All about the brain, worry, etc.

[mrsukyankee]

So, here's the bulk of the presentation. I've cut out a few things, but it's the jist minus me presenting how to do a few things at the end (which I put in the other thread). Please note it's not a finished product (presentation is at the end of the month).


A stressful situation — whether something environmental, such as a looming work deadline, or psychological, such as persistent worry about losing a job — can trigger a cascade of stress hormones that produce well-orchestrated physiological changes. A stressful incident can make the heart pound and breathing quicken. Muscles tense and beads of sweat appear.

This combination of reactions to stress is also known as the "fight-or-flight" response because it evolved as a survival mechanism, enabling people and other mammals to react quickly to life-threatening situations. The carefully orchestrated yet near-instantaneous sequence of hormonal changes and physiological responses helps someone to fight the threat off or flee to safety. Unfortunately, the body can also overreact to stressors that are not life-threatening, such as traffic jams, work pressure, and family difficulties.

The stress response begins in the brain. When someone confronts an oncoming car or other danger, the eyes or ears (or both) send the information to the amygdala, an area of the brain that contributes to emotional processing. The amygdala interprets the images and sounds. When it perceives danger, it instantly sends a distress signal to the hypothalamus. This area of the brain functions like a command center, communicating with the rest of the body through the nervous system so that the person has the energy to fight or flee.





And then you get all the stuff that happens in your body due to stress from fast breathing to muscle tension/shaking to upset stomach. There’s a lot. All of these changes happen so quickly that people aren't aware of them. In fact, the wiring is so efficient that the amygdala and hypothalamus start this cascade even before the brain's visual centers have had a chance to fully process what is happening. That's why people are able to jump out of the path of an oncoming car even before they think about what they are doing. It’s also why you may not be able to use the rational part of your brain to problem solve in that moment – it’s too slow a process when you are in danger. While it may not always feel like it, this part of our brain is trying to protect us from a danger. But it may not be helpful to us in the long run as our brain is trying to give us a short term solutions (which makes sense – you don’t want to be thinking too hard if a taxi is coming at our bodies).

How many of you have put things off when anxious? Made a decision to look at Netflix instead of doing some work? Or began cleaning when you have so many other things to do? And how do you feel in that moment? Calmer? I know I do. (not so much with the cleaning as it’s not my favourite way to procrastinate) The brain, in that moment, is protecting you in the short run. But once you are done procrastinating, all those worries may come flooding back.

There’s a lot of cognitive content that can get in our way of having our best lives, from worry to rumination to intrusive thoughts. And I’d like to present a few ideas of things that might help us all deal with anxiety.

The title of this presentation, Become the Bus Driver, comes from the “Passengers on the bus” metaphor was developed by Steven Hayes, who developed Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT). It’s a very useful way of thinking about our internal experience (versus external), and an excellent place to start being more mindful.  

From the moment you set out on the road of life, you begin to accumulate experiences: birthdays, school days, everyday events, and special events. The road represents the situations and people we encounter, factual events, which everyone would agree occurred.

Over time, we internalize these experiences into our mind-body vehicle. We begin to pick up passengers. Passengers are our internal experiences in the form of beliefs and feelings about the world. They form our worldview: expectations about how the world works, how others respond to our needs, even our own capabilities. Passengers are basically our learned reactions from past experience.

An example I commonly use in my therapy work is the tissue box example. Everyone can agree on the fact that there is a tissue box sitting on the table. But, what if I had past experiences as a child of being bullied and tissue boxes were thrown at me as other children taunted me? Can you see how I might have a very different internal experience (e.g. tension, anxiety, worry thoughts) of the fact of the tissue box!

This is what happens in all of our interactions. We bring with us our past experiences and project them onto the current facts!

Passengers are the experiences you have inside yourself; thoughts, beliefs, memories, feelings, physical sensations, impulses, and emotions. Some passengers are benign, which don’t affect us very much. Some are even pleasant, and help us on the road of life at certain times. But some passengers make us feel really vulnerable and uncomfortable.

Humans will naturally and automatically do more of what feels good, and less of what feels bad. So, we develop emotional habit patterns to keep the bad feeling passengers outside of our awareness. Emotional habit patterns are the ways we think and behave to quiet down the passengers. There are an infinite number of habit patterns we can develop to quiet down passengers. Sometimes these are ways of thinking, sometimes ways of behaving.

Like subtle addictions, we become so consumed in quieting down the passengers, we lose sight of where we truly want to go in life. If we over use our auto-pilot habits too long or too often, the passengers start hijacking your life! Soon our driving patterns (our actions) can become automatically and unconsciously under the influence of the passengers, rather than the driver, us! (pic of Sandra Bullock driving the bus)

Life transitions tend to be particularly challenging. Just as when we are driving a new road, or negotiating the transition from the highway to surface streets, you have to shift out of cruise control and attend more carefully to where you are going. Just the same, when we begin new or uncertain roads, auto-pilot no longer works!

Passengers tend to get particularly rowdy when we have a major life transition, or pursue something important. So your gonna need new skills to balance mindfully listening to passengers, with effective driving and navigation of facts on the road.

Now, here’s the rub. Just as we cannot delete past experience, once passengers are on your vehicle, they never get off. We simply cannot un-know what we have experienced. Sure, we can distract ourselves or avoid the situations that trigger these passengers.

But some part of you already knows that you simply cannot will yourself to feel, or un feel, a certain way. You may have tried to forget certain parts of your past, or ignored the resulting insecurities. But your own experience tells you, you can’t un-ring a bell.

As I said earlier, we can loosely see the bus passengers as being of two types – paying customers and freeloaders. The paying customers want us to drive the bus route of our values. They represent primary emotions & thoughts that orientate and energise us to reach healthy goals. Listening to these „paying customers' is typically helpful. It's the freeloaders on the back seats that we largely want to ignore. These pessimists include the distracting voices of worry, catastrophising and rumination (brooding). They are conflicted about the bus driver's advertised route that leads to welcomed goals like loving relationships, healthy self-care, development of our strengths, and exploration of our interests & enthusiasms. The back seat freeloaders try to distract the driver with discouragement, doubt & anxiety. It can be very useful to get better at responding to these freeloader voices with mindfulness, simply letting them „witter on' like background radio. We don't have to give these unhelpful inner voices our attention or take them seriously. As the freeloaders realise that they're being 'mindfully' allowed to chatter without their opinions being given any weight, they gradually quieten down.

And this is where you need to do those exercises.

[sakoro]

The bus/ passenger analogy is so helpful! Thanks for sharing this.

[erbear]

This is such a helpful lens. Thank you so much!

[seeyalater52]

This is so valuable and I REALLY needed it right now. Thank you so much for sharing your expertise.

[mrsukyankee]

I'm glad people are finding it helpful. Believe me, I need to remind myself of these things all the time and keep working on them despite having done this work for many years. It's a practice. And I don't do it well all the time either - so I encourage you all to be kind to yourself when you forget to use these sorts of skills.