Verbalising our thoughts helps us put them in order. By explaining it to someone else, we, on some level, are explaining it to ourselves. Emotions can be labelled, experienced and sorted. This allows the brain’s alarm system, the amygdala, to stand down and reduce the amount of time we spend in the fight-or-flight response.
It helps us to activating the parts in our brain that deal with language. It gives context to our emotions and allows logic to have a seat at the table alongside our feelings, reducing the limbic style of reactivity we experience when we’re fully ruled by emotion.
This can reduce the amount of ruminating we do, reducing the amount of energy we spend on our emotions (while still genuinely experiencing them) and reduces stress. Doing all this with someone we trust increases the impact by also releasing some serotonin (one of our main happy hormones).
But why is this so important?
When fight-or-flight (AKA sympathetic nervous system) is activated, our body is flooded with the stress hormone (cortisol and adrenalin). Because we live in a world that is often not inclusive or accepting of ADHDers, (sometimes outright discriminatory) this happens to us more regularly than most people. It teaches us to be on the look out for threat all the time in an attempt to be safe (hyper vigilance).
ADHDers, navigate daily disappointment, admonishments, and blows to our self-esteem. Over time the effects of this build up to present like trauma might with emotional dysregulation, impulsivity and trouble sleeping.
What we do every day and how we experience the world makes changes to our brain structure. If we experience the world as a tough place, like someone carrying trauma might, our brains will respond in similar ways to people who carry the signs of trauma. In other words we become wired for emergency action or high excitement instead of behaving in a measured and organised way. It’s easier to be more measured and organised when you feel safe and accepted.
I love the quote from Neuropsychologist Donald Hebb that says: ‘Neurons that fire together wire together.’ In other words, the more we experience the same situations the more our brain gets used to that being a pattern and the less we need to think about it the next time we encounter a similar situation.
In this scenario, having more experiences with people and situations that help us to feel safe, accepted and nurtured, makes it easier for us to recognise those events. With enough exposure to that, we not only take a break from the hard stuff, we also resource ourselves for the times we have to face them.
So if we’re asking ourselves how talking about stuff might be helpful, the answer is, it settles us in a safe situation, allows us to process our emotions and thoughts and it replenishes us for the difficult things that will inevitably come up in our lives.
If you need someone to hear you without judgement and support you in finding new ways to approach the tough stuff in your life, perhaps therapy would be helpful.
I offer a free 30min zoom chat, where we can discuss what you need and work out if I’m the right therapist for you.
You can contact me via connect@rewiretherapy.co.uk, or 07537 142908 to book an appointment.
