What Makes Up the Basic Principles of Craft Therapy?
In the world of neuroscience, great leaps are being made into understanding how the brain regulates the chemicals it releases into the body to manage its every day functions. Not only that, but professionals are discovering more and more about the role the gut plays in the production of neurotransmitters and healthy hormones.
So in our brain there exists a throwback mechanism that is produced in a very small part of our brain, called the Amygdala. This amygdala is very important in the process of deciding which will be activated in your brain and your body.
The amygdala is often know as your lizard brain, or mammalian brain or reptile brain. It is a tiny little part of our brains, but it was evolved to protect us when our lives are threatened by danger or the prospect of death.
Basically, the amygdala recognises through various means when we are in grave danger and sends signals to your brain telling it to release what are known as the survival hormones. They activate the flight, fight, freeze or flop function when you find yourself in a life threatening situation.
The problem arises when you consider that this part of the brain was designed to protect us from dangers such as sabre tooth tigers and huge woolly mammoths.
Back when we first started learning how to deal with such big menaces our brain evolved this amygdala to help our bodies become optimally ready to deal with what ever threat was in front of us.
When these survival hormones are released they exhibit very particular functions to enable your body to be ready to face the threat.
It starts of by diverting energy from your digestive functions, to your heart, lungs and limbs. After all you don't have time to eat if there is a sabre tooth tiger chasing you so you also won't need to do much food digesting. It also shut down your ability to sleep, causing insomnia for the length of time that the danger is present, because again, if you are being chased by some huge predator, you don't really have time to take a nap! This energy is diverted to your heart, lungs and limbs so that you are ready to fight the scary beasts or run away from them. This means that in time of great stress and at risk of great injury or death they generally give some parts of your body a ton of energy, that they take away from other parts of your body for the short length of time you are in this survival situation.
Now the major problem is, that we still have that amygdala, primed and ready for us to deal with those huge tigers, monstrous bears and big tusked woolly mammoths and suchlike.
The amygdala was originally designed to only release these hormones, that divert all that energy, for a short piece of time. Then it is supposed calm back down and redivert the energy to where it came from so that you can go back to the task of living happy, healthy lives.
In today's modern world, particularly in the first world there are very few instances where we are chased by large predators such as wild animals. Admittedly, sadly there are other things that prey on us and can threaten our survival, but usually it is humans themselves that are the risk. People in the less developed parts of the world, soldiers in combat and people experiencing severe trauma do still need the amygdala to work, but not always as dramatically, or as often as our prehistoric ancestors.
Sadly, our way of life here is the developed world has evolved far faster in the evolutionary scale of things than our amygdala can keep up with. So while we don't need to chase down woolly mammoths anymore to provide food and clothing, there are a whole plethora of other things that challenge our ability to be happy, housed and healthy.
Our amygdala is still seeing sabre tooth tigers and huge man eating predators under every sofa cushion however, and has not managed to adapt particularly well to modern lifestyles.
So now our amygdala, looks at our lives in much simpler terms. We still need food, shelter, safety and clothing, these are primary survival necessities. But obtaining these things for the majority of the modern world has changed into something generally a lot easier that hunting and fighting for survival.
Please note, I do say generally there. I know there are exception, I am one of them, but in general terms it is much easier to get shelter, sustenance and clothing than it was in prehistoric times.
These the things that threaten these necessities are things like, getting a job, doing the job well enough to earn money, being able to use that money to provide the essential tools of survival such as food and shelter, medicine if we are sick and clothing to maintain the best body temperature.
So if we are struggling in anyway to provide or access those modern survival necessities, our amygdala starts to jump up and down and shouts "Oh No! Panic! No money means no food, safety, shelter and clothing our survival is threatened! So release those hormones survival hormones quick!"
Unfortunately though, these hormones were only designed to be released for a short period of time. I am sure you will have heard of at least one of these hormones, Adrenaline. There is also Cortisol
Anything in the modern world that can threaten our perception of the survival necessities, triggers a response from the amygdala, releasing those survival hormones. You will have heard them by name, for sure, they are called Norepinephrine, Adrenaline and Cortisol. Ring any bells?
So if your adrenaline is high and the other stress hormones are in play, you are living in what is now known as a state of survival.
Remember earlier what I told you the physiological effects of these hormones are? You can't process food properly because, you can't eat when you need to be able to run or fight and you can't sleep either for the same reasons.
Because the stressors around us do not go away, once we have killed or driven off the day to day mental equivalents of the sabre tooth tiger, our brain doesn't go back into the happy hormone state that is should be in.
This can have a profound effect on our actual physical reality. Not being able to eat leads to issues like malnutrition and irritable bowel syndrome, not being able to sleep can cause a whole plethora of ailments from headaches and eye strain to eventually a gradual destruction of every major organ in your body.
It is our belief at Jends Creatives that we can teach ourselves to trick our brain out of the survival mode and back into the happy mode, using a variety of techniques and cross body crafting is an especially important part of this.
Scientists have long been extolling the virtues of creativity in promoting balance in the brains hormone levels. Creativity is part of the package of hormones that is released in Happy Mode.
If you want to check out the different hormones and how you can get them to work in your body, pop along to our Happy Hormones page to get the low down!
In short though, there are these 4 hormones that can be produced in our bodies that take us out of the Survival Mode and into Happy Mode.
These are, Dopamine, Serotonin, Endorphins and Oxytocin. Now these are the warriors against the stress hormones, so picture it as a battle if you like (I often use this example to illustrate this for my 19 year old, neurodiverse son who responds well to visualisation).
So on the red side you have the stress hormones - Norepinephrine, Adrenaline and Cortisol and in the blue corner we have the happy hormones - Dopamine, Serotonin, Endorphins and Oxytocin.
Straightaway we can see that the blue side actually has the advantage, after all there are four of them. Yet so often it is the red side that has control of our moods, our health and our happiness (or lack thereof).
So to me it seems like simple science, feed the blue side of the force and then they can fight harder against the dark side (so to speak).
Obviously these things often seem easier in principle than practise and this is for a number of reasons.
First we have self-limiting beliefs. This is the Red armies spying and scouting service, they go on ahead and prepare the battleground for our minds, right from a really young age. These are thoughts and opinions that we are often unaware we are even having as they happen on a subconscious level. Thoughts like I have never been happy, I can't be happy, I never will be happy. I don't deserve to be happy. For everyone it is different, it might be I don't deserve to be rich, or healthy, or loved. All of these self-limiting belief are formed from influences in our lives that have maybe unknowingly damaging to to us. Once these beliefs start having a toe hold in our minds, we start finding ways to confirm that these beliefs are true. We link back - again often subconsciously - to the original event, every time we end up in a similar situation.
Then we have fear of the unknown, which can often be linked to the self-limiting beliefs.
A classic example that I have discovered in myself is about my weight. An abusive father had me spent the formative years of my life believing I was fat and ugly (amongst other things). By the time I was 18 years old I was a UK size 18. I spent my whole life until the last couple of years (2019 - present day) believing I was fat, I had always been fat and I always would be fat. Until I was shown pictures of myself as a child and teenager and saw this slender, gorgeous kid/teen in them. It was a real eye opener for me. At my heaviest I was wearing a size 24-26 (UK) clothing, that I could only get from specialist shops. Today (Jan 2022) I am a size 14-16 - mostly 14. I didn't go on any special diet to achieve this although health issues have helped the process.
Mostly though, I stopped believing that I had a rubbish metabolism and used neuro-linguistic programming to keep telling myself that my metabolism was perfectly fine and there was nothing wrong.
So you see these self-limiting beliefs were themselves causing the problem within the physiology of my body. Not only has my clothing size reduced, within the last year I have finally been able to get my diabetes under control as well!
Basically, our brain can be our own worst enemy, and when people tell you it is all in your head, they don't realise, but they can be partly right.
So how does all this tie in with Craft Therapy?
Craft therapy teaches us how we can use our creative sides, to help retrain our brains into a better frame of mind Using meditative techniques whilst doing simple cross body crafts can give us the space to challenge self-limiting beliefs and unhelpful preconceptions in an environment that promotes the release of the Blue army (the happy hormones) and inhibits the Red army (the survival hormones) and knock it back where it belongs.
Production of 3 of the 4 happy hormones can be produced just by the act of being creative and combining the creativity with other psychological techniques helps us to move forward on a daily basis, taking small steps to improve our health, happiness and general wellbeing.
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