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Healing and our Brains

Did I ever tell you…

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Did I ever tell you – how much I appreciate the things you do?

by Robert S. Vibert

In today’s fast paced, hectic, stressed-out mess that passes for a real life, appreciation and its close cousin gratitude, often get lost in the shuffle. Given the pressures we are all under, with rising prices, job losses and general uncertainty about the future, it is not surprising that we revert to a mode in which we focus on what is lacking instead of what we have. Reversing this tendency is not only a good thing from a social standpoint, it is an investment with lots of upside potential for great return.

 

It’s all about me

I could write for days on all the examples of narcissistic behaviour that one can encounter by simply watching what people say and do. No matter what their physical age, far too many people act as if they were still 5 or 6 years old. You know, they focus almost exclusively on THEIR needs, THEIR desires, THEIR fantasies and when the world does not provide them with what they demand, they throw a tantrum. If they have aged a little, the tantrum does not usually look like a child stomping their feet or rolling about on the ground with arms flailing – no they have developed more sophisticated expressions of childish responses. They will pout, but claim that they are too busy to reply to you. They will retaliate for some perceived slight and pretend their response was an “accident”. They will viciously gossip, and seek revenge. These are all examples of the response and coping techniques we developed as children to keep ourselves safe.

We of the human race all have these “tools” from childhood at our immediate disposal. All of us, including me. ( I told you it was all about me… 😉  )

But I digress from the storyline.  Since we all know about these childish responses to the difficulties of life and have most likely employed them at some time, what is critical to having a more peaceful life is how we respond when the urge to use a childish response arises. If we are 5 or 6 years old, then we are likely to simply use whatever pops up.  If we are a little bit older, say 25 or more, then we should have at least a notion of some alternatives we can employ.

There are numerous sources of information on more refined and resourceful responses to life’s challenges. Actually, numerous is an understatement – I did a quick online search and found 111,000 references to “dealing with anger”. 111,000!!! That’s a whole lot of information, and if one was to only study and put into practice the approaches found in the first 5 articles, there would be no shortage of ideas, techniques, tips and tricks for that one element of our life. Life skills training is abundantly, copiously and exuberantly available, for free. All you have to do is look for it. And then use it, instead of doing what you did when you were 5.

 

Paying attention

The other part of this puzzle of contributing to a better world rather than detracting from it, is to pay attention to what we do with an emphasis on investing in thoughts, actions and feelings that are positive. Studies show that we get healthier (mainly through stress reduction, but not only) when we do this, so there is a personal payback. It is like being gardeners – we cultivate that which we want to grow. If we want more peace, we cultivate being peaceful with others.  If we want more compassion, we cultivate being compassionate towards others. And so on.

Studies have shown that noticing what others do for us and being appreciative of them and/or expressing gratitude helps relationships flourish and provides fertile opportunities for pleasant outcomes. Here is a link to one study, and you’ll find many more with an online search for the benefits of gratitude.

How does one cultivate appreciation ? It is easier to do than it might first appear, especially if you have not seen it modeled for you much. It can be as simple as saying something along the lines of “I like it when you do X” or “I appreciated when you said Y” or the very simple “Thank you”. The more you do this sort of thing, the more natural it becomes, like any other new habit. And the more you supply those around you with sincere indications of appreciation, the better off all of those involved will be.

The sincerity aspect is not to be ignored, as many times we will hear a rote “Thank you” that may as well be coming from a robot. The key to appreciation is the deeper human connection that occurs. It may last only a brief moment, but in that short space of time, a richness of interconnection and well-being can be experienced. If you’ve ever felt truly appreciated, you know what I mean. One time that springs to mind as I write this (and the deep emotional effect it had on me swells up inside me right now) was when a workshop leader brought me in front of the group to publicly thank me for my volunteer work for his project. He took the time and words necessary to make it abundantly clear to all present what he wanted to express and how strongly he felt about it. He used no fancy words and gave me no trophy, ribbon or certificate – this was not about symbolic or token appreciation but about real, heartfelt, sincere human to human expression. In those few minutes I learned firsthand the power of true appreciation and it completely changed my perspective on the topic. I aspire to one day be able to deliver as profound an expression of appreciation. In the meantime, I practice, practice, practice. (So let me take a moment here to say that I really appreciate all of you that read this blog, and especially those who give me feedback and encouragement. I do.)

 

Sowing seeds

One of the ways to enhance your gardening of a better world is to be mindful of your language when communicating. When we are stressed out, it can be easy to be curt, sarcastic, even rude. But, if we are mindful  and considerate in the way we speak to others, then the seeds we are sowing are more likely to grow into something  beneficial. One of best resources for this is the Center for Nonviolent Communication which offers books and audios on the subject of how to be clear and nonviolent in our communication.

Many times, the way we express ourselves is influenced by how we feel. OK, it is almost all the time. If we are feeling down, or upset or sad, etc., then it is hard to express appreciation sincerely. As you have heard/read me say before, resolving outstanding emotional issues makes it easier to do just about anything in life. With those emotions no longer intruding into our present day life, we can feel gratitude and appreciation and express it without any taint from that “other stuff”. The system that I developed, AER, is one way to release stored emotional pain. There are other techniques as well, and the important thing is to consciously and diligently release, using whatever tools work for you.

One does not have to wait until one’s pain has been released to start appreciating others. You could start today, with someone, anyone. Try it, notice what happens inside you and with them. You may be delivering a surprise that will pleasantly surprise you right back. The key is the giving without expectation of return, knowing that giving appreciation is its own reward.

Copyright 2011 Robert S. Vibert, all rights reserved.

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AER is a system to enhance the natural human release mechanism. One of the recorded AER sessions is available for FREE at my Facebook public page. Other AER recordings are available for the low cost of $10 each.

Healing and our Brains

Change is not just about your thoughts

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I recently watched the film “The Living Matrix” which features the work of a number of people involved in examining how our world actually works.  It was a good film in many ways and explained well some of the top-level notions about quantum physics and the interconnectedness of life.

One of the things I noticed was the usual preponderance of people pronouncing that our thoughts determine so much in our lives, and the mention of NLP (Neuro Linguistic Programming). Speaker after speaker emphasized the importance of our thoughts and how they affect us.

There was a small portion of the film that discussed the power of emotions and the power of the heart, and then the focus shifted back to the brain and thoughts. If one only had access to the material presented here, one could conclude that changing one’s thoughts was the key to better health, peace and happiness.

For a long time, I was in that same camp. I studied NLP and Hypnosis (Ericksonian Hypnosis was the basis for NLP), read books, took courses, listened to lectures, etc., etc. all about how to improve my mind. I can’t recall exactly when and how, but eventually an awareness in me was triggered – we’re not our thoughts and changing them is not the answer, but only part of the process of transformation.

The danger of specialization

I’ve written before about the conceit of the prefrontal cortex, that part of our brain that thinks it is charge and tries to overcome our emotions. One of the dangers of being too specialized is that one can miss all kinds of other information that lies on the periphery of our focus. This is what I observed when watching The Living Matrix. I saw a series of people, with brilliant minds and incredible aptitude, focusing almost all their attention on just one part of what makes up the complex beings that we are – our brains and thoughts.

What was missing from the film, and it is a big omission, is a discussion of how we are made up of, at the very least:

  • our emotions
  • our body sensations
  • our thoughts
  • our beliefs
  • our memories
  • our consciousness filters
  • our ways of being.

Humans are a complex organism and our various aspects are intertwined to such a degree that we must take a “whole person” view to properly honor our reality. We must acknowledge that each one of these aspects affects all the others.  Our thoughts do not stand alone nor do they drive the ship that is us.

To effect any substantial change in ourselves, we need to have our various aspects in alignment and agreement – we need to have congruency. The evidence to support this notion is all around us – many people say they want one thing, and yet it never appears in their life. They might blame all kinds of external factors, but it does not take very long to discover that their actions do not match their words and underneath there is dissension. They might have a life-long fear of success or a preconceived negative notion about their own self-worth or  a belief that it takes too much effort to attain that goal. It could also be dozens and dozens of other factors, any one of which is enough to introduce incongruency and internal dissension.

All together now

If one has the intention to change some aspect of one’s life, then one needs to become aware of how each of the various aspects is affecting the movement toward that goal. One needs to benignly notice the beliefs, the thoughts, the emotions, the memories, the body sensations, etc ,which are evoked when this goal is contemplated. Anything which is out of alignment needs to be gently brought into alignment. If a fear is present, for example, it must be released using some sort of technique such as AER. If a limiting belief is present, it needs to be acknowledged and released as well. The same is needed for all aspects which are not congruent with the movement toward the goal, and this is more a project of releasing blocks and dissension than it is about forcing oneself into conformity.

Next time you hear or read someone say that one needs to change one’s thoughts, remember that you are not your thoughts – they come and go, thousands of times during each day. Your thoughts influence you, yes. So do your emotions, your beliefs, your memories, your body sensations, etc..

Take a “whole person” approach, get your aspects into alignment,  and you may be surprised at how much easier it is to obtain your goals.

Copyright 2009, Robert S. Vibert

Healing and our Brains, Moving to a stress-free reality

Managing Emotions?

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It is common to hear professionals in the therapy realm talk about the need to manage one’s emotions. Other terms for this include “emotional mastery”, “emotional control”, and “emotional freedom”. The premise in each case is to treat our emotions as something that

– are distinct from “us”,

– regularly get out of control causing us problems,

– cannot be allowed to be fully expressed, and

– generally need to be subjected to some control by our superior intellect.

We humans think this way because we seriously believe that our prefrontal cortex, the “executive” part of our brains, should triumph over the more “primitive” parts of us. Curiously enough, this sort of thinking could only exist for those who have a prefrontal cortex… After all, the role of this part of our brain is to provide the ability to plan, reason, concentrate, and adjust behaviour. This is akin to asking a fox what is the best way to guard the hen house: of course our reasoning motor is going to argue for the supremacy of reason over emotion.

The funny thing is that this same logic seems to disappear when we have fallen in love or experience intense fear or any other time our emotions arise strongly. The notion of controlling or managing/mastering (politer terms for controlling) our emotions is that our thinking motor (aka head brain) does not like the power of our emotions to push or pull us in various directions. So, when things have calmed down, it plots to over-throw the emotions with ploys, tricks and contrivances. This is a great idea, the thinking brain thinks, and each and every time, it is defeated – as soon as another strong emotion surfaces, it gets put on the back burner while the emotion takes over.

No wonder the psycho-therapeutic world is replete with all kinds of practices designed to help the brain try to lord it over the emotions, which mainly originate from the heart and body. These practices are attempts of the brain to regain full-time control of “us”. These practices come in many guises, but are easy to spot – if they propose a way to manage or control emotions, you know what you are looking at.

Allow instead of fighting

Here’s a novel concept – allow your feelings/emotions to flow through you, without trying to control them. This probably sounds scary, as there may have been situations in the past when you got “overly” emotional and did or said something you later regretted. The key here is the “overly” part. Calling something “overly” implies that it is excessive, which is of course a judgment.

The funny thing is that a twisted bit of logic is at work here, one that we could expect to invent when we are perhaps 5 years old, but that our head brain should have realized was no longer realistic a long time ago. The faulty logic is assuming that having had one intense emotional incident with some sort of negative outcome means that all future emotional incidents will be equally disruptive to our lives and therefore we should suppress those emotions as soon as they appear. This logic underlies a lot of the emotional management/mastery approaches and it actually makes things worse rather than better.

Starting from the premise that all intense emotional incidents are bound to cause us some sort of pain or embarrassment, we end up only allowing our emotions to be partially experienced and then we do our best to avoid feeling them. We stifle the experience and instead of the feeling flowing through and out of us as most other creatures do, it gets stuck inside. Our system is not really designed to store up all these feelings indefinitely – this is not a question of storage capacity, but one of health. Both our emotional and our physical health are affected by stifling emotions – we get stressed out, we get heart attacks and our immune system is diminished. A web search for “health impact of negative feelings” turned up nearly one million hits, which is an indicator of the importance of this.

And, the fact that we have stored up all these partially expressed emotions from various incidents means that the next time we encounter another similar situation, all those feelings are going to want to come to the surface. This is the main reason for us “overly” reacting to situations – we not only have the current emotion that is natural and relevant, but we automatically add to the mix all the previous instances of that particular emotion. These stored feelings come flooding up from storage and swamp our nervous system. If you manage to pay attention to yourself the next time you have a very intense emotional reaction, you’ll probably notice memories of past situations with the same emotional content. These are the stored emotions stuck inside us, wanting to be released and allowed to flow out.

Instead of stifling the expression of a feeling, it is far healthier to allow it to flow through us. There is a caveat, however. If you have not been actively “draining the batteries” of the emotional energy stored inside you, then you are most likely to get overwhelmed by the flood when a situation arises. The fix to this is very simple – undertake an active releasing program to free those stored feelings from captivity. AER is designed to facilitate this releasing. All you need to do is notice as you go through your day what feelings come up for you quite strongly and release them, one at a time. Emptying the stored emotional energy leaves you lighter and more agile in future situations. Once you have released a stored emotion, your response to a new incident will be proportional to the situation instead of an over-reaction.

As you do embark on this voyage of releasing, your need to control your emotions will diminish as you enter into a healthy relationship with your emotions. After all, you don’t need to manage or control something that is a balanced natural expression of your reality in that moment. To reach this state of personal grace, you do need to release the stored up emotional energy before it really weakens your immune system and causes you any more uncomfortable situations.

copyright 2009 Robert S. Vibert, all rights reserved