Our brain's automatic pilot and true freedom
Creating space between trigger and reaction
-6 min reading time-
Are we really free?
There was a time when I used to think that if I had enough money, didn't have a boss, and was able to travel and be anywhere I wanted whenever I wanted, I would be free. But curiously, at a time when I had practically it all, I still found myself walking in circles, experiencing a similar kind of suffering over and over again.
As the saying goes, "wherever you go, there you are". We can try to escape places, people, and situations, but we can never escape ourselves - our own mind.
Bob Marley knew better when he wrote redemption song.
“Emancipate yourselves from mental slavery, none but ourselves can free our minds..”
In this song, he is essentially saying that we have enslaved our own minds, and freedom from this enslavement cannot come from the outside.
How our brain and mind are wired
The limbic part of our brain, also known as our emotional brain, is responsible for how we perceive and relate to ourselves, others, and the world. This part is shaped by the environment we grow in and the inputs we receive from our parents/caregivers from the moment we are born until our teenage years. It is almost if like for each belief we hold about ourselves, the world, and how we exist in relation to others, there is, figuratively speaking, a neuronal connection for that.
Neuronal connections are formed by repetition.
Imagine you're about to walk into the wild nature. On your first time walking in, you're likely to step on leaves and cut out some plants along the way. However, the more you repeat the same route, the clearer the trail becomes, allowing you to travel faster, without having to think about it or work for it. Eventually, you're unlikely to ever consider walking through the wild nature again, as it is slower and more challenging.
This is exactly how our brain works. According to the inputs we receive from the environment we grow in, and the emotional resources (or lack thereof) we had, our brain starts shaping neuronal paths to trigger fast and automatic behaviors and responses to inputs we get from the world.
Our automatic responses are shaped with the intent to be a protective mechanism to keep us safe - mostly in relation to the experiences we had in our early years. The problem is that as we grow older, our brain doesn't automatically update our perceptions and responses to new contexts we find ourselves in, which ends up causing us pain and suffering.
When I understood this, I realized that the way to stop experiencing the same pattern of painful experiences was less about controlling the world, and more about understanding what triggered my mind and changing my reactions to it.
Automatic Pilot
We can be the smartest and well-meaning person. We could have had the best education, teachers, and resources available. But at the end of the day, without self-awareness, our frontal cortex (rational brain) is a servant to our limbic brain (emotional brain). When overwhelmed by stress or powerful emotions, we react not from "thinking" but from our automatic mechanisms hidden in our emotional brain. When we act from a triggered state, we are not free.
The psychoanalyst Emanuel Aragão explains this clearly. He says that most of our automatic behaviour and responses are learned in pre-verbal phase, in other words, before we can even talk. As he describes in following example:
Imagine you're sitting on your bed and then you realize you're thirsty. At this moment, you consider the several options for action. You walk to the fridge and think whether you want to drink water, soda, or juice. You ponder whether to have it now, in 10 minutes after using the bathroom, or to save it for later. But during this entire process, there's one thing you never think about, even for an instant: how to walk. This is an automation of our brain. You don't think about putting one foot in front of the other; you just do it.
When we get triggered, that's how most of our emotional responses unfold (when we're unaware of them), just like computers programmed in our childhoods. When not governed by conscious awareness, our minds tend to run on autopilot.
The first time I challenged my brain
Developing awareness and understanding of the self is crucial in the process of deconditioning and creating more accurate perceptions of ourselves and the world. However, just thinking and talking about it isn't enough. We need to directly challenge our beliefs and emotional processes in practice. When we do so, we experience different inputs from the environment, creating new neuronal connections in our brain, hopefully overriding the old ones.
If you've been reading the previous issues, you know that some of the unconscious beliefs I've been working on were that I was "hard to love," I was "too much," or "not good enough." Which showed up mostly in how I reacted in close relationships.
When those painful beliefs were activated, one of my trigger responses would look like this: I would close myself, create physical distance and shut off communication. The pattern was: Isolate myself from the person that triggered me as my head would spin the words “fuck this shit, I don't need you anyway, I'm great on my own”. This is how my brain worked to “protect” myself from the “threat".
My body would give me uncomfortable signals, which I would completely ignore. I would hold it in and let it "pass". But the reality is that until you pay attention to it, it never really passes. This only generates more unconscious responses that ended up hurting myself and others.
Creating space between trigger and response
It was a little over three years ago, but I remember as if it were yesterday the first time I consciously challenged my automatic pilot. Ouff, it was one of the scariest things I've ever done.
At the time, I had been working with my new therapist for a while already. She helped me identify my hidden beliefs, pattern responses to when they were triggered, and more importantly, how ineffective they had been in achieving what I really wanted out of those situations, which was to feel seen and repair connections.
The first time I consciously tried a new response (in other words, when I chose to walk into the wild nature when there was a super fast clear trail just by my side) went like this:
My partner had said something that made me feel hurt. I don't really remember the context or what was it about. Looking back it was probably something really small seen from the outside, but that doesn't really matter, because it's not about how our rational minds judges it, it's about how our emotional memory in our body responds to it.
But what I do remember was my reaction. The moment I felt triggered and hurt, I left the room without saying a word. I closed the door, entered another room, and closed that door too. In my mind echoed the words: "Fuck off, I don't need you anyway, I'm great on my own." When I was about to lie down, determined to stay there all night alone, the voice of my therapist popped up in my mind:
-What are you really feeling? (They say that when you start listening your therapist on your mind is because the therapy is working LOL).
At first, I didn't know how to answer that myself. Part of me, which I'm gonna call the 'protective’ part, just wanted to keep going on automatic mode, lie in bed, and shut down. But another part, which I'm gonna call the ‘aware’ part, had learned that this wasn't really the best for me. This response wouldn't get me what I really wanted.
-I guess I'm feeling rejected, not good enough, small, unloved - replied the protective part.
Together with my therapist during our sessions, I had gone through all the patterns when negative perceptions of myself are triggered, so this wasn't really new information for me. I just needed to say it to myself, and in the space created between trigger and reaction, remember that this wasn't about the present moment.
Then the aware part says: “Great. Good step. So, what do you want to do now?”
-I just want to disappear. - The protective part answers.
-hun… do you really believe this is the best course of action to get what you want?
-Not sure. Fuck off.
-What are our options? Roll them out to me. - asks the aware part.
-I can go ahead, shut down, and keep repeating the same pattern I've been repeating for my entire life and to this day, which still haven't proved effective, or I can try to do something different, like taking a moment, breath, going back there, telling him how I really feel in a calm way and ask for what I need: a talk and a hug. - says the protective part.
-Great! Which one do you think you should choose?
-The second option.. but it's SO SCARY! I don't know if I can do it... - Literally in this moment, my body was frozen. I was flooded with fear. My brain was literally screaming at me: “You can't go back there and talk about your feelings! You'll get so hurt! You'll be expelled from the tribe, and die alone eaten by lions.” This is how my brain had been wired in my early years.
The aware part reassures me:
-I know it's scary... It's our first time. But we trust our therapist, right? And we want to get different results right? And we are brave, right?
-Yeh, we are brave… - I reply to myself in my mind, a bit unsure of my bravery at this moment.
Just to be clear, in case you got confused, this conversation was all going on in my head between me and myself. This is called self-talk, an important resource we learn in therapy.
As I'm standing in the room, I turn my way around. I open the door, walk to the other room, open the second door, sit down and say:
-Hey, I would like to tell you how I'm feeling.
His response was the most unexpected thing ever to my brain. He said “Ok, tell me.” He heard me calmly, we talked through it, perceptions were clarified, he hugged me, I felt safe. I felt seen and connection was repaired.
*BLING - A new neuronal connection had just been formed in my brain.
I won't say that experimenting with new responses is an easy feat. Surely, it isn't at first. The few minutes of self-talk I had, plus the action I decided to take, drained every drop of energy from my body. Figuratively speaking, it feels like trying to slow down and turn a truck coming at high speed with no brakes.
It was also scary because, at that moment, I decided to risk everything I knew about emotional safety up to that point in my life. I'm glad I did, because by trying a different response, I received different input, bringing me closer to what I really wanted to achieve at that moment.
The good news is that the more we practice, the easier it gets. What at first took so much mental effort and energy has now become the obvious course of action for me. It's still scary sometimes, but I've built enough of a track record to prove to myself that it's still the go-to choice.
Developing awareness
A great tip that the psychoanalyst Emanuel Aragão shares about how to identify our triggers and reaction patterns is to reflect on the question:
How do I feel when.. (this happens)?
Identifying the "feeling" is about what we feel in our body, what kind of physical sensations come up for us, as well as what perceptions show up in our mind about ourselves, others, and the world.
Once we're able to identify these, we learn to be aware when we're experiencing a trigger in the moment, breathe in, create a little space which we can use to measure our perceptions against data from reality, and assess if what we're experiencing is actually a threat or just a reaction memory from the past.
Eckhart Tolle writes that the distinction between automatic mechanism and conscious free will can be illustrated by the difference between punching a wall with your fist in a fit of reactive rage, and mindfully saying to yourself:
-I have so much anger in me, I really want to punch this wall right now.
Or even more consciously:
-My mind tells me I should punch the wall.
The latter mind-states give you the option of not striking the wall, without which there is no choice and no freedom - just a fractured hand and a head full of regret. Choice implies consciousness.
When we notice what is going on inside us, we allow ourselves to feel what we're feeling. Most of our conscious brain is used to focus on the outside world: getting along with others and making plans for the future. But it does not help us manage ourselves.
Becoming aware of our inner experience and learning to befriend what is going on inside ourselves is a way to create space so we can create more positive and effective responses in our emotional brain.
It takes effort and bravery to update our system, but I believe that's real freedom.
With love,
Nat
P.S.: If you have any thoughts, questions, or just feel like sharing your experience, please do! The point of all this is to create conversations from which we can grow together.