mental health

Practicing Mindfulness – Beyond Buzzwords

How do you practice mindfulness? And what is it, anyway?

Take a deep breath, inhaling for as long as you exhale. Do it again, inhale and exhale, taking notice of how the air feels in your nose and throat.

If you followed along with that paragraph, consider yourself a more mindful individual than you were before.

Let’s first establish what not being mindful looks like; A common example of the mindlessness we should work to curb in adult life comes when you’ve driven somewhere but can’t really recall the journey that got you there. On a larger scale and longer timeline, that distracting mental chatter can lead to poorly-remembered months and years of your life.

It was birthed from the Buddhist method, but modern mindfulness has become a secular practice that can aid you in many ways.

Observing your thoughts with metacognition

Mindfulness seems like an abstract concept to grasp, and that’s why I rolled my eyes at the mention of it for a while. It seemed like too much effort; Just another ‘woo woo’ buzzword that had little intrinsic value in everyday life. I couldn’t have been more wrong in my assumptions.

Explaining mindfulness properly requires some understanding of metacognition, a term that’s easier to remember if you see it as a fancy way to say ‘thinking about thinking’. You’re meant to analyze your thoughts as a way of breaking things down into smaller, bite-sized pieces instead of leaving them as huge, vague and daunting feelings.

We all experience that introspection from time to time, but a greater focus on metacognition – taking a moment to question your thoughts – is key to making challenges, big and small, easier to navigate.

What does it mean to be mindful?

It wasn’t a Buddhist monk or stereotypical hippie who properly introduced me to the idea of being mindful, but a licensed psychologist.

In our first sessions, she taught me about the practice of recognizing the thoughts speeding through my mind without overreacting to them. I learned firsthand that ‘mindfulness’ is more than a hollow buzzword thrown around by self-help gurus.

This didn’t immediately solve my problems or fully connect with me in those first sitdowns, but later mindful practice made slowing down easier. With that practice came proof that I could get better at maneuvering around the noise, and having that confidence in later nervous moments has been immeasurably rewarding.

Five points to aid your mindful practice

Sit. This helps to relax and narrow your concentration.
Bring your attention to the present moment.
Notice the sensations in your body (breathing, touch, etc.)
Accept that your thoughts will inevitably wander.
When your thoughts do wander, re-focus on current sensations.

When you’re mindful, you’re able to turn your attention to the present moment without following the thoughts that inevitably trickle in. The thoughts don’t stop, but your reaction to them adjusts.

What mindfulness isn’t

When you’re finally getting better at being mindful, your life doesn’t become perfect or problem-free, but you’re better able to analyze and deal with what comes your way.

Mindfulness is NOT:

Ignoring your problems or thoughts
Something you can force
Becoming ‘blank’ or thoughtless

Applying mindful practice to your daily life

Do you get partway through the week with no awareness of how far the weekend is? I know I can go for several hours without even being aware of what day of the week I just started.

That type of ‘cruise control’ is an easy trap to fall into when society is scheduled to the absolute brink — sleep schedule, work schedule, TV schedule… without any introspection, that only leads to an exhausted mind and something I’ve personally experienced — years that fly by, barely remembered.

To practice mindfulness is to live a life with fewer ‘autopilot’ moments. Still, you shouldn’t venture into this practice with the goal of having fewer thoughts pass through your mind; you’re simply committing yourself to notice and release them as they pop up.

While giving a proper description of mindfulness may feel overwhelming, the actual practice is beautifully simple; You can be mindful at any time by asking yourself “Where is my attention right now?”

Activities that encourage you to be mindful

Really, anything that requires a single focus can be a mindful activity. You can mindfully eat, exercise, even knit. The saying “It’s just a state of mind” is kind of true here, because you’re meant to continue living your life as you work to become more aware of your thoughts and feelings.

Since the term ‘mindfulness’ only started to be used outside of the psychology world more recently, you may not have been familiar with the word. Knowing more about mindfulness now, it’s probably pretty easy to see how some common activities can be done mindfully.

Everyday activities for practicing mindfulness:

Showering, bathing
Cooking
Eating (Slowing down at mealtime is good for digestion!)
Waking up (mentally scan your body for sensation)
Tidying your space/making your bed

Make a routine of mindfully engaging in any one of those practices and you’ll be better off!

How to control fight or flight anxiety

It’s a late-night and you’re shutting the lights off in the unused part of your home. You have to pass a dark, exposed window to get to the bedroom, and realizing this sends a nervous zap up your spine that urges you to bolt for safety as you approach the vulnerability.

Does that sound familiar?

What is the fight or flight response?

Your body’s acute stress response is commonly referred to as the fight or flight response. In the animal kingdom, it aids survival by powering the body’s systems with the explosive energy necessary to escape danger.

You can thank physiologist and Harvard professor Walter Bradford Cannon for formally describing the reaction in the early 1900s. He was also one of the first to insist that emotional stress, not only physical trauma, can trigger fight or flight.

For modern people, the source of the reaction is often vaguer than an obvious physical threat in front of us. We tend to anticipate danger more often than it is present.

One example is the sudden urge to seek shelter when you realize your back is to a doorway or exposed window at night time. While this may have been helpful when locks and various other security devices were more primitive, civilization has recently kept us (fairly) safe and your neighborhood probably isn’t known for its packs of marauding bandits.

Civilized comforts mean that many times, our fight or flight response activates in the absence of real danger. Because the stressor only has to be a danger in our imagination, those of us with disordered thinking often find the response engaged when there isn’t something real to fear. It’s quickly exhausting and leaves you searching for ways to control fight or flight anxiety.

What does the fight or flight response feel like?

The first step in dealing with or adjusting your body’s reaction to stress is being able to identify when it’s happening. Modern triggers aren’t usually as obvious as their historical counterparts when even average humans commonly had to face something they had a good reason (from a life-preserving standpoint) to fear.

But we still find ourselves anxious when there is no clear and present danger.

Physical symptoms of hyperarousal

When you sense trouble, your sympathetic nervous system flips fight or flight’s ‘On’ switch. Your heart races. Adrenaline (also called epinephrine) is a major hormone and neurotransmitter involved in this response, responsible for binding to the receptors that regulate your heart’s output, the blood flowing to your muscles and your blood sugar.

The major reactions require energy that gets provided in the form of glucose (sugar), which is produced when the epinephrine binds in your liver. Sudden muscle tension is meant to support the strength necessary to run or physically defend.

Another boost comes via the ‘stress hormone’ cortisol, which (as mentioned) temporarily increases sugars in the bloodstream. Personally, that’s the part where I get dizzy.

Emotions in fight or flight

Those physical symptoms – the adrenaline dump, racing heart, etc. – are especially distressing without a clear trigger, and lead to the mental struggle that many find most difficult.

Anxiety and aggression are common emotional responses to the physical process going on in our bodies when stressed. There’s so much tension still there even when you aren’t actively fighting that your mind remains hypervigilant and anxious. This is true both for people with and without added panic disorders.

These symptoms are helpful for short-term bursts of energy but begin to wear on a person’s long-term health if they’re experienced consistently. Because living in this state is such a drain on the body, it’s critical to recognize and then to prioritize mindful stress management as a regular part of your life.

Relieving your nerves

With a better understanding of fight or flight and its triggers, we should consider how to identify and control it in our daily lives. Anything I mention in the next section is something I’ve personally found effective and, if not, I’ll be making that very clear.

As you leave fight or flight mode, your parasympathetic nervous system activates what’s known as ‘rest and digest’. You can strengthen and even control this parasympathetic response in a number of ways, mostly by directing your body.

BREATHE! – An easy method called diaphragmatic breathing is particularly useful for calming your nervous system.

An anecdote on the effectiveness of breathwork: I was recently obligated to attend a corporate awards ceremony-slash-dinner that hosted 200 people. It was a familiar venue where I was married a few years ago, but I got overwhelmed by the sudden chorus of voices having separate conversations when I walked in beside my husband. Using mindfulness techniques like breathing exercises as we sat really helped get me through my initial urge to avoid the situation.

MEDITATE – Meditation is not the art of relaxation. It’s the act – or art, I suppose – of repeatedly focusing your attention back to something. This practice strengthens your ability to redirect your focus during stressful situations and works hand-in-hand with the breathing exercises I just mentioned.

Just like lifting the same weight with your arm every day gradually becomes easier as your body adapts to the repetition, working this ‘mental muscle’ enough will help move your focus faster and smoother.

WORK IT OUT – A great way to get out of this stressed state is to go straight through it via exercise. Adrenaline prepares you with an explosive energy that needs an outlet – use it!

… SELF-SWADDLING? – Just like a baby whose brand new nervous system is overwhelmed by sensation, you can swaddle yourself in tight, uniformly fitting clothing (think compression stockings and athletic wear) or heavy blankets. I know this sounds absurdly simple, but it can work wonders for many of us who have long aged out of babyhood.

If you can get a better grip on your natural reactions to stress, you’ll find it becomes much easier to maintain balance in your daily life. Understanding responses like fight or flight and how we encounter them even during common activity is a big part of achieving that balance.

Go forward with these bits of information on your stress response; I hope they serve you well!

When Your Anxiety Means Memory Loss

Around 30% of people have anxiety disorders and everybody on the planet experiences some kind of stress. Everyone also experiences some memory loss and an increase in blank moments as we age. But imagine being in your 20s or 30s and honestly searching keywords like ‘early dementia symptoms’ or ‘how young can Alzheimer’s present?’

Maybe you don’t have to imagine – I know my own search history’s had similar phrasing after I forget somebody’s name on the sidewalk.

When your memory is affected by anxiety, insidious little thoughts like ‘But what if it is a brain tumor?!’ can seem even more reasonable. Suddenly you’re Googling tumor symptoms for an hour instead of being productive or resting, furthering your stress and occupying your mind all because you had a little mind-blanking moment earlier in the day.

My mind went blank. What just happened?

It’s likely that your stress response took over! The human body’s stress response goes, roughly, like this:

A “Threat” occurs and a distress signal goes to the emotional processing center of your brain, called the amygdala.
If your amygdala agrees that the signal confirms immediate danger, it passes it along to your brain’s primary control center, called the hypothalamus.
The hypothalamus lights everything up; Adrenaline releases, your heart rate increases and all that energy causes a heightened state of alertness that’s traditionally been necessary for the survival of our species.

Now you’re alert and still sense danger – time for a shot of that not-so-sweet, sweet stress hormone: Cortisol!

When Hormones Get Involved

Sitting on top of your kidneys are your adrenal glands, responsible for secreting the main stress hormone – called cortisol. When your stress response keeps going, cortisol is one of the primary hormones responsible for the ongoing physiological effects.

At this stage, your mind is firing on all cylinders, extra sharp thanks to the new burst of hormonal energy.

Do you lose your appetite when you’re anxious? That’s because cortisol shuts down down non-essential functions when your body is under attack. This tends to quiet your digestive and even reproductive systems.

Though you may be craving less food, cortisol makes sure the fight or flight response gets plenty of fuel by telling your liver to turn your body’s protein stores into more glucose (sugar) to use in the sprint away from danger. This process is called gluconeogenesis, a word you probably don’t need to remember how to spell unless you’re planning on writing a keto diet guide.

Your cortisol levels will only drop when you’ve accepted that the danger has passed (even if it really passed long before), and this is the cause of the common ‘crash’ after heavy moments of anxiety.

Why does anxiety make me more forgetful?

There are a few different factors when it comes to how our anxiety affects memory.

Close up of elephant face and eye — Even elephants forget. Credit to Joel Mbugua

Consistently high levels of cortisol in the body have been linked to the loss of synapses (think of these like little highways for information) in the prefrontal cortex, which is where your brain stashes short-term memory.

That’s partly because anxiety and stress are exhausting for your body and greatly increase the demand put on many systems. It’s especially taxing for individuals with anxiety disorders (like GAD, among others) who excess stress on a near-daily basis, reflected in research on the comorbidity of these disorders with impaired memory.

Recently, researchers have found that short-term stress fires up molecules that limit some of the brain’s memory and learning processes. Studies like this are key to better understanding of why we have increased difficulty learning and recalling information when under stress.

Reduce stress & improve memory

So the results are in when it comes to the link between anxiety disorders and memory loss, particularly with anxiety disorder as a predictor of future cognitive decline. They go hand-in-hand.

That doesn’t have to read as grim to those of us suffering, though, because there are many avenues to treatment that can even begin at home.

A few things that are completely under your control can contribute to anxiety-associated memory loss. Sleep quality is a common area of suffering when we experience excess stress, and happens to be one that we can self-treat (to an extent! You’re likely not a medical professional and neither am I).

Sleep better, think better

Approximately 70 million people in the United States suffer from sleep disorders, insomnia being the most common among them. Insomnia sufferers experience great difficulty falling and/or staying asleep, and the disorder has a high comorbidity with anxiety. This makes it very likely that improving your sleep will jog your memory.

That’s not to say your symptoms are necessarily reversible, but there’s certainly hope for staying sharper in the future. A big factor in your sleep quality is timing – sleeping at night, when it’s dark out. Sounds pretty obvious, but there’s good research that backs why you should do your best to sleep when it’s dark, not when it’s noon.

Spoiler alert: More hormone talk!

Melatonin is a hormone released by your brain’s pineal gland in the evenings under normal circumstances. Elevated levels of melatonin in your blood will help you wind down and get to sleep, but those levels are only present naturally in darkness.

Why? Because bright light harshly suppresses melatonin production in the human brain.

I personally didn’t realize that until I brought up to my doctor that I’d been using a special feature on my computer and phone to reduce blue screen light in the evenings. It was easier on my eyes, for sure, but didn’t seem to help me fall asleep any faster. She vaguely explained that the brightness mattered and, being a little bit of a jerk, I double-checked to confirm her advice with a quick Google search.

Sure enough, making sure you’re exposed to plenty of light during the day will help keep your circadian rhythm strong.

Let’s Talk Video Games and Mental Health

Stereotypes and misconceptions of gamers are pretty widespread, but the positive connections between games and mental health isn’t often discussed. There’s a stigma, and instead of emphasizing how video games can help anxiety and depression, games are often associated with addiction, a lack of motivation and even obesity.

That can paint a terrible picture of gamers, in truth, most people who play games are getting a benefit to their mental fitness, confidence, and social skills. Past research into gaming has tried to dig into potential adverse impacts leading to violence, depression, and addiction. While that kind of investigation has its place, the issue is a lot larger and requires a more balanced look as more recent science shows there’s a lot of value to playing games.

Because of how drastically gaming has changed in the past few years by becoming much more diverse, realistic and socially engaging, it’s especially important to pay attention to the newer, more positive research, such as this paper on The Benefits of Playing Video Games. What does the new data show, though?

Video Games and Depression: What to avoid

The link between depression and video gaming is strong, but Jane McGonigal recently wrote to clear up some of the misconceptions:

“No wonder several major video game studies have shown a correlation between playing more than 20 or 30 hours a week (depending on the study) and depression! Some researchers originally interpreted this as evidence that video games can cause depression. But today, a more common interpretation among the researchers that I compare notes with is that many depressed players are actually attempting to self-medicate with games. They experience a dramatic sense of relief from their symptoms while playing, and therefore, the more depressed they feel, the more they play.”

She suggests avoiding having an escapist mentality towards games (using them to escape the real world) and instead adopting a ‘gameful’ mindset where you meet challenges willingly and seek to make incremental gains consistently. If you simply use games to escape, you’re going to play more when your life is more stressful and use less of your mental resources/effort to tackle the issues affecting you.

When someone playing a lot is told they need to get up and do something with their life instead of ‘doing nothing’ like they do when they’re gaming, that reinforces that games are something with no real value, to be used only as an escape from/alternate life. It’s a vicious cycle that only reinforces harmful stereotypes.

“The game of Chess is not merely an idle amusement. Several very valuable qualities of the mind, useful in the course of human life, are to be acquired or strengthened by it, so as to become habits, ready on all occasions… we learn by Chess the habit of not being discouraged by present bad appearances in the state of our affairs, the habit of hoping for a favourable change, and that of persevering in the search of resources.”
— Benjamin Franklin, ‘The Morals of Chess.’

Healthy, positive gaming experiences

Instead, thinking gamefully, you can challenge your troubles and recognize games as a positive enhancement to regular life, as opposed to something that takes over and serves an unhealthy mentality.

You can still play games to change your mood, but it’s suggested that you do so with a goal in mind, like enhancing your problem-solving abilities, building bonds with friends/loved ones or practicing resilience in the face of a problem that just keeps bouncing back). That kind of goal-oriented, purposeful gaming builds both real-world problem-solving skills and self-confidence, as well as having the exact opposite effect of escapism because playing to improve helps you connect to and use different parts of your brain, become less depressed and better able to cope with a range of emotions and real-life problems.

One major way gaming engages your brain is by continually providing new puzzles and levels of difficulty.

As humans, if there’s no avenue left to improve, we tend to stop an activity, but games offer a constantly evolving challenge and motivate incremental improvements that keep us playing until the end in many cases.

If you fail at a task in a video game, you simply reset and try an alternate strategy.

This drive to always improve or ‘level up’ can be adapted to the rigors of everyday life and help you become more resilient as well as causing you to instinctively respond better to challenges. If you mentally associate a reward with overcoming a challenge, as is the case in games, you’re naturally more motivated to persevere and work through to the other side of problems in your life.

Video games can get you off the couch!

You don’t have to sit in front of your TV or a computer screen for hours to get a little bit of that gaming experience.

The games on your smartphone or tablet will help foster all of these same rewards, with the caveat that they can’t be quite as complex or realistic as console/computer games.

You still get some of the cognitive benefits scientists talk about, but mobile games are designed for shorter periods of play, so you’ll usually find the challenge/rewards much quicker and thus don’t need to dedicate as much time as you would digging your teeth into a bigger game. Mobile games are usually linked to social media platforms and can help engage you with friends who also want to play (as long as you avoid being that Facebook friend who spam invitations to the game of your choice), and reward players for coming back to them for short periods every day.

Gaming to Exercise

There are even games designed to get you off of the couch completely! Thanks to motion tracking technology that comes with the Xbox One, Playstation 4 and Wii U consoles, there’s a whole new style of game that gets you moving physically.

They make workouts fun by incorporating gameful thinking (you unlock rewards, level up, compare your results) and tracking you to make sure you’re doing the exercises correctly. Alternatively, they’re perfect for jumping in front of the TV with a friend and playing a game of digital tennis in the living room, complete with invisible rackets!

We’ve discussed approaching games with a ‘gameful’ mindset where you welcome challenges and meet goals intently, and highlighted the link between depression and gaming in a positive way that provides the basis for a more productive overall mindset when it comes to playing games.

So, next up, it’s time to tackle how gaming can provide diverse environments and help you manage anxiety!

Practicing Mindfulness

Along the same lines, you can approach an anxiety problem by gaming mindfully. Being mindful is to be in a state of active attention in the present. When you’re mindful, you look at your thoughts or feelings from far away, without judgment on whether they’re good or bad. It’s the opposite of avoidance, one of the more negative tendencies of anxiety, and means you’re living in the moment.

Anxiety is apprehension about a future or past event, so practicing mindfulness is a natural counter to it. When you live with constant anxiety, there’s an almost unending sense of dread to everything. Your body’s fight or flight system is always engaged, and there always tends to be a feeling something harmful is about to occur. Every change is significant, met with intense nervousness, and even small challenges seem massive with the added weight of your thoughts.

It’s exhausting, and few environments ever feel truly safe.

Games offer a space to experience a wide array of emotions without the sense of real danger or threat to your well-being. You go into the game with the understanding that it IS ‘just a game’ and can’t harm you, and you reinforce that with consistent rewards from the challenges it presents.

They can even ease (or test) your anxiety!

That’s not to say it’s easy for an anxious person to find a game that helps. Not all games are comfortable for all individuals, and a lot of folks with anxiety find themselves shying away from shooters or games requiring quick reflexes, finding the immersion and stress to be too much.

As an example, I’m personally intolerant of any horror in games – I just don’t consider becoming that tense fun or rewarding, so I don’t play them. Racing games, too – even Mario Kart can bring me to the brink of panic. And yes, I regret missing a few games I’ve heard are great, but I’ve made some personal progress by playing slightly scarier fare like Fallout 4 without much trouble, even if I usually stick to it when my husband’s nearby.

Games are meant to be stimulating, so somebody prone to overstimulation can get there pretty quickly — totally understandable! There’s no shame in sticking to more detached experiences like Mario or the array of adventure/puzzle games out there. There are even games specifically designed for tackling depression and anxiety!

“Thinking gamefully, you can challenge your troubles and recognize games as a positive enhancement to regular life, as opposed to something that takes over and serves an unhealthy mentality.”

A little bit of anxiety can be motivational, though. We eagerly anticipate the feedback from our input in both the short term, whether it’s seeing a shot land or your character jump across a gap, and the long-term, like when you collect all the blue properties in Monopoly.

Positive feelings, as with rewards in games, elevate levels of the neurotransmitter dopamine, whereas a lack of dopamine spurs negative feelings and depression. Dopamine is directly responsible for the little rush of the reward system, and it’s usually riding high when you’re gaming with goals in mind.

Games also introduce competition in the form of high scores and multiplayer, adding another layer of potentially active and productive anxious feelings. If these feelings become overwhelming or negative, you can choose to knuckle under and use it as a type of exposure therapy or simply move on to a different style of game that suits your mood better (like me bowing out of zombie games altogether). A game does you no good if it spawns real-world negative feelings that aren’t constructive, like creating anxiety without following up with a little dopamine bump reward.

When you’re done this read on video games and mental health, you can find a little more information on panic disorders and anxiety in this rundown – Common Symptoms of Anxiety Attacks & Disorders

“When we play a game — and this is in the scientific literature — we tackle tough challenges with more creativity, more determination, more optimism, and we’re more likely to reach out to others for help.”
— Jane McGonigal

Are there social benefits to gaming?

You don’t just generate dopamine while reacting and being rewarded in-game. If you game with friends, new and old, you reap a lot of real-life social benefits.

Probably the best part about modern gaming is the social aspect. Thanks largely to the internet, you no longer have to schedule time side by side to interact in a gaming environment. While gaming in the same room is ultimately the healthiest outlet, online interaction is still incredibly valuable and can teach you a lot about working with others.

A study at East Carolina University showed that just 30 minutes of online gaming a day was enough to foster a significant boost in long-term happiness and mood, thanks in no small part to the social aspect.

Some games are specifically tailored toward interaction with other players, such as Massively Multiplayer Online (MMO) Games, and provide a space where you have to form parties and work together to progress. They encourage active listening and contribution from every player, greatly rewarding cooperative play and fostering a level playing field socially. In MMOs, everybody plays a role in the group’s success, and each person has to openly communicate with the others in some aspect, whether it’s in-game typed chat or voice chat, to complete objectives. That team play leads to a real sense of personal responsibility and a healthy level of pressure to learn to work through.

Don’t discount ‘online friends’

Since people began connecting on the internet, there’s been a pervasive thought that friendships built online are somehow lesser than those kickstarted by physical interaction. Anybody who allows themselves to have significant interaction with people online knows this not to be true, as many of us have made very real, very lasting bonds with people that were first met in an online venue.

For example, some of the guests at my wedding were folks I’ve met through online gaming, and I couldn’t ask for better friends. I’ve spent countless hours with these people, working through in-game challenges while discussing any number of things, from our personal lives to world news, and we’ve gotten to know one another incredibly well in these hours-long conversations.

Even though we don’t play as much as we used to, we remain in touch and make time to play every once in a while. These relationships require just as much attention and care as those created offline and operate on many of the same social cues. There aren’t any special feeding instructions for online friends, and there shouldn’t be a need for competition between online and offline relations – they’re on an even playing field.

But there *is* such a thing as healthy competition!

Competitive games give the same dopamine rush, combined with often open (for better or worse) voice chats that encourage players to speak up during play. Though cooperating creates a greater array of social obstacles to overcome, the competitive gameplay still (hopefully) tickles our drive to be gracious winners or losers and deal with an emotional rollercoaster in real-time. On top of that, competitive shooters like Call of Duty can increase your visual attention and engage some other cognitive enhancements.

Tabletop! Where the social aspect of games and mental health are strongest

Every time I say ‘games,’ you’re probably unconsciously putting ‘video’ in front of the word, and you’re missing out! One more traditional, face-to-face form of gaming comes by way of the tabletop. Tabletop games include card games, roleplaying games, board games and more, which you can find on Wikipedia.

What tabletop games lack in hand-eye coordination, they make up for in their aid to social anxiety by forcing you out of your shell and into real-world interaction with other people. You’re given the bonuses of eye contact and taking physical cues from other players, giving a whole new layer of additional contact to overcome.

Most people with social anxiety have a naturally difficult time engaging in these kinds of activities, but it’s been found incredibly worthwhile in curbing the avoidance and shyness associated with social anxiety disorders. You’re working as a group, overcoming a multitude of small challenges, reaping the rewards – and getting those sweet dopamine hits – as a result. Everybody gets a turn being the center of attention and having the pressure that goes with it, and the element of chance in most games keeps things fair for everybody, regardless of the pre-existing skills they might have to give them an advantage in-game.

Many areas have tabletop gaming groups that get together to play a certain game or type of game every week, and they’re comprised of people looking to cooperate and meet new friends. It can foster a great, positive environment for social growth and general fun!

So go forward with games in mind and make sure to consider the benefits so many have gotten from them. Gaming doesn’t have to be sitting alone on your couch, not speaking to anybody – you can regularly connect with friends, new and old, and take on challenges together, whether working as a team or competing in the positive gaming space. As more studies are done, we’ll come to get a better picture of the encouraging ways gaming affects mental health, and hopefully start to remove the stigma of the lazy, antisocial gamer from the front of people’s minds.

You know it: Dogs can help your health

SMILEY CAR RIDE BOI

Different scene, same ancient bond

I wake up to a sound that just barely registers at the edge of my mind. A flurry of movement under the comforter and a bark accompany it. I fell asleep before my husband came home from work, and a glance at the alarm clock suddenly frays my nerves — there’s no way the dogs are greeting him, not this early. It’s probably nothing. Then again…

Just as the anxiety takes off, there’s a barely-audible mew that alerts me to one of the cats at the bedside, seeking to make up for cuddle time I must have somehow denied her during reasonable waking hours. Of course, my realization doesn’t really translate to my bedmates. They were in the same situation as I was, though woken by some sound beyond human ears or the barest scent of a threat instead of the growling alarm. I reach an arm out across both my 10-pound bodyguards to quiet them, but Annie is an American Eskimo mix with energy to spare (in spite of only having one hip) and does her best to lunge, half-playfully warding off the intruding kitty. Their ancestors have been helping to guard mine for over 30,000 years, so it’s easy to forgive a little overzealousness here and there.

Once the sun comes up and my husband is out the door the following morning, I find bright eyes staring back at me from the other side of the mattress. All we’re doing is getting out of bed, something I wasn’t going to bother to do before Harley – my imposing, six-inch-tall dachshund nurse – woke up and stuck her cold nose against my throat. Before I say anything, her tail sets off wagging, and there’s a palpable energy, an eagerness I could only hope to match on my best day. My dogs will forever be one of the most positive, driving influences in my life, and I know I’m not alone in saying that.

One of the best parts of dog ownership is having a friend you NEVER worry about judging you. I feel I can already count on my closer friends not to (or if they do, not to hold it against me), but there’s always that little pinch of social paranoia with human interaction. Face-to-face, there are a hundred things to over analyze with the people we love, and I can read too much into almost any body language or tone of voice.

There’s no scowl over those button eyes when I need to set my head down on my desk for a minute or hide in bed for a little while mid-afternoon. There’s no misreading, worrying about their quiet judgment – my dogs don’t bother hiding it when they’re sad, stressed, scared or overstimulated. It’s some of the most truly honest interaction you can have. Don’t mistake that attitude for simplicity, either, because every animal has its own personality, and you grow to love them as unconditionally as they do you. That’s mostly because relaxing, playing and being happy (And, for the cats, plotting the next soul they’ll devour) are the primary hobbies for the smaller members of the household. Of course, that lack of scrutiny could be the appeal to nearly any house pet, but with dogs, we get the unconditional loyalty and the emotional connection that comes from thousands of years of history between our species. It’s in their genetics to be family/pack’ members and do their part – which, for most modern dogs, means merely existing. They’re essentially focused on food, fun and you.

Cool story, but how do dogs really affect human health?

For starters, dog owners have lower cholesterol and fewer indicators of heart trouble. Spending time with animals can have a profound effect on everything from your blood pressure to your confidence, among a seemingly endless list of other benefits most pet owners would chime in to add to.

Just ten minutes with your dog will significantly raise levels of oxytocin (a calming hormone) in both your bodies, which elevates your mood in turn. If you’ve got children – or maybe kids are in your future – your little ones get the benefit that time spent bonding with animals provides to their development into more even, balanced young adults. That’s not to mention the contact aiding their immune systems and helping to ward off future allergens.

If you get nervous in social situations – whether you’ve got genuine social anxiety or just don’t fancy yourself much of a ‘people person’ – your pet can be a great icebreaker. I can’t count the number of times I’ve been stopped (or stopped someone) while walking our dogs, even if it’s just for a stranger to reminisce on a long-passed pet they were reminded of. You’re also sharing common interests with an incredible group of people — the majority of animal lovers are incredibly caring, varied individuals from all walks of life. You’re immediately part of a kind and vast community of generally fantastic folks with a common bond: The very same kind of love I’m writing about.

All of this said you, shouldn’t run out to adopt a pet as some miracle cure for stress instead of a medical consultation. Also, bear in mind your personal financial situation — Animal care isn’t cheap, and we’re talking about a living creature that relies on you, not an iPad you can leave on the shelf and come back to when the mood strikes. Being unprepared will only lead to the gut-wrenching reality of having to re-home your best friend for their benefit, and that’s not something either of you should have to endure.

Dogs aren’t for everybody, either – there’s no shame in not being a ‘dog person.’ I’ve also enjoyed keeping fish as a calming hobby, and kept a small aquarium beside my bed to relax me when I stopped taking over-the-counter sleep aids.

Sure, part of my routine has become managing a tiny hurricane of chew toys, poo bags and stray hairs in the nose. The positives outweigh the inconveniences by too much to ignore the mental health benefit of dogs, though, and the next time I stub my toe on the doggie ramp attached to the end of my bed at 3 AM, I’ll do my best to remember my words here.