Mind Science.

A few years ago I visited a psychologist to talk about my divorce and other things in life. I had mentioned that one thing I was struggling with slightly was anxiety. He immediately said “above all other things going on with you, including your divorce, let’s tackle the anxiety issues first.”

The point of addressing the anxiety was that he knew I would continue to struggle with the other things until I dealt with the anxiety. He had me commit to eight weeks of sessions. I did that and I’m glad I did.

In our first session he asked me “how do you deal with your anxiety today and in the past?” I proceeded to discuss all the marvelous things I knew and used to deal with anxiety. Once I finished my 15-minute declaration, he immediately responded “now, I want you to unlearn everything you know about anxiety. We’re going to start over.”

Gotta say I was taken back a little from this comment. I had 15 years of experience in dealing with generalized anxiety, some panic attacks and so on. I never used medicine to deal with anxiety, which is something I was pretty proud of. I felt I had been able to “cope” with it pretty well, functioning in business and personal life pretty well.

In the next few sessions I began to understand better why I needed to “unlearn.” He taught me the science of the brain. Why I felt the way I did at times. Why I had anxiety to begin with. That my brain is functioning the way it’s supposed to in reacting to alarming circumstances.

To disclaim this post, I’m not a licensed therapist and you should talk to a professional if you struggle with anxiety or panic attacks or depression. But what I can say is that better understanding why your brain does what it does will help you. It helped me.

In a nutshell, the reality is that we humans are totally outside of our natural, created environment these days. We’re designed to watch our back for any attacks from nature. If we lived closer to our natural elements, snakes would be around, storms would be closer, bears and big cats would be lurking and it would be much harder to hunt/gather food. Our minds are designed to be working full-time. We’re designed to fight.

But in today’s civilized world, the bombardment of information and the convenience of technology, we find ourselves not really fighting with tangible things. After a long day of work, we escape with shows on the couch, feeding our minds with more information. Seemingly relaxing, it’s not. We’re becoming passive and comfortable. I mean, we don’t even let ourselves get cold or too hot anymore.

All the while, there are more intangible fears lurking. Finances, health, emotional drama, relationships and everything else that is more mental vs. physical. The more comfort we achieve physically, the more distant our alert mind becomes from physical threats and turns to intangible threats. The threats of bankruptcy, divorce, what Google says about our symptoms, what people say about you and comparing ourselves with others.

We end up just being worried for no reason. We may not even realize we are worrying until random anxiety or panic attacks rise up. Then, we wonder why and can’t seem to put our finger on the situation. This causes more panic and we think we are going out of our mind. But, we’re not.

Our minds were designed to fight. But we can’t see what we fight anymore. It’s good to understand the design of our mind better. Why it alerts us. Rest in the fact you are operating as intended.

This video is not necessarily about anxiety, but rather gives good insight to how the brain functions. Hope you enjoy.