Tunnel vision. What you see is definitely not the entire picture.
Can you remember a time when something grabbed your attention?
Like the time you were so engrossed in a TV show on Netflix that by the time you stopped watching, you hadn’t noticed that it was completely dark in your apartment? Or the time you were watching a funny video on your phone as you were walking through a busy street, only to be reminded of reality after you ran into a trashcan?
Or…
You were given a task and you became so hyper-focused on answering that question that you literally did not see a person in a gorilla suit walk in, beat their chest, and walk out?
How many passes were there again?
This happens all the time.
Our brains are wired to attune to what we deem as important. This is pertinent, isn’t it? If we could not focus on a task, we would never get anything done.
That’s obvious, I get it.
But the problem arises when we set our attention so much to one item or aspect of our environment that the thing we’re attuning to is given greater value and meaning than it probably deserves.
Let’s imagine that you were reprimanded by your boss for a mistake you made. You took a 15 minute tongue lashing, in front of all your colleagues, before the boss ran out of breath and let you get back to work. Once your boss leaves the room, all of your colleagues come to your side, offering their condolences, sharing stories of similar experiences, and overall, providing words of encouragement.
This kind of interaction happens to all of us, in many different contexts. We generally don’t forget an interaction like that. We all make mistakes. We all have to face it at some point. The problem arises when we continue to keep our attention to the interaction.
It’s hard not to solely focus on an interaction that made us feel utterly humiliated and ashamed. But it was one part of the whole event. Attuning only to the interaction with your boss leaves no space for our minds to realize that immediately afterwards, your colleagues surrounded you with support. It becomes this black hole, where everything is sucked into the gravity of that moment, and nothing else has meaning outside of it.
This is how tunnel vision works. It leaves no space for other explanations. It is how you (want to) see it. The problem isn’t inherently the meaning you made from it. That’s a product of the problem. The problem lies within what we choose to focus on and what we are intentionally or unintentionally leaving out.
If we based our perceptions, mood, and worth on the interaction we had with the boss, what else is to be expected besides creating a negative schema of ourselves? But if we step back a moment and see that interaction within it’s entire context, we can gain more meaning:
- I have great peers and colleagues. Besides my boss, I have an environment that is responsive to when something bad happens to me.
- They’ve were chewed out by this boss as well
- I made a mistake and then experienced a reaction that was probably not equitable to the mistake.
- Time to move on.
I see this daily in my practice. I work with the clinically depressed and anxious. They have been attending to one aspect of their reality and giving it a greater (and generally negative) meaning. Due to biological, environmental, and interpersonal factors, they spend years creating more and more meaning from singular events and thoughts. This is a slippery slope. These moments become the whole story and not part of the larger, ever growing story.
It’s a hard cycle to break when this is how you’ve been seeing the world. They don’t choose one day to see the world from a narrow perspective. Like good habits, this bad habit has to be practiced and maintained.
Depressed and anxious people are not the only ones who do this.
We all do.
How often do you do this in your life? Why do you do it? What purpose or function does it serve you?
“…a whole is comprised of parts, and all those parts are necessary to achieve the whole. In addition, the effect of the whole form cannot be achieved by simply describing the individual parts it holds” — Keith Yates
When you’re ready to challenge yourself, please feel free to read my older articles outlining cognitive distortions (tunneling your vision is a way we distort reality!).
Cognitive Distortions and impact on emotions and behaviors
When you’re ready to practice seeing the whole, check out:
Radical Acceptance — How to accept life as it really is and make meaning
