Women’s Mental Health Week

6 - 10 September 2021

Words can be weird and wonderful, so can states of mind. Some of the weirdest of words have been pointed out in movies, chat shows, and stand-up comedy sets – if you feel like a grown-up giggle, follow those links. Seemingly unpaired funny words like whelmed; shevelled; sensical; gruntled and affable. They make you smile, and make you think…

“We can be overwhelmed, we can be underwhelmed, but are we ever just whelmed?”

From a mindful point of view, there could be a lot of value in the possible state of whelm in this evolved wordy context. Whelmed in this sense could mean - content, at peace, perfectly challenged, inflow, or ‘in the zone’ perhaps?

Certainly, a state of mind that would be nice to be in more often, rather than being over or under.

What could be 4 ways to just be whelmed?

mindfulness

/ˈmʌɪn(d)f(ʊ)lnəs/

noun

the quality or state of being conscious or aware of something.

"their mindfulness of the wider cinematic tradition"

a mental state achieved by focusing one's awareness on the present moment, while calmly acknowledging and accepting one's feelings, thoughts, and bodily sensations, used as a therapeutic technique.

The Oxford Dictionary definition is a good place to begin when defining something that can have so many meanings, influenced by whether you are defining it based on spirituality or science. Some explications can make something that is so simple, and effective, seem too complicated to try. Your best bet is to come back to the simplicity, the science, and your ability to do it.

Mindfulness is a completely portable practice that can be done while you’re doing anything. It can encompass styles of meditation, but essentially it is a stand-alone activity. A ‘quality of discriminating attention that can be cultivated all day long’ – as Eric Harrison describes in the opening pages of The Foundations of Mindfulness (2015).

Mindfulness meditators brains have been studied and the research has shown some remarkable changes in some very specific brain areas. Areas of the brain to do with emotion, emotional regulation, memory, and learning, along with the areas that control how we think about ourselves in reference to everyone and everything else in our world, and the areas where we shape and change our perspective.

Interestingly in a Japanese study, they broke down the 5 facets of mindfulness and looked at them in relation to changes in the brain individually. The results were fascinating, with respect to:

Non-reactivity: not reacting to the inner experience.
Observing: noticing and paying attention to your own emotions, feelings, bodily sensations, and behaviour.
Describing: finding the words to describe the emotions, feelings, sensations, and behaviour.
Awareness: acting with conscious awareness, concentrating, not being distracted.
Non-judgement: Taking care not to judge the experience.

Of the five facets above, specifically, it was the skill of describing that demonstrated changes in the right amygdala and right insula. With regular mindfulness practice these brain areas could be better at interpreting ‘gut’ feelings in the body, be more aware of emotional states, also be aware of stress states, and then exercise better cognitive control over the rise and fall of these feelings. Sounds like quite a whelmed way to be.

flow

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi has been exploring the incredible concept of flow states since the ’70s. Since then science is catching up with evidencing what is happening in the brain during these wonderfully described optimal psychological experiences.

The Headspace definition of flow really takes you there:

You may have experienced a flow state at some point – that sense

of fluidity between your body and mind, where you are totally absorbed by

and deeply focused on something, beyond the point of distraction.

Time feels like it has slowed down. Your senses are heightened.

You are at one with the task at hand, as action and awareness sync to create

effortless momentum. Some people describe this feeling as being ‘in the zone’.

This flow state is accessible to everyone, whether you’re engaged in physical activity, a creative pursuit, or even a simple day-to-day task.

What happens in your brain to get you to, and keep you in, this state of flow?

There are a number of areas where we can measure the brain activity that start to explain the experience so perfectly:

Activity increases in the area where we predict how likely it is we will succeed, the putamen, lending itself to the belief that we can do it and can do well.
The areas where we can feel a profound sense of cognitive control are really ‘on-line’ in the Inferior Frontal Gyrus (IFG).
There is a drop in how much the brain feeds the area where we compare ourselves to other people and things, the Medial Prefrontal Cortex (MPFC). We may better identify with our own positive identity.
An area of your brain that is active during negative stimulation, the amygdala, is deactivated as if it doesn’t need to be alarmed about anything.
Frontal brain areas that let you immerse yourself completely in activities produce the right brain waves to support this state.
The load on the areas of the brain that connect to activate working memory is seen not to be excessive (in parieto-occipital regions), meaning it doesn’t feel hard to really put the skills you have to work.

Understanding your brain and your brains behaviour puts spectacular science to its best work – to help you to learn more about how your brain functions, and how to better achieve these optimal, productive, and ultimately happy brain states.

gratitude

The Greater Good Science Centre has long understood the value of gratitude in a good life. Seeing and being thankful for positive things is a humble practice, one that can get easier and more powerful the more you do it. Gratitude techniques can boost optimism, reduce depression and improve relationships.

But how does it change our brains and what is really the best way to do it?

You don’t have to do it every single day, but thoughtful and meaningful weekly practice can start the positive shift. A study looking at the benefits of gratitude compared individuals engaged in psychotherapy divided into groups of either additional: expressive writing about deep thoughts and stressors; writing gratitude letters to others; and no writing at all. Results were clear, gratitude can improve mental health.

The deepest brain-based investigation of the study participants went on to complete fMRI studies of the groups that wrote gratitude letters and those that didn’t write at all. The results revealed greater activation in brain areas associated with learning and decision making. It seems the action of gratitude letter writing may train the brain to learn gratefulness, increase grateful behaviour and wire us to be more sensitive to the experience of gratitude in the future.

But it is going to take a bit of time to reap the benefits. The initial positive lift in mental health from this study wasn’t seen until 4 weeks after the activity, and wonderfully this boost got bigger after 3 months. Just imagine how your brain would be wired for gratefulness in a year!

forgiveness

Saying ‘sorry’ can promote forgiveness, but an apology and forgiveness are not the same things at all. We can hear an apology, but to forgive our brain needs to digest the whole situation and make judgements about the severity of the offence and the intention behind it.

The effects of forgiveness on health are at the frontiers of health research. A study of 81 adults measured physical and emotional markers and found that true forgiveness can improve mood and reduce stress. Brain imaging reveals apologies are processed by the brain in a number of areas, but, it seems forgiveness may happen in a really specific area that carries responsibilities for language, memory, attention and theory of mind – the part of our brain that enables us to understand that other people have their own minds, their own beliefs, hopes, plans, and lived experiences that are different from our own.

Top tips for forgiveness could include:

Exercise your empathy. Put yourself in the other person’s shoes.
Write the situation down and separate the event from the emotions.
Recreate in your mind a time where you needed to be forgiven by someone – What happened? How did you feel? How did that person forgive you?
Remember why the person you need to forgive is so important to you.
Think about what has happened as part of your story, a narrative that has meaning and you have the power to change.
Respect that forgiveness isn’t easy, but that trying to do it right will make it easier to do.

There is no quick formula but finding out more and working on forgiveness is well worth the effort, for both those that need to forgive and those that need forgiveness.

We would like women, in particular, to spend more time in a wonderful state of whelm this week. It’s Women’s Health Week. Women are statistically more likely to experience depression, anxiety, PTSD and eating disorders than men. Perhaps, women could use a little more whelm to work wonders on some powerful aspects of their health, and in turn, completely whelm their families into some healthy habits too.

Should these tips have you thinking more about you could feel more whelmed, gruntled and sensical - The Perth Brain Centre is available to help. You can watch, read, call or email, to find out more today.

About the author - Ms. Emily Goss (Occupational Therapist, Senior Clinician, The Perth Brain Centre).

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