THE WAY THE MIND WORKS!

If we can think of our minds in two parts, the intellectual mind and the primitive/emotional mind.

The intellectual mind is the part where we are in control, we can do anything we want to when we work within its confines. When we are in control and life is going as we planned, its the intellectual mind that we can thank.

The Primative or emotional mind is a hangover from our caveman days it is there for our survival, but it is also the part that can throw us off course. Within the confines of this primative/emotional mind we can think of there being a huge room with infinate storage of things we have ever experienced, known to be or inherited knowledge of, that are potentially dangerous to us in one way or another. It’s in charge of our freeze/flight/fight responses, so if it percieves us to in any way be in a crisis, danger or emergency situation, it will step in taking control away from our intellectual mind and take over with one of or a combination of three responses, Anger, Anxiety, Depression.

So it is then, that there is a direct relationship between anxiety and intellectual control, when our anxiety level go up we lose intellectual control and the primative mind steps in and takes control bringing with it panic attacks/anxiety/depression etc and we can deduce that these issues are subconscious primitive responses.

There’s more to say about the emotional mind though, it’s a negative mind dealing in negative looking back and negatively forcasting the future. It’s obsessive which is why when we start thinking negatively it’s difficult to stop, and its vigilant, always looking for the worst possible scenario, most of all, it can’t formulate solutions to problems – thats an intellectual mind job!

So why does your mind thinks your life is in such crisis that it has to move in?  It can’t be the events in your life.  If it were, it would mean that everyone at university would be suffering from panic attacks, and we know that’s not the case.  So, it must be your thought patterns surrounding the events of your life.  And the subconscious mind relies on our thought patterns to determine how our life is.  Negative thoughts are always converted into anxiety, because our mind can’t tell the difference between imagination and actuality.  When we imagine something to be happening, it is exactly the same as it happening.

There are two main ways in which we can create negativity.  The first is when we negatively forecast the future – now remember, the subconscious mind can’t tell the difference between imagination and actuality.   It can be big things.  “I’ll never be able to cope with that.”  “I’ll never be able to get promotion.”  “I’ll never be able to afford that.” etc. etc.  Or it can be small things.  Like that meeting.  Now you know, intellectually, that nothing much can go wrong with that meeting.  But being you, you’ve already started worrying about this going wrong and that going wrong.

The second is when we negatively introspect about the past.  Again, it can be big things.  “I wish we hadn’t done that.”  “I wish that hadn’t happened.” etc. etc.  It can also be those small things.  Like that meeting.  Actually, the meeting probably went quite well, but being you, you wish that it had gone better; you wonder what they think of you for doing that; you  wonder what they meant when they said that.

This kind of negativity is always converted into anxiety.  Now, we do have a mechanism in the brain for dealing with anxiety.  It’s called Rapid Eye Movement.  We have REM at night during our sleep patterns to rerun the negative events of the day.  When our REM pattern is working as it should, we wake up in the morning free from the upsets of the previous day.

Sadly, if we create more negativity than our REM can cope with, or, for one reason or another, we aren’t getting enough REM sleep, then we’ll build up a surplus of anxiety.  And it’s this surplus of anxiety that causes us to lose intellectual control.  It’s this surplus that prompts the mind to evaluate our life as being in crisis and causes it to respond with patterna of depression, anxiety, and anger.

Now a little bit about the physiology… about what happens in the brain when we suffer from anxiety disorders or depression.  This will give you an understanding of how any medication you’ve been given is going to help you.

Early man and early woman were given quite definite rewards for carrying out certain evolutionary processes.  They got a reward when they hunted and gathered, when they supported themselves and their families.

We are better as a tribe rather than as individuals, so they got a reward when they interacted with others.  The reward they got they quite definitely recognised and scientists are adamant about this.  They felt motivated.  But most of all it was a coping mechanism.  It helped them cope with day to day activities… helped them cope better with physical fear…made them braver.  It even helped them cope with physical pain and no doubt they were pleased.  Now we know what that reward is.  It’s a chemical response in the brain that produces various neurotransmitters in the brain that act as catalysts for mentally healthy behaviour.  As you know, the neurotransmitter we talk about most, simply because it is the most important, is serotonin.

So when we are operating within these positive parameters like early man, although we don’t have to go out to hunt, we do have to interact in a positive way, be active in a positive way, and think in a positive way.  Because when we do, we produce patterns in the brain that give us that constant flow of serotonin.

When we produce a constant flow of serotonin in the brain we are a nice, happy, coping, brave little souls!

So we need to be active in a positive way, and think in a positive way.  Because when we do, we produce a constant flow of serotonin. Serotonin allows us to cope with life situations, the release of this triggers another neurotransmitter to be released which motivates us to complete tasks, and of course we all recognise that wonderful ‘YES!!’ feeling we get when we complete tasks – that’s the feeling we all want.

What stops the flow of serotonin?  Well, when we’re depressed, we don’t produce any chemicals at all, and when we’re anxious, we produce an overload of adrenalines, i.e. stress hormones, which is great for when we run into a dangerous situation but not so good for running our daily lives. So, we need to get back into the intellectual mind.

Thats where Hypnotherapy comes in …