I had a conversation the other day with a friend who found herself trapped in a loop she couldn’t get out of. She had developed an ongoing relationship with a guy who was out of town a lot, and found herself obsessing over whether he would email that day or not, whether anything he had emailed recently suggested how he felt about her, whether something she had written to him had affected him adversely, where he was, etc., etc.
Before she got involved with him, she had had some equanimity, she said. She had been happy and contented without him, and couldn’t figure out why, with him in the picture, she was suddenly insecure and needing reassurance about her attractiveness, desirability, etc.
After she had talked for a while about what was going on, and her perplexity and anxiety about it, a parallel with my own brain operation came to mind. She had listened to some of the Bare Brains podcasts, and I asked if she remembered Episode One in which I encountered a distressed-looking woman in the park. She laughed, remembering how my brain had snapped into hero-rescues-distressed-woman mode, and seeing the parallel with her own situation. Her brain had found itself in a situation that was familiar, comparable to many previous experiences, and activated the tools it had used in those. (Instead of “tools,” Marvin Minsky would say, “resources,” or “ways of thinking,” following his terminology in The Emotion Machine.)
Having seen that she was trapped by brain habits in this old scenario, she despaired of breaking out of it. Even prior to our conversation, she had had moments of insight about it, and yet the next email would catapult her back onto the treadmill.
Extricating oneself from these kinds of loops is a similar process no matter what sort of habit one is trying to break.
First, let me clarify who this “oneself” is–a familiar refrain if you have had much exposure to my pronouncements. We are not one unified, undifferentiated self, or person. Whenever our environment changes, neural networks are activated that have been active in previous, similar situations. (For Minsky: “ways of thinking,” or “sub-personalities,” instead of “neural networks.” I’m going to give him a thorough review some day.) When we find ourselves wanting to change our behavior, we are actually a different person–call this the “good” one–than when we are enmeshed in acting out that behavior–the “bad” one–and the good person has to figure out how to maintain control in situations where the bad one usually steps in.
I’ve talked elsewhere about tricks we can use for weight control or getting in shape, but to stick with this situation, it can be helpful to write down a description of the whole pattern, and how you’d like it to be different–I think journaling in general is a good idea for clarifying our pattens. Make a journal to note when you’ve been the good one and when you’ve been the bad one. Record yourself talking about how you’d like your behavior to change, and then put a recurring reminder in your calendar to listen to the recording, read the journal, etc. (For me, Episode Five is pertinent.) If you have an Apple computer, you can record your own alert sound, so that when you make an operating error, a voice says, “Be the good one.” Put a Stickie on your computer monitor with a similarly inspiring message. These may sound like typical self-improvement tips, but hey, whatever works. The difference with this approach is that you understand the underlying brain operation, rather than operating within the old self-illusion.
As I was about to leave, she checked her email. “Did he write?” I asked.
“Yes!”
“Did he say the right things?”
“He came close,” she said happily.
Time for a refreshing walk home in the cool night air.
Nipping Loops in the Bud