Dear Adorable Little Brain,
You’ve been given such a bad rap for so long now that I just want to begin by saying, “You’re doing GREAT.”
Really, you are.
You’re doing everything you were ever designed to do to keep me safe from tigers and famine. The way that you are able to continuously scan every aspect of my environment in search of potential threats is kind of amazing. This vigilance of yours is literally what kept my caveman ancestors alive long enough to procreate. So, basically, I’m here today because of the dramatic danger signals you gave my ancient ancestors. Wow! Thank you!
And the way that you masterfully send chemicals coursing into my bloodstream so that I can run from a tiger, fight for food in a famine, or freeze like a possum playing dead is truly miraculous. From an evolutionary standpoint, your job performance far exceeds expectations. Kudos to you!
But, here’s the thing, my sweet, amazing little brain…somewhere along the line, we humans stopped getting eaten by tigers. And most of us stopped facing the threat of actual famines.
In spite of this, you kept doing precisely what you were programmed to do from the very beginning. You kept up the vigilance. You carried on sending danger messages. You continued directing those chemicals into our bloodstream so that we could fight, flee, or freeze. Of course, you did. It was your design to do so.
So, here’s where I innocently got lost and started hating you. For whatever reason—and it really doesn’t matter—I started taking your natural, evolutionarily perfect programming personally. I somehow believed that all that vigilance, scanning, and chemicals coursing in my veins were about ME; that they said something about ME as a person.
I thought something was wrong with ME because I had so many danger signals firing and so much fear response happening. I thought I should somehow be able to control you or do something to manage you better.
That misunderstanding led to some pretty compelling stories about my lack of worth…my inability to cope…my inability to be normal.
My belief that all those fear signals and physiological responses were somehow about me and my life kept me in a low-level but very palpable story of shame. I didn’t want anyone to know that I had failed miserably in my ability to control you.
And then, thankfully, I saw something new.
I learned that, as amazing and efficient as you are, your interpretation of reality is WILDLY inaccurate.
Sweet brain—please don’t take this personally, but you get MOST things wrong when it comes to how life is going and how I am doing.
Because of the nature of your programming, you literally make shit up in an attempt to make sense of this modern world. You make assumptions, judgments, and associations based on some very old and outdated programming. It’s not your fault, but honestly, as AMAZING as you are at shouting “DANGER,” you are equally APPALLING at being correct about anything.
And I just never knew that—until I did.
I spent most of my life believing that you were always telling me the truth.
I thought that the more danger signals you sent, the more danger there WAS. And I believed that all those chemicals that you directed into my bloodstream meant that something was physically wrong with me...that my stomach aches and wobbly knees and weird throat feelings were ACTUAL problems to solve. I didn’t know better, but now I do.
Realizing that nearly everything you say about how I’m doing or how life is going is almost entirely inaccurate has allowed me to stop taking you so seriously. And now, I can adore you for trying so hard to help me in the same way I can adore my little 5-year-old nephew Harrison when he tries to crack eggs into the cake batter. It’s a disaster, but I love him for trying.
Adorable Little Brain, now that I understand you, you are free to do what you are evolutionarily programmed to do. You can scream DANGER all you want. You can even send those little chemicals into the bloodstream that make my stomach queasy or my legs feel like Jello.
Because now I see the perfection of the whole design.
I understand how you innocently misinterpret unfamiliar things as being dangerous. I understand how you demand answers to unanswerable questions in an attempt to keep me focused on you. Of course you do—you’ve had tens of thousands of years being the star of the show. You’re not quite ready to give up that role. And I understand that you HAVE to choose the scariest and most disturbing thoughts to play over and over again until I am able to see them as just thoughts rather than as the truth of reality.
Adorable Little Brain, you and I are going to get along just fine from now on. I’m onto you and your silly misinterpretations of reality, but I AM going to love you for trying to keep me safe in your own perfect, misguided way.
And as for all those shame stories; they no longer make ANY SENSE. There was never any possible way to manage or control you, sweet brain. All of those fear stories, assumptions, judgments, preferences, and associations were never MINE—they were programs running—nothing more than sensory data being processed and spit out like a computer application. They had nothing to do with me.
Now, cute little brain, when you feel a bit neglected and you demand some attention from me by asking impossible questions like, “How will I cope if something bad happens,” or “How can I be sure that I won’t fail,” I will smile and say, “Oh, this is what it feels like to believe my mind needs an answer or a resolution.”
And when the tension in my body increases from not appeasing you, I will remember that that tension is the universe singing. And I will go play.
PLEASE JOIN ME IN MARCH!
I'd love for you to join me in March for a 4-week exploration called Back to Basics. We'll explore the role of the unconscious mind in our experience of life and look at ways that a simple shift in understanding can soften that experience. Click here for more information or to register.
This is a follow-up to an earlier letter to my body which you can read here.