Mica’s Story Part 3: Your Brain, Body, Mind and Relationships Are All Connected
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Welcome to part 3 of our new newsletter format: storytelling (catch up on Mica’s story here). We’re embedding the principles of optimizing brains and bodies™ into a storyline. The people in this story are fictional. Any similarities to real people are by chance. At the end of the story is a commentary and resources that you might find interesting. We enjoy this new approach. Do you? Your feedback and engagement will help determine if we will continue.
To recap what has happened in our story: After starting to have panic attacks, two months after her mother's death, Mica decides to find a therapist. A friend referred her to Tayna. During her first appointment, Tanya provided Mica with a box of juice and a bag of nuts, explaining that it would help lower her anxiety in the moment - which it did seem to do. In between appointments, Mica did notice that her anxiety does get louder if she goes too long without eating. We left off mid-way through her second appointment with Tayna.
Having had the juice and nuts, and feeling calmer knowing that she doesn’t have to talk about her mother right away, Mica relaxes into her chair as Tanya gets out a blank piece of paper and draws four circles on the page. Each ring is named: body, brain, mind, and relationships.
"Here’s one way I think about your life. Your body is your power supply, it powers your brain and mind and allows you to engage in relationships. If you don't have a good power supply, your brain can’t work properly, your mind can become distorted, and you don't have enough energy for relationships. Mica, what do you know supports your power supply?"
Mica thinks for a moment, "Sleep. When I get 7 or 8 hours of sleep, I do better. I was a pretty good sleeper most of my life, but now I’m waking in the middle of the night with my mind racing about all sorts of stuff: work, my sister, but mostly about my Mom."
Tanya can see Mica slump with the comment about her mother. She’s not sure that Mica is ready to open that box, so she says, "Yes, sleep impacts your power supply, or energy. What else?"
Mica says, "Well, food. I noticed this week that the longer I go between meals, the more anxious I get. If I continue to wait to eat because I am not hungry, I get tired. Two weeks ago, during work, I actually went out to the car to take a nap. But now that I think about it, I hadn’t eaten anything at all that day. I was trying to keep it together, but then I just crashed."
Tanya replies, "Yes, what we eat and when we eat can have a big impact on how we feel. We’ll talk more about that in a minute. Anything else that might impact your power supply?"
Mica considers the question, "Well, relationships do. Some of my friends were so supportive when my mother was dying, and others were really expensive in terms of my energy. I had one friend that I just had to stop getting together with because she would always talk about when her grandmother died when she was 14. I felt bad, but my sister kept saying to me that I’m not her therapist." Tanya quietly encourages Mica to continue talking by agreeing, "Yes, who we spend time with can greatly impact our energy." Then she paused. The silence built for a moment, and then Mica looked down at the ground, "What my head is saying to me can also be exhausting." Tanya asks compassionately, "What do you mean, 'what your head is saying'?" Mica, still looking at the ground, explains "Well, I have this voice in my head when I’m nervous that tells me that I’m going to fail, that I’m stupid, or that I’m going to rejected. That voice can exhaust me."
Tanya says, "Do you know that most people have a not-so-nice inner voice? It’s this critical voice that often brings people into therapy. I think of it as the inner critic which arises from the brain." Tanya points to the circle that is labeled Brain. "Hopefully, our work together will help decrease the intensity of that voice. Part of why I want to focus on your power supply first, and not your brain, is because one of the factors that influences the intensity of your inner critic is how much sleep you get, what and when you eat, and whether you move your body.”
Tanya continues, “The brain is the hardware. Most of what we do and think comes from the brain. It can create loops that sound critical or often repeats or even create untruthful stories. The brain has two parts to it. I think of them as the smart-responsive cortex brain and lizard-reactive-limbic brain. Both are really important and have their own purposes, and they each should be used in the right time and place. The lizard-reactive-limbic brain is responsible for our survival and a lot of automatic behavior, like brushing your teeth in the morning. Panic attacks arise out of this survival brain. The smart-responsive-cortex is where we do our active, creative thinking, problem-solving, and we when we’re using this part of our brains, we tend to be more comfortable and compassionate. This is the part of your brain that can observe yourself; it’s curious about what is going on. It tends to be more present moment-future oriented, while the reactive lizard brain is more past oriented. People often think about therapy in terms of understanding relationships. I suspect that, at some point, we might talk about your mother and your sister. But first I want to make sure that your brain has the power supply to do that work. What do you think about that?"
Mica looks right at Tanya with an open face and says, "I like that idea. It’s like making sure my brain has all the resources to rewire itself before I ask it to do more hard work. Supporting my Mom took a lot of energy. I don't think I ever asked myself if I had the energy or resources to do it, I just had to do it. But it makes sense to take some time to improve how I care for myself before I start to do more emotional work. I know I haven’t been doing the best in terms of eating and sleeping. And I used to be more active, meeting my friends to walk or playing on a softball team. But when I had to take care of my Mom, I stopped all that."
Tanya reaches for a handout with a head on it with descriptions of energy supply. "Typically, what does your energy run. Ten is lots of energy to do things but not manic. One is not enough energy to get out of bed."
Mica replies, "Most days, I’m at a 5. I just get the basics done. I go to work, and I come home and then just watch TV. In the evenings I just feel exhausted, so maybe a 2 then."
Tayna looks at the time and says, “Maybe we can spend the next couple of sessions working on increasing your power supply. This is the handout I mentioned earlier (in part 2) on getting enough protein throughout the day. It talks about experimenting with eating protein every 2-4 hours. Do you think you can do that experiment between now and the next appointment? Page 3 of the handout has examples of protein-rich meals and snacks.”
Mica replies, “Sure, I’ll give it a try and I’ll watch the video. How perfect do I have to be in the experiment to feel a difference?”
Tanya quickly replies, “For me, perfect is never needed. You can just tell me what you did and we’ll look to see what the effects are. I want you to just notice what works for you and what doesn’t. No perfection needed.”
Mica stands up and gathers her handouts and belonging. “I’ll see you in two weeks. Have you been following this virus thing? I heard that the governor is going to shut down the state. What will happen with your business?”
Tanya says, “I was just talking with a colleague about that before your appointment. If anything changes with me, I’ll call you and we’ll figure something out. You can always call me if you have a question when we learn more from the governor.”
Mica, “Ok, thanks for your help.” And she walks out the door.
Warm Beverage Conversation
When I first started writing about Mica the rhythms of life were changing on the individual scale but not on the global scale. I thought I could write about Mica and Tayna and it could apply in almost any month or year. Now that’s not true. Mica and Tayna are going to have to enter the cataclysmic changes we have all experienced. They’ll need to use all their tools to maintain their power supply!
How is your power supply doing? What has been helping you to sustain it or improve it, especially during high-stress times? Please share with us how you are doing and what you are doing to sustain yourself. Next month we’ll share the repossess to the 2-question survey below