The Upward Spiral: Using Neuroscience to Reverse the Course of Depression, One Small Change at a Time
Alex Korb
Top 10 Best Quotes
“In mountaineering, if you’re stuck in a bad situation and you don’t know the right way out, you just have to pick a direction and go. It doesn’t have to be the best direction; there may not even be a best direction. You certainly don’t have enough information to know for sure. So if you start down a path and end up at a cliff, you’ll just have to pick another direction from there. Because guess what? In a dire situation, you can’t be certain of the right path; what you do know is that if you sit there and do nothing, you’re screwed.”
“Be as patient and kind with yourself as you would be with a cute little puppy that you’re trying to house-train. Stressing the puppy out will only make it pee on the floor.”
“Worrying is often triggered by wanting to make the perfect choice or by trying to maximize everything. When buying a used car, you want one that is cheap, reliable, safe, sexy, the right color, and fuel efficient. Unfortunately, no single option is likely to be the best in all those dimensions. If you try to have the best of everything, you’re likely to be paralyzed by indecision or dissatisfied with your choice. In fact, this kind of “maximizing” has been proven to increase depression.”
“For the first thirty years of your life you make your habits. For the last thirty years of your life, your habits make you.”
“Improving your ability to stay present, a practice known as “mindfulness,” helps enhance these activations and leads to long-term improvements in anxiety and worrying.”
“Focusing on the present helps reduce anxiety and worry,”
“You can change dopamine and the dorsal striatum with exercise. You can boost serotonin with a massage. You can make decisions and set goals to activate the ventromedial prefrontal cortex. You can reduce amygdala activity with a hug and increase anterior cingulate activity with gratitude. You can enhance prefrontal norepinephrine with sleep.”
“Each electrical pulse—and resulting squirt of neurotransmitter—is not an order commanding the next neuron’s actions; it is more like a vote on what the next neuron should do. The whole pattern of activity is like a presidential election. Everyone votes on who the president should be, and depending on those votes, the country veers off in one direction or another. If you can change the number of votes in a few key swing states by only a few percentage points, you can dramatically change the course of the country. The same is true of the brain. By changing the firing rate of neurons in a few key regions, you can influence the pattern of activity in the entire brain.”
“Shift your focus to what’s occurring right now. This is why Buddhist monks and yogis practice nonjudgmental awareness—the process of being aware of the present, without attaching emotional reactivity to it. This mindfulness practice cuts off worry and anxiety at the source.”
“Making a decision, even a tiny decision, starts shedding light on ways to improve your life.”
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Book Keywords:
serotonin, prefrontal-cortex, sleep, norepinephrine, dopamine, gratitude
