Rainy Brain Sunny Brain by Elaine Fox and Cognitive Behavioral Modification (CBM)

[Divide by Zero]

Rainy Brain Sunny Brain by Elaine Fox
I started to read this book after seeing it mentioned in a sott.net article a week or so ago. I'm about halfway done but so far it helped me realize some things.

I have done Neuroptimal brain training in Jan/Feb of this year, and it helped with sleep and stress/general anxiety.

But even with the improvements, I noticed that my brain can and will worry about things that are logical but not happening. It's different than general anxiety which feels like a fear of everything. Instead it is logical because in some cases (in work, for example) it does come true. But, the anxiety/worry is still not justified and just hampers dealing with the inevitable. In other words, it's an overreaction that I can deal with, but it requires a lot of effort which honestly, I think should not be needed because the actual problem itself is not so bad!

This book approaches things from a scientific perspective of how the amygdala, PFC, and other centers work in combination to paint the emotional and logical picture of things. A lot of studies are mentioned to give clues on what is going on. Is it the transmitter chemicals? Is it the networks? Is it the way we label things? And so on.... I learned a lot of this in the Wave series about the low road and high road networks in the brain.

The book lead to a realization that simple exercises based on Cognitive Behavioral Modification can shift the brain away from running on this emergency mode.
I looked up exercises that match the descriptions in the book and found a few interesting ones:

Cognitive Bias Modification Apps Has apps for Android/iPhone that helps reorient the brain to notice positive faces and not focus on negative faces. This helps to weaken the hold that the amygdala has in scanning the world for threats first (at the cost of tuning out positive things).

Mind Trails
This website has 2 CBM programs, one for anxiety and one for future thinking.
They work on using stories to help rewrite our automatic assumptions/predictions of what will happen in situations.
(If you don't "qualify", perhaps embellish a little bit in the questions to "qualify")

I will update this thread with any other information that comes up in the book.

 

[Divide by Zero]

I finished the book today and it just wrapped up the same points with other studies.

There was also an interesting part on the serotonin transporter gene. The long form of it means that the system can manage serotonin more quickly, keeping the levels more balanced. It was originally thought that this long form was common in optimists and the short form in people who are depressed/anxious.

But, they found out that there was another type of long form gene which acted like the short form.
One of the people studied was the actor Michael J. Fox, who had one long and long modified, despite him being super optimistic with his parkinsons (and optimism throughout life).

It turned out that the benefit of having a short gene is the ability to thrive in good environments (as Michael J Fox had a supportive family environment) along with the ability to feel deep negative states. It reminds me of a sott article where they found people who do well in a bad environment do similar in a good environment. However, the ones who do bad in a bad environment (the short form of the gene) do much better in good environments.

In effect, this gene relates to how much one feels about things around them.
Having this gene and going through a negative upbringing or society means that it does much help to mitigate the effects on us with techniques such as CBM in order to tame the amygdala from taking over and coloring everything badly before even experiencing it (like PTSD, phobias, and OCD do).