They concentrate on avoiding all unpleasant emotions. It’s high time to put this in order [FRAGMENT]

Thoughts, feelings, and behaviors—subject to cognitive distortions in the prefrontal cortex, rigid moral codes that energize the amygdala, and amygdala trauma patterns that bypass the prefrontal cortex entirely—create a gigantic web woven between the various centers of the brain that excite, communicate, amplify, or drown out each other. .

Therefore, we must reach for numerous methods – appropriately and precisely selected – to sort out this cerebral mess. It is worth approaching ready-made solutions with distrust, which assume that one theory or method can solve all problems. It has nothing to do with the complexity of the forces that govern the brain.

So you are like conductors whose task is to make eighty musicians play together different melodies with different rhythms. This does not mean that achieving harmony is not possible.

Psychoeducation: understand what is happening to me

One of the key steps in solving any problem is realizing what is wrong with you. What is going on in your head that makes you feel this way and not otherwise? Ignorance fosters uncertainty, doubt, anxiety – unpleasant states. You have the feeling that you have no control over anything, and your imagination gives you the worst visions.

Psychoeducation is about understanding the biological mechanism of the mental processes responsible for your reactions and realizing why a particular technique is suitable for overcoming a particular ailment. It can be summed up in the phrase: “To know is to be able”.

When you understand what goes on in your brain when you feel sad, anxious, angry, and how a particular technique can effectively influence how it works, you will be able to deal with the problem better. The common element of almost all experienced situations is that they stimulate the emotional brain, prefrontal cortex and basal ganglia. So you must act on each of these three components. Intervention will have an impact on the functioning of the brain and will allow it to be programmed differently.

One of the main advantages of psychoeducation is the knowledge you gain; self-awareness allows you to distance yourself and soothe doubts and ease anxieties and other unpleasant feelings. Is there something wrong with you, or are the emotions that bother you common? Can’t suppress your anxiety? There is no lack of will or motivation behind it, the background is purely biological. It’s worth repeating. Talk to your brain, tell it that you know about the role it plays in what is happening to you. Say “my brain” instead of “I”; instead of “it’s my fault” – “it’s my brain that got carried away”.

When you have the intestinal flu, you don’t need to know the anatomy of the intestines and stomach, the viral mechanisms responsible for the disease, or the reactions behind the action of drugs to suppress anxiety. You’ve been through it often enough to know what’s going on. On the other hand, with everyday mental problems, few people really understand the essence of the processes taking place and you can quickly get over yourself with resignation. Understanding the mechanisms is a powerful tool, and the feeling of independence in the face of a problem is your strength.

It must be clearly emphasized that the methods we recommend require considerable effort, and the process itself will be tedious and often lengthy; you will become discouraged and perhaps even feel like a failure. Don’t forget why you’re doing it, because it’s the key to doing better and more efficiently. Everything goes easier if we know what it is for.

It is therefore worth returning to the principles of brain functioning often. Every time you struggle with something, carefully re-read the concepts of the problem. When doing the exercises, remember why you are doing them and what is happening in the brain as you repeat the exercises: imagine the neurons – how they form and change. Keep before your eyes the basal ganglia learning and the emotional brain calming down – with the help of the prefrontal cortex.

Now for the key advice before embarking on this long trek: Be skeptical about the quality of information in circulation, especially when it comes to psychology. Certain outdated, simplistic, magic formula-like explanations can make you feel guilty, cause conflict, and waste time that could be better spent with a more appropriate approach. Seek what appeals to scientific facts. Biology is a science, and so is psychology. Everything has to be proven first.

Acceptance as a means of emotional suffering

You hate unpleasant emotions: anxiety, sadness, emptiness, frustration, feeling like you don’t exist, injustice, resentment, etc.

When a situation triggers one of these feelings, you do everything you can to get rid of it: you comfort yourself, you ask for help, you reach for alcohol, you overeat, you look for a way to escape or forget that emotion, you think obsessively about it, you spend hours telling everything to your friends. In short, you can’t handle the fact that a feeling lasts. You want it to go away immediately, and you blame the situation that caused it.

You can allow your brain to naturally “expel” unpleasant emotions in its own time (acceptance), or you can fear them, push them away, focus on them, and stubbornly analyze them (avoiding or controlling feelings). control, the brain not only cannot fulfill its function of getting rid of emotions, but also learns to perceive them as a threat and focuses on them even more, which leads to their strengthening.The feelings become stronger (more intense) and last longer longer, which in turn leads to more obsessive thoughts.You become prisoners of a vicious circle.

It should be taken into account that if we allow unpleasant emotions to dissipate naturally over time, they will dissipate quite quickly, as the brain does not have enough resources to sustain them for long. This means that if you accept the presence of unpleasant feelings and consider them normal, common and actually quite trivial, the brain will stop focusing on them and amplifying them. Therefore, one should strive for release, not for control. It also means that you have to accept that there are many situations in life that, although they may seem pathological and arouse negative emotions, are part of reality. If we don’t want to move to a deserted island, there’s no way that they wouldn’t happen to us often.

However, rejecting these situations and the emotions they cause leads to you focusing on them; obsessing over them makes you actually hurt yourself.

It is therefore clear that acceptance is the basis. We urge you to move away from the attitude of rejection or controlling your feelings.

Here is a typical example: Walking in a rainstorm

If you reject thoughts and emotions, it’s like trying to stay dry on a walk when a downpour catches you while admiring a wonderful landscape in the bosom of nature.

You don’t want to get wet to the skin. You run, you curse, you try to hide under the few trees growing here and there. But even there you get wet.

Fighting the downpour is impossible, and yet you continue to fuel anger and frustration in a situation over which you have no control. You don’t see the landscape that brought you here at all.

Either way, you’re going to get wet from head to toe, so you might as well accept it as it is. You didn’t want this and the situation irritates you. However, if you accept the way things are and give up thinking about how you think things should be, you will be able to walk instead of running. And more importantly, enjoy the view anyway.

After all, that’s why you went for a walk.

The landscape is still there waiting for you.

Fighting your emotions drains your emotional resources without solving any problems. For the sake of self-respect and to use your energy for what is really important to you, it is more interesting to accept the state of affairs, whatever that may be, and do something else. The world is full of unpleasant situations, unkind people, terrible accidents, things that could have turned out differently. You can suffer and go back to them over and over again, or you can tell yourself that these are the facts, this is how things are and you don’t feel like spending days on it or fueling your frustrations.

Let’s use a metaphor: you baked a cake. You just took them out of the oven. If you really want to eat it, you must wait for it to cool down, otherwise you will burn your hands and tongue. If you can’t wait, you will pay for your lack of patience with a burn and miss the opportunity to enjoy the cake. While the impulse to taste it is primal, it will be more appropriate to accept the fact that you have to wait for it to cool down. You must make a choice. And there is no compromise here […]

Clarifying life goals (“How do I want to live my life?”)

People are sometimes so overwhelmed by problems or the desire to avoid suffering in any form that they completely forget about their life plans, about what matters to them. They don’t get up in the morning to do things that are important to them, but they focus on avoiding all unpleasant emotions. It’s time to sort this out. This is at the heart of ACT therapy, which since 1985 aims to go beyond the limitations of other therapeutic models.

Clarifying life goals and values ​​- questions to ask yourself:

• How do you want to use your time on earth?
• What kind of person would you like to be?
• Have you already experienced a sense of self-actualization? When? Under what circumstances?
• If you weren’t blocked like you are today, where would your energy go, where would your life go?
• What qualities or strengths would you like to embody?
• If you were to die in a few years, what memory would you like to leave behind, what would you like people to say about you?
• Are there things that you obsess over, that you can’t digest, that sap your energy? (Otherwise, you’d be using it for what really matters to you.) Would you be willing to put these things aside and focus on your life goals instead?

The Story of the Time Machine: Imagine yourself in your 80s. You have already had many experiences and you have acquired wisdom. If you could go back in time to talk to yourself today, what would you absolutely want to say to your younger self as a 80-year-old? What sound advice would you give yourself? What dangers would you warn yourself against? What important and key issues would you like to convey to each other?

In conclusion, would you agree to act differently on a daily basis if it would bring you closer to the goals that are really important to you? For the brain to function properly, it needs life indicators that will help it find mentally constructive solutions and apply them in life.