Category: Brain Health

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Brain Health Psychological Tips

Your Phone is Not Your Friend

your phone is not your friend

A friend is a being that is there when you require help.

Now imagine something or someone that provides you with exactly the things you lack at the time.

You’re feeling bored? This friend provides you a lot of entertainment to witness and talk about!

You don’t feel good? This friend gives you a million things to watch and laugh at.

You feel heartbroken? This friend provides you with countless pieces of advice – often pretty contradictory.

But most of all, this friend provides you with exactly what you think you want.

And what we think we want is often not really what we require.

So, in this article, I will be talking about a few reasons why your phone is not your friend.

Easy Access to Lies

In your low mood, you can always pick up your phone, go on instagram, or facebook or tiktok and you would instantly see many people seemingly living their lives to the fullest.

Living their lives as no human can.

The simple fact of the matter is that social media portrays a very distorted version of reality. Everyone is often at their best – or worst – behavior and image.

Does a friend lie to you?

They certainly should not! I am not talking about the probability of whether a friend would lie to you or not. Rather the concept of a friend is someone who wishes you well.

Your phone, however, is not your friend.

Then what is your phone exactly?

Unhealthy Addictions

Simply put, social media, smartphones or any kind of technological devices are simply tools to help you perform specific functions. There is no ethical or moral substrate of such devices. However, what they can lead to is the main problem.

Vape pods were considered an innovation of technology. They were shown as a new way to help smokers quit tobacco! However, recently these pods are being banned across Europe because they have actually got many teenagers hooked on nicotine!

This was a device for helping people. But it ended up enabling an entire generation towards nicotine addiction.

Your smartphone on the other hand does not hand out just one problem.

This device, unlike the vape pods cannot be banned. Moreover, it has become a part of daily life. You need your phone to order food, get a cab, navigate the map, prepare and conduct meetings in the workplace. But just a few clicks away, there lie many of the most addictive applications ever created. These apps have been proven by research to induce stressful habits.

Among the myriad of issues, social comparison, anxiety, depression, loneliness are just a few of them.

Lower Productivity

 If you’re spending so much time on your phone, using social media, you are automatically letting it eat up your time to be productive!

Research has shown that social media usage drops employees’ productivity significantly. No wonder you are not able to get your tasks done on time! And even if you somehow get them done – think about how much better you can perform your tasks or go on new ventures just by using that time lost to social media!

Smartphone Addiction Can Mess up Social Interactions

Ever wonder why some of your elders complain about young people always being on the phone?

Well, try to get an important point across to someone who cannot maintain eye contact because they think something on their phone is more interesting.

Interesting does not equal to important. This is just one way constantly being on your phone messes up social interactions.

“The Machine is much, but it is not everything. I see something like you in this plate, but I do not see you. I hear something like you through this telephone, but I do not hear you. That is why I want you to come. Pay me a visit, so that we can meet face to face, and talk about the hopes that are in my mind.” (E. M. Forster, The Machine Stops).

While phones can be a tool to facilitate interactions, they reduce the human, irrational and emotional aspect of communication which is natural for us. Emotional expression serves an important function in our communication with other people.

Emojis may be able to give a surface level understanding of what you are feeling. But it cannot convey the entire emotion. Or the gravity of what you are talking about.

Conclusion

Our phones are devices that help us communicate. But unlike older times, they now also serve as portals to other people’s (slightly to highly) distorted presentation of the world. In fact, they have become a world in themselves because of the sheer amount of information they can give us access to.

But they are not a substitute for organic experiences. Much of the world is still organic. The food that we order, the cab driver we call, the people we see online – all are living inside an organic reality.

Let us not let our phones fool us into a world where we can access, download, delete and log out of any situation that we so desire.

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Brain Health Psychiatric Disorders

Psychoeducation: Understanding Your Addiction

Addiction to chemical substances is not a comfortable condition. According to a study, 2.2% of people in the world have a problem with drugs or alcohol. 1.5% of people have an alcohol use disorder, compared to 0.8% of people with all substance use disorders put together (0.32% had a cannabis use disorder, 0.29% had an opioid use disorder, and 0.1 % had an amphetamine use disorder).

There are four major concepts that are central to addiction. These major concepts are expanded upon briefly in the DSM V TR. In this written piece of psychoeducation, I will attempt to unpack substance addiction and open a framework by which you can control it.

The four major concepts of addiction are:

  • Habits
  • Compulsivity
  • Personality factors
  • Physiological effects (tolerance and withdrawal)

These aspects can and are, in fact, present in many addictions, not just those related to chemical substances. For example, gambling disorder also is characterized by compulsions, habits and certain personality factors. One prominent aspect, however, which is a core feature of substance addiction are the physiological effects of tolerance and withdrawal.

So, without further ado, let us dive into the experience of addiction, factor by factor.

Habits

According to some researchers, addiction can be explained as an adapted habit. An adapted habit is a complex of behaviors that an individual seeks to adapt to, due to the reinforcing aspects of the behaviors. There are three major elements of such a habit:

  • Initial capture
  • Development of behavioral action schemata
  • Cognitive expectancies concerning the habit
Initial Capture

The word capture here is used in the invasiveness of the habit, due to its desirability and reinforcement. Individuals who are addicted to substances often talk about a drug capturing their state of mind. The initial capture is often when the action has already been performed and the reinforcement has already been significantly experienced.

What then happens is that this action is associated with a desirable outcome (e.g euphoria, stimulation, more relaxed social interactions etc.). Adapted habit theory of addiction – and scientific research – put forward the notion that drugs actually become a primary reinforcer. This means that they are on the same level as a reward for person as food is.

This is how the habit captures a person.

Action Schemata

Action schemata or behavioral action schemata are a thought based conceptualization of one’s plan to perform the habit. Schemata refer to many ideas about a particular thing being grouped together in order.

So, behavioral action schemata refer to the addicted individual’s conceptualized plan of how they will follow their addiction further. For example, a person addicted to pain killers will have an entire action sequence in mind where they acquire the pain killer and use it.

This is the result of a habit.

Expectations

For one to have motivation to perform a habit, there have to be some expectations of what they hope to achieve. Since the substance(s) can become a primary reinforcer, this shows that one’s expectations for the substance use is far reaching.

Mind altering substances can provide an individual with psychological and physiological relief. Conversely, some substances can energize an individual.

Regardless, these effects usually make one’s expectations for the drug use stronger and more mentally intrusive.

Compulsivity

Compulsions are constant urges to perform an action. Compulsivity is the lack of control of one’s behavior over acting against these urges. Substance use disorders also feature the element of compulsivity, much like obsessive compulsive disorder.

There are two ways by which compulsivity plays a role in addiction. The first way is by the way of carrying on a learned and reinforced habit. An individual could thus have compulsions regarding performing a habit again and again because it is rewarding.

The second way compulsions have a major part in addictions is that one’s urge to consume drugs is fueled by their urge to get rid of a bad experience or event. This is most notable in individuals engage in substance abuse and who have higher levels of stress. The substance provides them with relief from an aversive state.

Personality Factors

Personality is a pattern of multiple complexes of behaviors that seem to be constant through age and context. It is based on environmental and genetic predispositions, with both of them contributing simultaneously. To say that one is born an addict would be unscientific and untrue. However, if a young individual has a higher affinity towards seeking excitement, it reflects a predisposition towards addiction. Excitement seeking is actually a facet of trait extraversion of the five factor model of personality.

Other important personality traits that can contribute to addiction are of neuroticism and conscientiousness.

Neuroticism is a personality trait that signifies emotional instability. Thus, one could see this as playing a major role in compulsivity. Furthermore, neuroticism also includes being impulsive. Impulsivity is the failure to control one’s actions in the context of a momentary urge. Unsurprisingly, individuals that have addictions are also often impulsive.

On the other hand, conscientiousness, which is a trait that relates to one’s ambitiousness and orderliness, can have a negative impact on addiction. In fact, if an individual has higher levels of conscientiousness, there is a greater possibility that they can recover from addiction more effectively. Conscientious individuals want their life to be in order and they usually have high ambitions and desire to achieve more. So, they might see their addiction as a major hindrance that they eventually have to overcome

It is important to remember, however, that psychiatric conditions are not just a product of the environment or genetics as a whole. Rather, both of these factors contribute significantly. Personality traits are much the same.

So, by understanding one’s behaviors and working towards goals which offer pleasure but stability can have a major effect on the person’s addictions.

Physiological Effects

Substance addiction can majorly change our body’s physiological condition. While some of the physical effects are indirect (for example, weight loss), the substance can directly affect the way chemicals in our brain act.

Many of these substances, by binding with chemical receptors in the synapses of our brains increase the duration the ‘happy chemicals’ stay out in the synapse.

This is usually what causes the euphoria one might feel. This also produces the relaxing effects.

Since this change is not what our body is used to, our body tries to adapt to it. Our brain might gradually stop releasing its own ‘happy chemicals’. Or our blood vessels might remain dilated for longer times.

As our body adapts to the drug, we might start to feel as if the effects of the drug are lesser. So, one could start taking more drugs to help them get the same feeling. Their body has developed a tolerance to the effects of the drug. This is what can greatly increase one’s substance use.

Another important point to remember is that these changes that I talked about earlier, only adapt our bodies to the time when we are using the drug. When one suddenly stops using the drug, for some time, their body doesn’t just go back to normal. It is adapted to the effects of the drug.

The happy chemicals do not release at the same rate they did before. In fact, many other effects, such as slowing down of the heart rate in alcohol, do not return to normal initially after the addiction is dropped. This is our body’s way of withdrawal from the effects of the drug.

Unfortunately, in cases of potent drugs such as methamphetamine and heroine, the withdrawals can endanger life. This is because many of the physiological functions of the body are no longer being performed as correctly as before.

This is why medications are often used to treat withdrawal symptoms. They do not lead to the same euphoria, but they allow the body to return to normal through a controlled and safer dosage.

Conclusion

Substance abuse and addiction is a psychiatric condition. If it is severe, it can cause long lasting social and psychological trauma. In fact, withdrawal symptoms and overdoses can be fatal. This is why it is necessary to treat them appropriately. Not every kind of drug is fatal though. However, habits that cause harm to oneself and others are rarely sustainable.

If you or anyone you know might have a substance problem, it is probably good to seek help.

Categories
Brain Health Cognitive Psychology Psychiatric Disorders

Basic Psychological Techniques to Control Social Anxiety

M Abdullah Qureshi

Social events are supposed to be fun.

Going out with your friends, going on a date with your partner or even going to weddings can be exciting. Research has also shown that people who are high in sociability tend to have better health outcomes.

However, not all people find social interactions to be fulfilling. While introverts are generally healthy, a subset of people experience anxiety in social situations. Often this anxiety is an indication of a deeper psychological issue. People with social anxiety disorder (SAD), which is also called social phobia, are constantly afraid of and avoid social situations because they think other people will judge them. Social anxiety can be very upsetting, and people who have it may avoid social or performance situations, which can affect their school, job, and social life.

I have treated people with Social Anxiety Disorder and other social issues. It is not at all a pleasant condition.

But there are many behavioral and cognitive techniques that can overcome these issues.

Do you want to take control of your social anxiety?

Do you want to be social without negative thoughts all the time?

In this essay, I will outline three of the major techniques that you can use to get rid of your social anxiety. As a reminder, I will add that if you believe that you have a major issue with social anxiety, please consult a clinician. There is no harm in doing so.

With that out of the way, let’s see how you can take control of your social anxiety!

Cognitive Restructuring

Our first point is about addressing our cognitions.

Imagine a situation where all your friends are having a lot of fun. But during that gathering, a friend of yours says something which appears to be hurtful. However, he does not seem to notice. He keeps enjoying with the group.

But your mood has changed completely. Suddenly, you feel conscious about yourself. And that just sucks the fun out of everything.

If you find yourself in situations where others’ judgments seem to affect you more deeply, you might have major issues with social anxiety.

The cognitive triad can be used to explain this. When we find ourselves unable to take control of our negative thoughts about us, others and the world, our mood deteriorates. Unfortunately, in social settings this mood can be far more hurtful to us.

Cognitive restructuring is, at its core, re-evaluating your thoughts about a situation using all the evidence that is available.

It could be that perhaps your initial evaluation of your friend’s comments was too harsh. Perhaps the initial evaluation did not take many things into consideration. For example, it could be that he says these things to everyone. Or maybe he said that as a passing comment.

It could also be that people in general do not say many things personally. They do not generally think much before commenting. In fact, much of what people say could be a result of projection of their own insecurities.

So, if you re-evaluate the situation following a similar line of reasoning, you will find that your thoughts might change about the entire event. Perhaps the intensity might lower significantly. In fact, you could even start feeling bad about that friend.

We have understood how adaptive thoughts and beliefs could treat social anxiety. But social anxiety is also based on our continuous habits of thinking in social situations.

This means that going through those adverse situations could be crucial.

With this, I will move on to another effective intervention.

Exposure

One of the unfortunate products of social anxiety is that one might stop being social. They might avoid social events, birthdays, re-union parties, hang-outs, and trips – many things that can actually make you feel really good.

Perhaps the most negative consequence of social anxiety could be that you do not develop the right coping mechanisms.

Being exposed to the situations we fear the most can have positive consequences that we might not have expected. In fact, a study demonstrated that exposure to social mishaps could be used to treat people with social anxiety!

While treating patients with Social Anxiety Disorder, I found this technique to be particularly useful. New ways of providing exposure can be through virtual exposure as well.

Thanks for technology!

Exposure is often paired with another intervention. Since symptoms of anxiety can also include our physiological arousal, it is important at times to relax our body.

Relaxation

Anxiety has many symptoms. Many of these symptoms are actually psycho-physiological. These features could involve

  • Increased heartbeat or palpitations
  • Nausea or vomiting
  • Profuse sweating
  • Dizziness
  • Pins and needles
  • Tightening of muscles

These symptoms indicate a period of heightened physiological arousal. If you find that your experience with these symptoms is severe, consult your clinician. However, tutorials for some basic relaxation exercises are also available online.

Body relaxation is not a standalone treatment. But research indicates that it can help you control your physiological symptoms effectively. It certainly can make you feel calmer and more in touch with your surroundings. The rule goes that the less agitated or physiologically aroused you feel during anxiety, the better your outcomes.

Conclusion

M Abdullah Qureshi

Social anxiety is a debilitating condition to have. It stops you from doing many healthy activities. However, to say that there is no end to it would be wrong.

The 3 techniques talked about in this article are very effective ways of controlling social anxiety. But remember, these are just 3 of many other psychological tactics that you can use. In fact, these are the basic psychological techniques that have been used for decades.

Newer psychotherapies and techniques have emerged over the years since then.

However, remember that if you have severe symptoms of social anxiety, address them properly. Talk to a health consultant. You can also ask for help from your peers or social circle.

If you would like to add anything, or you have a question, feel free to write it in the comments section below.

Categories
Brain Health

The Effects of Trauma on Parts of the Brain

Animals and people are more likely to have cognitive-behavioral, mental, and physical problems later on if they have traumatic events early in life. In people, stressful events are strong indicators of mental sickness. More and more studies have focused on changes in the structure and function of the brain that show how genetic changes happen after stress (Thomason & Marusak, 2017).

Stress Hormones

Teenagers who have been through stress and show signs of post-traumatic stress disorder make more of the steroid cortisol than teens who have never been through trauma. Research on animals show that too much corticosterone can hurt brain cells in parts of the brain that have a lot of glucocorticoid receptors, such as the hippocampus and the prefrontal cortex (PFC). You need to be able to remember things and make decisions, which are both very important for learning (Carrion & Wong, 2012).

Brain Areas

A talk at the National Summit for Stress and the Brain talked about structural and functional imaging results in the hippocampus and PFC of young people who have PTSD (Carrion & Wong, 2012).

It was said in the lecture that young people with PTSS have higher amounts of cortisol. Cortisol levels before bedtime can predict long-term declines in the size of the hippocampus. There is a negative relationship between cortisol levels and volume in the PFC. Teenagers with PTSS have lower activity in the hippocampi and prefrontal cortex (PFC) when they are doing memory and executive function tasks compared to healthy teens (Carrion & Wong, 2012).

As memory is a particularly important function of the limbic region and the Prefrontal Cortex, this short essay will infer that memory problems could indicate functional changes in the brain.

Hippocampus

The hippocampus is a part of the brain that helps us learn and remember things. It is also very sensitive to stress. When people are stressed, their bodies create a lot of glucocorticoids, which are chemicals that hurt neurons in the CA3 area of the hippocampus. These chemicals cause neurons to die and dendritic branches to stop growing. Glucocorticoids mess up the chemistry of cells and make hippocampal neurons more vulnerable to amino acids that make them fire, like glutamate. Bremner and others (1999) used cognitive tests to find out how well people with PTSD could use declarative memory. They picked tests that had been shown to be accurate in studies of epilepsy patients as ways to look into how the hippocampus works. These mental tests, like delayed paragraph memory and learning word lists, were linked to the loss of neurons in the hippocampus in people who had surgery to remove part of their hippocampus to treat seizures.

In the first study to use brain imaging to look at PTSD, war soldiers had an 8% decrease in the volume of their right hippocampal area, as measured by magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). There was no change in reference areas like the caudate, amygdala, or temporal lobe. People with PTSD had problems with their short-term memories when the size of their right hippocampal region shrunk.

Prefrontal Cortex

The prefrontal cortex (PFC) controls behaviour, thoughts, and emotions from the top down. It creates the mental models needed for flexible, goal-directed behaviour, such as the ability to control attention, reality testing, and understanding of one’s own and others’ actions. Through working memory, the dorsolateral PFC (dlPFC) controls ideas, attention, and movements in animals. Damage to the PFC makes it harder to concentrate or pay attention, and it can also make it harder to control your impulses, which can lead to risky behaviour. Structural imaging studies have found that the dlPFC, ventromedial Prefrontal Cortex (vmPFC), subgenual PFC, and temporal association cortex are all thinner in people with high levels of distress (Arnstein et al., 2015).

Damage to both sides of the vmPFC makes it harder to control emotional responses, leading to more anger, trouble making decisions, and a lack of understanding. PFC injuries can also make it harder to stop cognitive distraction, like stopping memories that aren’t relevant. The dorsal PFC is needed for reality checking, which is a skill that helps people tell the difference between a strong memory and a real event, like the flashbacks that people with PTSD experience. Lastly, the PFC can control how alert we are by connecting to noradrenergic neurons and stopping them from firing. This lowers the stress reaction (Arnstein et al., 2015).

In Mammals

Animal tests have shown that even a small stressor that can’t be stopped, like loud white noise, can quickly hurt the working memory of monkeys and rats in the PFC. A lot of the time, people who are worried feel like they are unable to regulate the issue that causes them stressed (Arnstein et al., 2015). It’s intriguing to note that the PFC may halt the stress response if it believes that the individual is in charge.

Humans

People can also lose the ability to use their working memory when they are under a lot of stress that they can’t control. For example, watching a disturbing and violent movie can hurt working memory and lower the dlPFC BOLD response. Even Special Forces troops who are under a lot of stress have been seen to have trouble with their working memories (Arnstein et al., 2015). Acute, uncontrolled worry also makes PFC less self-controlled and makes them more likely to abuse drugs.

Conclusion

Scientists have argued for long that psychological phenomena interact with the brain. As is demonstrated by the research cited above, the investigation has reached a point where we could measure changes in the brain, both on a functional and structural level. This is a promising direction which could highlight even better psychological interventions. After all, if stress can be contained through specific psychotherapeutic measures, these measures could be studied individually in relation to the effect on the brain.

This direction continues to marry the sciences of Neurology and Clinical Psychology.

References

  • Arnsten, A. F., Raskind, M. A., Taylor, F. B., & Connor, D. F. (2015). The effects of stress exposure on prefrontal cortex: Translating basic research into successful treatments for post-traumatic stress disorder. Neurobiology of stress, 1, 89-99
  • Bremner, J. D. (1999). The lasting effects of psychological trauma on memory and the hippocampus. Law and Psychiatry.
  • Carrion, V. G., & Wong, S. S. (2012). Can traumatic stress alter the brain? Understanding the implications of early trauma on brain development and learning. Journal of adolescent health, 51(2), S23-S28.
  • Thomason, M. E., & Marusak, H. A. (2017). Toward understanding the impact of trauma on the early developing human brain. Neuroscience, 342, 55-67.