Riding the what-if fast train track to nowhere

March 12, 2014  |  ibrainmapadmin

I had to laugh at myself this morning. I woke up worrying.

“What if no one comes to my launch?’

Then,

“what if everyone comes to the launch?”

Then,

“what if no one likes it?”

Then,

“what if everyone likes it and I’m never left alone?”

And so on and so on, around and around went my brain stressing itself out and dragging me along with it.

It doesn’t matter if it’s a book launch you’re worrying about, or what to have for dinner, Stuck on Stress brain is always the same. It starts innocently enough, “what if no one comes…..?” At least it seems innocent, but that thought may be the tip of a brain iceberg with a plug of insecurity, such as fear of rejection, right down at the bottom.

Often, mostly our repetitive thoughts are hiding some emotional plug-in that takes us to another site, another map of experience. Perhaps it’s a memory map of when you were six, and the class teacher “made an example” of you, or when you fell flat on your face on stage in front of assembly.

Then, when you are facing a big event, such as a book launch, your brain plugs into that old memory map and starts replaying it, but forgets to tell you that it’s a track from thirty years ago, when you bit your nails and wore braces, that it’s playing.

The brain replays those awkward and uncomfortable feelings in your body and then your mind jumps in and gives you some thoughts about this current situation but based on the feelings of that experience. And you believe it, because mostly you can trust your brain-body-mind to behave itself and respond appropriately to the current situation.

So, what can you do when your brain switches to an old map to interpret the current situation, or an old map that isn’t helpful, because the brain is always using old maps to manage current situations so it can manage all that incoming data and keep you walking and talking all at once.

Well I can tell you what I did.

Firstly I had to notice that I was in a kind of trance (that’s a term Tara Brach uses, which describes it exactly). So I’m in an overthinking trance and the hardest thing is to notice that I’m in it, because I’m running around on this fast thought train, and going around in circles but I don’t know it yet.

That’s when I laugh at myself. Ha-aha! It’s like catching yourself with your hand in the biscuit barrel when you’re not watching. I’ve been practicing catching myself for years. Most people call it mindfulness.

But here is the next challenge, you can’t get angry at your brain or you make the loop tighter, like, I mean really tight, and it becomes a brain knot, and that’s even harder to undo than the slippery slope of overthinking. But I could write a book on that one, oh yeah I have – it’s called i-brainmap, freeing your brain for happiness. But that’s another story.

Laughing with yourself is the best thing you can do, or get curious, like being a “friendly scientist,” as Russ Harris, who wrote “The Happiness Trap,” calls it.

If you approach the brain with irritation or an I’m gonna fix this, approach the brain reads it as a problem and will throw in some cortisol-adrenaline and a good dose of “oh no, something’s wrong here and tighten the knot.” So how you approach this overthinking, what-if-thought-train-track-to-nowhere-fast will affect whether your brain keeps looping, or can jump off the track.

So here is what you do when you’re on one of those, what-if-trains-going-nowhere-fast:

• Approach with kindness and curiosity, as you would a frightened animal, perhaps a scared naughty puppy. The part of the brain that’s misbehaving is like a frightened animal or small child, so yelling at it, or trying to fix it wont help.
• Don’t try to analyse the plug-in. The brain is playing a body memory that you may not remember, you don’t need to remember or understand it to change it, you only need to be present to it with kindness and sometimes firmness, here and now, and the brain will get the message that there is no threat and it no longer needs to play that clip of distress.
• Repeatedly bringing your attention into the present, noticing the sounds, smells, sights, and sensations tells the brain that you are ok now. This tells your brain you’re no longer that six year old standing in front of the class with your pants down, metaphorically speaking. You are an adult with lots of resources and have just published a book, so you can’t be as stupid as that teacher said you were. But really did he have to do it in front of the whole class…. and there she goes again…. repeat as above.

It’s only days till my launch. And I have done all I can do. I have a great team of supporters and my fabulous team-book will be there, and good friends, with wine and music, and hopefully a few books if they arrive on time. There is nothing else I can do.

Thank you brain, welcome back to now.