Silence is Golden

One of the biggest self-righteous errors we get caught up in as humans is that we cannot handle emotional pain and therefore will go to all extremes to avoid painful memories or fears that cause us stress and pain. We often run from these fears often by way of chemical and/or behavioral addictions.

Addiction is a chronic, relapsing brain disease, that consists of compulsive substance use or behavior that creates harmful consequences. Substance Use Disorders involve drugs or alcohol, while behavioral addictions involve things like food, gambling, gaming, shopping, over-working and excessive screen time, both involving the brain’s reward circuitry. It can also lead to neurological changes in the brain, creating long term and lasting effects.

Humans are naturally pain adverse, so the moment we feel excessive stress or pain, we often search for something to relieve the pain but then fail to return to the thought to overcome it. We tend to believe that if we don’t think about a painful or scary thought, memory or event, and suppress it, that it will miraculously disappear. However, the more we try to not think about it, ironically the more we think about it. We are faced with a psychological struggle against unwanted thoughts and the “ironic process” where suppression leads to increased awareness. This is the center of intrusive thoughts, obsessions, anxious and uncontrollable ruminating thoughts.

Intrusive Thoughts and Suppression

We are rooted in survival, and our bodies are designed to protect us, so alerts us when something is wrong. It will make the decision for us as to what we can handle and what we cannot, like it or not. Our brains work to bring thoughts closer, to heal. This is done during our waking moments, but also during REM sleep, one of our greatest times where we solve problems.

If the brain feels too distressed and overwhelmed, it may dissociate, shutting off the emotional part of the brain. Trauma, both “big” traumas (sexual or physical abuse, loss of a loved one, systemic racism, poverty) and “little” traumas (constant criticism, conditional acceptance, emotional neglect, lack of attunement, inability to self-regulate), live inside our body, inside our tissue fibers, until we release them, if we ever do. Trying to just forget about them, just doesn’t work. We must learn to trust our body. Recognize it is signaling to us that something is wrong and instead of fearing the symptoms of anxiety, learn to bring the body back to a state of homeostasis and then tackle the issue at hand, not avoid.

Our bodies are designed to detect threats. One example is you are getting your morning cup of Joe at your local WAWA and a person with a gun enters the store, demanding money from the cashier. Your body will naturally go into fight-or-flight, detecting an emergency.

Other times the stress response may appear in less obvious ways, you are about to serve at your high school volleyball game, and the score is 17-24, missing your serve means you lose the game, creating fear and extra pressure. Or telling your parents that you don’t want to be a chemical engineer and join the family company, rather want to explore a career in plumbing, fearing their disappointment in you.

The fight-or-flight response is an automatic, sympathetic nervous system reaction to perceived threats, and will rapidly elicit a hormone release (adrenaline and cortisol) that prepares the body to fight or flee. Initiated by the amygdala and hypothalamus, this response increases heart rate, blood pressure, and alertness to boost survival chances. However, the body sometimes misconstrues an actual threat from a perceived threat, hence the difference between a gunman and a missed serve at a volleyball game.

Three things that also happen when in fight-or-flight is that we hyper-focus, watching every move of the gunman who entered WAWA, or internally with our thoughts, “what will my parents say when I tell them about my new career choice”. Second, when in fight-or-flight, we feel the need to move our bodies, “can I run out of the store, or will I need to fight the gunman”? Or pacing around the room as you think about how your parents will react to you not becoming a chemical engineer. Lastly, we tend to talk a lot, externally, “mom, dad, please, I just don’t think you understand me, I never really wanted to be an engineer, I just thought it was what I was supposed to do, are you disappointed or mad at me?” Or with our internal dialogue “my parents are going to hate me, and they will be so disappointed, and this news will likely break their hearts”.

Anxiety is fascinating, it feels very present because our bodies feel so uncomfortable in it, and it can even overtake us pulling us down a dark rabbit hole of fear and catastrophic thoughts. However, despite the uncomfortable feeling of anxiety, it only exists when we think about the future or the past. If you can ground yourself and return to the present, you realize you are safe. Even in my earlier example of the shooter walking into the WAWA, you are not actually anxious, even though symptoms of fight-or-flight are present and replicate that of anxiety. You are very focused on the threat and your survival. The anxiety may come later, when thinking about the event, but you are equipped to handle the task at hand, and your body will take over and will do whatever reactions it deems necessary for survival.

When the anxious thought about missing your serve at your volleyball game, hence losing the match occurs, you are anxious about how your team, your coach, or the crowd will respond to your failure, were you to miss. Again, past or future, not the present.

How to overcome this anxiety in the moment is to work to ground yourself and return to the present. Two of my favorite techniques for mindfulness are breathwork and grounding. Focusing on your breath, sends a message to the amygdala to calm down. Breathe in to the count of 4 and then hold for a few seconds, then do a long exhale out to count of 8 (4-7-8). Try to remember, the breath in is like the accelerator in the car and speeds up the heart rate, and the breath out is the brake and slows the heart rate.

Also, try grounding, 5,4,3, 2,1. Return to the present, by naming five things you can see around you, four things you can touch, three things you can hear, two things you can smell, and one thing you can taste. Then assess if you feel calmer. By doing this you are also activating your peripheral vision. Remember how I said earlier when you go into fight-or-flight you hyper-focus; hyper-focusing is also a loss of peripheral vision.

Back to avoidance and chemical and behavioral addictions. I worry we are losing our ability to deal with challenging and stressful thoughts. The moment we feel uncomfortable, the first thing we turn to is something that will alleviate the pain and bring down the stress. Maybe that is a glass of bourbon or reaching for your phone to jump on YouTube to watch videos of crazy cats. However, as I said earlier, the brain is meant to process and will flood us with intrusive thoughts, when we sit still and are no longer distracted.

I also find that many of us hate to be bored, in fact even fear it at times. This is because with boredom and stillness comes processing. If we are constantly avoiding, when we stop, the flood of intrusive thoughts and fears appear, unexpectedly. This creates excessive anxiety, when we least expect it.

When I started studying Stoicism, I learned that the Stoics sit in “death meditations”, where they will envision, for instance, losing a loved one. Rather than trying to push the painful thought out of the brain, they sit in the thought and think about what life would be like were this to happen, problem solving and processing, feeling the emotion, while calmly breathing through it. I have done this, and I have cried throughout the meditations pulling my biggest fears closer, but then eventually realizing, while inevitably the event would be terribly painful that I can handle it and will survive it I find some very powerful thoughts arise as I bring the pain closer, and agency is built.

Agency

Agency is our subjective sense of being in control of our own actions, thoughts, and consequences, as well as our capacity to intentionally act to influence our environment. It involves goal-directed, autonomous behavior and is a key indicator of personal competence, mental health, and well-being.

Final Thoughts

In summary, Silence is Golden, as they say when we go to the movies. The movies use the phrase as a way of saying “be quiet so others can enjoy the movie”. I mean it in a different way, which is learning to be still and not avoid and taking on the very challenging task of bringing our fear closer.

When I am overwhelmed, I work to return to nature, breathwork, mediation. I turn off devices (except my meditation music), practice accepting my anxious thoughts and then work to process them. We can choose to deliberately deal with our thoughts, or we can avoid them, increasing fear and anxiety.

Choose how you want to manage your thoughts. The body will always win and will never lie, even when our cognitive brain tries to make it. We need to learn to listen to our bodies, as its job is to protect us and survive. An anxious person is a divided person, as the great Dr. Martha Beck taught me.

I also want to add that sometimes thoughts become too overwhelming, I too get hijacked in my thoughts. When that happens, I first notice, accept I am here, then take time to temporarily distract and dissociate, to pull down the loud noise in my head and get myself out of fight-or-flight and back to state of homeostasis. I then return to the painful thought, once calmer and then work to pass my feelings through the tunnel, problem solve and process.

In summary, life is built on uncertainty, and the human brain’s natural desire for certainty can lead to anxiety and stress. Resilience is built through adversity. Resilience is the ability to adapt to stressful events, maintain well-being, and grow stronger from painful experiences.

Pain and tragedy are inevitably parts of the human experience, but suffering is a choice that can be overcome through acceptance.

While modern life often allows for shortcuts, humans are fundamentally built to endure hard things. By embracing discomfort and facing challenges, we can build resilience and discover our own strength and capacity to survive.