolved to promote survival, not to make you happy. Our happy chemicals are not designed to be on all the time. They evolved to do a job. When you know the job they do in animals, your ups and downs make sense. 

The happy chemicals are controlled by brain structures that all mammals have in common, like the amygdala, pituitary, hippocampus, and hypothalamus. If you want to be happy, you have to get if from this “limbic system.” But it can’t process language, so it can’t tell you in words why it turns the chemicals on and off. This is why we feel urgently motivated to do certain things without quite knowing why. 

How can parents help kids manage anxiety and stress and find joy more easily?

Focus on what you want rather than you don’t want. When you focus on disappointment, you build the pathways that turns on disappointment. Instead, break your desires into small steps and focus on your next step. Happy chemicals are triggering by your steps, so you will keep triggering them.

Learn more in her book Tame Your Anxiety and website. https://innermammalinstitute.org/