Mental Health

[Black Rose]

The front part of the brain tells us not do things or to do them. This is a learning process. Whatever it is we are not supposed to do is bad and what we are supposed to do is good. But in some brains, this process becomes dysregulated. The good or bad things have become learned in maladaptive ways. This maladaptation came from doing things a certain way that worked but no longer work. In a primitive survival situation if an extreme is encountered the brain can recover and learn new ways to adjust to its environment. The basic needs of an organism can always be met by changing its environment, by taking control. But in mental health, this process has gone wrong.

What a person can and cannot control changes too fast or too slow. This damages the process of learning. A person may have learned that to take control they must act a certain way. These learned behaviors make the brain operate in a way that happens to be based on the primitive mechanisms of the brain. So fear of one thing or another leads to marked differences in adaption. Anger and sadness too have primitive mechanisms. The person who learns to use these mechanisms in extreme cases has undergone changes that in the wild would be adaptive to momentary conditions but doing them all the time makes them less adaptive in controlling themselves today.

All cognitive resources have gone into one side of adaptation. To solve a major problem that we were not prepared for and did not have the experience to deal with. Emotionally we have in us an ability to know bad things from good things but it is not within us to be able to solve all problems at once when overwhelmed. It is then we will sink into patterns of all-or-nothing strategies, not seeing options available to us. Yet we can if we are deconditioned, lessen the hold of emotions we have in those areas of our lives that have made us to adapt in such a way.

The narrow focus of what did work must be brought into consciousness. Why did it work and why is it not working now? This requires an override of those emotions that see limited options, this is not the same as before and it can be done in a different way. This means we need to inhibit ourselves from quick fixes to problems that require more complex solutions. And can we let go of problems that have no solution. Then we will have more brain power to see things in a new way. We will be able to have resources to be used for other things rather than being in a constant state of threat. This will require us to review many things about ourselves that are not true but depend on us knowing what we can and cannot do realistically. Doing so our emotions will calm down and relax to the effect of seeing what is causing the overwhelment.

 

[scorpiomover]

The front part of the brain tells us not do things or to do them. This is a learning process. Whatever it is we are not supposed to do is bad and what we are supposed to do is good. But in some brains, this process becomes dysregulated.

Scientists studied learning in mice. When mice were fed, then given a maze to learn, and then given the same maze the next day, they got through the maze much quicker and were able to detour around new obstacles much better, than when they were starved and given the maze to learn.

Human brains learn well when in a non-stressful state. Then when under stress, they automatically default to what they already learned previously.

However, if they are made to learn in a stressful state, then they learn poorly. Then when under stress, they automatically default to what they already learned previously.

So the solution is to re-learn what you know poorly, but in a non-stressful state, so you can learn it well, and then repeat it well.

The good or bad things have become learned in maladaptive ways. This maladaptation came from doing things a certain way that worked but no longer work. In a primitive survival situation if an extreme is encountered the brain can recover and learn new ways to adjust to its environment.

Scientists also studied the brain's self-correcting mechanism. It's fed by lots and lots of data that come from repeated experiences. It's how humans learn to drive. Get in the driving seat and drive again and again and again, and your brain learns most of what to do automatically.