Most people have no idea how many options they have for treating mental illness, and many
people feel hopeless or stuck in their anxiety or depression. But modern imaging technology is
allowing researchers to look into our brain in ways that was never possible before, and they've
been able to see that you can actually change your brain's structure function and brain chemistry.
By changing how you think and changing how you act. This is called neuroplasticity. I feel like
it's really important to help people access these mental health resources and education.
So I made this online course, and it's about two and a half hours long and it's on udemy.com and it
includes 10 other principles 10 other ways you can change your brain chemistry other than medication,
and it's based on the most current scientific research. So this is research backed ways to
change your brain without medication. Now i'm not against medication, I believe it should
be considered as a treatment option i just know a lot of people want to know what their
alternatives are. But I wanted to make some of its information more accessible to everyone
so i'm including a couple of chapters for my course right here on Youtube for free
this first chapter that i'm going to be sharing with you is on neuroplasticity. What that means
and how that applies to mental health. If you want to see the whole course it's on udemy.com
and i'll include a link in the description um with a special coupon code so it's 9.99 to take.
But in this introductory video i'm going to explain the fundamentals of neuroplasticity
which is how you can change your brain, its physical structure,
and your brain chemistry, by changing how you think, and how you act. So let's jump in.
In the first segment of this course we're going to talk about how changing how you think actually
changes the chemistry, structure, and function of your brain. Hi I'm Emma Mcadam, and i'm a licensed
marriage and family therapist and I get really stoked about helping people improve their lives.
I've been working in this field since 2004, and I've worked in a lot of different settings
like juvenile corrections, wilderness therapy, residential treatment, outpatient treatment,
and I love the change process and walking with people as they're making these great changes
to their life. I just love it when people start to feel that excitement about how good their life can
be. So, let's jump into this course and see what small changes you can make in your life that are
going to make a big difference. This course has nine simple not easy but at least straightforward
ways to change your brain and one complicated one. This first segment is the most complicated one
and changing how we think is really difficult. Now, of necessity we have to start with this one
because it lays the foundation for all the changes that we're gonna make. So understanding how we can
change our biology by changing how we think is really essential groundwork for understanding
how the other nine principles can work. So if this topic seems a little overwhelming just
stick with the course because it gets easier as we go on. So let's jump in. There are two ideas in
psychology that have been proven wrong. The first one is that once we hit adulthood, our brains
really don't change much, and the second one was that we can separate the psychological disorders,
these problems in living, from the biological disorders, this chemical imbalance and so
someone might have depression and it's caused by a chemical imbalance. And the only way to treat
that is medication and someone else might have depression which is caused by choices they've made
and the only way to change that is by making them change their behaviors. So new research
is showing us that our brain chemistry does impact how we think, and how we feel,
but how we think and how we feel changes our brain chemistry. This gives us more power
and more influence over our lives to make them happier and healthier.
So new imaging technology has changed our understanding of how our brain works.
And new research in the field of neuroplasticity has shown us that our brains they don't even stop
laying down the hardware until we're 25, but they can continue to change and grow and develop our
entire lives. And this is called neuroplasticity, meaning that our brain is moldable and shapeable
and changeable throughout our entire life. One of my favorite examples of neuroplasticity
is the stories of people who are blind who have learned to navigate using echolocation. So they've
developed the ability to locate objects in their environment using sound waves in the same way
that bats do. This is an ability that their brains didn't have, but developed after they went blind.
If you haven't seen the videos of these people you should check it out. It's really inspiring to see
how much our brains can change and this applies as well to people with anxiety or depression or other
difficulties, that thanks to our brain's ability to grow change and adapt throughout our life,
we can improve our brain functioning and abilities in really dramatic ways. This again I love this
principle because it gives us room to influence our life we are the agents of our own lives and
you can create the changes that you want to make in your life. It's become increasingly
evident that biology impacts thinking, so this idea that you know you have a chemical imbalance
that's causing depression, that's true that does happen. But it's also become more and more evident
that the way we think impacts our biology. So if we consistently think hopeless thoughts,
then we're going to be more likely to have biology of depression. So we might have what's considered
a chemical imbalance. Or we might have lower levels of serotonin or dopamine when we have
these depressing or hopeless thoughts. So to understand what we're going to talk about in
this segment we need to do a little bit of brains 101. So there's four aspects of brain performance
that we're going to talk about. Brain structure, chemistry, function, and genetics. The first
one is brain structure. There are physical structures in our brain and each performs
a specific function and we're not going to learn about all the parts of the brain for this course,
but we're going to talk about a couple of them. Our brains are made up of distinct structures
that change and adapt based on how we use them. For example, there's two structures in our brain
that are impacted by depression. The amygdala is the part of the brain that processes fear and
the fight flight freeze response, and in people with depression the amygdala has been shown to be
larger and more active. Another part of our brain that's impacted by depression, is the hippocampus.
The hippocampus processes emotions and it's been shown that in people with depression,
the hippocampus is actually smaller, it shrinks when people are experiencing
depression. The the really cool thing is that some recent research and multiple studies have shown
that the hippocampus has the ability to regain its size after a bout of depression. So in in patients
who were experiencing depression they attend eight weeks of therapy and their hippocampus was
measured before and it was shown to be smaller and then after therapy was measured and shown to be
larger. So the hippocampus can can change its size just based on something like talking with another
person who's helping you change how you think. When it comes to brain chemistry, our brain uses
chemicals to communicate and these are called neurotransmitters. The main ones we're going to
be talking about in this course are serotonin, which has to do with confidence and happiness.
Dopamine which is kind of the reward chemical and pleasing chemical. Norepinephrine which has to do
with decreased pain sensitivity and feelings of elation. Oxytocin which has to do with bonding and
love, and GABA which is associated with anxiety and stress. Medication is not the only way to
treat a chemical imbalance. So while depression or anxiety can be seen on a chemical level inside
the brain, that doesn't mean that your only option is to change those chemicals by adding chemicals
to your body like medication. Now again I'm not against medication. I
often recommend that my clients go to see a doctor to get some some medication options.
However, it's not the only way to impact our brain chemistry. So cognitive behavioral therapy
changing how we think and act has been shown to be as effective as medication as a treatment for
mental health disorders like depression and anxiety. How we think affects our brain chemistry,
so here's an example. If we interpret a situation like a work assignment as being threatening
or impossible or overwhelming, then our brain releases chemicals like adrenaline and cortisol.
Now people with depression and anxiety have higher levels of adrenaline and cortisol in their brains,
and this this creates a heightened stress response, so a cycle of being stressed out
about being stressed out and they they tend to get more stressed out than the average brain,
than a person who doesn't have depression. It has been proven that with many people, if they are
taught how to think differently about a situation how to interpret that work assignment as not being
stressful or overwhelming, then the brain releases less cortisol and is less flooded with adrenaline
and therefore creates a more healthy balance of chemicals inside of it. So we can actually
change those stress chemicals, we can decrease the level of the stress chemicals in our brain,
by changing how we think. The third aspect of our brain that we're going to talk about very
briefly in this course, is brain function. How we think changes our neural pathways
so we think along these little neural channels and they're like roads and the ones we use the most
become broad like highways. The ones that we rarely use are narrow and thin and when we
don't use them at al,l they get trimmed off because the brain likes efficiency.
So when we start thinking negative thoughts like this is hopeless or i'm no good or nobody's gonna
like me. Then those pathways become thicker and broader and easier for the brain to send signals
on. We become habitual in thinking that way, and that shows up in our in our biology. But when we
change how we think, and we start thinking hopeful thoughts, like I can do hard things
or I can reach out and love other people and they're going to respond with love to me.
Then those neural pathways become broader and wider and those physical structures in our brain
actually change. The last aspect that we're just going to talk about briefly
is our genes. Now we know there's a genetic aspect to mental health and mental illness. So depression
tends to run in families and anxiety tends to run in families for many people this feels like
we're predestined to feel the way we feel. Now, there's some recent research that's coming out
that's really exciting that has shown that we have the ability to influence which of our genes
get turned on and which of our genes get passed on to our descendants based on the experiences
that we have. So how we respond to our experiences and how we think can impact which genes get turned
off and this emerging field is called epigenetics. It gives us some degree of influence over a very
impactful part of our mental health our genes. So therapy isn't the only way to change our thinking,
it's just the one that has the most research behind it. So cognitive behavioral therapy
has um lots of research showing that it's effective for 65 or 70 percent of people,
when it comes to improving their symptoms of depression and anxiety. And we know that it works
because it not only changes how we think, but it changes the biology that's going on in our brains.
There are other ways to change how we think things, like self-help and courses, and seminars,
books, and and new experiences can all change how we think. Cognitive behavioral therapy is just one
way that's been refined down to a skill that is a very efficient way to help people change their
brain chemistry. Now I realize that this segment has kind of been more of an overview and if you'd
like to learn one specific way to change how you think, check out this video I made on black
and white thinking. When we resolve black and white thinking, we increase our brain's ability
to be healthy and happy. So, if you want to change your brain chemistry start changing how you think.