Organize Your Mind, Organize Your Life (8 page)

The direct analogy is clear. When “turned on,” these emotional centers of the brain can interfere with the basic building blocks (such as attention and focus) of more complex organization. When you are reacting emotionally—whether you're anxious, sad or angry—you are not thinking well. Studies consistently show how emotion can grab your thoughtful attention and turn it away from the task at hand. So it stands to reason that when you are trying to get to an organized foothold in what may seem like a chaotic life, the last thing you need are emotions that can sway, distract and eventually send you tumbling back down into disorder.

Ah, but the brain has an answer to emotional distractions in its higher, or “executive,” functioning areas. To go back to our committee metaphor, the executive would be the chairperson. Another way to think of it is as the “central offices” of the brain—the thinking centers in the brain's cortex (those classic thick folds and crevices seen over the top of the brain) that direct the underlying older, “subcortical” regions (out of sight)—much as a supervisor's office would develop and direct the actions of the workers on the factory floor. The prefrontal cortex is one such critical cortical area, one that we will come back to time and again throughout this book. As we will see, cortical areas of the brain are involved in emotion and, more importantly, emotional
control.

How do we know this? While scholars since Aristotle have theorized about the structure and operations of the brain, we can now describe that structure and the interactions of its various parts with
some confidence because we've been able to
see
it in action. Brain imaging scans have progressed from being able to document the size and shape of the brain and its components to demonstrating the actual functioning of various regions in action. Some of the most fascinating functional brain scans involve special chemicals (radionuclides) that can travel in the blood to specific areas of the brain and light up for the imaging camera. These chemicals indicate brain activity during a particular task, such as looking at a picture, solving a math problem, or seeing a scary face. Functional brain imaging scans can offer incredible detail of brain activity. These brain scans have informed us about the nature of emotion and cognition and their delicate, dynamic balance. It's a real-time image of the human brain at work.

Okay, now let's go back to the amygdala and see how Eileen's behavior helps us reveal the inner workings of the “disorganized” brain—but also what the brain can do to get things back in order. We know that the amygdala is part of a fear network in the brain. This region can be identified in functional brain scans, as it “lights up” in the presence of anxiety or fear-provoking stimuli. (Some studies have even used exposure to snakes and spiders to elicit anxiety.)

And here's another important aspect of what these studies have found: When the amygdala is “acting up,” the cortical, thinking areas of the brain seem to “quiet down.” In other words, as we become more emotionally heated, we see a lessening of cognitive control, almost as if the emotional centers of the brain are “shouting down” the rational side. Quite literally, the hotheads have taken over!

THE BRAIN AND WILLFUL CONTROL

What happens when people try to change or control the fear, manage emotions and keep their thinking centers humming steady in the face
of hot tempers? Can we cool off and calm down the hotheads? Can we master our frenzied emotions?

Functional brain imaging studies (commonly known as magnetic resonance imaging studies, or MRIs) have shown that when subjects use cognitive strategies to try and reduce negative emotions, an increase of activity can be observed in the cortical, thinking brain, such as the pre-frontal cortex (PFC). These studies, done at the University of Colorado, show that the PFC can dampen the hot-and-bothered amygdala, just as a calm voice of reason can quiet down an over-agitated crowd or children in a classroom. In other words, when you consciously make an effort to think; to be rational; to get the PFC up and moving; it can respond and assert itself, telling the amygdala, in essence, to calm down.

What kind of cognitive techniques does your brain use to lasso those emotions and hold them down until they stop kicking and screaming? One widely recognized strategy is called
cognitive reappraisal.
Reappraisal, as the name suggests, involves reappraising a situation, taking a new viewpoint. This is a form of cognitive reinterpretation. It means that our brain creates a new meaning to a situation, and the result of that reinterpretation alters the impact.

During reappraisal strategizing—when one is considering a fresh viewpoint—reduced activity in the amygdala with increased prefrontal cortex activity can be observed. The implications: Your brain has a way of controlling your emotions and, in particular, your negative or counterproductive emotions. If we allow it to, the brain's voice of reason
will
be heard.

This is what Eileen did: Once she began to identify the patterns of stress in her life, she began to reassess or reappraise some of the predictable hot-button situations and think in more rational ways about how to respond. For example, she began to think that perhaps her son was dawdling on his Xbox not to deliberately irritate her. Instead, she
thought, it may be that he was feeling a little anxious himself—about his talents as a ballplayer and his status on the middle-school team—and was using video games as a moment of escape or solace. She also began to see his actual provocations as evidence that he, too, was tired from his heavy workload and maybe a bit stressed out, too. “I thought all the time he was just doing this to get under my skin,” she admitted during one session. “I guess I should have realized that a kid can get stressed out and tired, too.”

You'll learn more about how to do this on a behavioral level later in this chapter, but first, remember those primary emotions—anxiety, sadness, anger—the ones most likely to be associated with those who feel disorganized, distracted and overwhelmed? We've explained how reappraisal can be used in a clinical setting to tamp down anxiety, as was the case with Eileen; now we will see how another one of the most common negative emotions can affect our sense of disorganization—and how we can use our understanding of the brain to deal with it.

Let's head back to my office.

IT'S NOT JUST THINKING; IT'S WHAT YOU'RE THINKING
ABOUT

A recent study at the University of Wisconsin–Madison School of Medicine and Public Health showed that those who have a tendency to get stuck in sad thoughts might have a harder time getting out of them. In the study, subjects exposed to difficult images deliberately designed to elicit negative emotions (pictures of car crashes and so forth) were asked to envision a positive outcome. The researchers found, as with other studies we've mentioned, an increase in prefrontal cortex (PFC) activity, as the thinking parts of the brain sprang into action. However, some of the subjects in the study were clinically depressed. For these individuals, despite efforts at positive thinking, amygdala (the fear, threat sensor) activity remained high. By contrast, people without depression were able to reduce amygdala activity during positive thinking strategies and the harder they tried the greater the effect. “Those (healthy) individuals are getting a bigger payoff in terms of decreasing activation in these emotional centers,” wrote the authors. By contrast, for those stuck in a depressed state, greater effort seemed to yield more amygdala activity, not less.

Such was the case with Jennifer. Whereas thinking rationally—“turning on” the thinking centers of the brain—helped to calm Eileen's
anxiety, the exact opposite happened with Jennifer. At present, she was stuck in an emotional rut; more thinking just yielded more negative thoughts—and thus, she became more caught up in the negative emotions.

There's one more study to underscore this point. In a 2009 study, researchers in the Netherlands looked at how “keeping busy” works when it comes to emotional control. Instead of just envisioning positive outcomes in the face of stress (images of angry faces or injuries), these subjects were given what psychologists would call a “cognitive load”—in this case, math problems of increasing difficulty. Through brain imaging, the researchers found that the more the cortical areas of the brain were engaged by the math, the “cooler” the emotional areas became. The lesson here? There's thinking and then there's
thinking.
Going off to a quiet place to ruminate after an emotional event may not be the best approach because it allows for more sadness, more negative thoughts and more prolonged amygdala activity. Instead, we should actively engage the brain in a cognitive capacity—thinking positive, reappraising or maybe just any (nonnegative) thinking—and make those cortical areas get to work, thereby taking the stage away from the emotional centers.

Jennifer, I suggested, needed to make a concerted effort to do
something.
Put in a few extra hours at work, read a book or play a challenging game. Remember what we learned from the brain image studies: When the “thinking” parts of the brain are working, they tend to have a cooling effect on the heated, emotional parts. Plus, we've learned that the harder you work on your cognitive tasks, the greater that effect.

So, instead of heeding her mother's advice (sorry, Mom) and spending the weekend at home alone, potentially getting dragged deeper and deeper into her sadness (as the depressed subjects in the study did), Jennifer made a plan to get active—intellectually active—which
she did, both in the short and long term. After a “pretty decent weekend,” soon thereafter she went on to join a book club and volunteer to be on a fundraising committee at her church. All this activity and engagement replaced sitting around and thinking about how sad she was. The job kept her challenged, and in small steps, success led to success. Before long, she was performing up to par, making fewer mistakes and distracted less and less by her sad, negative emotions. Part of the reason she's not letting those emotions get the best of her is that her increased cognitive load has quieted those feelings, which in turn has given her time to rethink her situation (remember that “reappraisal” strategy?). After awhile, Jennifer realized she wasn't so “dumb” after all, a feeling that was reinforced when, thanks to some of her more focused efforts on work, she got praise for the quality of her work—and a raise!

Jennifer's frustrations resulted in sad ruminations. With other people, frustration and overload can provoke very different reactions.