Monitoring Our Worries
I woke up at three in the morning and immediately started to replay in my mind a challenge that my friend was having. Pretty quickly I realized that my worry was a waste of time because: 1) it wasn’t my problem to solve, 2) no one was asking me to solve it, and 3) even if I could solve it, 3 a.m. wasn’t the time to be working on this.
Despite the ironclad logic that worry was unproductive, my mind kept tripping to the scenario and the angst of it all. I probably wasted a half hour replaying the scenario before I remembered what I already know – that going over a negative thought or rehearsing in my mind a negative event only serves to strengthen the neural pathways that repeat the negative thoughts and accompanying bad feelings a.k.a. suffering.
Building Thought Pathways
Current neuroscience research demonstrates the neuroplasticity of the brain – meaning that throughout our lives our brains have the ability to change. Each thought creates a neural pathway in the brain. Thoughts that are repeated are reinforced. The neural pathways of thoughts that aren’t repeated get trimmed away.
This got me thinking about my love of trading personal stories with friends. Part of what creates intimacy for me is the sharing of our life’s ups and downs – and the empathy and encouragement we give each other. But I recently noticed something I’d never seen before. While I was sharing a story with a friend it felt good to get her empathy. But later that night I noticed I felt worse about the situation, rather than better. I shared the story with another friend – and noticed the same thing. It felt good to TELL the story, but shortly after I felt MORE upset than I did before I told the story. I couldn’t escape the conclusion that telling and retelling the story was making me feel worse – every time. I had to ask myself – what is the point of retelling the story? Why keep reliving this?
Processing Emotions
I’m not a fan of keeping emotions in. Repressing emotions causes a slew of other problems. It seems the middle ground is to feel emotions in the moment – notice them and watch them as the emotions move through me. But once the emotion has run its course – it’s best if I try to let it go. My goal is stop the instant replay. Feel it in real time – and then let it go.
The trick is to notice when I’m replaying a disturbing scenario in my head. As soon as I notice this I actively engage my attention on my breathing – keeping my attention there while I scan my body for physical tension. Wherever I find tension I try to release it. Anytime I catch myself wandering back into thinking about the negative scenario I return my focus to my breathing and begin again to refocus my thinking.
Instant replay is great for watching sports and great for learning important life lessons. But once those lessons are extracted, it’s time to move on.
~Sue Hardman-Conklin
Questions to Ponder:
1. After you retell a story about a difficult situation, how do you feel immediately after you replay it? Relief? Worse?
2. How do you feel later? Are your emotions heightened, or lessened by retelling?
What an interesting way to look at negative situations! I am usually the listener and can see that happens.
Thanks, Sue.
Thanks for your comment Heather. It is an interesting phenomena to observe – with compassion and understanding of why we do this. I’m hoping I can do it less now that I’m aware of it. Thanks for taking the time to comment.
For 22 years I have been a practitioner of Emotional Fredom Technique also know. as EFT or Tapping. It is a very simple but powerful tool to use for yourself or with a therapist, to Change The Story. You do this by tapping on a series of acupuncture points on your face and upper body while relating all the negative feelings and thoughts about the event. Check out http://www.karenledger.ca and you can download a free tapping guide of EFT on A Page. Or email me.
Thanks Karen for mentioning EFT. I’ve taken a one day course in tapping, so I’m a little familiar with it. It’s nice to have a variety of techniques and to be reminded of them. Thanks for the resource!