Kiss your brain The science of gratitude

when i was a middle school science

teacher

i would often ask my students to kiss

their brain i got this idea from

visiting my friend’s kindergarten

classroom

she would ask her students to kiss their

brain and they would take their fingers

tap them to their mouth

and then to the top of their head and it

truly was as cute

as you can picture it to be so i decided

to bring it bring it back to my middle

school

classroom which could have gone one of

two ways

but it ended up being a really fun

ritual for us too

and i would ask them to kiss their brain

for all the work they did in class as a

practice

of gratitude after teaching middle

school i came back to grad school to get

my phd in psychology

my research is within the area of

positive psychology which is a science

that investigates the strengths

and factors that allow individuals and

communities to thrive

i also get to teach psychology to

undergrad students and high school

students

i love teaching psych and my absolute

favorite unit to teach

in intro psych is the brain but while i

love teaching about the brain

i thought it would be pushing it to ask

my undergrads aka

adults to kiss their brain so three

years would go by before i would

remember that fun

phrase one day after teaching last year

i had a terrible migraine that left half

of my face numb

and blurred my vision the migraines kept

happening i saw multiple doctors

and then i started experiencing dizzy

spells

the neurologist ordered an mri and i

remember being so

excited because then i would be able to

use my own brain pictures when i taught

brain imaging to my students

but as it turns out my mri wasn’t too

picture perfect the doctor called me and

asked me to go to the er

because there was a large mass in the

right hemisphere of my brain

and that’s where i saw the image for the

first time

i have never been more scared in my life

than i was that night

and with tears dripping down my face in

the hospital

i kissed my brain for the first time

since i had left my middle school

classroom i made it my mantra and i

kissed my brain

every single day leading up to and after

surgery

then two weeks later after surgery the

pathology reports came back and i was

diagnosed with an anaplastic astrocytoma

the weeks following were very difficult

i tried to figure out what i was

struggling with the most

by looking back on all the things i had

been writing about this experience

i wrote and posted this on instagram

about a week after i received that

pathology report

i will keep fighting i will keep loving

i will keep living

i will keep loving i will keep living

and then about a week after that i wrote

this

fighter i tried it on to see how it felt

because i kept hearing those words next

to my name

like a job like an identity like a roll

fighter i look at myself in the mirror

it felt

okay at first but soon it became

exhausting

too heavy to lift too much to carry too

burdensome to bear

i took it off and left it on the floor

war was not for me

a body is not a battlefield

i realized that i had been introduced to

the fight narrative

when people heard my diagnosis i became

a fighter you’re a fighter

keep fighting beat this tumor were the

top comments

and then there was the internet the

place i so desperately searched for

people

who were doing well with their diagnosis

but the top hashtags to search for

were brain tumors suck cancer sucks

and cancer fighter i understand

completely why those hashtags exist but

i was so eager to find the hashtag

hi i have a brain tumor that might never

go away and i’m still living and

thriving and i guess there just isn’t a

ring to that one

i hated the idea that i was going to be

at war with my brain

because i want i had spent months and

years kissing it instead

i hated the suggestion of naming my

tumor something awful

because the reality is that it was going

to be my neighbor for the rest of my

life

and i hated the guided imagery training

that asked me to picture chemo as an

army coming to battle the cancer cells

because i didn’t want to spend over a

year of my life at war with my own body

i can see how these elements of the

fight narrative can be empowering for

people

but for me i knew it wasn’t going to

work so i started to reference

well-being practices that i had learned

from my own studies

doctors always laugh with me when they

find out that i’m a biopsych

and neuroscience major and psych phd

student

then when they ask what i’m studying and

i tell them i study

resilience and well-being they either

laugh again say something like

oh that’s irrelevant or go ah

the irony was never lost on me i have

read so many stories

and studies of resilience but i never

pictured the day

that i would have to personally

experience it

i read and taught about gratitude

practices specifically

as a well-being strategy and even though

i knew the positive effects

i had never seriously practiced them

myself

i started to incorporate some of these

exercises into my life

i tried to stop focusing on what my body

had done

wrong and focus on the gratitude i had

for my body instead

and really i realized this is something

i had been doing when i was kissing my

brains those days

leading up to and after surgery

gratitude became the tool

that helped me restructure my vision of

illness and disability

when the world was telling me i should

fight it instead

instead of thinking about if i would be

able to have kids one day

i thought of how amazing it was that my

brain

despite its trauma was able to deliver

the perfect

amount of hormones to my body to produce

enough eggs to stay for a later date

every time i went to radiation it was

put in my mask i kissed my brain

and i focused on the resident telling me

how the healthy cells would be able to

repair

over time and the cancer cells could not

and when the operative notes came back

from my surgery a day that i remember

very well and had been scared to think

about i read the note out loud

sobbing happy and grateful tears

thinking about what my neurosurgeon’s

team did i started to feel such an

immense sense of gratitude

for science medicine and my medical team

that those thoughts started to drown out

the what is my life going to be like

thoughts

the more i practice gratitude the more

peace i felt my situation

and this got me interested in what could

be happening with the science of

gratitude

at a neurological level there are

several positive

psychological and social outcomes of

gratitude like increases in happiness

decreases in depression

having stronger relationships and

experiencing positive emotion

but what’s interesting is there are

actual physical outcomes as well

like having a stronger immune system and

experiencing less pain

when we express gratitude our brain

releases dopamine and serotonin

two important neurotransmitters

responsible for our emotions

and our mood expressing gratitude also

helps us regulate stress hormones

and fmri studies show us that several

parts of our brain

and pathways are activated when we

experience and express

gratitude one of these parts is the

medial prefrontal cortex

an area associated with the management

of negative emotions

together these changes in

neurotransmitters and hormones

combined with the activated neural

pathways

help us cognitively restructure

potentially harmful thoughts to better

manage our circumstances

and the cool thing is that we can

intentionally activate these gratitude

circuits in our brain

in general the more we do something the

easier it becomes and our brains work

the same way

the more we activate these gratitude

circuits the less

effort it takes to stimulate those

pathways the next time and the stronger

those pathways become

neuroplasticity as a t is a term i teach

my students

that refers to our brain’s ability to

form new neural connections throughout

life

which means this is something that

anyone can practice and get better at

over time so i kept practicing gratitude

even when it seemed impossible

i continue to thank my brain for the

amazing work it does as i prepare for 12

more rounds of chemo this year

i write down three things i’m grateful

for and why i’m grateful for them

no matter what every morning that i wake

up i write thank you notes to my heroes

in health care

nurses who get the iv in the first time

the anesthesiology resident who held my

hand

during the awake portions of my surgery

radiation therapists that play my

playlist

during treatment and administrative

staff that makes me smile

every time i walk into the hospital i do

want to take a second here

and practice what i teach to shout out

my doctors and their teams from the

michigan medicine

multidisciplinary brain tumor clinic

i have never met such intelligent

kind and patient people

thank you for making me feel brave when

i sometimes felt the opposite

i think the universe might think it’s

funny that a psych instructor and

researcher

who studies well-being ended up with a

brain tumor the truth is that we need

more awareness and more research

regarding brain tumors and brain cancer

doctors can’t exactly predict how my

tumor will behave

and really none of us can predict what

our lives are going to be like

exactly but what i hope i can show you

is that we can also be grateful

for the unexpected challenges i don’t

want to dismiss people who may find the

fight narrative

empowering i also don’t want to suggest

that is by any means easy to find ways

to be grateful in dealing with adversity

this has been the hardest thing

that i’ve ever had to do but i do want

to empower those that feel like me

that there’s another way to go through

whatever your journey may be

that loving your body doesn’t have to be

conditional

and that by practicing gratitude we can

actually wire our brains to help us

build

resilience and lastly i hope everyone no

matter where you are

or what you are doing can take a second

to kiss your own brain

and thank it for all that it does for

you