The Conclusion Drawing Machine
The brain is a conclusion drawing machine. It does not believe in our ability to live in uncertainty. It has little faith in ‘we’ll figure it out when we get there’. It abhors ambiguity. It needs answers now, and if good ones cannot be found, it will settle for bad ones.
The brain’s first preference is the correct conclusion. It wants to be right about people, places, and things. It wants to be right about relationships and ideas. This is the golden conclusion we are always striving for.
The brain’s second preference is an incorrect conclusion. We like to close loops in our head. Mysteries are fun when they have answers. So many things in life are either unanswerable, or unanswerable in the moment. We lose sleep worrying about things that have yet to play out. Telling ourselves a lie can help us rest. Believing we have arrived at the truth means no longer having to think about it.
The least favorable preference is coming to no conclusion at all. Like the uncomfortable feeling when you are walking and the next step isn’t where you thought it would be. For our cavemen ancestors who faced threats we have since inoculated against or drove extinct, mysterious situations were where deadly danger dwelt. We are hardwired to have a nagging voice in our head saying ‘figure it out, figure it out. Don’t wait for more information, figure it out now.’


Comparitivitis
Comparitivitis - noun - /kəm-per-I-tə-vī-dəs/
: inflammation in soul caused by thoughts of others successes, particularly in comparison to ours. Psychosomatic disorder. Arises in subject from misconceptions on how ‘they’ve got it over there’. 
Individuals most vulnerable to comparitivitis include infants, toddlers, and those who have difficulty imagining what it is like to be in other people’s shoes.
Symptoms include: (a) endless social media scrolling, (b) “I wish I/we could do/had that” statements, (c) inability to appreciate what one already has, (d) decreased motor function
SEE ALSO: Joneses, keeping up with; First World Problems

​High School is Over
Maybe when we look back on it there is nostalgia but let’s face it, high school was awful. We were in rapidly changing bodies, first discovering what the social world was, and surrounded by others in the same situation.
No longer was there the innocent equality of the prepubescent days, when every kid was just a kid. Now there were rankings, cliques, hierarchies. We spent our days all in the same brick building. Everyone knew everyone, had an opinion on everyone and we had one for them. Hell even everyone’s parents had an opinion on us. We were being watched and judged; ‘No Mistakes’ was the order of the day.
After high school it’s all over. When we become an adult no one cares anymore. We are cast out into the world for our chapter three. Trouble is, every single person who has reached this point brought with them a view of the world developed in the preceding eighteen years. So if that view says that people are compared, categorized, and ranked, then we are going to march into adulthood thinking that is still happening.
It’s not still happening. No one cares, and that is a really good thing. Go make mistakes, fall flat on your face. No one is watching anymore, they too are off on their own. Go do a thing. Become you.

(Originally featured on Social Work Today)

In the American Southwest, there’s a little guy called the trapdoor spider. It sits all day in the small tunnel it dug into the earth with specially adapted teeth. It chose this space, seeing it as best suited for its purposes and freely available. It did the work of digging, closed its silk-hinged trap door, and now it waits.

Time passes, its prey creeps across its doorstep, and it strikes. It’s quick, and to our eyes violent, but also natural. It’s smooth. It’s the way of the world.

The tree in the woods did not select its spot. But it too works with the parts it has evolved on the ground that it found available. Time passes, and the storm winds rise up. The many branches of the tree bend and give way; the wind moves on. Maybe it appears violent to our eyes, but it is also natural, smooth, and the way of the world.

Some trapdoor spiders may starve, and some mighty trees may fall. But the tree does not attack the wind, and the trapdoor spider does not run around the ground in a panic. They do not force these actions because they know intuitively they won’t work. They do not force these actions because they lack anxiety.

Anxiety can be a beautiful thing. In large part because of anxiety, we do not have to live with our bodies or roots hiding in the ground. We can venture out across the earth safe in the knowledge that, to a strong degree, we can react to trouble and threats. Our blessing is that our reaction switch is always set to “on.” Our curse is that we can never turn it off.

Reaction will always be our default. Reaction is controlled by our amygdala, the almond-shaped bit of brain that sits near where the brain connects to the rest of the body.

When we feel, see, smell, or taste things, that information passes through our amygdala first before moving on to the rest of our brain. If we see a bear’s paw swinging at us with claws out, our amygdala will direct the body to dodge it before we even recognize with the rest of our minds that it is a bear’s paw.

The amygdala is so wonderful when it is functioning properly. When we have suffered a trauma, have suppressed a lot of emotion, or are under considerable stress, the amygdala can be like a malfunctioning fire alarm. It will scream out to us, “Something is wrong! We need to take action now!” Action, action, all the time. This is anxiety.

The amygdala reacts. But it knows its abilities are limited, and that it has an ally in our skull in our higher brain. The prefrontal cortex. The place where we do our higher thinking. This is the part you are using right now to comprehend and consider these words.

The amygdala reacts and asks our higher brain to take action. It sends up stress signals like the Bat Signal. It makes us physically uncomfortable so we will act. When we act, we feel comfortable again for a while. If there are no actual threats that can be addressed, we may turn to our default coping strategies. We may rearrange the furniture, seek out some reassurance, or throw a tantrum.
Afterwards we feel better.

Unfortunately, in searching for short-term relief, we often do long-term damage. Our actions, when there was no real immediate threat, fed back to the amygdala the message that it was right to get all worked up and send out those stress hormones. The amygdala then thinks it should see more things as threats and make us even more anxious next time.

The solution then is the most counter-intuitive thing imaginable in the moment. Unless the bear’s paw, the tornado, or the city bus truly is barreling toward us, the best thing we can do is take inaction. It is to sit there with the pain, watch it swell up like a wave in our mind and body, reach its crest, and then recede. Because it will recede. It will not drown you.

As the stress hormones taper off, you will find that you survived, that your life was never actually at risk.

After the initial reaction of our amygdala, our actions are within the control of the higher mind. When we ride the wave of anxious discomfort to its conclusion, we are then able to respond rather than react to what is going on.

With practice this becomes easier, and we grow more skilled at working with our anxiety. Eventually we can even learn to appreciate our amygdalas, which do so much good for us. We can learn to love them because they are part of the beautiful experience of being alive.

​We can learn when we need to respond. Or, like the patient trapdoor spider or the tree on a peaceful day, we may find that no action is required at all but to be.

Satellite View on Anxiety

When we are in a highly anxious state the world closes in tightly. It’s kind of like being in Google Street View. We’re locked in place and all we can sense is our immediate surroundings. Our brain is scanning the area around us because it perceives threats. We can see detail in every direction, but only about 40 feet out.

But that 360 degree bubble is not the only place life exists. Our anxiety is so concerned with the moment that we lose sight of that. If we are able to zoom out we see that the moment is a small part of the whole. There is the town, the county, the state, the nation, and it is all happening on this green and blue orb.

If we can catch ourselves in the moment, and click that (-) button to zoom out, we can be better off for it. Oftentimes the people that know us best are already there, viewing our life from 40,000 feet. It may be worth asking them what is actually going on in the wider view, help adjust your perspective.

The Overnight Attendant
The brain is like a good hotel. It is all efficiency. During the day bellhops zip up and down elevators, maids toss white linen in the air, and a team of workers at the front desk process weary travelers. We can take on most challenges in the daytime.

At nighttime things change. Staff go home to their houses and apartments. Come 3 AM there is no one around but the Overnight Attendant. That one lone person manning the front desk in the unlikely case someone is needed. The staff need rest, so they rest while the rest of the world is at rest.

We need, uh, rest too. We can run a whole operation during the day. We can hold conversations while operating vehicles. Listen to podcasts while cleaning. It is amazing what the brain can do! The cost of being human is that such an amazing piece of machinery as the neocortex cannot run at full power, 24-hours a day. At 3 AM it wants to be asleep.

So if we are awake at 3 AM, the hotel is not at its best. The anxiety we experience then is like a group of teenagers broke into the swimming pool area, someone clogged the lobby toilets, a surprise tour bus just pulled in, and oh by the way the building is on fire. The Overnight Attendant is not equipped to handle all this. What brain is awake at 3 AM is not equipped to handle problems. The best possible answer is to lock the doors and say “I am going to figure this out tomorrow when I am fully staffed again.”

Hope Loan

This one is dorky, but it can work. It’s called the Hope Loan. Sometimes in life we know we are in a pinch point, where life is coming at us from different angles. Perhaps the kids are at a really tough age, while simultaneously we are overwhelmed at work. Or you are in some major transition. A divorce, grieving a loss, an emptying nest. 

What all of these situations have in common is that they are not permanent. They are tough times, but the pain we are feeling in those moments won’t last. There are better times ahead. It’s hard to imagine that in the moment, of course. But the moment is emotional, not logical. Logic is clear: periods of pain are followed by periods of not-pain.

We all are familiar with loans at this point. A loan is a bet on yourself. It’s saying “I am gonna be worth enough in the future, I just need a lump sum to help me in the present.” A hope loan says the same thing. “The future is gonna be alright, so I am gonna take a lump sum of those good vibes now.”
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Hope loan: like a regular loan, but no monthly payments!