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Welcome to Episode 130 of The Train Your Brain Podcast with Dr. Michael Trayford. Every Monday we produce a 30-minute episode. Tuesday through Sunday we produce episodes with five-minute tips. Every episode of the Train Your Brain Podcast features a tip, so you can receive pointers 365 days a year that will help enhance the performance of your brain!

Now through the end of February we are having a special contest for Train Your Brain Podcast Listeners to send in their best brain training tip for a chance to win a $25 gift card!

Today Dr. Trayford shares brain training tip 130. Sometimes Dr. Trayford’s tips make so much sense that it just feels right to your soul! This is one of those tips. Identify what’s stressing you out. You might be under so much stress that you don’t stop to figure out exactly what is causing it. Taking this kind of inventory demystifies stress and empowers you to be able to make small changes that will have a huge impacts. Thanks for listening!

If you have any concerns regarding the information and applications discussed in this podcast, please consult your physician and a doctor who is experienced in functional neurology. Michael Trayford DC, DACNB is available for consultation by calling (828) 708-5274. Thanks for listening.

Jason: I’m glad you’re here today to help me figure out what’s stressing me out. Usually, it has to do with my children.

There is something about, I had a friend say that sometimes your heart starts running around outside your chest. There are just inherent stressors, like the demands, school, interacting with peers.

There are some stressors that are going to be out of your control, and others that are within your control. Identifying what is stressing you out, helps you take actions to deal with and resolve them.

This is absolutely critical when it comes to living a good and healthy life, and treating your brain in a way that allows it to perform at its maximum capacity.

Just recently I was working with a young man who came from a background with a lot of anxiety, stress and anger management issues. These things were a part of his life on a regular basis. As a result, his mind never calms down. He’s tried many things, for a long time with no real success towards calming his mind. He’d gotten to the point where he didn’t think he could ever do that.

One thing we started doing while we were working with him was to use a home neurofeedback device. It’s basically a band that you wear around your head and it would pick up his brainwaves. What would happen is that as he was talking and interacting with people, the band would measure his brain wave activity.

He found when he spoke to certain people, particularly certain people in his family, that his brain waves would get out of whack. So to speak.

He would display brain waves that were indicative of someone experiencing emotionality or feelings of anger. This would happen, even if it wasn’t a heated discussion. It was just his emotional response to this individual after years of interacting with that person.

Then he would talk to his girlfriend and his brain waves would calm. So through the use of this technology he was able to pinpoint some of the key stressors and individuals that were causing a stress response in his life.

This allowed him to address these situations more effectively. Even though he couldn’t cut off the person that was stressing him from his life, he could use various techniques to manage the conversations differently. He can also show this people, very gingerly, that when he’s talking to them, this is what’s happening to my brain waves.

Each situation needs to be handled differently, depending about the family.

Jason: I need to tell my kids that you’re messing up my brain waves.

With the advent of this type of technology is that people can now monitor and identify more accurately the stressors in their lives. Beyond the use of technology. Many people will say that they are stressed, but they don’t necessarily understand what it is that’s getting to them.

Sometimes it might be as simple as writing out a list of things that bother you throughout the course of your day. Break them into two columns, things that are within your control and things that are not. When it comes to things that are within your control, you need to come up with effective and healthy ways to deal with it. A key step in this process usually relates to your initial response to the specific stressor.

The ultimate goal is for people to be able to find the things that stress them, so they can be proactive and come up with a healthy plan of action and deal with stressors and stress levels effectively.

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