Our lower brain is designed to look for danger. God gave us the lower brain to keep us safe and it takes its job very seriously. So during this time which is very unknown, a lot of things are being brought to your attention as danger. And your brain is trying to get you to safety. Here is how it gets you to safety:
1. Avoids pain:
Right now there are things that are happening that will easily be interpreted into negative emotion. And your brain doesn’t like to feel negative emotion.
There is a lot of uncertainty which may allow for you to feel anxious or worried. Plans that were made are now changing and that may allow for disappointment and frustration. You are by yourself more and so you may feel alone or even worse isolated. You may have lost your job and so feeling nervous or confused about your future.
Again your lower brain doesn’t like this.
The reality is our life is filled with 50% negative emotion and 50% positive emotion. So during this stay at home experience we are going to have a 50-50 experience. We need to get used to encouraging our lower brain to just feel the negative emotions that are there.
The problem is if there is not enough danger around you your brain may try and create or make-up danger. So if you’re by yourself a lot which your lower brain interprets as being more vulnerable to attack, you may notice that your brain will heighten things that are normally not so negative so that you will try and be around other people and not be left in such a vulnerable situation. But what your lower brain doesn’t know is that the safest place for you to be right now is by yourself.
So take this example, you’re by yourself and you send a text and the person you sent it to doesn’t respond to you right away. Your brain will turn that into a story about how there’s something wrong with you or that the person doesn’t love you, or create an entire story about a text being sent and not responded to right away. Be onto yourself. See all the ways your brain is showing you dangerous things that are NOT really dangerous.
2.Looks for pleasure
OK so this is where your lower brain is really good at getting a dopamine hit. And your brain especially wants to feel good when it is feeling negative emotion. And if we’re honest, being at home alone and not doing our normal things we may not be getting some normal dopamine hits that we are used to having.
Be onto yourself here because we can get caught up in instant gratification. This is when I find myself playing a game on my phone just so that I can win. Maybe online shopping does it for you, or social media, or maybe overeating. Some may struggle with masturbation, or sex, or binging. Understanding how your brain will do whatever it takes to get its hit is so important for you to understand. This is not your fault, your brain is wired this way.
You don’t have to give into the quick hits.
We have to train it for delayed gratification. The way you do that is plan for a healthy dopamine hit and let your brain know it is coming. I like to tell my brain we will get a hit tomorrow when we go to Andy’s and get frozen custard. Other dopamine hits for me are serving others, working out, texting or calling a friend, getting a treat, creating something or baking something.
It would be so good for you to have a list of healthy dopamine hits for you and practice them regularly.
3.Be efficient with your thinking
You have a lot of thoughts that you have thought so often they are unconscious. You are not even aware that you think them. It is those thoughts that run on auto-pilot. Those thoughts create certain feelings and from those feelings you take certain actions.
I like to call those well-worn bike paths. You have a lot of those in your brain.
If you think those thoughts regularly it is hard to go in and think something new. So if you are someone who normally thinks things are hard then it would be very efficient for your brain to think that now about having to stay at home. If you are someone that thinks about the worst case scenario then it would be easy for you to think that way now. Often I work with clients and when I ask them why they think that they normally respond with, “I always have thought this way.”
During this time of staying home be onto the ways that you normally think and what that efficient thinking is really creating for you. You may not like some of your unconscious thoughts. When you become aware of them, you may decide you want to start trying to lay some new bike paths. Your brain doesn’t like new bike paths but that is the way to work on taking more actions towards the life you truly want, and not living on autopilot.
Also because your brain likes to be efficient it doesn’t want to do anything that seems like it would take brain effort. So trying something new right now would be another thing your brain would be totally against because it doesn’t want to expend energy thinking new things.
Being aware of how your lower brain works and how it is wired for our survival may help you right now as you’re navigating this new season of coronavirus and staying home and an unknown future.
Hang in there friends,
Angie
