Last weekend I went to a fantastic concert, right here in Portland. Enjoying the music, I realized I was not just hearing it, but feeling it as well. There were thirteen musicians on stage, so there was a lot to watch. I felt more deeply relaxed than I had in quite some time. I felt alert but calm, my body let go of tension. My mind was focused and engaged. It seemed like an optimal state of being. Needless to say, it was highly enjoyable.

This experience got me thinking about Aaron Bilodeau of Exist Anew, and the fantastic piece he wrote last week, as part of the New Perspectives Series on this blog. He explains how he was able to use an evolutionary perspective to make life changes that helped improve his mental health. His perspective is that if we consider the types of foods, activities, and environments we were evolved to thrive in, we can start to understand why the modern world is stressful to our minds and bodies.

Aaron suggested some key ways that we can help our bodies and minds function more optimally in our modern environment: eating food that at least resembles the food our ancestors ate, moving our bodies, and being outside more often. I have also observed that these changes do promote well-being. At the concert, I began to think about what else might help promote well-being from an ancestral perspective? I came up with some more ideas, but first let me explain more about the “problem”…

It seems to me that the majority of Americans are stressed out much of the time. When I ask people in the office how often they feel relaxed, most say they are NEVER relaxed. This is a big problem.

I think using an evolutionary perspective is helpful in understanding why we are stressed and why we seldom have relaxation. I think it has to do, at least in part, with our primitive fear response. The oldest part of the brain is the region that is responsible for responding to threats from the environment by increasing heart rate, allowing blood to rush to the limbs, directing oxygen to fill the lungs, tensing muscles, elevating emotions and disabling reasoning skills. We are ready to take on the predator by fighting or fleeing, and hopefully surviving the outcome. This system probably worked well for our ancestors, since here we are today!

This fear-driven fight or flight response was optimal in an environment where big predators lived and we needed a fast and effective way to survive. Our current environment is much different. Even in Maine, I rarely encounter a predator! However, our brain still perceives “threats” from anything potentially stressful, even an upcoming test, a work assignment, a fleeting negative thought, or even a memory of an earlier time where we felt unsafe.  A fight or flight response is not picky. If a stimulus, internal or external, seems “scary” it will trigger the system to have a full-on fear response. The problem is the fight or flight response will not protect us from a test or assignment or a negative thought. Instead, most people are confused as to why they are feeling this natural response, which, absent the need to fight or flee, is highly uncomfortable. Not knowing what it is, often people fear they are going crazy, dying, or having a heart attack. These concerns then make us further afraid, increasing the duration of the fear response. We call these “symptoms” panic attacks and anxiety.

I think it’s very interesting that we have the same physiological response to real or just perceived threats. The bear is the same to my brain and body as an algebra test (assuming that I’m fearful of a math test, which is probably pretty accurate). Knowing this makes me a lot more aware. I don’t want to make my body and brain go through something that I don’t need to. I try to have the discipline to catch my thoughts and say, “Don’t go down that track, you’ll just have a completely unnecessary fear response.” I read recently that we are actually more resilient to emotional pain if we are less anxious (I’ll keep looking for that source and update this post when I find it). So there is only a disadvantage to firing off the fear system without a true physical risk to life or limb.

If you think you are experiencing the fear response on a regular basis, you may need help learning how to respond to it differently, trigger it less often, and get out of a vicious cycle. That is where counseling can be very helpful and probably necessary to get some relief.

For people who are recovering from panic and anxiety or for folks who want to do more to reduce vulnerability to stress and anxiety, I have some ideas. I’ve noticed in my practice that when clients are feeling less anxious, they almost always start to engage in a creative project. I know things have turned a corner when someone comes in and talks about painting for the first time in years, or picking up a musical instrument that they used to love to play. Sometimes, it’s just that they have music going in the background, are singing in the shower, or are laughing more with friends. I’ve started to wonder if things like music, art, dancing, laughter, reading, writing, relaxation, fun, celebration are cues to our brains that we are enjoying a period of safety and abundance. Maybe it cues the fear response to chill out for a while.

I believe these aspects of thriving are essential to being well. I also think they may be the factors that help keep us out of a constant fear response. Our ancestors did a lot to make sure our species survived into the 21st century. We can learn to thrive now, but we need to be careful what messages we give our brains and bodies. Nourishing food, sleep, social connection, music, art, laughter, dance are all markers of thriving. Things like going to a concert help us recognize that we are not just surviving, but can have celebration and abundance. Learning how to manage our thoughts, feelings, and natural responses can give us new insights into ways to be peaceful in our minds and bodies.

What do you do to thrive?

Note from Hannah: This the first in a series of guest posts with the goal of providing new perspectives to mental health, wellness, and being a human. This piece is written by Aaron Bilodeau, co-founder of Exist Anew.

My brain is broken, I thought to myself, as I sat in a plush, brown leather chair in my psychiatrist’s office; the perfect cliché- in an old brick building in downtown Portland, Maine. I stared, vacantly, through a large bay window, the sun’s rays cast upon my face, warming my skin through the white sheer curtains. Being a few stories up, I gazed at a slightly veiled view of  the modest skyline of the city I grew up in, amidst the backdrop of sparkling ocean and blue sky. The view made it easy to transport myself elsewhere, in avoidance of what I was being told: “You have a mental illness and you need stronger medication.”

This visit was the culmination of many other painstaking appointments, over years, with therapists and other doctors abound in which I was prescribed different anti-depressants and other drugs for a variety of health issues. From the time I was a teenager, chronic insomnia, panic attacks and mood disturbances led me to a multitude of diagnoses: Depression, Panic Disorder, Generalized Anxiety Disorder, Cyclothymia… call it whatever; I just wanted to feel better, even “normal.” At the time, in my late twenties, I experienced an air of skepticism and frankly, hopelessness, that I would ever feel well.

So, there I found myself, contemplating treatment with more and stronger medications with potentially serious, frightening and lifelong side effects. My general detachment from this conversation quickly turned to fear, then anger, at this prospect. I felt deeply that this path was not for me and I became incensed with a renewed passion, even desperation, to move as far away from this path as I possibly could.

It was around this time that I encountered a truly unsuspecting catalyst for this journey; I found the novel, Ishmael, written by Daniel Quinn. It’s a story of fiction that incorporates factual events about how human life has changed since the Agricultural Revolution, around 10,000 years ago. I know what you’re saying, what the heck does this have to do with mental illness? Allow me to explain…

As homo sapiens, our species have been around for about 200,000 years (and other species recognizable as humans for much longer.) For the vast majority of that time, humans have been hunter-gatherers- living outside, eating wild foods. Around 10,000 years ago, some humans decided to make some big changes, namely, growing and raising their own food through agriculture. This change led to surpluses of food that became “locked up,” which then led to the creation of different means of work, in order to get money to buy that locked up food. This occurred along with tremendous and rapid rise in population and development of hierarchies within civilizations.

Thanks for the history lesson right…so why does this matter?

Well, it matters because over millions of years of evolution, nature has made some requirements for our health through food and lifestyle that literally affect us on a genetic level. They are nature’s non-negotiables, and human life, which changed dramatically following the agricultural revolution, has progressively neglected this.

Here is a very abbreviated way to look at it:

Food-Before agriculture, our food was wild, full of nutrition and medicinal properties and free from pesticides and pollution. Today, almost all of our food is genetically modified and low in nutrients and medicinal properties, high in calories and full of pesticides.

Work Stress- Before agriculture, humans worked modest hours to secure their survival needs, in nature, breathing in fresh air and absorbing sunlight. Today, most humans work stressful and seemingly endless hours inside buildings, under florescent lights.

Movement- Before agriculture, humans used to move and lift objects frequently as part of survival. Today, we are often docile because our lives require little movement. We move from seated position to seated position with little regular movement (with the exception of some gym workouts-if we can manage that- thrown in.)

Support and Nurturing- Before agriculture, humans enjoyed the safety of tribes, social connections and ways of upbringing that worked for them over eons. Today, many of us do not experience the necessary familial and social connections and support necessary to create healthy people.

The previous examples briefly highlight what most of us know we need to make us healthy:  Healthy food, lowered stress levels, movement, exposure to the outdoors and support and nurturing. But rather than have this be just some generic health advice, it’s crucial to remember that through millions of years of evolution, they all affect our health on a genetic level. Yet, they are all disappearing from human life at a rapid pace and we have poor health and a change in our genetic expression of disease to show for it.

We are now living completely out of context. Our very environment is becoming completely toxic and malnourishing, from the food we eat and water we drink to the relationships we experience to the way we live our lives-our basic needs are no longer being met.

Diseases of modern times, like cardiovascular disease, diabetes, obesity and even mental illness, which have become an epidemic today, did not exist in any prominence, if at all, in our ancestors. Nor do they exist in modern wild human populations.

This realization changed everything for me, because I realized that the symptoms I had been suffering from were not indicative of an isolated or personal flaw. They were, at least to a significant extent, a sign of the times; a product of the modern human’s dilemma of illness from living out of context with our evolutionary requirements for health.

Now, I don’t want to simplify mental illness because having dealt with it personally and working professionally with people with mental illness, I realize its extreme complexity. It will require a lot of support from many areas to help most of us experience a consistent level of mental and physical health. But, shouldn’t we begin by understanding our evolutionary requirements for health as a new perspective upon which to look at mental illness, and disease in general? The level of illness we see today is not the natural state of humanity.

Think about it like this- what if you took a wild animal and placed it almost entirely indoors and made it reliant on others for food very different from what it had always eaten in the wild? Food that was full of sugar, low in nutrients and, in many cases, full of toxins. What if this wild animal spent the rest of its life, alienated from its natural environment, moving far less than it ever had because it was encaged in a small area. What if this animal was forced to do stressful tricks for eight hours a day or more , five days a week, for fear of losing its food and shelter (and often alongside other animals it didn’t like?) What would you expect this wild animal’s health to look like? Aren’t we kind of like this wild animal? If so, then it becomes no wonder so many of us are ill.

We certainly cannot create all of the same wild conditions that our hunter-gatherer ancestors lived in, nor am I suggesting we wish to go back in time. However, we should feel assured that we can make dramatic changes given what we know about how the human animal evolved to be healthy.

For me, the biggest changes occurred when I altered my diet. While this would require a much more in-depth conversation, my diet gradually became based in food much closer to what our ancestors ate, and modern wild humans eat. We can’t always eat truly wild foods but we can use them as a guideline:

• While a wild turkey might be best, an organic, free range chicken is a lot better than chicken mcnuggets.

• While harvesting your own wild grains might be best, store bought wild rice is a lot better than a loaf of white bread or pasta.

• While foraging wild plants might be best, organic salad mix is a lot better than iceberg lettuce.

• While catching your own wild fish might be best, choosing wild fish at the market is better than frozen fish sticks.

Gradually eliminating sugar and most modern, processed foods really made the biggest difference for me. However, other lifestyle changes were critical as well, and involved me changing the entire framework of my life. This included changing how and what I do for work, altering social relationships and reconnecting with movement and nature. All of these changes were made upon the foundational knowledge of what is required to become a healthy, human animal.

So have all of these changes “cured” me? Heck no. But it has been years since I have required any type of medication and virtually every marker of my health has improved. The fear, anger and sometimes hopelessness I felt at my previous prognosis has been replaced by the calm that comes with increased knowledge and steady changes. This was not an overnight, dramatic change, but rather a gradual process over years that I am still very much taking part in. I’m confident that anyone could take similar steps to enjoy the increased health and freedom that goes along with recognizing our deeply rooted requirements for health.

Aaron Bilodeau is the co-creator of www.existanew.com, a project that challenges conventional notions on how to foster health, live and be happy. If you have questions for Aaron please contact him at existanew@gmail.com.

I have always heard from self-proclaimed procrastinators that they “need the pressure in order to perform.” I used to accept this as a legitimate reason to procrastinate, feeling that if it works for people then it’s fine. But somewhere down the line, this way of reasoning has lost its validity.

Now I say to you procrastinators everywhere, “Procrastinate if you want, but you don’t need the pressure, you choose it.” So there.

I’m calling you out on this one because I care. Really, I do. I’ve already outlined all the reasons I believe procrastination sucks the life out of you. Time to take away its power. I’ve put my health correspondent on the task of compiling all the research studies of how procrastination makes you ill. But for now, you’ll have to accept antidotal evidence that it just isn’t good for your psyche.

Here’s the thing- when you choose to procrastinate, what you are really choosing is to use stress and anxiety as the motivators to get a task done. Guess how you feel as a result? Yes, you got it: stressed and anxious.

What’s really needed is to get in the habit of choosing other motivators. Drawing a blank? Let me help. Momentum is one motivator of which I’m particularly fond. I talked about it previously on this blog: when you do something positive and new (however small) and it feels good, you want to continue in that direction. You feel rewarded. You end up getting a task done by using the rewarding feeling of momentum, not the bite of stress.

Also, imagine the feelings you get when you start something and compare that to the feeling of waiting until the last minute. Visualize what it will be like to have the task completed. Use the feeling as a reward for changing your behavior.

 
If you need to, go ahead and bribe yourself to get on a task (I certainly do). Say, “if I work on this straight for 10 minutes I can watch that show that was just added to Netflix.” Or, get 10 minutes of work in and THEN check Facebook. It’s like reverse procrastination. Do the thing you’d like to do to procrastinate after you get a little bit of work done. It also helps to make the work “snack-sized.” Plus, you get to enjoy your break even more, without the nagging feeling that you really should be doing something else.

Bottom line: You don’t need procrastination. You have options. The more you practice creatively finding other motivators, the more you can use them to make other kinds of behavior changes in the future. So start now, please don’t delay!

Where to you find your motivation?

Copyright 2012 www.newapproachesme.com

It’s back to school week here in lovely Portland, Maine. Whether you are a student or not, it seems like an appropriate time to revamp work habits. Last week I detailed my dislike of procrastination and this week I think it is high time we do something about it.

It’s easy. My first piece of advice for addressing procrastination is to know how to get started. Actually, I’m not even going to make you start, only pre-start. It’s like preschool for procrastination. It gives you a solid foundation and it’s pretty easy. Really.

Take 2-5 minutes to get the drift. The idea behind pre-starting is that you simply take 2-5 minutes to understand what the project, assignment, or duty is that you need to complete. Pre-starting means that from the moment you know about an assignment or some other thing you need to do,  you take 2-5 minutes to be sure you know what exactly it entails. For example, read the assignment, look at the directions booklet, ask your spouse questions about the house painting project.  That’s it. You simply start to understand what the process will be all about.

Do it now. The point of pre-starting is to take a very short amount of time to get the basics of the project immediately when you know about it. So just do it! I know you can.

It’s important. When my clients are struggling with procrastination, I find they often do not know exactly what an assignment or project really involves. We have the tendency to estimate that it is bigger or more difficult than it truly is. Pre-starting helps you get an accurate view of what you are doing so you know from day one. Plus, you are already practicing facing the situation head on as opposed to avoidance, which sets the stage for procrastination. I’ve seen a lot of successes with this strategy in my office.

Give it a try and let me know how it goes. Why not, right?

Procrastination is not about being lazy. It is not about being complacent. In fact, most procrastinators care very much about how things turn out. Procrastination is a way to avoid the fear of failure until the last possible moment. Then we say, “Oh, of course I did badly, I didn’t have enough time.” Or we just do good enough, so our best possible work goes undone and not judged by others. Procrastination is a fear-driven behavior. It is the opposite of going all in.

Another problem with procrastination is that it provides all of the stress on the mind and body of actually doing the work, without any of the reward. We spend our time and energy thinking about the work we should/want to/need to do. We worry about when and how we will do it or how it might feel. We think of what the outcomes will or won’t be. Meanwhile, we produce absolutely nothing (or anything but the work that we are dwelling on).

All this worry undermines our confidence. There is great pride that comes from putting in effort and producing something of substance. Even when the product is not spectacular, the process teaches us something. When we procrastinate, we lose the focus on process, learning, and hard work. We get stress and feelings of inadequacy instead. I think battling procrastination is an important step in improving self-esteem.

So I say go for it. Show the world your best work, your best self. Do your work in a timely manner. Give it the space and time it deserves. You deserve it. No one ever regrets it.

Need ideas for battling procrastination? Stay tuned for the next post in my back to school series…

Image by Victor Hertz

I was recently asked to guest blog for GCDSpa, a terrific local business that has personalized beauty products for every occasion. I was asked to weigh in on an important topic: how to survive (or even thrive) the in the role of bridesmaid. Here is what I had to say:

Being a bridesmaid can be a rewarding and memorable experience. You are supporting a friend or loved one as they enter into a marriage. There are pretty pictures, touching moments, and many opportunities to bond with her as she goes on this important journey. On the other hand, as too many people know, it can also be stressful, filled with conflict or disappointment, and sometimes even end a friendship for good. Most of us have heard such horror stories.

Few brides or bridesmaids start with the idea of destroying their friendship in a whirlwind of chaos and hostility. We all want the fairy tale-like wedding and not a nightmare scenario. The good news is that there are several steps that can be taken to minimize the risks and maximize the rewards that come with accepting the role of bridesmaid.

Here’s how you can fulfill this duty with grace and generosity to keep your sanity and your relationship with the bride:

Read the rest here.

As a therapist, I find that the cause of many mental health issues is not the emotion one naturally feels about an event or situation, it is the reaction to this initial or primary emotion. Often for people experiencing panic, it is the fear or embarrassment of having the panic symptoms that becomes problematic. For depression, it may be the shame of feeling sad, which prompts even worse sadness and lowers self-esteem. The first step in therapy is most frequently addressing the reaction to our own natural, understandable feelings. In short, ineffective internal responses to feelings we have are the underlying issue in many mental health diagnoses.

As a result, I think a lot about why we are so ineffective at accepting, managing, or feeling our emotions. Why do we feel shame, anger, fear, or guilt about having feelings? For me, this is an issue that is much bigger than any one individual. It is a societal issue about how we think about emotions. Frankly, I think we as a culture have a messed up view of emotions and how they function in our lives. Instead of seeing our emotions as generally informative and natural, we have framed them as being unhelpful and shameful. People often believe having feelings is weak, irresponsible, or dramatic. We can see emotions as being extraneous to our goals and lives. You can see why they become something that people try to avoid.

It is this avoidance that creates a whole other level of problems. In avoiding feelings, which are a normal and healthy part of being human, we do things that truly wreak havoc. Suppressing feelings has become something of a national past-time, from what I can tell. Substance use, gambling, over-working, staying excessively busy, trying to achieve the impossible goal of “perfection” can all lead very quickly to numbing and disconnection. This disconnection occurs not only from our own emotional selves, but also leads to disconnecting from others.

This is a fundamental problem leading to a lot of human suffering. But I still have a lot of hope. I think that this issue is not widely understood and in helping people gain an understanding, things can change. In fact, that’s why I started this blog. For me, its a small way of trying to show other ways of thinking about ourselves and our emotions. I guess I’m a PR manager for emotions. They need a new, more realistic image. I’ll try to do my part.

What to you think? Why do emotions get such a bad reputation?

In elementary school, our art teacher would coax us into making some unintended dribble or scribble into a “happy mistake.” I was not receptive. I would rather have started over so that I might have some pristine piece of art when I was done. A quarter of a century later, I think I’m finally catching on. There is beauty in the mistake…as unappealing and potentially cliche as that sounds. Learning or growing often comes from mistakes, in art class or in life.

I’d like to say that I make a fair amount of mistakes. I often think that I’d like to take them back. There are things I wish I said differently and some situation I could have handled with more skill and grace. But that’s not how it works. “To err is human” said Alexander Pope. He was right. I don’t think making mistakes are a flaw of being human, though. I think to err is to evolve as a human.

It’s a problem to see mistakes as something that we should be ashamed of. A mistake is an unintended error of which we have little ability to avoid at the time. It’s how you respond afterwards that matters. I didn’t mean to drip paint on my portrait of Cuddles, my beloved cat, in first grade, but it happened anyway. Should I have scolded myself and thought myself a failure? Or should I have embraced this and made Cuddles a multicolored, glamorous version of himself?

If we can allow ourselves some room for mistakes, then we can see and accept them. When we can reflect, then we can learn and re-evaluate. We can be accountable and make changes that help ourselves and those around us. When we deny our mistakes and become defensive, there is no room for growth or positive change.

I can see that there are situations that in the future I want to handle differently. In the meantime, I think it’s best to acknowledge where I could have done better and hope for the divine response of forgiveness.

I spend a lot of my day talking with people about the foundations of good mental and physical health: quality food, exercise, and sleep. Yes, we all know about these things, but we dismiss them as too obvious or too difficult. So I’m the broken record reminding everyone (including myself) that these are the unavoidable essentials. Starting with sleep is always helpful because if that’s in line, the other things are more easily addressed. It’s the foundation. You must sleep to have good mental health.

The good news is that some fairly simple changes are clinically proven to help promote sleep: fall asleep and wake up the same time each day, avoid light when trying to sleep, get into the light when waking, avoid caffeine after noontime, do restful activities 1 hour before bed. These recommendations work, but only if you take them seriously and use them consistently.

I know you have a million excuses for why this is hard to do. However, there is no single activity that promotes health more than quality, regular sleep. If you make only one change for your health, I propose making sleep your top priority. Sweet dreams!

My tip today is for all of us who sometimes do too many things at once, speed more than we should, or gulp down food without proper chewing- slow down! It is the natural rhythm for late fall to get slower, quieter and more reflective. I’m convinced slower does not mean less productive or less accomplished- just more intentional, intuitive and relaxed.

How can you slow down?