Mind Wandering – How It Points Toward Mental Disorders
The brain is so undermined that we forget how much we need it and how much we use it in our daily lives – from thinking about what to eat for breakfast, to estimate the time we’ll be stuck in traffic, to mentally noting ideas that we need to access later on. But as our wild minds begin to wander, it takes its toll on us, throwing us off and making us lose our way even in the middle of a task we are working on.
In pursuit of a framework that would help in better understanding of mental disorders, some scientists began to study the results of a research published before in Nature Reviews Neuroscience. The study includes how the wandering mind relates to mental illnesses like anxiety, depression, as well as ADHD.
When the mind wanders, it often goes to the areas of our lives that causes worry in us. Our fears tend to constrain the contents of our mind wandering, drawing us to the same thoughts that are usually causing worry in us. In the paper, a notion of dreaming as mind wandering is presented where the same brain regions or mode network is activated and the state we are in during REM sleep or rapid eye movement sleep causes a constrained dream content. With this in mind, dreaming and anxiety begin to form somewhat a relation, as those scenarios that we create in our mind birthed from our anxieties that we thoroughly avoid in real life start to manifest in our dreams and place us in situations that we cannot escape from. The content of the dreams, therefore, highlight the root of the dreamer’s anxieties and mental illness thus leading to a better approach and focus for their treatment and therapy.
Help is provided for treating mental disorders
The generation we belong to is one that seeks to understand mental health and raise awareness about it. Nowadays, mental illnesses are seen in a different light – as issues that do not need discrimination but rather care, and people who are struggling with such is no longer avoided but rather listened to. There are many ways today to treat mental disorders, including mindfulness treatment and talking with a professional therapist or psychiatrist in the pursuit of holding down your mind which could be triggering when allowed to wander. There are also different help lines that offer aid when it comes to treatment and facing the difficulty of mental disorders. Mental illness need immediate attention and treatment, that they must not be delayed, as things often have a way of getting out of hand, so seek help today.