Life with My Unruly Brain
For me, focus is a skill that darts in and out of my mind’s frame like a squirrel. Some moments it is there and still, but mostly it’s on the run. We live in a distracted world, my friends. My brain won’t get in line when I need it to, and it goes all unruly like that squirrel whenever I come into contact with devices.
Even before home computers and cell phones invaded our lives, I was prone to battling my brain for control (This opens another thought stream entirely, about Who is the I that is battling??) The best example I can think of to explain this is how I feel when a peculiar physical illness or pain strikes me. I can be the most focused, balanced person, executing my To Do list with efficiency and order, and then I am blindsided with an acute pain or a subtle awareness of something I recognize as wooziness or congestion, and Unruly Brain takes charge, firing off all kinds of potential reasons that I am in mortal danger.
I have long been afflicted with anxiety and all the what-if’s that characterize it. I had plenty of motivation to change my way of being and so I started down the wellness path. I was convinced that if I just learned the secret to unlocking my brain’s AWOL domino pattern, perhaps I could once and for all knock out anxiety. What I have learned after years of effort, is that there are ways for me to arrest the feelings once they’ve started, but what starts the chain of catastrophic thoughts in the first place is still a mystery to me. Is it an autonomic response based on a deeply embedded childhood memory that made me feel unsafe? Is it a fluctuating glucose level, or an undiagnosed thyroid condition? I read about a man who had a tumor on his adrenal gland and caused him anxiety provoking sensations. Maybe I am ultrasensitive to barometric pressure. Or planetary gravitational forces affecting my energetic body? I am telling you, I have been down many a rabbit hole, trying to grasp at the mystery of me, yet ultimately I may as well try the sport of barehanded fishing. My efforts fall short and my brain is free to invent more stories. Usually the symptoms that come on so suddenly and send me for a loop are likely to dissipate on their own, leaving me free to relax until the next bout. For souls who have never wrangled with these episodes of exhausting experiences, I imagine it’s pretty easy to judge me - “Maybe you need to exercise more,” and “Do you ever think maybe you drink too much coffee?” I project on others that they see someone in me who just needs to relax and stop worrying so much. Ha! If only.
The pandemic years combined with my social isolation provided the perfect time for me to dig into root causes of my anxiety problem, and while I can not report a complete cessation of episodes, there have been successes! I have learned a lot about how a human brain works with its neural networks and why it gets stuck in loops. The knowledge helps the intellectual part of me that wants to understand the whys of an unruly brain. Our brains afterall are problem-solving machines, always in search of a story to explain the why’s. More importantly though, I learned there are exercises I can do which help me either prevent anxiety, or alleviate symptoms more efficiently. The exercises are where my power lies.
For a variety of reasons, we human beings of modern times have unknowingly cultivated poor habits that have left our bodies and minds somewhat disconnected. The reason (I learned this first-hand) why we become unhealthy is because we leave negative energy trapped inside our bodies. Consider an animal in the wild who freezes when sensing danger nearby. Once the threat has passed, they will often give a big shake before going back to grazing. In this way they are able to release pent up energy rather than leaving the adrenaline to sit inside them. Shaking is nature’s way to process it through the system. People, though… we negate the urge to do that and instead hold onto it until later on, when we can blow up at our co-worker or family member in a way that is incongruent to the situation. We never make the connection that the reason we just got angry over something trivial is because of a previous time when we held fear or rage inside of us.
Another way we handle stress that illustrates an inner disconnection is by mindlessly eating. It is all too easy to sit on the sofa at the end of a tiring, TV droning, while we unconsciously polish off a sleeve of cookies, bag of chips or bottle of wine. We simply aren’t paying attention. We fail to tie one behavior to another. We behave in an unconscious way.
For me, the deep dive into my behaviors brought up a lot of awareness around unconscious triggers. Once I became aware of patterns, I could often trace my unwanted behaviors back through a chain of things I would do without even realizing it. And from that point I could begin to intentionally alter the chain in a positive way.
An example of an autonomic response to stress for me was chest breathing. Didn’t even notice it happening. Yet once I recognized it consciously, I realized that sure enough, I was shallow breathing rapidly in the presence of certain people or environments that made me uneasy. This type of reaction can do a number on your body both short-term (initiates other stress responses in the body) and long-term (wear and tear on the central nervous system which can cause other ailments that may go undiagnosed, causing a domino effect of damage.) Simply learning that by consciously taking control of my breath and breathing patterns (ie, in for 4 seconds, out for 6 or 7) meant I could stop the cascade of stress responses in the moment and gain control over my anxiety, at least mitigating the feelings of discomfort.
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Occasionally I ask myself, where would I be if I had never learned any of these essential tools that bring me out of my head and into my body… I realize that I might be in a lot worse shape right now, maybe chasing down doctors and medicines to try and help regulate this body that was beyond my control. It has been worth every rabbit hole and hour of pouring over studies and articles where I only barely understood every fourth word, or chasing after names of experts and resources that might shed light in some way.
I am intentional about wrangling my old friend, Anxiety; now at least, I have ways of communicating with him in a language he seems to understand. It’s better than the old days when he’d hide behind a curtain and jump out at me any old time and send me reeling backwards on my butt. I prefer this situation I have created. I haven’t completely given up on going our separate ways; I recognize that we’ve been together a long time and maybe fighting him isn’t helping either of us. Maybe I just need to figure out a way to sit with him face to face. (It’s a tactic I learned in the rabbit hole known as Self-Compassion.) Self talk is the loudest talk. Judge less, love more. Be kind.
