Stress has become an accepted part of our modern life. It’s something we all expect as we juggle work and family responsibilities. But long-term stress can be extremely damaging to the body and mind, leading to an increased risk of heart disease, stroke, immune disorders, diabetes, and more. Even more alarming is the effect chronic stress has on the brain. Studies have shown that it can lead to depression, severe anxiety, memory loss, problems sleeping, and difficulty regulating emotions.
There are a lot of methods and mindsets that help reduce stress, and we talk about them a lot in our programs. And while practicing techniques like daily meditation and journaling, eating a healthy diet, and getting plenty of exercise are extremely effective at lowering your stress levels, there are a lot of tools meant to offer quick stress relief in the moment. Here are three brain hacks you can practice that help calm your mind anytime you’re feeling overwhelmed and stressed out.
Name Your Emotions
It’s been long understood that talking about your emotions helps process them. But was that because talking through difficult situations leads to resolution that reduces the emotional toll? Or was something else happening?
In 1999, psychiatrist Dr. Dan Seigel coined the term “name it to tame it”. He described using language to regulate your emotions. Your limbic system controls a lot of your emotional reactions, and when you’re experiencing stress, this area is highly active. But when you’re able to engage the more logical areas of your brain—in particular, your frontal lobe—your brain will actually release calming neurotransmitters to calm the limbic reaction. In turn, this allows you to process the situation which reduces your emotional response.
A 2006 study conducted out of UCLA set out to understand the neurology behind this phenomenon. They found that simply naming the emotion an individual is feeling disrupts the activity in the amygdala—the area of the brain responsible for processing emotional responses—by activating two areas in the prefrontal cortex. When the amygdala stops signaling a threat to your nervous system, which allows your body and mind to calm down.
There are a number of ways you can name your emotions. Further studies have shown that the more expressive you can describe the emotion, the more effective naming it is in disrupting the emotional response in the brain. For example, rather than saying you’re stressed, you may be feeling helpless, overwhelmed, frustrated, discouraged, or insecure. Research indicates that the more specific you can be, the more powerful naming the emotion can be. You can add event-specific descriptions, such as deadline pressure, or finals stress, which can also be triggers to remind you to practice stress-relief techniques.
Remember to start small. Keep a notebook with you or have a document in your phone. Whenever you notice that you’re feeling stressed, take a moment and write down what’s going on and how you feel. It doesn’t have to be a long journal entry, but even writing down two words—finals and nervous—will disrupt the amygdala and relieve the activation of the stress neurotransmitter cortisol in your brain. The more time you spend recognizing your emotions, the easier this process becomes, and can be a powerful tool in providing instant stress-relief.
Move Your Eyes
The eyes are the window into the brain. Being able to scan the landscape and identify details in the environment were imperative to survival. Research has shown that eye movement is directly connected to thought patterns and cognitive processing, and new therapies such as eye movement desensitization movements (EMDR) have proven effective in resolving symptoms of long-term trauma and PTSD.
When you’re in a stressful situation, your vision turns to what’s known as “sharp” or “acute” vision. You focus in on the threat directly in front of you. This makes sense from an evolutionary perspective, you’d be worried about the hungry animal trying to eat you. Your attention is honed directly on the threat. In modern terms, this threat can be anything from a screaming toddler to a busy spreadsheet.
In times of stress, your vision will zero in on the stressor, keeping you focused on it which continues to elevate your stress response. In order to break that reaction, you have to break your visual focus. One way to this is to simply stare into the distance. Again, from an evolutionary perspective, being able to scan the horizon was calming. It meant you could see if any threats were headed your way and gave you an element of control. Being able to look out a window is ideal, but even finding the furthest point in a room and scanning the area will help reduce your visual focus and calm your mind.
Another way eye movement can reduce stress is through lateral eye movements. This is simply moving your eyes back and forth, as quickly as possible, for a few seconds. The movement itself is a distraction, and many find that it’s impossible to think stressful thoughts while engaged in the act. You’re focused on the eye movements themselves, which disrupts your attention. Instead of thinking about how hard the final exam is going to be or how long completing the spreadsheet will take, you can take a moment to reset, which reduces the stress response so you can go back to your task with a clear mind.
Take A Deep Breath
This advice probably isn’t new to anyone here. Deep breathing has been shown to calm the nervous system, reduce stress, and combat anxiety. When you’re stressed, you trigger your sympathetic nervous system, and in preparation for fight-or-flight your breathing changes to short, shallow breaths. Taking time to slow your breathing sends the signal to your brain that you are safe, and that provides an immediate calm response.
More than that, stress causes your muscles to tense, and that extends to your diaphragm. When you take deep breaths, you have to open your diaphragm in order to inhale oxygen into the lower part of your lungs. You know you’re taking deep enough breaths when your belly expands with each breath. As your diaphragm relaxes, this signals to the rest of your body that it too, should relax. In addition to relaxing, with every deep breath you take, you increase the amount of oxygen in your blood, which in turn increases the amount of oxygen in your brain. This triggers the release of endorphins, a feel-good neurotransmitter that reduces cortisol, the neurotransmitter associated with stress.
There are numerous types of deep breathing exercises you can practice to get these relaxing effects. Taking time to focus on your breathing signals to your brain that you’re not in danger and that you’re safe. It helps redirect your thoughts by bringing you into your body and allowing you a moment to focus only on inhaling and exhaling.
Learning how to breathe to disrupt stressful reactions can take some practice, and some breathing techniques may be more effective for you than others. Try different exercises and practice in both stressful and non-stressful situations. You’ll likely find that different techniques are more effective at different times than others, so having various breathing exercises you can turn to will ensure that you have effective tools to combat stress no matter what brings it on.
Conclusion
Stress happens. That’s why it’s important to create and maintain healthy lifestyle habits to keep your daily stress levels low and avoid long-term damage to your body and mind. But no matter how healthy your habits are, you’re going to experience stress. You may not be able to control what life throws at you, but you can control how you react to it. Having these brain hacks on hand will help you navigate difficult times and stressful situations, allowing you to reach your limitless potential.
