Week 108: Strengthening Psychological Muscles

Most of us have knee-jerk reactions of some kind or another that come to the foreground in a given situation, an upsetting interaction with someone, or an event that reminds us of something in the past that was either painful, humiliating, or otherwise distressing. Over the years, as I’ve practiced mindfulness and other approaches that have helped me develop a more compassionate relationship with myself and my “stuff”, I’ve noticed that – even though I can still get activated in certain predictable ways – I now have a lot more tools with which to move through these experiences. I’ve developed “psychological muscles” I didn’t used to have.

When I work with clients in therapy, one of our primary goals is to expand the menu of options available for responding to any given situation or experience. I may have mentioned in another experiment that one of the definitions of psychological health goes like this: The more possible responses a person has to any given situation reflects their level of psychological flexibility and resilience. This doesn’t mean there are particular, “right”, ways to respond to any given situation. The underlying dynamic is that we aren’t locked into only one response, no matter what.

For example, let’s say one of your knee-jerk responses to having an argument on the telephone is to call back immediately and want to continue talking, even when to do so actually escalates the problem. If the only item on your menu of responses is to call again and again and again, you’ll probably find yourself becoming more agitated rather than less. Or, let’s say you have a fear of elevators and find that your menu of responses when you think about riding an elevator narrows down to one: “I can’t.” Or, you may be someone who really gets upset when you break a glass or drop something on the kitchen floor that creates a mess. If your response option is limited to getting upset about this kind of experience, you’ll have much less internal flexibility than the person who takes it in stride.

These responses, and the lack of items on the menu, represent the building blocks of the brain – neural pathways. From infancy, we develop neural pathways as a result of experience. Over time, these pathways in the brain become more and more defined so that we have many automatic behaviors and responses as a result. When these automatic responses leave us feeling caught in shame, stressed out, agitated, or less competent or comfortable than we would like, we know that we need to expand our menu and learn more options.
A new emphasis on neuroscience in the field of psychology has offered a great deal of hope to all of us. It turns out that the brain remains “plastic”, or flexible and able to learn, throughout our lives. At any age, we can expand our menu of response options by learning new ways of moving through life experiences and then to practice those that work for us. As we practice these new options, the neural pathways associated with them become more automatic, more thoroughly “laid down” in the brain. That’s good news, as it tells us that we don’t have to settle for old, less-skillful responses and behaviors that we’ve picked up along the way, or developed as a response to trauma or other distress. Instead, we can experiment with new possibilities and know that we can shift from problematical to more skillful and effective ways of being.

Another thing we know from neuroscience, that is also taught in Buddhist psychology, is that wherever we put our attention, we inadvertently or purposefully reinforce beliefs and behavior. This means that it matters where we focus our awareness. If we spend time thinking about our losses, or mulling over regrets, we actually strengthen the neural pathways associated with these feelings, and make it more likely that we’ll continue to hang out in this state of mind, even when we may not want to do so. On the other hand, if we focus our attention on new strategies, new options, new responses that make us feel better, we actually increase the chances that we’ll spend more time spontaneously hanging out with these.

And so, for this week’s experiment, I invite you to pay attention to your menu of responses in given situations. Pay particular attention to beneficial and skillful responses and ways of thinking and being that you’ve developed as you’ve matured. Whenever you find yourself moving into old, less-resilient responses, notice what happens if you acknowledge that you’re in an old place and then shift your attention to something you know has a chance of helping you to settle down. It may be a thought that you’ve learned reassures you, such as “everything will work out eventually,” or “this too shall pass.” Let it be something that gives you a greater sense of the present moment and of the possibility that there are more options for responding than the one you’ve spontaneously fallen into. This experiment draws on something I’ve said many times before – it really pays off to focus on what’s going right in any given moment, as this supports and reinforces behaviors and beliefs that empower us in the present.

As with all experiments, allow yourself to invite curiosity to be your companion along the way. The goal here is to learn to notice and reinforce responses that enhance a more flexible sense of well-being in daily life and, in neuroscience terms, to reinforce those neural pathways that support skillful living.

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