Trauma
Journal with different viewpoints
To deal with this, you need to learn how to look at the occasion in a different way. You need to uncouple the emotion from the narrative.
Look for ways to integrate rationality and compassion into the story. You can do this by being curious. ask why did i feel this way? why did that happen?
Sometimes trauma gives positive fuel: You can transform negative to positive such as turning anger to hard work.
Actively think about it
You should try your best to not avoid it. Instead, sit with it and get used to it. Although it sounds weird, you would eventually get bored with it and not feel as effected.
Try playing some calm music or have someone next to you if it’s too hard in the beginning.
Grief
Grief is the desire of something right outside your reach (imagine a glass of water on a very hot day that is always outside your reach).
To overcome it, you need to spend time grieving rationally. It hurts because you think you are going to have the person back but don’t. So, don’t anticipate them coming back.
Keep a low autonomic arousal. Do what you can to mitigate stress and alertness during this. Ex: NSDR, physiological sigh, meditation, etc.
OCD
Yale Brown Obsessive-Compulsive Scale (Y-BOCS), which helps to identify the exact fear driving the compulsion.
- Cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT) is the most effective therapy for OCD, and it identifies the underlying fear and purposely invokes more anxiety in attempts to intervene in neural circuits.
- Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitors (SSRIs) are commonly prescribed to reduce symptoms of OCD, but not everyone responds to pharmaceutical treatment.
People feel extremely extremely anxious with the presence of that trigger. They try to suppress that anxiety with compulsion.
There is a genetic component
Treatments: Progressively improving, Homework, Home visits
Anorexia
Anorexia is failure to consume enough energy such that the individual is at risk of death, and if not death, then severe metabolic disorders, lack of bone density…
Anorexic people have weak central coherence which is a way of thinking in which a person focuses on small details rather than seeing the big picture
Teach them what is leading up to the habit. teach about interoception so they can understand their bodies
Weak central coherence is hyper focus on details. Anorexic can find the odd one out easier (such as a face in a collage of coffee beans). You can realize how hard this is for them by trying to forget what you are now able to see
support network, CBT
start with self-awareness. teach them about what is happening. knowledge of knowledge can help them make better decisions.
encourage anorexics to embark resistance training and learn about the relationship between exercising and making bones and muscles stronger and hence seeing food as a way to nourish that process. help them realize shift their mindset to be more anabolic (body is building after exercise and needs more nourishment) vs catabolic (body is breaking down after exercise)
distorted self-image: confabulation. They discuss negative physical features of themselves and insecure about it but they actually have a distorted perception of themselves vs what they are in reality
It's hard to change the distorted sense of self (maybe not even plastic). it's better however to change the habits and attempt to understand, not judge, their hyper self consciousness of their body
Treatments are different from anorexia. they usually prefer something that controls impulsivity
Bulimia
eat 10-30x more than their daily needs, even if once a week. It basically means a lot more than they want to eat and can't control it. They are hyper impulsive.
Protocol is similar to that of anorexia
Bipolar Disorder
Symptoms of bipolar:
- lack of internal awareness (interoception)
- top-down control on overall levels of energy
Treatment options: Litium, Ketamine, talk therapy
It’s naïve and in fact, wrong, to say that lifestyle interventions alone are going to prevent especially extreme forms of mania and depression.
Fear
Fear involves a lot of reflex. The threat reflex always activates the amygdala. Memory and sensory information flow into the amygdala which then outputs to hypothalamus and adrenals and PAG (freezing response) and locus coeruleus and motivation pathways. Finally, the prefrontal cortex (deliberate decisions) may help you override that reflex. This allows you to negotiate what the fear means and how you respond, but you can't change what the fear response is (a ton of adrenaline)
Depression
cold showers and exercise have some mechanisms that support those neuromodulators and hence improves the situation. However, those who are depressed really struggle to get that thing done so you need to understand them and not just say: "oh i heard that exercise can help you, try out exercising".
excessive inflammation can lead to depression. IL6 TNMF alpha, c reactive protein. are inflammatory cytokines. they inhibit the effects or synthesis of the previous 3 neuromodulators
reduce inflammation. how? omega 3s specifically 1000mg EPA. this also allows to the reduction of volume of antidepressants.
dopamine comes from tryptophan which comes from turkey and carbs which are then converted to serotonin. but the cytokines make tryptophan convert to a neurotoxin that is pro depressive. EPA prevents this.
Regular exercise also interferes in this pathway to keep serotonin higher
creatine monohydrate. There is a phosphocreatine system in the brain that increases mood and improves depression. more helpful for women. improves SSRI pathway,
ketamine and PCP suppress NMDA receptors which reduces the experience of negative experience.
psilocybin looks promising