How to Make Sense of What Doesn’t Make Sense
For most of us, when we have a feeling, we can usually point to its “cause,” or at least understand why we might feel frightened, worried, or annoyed. However, there are times when our fears just don’t make sense, and this can be problematic because this can have us questioning our judgement and/or attributing more validity to our worry and anxiety, regardless of whether it makes sense or not.
Therefore, I want to give you information that helps you make sense of the fears that make no sense so that you can continue to trust your judgement and continue apply your best thinking to creating the life you want. To do this we need to understand a little of how our brains process information. For example, the lower 20% of our brain (the limbic system and brain stem) is responsible for triggering certain emotions and reactions, especially around fight or flight. It doesn’t “think,” it just reacts in order to keep us safe. When our eyes pick up something coming at our head, we instinctively duck (without thinking) and this reaction is necessary to avoid injury. This makes sense, and therefore isn’t a problem.
However, when this instinctive part of the brain reacts with anxiety or worry, and the reaction doesn’t make sense, we tend to worry more, which has us going deeper into the lower brain. Unfortunately, what is called for here is not more lower brain activity, but the ability to engage the upper 80% of our brain (the neocortex), because this is the part of the brain that “makes sense” or uses all of our cognitive abilities to understand what is going on.
For example, let’s assume that you were bitten by a dog when you were a child. Chances are that anytime you came into close contact with a dog after that, you would feel anxious. Even if you “knew” that the new dog was friendly and wouldn’t hurt you, your old reactive brain would still be triggering anxiety. At this point, rather than feeling anxious about your anxiety or criticizing yourself for a “silly” reaction and trying to stop feeling worried, you could just say, “Ah, my old reactive brain is trying to keep me safe based upon a past experience. Given that I want to learn to enjoy being around friendly dogs, I can use this situation as an opportunity to retrain that old brain, which will eventually result in the anxiety lessening and even going away. Until then, I know what is going on, and I don’t have to worry about the fact that I’m worried.”
You see, we make sense of the fears that don’t make sense by using the top of the mind to explain our lower brain reaction. This keeps worry and anxiety from being piled upon worry and anxiety, and gives us the opportunity to “feel the fear and do it anyway” (pet the dog, ride on an airplane, look over the rail of a tall building, etc.) until the fear is extinguished.
It’s all about training. As babies we are born with only two fears… the fear of falling and of loud noises. Every other fear is learned. Our job as an adult is to examine the fears we have learned, and determine which we want keep and which we want to change. The part of the brain that is best designed to make this assessment and do the retraining is the neocortex, what I call the “Top of the Mind.” Or, put another way, when things just don’t make sense, let’s make sure we are engaging and trusting the part of the brain whose job it is to “make sense,” versus some old reactive brain that thinks it’s keeping us safe when it is only keeping us frightened and confused.
~ All the best, Dr. Bill