My greatest joy as a physician and therapist comes from watching people grow into their healthiest self.
The individual path to health, though infinitely complex, is undoubtedly reduced to one constant: the choices we make are the most important determinant of our fate.
Simply put, no matter what choice is before you, the better we are at choice, the better we are at life!
No one comes to my office for help, sits down on the couch while balling their eyes out and says, “I make such sensible, healthy choices in my life and it makes me miserable! So please, I beg you, help me make some really bad decisions!”
Similarly, I challenge you to go the freezer section of your local grocery store and pick up a brand of food called “Unhealthy Choice”.
Of course it won’t be there. It’s a bad brand; no one would buy it.
If “Unhealthy Choice” is your brand and you sell items like denial of your problems or self destructive behaviors, eventually no one buys it either and life ends up a disaster.
If you want the better brand, you can unleash your power of choice by first understanding that the mind’s (and society’s) greatest adversary to free choice is the prison constructed of our individual traumas, fears and anxieties.
Our greatest freedoms are all choice based.
In fear there is no true choice.
Absent true choice, there is no true freedom.
Biologically, fear, trauma and anxiety are stored in the brainstem, which is more commonly known as the “reptilian brain” as we share this in common with all animals.
Evolutionarily, the brainstem is the oldest part of the brain and serves a primary role of ensuring survival by identifying threats. When the brainstem senses any “danger” it immediately responds by releasing adrenaline, creating anxiety, and activating our “fight or flight” nervous system.
Like a sentinel, the brainstem is on 24/7, actively scanning for danger defined by both real environmental threats as well as our own personal definitions of danger such as social situations or bodily sensations. The brainstem does not care if it is real or false danger and it does not care about choice as choice takes time.
In all, the brainstem was built to “reflexively” react to real life and death situations where you either survived or died. If you survived, the brainstem preferentially stores the fear and trauma as identifying and avoiding past danger is more important for survival than storing any positive outcomes of terrifying events.
This is why Post Traumatic Stress Disorder exists, but there is no Post-Good Time Stress Disorder...other than maybe a hangover.
The brainstem’s emphasis on negative events also explains why it takes effort to “think positively” and that Murphy’s Law―anything that can go wrong will go wrong―exists. Actually, by virtue of being alive, Murphy’s Law is inherently wrong, but we ascribe to it anyway.
Since real life-or-death situations are hopefully not what we face on a daily basis, when it comes to perceiving danger the BRAINSTEM, or as we will call it now: the B.S. is mostly that, just B.S.
Examples of BRAINSTEM B.S. can include:
1) Fearing normal but uncomfortable sensations in the body that are misinterpreted as illness (Hypochondriasis);
2) Fear of disappointing others which is perceived as an ultimate sin and guaranteed grounds for rejection (Co-Dependence);
3) Fear of being judged and ridiculed for being stupid or unattractive when around others (Social Anxiety Disorder).
Thus, we have a natural but alarming obstacle to free choice: B.S. beliefs that instill fear and anxiety. Our goal is to learn how to turn the obstacle of fear into an opportunity for choice.
To attain choice, we must learn to use a more evolved part of the brain called the cortex or the “human brain”.
In general, more evolved systems like the cortex can regulate more primitive systems like the brainstem―just like parents should modulate the responses of children. Therefore, the cortex serves as the seat of choice by providing a thinking-based, rational response to irrational B.S. anxiety.
The question then becomes how does one deal with the B.S. anxiety? Shouldn’t we just avoid it or immediately get rid of it. The answer: No, we should embrace and challenge the anxiety or we will never unleash the power of choice!
First and foremost, we must use our cortex to accept that anxiety, though uncomfortable, is a natural, fundamental requirement for existence and is not dangerous.
How do I know this? Evolution is too smart to make the body’s signal for danger deadly. Otherwise, as soon as someone gets scared, they die.
That’s why there’s no tombstone that says “Here Lies Bill...He Was Scared to Death”. That said, the saddest of all tombstones would read, “Here Lies Bill...He Was Too Scared To Live”.
Next, we need to learn true choice is only possible when we use our cortex to think past the anxiety created by either your B.S. messages, or another person’s B.S. message designed to instill fear and take choice away from you.
Examples of the cortex “reflectively” addressing anxiety and making choice can include:
1) Seeing normal uncomfortable sensations in the body as just that, and not leaping to the conclusion of having some severe illness;
2) Being able to do things that work for you instead of always being pleasing and fearing disappointing another;
3) Accepting that social situations can create normal anxiety and if you are ridiculed it likely says more about the other person than you.
In all instances, the general steps to getting choice over B.S. fears are:
1) Recognizing the organizing principles and ways you behave in your life based on those things you perceive as dangerous. I call this your religion. Understand the commandments of your religion and extract those that you are ready to challenge. For example, “Thou Shalt Always Be Perfect”, is a typical “religious” tenant I see all the time that needs to be challenged,
2) Exercise and strengthen your cortex by working to tolerate the “reflexive” uncomfortable feelings of anxiety that occur when you challenge the B.S., just like you would need to tolerate uncomfortable feelings of shortness of breath when you are on the treadmill.
Practices like having a healthy work-life balance, proper diet and sleep schedule, yoga, meditation, mindfulness, cardiovascular and strength training as well as all types of psychotherapy and medication, when necessary, strengthen the cortex. With strength comes endurance, tolerance and an increased ability to make true choice.
You can also use mental exercises to “play” with B.S. anxiety by imaging all of the different choices there are outside of obeying “fear”. Then put the imaginary into reality. For example, if the B.S. tells you to be perfect, imagine showing up flawed, then show up.
My hope is you now have a better understanding of the power of choice, the manner in which the brain resists choice based on fear, and some strategies to build a stronger reflective and thinking based brain.
If I’ve achieved my goals then...Let The Choice Be With You.
Merrill Sparago, M.D.