Free Challenging Depression & Despair: A Medication-Free, Self-Help Programme That Will Change Your Life by Angela Patmore

magic.
Rossini’s crescendos
Gioacchino Rossini (famous for the crescendos in his music such as the William Tell Overture) couldn’t compose until the night before the performance. Once he composed on the actual day of the performance, with the impresario’s henchmen standing over him as he wrote and threatening to throw him out of an upstairs window. What was happening to poor Rossini during these scary creative episodes?
    THE BRAIN’S BATTLE STATIONS
    When we face a threat or challenge, the body goes into the complex ‘fight-or-flight response’, triggered by the hypothalamus at the back of the brain as it galvanises us into action. Stress management people are fond of telling us that this is a ‘very primitive’ threat mechanism, suitable for fighting sabre-tooth tigers but inappropriate for our modern lives. The mechanism is in fact highly sophisticated. This is just some of what happens.
Yellow alert
The hypothalamus transmits electrical and chemical signals to the pituitary gland. The pituitary relays the exciting news to the adrenal glands just above the kidneys using the hormone ACTH (Adreno-Cortico-Trophic Hormone). Over 30 chemical messengers suddenly cascade from the adrenal glands and are sent round the body. Their tiny tasks are complex: they can alter metabolism, alter blood pressure, alter the pigmentation of the skin and raise blood sugar levels. The main effects are:

• the heart rate increases
• metabolism of sugars increases
• blood thickens
• blood pressure rises
• hands and feet lose heat
• sweating increases
• the mouth becomes dry
• muscles tense
• digestion is disrupted giving rise to …
• ‘butterflies’, diarrhoea and nausea.
Red alert
Blood supply is being diverted away from the extremities and non-essential systems like digestion. Why? The blood is needed elsewhere. Of course some of it must go to the large muscles, which may be needed for fighting or fleeing. But this emergency blood boost must also flow elsewhere. It must go to the brain, which literally experiences a ‘rush of blood’, although this is carefully controlled by the surrounding vascular system or you might have an aneurism. The body may be preparing for action, but the brain is readying itself to work in a high gear, to focus, connect, create, crystallise and come up with appropriate solutions to this emergency.
Lift-off
Within the brain’s own circuitry an electrical charge now goes down the tiny main cable or ‘axon’ of each affected nerve cell and crosses the synaptic gap to neighbouring cells and circuits – sometimes on a very grand scale. The bigger the connection, the bigger the brainwave and the bigger the epiphany we may experience. The brain is signalling to us that it is making sense of our reality. There is even a metaphorical language that we use to describe our feelings during crises, of which ‘pressure’, ‘rush of blood’, ‘seeing red’ and ‘don’t burst a blood vessel’ are among hundreds of examples. 2
    This miraculous process is evidently the source of our brainwaves, our peak experiences, our epiphanies. The brain changes gear when we face threats and challenges. It has to. It is designed to help us survive and learn. This is why it is wired to produce brilliant ideas when we are in the middle of bad experiences. This is also why most of our leisure pursuits, as we shall see later on, are designed to bring us to artificial crises and climaxes, and give us what we call an adrenalin rush or a ‘buzz’.
    THE LIGHT AT THE END OF THE TUNNEL
    Without the complex physiological changes that go by the name of ‘nervousness’, the brain would not be able to move into its higher gears, or orchestrate its key connections, or create its brainwaves, or manage its crisis thinking. People would just go bumbling along from day to day without ever having access to its special powers. This is why creative professionals like writers and composers tend to live on the edge or ‘on