What Do Adhd, Depression, and Anxiety Have in Common?
Common Features of Adhd, Depression, and Anxiety
One of the very common features of all of these diagnoses listed is that your brain is on fire. Now, that doesn't mean literally on fire of course, but when I say your brain is on fire, it means that all lobes and hemispheres are firing constantly with no downtime to relax and function normally.
When your lobes or hemispheres are hyperactive with no downtime, all the systems of your body start to malfunction as well because your brain is responsible for directing some of that. If it's barely able to just function in one area, the rest are going to take a hit.
An example of that would be the Amygdala. If you are constantly in a hyper, fight or flight. mode with an increased adrenaline flow, decrease of magnesium, decrease in stomach secretions, decreased flow of blood to your brain or your stomach and always ready to flee, don't you think you would be slightly agitated all day or unable to feel like you have a purpose, as that is what your body is saying it needs you to do all day.
The mind is an extremely important piece in the puzzle of healing!
The Brain
So what do you do with that knowledge? Let's just take a very basic look at some of the areas of the brain and what they do, and why that could be bad if they don't function normally.
First let's look at your frontal lobe. It's primary function is cognition and memory. It is also primarily responsible for language. It is also the responsible party for procrastination, inattentiveness, avoiding activities, inhibitions, inability to concentrate, behavior disorders, inappropriate social or sexual behaviors, a "flat" affect, behavior disorders, and learning disorders. It interacts with the brain stem and the Limbic system and depends on interacting with deeper brain structures, which doesn't happen when it is hyperactive or on fire so to speak.
So, what are some of the things that happen when it is not functioning normally? You procrastinate.It's hard to think or concentrate. You come up with inappropriate behaviors as the inhibition center is too hyper to be active. You live in a fog basically because you can't concentrate or remember a lot. Learning disorders multiply when this area of the brain is hyper as it's your memory and cognitive center.
Let's look at just one other area of the brain as it's a HUGE deal if it is hyperactive and will affect the whole body. That is the Limbic System! This is where your Amygdala lies, which is your fight or flight center, as well as the lobes of the Limbic system that affect your biological rhythm, emotions, recent memory, rage, etc. This area of the brain is tied to your whole body in some way. It communicates with the sympathetic nervous system, hypothalamus and activates dopamine as well as norephinephrine and epinephrine. When this is hyperactive your adrenaline increases which eats up a lot of your magnesium causing cramps, you are in fight or flight mode so your bodies functions to your stomach (A non-important area when you have to flee somewhere) slow down, your memory is affected as blood flow to the frontal lobe is decreased, you can have loss of memory, agitation, psychological disorders such as social phobia, bipolar, etc. Your dopamine is also stunted, which means you can go into a more depressive state easily.
All of these deficiencies with either area of the brain would then also start working against your ability to absorb or utilize vitamins and minerals, cause an increase in stomach issues, cause an upheaval in emotional outbursts, extreme agitation, etc.
Hyperactive areas of the brain cause a lot of problems! If it continues long term, the issues can become chronic diseases or diagnoses.
What Can You Do?
This is where what I do can help. Social anxiety, mood disorders, triggered emotions and thoughts, fogginess, etc. can be calmed down if you know how.
Acupressure can tap into your brain function through your optic nerve and this is triggered by tapping your gamut point. When you tap your gamut point, back of either hand in-between your little finger and ring finger and back about 0.5 inches onto the hand (pictured), you also do eye motions utilizing the optic nerve to calm your brain. If you don''t know where your brain is hyperactive, just do all the eye motions and cover your bases.
As far as the eye motions go, you do them after making a statement while tapping the gamut point with two fingers, medium pressure, that draws your mind to the problem. Something like, "Even though my brain is hyperactive and causing all sorts of problems, I choose to calm my brain, and let it function normally."
Now you do the eye motions. Feet planted, no movement of your head, just the eyes, while tapping still. Look up, look down, Close your eyes, open your eyes, look to the right and to the left, then hard down to the right and the left and then hard up to the right and the left, then roll your eyes one way and back again. Now, you count to 5 out loud for the left hemisphere and then hum the first bar of a tune for the right brain. Take a deep breath and stop tapping at this point and release the breath, as well as all the stress.
It can take about a half hour for the brain to put out the fires and calm down. So just meditate and calm the mind as much as possible before trying to tap out more issues. There are almost always issues why the brain gets on fire, but that, my friends, is a whole different article.