Heal Your Brain: Ninety-Day Devotional

Copyright © 2022 Clare E. Steffen, Ed.D., BCC.

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ISBN: 978-1-6642-7834-9 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-6642-7835-6 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2022917085

WestBow Press rev. date: 11/09/2022

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Clare E Steffen, EdD, ND, CADC II, ICADC, CNHP, CMH, BCC, CBHC is a psychologist, naturopath, drug and alcohol counselor, educator, life coach, and brain and wellness coach. Dr. Steffen is the author of multiple books: Dancing through the Darkness: The Cognitive Treatment of Shame; ADHD: A Guide to Natural Healing; Live Your Life with Gratitude and Grace: An Integrative-Sustainable Guide for Choosing to Live Well; and Social and Emotional Intelligence: New Thinking, New Choices in Life Coaching.

Dr. Steffen actively promotes message music and has authored CDs that highlight and integrate meditative music and guided imagery. She currently cowrites country, Americana, blue grass, jazz, world, folk, spiritual, and other styles of music. In 2019, Dr. Steffen founded the Round The Globe project to bring hope, encouragement, and global healing the world through music. Thus far, she has co-written songs with artists from over 30 different countries, and they have over 500 songs in their catalog. Round The Globe has won several awards from different organizations including a legacy award for the impact their music will have on future generations. To learn more about this amazing project please visit www.roundtheglobemusic.com and visit roundtheglobe.hearnow.com to download their music. Dr. Steffen has been a practicing psychologist, counselor, and coach for over thirty years and maintains a private practice in Oregon. In recent years, she has been providing teletherapy through different telemedicine companies. Over the span of her career, her work has been primarily focused on trauma recovery in its many forms, family wellness, and brain health. She has cross-trained in several areas that allow her to integrate a wellness and psychological perspective.

Dr. Steffen is the founding and executive director of coachingchoicecollege.com and ce4coaches.com, which is dedicated to training life, wellness, business, and career coaches. For further information about the college, the mission, and offerings that are available, visit www.coachingchoicecollege.com. She is an adjunct professor at a private Christian university and believes that our spiritual lives are deeply connected to our mental/emotional and physical health. As an educator, her approach to treatment has always focused on learning across the lifespan. She has authored many articles on the importance of this personal and intimate relationship. Her continued interest in the topic of choice and achieving and sustaining brain health are the impetus for this book. Developing healthy a relationship to self and others and creating a sustainable wellness lifestyle continues to be in the forefront of her work with individuals, families, couples, and groups.

CONTENTS

Acknowledgments

Introduction

Chapter 1 Brain-Based Being

Chapter 2 Social and Emotional Intelligence and Healing Your Brain

Chapter 3 Cognitions of Choice: A Philosophy for Living That Supports Brain Balance

Chapter 4 Trauma, Grief, and Loss

Chapter 5 Healing the Shame Identity and Balancing Your Brain

Chapter 6 ADHD: The Myths We Have Created That Disrupt Brain Balance

Chapter 7 Recovering from a Self-Medicating Lifestyle and Healing Your Brain

Chapter 8 Healing Our Relationships

Chapter 9 The Big Five of Healthy Relationships

Chapter 10 Considering Religion and Spirituality to Seek Balance

Chapter 11 Message Music: A Universal Genre

Chapter 12 Family of Choice

Chapter 13 Integrative Sustainability: A New Model for Wellness

Chapter 14 Maintaining Brain Health

Chapter 15 Ninety-Day Devotional: Brain Health

Chapter 16 Body and Exercise Health

Chapter 17 Spiritual and Religious Health

Chapter 18 Conclusion and Final Words of Encouragement

ANNOTATED CONTENTS

1. Brain-Based Being

Description: Our brains are our most powerful organ, yet little attention is paid to keeping our brains in balance. When this vital organ is out of balance, we experience imbalances in mind, body, and spirit. Scientists argue over the concept of the mind and tend to focus on physical well-being, but to be in balance, we must also be well within our minds and brains. This chapter guides you to reflect on your personal definition of being, and examine how it influences the thought-feeling-behavior paradigm. Connecting to our authentic selves allows us to focus on brain balance and establish a foundation for brain health.

2. Social and Emotional Intelligence and Healing Your Brain

Description: The concept of emotional intelligence is not new; as far back as the 1930s, Thorndike described social intelligence as the ability to get along with other people. Some view emotional intelligence as an array of noncognitive capabilities, competencies, and skills that influence one’s ability to succeed in coping with environmental demands and pressures (Reuven Bar-On). Emotions are described as involving the subjective experience, the physiological response, and the behavioral response.

In this chapter, you will learn about the four factors of emotional intelligence, along with the five key components, and explore ways to measure and develop EI skills and apply them. The integration of social and emotional intelligence (SEI) will assist you in developing increased self-awareness and self-management. Through improvements in insight and self-control, you can gain a deeper level of understanding and the ability to access critical and creative thinking. Learning to apply SEI and both critical and creative thinking will assist in establishing brain balance.

3. Cognitions of Choice: A Philosophy for Living That Supports Brain Balance

Description: In this chapter, you will learn about the New Choice Thinking Model that assists in brain balance. Learning how to apply the Cognitions of Choice (COC) will assist in the development of critical and creative thinking. You will learn how to access the choice cognitions to create a philosophy for living and to improve your life and lifestyle. With this choice system, you can learn how to restructure unhealthy habits and patterns of thinking or feeling. Armed with the Cognitions of Choice, you will learn to invite, investigate, and initiate change. Thoughts occur at three levels of process—automatic, meta, and conscious state—and the COCs can be utilized to address change and to manage and regulate thoughts at all three levels of processing. Being able to increase confidence in your ability to make healthy life choices will assist in and support brain balance.

4. Trauma, Grief, and Loss

Description: Trauma impacts so many aspects of life functioning. Providing you with the tools needed to reclaim and empower your life can be the first step toward healing and wellness. Between 7 and 13 million Americans experience post-traumatic stress disorder. All aspects of their lives can be negatively impacted by trauma. Everything in life is relational.

Addressing trauma from a relational and brain-based perspective will provide you with the necessary tools to assist in reshaping the experience and retraining your brain to begin your healing process. Trauma is experienced globally, and it is timely that we contribute to changing worldviews and empowering people.

5. Healing the Shame Identity and Balancing Your Brain

Description: This chapter offers a cognitive approach to overcome shame. A mini-survey was conducted to bring clarity and personal definition to the emotion shame. The survey yielded many different situations and contexts in which an individual experiences shame. The difference between shame and guilt, and shame as a feeling versus an emotion was explored. The text mostly focused on shame as an emotion or identity. The paradigm offers that shame is a learned behavior that can be unlearned. The influences that assist in the development of shame are presented. The thought-feeling or faulty-learning model is presented, with ways to change thought patterns. The chapter examines the connections between a shameful identity, depression, anxiety, and addictions. The issue of how shame plays out in relational choices is examined, with a plan for change. Practical approaches to working through shame are offered. The importance of forgiveness, acceptance, and love are specified. The emotion of shame is poorly defined; thus, the approach is to offer a personal definition of shame. The core issue of abandonment has been a presenting theme in all individuals who suffer with shame. Fear of rejection is a top layer to the abandonment issues. The chapter offers some helpful paradigm shifts for consideration, as well as a self-help approach with easy exercises to assist the individual in change. In this very simple approach, Dr. Steffen guides you through understanding shame, recognizing the sources of shame, and learning new behaviors.

6. ADHD: The Myths We Have Created That Disrupt Brain Balance

Description: The number of individuals treated with stimulant medications for the condition of ADHD continues to rise. Many individuals are interested in a natural approach that offers a comprehensive system to address underlying factors, as opposed to a symptom-reduction approach. Medications are not considered a cure-all; many, however, are disappointed with results and recognize the need to offer other support systems to assist in creating balance in their lives. In this chapter, you will explore a natural system of healing for the condition of ADHD, learn how to apply deep healing versus a quick-fix approach to treating ADHD, examine the importance of creating a healthy identity, utilize behavioral approaches to maintain healthy behavior, consider a mind-body-spirit paradigm, and look at risk factors to consider when professional help may be needed. Social skills can be impacted, and it may be helpful to focus on developing social skills to increase support and assist in maintaining brain balance. Currently, there is not a cure for ADHD, but following the simple natural systems approach, as offered by Dr. Steffen, can assist you in directing your or your child’s energy toward health and life balance.

7. Recovering from a Self-Medicating Lifestyle and Healing Your Brain

Description: Moving our thoughts from an automatic or habitual level to a conscious level, in which we make a mindful choice, takes work. The concept of self-medicating can be poorly understood or overlooked. We must first examine why we self-medicate and the manner in which we engage in this behavior. Understanding it from a brain-based perspective gives us the necessary information to remove shame and to focus on healing. Knowing that our pleasure system and reward center can be hijacked allows us to consider different choices when faced with the option to use. Having a sustainable-choice model that provides balance in four quadrants—life, health, conscious intelligence, and love—is designed to bring about brain balance. Learning to assess the stages of change and apply them provides us with the tools to answer five questions that address and offer a solution self-medicating behavior. Utilizing the reality check–question system provides a way to examine behavior that may be underactive, overactive, or fluctuating, in an effort to recreate and establish balance.

8-9. Healing Our Relationships and The Big Five of Healthy Relationships

Description: Relationships can be complex because we frequently bring past issues into the present. A relationship can have different functions and reasons for the connections we make with other individuals. We are born into families, and in some cases, our emotional needs are not met. Healthy relationships offer five components: trust, respect, empathy, mutual support, and validation. Some relationships are a function of proximity, such as those that develop through work. Human beings will sometimes bring unresolved family issues into their work environments. At times, we develop friendships that represent family of choice. The Big Five of Healthy Relationships is offered as a tool for assessing our relationships and as a way to guide us in establishing relationships that will meet our emotional needs and bring mutual satisfaction.

10. Considering Religion and Spirituality to Seek Balance

Description: It has been found that whether or not we know we are being prayed for, there is a positive influence to our health. Prayer allows us to feel connected to something greater than ourselves. Some individuals find comfort in organized religion and through participation in a church. Others take comfort in their individual journey and connection to spiritual beliefs and thoughts. Religion and spirituality can serve in allowing us to feel connected universally. At the foundation of most religions and spiritual beliefs or teachings is the concept of love of self and others. Having beliefs, a philosophy for living, or a spiritual connection can assist us in finding purpose and meaning in life, which is necessary to bring us in balance.

11. Message Music: A Universal Genre

Description: Music has always been a way to communicate feelings, struggles, and the need for change. It is a way to communicate across racial, cultural, and social barriers. It uplifts and inspires. Music brings people together in an effort to overcome obstacles and to transcend conditions that oppress, and it can be a vehicle that offers a commitment to change. Music can serve as a function of healing. Universal emotions are expressed through music and the messages it communicates for healing. No matter in which environment we exist, we all want to have meaning in life. A purpose-driven life inspires us to achieve remarkable things. Message music can be utilized to teach us to align with nature’s laws and simple truths that can assist us in creating personal balance. The five themes of message music—love, empowerment, freedom, forgiveness, and acceptance—can be used to create a focused plan for balancing our brains and moving from hyper-rationality to a creative brain that is open to acceptance, forgiveness, and love, which is a remedy for healing.

12. Family of Choice

Description: Families are sometimes created out of necessity but most importantly by choice. The traditional definition of the nuclear family is not as common as in previous generations. We have seen an increase in single-parent homes across all cultures and socioeconomic groups. Many children grow up in the foster care system and never consistently experience the loving care of a family. Children who grow up with a father in the home stand a better chance of completing high -school and of developing a higher degree of intelligence.

Who may be in need of developing a family by choice?

➢ Children in foster care

➢ Military families who relocate

➢ Single-parent homes

➢ College students away from home

➢ People who relocate for job reasons

➢ Elderly people who are alone

➢ Individuals who have to separate from unhealthy family of origin

➢ Disabled individuals

➢ Mentally ill individuals

➢ International exchange students

➢ People in recovery

➢ People who left their homeland

➢ Bereft families

➢ Caregivers in need of respite

➢ Homeless individuals

➢ Disenfranchised cultures

➢ Victims of trauma

➢ Veterans

➢ Many countless others

There are community organizations that offer mentoring, but no one organization can address all the apparent need. Family of choice exists to promote a new definition of family by promoting values that reflect current cultural changes. Since culture is forever changing and growing, values change with it. This chapter is designed to examine the ever-changing definition of family and to reduce the stigma attached to having family issues that prevent one from receiving mental, emotional, and physical support. After examining the rationale for creating a family by choice, a practical examination of how to create a family by choice is offered. Having support is necessary for maintaining homeostasis, physical and mental health, and brain balance.

13. Integrative Sustainability: A New Model for Wellness

Description: Old models of sustainability tend to consider only environmental factors and ignore a radial holistic perspective. Certainly, we must consider a more dynamic point of view. As we understand that not only personality but relationships exist on a continuum, we must also consider that this continuum is not linear but that it rotates in a radial fashion, with many facets, connections, and integrations. Humans and all living beings do not exist in isolation; they intersect and relate in many ways and on multiple levels. Some elements maintain a consistent connection, while others experience a momentary or fleeting connection. Whether the connection is fleeting or consistent, there is a lasting impression, or trace element, that creates a chemical memory of the event; in some cases, a deeper connection becomes a conduit that forms a neural network. It is that relational connection between these experiences, acceptance of self, and ability to adapt and maintain health and well-being that promotes sustainability. It is significant that we are able to be resilient, but when faced with multiple losses or traumas, we must learn to continuously be resilient and to sustain health. In this chapter, a model is offered to develop conscious choice, emotional intelligence, synchronous self, and life balance to promote well-being and brain balance.

14. Maintaining Brain Health

Description: We all experience losses in life and, over time, changes in our brain functioning and health. Once acknowledged, there is an opportunity to reframe these losses as we search for the strengths within ourselves. At times, these losses result in brain imbalances, which require attention to rebalance. Understanding brain wiring—specifically, the sensory, attention, and memory systems—and how they work collectively will allow us to have more depth than the average approach to life transitions.

The approach to acceptance must be active as well as proactive, as a stagnant approach will not support the brain changes and differences that are a reality. The influences of technology and changes in brain wiring have impacted communication.

When you finish reading this book, you will have a variety of techniques in your toolbox to address life changes, become resilient, and sustain brain health. Techniques to calm the brain are a necessity if the picture of brain health is to be fully appreciated. Developing resilience and maintaining a daily healthy routine and philosophy for living are key to keeping your brain healthy. Brain balance is achieved by reducing the stress of everyday living and by connecting to the authentic self.

Ideally, we want to move from survival mode to thriving. In the world in which we live, we are bombarded by stressors from all directions. Connecting to one another and to life promotes resilience and healthy adaptation. Appreciating cultural richness for all is constructed by creating life balance with the quadrant approach: love, life, health, and conscious intelligence. Connecting to the synchronous self, learning to calm the distress, and building resilient relationships will give us the tools needed to promote brain healing and an appreciation of choosing to live a healthy lifestyle.

Sustainability choice is used to integrate the elements of neuroscience, emotional resilience, wellness, mindfulness, healthy choice, and applied learning. You will learn to be mindfully present intrapersonally, interpersonally, and interrelationally to engage on a conscious level. Utilizing the Cognitions of Choice will provide you an approach to organized thinking and decision-making and will provide you the opportunity to create choice at a conscious level.

You will invite, investigate, and initiate choice from a brain-based approach to your applied learning within different environments in which you relate. Having a healthy philosophy for living will support the development of emotional resilience, wellness, and sustainability coping.

If you have been seeking assistance in creating a new life plan and a change in direction in life, you will now have the tools you need to change your life. This chapter pulls together the tools you have acquired in Heal Your Brain: Ninety-Day Devotional and encourages the maintenance of brain health. Each of us wants to have purpose and meaning in life, and expanding our worldviews to embrace universal love is considered one of the keys to reaching brain balance and brain healing.

15-17. Ninety-Day Devotional: Brain Health, Body and Exercise Health, and Spiritual and Religious Health

Description: Prayer and meditation have a positive impact on our brains and will assist us in calming an overactive brain. We can become stressed by the demands of everyday life and by situations that may feel overwhelming. Daily introspection through prayer and meditation can bring insight but more importantly may lead us to make necessary life changes. Within ninety days, we can restructure unhealthy thought patterns as we begin to understand the choices we make and reconstruct them. Journaling helps us commit to making different choices and to change our behavior. Focused introspection is a process by which we connect our thoughts, feelings, and analysis of our behavior as we examine our beliefs. Values are internalized and are deeply connected to our belief systems. With new insights, we can make lasting changes that bring improvements to our mental, physical, and emotional health.

DISCLAIMER

This book is written with the intention to help individuals and their families work through their personal issues related to the subject matter covered. It is not intended to be a replacement for professional therapy or treatment. If expert assistance is required, the services of a competent professional should be sought. Although the book discusses medication reactions, it is in no way meant to imply advocacy for stopping treatment without professional advice or intervention.

Dr. Steffen does not endorse any particular therapeutic company or vitamin or supplement companies. The purpose of the book is to educate and guide the individual through a self-help exploration process by applying the principles of natural health. The author has neither liability nor responsibility to any person or entity with respect to loss or damage caused or alleged to be caused, directly or indirectly, by the information contained in this book.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

First and foremost, I want to thank the multitude of individuals and families I have treated over the years. Without you, there would not be a book. I would also like to acknowledge my brother, Bill, who lived his life with courage and spirituality. I also want to thank all of the brave individuals who have clung to natural ways of healing and have painstakingly documented approaches to healing that might otherwise be lost. There is hope for healing, and the answer lies in a systematic and combined treatment approach that encourage healthy self-empowerment. I am grateful for the blending of nutrition, biology, natural science, psychology, counseling, and coaching that has allowed me to conceive of this book.

INTRODUCTION

Optimal brain health is crucial. We are bombarded with many challenges that create brain imbalances. Heal Your Brain: Ninety-Day Devotional offers several methods and techniques to establish or reestablish brain balance.

The pace we keep places demands that cause many to feel compelled to comply. Resilience allows us to adapt and adjust to these demands, but is it enough? Consider not only how to become resilient but to maintain and sustain it in an effort to keep our brains in balance.

When our brains are balanced, we are at one with ourselves. Living in harmony allows us to be our authentic and true selves. When we focus on productivity and defining ourselves by what we do or the belongings we have, we detach from our authentic beings. Learning to focus on brain health daily improves cognitive flexibility, the ability to make healthy choices, create mind-body brain balance, correct errors in thinking and feeling, and correct unhealthy belief systems that interfere with healthy functioning.

Developing social and emotional intelligence (SEI) assists us in having the skills needed to identify feelings, as well as regulate and manage them effectively. Having highly developed skills can improve interpersonal relationships. Having command of emotional functioning increases our ability to make deeper connections in our intimate relationships by improving our ability to communicate more accurately and effectively. We can expand our social relationships; thus, we garnish more support.

At work, we can excel and rise to positions of leadership because it has been recognized that employers seek employees who excel in the areas of emotional intelligence. Individuals who excel in the skills of social and emotional intelligence make desirable leaders. Understanding ability and traits that are the building blocks of SEI increases self-awareness, helps us self-regulate, improves social skills, and increases our abilities to be empathic and maintain motivation.

SEI can be applied to reduce stress and tap into mindfulness. As we become more equipped to adapt, we can block influences that hijack our brains and disrupt brain balance. Exercising social and emotional intelligence helps us align with practices that promote self-efficacy and support brain-based being and balance.

Every day, we make choices—some simple and some complex. At times, we become overwhelmed because there may be too many choices. Cognitions of Choice (COC) offer a philosophy for living that can be used to improve choices and our ability to make healthy choices. The COC model teaches us ways to invite, investigate, and initiate new choice thinking. Understanding the three levels of choice—(1) automatic (habitual choice), (2) meta (thinking about choice), and (3) conscious choice (mindfulness)—opens the choice portal and accuracy of reaching desired outcomes. The twenty-four traits that comprise the Cognitions of Choice offers a system to access a sustainable model that establishes brain -balance, is value-based, and can be used to improve our confidence for making choices in an array of situations and under multiple circumstances. COCs can be used whether a diagnostic condition exists or there simply is a behavioral concern that is considered desirable to change. The three levels of choice move thoughts and related feelings through the stages of processing within specific treatment methods:

1. Automatic thought