Show Notes:

Continuing our “In the Thick of It: Small Steps for Quick Wins” series, today we are talking about brain building exercises to support resilience.

For the purpose of todays episode, I want you to think of your brain like a muscle. Really, like a group of muscles. Each region of your brain performs different jobs to serve your needs, and much like a muscle, the more one region is used, the stronger it gets. 

I’ve used this example before, but it’s been a long time and I think it has a lot of value, so bear with me. Think for a moment about bringing home a big pile of groceries. You go to the trunk of your car, reach in to grab 4 bags at once…which hand do you reach with? Most of us have one arm that we will tend to choose to overburden because it is our stronger arm. Without even thinking about it, we will reach in and grab those bags and haul them into the house using whichever arm our bodies unconsciously prefer as we internally know that it’s stronger and more dependable for this job. It becomes the arm that does the reaching completely unconsciously, it just happens.

If we think about your brain as a group of muscles, we can picture this the same way. When you have something stressful, challenging or heavy come up in your life – what part of your brain is unconsciously reaching to pick it up? What part of your brain is getting strengthened and is being unconsciously trained to do your heavy lifting?

The very real answer for many people, particularly those who work in high stress-related environments, is that their stress center, also known as the limbic system, has gradually and quietly become trained to be the muscle that does the lifting. Because we spend more time in survival responses than a brain was ever intended to spend time in, that muscle has gotten worked and worked and worked and has built itself up to feel really strong. Think of every stressful situation as a heavy weighted bicep curl for that part of your brain. Given your work, you have disproportionate exposure to stressful experiences, and so this part of your brain is doing bicep curls all the time. 

What that means is that when something comes up – including not particularly end-of-the-world type things, like finding out your kid has a school project due that you didn’t know about – the part of your brain most likely to react and pick up the situation to run with it, is your stress center. If you have had times where your reaction to something has felt really disproportionate to the situation; or where you’ve felt really anxious or worried about something that is not a big deal; or where you quickly jump to shut down or numb in a scenario that overwhelms you more quickly than it probably should…those are solid indicators that your limbic system is running on overdrive and picking up things it has no business carrying. 

So what do we do about it? Well, the goal is to strengthen a complimentary muscle group. If I have overworked my right arm, I probably need to spend some time investing in building up my left arm to try to match and better support the strain I’m putting on my right side. Similarly, if I have an overworked stress center limbic system, I need to invest in building up my executive function center frontal lobe. Your frontal lobe is the counterbalancing force to your limbic system. When the frontal lobe is strong, it helps keep the limbic system in check. The more intentionally we work at strengthening our frontal lobe, the better we can support our limbic system at picking up the things it is meant to pick up, but not the stuff that it’s not meant for.

How do you build up your frontal lobe, you ask? Well, here’s what you need to know about your frontal lobe. Your frontal lobe is the part of your brain responsible for what we call executive function. It is the director of your brain – it is highly reasonable, rational, and systematic. It loves things like language, order and sequencing (like 1 and then 2 and then 3), planning and organizing, grouping, differentiating (like knowing the difference between things), recognizing, labelling, and numbering. When we understand what this part of our brain does, we can work at building in exercises to support strengthening it. Here are some of my favourites:

1.      Alphabet game: choose a category like fruits and vegetables, movie titles, actors/actresses, song titles, Disney characters…whatever you’re into…and work it through from A-Z. A, apple, B, banana, C, cantaloupe, D, dragon fruit…and so on and so forth. This exercise involves language, labelling, differentiation and sequencing. It sounds stupid simple to name things in alphabetical order, but it is just hard enough that it puts demand on your frontal lobe, and that’s what we’re looking for.

2.      Name as many countries as you can. This activity typically inspires people to use a skill called cognitive mapping which involves thinking in your mind of a map and constructing an idea of where things are located in space. Interestingly, cognitive mapping is a highly frontal lobe task and really puts demand on your frontal lobe. Think of it like adding 10 pounds of weight to your workout. You can equally do variations of this activity where you name all of the streets you would drive on your way to somewhere you go regularly, or the stores you pass. 

3.      5-4-3-2-1: name 5 things you see around you, then 5 things you hear, then 5 things you can feel – like touch, not emotion. Then name 4 of each, 3 of each, 2 of each and 1 of each. Try not to name the same things to mix it up and make it harder. Again, we’re asking your brain to engage in labelling, sequencing, grouping and differentiation. All of these are frontal lobe tasks. 

These tools are great to use when you are in stress – I often teach these to people who struggle with panic attacks as it forces the brain to recalibrate and redistribute energy to balance out panic and stress responses. That said, they are also great to use more generally as an effort to strengthen proactively. Imagine using this in stress response mode as lifting something in a moment of need; but that would be made way easier if you had done regular lifting and exercise to build up strength before having the moment of need. We want to do the same for your brain – we want to train it in down times, to build it gradually to be more effectively responsive in moments of real need. 

Episode Challenge:

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Additional Resources:

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Check out some of our related episodes…
-        Impacts of Trauma Series (S3E9-13)
-        May Mini’s (Quick Tips for Regulation) (S2E35-39)

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