Summary: <p>Happiness Isn’t<br> Brain Surgery:<br> Understanding Symptoms<br> Presented by: Dr. Dawn-Elise Snipes<br> Executive Director, AllCEUs</p> <p>Counseling continuing education can be earned for this presentation at <a href="https://www.allceus.com/member/cart/index/product/id/570/c/">https://www.allceus.com/member/cart/index/product/id/570/c/</a></p> <p>Objectives<br> ~ Identify the common symptoms for anxiety and depression-based disorders<br> ~ Learn how a positive change in one area or symptom can have positive effects on all symptoms or areas.<br> ~ Explore<br> ~ The function of each of those symptoms<br> ~ The potential causes of each of those symptoms<br> ~ Interventions for each of those symptoms</p> <p>Review<br> ~ Everything you feel, sense, think and do is caused by communication between your nerves with the help of chemical messengers called neurotransmitters.<br> ~ “Higher order” thinking is able to over-ride sensory input and tell us there is a threat when none exists, or that there isn’t a threat when there really is.<br> ~ Think of your brain as a computer processor. It simply does what it is told, based on the information that it has.</p> <p>What are symptoms<br> ~ Symptoms are your physical and emotional reactions to a threat.<br> ~ Symptoms are designed to protect you.<br> ~ They are not bad or good. They just are.<br> ~ Instead of trying to make the symptom go away, it may help to:<br> ~ Understand the function of them<br> ~ Identify alternate, more helpful, ways to deal with the threat<br> Lack of Pleasure<br> ~ Form/Symptom<br> ~ Lack of pleasure in most things, most days for a period of at least 2 weeks.<br> ~ Cause<br> ~ Neurochemical imbalance (insufficient dopamine, norepinephrine?) caused by:<br> ~ Lack of sleep<br> ~ Excessive stress<br> ~ Drug or medication use<br> ~ Hormone imbalances including thyroid problems<br> Lack of Pleasure<br> ~ Function<br> ~ This is your body's way of<br> ~ Signaling that there may be a problem<br> ~ Conserving excitatory neurotransmitters for a “real” crisis<br> ~ Forcing you to address it. After all, nobody wants to be depressed for very long.<br> ~ How You Cope<br> ~ Think back over a few times when you have been depressed, even if it was just for a few hours.<br> ~ What did you do to help yourself feel better?<br> ~ What makes the depression/lack of pleasure worse?<br> ~ What can you do to prevent triggering your depression/lack of pleasure?</p> <p>Lack of Pleasure<br> ~ Simple-ish Interventions<br> ~ Don’t expect exhilaration, but try to do some things that make you mildly happy.<br> ~ Get plenty of quality sleep. You need to stabilize your circadian (sleep-wake-eat) rhythms.<br> ~ Improve your nutrition. You can search online for “nutrition for depression.”<br> ~ Think back to when you didn’t feel this way.<br> ~ What was different?<br> ~ What changed that started you feeling depressed<br> ~ Remember that depression is a natural part of the grief process and also very normal after a trauma. Be compassionate</p> <p>Eating Behaviors<br> ~ Form<br> ~ Eating too much or loss of appetite<br> ~ Cause<br> ~ Imbalance in the brain chemicals that help you feel motivated to eat, such a norepinepherine and serotonin.<br> ~ There are three primary causes of over-eating:<br> ~ Your body needing the building blocks<br> ~ Low serotonin<br> ~ Your circadian rhythms are out of whack<br> ~ Habit/self soothing<br> Eating Behaviors<br> ~ Function<br> ~ When nutritional building blocks aren't there, the body goes into overdrive trying to rebalance the system. This means it needs more raw materials to make the brain chemicals; therefore, you may crave certain foods.<br> ~ Disruption in your circadian rhyth</p>
