Stress Brain

Trauma is a fact of life. Veterans and their families deal with the painful aftermath of combat; one in five Americans has been molested; one in four grew up with alcoholics; one in three couples have engaged in physical violence. Dr. Bessel van der Kolk, one of the world’s foremost experts on trauma, has spent more than three decades working with survivors. In The Body Keeps the Score, he uses recent scientific advances to show how trauma literally reshapes both body and brain, compromising sufferers’ capacities for pleasure, engagement, self-control, and trust.

Is it possible to feel better - and make it last? Renowned physician, psychiatrist, brain-imaging researcher, and founder of Amen Clinics Dr. Daniel Amen understands how critical it is for you to know what will help you feel better fast, now and later. In Feel Better Fast and Make It Last, you'll discover new, powerful brain-based strategies to quickly gain control over anxiety, worry, sadness, stress, and anger, strengthening your resilience and giving you joy and purpose for a lifetime.

Modern times are stressful - and it's killing us. Unfortunately, we can't avoid the things that stress us out, but we can change how we respond to them. In this breakthrough book, a clinical psychologist and neuroscience expert offers an original approach to help listeners harness the power of positive emotions and overcome stress for good.

We are in the midst of a mental health crisis. An estimated one in five American adults suffer from some form of mental illness. Despite the billions of dollars spent in pharmaceutical research and the rising popularity of antidepressant drugs, we are more depressed and anxious than ever before. What if we’re looking for solutions in the wrong places? What if instead of treating mental illness with prescriptions and medication, we changed what we eat and how we feed our brains?

From Harvard stress expert, nationally sought after speaker, and television correspondent Dr. Aditi Nerurkar comes a reimagined approach to overcoming your stress and burnout using five small but mighty mindset shifts.

Stress is our internal response to an experience that our brain perceives as threatening or challenging. Trauma is our response to an experience in which we feel powerless or lacking agency. Until now, researchers have treated these conditions as different, but they actually lie along a continuum. Dr. Elizabeth Stanley explains the significance of this continuum, how it affects our resilience in the face of challenge, and why an event that's stressful for one person can be traumatizing for another.

Everyone experiences trauma. Whether a specific harrowing event or a series of stressful moments that culminate over time, trauma can echo and etch itself into our brain as we remember it again and again throughout our lives. In Everyday Trauma, neuroscientist Dr. Tracey Shors examines trauma with a focus on its pervasive nature - how it can happen at any time, through big or small events, and how it often reappears in the form of encoded memory.

This practical and groundbreaking guide reveals seven paths to fighting the effects of stress - to strengthen our natural defenses so that our minds remain sharp, and our bodies resilient, no matter what life throws at us. Each chapter examines a common stress agent - including inflammation, an out-of-sync body clock, cortisol levels, and emotional triggers - and presents simple ways to minimize its harmful effects with changes in diet, exercise, and other daily habits - including surprising hacks involving music, eye movements, body temperature, daily routine, and more.

For the first time, best-selling author and brain expert Dr. Daniel G. Amen offers insight on the unique characteristics and needs of the female brain and a practical, prescriptive program targeted specifically for women to help them thrive. In this breakthrough guide based on research from his clinical practice, Dr. Amen addresses the issues women ask about the most including fertility, pregnancy, menopause, weight, stress, anxiety, insomnia, and relationships.

We all want the power and motivation to create change in our lives. But how to get that in a stumbling dance of one step forward and two steps back? Negative emotions run rampant in many people's lives today; a reality that feels like a shrink wrap of suffering. Popular fallback solutions of performance-based goals and tools focus on extrinsic rewards like fame, wealth, or winning. But overuse of those rewards doesn't work for the long term and in fact weakens our confidence and motivation over time, leaving us vulnerable to failure and shame.

Stress is an unfortunate fact of modern life, and when those stressors are catastrophic - divorce, illness, caregiving, loss - a brain under stress becomes a brain in crisis. In this invaluable guide, award-winning psychiatrist Dr. Jennifer Love and neuropsychologist Dr. Kjell Hovik explore how to heal the damage that prolonged stress can do to your brain and your health. In When Crisis Strikes you'll learn how to prevent these side effects from hijacking your daily life.

Based on cutting-edge research, Overcoming Stress-Induced Brain Fog offers quick solutions you can put to work right away, including exercises based in awareness, mindfulness and acceptance, and self-compassion. With these ten easily accessible tools, you'll find your way out of the haze toward clarity, improved memory, and a greater presence to enjoy life.

Inside, there are brain hacks to deal with self-confidence, self-esteem, and anxiety. Understand how to reprogram your subconscious mind with simple tricks to think more positively and adjust your attitude, outlook, and your perception of yourself. Learn to use the “mindbus” technique to hack your brain and how to use it to reprogram your negative thoughts. Understand and give your mind the nutrients with foods that help boost your dopamine and serotonin levels naturally in your brain to help combat PTSD and CPTSD.

Enhance your ability to work skillfully with your clients’ trauma in this professional training taught by Dr. Bonnie Badenoch. Drawing on the latest research and neuroscientifically grounded treatment approaches in the area of trauma, Bonnie provides both the theory and clinical tools you need to more effectively support your clients. The instruction looks at both theoretical and experiential-based learning approaches.

ASMR, or autonomous sensory meridian response (a deeply relaxing sensation with delightful head tingles) feels so good that some refer to it as a “brain-gasm.” ASMR videos on YouTube have millions of subscribers and billions of views. ASMR is truly everywhere - from ad campaigns to celebrities to millions of regular people looking for a moment of “ahhhh.” With Brain Tingles, it’s now possible to stimulate - and even share - those feel-good tingles every day, and in real life! Craig Richard, PhD, explains what ASMR is, why it happens, and how to trigger it at home.

The key to a better body - in shape, energized, and youthful - is a healthy brain. Based on the latest medical research, as well as on Dr. Amen's two decades of clinical practice at the renowned Amen Clinics, where Dr. Amen and his associates pioneered the use of the most advanced brain imaging technology, Change Your Brain, Change Your Body shows you how to take the very best care of your brain.

Anxiety is a survival skill gone haywire. It happens when our brain is working so hard to protect us that it forgets to notice that the danger has passed. It feels like choking, stifling, smothering, tingling, panicking - our brains cut out and we start to make bad decisions - all normal anxiety reactions. Dr. Faith G. Harper, author of the best-selling This is Your Brain on Depression packs a ton of knowledge and help into this practical manual.

Binaural beats help you enter a meditative state quickly and easily, allowing you to use meditation as a tool for personal growth, relaxation, and spiritual practices. How do binaural beats work? Binaural beats are a psychoacoustic phenomenon that arises in the brain when the right and left ears are exposed to different tones with a constant amplitude. These tones have slightly different frequencies and create a third frequency that we perceive in the center of our brain. This generates a pleasant, gentle, and very comforting sensation.

The brain's superpowers have been discovered by neuroscience. Your genius mind knows how to make your brain dissolve worry and stay in your best internal states longer. The result is a life full of possibility. The Worry-Free Mind shows you how to decipher the architecture of your model of reality, shift it to a newer version, and overcome your tendency to worry every day.

Whether your performance realm is the playing field, the office, or the classroom, mental toughness is no longer simply an asset. It’s an absolute necessity. Thriving at work and in life doesn’t happen by accident: There are teachable skills that can help you unleash your full potential. Mental performance coach Jean François Ménard will give you exclusive access to techniques and strategies that he uses to help Cirque du Soleil artists, Olympians, and pro athletes become the best in the world.