Did you know that some people with dissociative
identity disorder - that's what used to be called multiple personality disorder - so when they
switch personalities, their different personality states can have completely different physiology?
Studies have shown that altered personalities may have different allergies, different blood
pressure and hormones. They may have different vision. One alter might need glasses when the core
personality doesn't. And they've been able to show through imaging that different personalities
have different blood flow and activity in the brain. Now, they've compared that to actors
pretending to have different personalities, and they can actually see a completely different
physical change in the bodies of these people with dissociative identity disorder than the actors.
So this this idea of the mind-body connection, our emotions and our mental state change our
body's physiology, this idea is not just some like woo woo like hippie idea. Our emotions
directly impact our body and our physiology and our body and our physical being. These can
directly impact our brain and our emotions. In this video you're going to learn about the
mind-body connection, the physical impact of emotions. And this is really important because if
we want to change how we think and how we live our lives, we need to learn how to resolve emotions
that get trapped in the body. This video is sponsored by Manta Sleep. Sleep is super essential
for mental health and it's how your brain resets for the day. A good night's rest is essential
for clear thinking and working through emotions. We're going to talk about this later in the
video, but when people with both depression and sleep difficulties solved their sleep
difficulties in one research study 87% of them saw their depression symptoms resolve. So prioritizing
sleep is really essential to processing emotions. Manta makes these amazing sleep masks, they
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these can help you have an amazing night's sleep. So check out the link in the description for 10%
off your new favorite sleep accessory. Okay, so back to how emotions get stored in the body.
Now, back when I was in college I did something that inadvertently really hurt one of my
best friends. She was super upset at me, and she sent me a nasty email. And I felt terrible
about it. I became physically sick, my stomach hurt, I got diarrhea, I couldn't sleep, my tear
ducts opened up, my hands got cold and sweaty, and after a while I was physically exhausted.
As part of my emotional response, I had a strong physical reaction. Now, almost everyone has had
this feeling after a strong emotional experience, but most people have zero education about what to
do about it. Emotions are as much in the body as they are in the mind. But as you're going to
learn in my next video, strong emotions make it hard to think clearly. So if we want to learn
to process through and resolve intense emotions, in my opinion we have to learn how to soothe our
body first. So let's let's look at how emotions show up in the body. Listen to some common
phrases we use when we talk about how we feel: "My boss is a pain in the neck." "My coworker
gives me a headache." "My ex-boyfriend makes me sick to my stomach." "I've got a broken
heart." "I'm so tired of dealing with this." "He got cold feet." "My heart's pounding with
excitement." "That sent a shiver down my spine." So it's common to think that emotions are in
our head, but we talk about them as being in our bodies. Anxiety, depression, PTSD, and other
mental illnesses all have physical symptoms. So for example, take a look at the nine symptoms
of depression. Now, you only need five of these to qualify for a diagnosis, and four of the symptoms
are physical. Depressed or irritable mood, loss of interest or pleasure, weight loss or gain,
difficulty sleeping or sleeping too much, feeling jittery or sluggish, fatigue, feeling worthless,
decreased concentration, thoughts of suicide. We often think of depression as something in our
mind, but it's just as much in our body. Many of your thoughts, emotions, and actions are rooted
in a deeper part of your brain and body that are not a part of our conscious thinking process. So
in the next chapter you're going to learn about the fight/flight/freeze response, which comes
from this deep knowledge that's subconscious, right? We have many more instincts that are also
not part of our thinking reactions. Now, take a look at this fascinating research that explored
where people experience emotions in their body. In the comments section below, tell me about how
you experience emotions in your body. Now, while there is little empirical research demonstrating
emotions and memories are stored in your body, there is plenty of anecdotal evidence. People feel
their emotions in their stomach, their glands, their heart, their other muscles. Like, think
about your jaw, how tense that gets when you're stressed, or your neck or back pain, right?
And people feel their emotions and the impact of them throughout their body. There's also very
rigorous research showing the links between stress and physical illnesses like cancer, heart
attacks, decreased immunity, and a bunch of other disorders. We really cannot separate the
mind from the body. They're intricately connected. In a previous video I said that allowing
yourself to feel an emotion can't harm you, and I meant it. We can handle feeling an
emotion, letting it pass through us. In fact, that's the best option, because as
you're going to learn in future sections, it's when we resist emotions, that leaves them
trapped in our bodies, and that's what makes us sick. And just because our emotions are in
our bodies, and they do sometimes get stuck, that doesn't mean they have to be trapped
there forever. A growing field of research into body-based treatments is showing that you can
treat trauma, anxiety, and other intense emotions through evidence-based body work, like somatic
experiencing therapy or EMDR, so when we learn to notice the physical aspect of emotions, that
gives us better insight into how to resolve them. And not only does how we think change how our
body feels, but how our body feels can change how we think. So just take a minute and think about,
like, how your thinking changes when you're tired. For example, are you more irritable, are you more
sensitive, are you more likely to catastrophize? What about when you're in pain? People
tend to be less patient and short-tempered. And what most people don't realize is that when
their body is tense, that can make them think in more anxious ways and feel more anxious in
their emotions. The state that our body is in directly impacts our emotions. There are some
simple physical changes we can make to improve our ability to resolve emotions. So when we
change our thinking or our emotions, we can also change the physiological responses. So if you're
dealing with anxiety you may learn the skill of not catastrophizing and this can help you feel
more calm. This is called a top-down approach. But we can also take a bottom-up approach
to improving our mental health by accessing our brain through our bodies. Right? What this
means is that when you learn to calm your body, you can actually soothe the fight/flight/freeze
response in your brain. You can create a physical, chemical change in your brain, and this makes
it easier to think more clearly and calmly. So let me give you a simple technique for
doing just that, for accessing your brain through your body. So take a few long, deep
belly breaths. An easy way to do this is to just link your fingers together like this.
Put them on your stomach or behind your head, lean back in your chair, and breathe
with your stomach coming in and out. Now, let's focus on an area that you
might be feeling a little bit of tension. Could be your neck or your back or
your shoulders, could be your stomach. For me, I'm going to use my shoulders. Now,
my shoulders feel a little bit tense. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to lean in to that
tension, I'm just gonna exaggerate that tension in my shoulders just a little bit like this, and
as I breathe out I'm gonna let my shoulders relax. And as you intentionally notice and change the
tension in your body, this sends a message to your brain that you are safe, it's okay to relax,
and this frees your mind to think more clearly. So small changes in our physical habits can create
big changes in our brain. We can release trapped emotions through moving our bodies. Now, when
I talk about trapped emotions, this is, this, there isn't research yet showing empirical
evidence that emotions are in our physical bodies. What I'm talking about is the experience we have
of emotions. So what people feel in their bodies could be an expression of the learned reaction
to threats that our amygdala is producing inside of our brain, but how people feel it is in their
bodies. So in this section, the next five videos in my course, you're going to learn how to improve
your mental health by working with emotions in the body. You're going to learn about the
fight/flight/freeze response, how to turn it off, the two parts of your nervous system, and what
to do if you're stuck in the anxious part of your nervous system, and you're also going to learn
some practical skills for releasing that tension and training yourself to relax. But to begin with,
there are some simple things that you can do that can make a huge difference for your mental health.
And honestly I think that taking care of your body is so essential for mental health that we're
working on this section before we're working on the section on changing how you think. So here's
a couple of small things you can do to directly improve your mental health. So the first one is
improve your sleep. Depression and anxiety and sleep issues are closely connected. In one study,
87% of people with depression and sleep issues, when they resolved their sleep issues their
depression symptoms completely resolved. They no longer met the criteria for depression. And
there are some practical skills you can learn to improve your sleep, so check out my video on sleep
hygiene, and I've got a couple other videos on how to manage anxiety with sleep and things
like that, so I have a whole sleep playlist, so check that out. Okay, the second one is exercise,
right? Exercise has been shown to be as effective as antidepressants at treating mild to moderate
depression, and it's super effective at treating anxiety too. So check out my exercise handout in
the resources section of the course. Number three: nutrition. Right? Our brain isn't just a mind;
it's a five-pound chunk of fat, water, proteins, and other physical building blocks. So how we eat
and what we eat directly impact brain functioning. My change of brain course goes into a lot more
detail about physical changes that you can make to improve your mental health. A few more ways
to improve your mental health through the body include yoga - which, according to Bessel Van Der
Kolk, he's the author of The Body Keeps The Score, yoga has been shown to be more effective at
treating PTSD than any medication. Changing your posture, right, sitting upright can
help you feel happier and more assertive. And smiling, right? Smiling can sometimes make you
feel happier. And in my opinion, most importantly, learning the skill to regulate your nervous
system is really essential to learning how to manage mental health, especially anxiety and
depression. And you're going to learn all about that in the next four videos. Um yeah, I go into,
like, a big deep dive on this. Okay. There are also two really simple skills that can make a big
difference on physical and mental calmness. Right? The first one is progressive muscle relaxation,
and the other one is the body scan exercise. Both of these videos are on my YouTube channel,
so check out the link right here I think. Okay. Small changes make a big difference. Our emotions
are stored not only in our brain but in our bodily response. When we have a strong emotion, our
body has a physical reaction. So emotions can seem trapped in our body when we have a chronic
stress response or other hurts. So when we learn to soothe and relax the body and take care of
the body, this helps the brain calm down and think clearly. Anything you can do to improve your
physical health can improve your mental health. Is there one small change you can make now? It could
be something as simple as cutting out caffeine or walking around the block a little bit more
often or getting a little bit more sleep. Small changes like this can make a world of
difference for your mental and emotional health. Thank you for watching, and take care. This
video is one skill from my 30 skill course- How To Process Your Emotions, where I teach 30 of the
most essential skills for resolving depression, anxiety, and improving mental health. Emotion
processing is an essential skill for working through intense emotions, but most people have
never been taught how to do it. I'm putting every single main video lesson on youtube for the world
to access for free. You watching these videos, sharing them, contributing to my patreon,
and my sponsors make this possible. If you would like to access the entire course
in one place, ad free, with its workbook, exercises, downloads, extra videos,
live Q&A's, additional short readings, and links to extended resources, the link to
buy the course is in the description below.
