How to do a life hack for your brain and to work with suffering the fastest way.
Let’s start by giving a brief overview of our brain and what its job is. For us it’s really our own personal supercomputer that is written on by our own experiences.
The number one prime directive of our brain at all times is to help us to avoid suffering. This starts even before birth. We acclimate to the sound of our mother’s voice, heartbeat and smell. We then go on to learn lessons of how to eat, talk, walk, learn to ride a bike, add one plus one and so on. We also learn when my mom makes this face she is happy, sad, angry and so on.
All of this information is stored away in our brain and is laid down to help us operate in an easier way in our future to avoid suffering. We learn to eat better to avoid hunger. We learn to walk because we don’t like our toy being out of reach.
And the brain kicks into gear and offers up different thoughts such as. “try it this way. If I fall down again, I will get up and I will try it a slightly different way and see if that works.”
This is all in service to help us learn, but really what’s happening is it’s helping us learn how to avoid our frustration and suffering.
The suffering is: I can’t reach my toy, I can’t play with my older siblings, I can’t get to my mother or father and I need to learn another way to get there faster.
As we learn how to master tasks, our brain gets rewarded by feeling pleasure and a sense of accomplishment which helps us avoid our suffering.
After we become older, our suffering shifts into not so much our physical limitations and frustrations but more into emotional limitations and frustrations. How do I connect better with my partner? Why is my boss upset with me? Why can’t my coworker understand what I’m saying?
This leaves us to suffer and so then our brain thinks, I know what to do! I will start thinking about things and I’m going to spit out different offers of thoughts: try this with your boss, try this with your partner, maybe I can stop some things so that I can end the suffering. The result is always our brain going into hyperdrive trying to help us understand what happened and then avoid that very thing again in the future.
This is why so often you might notice your brain thinking about things in the past and chewing it over or having anxiety about the future. All of this is in service for the brain to help you avoid suffering.
The thing is you are suffering in the moment and this is where these techniques that I am going to share become more powerful than any thought we can have. We will learn to bypass thought and go right to taking care of suffering.
This is why we need to do our work IN THE MOMENT. It is IN THE MOMENT that we find ourselves upset or suffering.
Nervous System
Overview of the nervous system.
There are many tasks the nervous system must do, however, for our purposes, we are only going to focus on how to master self regulation of our nervous system.
This is a surprisingly easy hack we can use to regulate our nervous system. I am going to invite you to think of it as a young child that lives within us. If you look at young children (infants and toddlers) you know exactly how that child is feeling at any given time. As parents we tune into our child, notice and attend to this need. For example, I recall many times when my oldest was around one, I would try to time going to the grocery store between naps. Well, sometimes this would turn out ok and other times he would be hungry about halfway through shopping. He would start fussing and I would quickly look for a reasonable food item I could give him that would tie him over until we finished and could go home. I would grab a banana or cheerios that he could hold while I would finish as fast as possible. This would usually satisfy his fussing, however, sometimes if he was too hungry he would be overwhelmed and meltdown. Again, I would tend to his needs of being held, etc. During some point of being held during his overwhelm, I could feel his little body give a deep sigh and relax. I had satisfied his need of being seen for what his immediate needs were. When a child receives this, their nervous system sends the message to the rest of their body, “our needs are now taken care of and it is safe to relax”. Take a moment to think of one of your own children. Do you have a memory of them crying and after holding them their little body sighed and deeply relaxed into you?
It is this process that is still very much alive within us as adults. We can bring a deep sigh of relief to our nervous system by giving to ourselves what we need in the moment.
Here are the four steps to hack our system.
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NOTICE
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NAME
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VALIDATE
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PLAN
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Notice
Simply notice that something is here right now. I feel upset or triggered.
2. Name
What is it that I am feeling right now? I am so angry!
Now let’s try to deepen our naming. I am angry because when my partner doesn’t come home when they say they will, this makes me feel as if I am unimportant and that I don’t matter to them.
Now try even deeper – tying it to a past wound.
I feel hurt and abandoned when he does this because it reminds me of how little I was seen/valued by my own parents. That was so painful.
3. Validate
Validate why these feelings are here now.
It makes a lot of sense to me why these feelings showed up.
No wonder my pain showed up when this happened.
4. Plan
Make a plan for when these triggers come up again. How do you want to handle this in the future?
I will self soothe when my partner doesn’t show up. I can tell myself that he is not intending me to feel unimportant. I will check in with my partner to ask if this is his intention. If this keeps happening I will take further action to protect myself from letting him treat me as unimportant.
At this point in the four steps you will easily notice that your body has relaxed and feel comfortable that you have attended to your own needs.
We might have to do this more than once as feelings have often built up. When we take care of one another is right behind it. This is ok and normal and you will find that as you get through these waves of emotions it brings a nice quiet to the body. Remember, even after a long cry, our body goes into a state of deep rest. It is that place of deep rest that we can restore.
