The Neuroscience of Volatility
Volatility is generally a tendency for quick or unpredictable change for the worse. Lack of sleep leads to agitation. Not having proper nutrition leads to an inability to think. If the habit of our mind is to ruminate on past mistakes or future anxiety, then we will be like a wave tossed on the ocean. If we allow fear or aggression to consume us, then these habits will have power over us. They will possess us. If we do not resist our fear and anger, the amygdala might get structured to wire our brains to perceive constant threat and compel us to fight. Prolonged fear and anxiety will damage structures like the hippocampus and anterior cingulate that help stop the stress response and draw us toward love. Stress, along with a bad diet and inactivity, can also lead to prediabetes. According to the CDC, approximately 84 million American adults have prediabetes. “Insulin is a hormone made by your pancreas that acts like a key to let blood sugar into cells for use as energy. If you have prediabetes, the cells in your body don’t respond normally to insulin. Your pancreas makes more insulin to try to get cells to respond.”[i] Over time your body just can’t keep up. Through stress, inactivity and poor diet, we can develop prediabetes. Prediabetes leads to type 2 diabetes. Diabetes can be very life threatening or debilitating.
Through healthy boundaries we can stay healthy. Through prayer and meditation, we can change our default mode network. We do not have to be governed by fear and anxiety. Our body and mind can be strengthened. Living by God’s laws helps break us free from the volatility in the world. What is most current in the news cycle, societal sins and prejudices do not have to be how we view the world.
“Habit, if not resisted, soon becomes necessity.” ~ Saint Augustine
[i] “Prediabetes: Your Chance to Prevent Type 2 Diabetes,” Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, accessed August 21, 2019, https://www.cdc.gov/diabetes/basics/prediabetes.html.