Psychoneuroendocrinology
Here’s How to Regulate Emotions and Knock Chronic Stress with Five Powerful Tools.
Practical insights and empowering perspectives from psychoneuroendocrinology
Why should we take responsibility and burden for others’ disappointments?
Psychoneuroendocrinology is a big word to pronounce. It may scare some of us. It is a relatively new discipline giving us valuable perspectives into the inseparable body and mind connection, particularly in dealing with toxic stress.
This new discipline gives insights into complex interactions among the central nervous system, hormones, and behavior.
This discipline shows us evidence of the debilitating effects of emotional traumas on the emergence and manifestation of physical and mental health situations.
It also teaches us the importance of emotional regulation for our mental health and overall well-being. Emotional intelligence, mastery, and maturity can be preventative approaches to emotional regulation.
Psychoneuroendocrinology combines biochemistry, endocrinology, neurology, psychiatry, and psychology to explain physical and mental health disorders.
This interdisciplinary approach focuses on the effects of our emotions turning into diseases when not appropriately managed by individuals.
As the name implies, psychoneuroendocrinology has a particular focus on hormones and neurotransmitters, including endocrine and neural systems.
Body and mind are inseparable.
Bodily reactions affect the mind and vice versa. As we don’t need to be an architect to enjoy a well-built house or a mechanical engineers to enjoy a good car, we don’t need to have a master’s or doctorate degrees to consume and benefit from the findings of psychoneuroendocrinology studies.
In this post, without going into theoretical details, I share five activities that helped me regulate my emotions and contributed to melting my chronic stress built over the years.
The leading cause of stress was making others happy and aiming to prevent disappointments and disapproval from perceived authorities in the family, workplace, communities, and society.
I asked myself, “why should I take the responsibility and burden of others’ disappointments?”.
The answer led me to live a more authentic life. With this self-awareness, I managed to live in a flow state most of the time, experience euphoria occasionally, and neutralize my other emotions with acceptance.
Here are the five tips that may give you valuable perspectives on dealing with emotional stress and improving joy and happiness.
1 — Schedule Joyful and Fun Activities
Joy is essential to living a fulfilling life. It is a human right built into our natural structure. Happiness comes from an authentic personality and living life with integrity.
It does not mean neglecting or rejecting the pain of setbacks by any means. Instead, it is accepting our being as we are, others, and our circumstances by taking personal responsibility within realistic boundaries.
Intentional and purposeful fun can make us happier and more productive. As people enjoy other people having fun, it can improve our relationships with others.
In addition, we can reduce our stress, anxiety, and worries by scheduling fun. When we deliberately and consistently schedule fun, we can rewire our brains. After a while, having fun turns out to be an empowering habit.
We can use daily chores such as washing dishes, cleaning the house, and removing clutter as fun activities. Approaching these activities mindfully, we can turn them into joyful exercises.
Planning fun is critical, as our frenetic lives will always delay fun activities. Besides, our brain has a negative bias, especially in anxiety-producing situations; hence it can hardly prioritize festive activities.
2 — Leverage Mindfulness Practices
Awareness of our thoughts and emotions helps us regulate them. Emotional regulation is essential for our physical and mental health.
Depressive thoughts might create undesirable emotions if we don’t notice them and address them timely.
However, if we become aware of negative thoughts, we can prevent them from triggering unwanted emotions by using our thinking brain.
The primitive part of the brain hijacks the thinking brain for perceived survival. It can stop rational thinking putting us in a problematic and vulnerable state. We get flooded by undesirable emotions in these situations.
However, we can empower ourselves when our thinking brain stops by questioning and challenging situations.
A practical approach is to make instant physiological shifts to activate our parasympathetic nervous system.
Breathing exercises, singing, humming, workouts, or dancing are good examples of creating this shift.
By using mindfulness practices, we can gain awareness of emotional triggers and manipulators, set emotional boundaries, and neutralize emotions by changing our perspectives
3 — Energize with Music, Dance, and Workouts
Music and exercise together can activate various brain regions. For example, music and rhythmic movements can initiate happiness hormones in the brain.
Adding music to our workouts can increase our motivation to do more.
The brain love music and movement. Besides, dancing to music can increase BDNF (Brain-Derived Neurotrophic Factor)
We forget about our worries, concerns, and anxieties when having fun. Fun activities allow us to live in the moment.
Living in the moment is a basic formula for happiness and joy. The more joy we feel, the better moods we create.
Smiling and laughing while listening to music and working out can significantly boost our mood. The good-feel hormones can rewire our brain for happiness and joy.
A good mood is an antidote to reducing physical and emotional stress.
4 — Acquire Joy with Social Connections
Humans evolved as social beings throughout history. Our brain is hardwired to desire and even crave tribal connections.
The emotional part of the brain is an open system designed to cater to our social needs.
We have social desires created by our limbic system and genes; however, some people might have difficulty connecting with others.
Thus, we need to improve our social intelligence to better connect with others.
We can boost good-feel hormones in the brain by talking with others, listening to their concerns with empathy and compassion, showing an act of kindness, and reciprocating favors.
Philanthropic activities can increase sustainable happiness, especially community work and helping people in need.
5 — Heal with Expressive Writing, Reading, and Attentive Listening
Expressing our thoughts and emotions both in writing and verbally appears to be a therapeutic technique.
I published a literature review on the benefits of expressive writing, reflecting insights from scientific papers. Attentively listening to others can also give us valuable perspectives.
Understanding the pain of others through empathy and compassion can create therapeutic benefits.
In addition to talking to others, self-talk can also be a valuable tool, as I mentioned in this article titled This Was How I Talked to Myself Yesterday: I share a personal self-conversation sample for challenging negative thoughts.
Keeping a diary, recording our voices, and turning them into stories can be therapeutic by creating self-awareness, increasing self-love, and improving self-esteem.
Learning not to take ourselves too seriously can be an investment in our happiness.
For example, humor is one of the best tools for health and well-being. In addition, writing and speaking humor can significantly reduce physical and emotional stress.
Conclusions and Takeaways
It is impossible to erase traumas and thoroughly get rid of grief from losing loved ones.
However, self-awareness, accepting the reality, and supportive actions for our mental health and well-being can reduce the effects and reduce cumulative stress.
Developing an emotional self-defense system is essential for our mental health and well-being to cope with emotional stress.
From my experience, the critical points for emotional self-defense are awareness of emotional triggers and manipulators, setting emotional boundaries, and neutralizing emotions by changing perspectives.
We can regulate our emotions and significantly reduce emotional stress by scheduling festive activities, leveraging mindfulness practices, energizing with music and dance, connecting with others meaningfully, using expressive writing, recreational reading, and attentive listening.
As well documented in the psychoneuroendocrinology literature, emotional stress plays a more significant role in our mental health and well-being journey.
Thank you for reading my perspective. I wish you a happy and healthy life.
Related Mental Health and Psychology Articles
Unbearable Feeling of Anhedonia: How Can We Enjoy Life Again?
Emotional Stress As Larger Part Of The Iceberg In Energy Deficiency
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