MIND THE GAP: YOU ARE NOT YOUR BRAIN. 
How to get out of your Head when you are Stressed.

As early as 5th century BC, the Greek Physician Hippocrates said from observation that “Men ought to know that from the brain, and from the brain only, arise our pleasures, joys, laughter and jests, as well as our sorrows, pains, griefs and tears. Through it, in particular, we think, see, hear, and distinguish the ugly from the beautiful, the bad from the good, the pleasant from the unpleasant…”

Fast forward to the 20th Century when Noble Prize winning Neuroscientist and the Father of the DNA, Francis Crick iterated the same philosophy when he said “You, your joys and sorrows, your memories and your ambitions, your sense of personal identity and your free will are in fact no more than the behaviour of a vast assembly of nerve cells and its associated molecules.”

Mind you, not many people took Hippocrates seriously because it was the 5th century BC and Humankind was largely misinformed about how we came about and held the collective belief that our destinies were written by some super power. Ironically all these thousands of years later, in the face of all the scientific evidence in the world, when a Scientist like Crick makes a similar statement, we still don’t comprehend the implications of it fully.

We don’t realise that any situation is only as good or as bad as we THINK it is. You could be lounging on a picture perfect, sun-soaked Beach in Hawaii and be absolutely miserable or you could be holed up in the dingiest prison and still be in a “happy” state of mind. So basically the quality of your life and its experiences are directly related to your mind’s interpretation of any experience. There is a gap between what the reality is and what your interpretation of reality is and we need to Mind the Gap between the two.

Think about the last time you felt stressed. If you had to think hard, you probably don’t need to read on (unless stress has become so integral to your life that you don’t recognise it any more).
 
For most of us, stress has become a part of our day to day lives and we live in a constant undercurrent of tension…an unreasonable Boss and unrelenting work pressures in a job that you can’t easily quit, a marriage where you can’t seem to agree on anything with your spouse, the constant strife of making money that never seems to be enough, and other such situations. For others whose lives are smoother and everything is going fine, specific incidents can trigger stress. In both cases, when faced with stress, our World narrows down and our reality become these situations. Meanwhile precious days of our finite lives slip by, unnoticed and uncelebrated. Days that will disappear into an abyss never to return.

Every stressful situation is like a fleeting cloud in the great clear sky of our lives. Every situation is temporary…and has to pass (and has always passed) and yet, when faced with one, it becomes the centre of our world at that time. True, the situation is real and needs to be resolved. But it’s our interpretation of the situation that is the problem.

You can either let the situation take you over and run you into the ground or you can look at the situation objectively, know its temporary, and deal with it that way.

Obviously the second state of mind is the one we would want to be in. To understand how we can achieve this state of mind, we need to heed the advice of the wise men whose quotes I opened this article with and pay closer attention to how our brains work, when faced with situations.

The Brain Vs. Stressful Situations

Our Brain, like the rest of our body, has evolved over millennia but it would be fair to claim that it has remained in its current state of evolution at least for the last 100,000 years.

However, the World that our hunter-gatherer ancestors lived in 100,000 years back and the World we currently inhabit are two entirely different worlds. In the time of our hunter-gatherer ancestor, the brain only had to help us tackle fundamental survival needs like finding food and dealing with wild beasts. This is not the case in modern times, where survival is not a requirement anymore but the brain has to deal with several petabytes of data and even more complex number of situations. So the same brain is now taxed with unprecedentedly high volumes of data and situations. The mechanism to deal with a situation has remained the same but the complexity of situations has changed drastically, so is it surprising that we should be stressed out?

Let’s look at the Brain in action in the times of our ancestors and in our present times. Rewind to the time of our hunter-gatherer ancestors. As he forages for food in the wild, he hears a wild animal in the vicinity. This is how his brain would react to the situation;

The incident (the roar of the wild animal) is registered by his Orbital Cortex (OC) (a small part in the brain right behind the eyes), which then fires a signal to the Anterior Cingulate (AC) (A part of the brain right under the top of the head). So imagine a circuit lighting up between these two parts .

The firing of signals between these two parts sends an anxiety signal to our man’s gut saying, “Hey something is wrong”. So our ancestor’s heart starts beating faster and he feels fear in the pit of his stomach. The fear spurs him to take action and he takes cover in the nearest cave and survives.

As soon as the situation is resolved, the firing of signals in the brain stops. The circuit breaks. Now there is a third part of the brain called the ‘Caudate’, which is like a switch between one thought and the next. When our caveman ancestor has taken the necessary action to survive, the Caudate releases the last thought about needing to run for cover and switches to the next thought, helping him to continue with his next move. Important Note: Since a concrete action has been taken, the Brain knows that there is no need to process that thought anymore.

Now fast forward to the present and picture the same brain in action in our current lives. We don’t have to take cover from a wild animal and think about survival issues anymore. Now our problems are different and are related to our modern lives. However, the default mechanism to protect us from danger still exists, so our brilliant brain still holds on to anything that it perceives as being a situation that could harm us.

Brain: 21st Century

Let’s take some examples of modern day stress; Perhaps you had an argument with your spouse where he/she said something really nasty…or at work your boss is being an absolute tyrant…or you are simply stuck in the worst possible traffic jam on the way to a really important meeting.

When faced with one of the above situations, the same players in your brain become active. A circuit in your brain lights up…which relays an anxiety, signal to the body so your body becomes tense. Remember from our last example that the purpose of this mechanism was to spur us into taking some concrete action. BUT HERE IS THE TWIST…this time there is no concrete action to take unlike our ancestor’s case where he ran for cover and resolved the situation. (You can only be angry with your spouse but you can’t change what he or she said…you cannot find a way out of the traffic jam…you have no choice but to comply with what your tyrant boss has asked of you).
In the absence of a concrete action being taken, the Brain puts the thoughts about the situation into a loop (because the brain sees this as being unfinished business and therefore keeps reminding you). The signals keep firing and ‘circuit’ does not break. You keep thinking about a million things about how the situation is and should or should not be and so on but you cannot do anything concrete to resolve the situation.

The third component of the brain, the ‘Caudate’ which is responsible for switching from one thought to the next is stuck with that last thought. You stay in the loop, keep processing the same thoughts and your anxiety builds. End result: Stress.

YOU ARE NOT YOUR BRAIN…SO DON’T LET THE BRAIN RUN YOU.

The Brain is merely a machine, like all your other body parts and has its own function. When faced with a situation your brain is doing what it is meant to do…which is to help you analyse and deal with any situation you come across. If you became aware of what’s going on in your head, you can separate yourself from your thoughts and tackle a situation more effectively.

The next time you start feeling stressed, visualise what’s going on in your brain and how the situation you are faced with is manifesting in terms of your brain’s circuitry. See how the situation has led to a circuit firing signals in your brain, and how in turn it has sent an anxiety signal to your body. Visualise how your ‘caudate’ has become ‘sticky’ with that one single thought and how you are not being able to think of anything else.

Once you become aware of this, it is possible for you to move your brain to the next thought manually (like moving a gear manually) and therefore not get stuck in the last situation. For instance, in the aforementioned example of the stress you are feeling because of your boss, if you became aware of how the incident is manifesting technically in the machine that is your brain, you will also see how the brain is stuck with that one thought and how you are not being able to move on with anything else. (This is true of any situation that is causing you stress). Once you become aware of this you have the choice to proactively intervene and take action. Remember that taking a concrete action tells the ‘caudate’ that it can release the last thought and move on to the next.

Now the action you take may be in the form of either doing something practical to deal with the situation OR if the situation does not have a clear solution then accepting it fully. Complete acceptance of a situation you can’t change (say you are stuck in a traffic jam with no way out) is also a concrete action that tells the brain that there is no need to put this thought into a loop…that it is free to move on to the next thought, thus helping you to beat the stress. We are not talking about acceptance as a form of grudging surrender here, but as a practical choice when we know that there is no other option.

In his path breaking book “The Brain that changes itself” Neurologist Norman Doidge explains the workings of the Brain and how we can re-wire it to break existing patterns and teach it new things. Recommended reading for those interested in learning more about how to teach the brain new tricks.

However before we teach the brain new tricks we need to be aware of its relentless mental chatter. We are like Zombies, walking and driving around in auto pilot mode, lost in trails of thought about various situations. We do not even realise that we are stressed in the first place and that in the process, are losing out on precious hours and days of our life. This is where practices like mindfulness and meditation play a crucial role and allow us to be aware of the trips our brain goes on, so we can take concrete action.

More on mindfulness and how to create positive distractions when faced with stressful situations in the next article.

In the meantime, should you have queries you can email me on raj@globetravelcentre.com or Click here to connect with me on Linked in.