Stress and soaring thoughts

Admin on 24/05/2020

I know how it feels to be stressed. My thinking slows down. It gets heavy and sluggish, like each chain of thoughts drags dead weight with it.

When I’m not stressed my thinking soars. My thoughts become fast and light, they float and bump into each other merging into new ideas. When my thinking is like this I come up with ideas like future.charity, my weeknotes stretch into two thousand words or more because I have so many ideas to get out, and I write essays for my masters with fluid ease.

I’ve been aware of stress’ effect on my thinking for some time but never really gave it much thought. And then, on a day when my thinking wasn’t stressed and ideas were colliding, I listened to a What Comes Next podcast about AI for good, featuring an interview with MyCognition, a “digital platform that enhances cognitive fitness through a structured programme of insights, assessment and training”.

They mentioned case studies from schools using their platform to help children with special educational needs learn to self-manage their behaviour, and research that shows “poor cognitive functioning increases the risk of poor mental health and increasing evidence shows that cognitive issues are predictors and risk factors for mental illness” My interest was piqued. I wanted to know more about cognition. LMGTFY. 

“Cognition is defined as ‘the mental action or process of acquiring knowledge and understanding through thought, experience, and the senses.’ At Cambridge Cognition we look at it as the mental processes relating to the input and storage of information and how that information is then used to guide your behavior. It is in essence, the ability to perceive and react, process and understand, store and retrieve information, make decisions and produce appropriate responses.”

Cambridge Cognition

How our brains take information from our senses and experiences, and process it, affects how we react, understand and behave. That makes sense to me. It fits my conjecture that mental illness and ill-health is a result of traumatic events ‘rewiring’ the pathways in our brains and manifesting as stress, anxiety, depression, etc.

So, if mental ill-health can exhibit as poor cognising, could the reverse be true? Could getting our brains thinking in a particular way help to relieve anxiety and stress? When I’m stressed and I go for a walk with my notebook, pick a topic to research, google things, make notes, explore ideas, I feel less stressed. When I go for a walk and take my stress with me I don’t get to my thought-soaring state. Maybe having something to focus my thoughts on, and get a particular kind of mental process happening, allows for cognising in a way that results in positive feelings for me. 

Maybe this is why some people enjoy sudoku puzzles and crosswords, because engaging in something that makes our brains cognise in structured, logical, focused ways means we aren’t using the pathways in our brains that allow chaotic, fight-or-flight stress-inducing cognising to occur.

Mental health awareness week: coping with stress at work

Admin on 18/05/2018

Mental health awareness week: coping with stress at work

Does telling people to take time out of their day to play board games really help their mental health? Does having less time to spend doing the same amount of work make someone more stressed? Would helping people deal with being stressed be more helpful than distracting from it? Could a few simple workshop-type activities start to give people the skills for dealing with stress?

I have a few ideas about things that can help our mental wellbeing and cope with stress.

Getting perspective

Sometimes, when we’re really focused on something we can lose a sense of perspective about how important the things that are making us stressed really are.

Write down what the most important thing in your life is. It might be your family or loved ones, or achieving something meaningful to you, but whatever it is let’s give this most important thing a score of 100. Then, list the things that are causing you stress and give them a score between 0 and 100 to describe how important they are to you, not to anyone else, or to your job, but to you. Hopefully, when you add up all those scores they won’t even come close to the most important thing in your life.

Comparing the things that are causing you stress to the most important thing in your life can hopefully put those things into perspective.

Sharing achievements

If we spend our time thinking about all the things we haven’t done, how long our to do list is, and how those deadlines are looming, it’s easy to lose sight of the things we have achieved.

Share with someone (you have to say it out loud) some of the things you have achieved this week. Let them ask you questions about it if they want, but the important part is for you to recognise that you are getting things done and achieving things, even if you still have lots of other things to do.

Recognising and sharing achievements can help us feel good about ourselves as we have to admit that we have have made progress towards our goals.

Be kind

When we’re stressed we can often be quite terse with people, especially if we feel like they aren’t recognising that we’re really busy.

For every person that you speak to that day, try to say something nice, compliment them on something they’ve achieved, thank them for something they’ve done.

Taking the time to actively say something nice to someone not only makes them feel better but makes you feel better about being a nicer person.

Breathe

Just breathe.

Are you crazy busy? 

Admin on 10/10/2017

Why do we use words associated with mental illness to describe how busy we are?

“It’s been a crazy day”, “His calendar is bonkers”, “I’m insanely busy next week”.

Is it because on some level we all recognise that being too busy leads to stress and poor mental health?