Your Brain Is Probably Pretty Stressed Right Now
Your brain deserves some R&R. Here are a few simple ways to calm your mind and body.
This is a modified excerpt from Inside Your Head 🧠, a weekly newsletter exploring why your brain makes you think, feel, and act the way you do, written by me, Elemental’s senior writer and a former brain scientist. Subscribe here so you won’t miss the next one.
How’re everyone’s anxiety levels doing today? Rhetorical question. Mine are through the roof, as I imagine most American’s are. So instead of writing another explainer on the neuroscience of stress or citing the “fight-or-flight response” for the hundredth time, I’m just going to offer a few tips on how to ever-so-slightly untie the knot in your stomach.
First, go vote if you haven’t already. Seriously. Not just because it’s your democratic responsibility and the future of our country depends on it, but because it’s one of the few things you can do that gives you some control over today and tomorrow and how the pandemic will end and the next four years of your life. And having control over a situation makes it less anxiety-inducing.
Once you’ve voted, try to accept that things are out of your hands and try not to worry. Easier said than done, I know. But I’m going to let you in on a little…
