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Sticks and stones may break your bones, but words can change your brain.

That’s right.

According to Andrew Newberg, M.D. and Mark Robert Waldman, words can literally change your brain.

In their book, Words Can Change Your Brain, they write: “a single word has the power to influence the expression of genes that regulate physical and emotional stress.”

Positive words, such as “peace” and “love,” can alter the expression of genes, strengthening areas in our frontal lobes and promoting the brain’s cognitive functioning. They propel the motivational centers of the brain into action, according to the authors, and build resiliency.

Conversely, hostile language can disrupt specific genes that play a key part in the production of neurochemicals that protect us from stress. Humans are hardwired to worry — part of our primal brains protecting us from threats to our survival — so our thoughts naturally go here first.

However, a single negative word can increase the activity in our amygdala (the fear center of the brain). This releases dozens of stress-producing hormones and neurotransmitters, which in turn interrupts our brains’ functioning. (This is especially with regard to logic, reason, and language.) “Angry words send alarm messages through the brain, and they partially shut down the logic-and-reasoning centers located in the frontal lobes,” write Newberg and Waldman.

According to the authors, using the right words can transform our reality:

By holding a positive and optimistic [word] in your mind, you stimulate frontal lobe activity. This area includes specific language centers that connect directly to the motor cortex responsible for moving you into action. And as our research has shown, the longer you concentrate on positive words, the more you begin to affect other areas of the brain. Functions in the parietal lobe start to change, which changes your perception of yourself and the people you interact with. A positive view of yourself will bias you toward seeing the good in others, whereas a negative self-image will include you toward suspicion and doubt. Over time the structure of your thalamus will also change in response to your conscious words, thoughts, and feelings, and we believe that the thalamic changes affect the way in which you perceive reality.

Many people today find that there are not enough waking hours to accomplish all we need to do.  Work, long commutes, email, family responsibilities and household chores can eat up much of our waking time.

In order to get chores done or get in a little extra leisure time, many cut corners on sleep.  We rationalize that a few hours here and there won’t make much difference.

But sleep deprivation can have effects on both your mental and physical health.

So what are these negative effects of not getting enough sleep?

Negative Effects of Not Getting Enough Sleep

1. Lower stress threshold. When you’re tired, routine activities, such as stopping at the grocery store on the way home from work, walking the dog or picking up the house can feel like overwhelming tasks.
2. Impaired memory.  Deep sleep fosters the formation of connections between cells, and REM sleep aids in memory formation.  Students considering pulling an all-nighter to study for that big exam might do better to get some sleep.
3. Trouble concentrating.  When you’re dragging yourself through the day, it’s hard to stay alert and focused.  This is why we don’t want our pilots and surgeons to lose too much sleep.  Sleep-deprived people have trouble focusing on tasks and overestimate their performance.
4. Decreased optimism and sociability.  Whether it’s the effort we have to put into staying awake or other factors, sleep deprivation makes us less hopeful and less friendly.
5. Impaired creativity and innovation. A growing body of research suggests that sleep deprivation may have a particular effect on cognitive processes that rely on our experience of emotions.
6. Increased resting blood pressure.  Several studies have found that sleep deprivation leads to increased blood pressure (Fujikawa et al., 2009) and even half a night of sleep loss has been reported to increase blood pressure in people with hypertension or pre-hypertension (Lusardi et al., 1996).
7. Increased food consumption and appetite.  Research indicates that acute sleep loss enhances pleasure response processing in the brain underlying the drive to consume food (Benedict et al., 2012).  The researchers raise the question of whether chronic sleep deprivation is linked to rising levels of obesity.
8. Increased risk of cardiac morbidity.  A number of factors can lead to an increased risk of heart attacks, and sleep deprivation is one of them.  During experimental sleep deprivation of healthy participants, increases in inflammation associated with the future development of cardiovascular disease occurred.

Why we experience all of these health problems related to sleep loss is not entirely known.  The strain of staying awake, alterations in hormone levels that the body releases during sleep, upsetting the strong circadian drive for sleep, loss of REM sleep and other factors may all play a role.

Although scientists may still debate the function that sleep provides us, it is clear that lack of sleep is associated with mental and physical dysfunction.

If you’re one of the chronically tired or if you view sleep as a waste of precious time, it might be time to change the way you think about sleep.  You  may not be aware of what your brain and body are doing during sleep, but that time is vital to your ability to function and potentially to your life.

Need help with getting to or staying asleep? Try these tips for shutting off your brain before bedtime.

The other day I covered 10 things you should not say to a loved one if you don’t want your name to come up in her therapy sessions. It covered a lot of ground, so I get why some folks would say, “Then what the hell CAN I say?” I’ve been thinking about that, and here’s my list. Some of them may require a personality adjustment, so just skip those.

1. Can I relieve your stress in any way?

One thing all writing manuals say is SHOW don’t TELL. Words aren’t all that helpful to a person struggling with depression. Because let me speak from experience… almost everything she hears will somehow be twisted to sound like an insult. Every suggestion — St. John’s Wort? Organic apples? Yoga?–are going to come off as: You are doing something terribly wrong and this is all your fault.

SO what I found most comforting when I couldn’t pull myself up by my bootstraps is when a friend came over and fixed me lunch, or when someone offered to tidy up my place. I realize that sounds a tad pampered and self-indulgent, but we wouldn’t think twice about doing it for someone who is going through chemo. Why not go there for a person battling a serious mood disorder?

2. What do you think might help you to feel better?

This one I picked up from parenting manuals. If you tell a little girl to stay away from the Skittles because she becomes demonic after indulging in those tasty sweets, that’s not really going to do much more than shove five in her mouth. However, if you say … “Do you remember when you slapped Cousin Fred in the face at the picnic last week because you got excited after eating a bag of Skittles? Do you think there’s a chance of that happening again?” she MAY very well still desire the Skittles, and hell, she might even shove another five in her mouth; however, there is also a chance she will arrive at her own solutions and, say, … go for the doughnut instead!

3. Is there something I can do for you?

Again, like number one, this is a SHOW not TELL moment, and those are very effective at communicating compassion. Chances are that the depressed person will just shake her head as she cries, but I can assure you that she will register your offer in that place instead her heart that says, “This person cares about me.” Now if she asks you to file her tax return, I apologize sincerely.

4. Can I drive you somewhere?

Here’s something that most people don’t know about folks battling depression: they are really bad drivers. REALLY bad. In fact, when I was admitted into the inpatient psych unit at Johns Hopkins, I was shocked that one of the questions was, “Have you received any speeding tickets, or ran into other cars, or big orange columns in parking garages that got paint all over your Honda and pissed off your husband?” When I inquired with the nurse why that question was on there, she said “bad driving is an easy way to diagnose a mood disorder.”

All I can say there is: True. True. True. So, this suggestion is not only to help out your depressed friends who maybe do need some fish oil or tissue paper from the drug store, but also all the other people on the road.

5. Where are you getting your support?

Notice the difference between saying, “Are you going to any support group meetings?” which implies, “If you aren’t, you are one lazy son of a bitch who deserves to be depressed.” And “Where are you getting your support?” which says, “You need some support. Let’s figure out a way to get it.”

6. You won’t always feel this way.

That was the perfect sentence that I could hear 50 times a day when I wanted out, out, out, of this world. Those words don’t judge, impose, or manipulate. What they do is convey hope, and HOPE is what keeps a person alive, or at least motivated to get to the next day to see if the light at the end of the tunnel is really a place of rebirth or a friggin’ freight train.

7. Can you think of anything contributing to your depression?

This is a very gentle way of saying, “It’s your abusive marriage that’s bringing you down, fool!” or “You think maybe the witch you work with might have a little something to do with the mood dips?” You’re poking around, but not stopping the stick on any one thing. Again, like the preschooler, she has to arrive at her own conclusions, and when she does, she will take accountability for what she can change and not blame you for any negative results.

8. What time of day is hardest for you?

This one was brilliant. It was my mom’s. So she called twice a day, once in the morning–because depression is usually most acute upon waking (“Crap, I’m still alive.”)–and at about 3 or 4 in the afternoon, when blood sugar dips and anxiety can take over. Mind you, she didn’t have to say a whole lot, but knowing that I could count on her during those two times was a little bit like holding someone’s hand through a dangerous intersection.

9. I’m here for you.

It’s simple. It’s sweet. And it communicates everything you need to say: I care, I get it, I don’t really understand it, but I love you, and I support you.

10. Nothing.

That’s the most uncomfortable one, because we always want to fill in the silence with something, even if it’s weather talk. But saying nothing … and merely listening … is sometimes the very best response, and the most appropriate. I love this passage from Rachel Naomi Remen’s bestselling book Kitchen Table Wisdom:

Julie Fast’s friend went to the hospital for a terrible colitis attack. “It was so serious they sent her straight to the ER.” After reviewing her medical records and seeing that her friend was taking an antidepressant, the intake nurse said, “Maybe this is all in your head.”

When it comes to mental illness, people say the darnedest things. As illustrated above, even medical staff can make incredibly insensitive and downright despicable remarks.

Others think teasing is okay.

Fast, a coach who works with partners and families of people with bipolar disorder, has heard stories of people getting teased at work. One client’s son works at the vegetable department of a grocery store. He has obsessive-compulsive disorder and poor social skills. When his symptoms flare up, his coworkers will ask questions like, “Why do the labels have to be so perfect? Why do they have to be in line like that?” They’ve also teased him about being in a psychiatric facility.

But most people — hopefully — know that being an outright jerk to someone about their mental illness isn’t just inappropriate and ignorant. It’s cruel.

Yet there are moments when even neutral words may be misconstrued, because the person is in a vulnerable place, according to F. Diane Barth, LCSW, a psychotherapist and psychoanalyst in private practice in New York City. “The truth is that it can be complicated to find the right comment to make to someone who is struggling with emotional difficulties.”

This is why it’s so important to educate yourself about helpful things to say. In fact, Fast, author of several bestselling bookson bipolar disorder, including Loving Someone with Bipolar Disorder, believes that we have to be taught what to say. “It’s not innate at all to help someone who has a mental illness.”

So what makes an insensitive remark? According to clinical psychologist Ryan Howes, Ph.D, “The problems happen when people make statements that imply that mental illness is a sign of emotional weakness, it’s something that can be quickly overcome with some trite homespun advice or they minimize it as a minor issue you can just get over.”

Below are additional examples of problematic statements, along with what makes a good response.

1. “Get busy, and distract yourself.”

“With significant mental illness, [distractions] won’t work, not even temporarily,” Howes said. After a person slogs through various diversions, they’re still left with the same issues. “Ignoring the issue doesn’t make it go away.”

2. “Do you want to get better?”

For mental health blogger Therese Borchard, this was the most hurtful thing anyone has ever said to her. While she knows the person didn’t have ill intentions, it still had a powerful effect. “It implied that I was staying sick on purpose, and that I had no interest in pursuing health, not to mention that I was too lazy or disinterested to do what I needed to do to get better.”

3. “Change your attitude.”

While a change in perspective can be helpful, it doesn’t cure conditions such as ADHD, bipolar disorder, PTSD orschizophrenia, said Howes. And changing one’s attitude isn’t so easy either. “It’s incredibly difficult for a high-functioning person to change their attitude, let alone someone debilitated by an exhausting mental illness.”

4. “Stop focusing on the bad stuff, and just start living.”

According to Barth, “one of the most common mistakes is to tell a person to stop focusing on themselves, or on the bad things, or on the past, and just start living.” Why is this so problematic? It can make a person feel even worse about themselves. “[T]hey figure the fact that they can’t do it is, in their mind, just one more sign of their failure.”

5. “You have everything you need to get better.”

“This is well intentioned, but to me it sounded like an indictment against me for not trying hard enough,” said Borchard, also author of the book Beyond Blue: Surviving Depression & Anxiety and Making the Most of Bad Genes. Plus, this might not even be accurate. Sometimes people don’t have everything they need to improve. “Sometimes you need a little assistance.”

6. “You can snap out of it. Everyone feels this way sometimes.”

Everyone experiences a range of emotions. For instance, everyone feels sad occasionally. But sadness on some days isn’t the same as “a hopeless pit of despair where it’s so dark I’ve forgotten what light looks like,” a description of depression that one client gave to Howes. Feeling anxious isn’t the same as having a panic attack, “a terrifying lightning storm of despair, self-hatred and the absolute certainty of my immediate death,” he said.

7. “Just pray about it.”

Prayer is powerful for many people. Centering yourself and feeling support from a higher power can be very helpful, Howes said. “[B]ut this advice alone can minimize the problem, ignore many proven medical and psychological treatments and can even make someone feel like they’re not being healed, because they lack sufficient faith, which adds insult to injury.”

8. “Why can’t you work?”

It’s no doubt hard to watch someone who’s smart and capable unable to work. But telling a person who’s already struggling that they’re lazy, just making excuses or aren’t trying hard enough can be incredibly hurtful, Fast said.

She’s personally heard the following before: “I don’t see why you have such a tough time with work. Everyone works. You need to just get over it and work.” Even just asking a question like “Why is this so hard for you?” can make a person wonder what’s wrong with them. They might say, “Why can’t I work? They are right and I am a failure!” Fast said. “And they will push themselves too far.”

9. “You have the same illness as my ______.”

Years ago, when Fast’s partner Ivan, who has bipolar disorder, was in the hospital, she didn’t know anything about the illness. She told her friend that Ivan had something called “manic depression.” Fast’s friend responded with: “Oh. I know what that is. My grandfather had it and he shot himself.” A person Fast barely knew told her: “My uncle has that, but we don’t know where he is!”

“I remember every minute of Ivan being ill, and I remember those two comments the most — 18 years ago!”

The Right Responses

While reading this piece, you might be wondering if you should say anything at all. “Silence is, in my experience, the worst response, because it’s generally interpreted in the negative,” Barth said.

According to Howes, these are helpful responses:

• “[S]incerely express your concern: ‘You’re having panic attacks? I’m so sorry to hear that. From what I’ve heard, that can be just awful.’
• Offer your support: ‘Please let me know if you need anything, or if you’d just like to talk.’
• Talk to them the same way you did before, which lets them know your feelings about them or respect for them hasn’t changed; your relationship is stable. They’re the same person, just dealing with an issue that is less visibly obvious than a broken arm or the flu.”

When it comes to mental illness, people make everything from insensitive to totally outrageous comments. When in doubt, Howes suggested offering “compassion, support and stability in your relationship and leav[ing] the advice to the psychological or medical experts… [A]ny advice beyond ‘I hope you’ve found good, caring treatment’ and ‘come talk to me anytime’ can be experienced as intrusive and can even cause more problems.”

For more on this topic, read Borchard’s pieces on what not to say to someone with depression and what to say.