Be In Charge of Your Mind

By Dr. Evan Parks—Two people can look at one event from two completely different perspectives.  Just ask any two people what they think about the speech of a politician during a campaign.  On second thought, maybe you shouldn’t ask!  Just as people have different points of view, a person can look at her own internal experience from two different perspectives.  We can either be in charge of what is happening in our brain or we can be carried along by the activity of the brain.  Those who are in charge have harmony and balance in their life and the ability to deal with reality, the key characteristics of mental health.

We all know what it is like when fear has taken over and is running the show.  Fear is driving the brain, which is coming from the brain stem, the most protected area of brain.  The brain stem helps to regulate basic bodily functions such as heart rate, breathing, and our level of alertness. When fear is in charge, the other areas of our brains that could possibly help bring some sense of meaning and understanding (limbic system) or even clear logical thinking (cortex) to counter our fear are overrun.  The middle of the night when you are hardly able to think is a great time for fear to get unleashed as you start to worry about some issue in your life.  Regardless of how dark things look at 2 AM, they always seem different when the sun rises and you have breakfast to eat.

Worry is one issue that seems to be a universal struggle for people.  There are people who have a worry condition called Obsessive Compulsive Disorder.  What is interesting about these individuals is that what they worry about and what healthy people worry about is pretty much the same. There is no unique fear that a person with OCD has that makes their worry so extreme.  What a person with OCD does is worry about average everyday things to an extreme.  For them, worry and anxiety go from being a temporary state to an ongoing trait; there is no conductor in charge of the orchestra of the brain and emotions are in control.  (For more information on the orchestra concept, read the previous blog by clicking here.) Anxiety runs the show until the conductor steps back up to the podium and begins to direct the activity the brain.

There is a lot that can be explained about how a person either learns to be in charge or not of their brain, but for now, I just want to describe what it is like to be in charge.  Anyone, even a person who has a significant mental health disorder, can learn how to be in charge of his own life.

Noticing

An essential quality that we must develop is the ability to pay attention to what is going on within our own heart and life.  We have needs, wishes, attitudes, beliefs, values, urges, behavior, emotions, memories, hopes and a conscience that guide and direct all that we do.  There is a lot of noise in our lives that we will need to quiet in order to effectively pay attention on an ongoing basis to these internal activities and states.  We are experts at creating distractions and self-deception, blocking out what we think, feel, remember, and experience in order to protect ourselves from what might upset us or threaten our ego.

Labeling

When we notice what is happening, we need to put a name on what it is we are experiencing.  What we name, we can tame.  Over the years of working as a psychologist, I cannot recount how many times I have helped people put a name to what they thought, felt, experienced, sensed, feared, recalled, or dreaded.  This simple activity is powerful because it helps our brain to begin to understand what is happening.

Responsibility

With everything that happens in our life, we have the ability to look back at what has happened and learn from that experience.  We can always benefit from understanding what happened and what can be done differently in the future.  When we are responsible, we do not blame ourselves, blames others, and or blame our circumstances.  We simply look at what has happened, look at our role in what happened, and make changes for the future.  The opposite of responsibility is seen in the person who makes the same poor choices again and again.  They either do not look back on what has happened to learn from the past, or they do not see their own role in the problems that continue to occur.  They blame others, themselves, or their circumstances, and always seem surprised at the disappointing outcome of their poor choices for partners, jobs, homes, cars, investments, and friends.

Hope, Love, and Trust

The key indicator of a person who is in charge of her life and able to manage the many different urges, memories, emotions, drives, needs, wishes, thoughts, impulses, and sensations that she experiences are the core principles that she has chosen to live by.  These core principles serve as the “musical score” that the orchestra conductor is following, bringing all the different aspects of the orchestra sections (areas of the brain) together to make harmonious, pleasing music.   When we are guided by hope, love, and trust, we have the ability to rise above the extremes of chaos and rigidity that can occur in our brain and see the big picture of what is important, where we are going, and who we need to become.

The opposite of hope, love, and trust, is fear, selfishness, and isolation.  When we lack hope, fear is in charge.  Fear is the fuel of emotional pain and physical pain.  Without love running our life, we become self-focused.  We live thinking about ourselves first and too often choose the worst way possible to meet our needs.  Without trust and dependence on others, we attempt to be self-reliant.  We come up with our own rules to follow and miss the opportunity to build and be in community with others.

When we recognize that we are able to direct the activity of the brain and the actions of our life, we put ourselves in the best position possible to ensure that the brain creates a life worth living, one that is harmonious and balanced.