There used to be a widely held belief in psychology that personality traits remain stable over one’s lifetime. However, it’s now known that life experiences and therapeutic interventions can lead to meaningful changes in personality traits.

While it’s unlikely you’ll go from high neuroticism to not being neurotic at all, you can absolutely lower your neurotic thoughts and feelings. This article defines neuroticism and explains some ways to become less neurotic.

(Disclaimer: the advice in this article does not constitute medical advice and should not be taken as such. Please visit your doctor if you are seeking mental health treatment.)

What is neuroticism?

Neuroticism is a Big-Five personality trait that predisposes people to experience more negative emotions, higher anxiety, lower self-worth, and greater levels of depression than average.

One of the most detrimental impacts of high levels of neuroticism is that it often prevents people from living life in line with what they value. Avoidance behaviors are characteristic of neurotic people. A neurotic person afraid of making a show of themselves in public might never join a martial arts class even if it was something they really wanted to try.

Neurotic people easily dismiss any positive aspects about themselves and focus on the negatives. Rumination about the past and fear of the future are common to highly neurotic people. Engaging with the present moment fully is something neurotic people aren’t well-versed in.

Psychologists or psychiatrists don’t tend to diagnose people as neurotic these days. Instead, they focus on specific manifestations of neuroticism, such as anxiety disorders, dysthymia, or depression. However, neuroticism is unequivocally a dominant aspect in the personality of anyone suffering excessively from negative thoughts and emotions.

Highly neurotic people often consume more alcohol and cannabis than normal because these chemicals can provide relief from neurotic ways of thinking and feeling. Alcohol can allow neurotic people to do things they normally avoid, such as engaging in social interaction. Both can provide a break from one’s constant stream of neurotic thoughts.

Unfortunately, overconsumption of alcohol in particular quickly becomes detrimental and can end up making neurotic people feel, well, even more neurotic. Any naturally anxious person who has got shitfaced drunk and experienced ‘hangxiety’ the next day can attest to this.

I have always been quite a neurotic person. In fact, running a blog like this is one of my personal coping mechanisms to distract myself from neurotic thoughts and feelings.

For most of my life, I thought that being highly neurotic was something that would grasp me in its clutches until I die. I felt resigned to the fact that I would avoid doing many things I valued, simply because my personality was shaped a certain way by a combination of genetics and childhood experiences.

One day, I decided to question whether I really should be letting this personality trait dictate how I live so much. I sought out science-backed answers on whether it’s possible to shift neuroticism downward and how to do it. I researched the shit out of it and found that it is indeed quite possible to become less neurotic and reduce the control that neuroticism has over your life. The fruits of my research culminated in the tips and suggestions I’m about to share.

How to Become Less Neurotic

The ideas below on how to become less neurotic range from the seemingly innocuous, such as getting your heart rate up, to areas in which you need to tread lightly, such as exploring psychedelics.

Meditate

Meditation is one of my favorite areas of intellectual and spiritual curiosity. Thanks to people like Alan Watts and Sam Harris, I developed this curiosity and began learning about Eastern teachings, such as Buddhism, Advaita Vedanta, and Dzogchen. Common to all of these teachings is some form of meditation.

There are different types of meditation, but the underlying aims of most meditative practices are to gain a better understanding of the mind, engage more with life as it unfolds in the present, and attach less to your thoughts. Regular meditation practice leads to scientifically proven positive changes in the brain^[1].

A simple Google search for “meditation studies” provides you with a plethora of interesting papers. One paper in particular, from 2011^[2], is of particular interest in the context of this article. The main finding was that sustained levels of mindfulness meditation practice can protect against the negative effects of neuroticism.

The authors of the paper suggest that the increased ability to label one’s experience without attaching to particular thoughts or emotions is the mechanism by which meditation protects against neuroticism. The fact that meditation requires little more than the ability to sit down and be present for 15 to 30 minutes makes it a no-brainer for me in terms of practices that can reduce neuroticism.

Get Your Heart Rate Up

Exercise and improved mental health are an excellent match. Study after study has shown impressive reductions in depression and anxiety when people work out regularly. If a pharmacological company could create the benefits of exercise in pill form, it’d earn billions.

In terms of how exercise curbs neurotic symptoms, the most interesting study was from 1989 when a diagnosis of neurotic was still commonplace. The paper, entitled “Exercise Intensity and Reduction in Neurotic Symptoms. A Controlled Follow-Up Study”^[3] found that people who exercised with higher intensity (jogging vs walking, for example) experienced lower anxiety levels after a six-month follow-up.

Anecdotally, exercise intensity matters for a reduction in my own neuroticism. A 30-minute walk perks me up a little bit, however, an equivalent length jogging or jump rope session makes me feel much better. This might be due to higher endorphin release.

Either way, I think getting your heart rate up via exercise is a crucial tool for reducing neurotic thoughts and feelings. It’s best to do a form of intense exercise that you actually enjoy, whether that’s jump rope, jogging, swimming, or cycling.

Practice Gratitude

Practicing gratitude to reduce neuroticism is my own personal contribution to this article rather than something with specific science-backed research to it. There are scientific papers on gratitude—a paper from 2010^[4] reports on an existing body of research that says there’s an association between gratitude practice and increased well-being.

Gratitude means appreciating the good things in your life. I can already hear your inner neurotic protest that there isn’t much to be grateful for in your life. However, speaking from experience, the reason it’s initially difficult to practice gratitude is that it’s a skill you need to learn.

One of the best purchases I’ve made in recent times was a dedicated daily gratitude journal from Amazon entitled “Start With Gratitude.” The beauty of this journal is that it helps you improve at practicing gratitude. It features tons of prompts and ideas that help you think of things to be grateful for. For the neurotic whose mind tends to veer towards pessimism and negativity, I can’t recommend a journal like this enough.

Try SSRIs

The most prevalent hypothesis for why depression occurs is that serotonin deficiency is the cause. The result of this hypothesis has been the development of SSRI medications. SSRIs like Prozac increase the levels of serotonin in the brain, and they are also prescribed for anxiety disorders.

In our post-truth world, some skeptics and conspiracy theorists like to spread the idea that Big Pharma only wants to exploit people and that SSRIs don’t actually do much. Most meta-analyses have found that SSRIs^[5] do statistically work better than placebo.

I am no expert in neurochemistry or neurophysiology, but suffice to say that I think the brain is so complex that we don’t actually know precisely how SSRIs work. We just know that they seem to work quite well for many people.

One very interesting paper from 2008^[6] postulated that the change in depression or anxiety from taking SSRIs is due to a reduction in neuroticism. The study followed 93 outpatients suffering from major depressive episodes. The conclusion was that “any treatment effect of SSRIs occurs through neuroticism reduction.”

Whether you want to take SSRIs is a personal decision. I am just presenting some findings from my own interest in this topic. I believe they’re worth a six-week trial run to see whether you notice any reduction in the severity and frequency of your neurotic thoughts and feelings. Always discuss these matters with your doctor, though.

Explore Psychedelics

Psychedelics are fascinating chemicals. Tons of research on their therapeutic capabilities was conducted in the 1950s and 1960s until they were outlawed and disregarded in scientific circles for 40 years. In the last 5 to 10 years, psychedelic research has experienced a rebirth, with institutions such as The Johns Hopkins Psychedelic Research Unit leading the way.

A study published in 2016 on psilocybin mushrooms given to cancer patients^[7] found substantial reductions in depressed moods and feelings of anxiety. I don’t know about you, but receiving a diagnosis of cancer sounds like a recipe for anybody to become more neurotic.

A relatively recent 2018 paper examined the effects of psilocybin on personality structure^[8]. The results were that people who took psilocybin became less neurotic and more outgoing.

Is the solution for reducing neuroticism to go out and take psychedelic chemicals that remain illegal in many parts of the world? I’m not sure. Set and setting are both incredibly important when experimenting with what are some powerful, reality-altering chemicals. Used safely, in a clinical setting, I think the answer is an unequivocal yes. But that likely involves registering for a clinical trial.

I couldn’t possibly recommend psychedelics in anything but a clinical setting, so I don’t advise anyone whether neurotic or not to take these substances outside a professional environment.

Personally, psychedelic exploration for the purpose of understanding myself deeper and getting to the heart of my neuroticism is something I am passionate about. If you want to further research psychedelics, I’ve picked out my favourite six best books on psychedelics.

Therapy

A really interesting meta-analysis of psychotherapy in 2017 found strong evidence that therapeutic interventions such as CBT or exposure therapy can alter personality traits^[9]. The authors of the paper specifically mention neurotic traits as susceptible to being reduced by therapy.

The type of therapy doesn’t seem to matter as much as engaging with the therapy and completing a full-course, which is typically 12 weeks in the case of CBT.

Is There an Upside to Neuroticism?

With all of the negative impacts of neuroticism in mind, it’s natural to wonder why this trait exists at all. Is there any upside to one’s neuroticism?

Pursuing a scientific line of thought, it’s clear there must be an evolutionary benefit to neuroticism. People who are neurotic tend to fear the worst outcomes and have high situational awareness. It’s easy to see how this can be beneficial—think wearing a seatbelt all the time when in a car or taking care of a toddler and ensuring they don’t put anything small in their mouths that they can choke on.

Because neurotic people see danger everywhere, they are likelier to take steps to prevent that danger. Aside from the examples above, a person with high neuroticism is probably likelier than average to build up a decent pension pot so they can avoid the danger of not having money to eat during retirement.

So, neuroticism can absolutely be a positive thing. My opinion is that it’s about balance. People like myself who score highly in neuroticism need to intervene and reduce that neuroticism using methods that have science-backed evidence behind them.

I hope any neurotic person reading this article has gained something of value from it. Please comment below if you have any thoughts. Thanks for reading.

Resources/citations

[1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4471247/

[2] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3191267/

[3] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/2816466/

[4] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3010965/

[5] https://bmcpsychiatry.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12888-016-1173-2

[6] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/18384882/

[7] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5367557/

[8] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6220878/

[9] https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2017-00079-001

The post How to Become Less Neurotic appeared first on Cerebrotonic.

Countries closed their borders, airplanes stopped flying, bars and restaurants shut, and millions of people lost their jobs. “Social distancing” and “self-isolation” rapidly entered into our lexicon, even though most of us had never used those terms four weeks ago. Over a third of the world is on lockdown, as of writing.

But perhaps the most significant change of all is that coronavirus has led so many of us to confront our own mortality head-on. This is a unique opportunity to make good of a really shitty situation.

The Immortality Project

It was Ernest Becker who first brought the idea prominently into contemporary mainstream thought that everything we do as humans collectively and individually, is underpinned by the terror of our own death. This idea is not new, but modern psychology somewhat neglected it before Becker.

In his Pulitzer Prize-winning book, The Denial of Death, Becker postulates that humans create shared cultural worldviews and projects of personal significance to give our lives a sense of order and meaning. We do this to escape the fear of our own deaths. Becker calls these our immortality projects, and they apply at both the individual and societal level.

An immortality project is something we create or become a part of that is bigger than us or we think will outlast our own lives on earth. Examples are:

• Creating works of art
• Performing scientific research
• Passing on our genes
• Participating in religious practices
• Doing work we find meaningful
• Paying taxes to help run the country
• Contributing to society through work, volunteering, sports, etc
• Being part of a functioning society and/or nation
• Accumulating wealth that we can pass on

The coronavirus pandemic has rapidly and ruthlessly exposed the utter fragility of the human societal constructs that we cling to in order to escape the terror of death. Not since World War 2 has such a large chunk of the planet been confronted with their mortality simultaneously.

Everyday activities that imbued our lives with a sense of order and meaning have ground to a halt. Many of us aren’t working. Governments have imposed widespread restrictions on what we can do. We watch news reports of overwhelmed hospitals and see people of all ages succumbing to this virus. Order has quickly turned to chaos. Immortality projects are collapsing.

There Was Never Any Permanence

By creating shared cultural constructs and feeling like we’re personally contributing to them, we play a psychological trick to convince ourselves we’re doing something permanent in life.

These constructs are now in doubt and many of our personal contributions halted. The societal game we were playing is on pause. With a contagious, dangerous viral illness on the loose, the deep existential fear of death faces all of us.

Anyone familiar with Buddhist philosophy will tell you there was never any permanence in life to begin with. Accepting the flux of life is arguably the whole point of walking the Buddhist path.

The British writer and lecturer Alan Watts, who is best known for popularizing Eastern philosophy in the Western world, summed up the impermanence of life brilliantly in his book, The Wisdom of Insecurity:

Man seems to be unable to live without myth, without the belief that the routine and drudgery, the pain and fear of this life have some meaning and goal in the future. These myths give the individual a certain sense of meaning by making him part of a vast social effort, in which he loses something of his own emptiness. But you cannot understand life and its mysteries as long as you try to grasp it. Indeed, you cannot grasp it, just as you cannot walk off with a river in a bucket.

The subtitle of Watts’ book is “A Message for an Age of Anxiety”. It was written in 1951 when the Cold War brought about severe anxiety at a societal level due to escalating tensions and the threat of nuclear warfare between global superpowers.

Almost 70 years later, ‘an age of anxiety’ is exactly how you’d sum up what the world is going through with the coronavirus pandemic.

How to Accept Our Mortality

Confronted daily with the reality-check that is the fact of our own impermanence and mortality, is there a way to make good of this situation? How can we accept our mortality during the COVID-19 pandemic?

I don’t have all the answers, but here are some suggestions:

• Accept flux as an inextricable part of existence — no living thing, no relationship, no government, no society stays the same. Make peace with the fact that living means changing.
• See the good side of flux— life wouldn’t have evolved without changing conditions, scientific advancements wouldn’t be possible without change, reading the article on the Internet is the result of flux. Crisp autumn mornings, long summer evenings, comfy winter nights in front of the fire-they are all made possible because of change.
• Engage with the present — the present moment is all we really ever experience. Many of the societal constructs we create and participate in depend on thinking about and planning for the future. Reframe your attention to engage much more with the present and your mortality becomes less of a problem.
• Practice self-inquiry —spiritual teacher Eckhart Tolle says “the secret of life is to die before you die”. What he meant was to investigate the nature of your own consciousness and see what you find out. You don’t have to like Eckhart Tolle or be religious to practice self-inquiry. Ask yourself who you really are underneath the ego—the set of images and thoughts you construct to give you, as a physical organism, some meaning in this world. You might be surprised at what you find out.

The post How Covid-19 Gives Us All the Chance to Accept Impermanence appeared first on Cerebrotonic.

It is a perplexing dilemma for the unlucky people who tend towards pessimism, negativity, rumination, and neuroticism as their default mental state: Why do other people seem so happy all the time? What is wrong with me that I seem to feel unhappy by default? Was it early childhood experiences that made me unhappy? Is it the fault of my parents?

While our upbringing can absolutely shape our personalities, what many people don’t know is that our genes play a huge role in our default happiness levels. In his excellent book, The Happiness Hypothesis, writer and social psychologist Jonathan Haidt describes being a happy person by default as “winning the cortical lottery”.

The cortical lottery refers to the fact that some people are lucky enough to be born with naturally higher proclivities for optimism and joy. Others are less fortunate and tend to be biologically wired to experience unhappiness as their default state.

Your upbringing and current life conditions of course impact how happy or content you feel. However, hope is not lost for people who are not lucky enough to win the cortical lottery. There are several excellent ways to improve default happiness levels and become a happier person.

What is Happiness?

Happiness is a state of experience characterized by positive thoughts, emotions, and behavior. Some of the happiest people you’ll ever meet live a life of squalor compared to what you are used to in Western society. I have lived extensively in Thailand, a developing country, and encountered many more happy people there than years of living in Ireland.

Outside circumstances can affect happiness levels to a certain extent, but they don’t tell anywhere near the full story. As mentioned, some people are lucky enough to be born happy. Other people become happy by default thanks to being raised in a positive, encouraging environment.

But what explains my admittedly anecdotal observation that people in poorer countries seem happier? To me, it is the power of community and social connection. Individualism is the predominant mindset in the West. People strive to prove how independent and self-reliant they are.

But this individualism brings with it a problem; the loss of community values and social connections. People in richer nations typically stay indoors outside of work hours, watching Netflix or browsing the Internet. There is a real loss of community values bred by focusing on only oneself. Isolation is rampant in the West.

Poorer nations tend to have more of a social culture with friends eating together, people selling food on the road, night markets, friends drinking in little pop-up bars at the side of the road. Humans are tribal by nature—we function best in social situations via collaboration, similar to how ants and bees also function best by working together. It is no surprise, therefore, that social isolation breeds unhappiness.

Note that while my observation about happiness in rich vs poor nations is anecdotal, it is also a widely shared perspective. Ask anyone who has travelled to Thailand or other Southeast Asian nations and they’ll tell you one of the most striking things was how happy people seemed despite their relative poverty. The same is often said by people visiting Africa and South America.

How to Become a Happier Person

Before delving into specific tips, it’s a good idea, first of all, to clarify why you would want to change your default happiness levels. The old saying goes that misery loves company, and it is actually quite easy to become attached to your own negativity. It can be difficult to let that part of you go, which is why changing your affective style, as it is termed, is difficult.

Furthermore, change is often scary. Sometimes it is easier to stay entrenched in current ways of feeling, thinking, and behaving. We worry about what awaits us on the other side and we’d rather the certainty of knowing what life is like in our current state than the uncertainty of finding out who we are and how we live when we are happier people.

The happier you might decide to end a relationship because you realize you were in the relationship out of fear of being alone. The happier you might dump your current batch of friends because they are toxic and hanging out with them makes you unhappy. Your parents might not understand where the happier you has come from and why you seem so different.

These are not small life changes. You need to understand that becoming a happier person is likely to lead to at least a few major life disruptions. But it is precisely these changes that provide a good reason to try and change your default happiness levels.

Change is where growth occurs. It is easy to carry on the way you’ve been living, even if you rarely feel happy. It is hard to change but it is a worthwhile endeavor. If you are convinced, then try adopting these five proven ways to become a happier person.

Meditate 15 Minutes Each Day

Pretty much everyone has either read or heard about the benefits of meditation by now. The thing about meditation is that not all of us have the time to spend entire days like Buddhist monks, cross-legged and contemplating the breath.

But you don’t need to meditate all day to receive its happiness benefits. A 15-minute meditation session suffices. Meditation does not need to be remotely religious or spiritual. Treat meditation like an experiment you are conducting on your mind. What you are doing is training your mind not to attach so readily to thoughts.

Whether you sit down and cross your legs or lie down, it is up to you. The aim of meditation from a happiness perspective is that you want to get to a point where you attach less to your thoughts. You see your thoughts for what they are—transient things that come and go in your mind.

With consistent daily meditation practice, you attach less to the negativity that manifests in the form of your default thoughts. You come to an innate understanding that these thoughts are not you; they are the activity of the mind and they are constantly in flux.

The aim is to get to a point in which your thoughts are not sticky things that you attach to and get bogged down in.

Get Your Heart Rate Up

In one of the more informative episodes of Joe Rogan’s podcast, Dr. Rhonda Patrick discusses the physical benefits of exercise in depth.  But just as impactful as these physical benefits are the profound mental benefits of exercise.

Exercise is a powerful treatment for depression, according to several studies. A 2017 study on exercise and depression concluded that exercise is an evidence-based medicine for depression.  Personally I enjoy a brisk walk as much as anyone, but I do think you feel better when getting your heart rate up, whether by swimming, rowing, running, cycling, playing soccer. The key is to pick an activity that you enjoy.

CBT

Cognitive-behavioral therapy is a therapeutic intervention that relies on challenging unhelpful cognitive distortions. These distortions are a collection of inaccurate thoughts and beliefs we have about ourselves. The goal is to challenge these distortions and replace them with more realistic and adaptive thoughts.

By challenging one’s own distorted thoughts, the practitioner of CBT changes their feelings which in turn results in different, more positive behaviors. These behaviors then further reinforce new, more realistic and less neurotic ways of thinking.

The best book on CBT is still Feeling Good: The New Mood Therapy by David Burns. I would really recommend this book to get an excellent overview of what CBT is all about. Finding a good CBT therapist or psychologist is straightforward in most developed cities nowadays. I think many people would benefit more from CBT with the aid of a qualified CBT psychologist.

ACT

Acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT) is a type of therapy that works well for people who don’t get any benefit or change from CBT.  it also works for people who don’t particularly get on with the idea that we need to constantly challenge our thoughts.

ACT observes (correctly in my opinion) that constantly challenging our thoughts is a pain in the arse, tiring, and extremely difficult. What is nice about ACT is that it begins with the assumption that the human condition is often marked by negativity and suffering. This is in line with the Buddhist idea that life is marked by Dukkha, a sort of fundamental dissatisfaction.

ACT states that much of our suffering and unhappiness in life is caused by fusing with our thoughts. When we fuse with our thoughts, we avoid experiences that could potentially cause psychological growth. We become rigid in our ways of thinking, behaving, and interacting with the world.

To become happier, more psychologically flexible people, the ACT approach advocates taking action in line with personal values. In order to take such action, we first need to learn how to defuse from our thoughts. This is where ACT links nicely with meditation. You try to get to a point where you attach less to the content of your mind.

To learn more about ACT I really recommend a fantastic book called The Happiness Trap by Russ Harris. I’ve read this book three times and it still takes a prime position on my bookshelf. You can also seek out a qualified ACT therapist but they can be awkward to find.

Antidepressants

We live in a world in which it is fashionable to rebel against the status quo. There are people who take pride in being cynical about certain things, and one of those things lately is Big Pharma and their apparent hidden agenda with antidepressant medications.

People speculate that these mammoth companies like Pfizer and co push these mental health drugs to the public for profit in full knowledge that they either barely work or that most people who take them don’t need them. But the truth is that generic competition for these brand names drugs means they are not as profitable as they once were and that many people do benefit from them.

Skepticism is often healthy but online wellness blogs, self-improvement forums and blogs, and YouTube video sections and comments too readily dismiss antidepressants like Prozac and Lexapro. Read the reviews on Drugs.com for depression meds like Prozac and you’ll see overwhelmingly positive reactions (and some negative reviews).

The truth is that antidepressants are viable options for those of us not lucky enough to win the cortical lottery. They can help those of us who have developed depressive personalities whether through bad genes, a less than optimal environment for our upbringing, and general life experiences so far.

I like the analogy Jonathan Haidt uses in the aforementioned book, The Happiness Hypothesis. He says that those of us who are not happy by default are like people who live life with functional yet cloudy eyesight. You would have no hesitation to give contact lenses to someone to improve their vision; how they see the world. The same should ring true for giving someone a tablet to change how happy they feel by default.

Antidepressant therapy does not work for everyone. But if you are truly unhappy in your default state and you have tried other methods, I see no harm in giving these medications at least a six-week trial. You can always stop taking them after the trial if there are no changes or stop during the trial if you can’t handle the side-effects.

Closing Thoughts

Saying that you can become a happier person and providing tips to do so isn’t the same as saying that happiness is some destination that you can arrive at. I look at happiness as an ongoing experience that comes and goes. There will always be pain and negative psychological suffering; it is part of the human experience.

But it is my firm belief that how much happiness we experience in our everyday lives is malleable through taking certain steps, such as exercising regularly, undergoing therapy, meditating, and taking antidepressants to correct genetic bad luck.

None of these things relies upon the modern consumerist view of happiness that if you achieve or have X, you will be happy. None of these things is easy; even though popping a pill sounds easy, antidepressants often come with side-effects that people can’t tolerate.

I recommend starting with exercise and meditation at a minimum, as both of these things have personally made the biggest impact on how happy I feel each day. From there, you can gauge how you feel and move on to therapy, medication, or both. Good luck and please leave a comment or share this post if you enjoyed it. I’ve provided some of the main reading recommendations below.

The post Five Proven Ways to Become a Happier Person appeared first on Cerebrotonic.

As an Irish person, it is almost a cultural more to consume a lot of alcohol in my country. When young Irish people drink on the weekend, we generally don’t do it with the sole aim of enjoying our drinks. Without wanting to speak for the few who are able to moderate, young Irish people tend to drink booze to get shitfaced. The enjoyment of what we’re drinking is a happy byproduct of that aim. Older people may or may not be just as bad at moderating their alcohol consumption.

Drinking booze heavily isn’t a problem limited to the people of Ireland. But in a country famed for its nightlife and the “craic” we have, it’s fair to say we are perhaps more known for heavy drinking than most other countries. The stereotype of an Irishman is a guy with a funny accent and a pint of Guinness in his hand at all times.

Personally, I’ve teetered on the edge of excess alcohol consumption for much of my 20s. I don’t drink every day but when I imbibe, I indulge heavily. I don’t stop at 2 or 3 beers; it’s more like 6 or 7…go hard or go home and all that jazz. In my early to mid-20s, it was often 9 or 10 drinks.

A big problem of drinking heavily is that drinking in excess leads to really bad hangover anxiety for some people the next day. I’m particularly prone to bouts of “hangxiety” that leave me unproductive and wanting to indulge in escapist behaviors like mindlessly surfing the Internet.

What is Hangxiety and Why Does Alcohol Cause It?

According to an article in The Guardian, hangover anxiety occurs because alcohol messes with the delicate balance of neurotransmitters in the brain. The relaxed feeling when we drink comes from alcohol’s dual impact of increased GABA and decreased glutamine. The more we drink, the more profound the impact on brain chemistry.

Wanting to get us back to homeostasis, the body tries to overcompensate for these altered levels of chemical messengers in the brain. GABA reduces and we get a spike in glutamate. The result is a quite debilitating physical and psychological anxiety that can last an entire day.

Most people, myself included, are fully aware that alcohol is ultimately a poison and isn’t very good for the human body in large amounts. I still continued to indulge throughout my 20s in full knowledge of this fact, and I think part of that was because of a subconscious feeling of invincibility that many twentysomethings feel. We think we can do all sorts of damage to our young bodies and we will withstand it.

There is also the perspective that living is ultimately bad for the human body because we all die regardless of whether a drop of wine ever crosses our lips. This leads to the somewhat hedonistic viewpoint that we might as well enjoy ourselves while we are alive.

Questioning the Value of Drinking Alcohol

It is only when a behavior begins to cause more problems than it’s worth that people start to question it. For much of my 20s, I considered the trade-off of losing an entire day worth it so I could have fun for a few hours the night before. When I truly considered how much of my life I was losing to hangover anxiety, I started to rethink why I drink. Borrowing happiness from the next day is not really a behavior that provides value to my life.

I also had a flash of insight one day while hungover. I told myself I had enjoyed my night out, but then when I tried to think back to the night before and what conversations I had, much of it was either mundane stuff or just a blank space of not being able to remember. The actual fun part was before the drinking when I played pool with a friend.

This is not to say that drinking alcohol is not fun; it most certainly is. It quells my overactive mind, it reduces inhibitions, it makes me feel way more talkative, and I become much more present. Oh, and Guinness tastes great! But if the net effect of those benefits is to make me miss out on 52 days (and the rest) each year, I started to wonder if it was worth it.

Living in congruence with your values is a pillar of building a content or happy life. If you say you value your health and then you go out and get shitfaced once or twice each week, a gap emerges between your values and your behavior that ultimately makes you feel unhappy.

Philosophers on Alcohol

When searching for wisdom and advice on a topic, I often find it is helpful to consider the perspectives and opinions of philosophers, whether past or present. I find philosophical insight useful because, well, philosophers are/were smarter people than me.

The first philosopher that springs to mind is Nietzche, who was very anti-booze. In a famous quote about the complacency and escapism alcohol encourages, Nietzche said,

But this [German] people has deliberately made itself stupid, for nearly a millennium: nowhere have the two great European narcotics, alcohol and Christianity, been abused more dissolutely.

It’s clear that to Nietzche, alcohol dulls us into a passive state of mind in which we are avoiding confronting life’s struggles. For Nietzche, confronting life’s struggles is the path to pursuing greatness; it’s where great works of art and great ideas come from.

The Roman Stoic Seneca had a different view on alcohol that is more in line with modern government recommendations on alcohol intake.

In his book, On The Shortness of Life, Seneca says, “There is a healthy moderation in wine…occasionally we should even come to the point of intoxication for it does wash away cares. But we must not do this often in case the mind acquires a bad habit.”

So, Seneca’s overall view is that we should have a few drinks now and then to turn off the relentless stream of thoughts and give the mind time to relax. He also thinks getting drunk occasionally isn’t too harmful but that we shouldn’t get drunk often. This is a slightly more relaxed view than most government recommendations on alcohol consumption, which advise moderation and refraining from binge drinking.

Let’s now consider the Buddha’s thoughts on alcohol. Gautama Buddha was a philosopher of the mind so I feel his opinions are worth considering. On his noble Eightfold Path to the cessation of suffering, the Buddha advises not trading in intoxicants in the fifth precept. But this is not an instruction to avoid alcohol.

Actually, different schools of Buddhism interpret this precept in different ways, probably reflecting that similar to the game of Chinese whispers, messages get distorted as they are heard and interpreted by different people with different schools of thought. Theravada, Tibetan, and Mahayana Buddhists all have different ideas on the fifth precept and what it means.

Coming back to the overall idea in Buddhism of The Middle Way, it’s probably fair to say that drinking alcohol to the point of intoxication isn’t advocated, but neither is complete abstention. The entire ethos of The Middle Way is to find that middle ground between the extremes of overindulgence in pleasurable things and completely denying yourself of any pleasure. In other words, everything in moderation.

Scientific Consensus on Booze

In a landmark epidemiological study published in The Lancet in 2018, researchers rather disappointingly found that there is no level of alcohol consumption that improves health.

A 2015 study on mental health and alcohol use in Finland found that frequent binge drinking leads to poor mental health and psychological distress. “Frequent” in this study was defined as binge drinking more regularly than once per month.

So, Should You Go Teetotal? 

Ultimately, choosing whether to drink is a personal decision that involves weighing up what alcohol adds to your life versus what it takes away from it. I certainly am not against people having vices in life. Because I find it challenging to moderate my intake, I think my body needs a break so I can properly evaluate what I am missing out on.

I think if there is too much of a difference between the way someone feels while drinking compared to how they feel when sober, this is a warning sign that alcohol is being used as a coping mechanism for conditions that would be better treated with therapy or prescribed medication. And for obvious reasons that should go without saying, alcoholics need to get appropriate help and abstain for life.

I think if you can moderate your intake there is nothing too wrong with a glass of wine with dinner or a pint of beer while watching a football match. Getting tipsy, by which I mean that really enjoyable relaxed and buzzed feeling that happens after 2-4 drinks, is probably fine once in a while too. But drinking to get wasted and doing so every week? Probably not a good idea.

Try a 30 Day No Alcohol Challenge

I would advocate giving up alcohol for a decent stretch of time and carefully noting how your life changes. 30 days should be sufficient. Get a notepad or a journal and at the end of each day, jot down some observations about how your life is different. Ask yourself some of the following questions.

Do you waste less time? Do you become more productive? Do you feel more mental clarity? Does your physical health feel better? Is your social life more varied than just going out for pints? Do you feel more or less anxious?

If nothing much changes, you can always go back to booze. If you find 30 days without alcohol to be an enormously difficult task, that might be indicative of excess consumption.

Either way, as with fire, always remember that alcohol is a good servant but a bad master. Sláinte!

The post Should You Drink Alcohol? Here’s What Philosophers and Science Say appeared first on Cerebrotonic.

Entering the present moment sounds like a bit of a contradictory phrase. After all, “it is only ever now”, as the spiritual teacher Eckhart Tolle is fond of saying.

The problem is that while we might always physically be present in whatever location our body happens to be in, mentally, most of us rarely actually live in the moment. Anxiety, by definition, entails worrying about the future, which means mentally not being aware of your current experience.

Even when in the grips of in-the-moment panic, your worry is not about right now; it is about the prospect of dying or some other terrifying thing happening. Anxiety is rife in society if statistics are anything to go by.

Rumination about past mistakes and failures is something common to all but the most privileged humans and it is the default thought process among many depressed people.

Even those who are lucky enough to live what would be considered a life without much suffering from anxiety or depression tend to spend most of their time mentally outside the present moment, making plans, pondering whether to have a takeaway for dinner, among a plethora of other things the mind likes to preoccupy itself with.

Most of us have had experiences in life of intensely living in the moment and we tend to recognize them as times that profoundly impact us, often for the better. Anyone who has ever been at a concert completely engrossed in the performance of a musician they enjoy knows about this experience. So does anyone who has ever had sex, climbed a mountain, played sport.

Life takes place and unfolds right now, which makes it somewhat of a travesty that many of us tend to sleepwalk through life without paying attention to it. Indian yogis and Buddhist monks were on to something when they espoused the virtues of being present in life.

The Attention Economy

But how do you become more present? In the modern world, it is exceedingly difficult to pay attention to the nature of experience as it is right now because there’s always something more compelling competing for our attention spans.

Addictive smartphone notifications, social media platforms, 24/7 newsreels,  Netflix, video games, porn, Internet browsing, even books…the list is endless. Such mediums ostensibly seem to provide an ideal outlet for escaping mental anguish, however, they mostly just avoid and perpetuate suffering in the long run.

Pretty much all modern big tech companies see human attention as a scarce commodity and a valuable resource.  Therefore, all technology companies compete with each other for our attention. The result is an onslaught of notifications, apps, and content that is difficult to resist.

Genuine feelings of contentedness tend to arise when we realize that truly being present in life eliminates most of our suffering.

Furthermore, when we are not present enough, life seems to flash by too fast. Days rapidly merge into weeks and before you know it, six months have passed in a timespan that felt like about 8 weeks.

Ways to Enter the Present Moment

But how do we enter this elusive present moment? Well, there are a few important ways that are simple yet require discipline.

Entering the present moment is something that Jeff Olson, author of an excellent book called The Slight Edge, would consider as “easy to do but easy not to do”.  According to Olson, our results in life, whether the goal is improved health or reduced mental suffering,  are dependent on implementing simple daily habits that are easy to do but also easy not to do.

1) Listen 

“The easiest way to get into the meditative state is to begin by listening”. The spiritual entertainer Alan Watts uttered those words and I have found them to be very useful. Just listening to the general hum and buzz of the world is a brilliant way to become more present in life.

2) Get into the Flow State 

Eckhart Tolle describes eternity as being outside of time. This is also an apt description of what it feels like to be in a state of flow. It is important to note that being in a state of flow is not the same as distracting yourself. In a state of flow, you completely merge with both the task you are doing and the present moment in such a way that you live entirely in the now.

Flow involves complete mindful attention and focus on what you are doing. This is what distinguishes flow from mere distraction, which typically occurs by focusing our mind on some other place, fantasy, or time.

To get into flow, pick a task, eliminate all possible distractions, and focus solely on that task. For me, it’s playing a musical instrument or writing that achieves this state. For others, it could be something like cleaning your home, building a bookshelf, or climbing a mountain.

3) Eat Mindfully

Eating gives us a great opportunity to become more present and it’s an opportunity most of us waste at least three times each day. Most of us cram food into our mouths and try to clear our plates as quickly as possible. We treat eating as a kind of distraction that we do out of necessity rather than savouring each bite.

By truly paying attention while eating, not only do we become more present, we also better tune into our real levels of satiety. We then make more informed and healthier choices about the amount of food we actually need.

4) Focus on Breathing

It would be a disservice if I was to write a piece on how to become more present without mentioning the classic method of focusing on the breath. When you focus on breathing, you notice that your thoughts naturally come and go; they are always in flux. This teaches you that you don’t need to attach to any particular thought.

Much of our suffering arises because we treat our thoughts as these sticky things. How often have you woken up thinking, “oh shit, I feel so unhappy with life” and then pursued that thought for the remainder of the day, focusing on everything that is making you unhappy?

I’m not saying that you shouldn’t try to fix aspects of your life that make you unhappy. But fusing with our thoughts too readily is the driving force behind a lot of mental anguish.

A 10 to 15-minute focused session every day on the breath is an incredibly powerful way to become more present during the rest of your waking hours. When you learn not to attach so much to thoughts, you naturally become more aware of your current experience without mentally labelling it.

5) Focus on Tactile Sensations

Pick up an object, like a marble or something. Hold it in your hand and truly focus on what it feels like. I sometimes use this technique when I am stuck in an anxious or ruminative thought loop and I find it very helpful. I grab a nearby object and just focus on how it feels for 10 or 15 minutes.

6) Grab a Beer or Two

Alcohol is a poison and it comes with a range of negative health effects. However, I am not going to deny that one of the most pleasing aspects of indulging in a couple of tipples is how remarkably it clears mental chatter.

A common way people describe how they feel after drinking is that the booze “takes the edge off”. The reasons for this are chemical⁠—alcohol decreases excitability in the brain and increases relaxation.

I advise you to treat booze with caution because it is very easy to begin to use booze as a crutch for achieving peace of mind. In the long run, this will cause problems in your life.

I hope you have got something from this post and that you will use some of these tips to experience life as it occurs right now instead of spending too much time fused with thoughts about the past or future. Please share this post on social media if you enjoyed it or comment if you have any thoughts.

The post How to Enter the Present Moment appeared first on Cerebrotonic.