Does Halloween spook your nervous system? It can be a bit chaotic — kids running around in the dark, lots of noise, scary props.

Maybe you love the Halloween theme, but the actual trick-or-treating sends your body into fight or flight mode.

You are not alone!

Let’s walk through how to use my Love Your Brain Formula to calm your nervous system even when life feels spooky and chaotic.

💗 Step 1: Love Your Brain

First, let’s check in with what is happening in your brain. If you’re feeling frazzled and anxious, your brain detects a threat and it is just doing its job — trying to protect you.

Give yourself some love and compassion!

Anxiety and overwhelm is a valid response to a dark, chaotic night with danger lurking in every corner!

🧠 Step 2: Optimize Your Brain

Your brain is a physical organ, which is good news. It responds to inputs. Here are some optimization tips to keep your brain calm during Halloween chaos:

Gear up the brain before the event:

• Hydrate. The brain is about 70% water and needs water to function properly.

• Eat healthy fat and protein — this will help to balance your blood sugar if you eat candy.

• Drink calming tea — chamomile or green tea can be helpful.

Here are some tips to optimize your brain in the moment of chaos:

• When you start to notice the nervousness creep up, bring your attention to your body. You may not be able to control your environment, but you can take action to control yourself.

• Wiggle your toes and take at least 5 deep belly breaths, exhaling longer than your inhales. This will be a physical signal to your brain to calm down.

• Next, bring your attention to your 5 senses:
    👀 What do you see?
    👂 Hear?
    🤲 Feel?
    👃 Smell?
    👅 Taste?

• Another tip is hand warming. This is a common one encouraged by Dr. Amen. Imagine your hands growing warm as your body relaxes. Imagine you’re holding a warm cup or your hands feeling the warmth of a fire.

💭 Step 3: Empower Your Thoughts

The final step in my Love Your Brain Formula is to empower your thoughts.

Your thoughts are so powerful — impacting how we feel and what we do! Many of our thoughts are negative and untrue.

What is your thought about Halloween?
How is this thought making you feel?
Is it even a true thought?

A thought I have every Halloween is “I can’t handle this!” Honestly, it is overwhelming, and this is the automatic thought that gets in my head. And this thought — that I can’t handle this — makes me feel overwhelmed.

But when that thought appears, I know it’s not true. I survive this every year. I reframe this to one of my favorite mantras: I can do hard things!

🎃 Remember the Formula

So this Halloween, when things feel loud and out of control, remember the formula:

💗 Love your brain. You are okay. Your brain is just responding to the environment. Give yourself love and compassion.
🧠 Optimize your brain. It is a physical organ. Show it some care.
💭 Empower your thoughts. You can do hard things!