Mental Health!

 Stress is the feeling of being overwhelmed or unable to cope with mental or emotional pressure. It is our body`s response to pressure. Many different situations or life events can cause stress. Stress is often triggered when we experience something new, unexpected, or that threatens our sense of self, or when we feel we have little control over a situation. There is a difference between stress and distress in that stress is a human response shown towards external or psychological stressors, while distress is the emotional state a person encounters when he fails to adapt himself to stressors. It seems like in humans, stress is inevitable! What is interesting is that despite the stress in life, people still risk engaging in stressful situations like riding a rollercoaster, asking someone on a date, public speaking, and getting married despite financial instability. Working against resistance is the most fulfilling experience because you feel a sense of accomplishment when you overcome it even in the process of overcoming resistance, marginal gains are motivators to continue pushing. The human brain is made up of different parts, the frontal lobe is the intellectual and logical part of the brain, it is the solving part of your brain. There is a distinctly different tissue in the brain called the limbic system, which is emotionally oriented, it is where your brain`s autopilot resides. Attached to the limbic system in the brain stem which handles metabolic responses like heart rate, breathing, blood pressure, etc. The moment you perceive danger your limbic system hijacks the frontal lobe and an alteration to the metabolic reactions. The healthy response to a perception of danger is called anxiety. Depression is when you actually think there is no escape to the danger you perceive. When you entertain a perception of danger, your brain treats it as real, it treats everything that you think as real. Depression can lead to suicidal thoughts when you feel like there is no solution to your problems. When a dangerous event or bad experience happens it is not the experience of the event that causes negative emotions, but it is the thought towards the experience that causes chaos in the mind and negativity. Almost always the thoughts that make us miserable are always untrue. Often people who struggle with depression show that someone is a deep thinker and cares deeply, but the adversary takes advantage of that when something bad happens and puts negative thoughts in our minds because the brain cannot discern between truth and error rather our spirits do. Researchers have noted differences in the brains of people who have clinical depression compared with those who do not. For instance, the hippocampus, a small part of the brain that is vital to the storage of memories, appears to be smaller in some people with a history of depression than in those who've never been depressed. A smaller hippocampus has fewer serotonin receptors. Serotonin is one of many brain chemicals known as neurotransmitters that allow communication across circuits that connect the brain regions involved in processing emotions. Scientists do not know why the hippocampus may be smaller in some people with depression. Some researchers have found that the stress hormone cortisol is produced in excess in depressed people. These investigators believe that cortisol has a toxic or "shrinking" effect on the development of the hippocampus. Some experts think depressed people may be simply born with a smaller hippocampus and are thus inclined to have depression. There are many other brain regions, and pathways between specific regions, thought to be involved with depression, and likely, no single brain structure or pathway fully accounts for clinical depression. Despite all these mental health issues, the cure for them is hope, hope that you can overcome with the power of knowing the truth which some call the power of positive thinking.