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

Are your thoughts causing your stressful feelings?

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There is a prevalent theory making the rounds, time and again, that your thoughts are what create your emotions and therefore your stress.

One of the expressions of these is what is called “Appraisal Theory”, which has been summed up as follows:

Event ==> thinking ==> Simultaneous arousal and emotion

Back in the day when I believed that the mind was supreme, this made perfect sense to me. After all, we humans are the thinkers, which is supposed to distinguish us from all other beasts. Hey, we have really old books that tell this story as well, and it just feels dang good to be top of the heap, don’t it? Stop noticing how we slaughter each other by the millions and how nasty we can be to others – it is best to ignore all that conflicts with our idealized vision of ourselves as simply wonderful.

Well, truth be told, I’m not so bright-eyed and bushy-tailed any more, which is another way of saying that I no longer automatically accept that humans are so much better than other species. Yes, we’ve managed to develop incredible technology so we could leave our trash behind even on the moon… Yes, we’ve polluted and ravaged the landscape to such an extent that there are few places left on Earth which are not damaged in some way.

OK, we have also done lots of good things, but if we are going to be relatively objective, we need to own what we do that is not so pretty or a good subject for polite conversation.

If we accept that even though humans seem to do a lot more thinking than dogs, for example (although your mileage may vary, depending on the human and canine subjects used in a study you might undertake), it would appear that this thinking is not always giving us a better world.

Ah, you might say, what we need is better thinking. Well, that would be an improvement, of course, but there is no guarantee that just because you are going to be thinking better that your actions are going to be congruent with these “better” thoughts. I know lots of people who can talk a good talk and who obviously are quite developed in the thinking department. They also happen to be less than optimum in the acting department – they don’t walk a good walk. Maybe you know someone like this too – a brilliant mind, but not so good to interact with.

And this is just one example of how I find less than satisfactory the concept that it is always our thinking that triggers our emotions. I would argue that there is a three-way street on which our physiological environment, our cognitive thought processes and our emotional responses are all interacting constantly.

A few examples from real life:

Imagine that you are standing outside and it is raining, cold and you are getting soaked and feeling rather clammy. You don’t need to think about this situation to feel miserable – you just feel it, as a normal result of your environment.

I would venture to say, given how the weather is the starting topic for so many conversations, that people generally respond to their environment without thought – they feel the environment acting on them and their emotions pop up in response. One can change one’s emotional and mental response to the environment, of course. But that is grist for another mill, fodder for another cannon, etc., etc.

Another example of this is when one eats something that tastes really good. This bite of Bill’s blueberry pie that I just ate triggers in me a feeling of comfort. I did not have to think about it – the pie enters my mouth and my taste buds signal “yum, good!” to me. And, as a result, I feel good about the pie and about Bill. I don’t have to think gratitude – it just comes up as a response to the good taste and texture.

When I think about this body and emotional response to the pie that I am enjoying, the feeling of gratitude can become more intense, of course. In fact, eating the pie triggers good thoughts about Bill. The communication is in all directions – from my body to my emotional centers to my mind. They interact with each other, back and forth.

Let’s look at another example – you are driving along and your car hits a slippery spot on the road and for a moment or two, is out of control. Before you have time to think “Oh Dang!” or something a little stronger, your body and emotions respond to the situation. Your body, probably guided by your enteric brain,  starts telling all of you – “holy jumping jelly beans, we’re outta control here!!!!” It also floods your system with those infamous fight or flight chemicals and maybe you break out into a cold sweat and your heart is racing. You feel fear both emotionally and viscerally, and way before any thoughts can arise. Your mind can say anything calming or rational it wants, to no immediate avail – you are still reacting to the situation and until those chemicals that are flooding your system start to subside, not much calming is going to happen.

The same thing happens with people who are upset – while in that state, they are not thinking rationally – they are experiencing their upset and will continue to do so until they start to settle down. Their thoughts are greatly influenced by their physical and emotional state. Again, we can see that no matter what the starting point, our bodies, our minds and our feelings are interacting and influencing each other constantly.

Another example is when you are feeling some heart-based emotions. These emotions, whether of love-sickness or heartbreak, trigger all kinds of non-rational thoughts and result in all kinds of out-of-the-box actions. Go on, tell someone in love to think logically and see what happens.

Now, I’m not dismissing the notion that thoughts can trigger feelings. We can find plenty of examples of that, too. Someone sees a bully pick on a child and thoughts of disgust can arise which lead to anger and then some intervention action.

Less Chicken and Egg

I think the world would be a much better place if we spent less time on chicken-egg-what- came-first notions which place one part of us in a superior position to the other parts. Our minds can do a good job of analyzing, understanding, comparing, etc., but they are not designed for loving, for caring, for empathy – that comes from our hearts. If you ever try to drive a car using your mind instead of allowing your body to handle the majority of the work, you’ll find it rather tiring rather quickly.

Remember that we have lots and lots of neural networks in our head brains, heart brains and enteric (gut) brains. Even though many, many people have been convinced that “it’s all in your head” that just ain’t so. All three of those brains talk to each other constantly just as our thoughts, emotions and body sensations constantly interact.

So, if you are feeling stressed about something and someone tells you it is your thinking that is to blame, smile and know that they have only got one piece of the picture, one nibble of the cookie. There is a lot more going on with us than simply our thinking triggering emotions – any one of the three parts I have mentioned can trigger a response in the other and influence, often enhancing or diminishing, the response that the other part is having. We’re not machines – we are complex organisms with all kinds of internal systems, many of which we have yet to properly discover.

Like a lot of people, I have tried many cognitive approaches to improving my life – I have a wealth of books and courses done on this. The stark reality is that my emotions are not dictated by my thinking, nor are yours. I can’t think myself happy when I am feeling sad, and when I am feeling happy, sad thoughts are nowhere to be found.

What I have found really useful is to acknowledge my complexity as a human and use the appropriate tools for the specific. I use AER to release stressful emotions which in turn releases stressful thoughts, both of which help hold in place non-resourceful beliefs.

You think, you feel, you act, you be, you respond – and therefore you are. 🙂 Help me spread the word – Rene has done enough damage with his “I think therefore I am”.

Copyright 2009 Robert S. Vibert, all rights reserved.

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Healing and our Brains

Stressed out from throwing your arms in the air?

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For far too many people, the world is a place full of boulders. Every day, they bump into these boulders, feel frustrated and then perhaps defeated and then stressed out. What would it be like if they could actually experience the world as a place of opportunity instead of obstacles? Wouldn’t that provide much more opportunity for a life that would be happier and calmer?

Let’s take a closer look at what often happens when life’s little challenges are seen as major problems. Imagine that you buy a new bicycle and discover after riding it for a week or so that some of the nuts need tightening. You go to your toolbox and grab your wrenches. None of them fit properly on the nuts, and perhaps you feel tension rising inside you. After all, you’ve had these wrenches for years and they were used successfully by your father before you. Frustrated, you call the store where you bought the bike and demand to know what is going on. Perhaps you are silently steaming at all the time that you are wasting on this. Finally, someone explains that the bike uses metric fasteners, and your tried and tested Imperial measurement wrenches will not fit properly. At this point, some people will feel so upset they might try to return the bike to the store, demanding one that is made using fasteners that their wrenches can fit. They might be verbally abusive with the clerks, and vent loudly to all who will listen, perhaps even waving their arms about in the air.

What’s really going on here? Is this reaction appropriate to the situation? Is the store to blame for the type of fasteners used on the bike? Would someone be justified in feeling all upset and angry over this situation? Is there some sort of crazy conspiracy to annoy them? Or is something else going on, beneath the surface?

As some of you may have guessed by now, trying to return a bike because your wrenches don’t work is an overly intense reaction for the situation. However, when someone is in this state of mind, with emotions being felt intensely, there is no point in trying to reason with them. After all, their body has already shifted much of its resources to the survival part of the brain and body core, and little logical thinking is possible (or happening) at this moment.

Why would someone get so upset over the fact that metric fasteners were used? The answer lies in their stored emotions and memories. Because their emotional kettle is almost full to the brim with emotional responses to situations in the past when they also felt similarly, it does not take much fresh frustration for the kettle to boil over. We humans constantly access our stored data banks to evaluate each new situation. We look in the data bank, which holds visual, verbal and emotional memory components, to see if we’ve seen this sort of situation before. If we have, we then tend to automatically respond in the same fashion as previously, without thinking.

If we have a very pleasant memory of feeling good when someone gave us a gift of flowers or chocolate, for example, we”ll access those stored memories and emotions in a flash when we see these same things again. This can be very useful and enjoyable when what we access is pleasant or heartwarming. On the flip side, it can be rather disheartening if what we recall are unpleasant or painful stored feelings and memories.

So, when you are confronted with a situation which appears in some way to be similar to a prior negative one (and even more so if there are numerous prior ones), it is normal to have the same feelings arise, and for your kettle to boil over. This boiling over can be expressed in anger, frustration, sadness, pain, guilt, etc. And, until such time as you empty that particular kettle, you are going to keep adding to it with each fresh situation.

Empty the kettle

Releasing stored negative or unpleasant feelings is the only way to experience fresh negative situations without them becoming overwhelming. People often try to suppress these built-up feelings as a coping mechanism for when they get too strong, but that is a stop-gap measure, and it does not work. Those feelings lie just beneath the surface, waiting to be triggered and to join in with the recent ones, overflowing from the kettle.

Releasing these stored feelings, or emptying the kettle, if you will, is actually not that hard. However, given our well documented human tendency to avoid unpleasant feelings, the process of emptying the kettle is not so intuitive. To empty a kettle of stored pain, for example, requires that one not only acknowledges the existence of the stored feelings, but that one remains present to the discomfort they bring long enough for them to dissipate. There are techniques such as AER which are designed to accelerate this dissipation process, but they are not so widely known yet. Most people keep stuffing down the unpleasant feelings, hoping they will go away on heir own and then suffering when they don’t.

Just buy or borrow a metric wrench already!

For those who are not emotionally engaged in the situation, it is easy to suggest logical and rational solutions, such as buying some new wrenches. However, these suggestions are falling on ears which are only tuned into fight, flight  or freeze type responses – people who  are in an emotionally intense situation are not going to even hear what the other is saying, let alone be able to think about it or act upon it.  Don Ferguson, a therapist who works with couples, remarked at a Smart Marriages conference in 2008 that talk therapy does not help those suffering from trauma, as it addresses the prefrontal cortex while the intense  emotions and memories are mainly stored elsewhere in the brain. When dealing with stored emotions and feelings, talk therapy usually has little effect, offering a sort of  drive-by relief at best. In fact, constant surface level recalling of traumatic incidents by talking about them can re-inforce those brain circuits, keeping the stored emotions well energized.

While we might not feel much pity for people who engage in dramatic expressions of their discontent when the world does not go the way they want, we can at least try to see that they are being pushed in a certain direction by their stored emotions. Yes, like everyone else, they need to take responsibility for their actions and empty that kettle so their over-reactions become more moderate and appropriate responses. Their reaction to what life serves up each day, which looks to them like a stream of constant problems which are almost insurmountable, is a result of unresolved past issues. There is no need to analyse these responses – they feel anger about something, for example, and that is the kettle to be released, before it boils over again.

There is also little to be gained in trying to figure out why someone feels a certain way while that feeling is present. The feeling puts them into an intense emotional state and at that point, they are literally incapable of rational thought. Empty the emotional kettle and the possibility of analysis of the situation arises. For many people, though, as soon as you drain the emotions from a kettle, there is little interest which remains in the situation and what was a hugely important situation a few minutes earlier. Without a lot of emotional content, the situation becomes benign or even banal.

Learning how to release stored emotions, emptying those kettles, is not hard. Using this approach to situations in which you feel frustrated means you stop finding yourself stressed out over what are really minor situations, but which appear larger when that kettle is full. You’ll also be less likely to wave your arms about, mad at the world, and getting all stressed out.

Copyright 2009 Robert S. Vibert, all rights reserved.

Moving to a stress-free reality

Searching for the Perfect Band-aid?

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For many people, if not most, when a problem arises, they look for a way of fixing it or making it “disappear”. Living as we do in a world of instant gratification, it is not uncommon to see people reach for a band-aid, a temporary solution, that will alleviate the problem, at least for the moment. These band-aid solutions allow us to cope temporarily with the issue.

Using a coping mechanism approach is normal, acceptable and makes a lot of sense, when dealing with temporary issues, as it is usually quick and economical. However, it is not an ideal long-term strategy, particularly when confronted with emotional matters, as coping mechanisms are not usually designed to resolve the underlying problem.

We cope, we live

Humans have developed many coping strategies and mechanisms over time. These coping mechanisms keep us safe and serve a useful purpose, as relatively efficient short-term solutions to problems. One definition of coping is “the process of managing taxing circumstances, expending effort to deal with personal and interpersonal problems, and seeking to master, minimize, reduce or tolerate stress or conflict.” Managing, minimizing, reducing, tolerating… all of these presuppose the continued existence of the problem and a continued effort to deal with it each time it appears. As the problem is not really dealt with, it will continue to present itself.

After a while, we get so used to reaching for a coping mechanism that we might not stop and consider if we could take another approach. Given that a coping mechanism is really only a temporary fix, it is not surprising that many of us keep looking for new ones when the old ones no longer do the trick. Out of this ongoing need for more and better coping techniques, a whole industry has arisen, providing us with a plethora of coping tools to try:

– relaxation techniques
– improved communication skills
– problem analysis approaches
– empathetic problem discussion
– acceptance of personal responsibility
– improvements in assertive behaviour
– trust building exercises
– techniques to handling insecurity
– affirmations
– enhanced forgiveness
– development of detachment
– development of patience
– Critical Thinking skills

as well as the old standards of simple denial and distraction, where we try to distance ourselves from the issue.

Some of the coping skills mentioned above will certainly benefit us in many areas of life. However, just as putting a daily or hourly band-aid on a cut that requires stitches for it to close, using a coping mechanism inappropriately can become quite tiring and ultimately quite expensive in time and effort.

Don’t cope, resolve

Rather than constantly coping, which really is mainly about dealing with the symptoms instead of the underlying problem, it is wiser and more efficient to seek out the most effective way to deal with the issue itself.

For example, if you were someone like me who suffered a loss of a parent at an early age, you might adopt coping mechanisms like mine: I would avoid at all costs any situations which would remind me of my father’s death. I would not attend funerals, would not discuss him, would not spend any serious amount of time in the town where I grew up, etc., etc. I moved to another country, lived an entirely “different life” and yet, the pain I felt around his death remained with me. My coping approach dealt with the symptoms by keeping me away from that pain, but never actually resolved anything. I dove into the business world and became a workaholic, studying business techniques and eventually running two companies simultaneously. I was distracted, yes, but the pain was always there, waiting for the day when I would finally face it and release it.

When I retired from running companies, I entered into the world of personal development and tried out many, many of the standard coping mechanisms available – I spent countless hours using my large collection of relaxation and affirmation recordings, attended numerous workshops on everything from hypnosis to meditation to communication skills to living from the heart, went on inner quests, etc., etc. I learned all kinds of ways to temporarily get myself into a better state of being or feeling, but soon it would be obvious that the pain was still present, waiting for me. In reality, these techniques are all good ways to cope better with what life throws at us, much like talk therapy can potentially teach us. But, bottom line, the pain was still there.

When I finally found myself in a situation where it felt somewhat safe to dip my toe into the pain, I knew I had to finally do something serious about it. 20 years of denial and avoidance and another five years of intense study of even better comping techniques was enough. Still with the results orientation I had cultivates as a businessman, I set out to find a way to release the pain, set it and myself free.  I did not need to seek out any more band-aids – it was clear that that approach was not effective nor cost-effective. I needed something that would help me, once and for all, release the pain I held over my father’s death years earlier.

The funny thing about what I have discovered on this quest is that the answer is incredibly simple and yet missed by so many due to a natural feature of humans – we avoid pain. This pain avoidance means that we look for the sugar coated pill that will magically dissolve our ills and pains, without our suffering. It can also be likened to wanting to win the life lottery – all our pains and tribulations dissolved away without our having to do much of anything. Given the constant influx of the latest and greatest coping tools (new meditations discovered by some guru in some distant land, new mind tricks we can use to cover our internal cow patties of pain with better whipped cream, more and better magical thinking involving aliens, ancient lands or dolphins, etc.) it is nor surprising that we get perplexed as to why they are not helping us beyond some minor pain alleviation.

The answer is simple and yet counter-intuitive. Research and field work by people like Dr. Peter Levine and Dr David Bercelli, just to name two, have shown that we can allow feelings to pass through us instead of “storing” them. If we do store them, we can access them and then release them, and that is what my AER (Awareness Expression Resolution) process facilitates. Learning how to release stored feelings is not hard and does not take a lot of time, does not require mind trickery or the intervention of anyone else, and can be learned in an hour or so.  But, since releasing requires us to become aware of our pain and consciously let go of it, people tend to seek out magic painless pills instead. And, while they get some feel-good sugar for the moment, their pain continues to be with them.

So, if you are tired of searching out that perfect band-aid, and ready to actually let go of your pain, try something radical: feel your feelings (stored and new ones) without resistance or judgment, and let them flow through and out. You might just find they are ready to leave…

Copyright 2010 Robert S. Vibert, all rights reserved.