From Attic to Pensieve - How What is in Our Minds Affect Us

Have you ever felt overwhelmed by an overload of information or emotions?

The answer would be yes for all of us. We live in a world which is constantly bombarding us with stimuli, and our minds are like attics, with thoughts and memories piled up haphazardly, often creating chaos in our lives.

Just like an attic filled with clutter, a cluttered mind can lead to stress, anxiety, and even depression. Maintaining good mental health is crucial for managing these challenges effectively. However, it's not just the negative thoughts and memories that can affect us, but also the positive ones.

Imagine if we could organize our minds like a pensieve, that magical stone basin from Harry Potter that allows one to extract, store, and review memories.

Maybe someday in the future, technology can give us the tech-pensieve option to download the excess thoughts in our head into an external drive and play them on screen like a movie.

Maybe, allow us to make notes and draw conclusions and learnings from them. By organizing our thoughts and memories, we can gain a better understanding of ourselves, our emotions, and our experiences.

This can significantly enhance our mental health.

But till then, here are some things I do when my head threatens to burst from a thought or information overload:

Go for a run or hit the gym hard

This has never failed me. Every time I have had the opportunity to push my body to its limits, it’s like my thoughts sort themselves out and leave my mind free for some clear thinking. A lot of solutions to problems, brainwaves and clear understanding of facts have come to me on the road or the bench or the rack. You should try it because it is scientifically proven.

Studies have shown that when you exercise, your heart rate increases and your body pumps more oxygen to your brain. A well-oxygenated brain helps manage anxiety and depression and simply works better.

In the long term, exercise may generate new neurons in the hippocampus, the region of the brain associated with memory, learning, and emotions. And there you have the link – why a good workout helps you sort through thought overload better.

And it’s not necessary that you have to run or lift. You can go cycling, swimming, or just drop down and do a ton of pushups.

A word of caution though – If you have an existing health condition that may be aggravated by physical exercise, get your doctor’s approval before trying this.

Do some quiet reflection and categorize your thoughts

This happens to the best of us. All sorts of thoughts crowd unbidden into our heads and the negatives crowd out the positives and leave us brooding and distracted from the present.

Take time to reflect on the thoughts and categorize them as positive, negative, and work-related and deal with them differently.

For the negatives - What did you learn? What could you do differently next time? Does this have any effect on your life today? If yes, then how can you resolve it? If no, then just let it go.

For the positives – Hold on to them and bask in the glow. Let them clear the shadows and cobwebs from your head.

For the work-related – Write them down or type them out on a notepad. Most of the time, you will find that seeing them in front of you helps you put them in a logical order or flow. This has helped me build the basic structure of numerous presentations, articles, and data analysis tasks.

Start learning something

This may seem like a strange suggestion. Why push more thoughts into a brain that already is crowded?

But starting to learn something new really helps by pushing your thinking in a different direction inside your brain – away from the crowded area of the brain and into a quieter area where you can focus only on that topic.

And you can learn anything that interests you – a new skill, a new subject, or even a new language. The first two are pretty easy – just go online and you will find multiple free and paid courses on any topic under the sun and probably the sun itself. The third one will take a bit more effort since you will probably need instructor-led sessions.

Here is a little more scientific evidence on how learning can affect your brain and help you manage your thoughts better. In the last decade, researchers have shown that new neurons are born in the hippocampus in the human brain throughout life. It is a topic currently at the forefront of research in neuroscience, but there is still a lot we do not know.

There is something that we do know for sure. Learning changes your brain chemistry. Your learning speed increases. By stimulating neurons in the brain, more neural pathways are formed, and electrical impulses travel faster across them as you attempt to process new information. This is because of white matter or myelin. Scientists have found that myelination increases the speed and strength of the nerve impulses by forcing the electrical charge to jump across the myelin sheath to the next open spot on the axon.

So by learning something new, you are upgrading your brain from 2G to 3G to 4G and now to 5G. Basically, your brain now does everything better, including processing and managing that thought-crowded area that you stepped away from.

And I am a firm believer in this. Over time I have learned numerous new skills and topics including Strength and Conditioning trainer certification, multiple digital tools that help me in my work, and new subjects related or unrelated to my work.

Take a little help if required

Sometimes, though, decluttering your mind can be overwhelming. There is no shame in asking for a little help. You can speak to a trusted friend or family member with whom you feel comfortable. In case you don’t have such a person, reach out to a mental health professional like a counselor or psychiatrist. In case you don’t know where to look, check out this website for starters – www.yourdost.com

And reaching out to such a person does not mean that you are mentally ill or crazy. This is a very common misconception and we really need to get past it.

Think about it this way. We all think of getting fit and healthy and building a great physique. Some of us can manage the process by ourselves and achieve our goal, and some of us need the help of a personal trainer or group training sessions to do this.

It’s the same for your mind. Some of us can get it done by ourselves. Some of us need a little professional help. No shame there.

If you're feeling overwhelmed and wondering "where can I find a psychologist near me?", remember that talking about your thoughts and feelings with someone you trust or a trained professional can help you gain clarity and perspective.

And here we are at the end and the conclusion. By decluttering and organizing our minds, we can improve our mental health and overall well-being. Just like cleaning out an attic or putting a lifetime of thoughts into a Pensieve, it may take time and effort, but the end result is well worth it. So, let's turn our cluttered attics into organized Pensieves and take control of our thoughts and emotions.