, 8 min read
Most of us are Operating on Autopilot...
Our brain #1
Something that never ceases to amaze me is the fact that we are all born with brains, that we can spend the rest of our lives getting to know. We’re born with a brain that we don’t know or understand, so we have to put in the work to become self-aware and get to know ourselves and what makes us tick.
To explain further, when you’re a child, so much is instilled into you:
- survival mechanisms, or
- responses to trauma, or
- problems, or hardships.
Traumatic events like losses, but everything that you’re going through in your developmental ages is affecting how you’re going to respond to things for the rest of your life, unless you can become aware of it and work to change it.
The coolest thing is that you can use your prefrontal cortex, you can use the conscious part of your brain, the thinking, conscious part of your brain, to gradually and slowly look at all the other parts of your brain, or to figure out your behaviors and your motivations for things.
Backtracking thoughts and feelings
To constantly ask yourself daily:
“Why did I just say that? Why did I just respond that way? Am I feeling triggered right now? Is my nervous system super, super dysregulated right now?”
Like, what was the motivation behind why I said it in that specific way, and how does it tie to my childhood? And I’m pretty sure you can just tie most things to your childhood. But daily, daily asking yourselves these things, asking yourselves, like, asking yourself why you’re continuing to make the same decisions or, or just decisions, why are you, like, what is making you operate the way that you are operating right now? Are you operating in survival mode? Are you, like, I don’t know, there’s so many examples. I think my brain is kind of going a million miles an hour right now. This is something that just never ceases to, like, completely mystify me and amaze me and make me extremely excited. I think about it a lot.
It’s also super cool how you can go deeper and deeper and deeper with one, like, tracing it back. Like, imagine you’re tracing something back. You’re like,
“Okay, I just said this. Why did I say that?”
Well, I was feeling angry. You’re like,
“Well, why was I feeling angry?”
Well, they said something here, and it completely, like, triggered, like, an extremely sensitive area in me. And you’re like,
“Well, okay, so you’re probably more hurt than angry.”
And also,
“What did they trigger in you? Where did that come from?”
And then you trace that back to childhood. And then you’re like,
“Well, where in childhood specifically did that happen?”
And then you can trace it to a specific memory of somebody who hurt you or said something extremely damaging that stuck with you. And then, like, you’re like,
“Well, how did I feel then when I was a child when that happened?”
I don’t know, you just totally trace it back farther and farther and deeper and deeper, and you can work through it.
Thinking mode
So what I do now, is not only do I constantly question why I say the things I say, why I react the way I react, how I’m operating, what my motivations are, what is the driving force behind the way that I operate in the world. I do all of that, and then in addition to that, I’m constantly challenging it and rewriting it in my head. And a lot of that you can do, like, with your thoughts, like, talking to yourself in your head with your conscious mind.
The other way you can do it is, which is probably more, more effective, is putting into practice doing the opposite or the healthier thing. And often, if you’re generally unhealthy, doing the healthy thing can often feel extremely uncomfortable, extremely unnatural to you, extremely vulnerable, and it feels like you’re forcing yourself.
Caveat
I have to say right now, now this is not, like, advice coming from a therapist or a trained person, because I’m not sure what a therapist or a psychologist would say about that. I’ve done a lot of my own research, but I think, therapy would have a more gentle approach, whereas I’m like constantly forcing myself into discomfort, but the rewards have been insane. Like, so much change has happened since I’ve put into practice, responding to things differently, being vulnerable when I want to go on the attack or the defense. Usually, I’m on the defense. Be more open about my feelings when the desire is to be as closed off as possible.
I think all of this is not news to a lot of you. I think this is just kind of like a, “Duh, no Sherlock” kind of thing, but I think for other people, it is kind of like a, it’s kind of a push, like, something, a nudge to consider something, because I think a lot of us, and the thing that bothers me is that a lot of people are operating.
Operating mode
A lot of people are operating from all of those instincts, those initial impulsive gut reactions to things, like,
“Oh, you said that. I’m going to respond this way,”
They don’t question it. And they think, like, that is them. That’s not really you. I mean, it is, but like, if you took the time, if you take the time to start looking inwards and questioning all of those reactions and instincts and gut impulses to, like, just act, and all of those things are, like, code that’s been written into your brain when you were a child.
All of these things are learned things, usually to protect yourself. And a lot of the things that you learn to protect yourself as a child are harming you actively in adulthood. You might think that you’re protecting yourself as an adult, and if you actually look at your life, it’s probably often harming you.
For example, if you’re choosing not to be vulnerable with people out of self-protection and fear of rejection, you won’t have close people in your life. That’s harming you.
It is the more scary and vulnerable thing to open up, but at the same time, it’s worth it, because then you have close connections with other people, and they do make you feel safe. And yeah, you’re taking the risk, but, like, you also have to choose that, to see that taking the risk is better than living your life in survival mode.
Again, there’s so many cases where this might not apply, like, for example, if you experience, like, massive, massive trauma, I encourage you a million times to go to actual therapy with, like, a trauma-informed therapist, instead of trying to, like, force yourself through, like, immense discomfort. But for those of us who are, like, functioning, unhealthy people, I think this message is kind of for you.
I think just start questioning and getting to know why you are the way you are, and don’t just believe that, don’t act out of the most impulsive places in your mind. And I’m not really saying that you’re impulsive. I’m just saying that every reaction you have that’s, like, the immediate first reaction, it’s often coming from a specific place from childhood that you learned in childhood.
Subconscious
Anyway, I think I’m kicking a dead horse or whatever that phrase is. And I think, I said what I wanted to say, that a lot of people are not aware of the fact that their subconscious is impacting them every day and controlling them, and they’re not aware of it. Or things like self-protection is controlling them, and they’re not aware of it. Or overriding things like shame and fear, those things are controlling them, and they’re not aware of it.
Our brain #2
It’s so fascinating. And let’s see if I can go all the way back to the first thing I said, like, the most amazing thought is that you are born with a brain, that you have to get to know. You cannot just operate using the brain that you have. You have to, like, dig through it, dig through it, do the questioning, like, do the soul-searching, do the journaling, go to therapy, talk with people, and most of all, introspect and try to just be introspective versus casting blame on everyone around you, saying, like,
“Oh, this person triggered me. You did this, like, you’re triggering this in me, like, you’re making me angry.”
A lot of the time, it’s just a reaction that’s within you from a trigger. Okay, kicking the dead horse. All right, I’m going to be done. I’ve wanted to share that one for a long time.
Concussion
Other news, I have a concussion. I got a concussion, like, September 15th, and it’s been two months now, past two months of concussion symptoms, and these concussion symptoms have gotten very, very, very, very, very bad at times where I can’t function at all.
Then it lifts and gets a little better, and then it goes down again, and then it lifts. It’s kind of like two steps backward, one step forward, honestly. But, I’m making progress, but I guess that’s important to know because I’ve been wanting to get YouTube videos out really badly. I really want to do, like, my year recap, and I’ve wanted to post videos about my trip to Europe. And I’m not able to edit videos or do screen time, which is really sad.
So hopefully I can start uploading more in the next month.