Have you ever felt like you can’t think straight? Have you struggled to string more than two words together? And have you ever noticed that when you can’t think straight and when you can’t string two words together, you get stressed? It’s like the harder you try, the more difficult it is.
If that’s you, then chances are you may be suffering from Brain Frog…oops I main Brain Fog. But don’t worry, it’s not terminal. It’s actually a result of too much stress and anxiety in your life. And although I just mentioned that you may feel stressed when you realise you have it, the truth of the matter is that it’s actually the stress that caused it.
So, What Is Stress?
Stress is a state of mental or emotional strain or tension resulting from adverse or demanding circumstances. These circumstances can be physical or emotional, real or imagined. The interesting thing about stress is that our brain can’t really distinguish between real and imaginary. So, if you are stressed about a past event or anxious about meeting a deadline, your body responds the same way and goes into action releasing stress hormones ready for you to fight or flee.
The problem with this is that once these stress hormones are released, they flood your brain impacting the way you think and process information… resulting in Brain Fog. Then when you realise that you can’t think clearly, you get more stressed and frustrated creating a perpetual cycle of increasing stress.
The Effects Of Stress
While a little stress can be good as it helps to motivate you, too much stress has many detrimental affects on your body, including
- Stress increases your heart rate, your brain works faster, and you have a sudden burst of energy. This is a natural and basic response but too much, prolonged stress can have harmful effects. High consistent levels affect the brain by increasing activity in the amygdala or fear centre.
- Continual stress can affect the size of your brain and in fact make it shrink and loose synaptic connections between the neurons. This then affects the prefrontal cortex that regulates behaviours like concentration, decision making, judgement and social interactions.
- Stress makes learning harder as it becomes difficult to take in and process information.
- Stress affects memory.
- Stress also affects digestion, muscle tension, your ability to sleep soundly and the list goes on.
How Can We Reduce Stress?
While it may be impossible to eliminate stress entirely, there are a few things you can do to reduce stress. Here are some of my favourites:
Meditation:
Meditation helps to reduce mental chatter and bring your awareness back to your breath. There are many different types of meditations that can help you relax.
Mindful Emotional Stress Release:
Place your hand over your forehead and breathe deeply. Bring your attention to the room you are in, engaging all your senses – sight, smell, sound, touch, and taste.
By placing your hand on your forehead, you are encouraging blood flow to the frontal cortex of the brain and regulating the amygdala’s fight, flight or freeze hyper-arousal response.
Breathing Into Your Belly
Rest your hands on your stomach. With your chin tucked and ribs relaxed, blow out all the air in your lungs in short, little puffs (as though keeping a feather airborne). On each short exhalation, press your navel inward toward your spine. Now take a slow, deep inhalation, gentle refilling your lungs. Repeat this a few more times.
Then slowly inhale and exhale from your belly. Arch your back slightly at the waist so the air can go even deeper. Repeat a few times. And then slowly return your breathing to normal.
Consciously bringing your awareness back to your breathing will help increase your oxygen levels, which is needed by your entire body.
If you want more stress relief techniques, I have created a video called Brain Boosters and Brain Breaks which is jam packed with different brain exercise to help reduce stress.
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I would love to hear what your favourite stress relief technique is? Comment below and let me know ?
About The Author
Carolyn King is the owner and founder of Empowered Happiness and has helped thousands release negative emotions and trauma assisting them to transition to a more fulfilled and happy life. She uses a multi-disciplinary approach which includes Kinesiology, mBit and Mindfulness coaching, Tapping, NLP, Reiki, creativity, oracle cards and meditation. She is a Kinesiologist, mBit / Life / Mindfulness Coach, Reiki Master, Master Lightworker Practitioner, Meditation Facilitator and Angel Intuitive. She is also a corporate speaker, blogger, and international author of Empowered Happiness, Discovering Bliss Beyond Depression and has co-authored many other books.
Carolyn King is on a mission to help people live a fulfilled life with real and lasting happiness and is especially passionate about helping those that have hit their rock bottom as she has personally overcome the lows and disconnectedness of depression and the anxieties and stresses associated with corporate burn out. She has studied many different healing modalities and continues to develop her skills, integrating them into her life and creating programs for her clients with the intention of empowering more people.
“Happiness Starts with a Smile and Empowerment Starts with a Choice.”
Check out Insight Timer for a few… http://insig.ht/carolynking
You can check it out here… https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Eo04Ji9UYk&t=16s