Your Brain Assistants, 2

When you experience a loss, sadness joins you on stage, giving you energy to process, recover, and heal from that loss. And fear leaves the ‘waiting room’ when there is a situation of danger (actual and real, or imaginary). Thus, if you allow your brain to be consumed often with thoughts of worry and anxiety, fear is the assistant out on stage with you and joy (along with anger and sadness) are pushed off stage into one of the waiting rooms. Fear can trigger the stress response and the release of adrenalin, cortisol, norepinephrine and other chemicals that can be helpful for short periods of time in a bona fide emergency, but that can be very unhelpful in the long term to both brain and body when there is no bona fide emergency. Worry and anxiety, forms of fear, are a type of stress and can be lethal to life and longevity. More tomorrow.