What language does your stressed brain speak?

A distinct language of the stressed brain.

 
In earlier blog entries I have written about the thinking mindset and the reactive mindset.  As a quick recap the thinking mindset is characterized by higher cognitive functions such as critical thinking, judgement, attention span, impulse control, solution orientation, cognitive flexibility and so on.  We find ourselves in this mindset when we feel a good degree of confidence, certainty, and oversight.  Unfortunately, this can quickly change.

Similar to how quickly the weather can shift in the northern Europe, so can the key-elements in a situation.  We can move from certainty to uncertainty and from having oversight to being overwhelmed.  With this shift come a change in our mindsets from thinking to reactive.  In the reactive mindset all of the higher functions that characterize the thinking mindset pretty much go offline.  What we are left with are the survival, instinctual behaviors of fight, flight and freeze.

Have you considered that mindsets have their own distinct language?

This is a question that I have my asked myself many times when I am in a coaching session with a client.  Typically, when I begin a session my client is some state of distress.  It could be an issue of looming deadlines and not enough time or a key direct-report who is giving him/her grief.  He or she may start our meeting in a reactive mindset where their focus is on only the problem and where they are hijacked by their emotions.  As they describe the situation their language instantly reflects their negative mindset.

As I ask more questions for clarification or elaboration, my clients are forced to start the arduous climb to the thinking mindset.  It requires cognitive energy to answer the questions and to articulate their thoughts.  With this heavy investment comes rewarding dividends.  That is, my clients are no longer plagued by the reactive mindset but are caught in the upward spiral of the thinking mindset.  There is a shift in their language that is characterized by forward-thinking, solution-orientation, and a broad spectrum of possibilities.

Even though I have been doing this for close to 13 years, my observations are still only anecdotal. Nonetheless, I have found the language used is a significant indicator of a constructive shift in mindset.

      If we are in the thinking mindset our outlook tends to be constructive and optimistic, and we use
      words such as solution, challenge, approach, possibilities.  When we question to figure out what
      has gone wrong we tend to ask questions like what is the reason?  In this mindset we are
      searching for an explanation.

      If we find ourselves in the reactive mindset our outlook is bleak and pessimistic, and we use
     words such as negative, problem, impossible, never.  When something does go wrong we ask
     questions like why now?, why does this have to happen?, where instead of searching for an
     explanation we are instead seeking a justification.

How does this relate to stress and self-management?
 
Individuals can sometimes be very harsh on themselves, where if it had been someone else they would have been much more lenient. This over-critical view really shines when someone chides himself for not getting something done.  I'll hear him say something along the lines of  'I should have done something' or 'I have to do something'. Simply thinking or saying this to yourself immediately begins the slide into the reactive mindset.

The answer is not being able to stop the reactive mindset from occurring, because that would only be an effort of futility.  If our brains interpret a situation to be a threat, whether mild or severe, it will automatically go into a reactive state.  The answer is to stop the reactive slide and begin the climb toward the thinking state of mind.

Part of self-managing your stress has to do with monitoring your thoughts and being award of what you say.  This is not very easy to do when your mind is occupied already with concern and worries. The key is to be able to shift your reactive language to a more thinking language (i.e. forward-thinking, solution-orientation, and a broad spectrum of possibilities).

An example of this is to shift from saying 'I need or have to do this...' to 'I want or would like to do this...'. Instead of asking yourself to justify your action by questioning, 'Why did you do that?', you instead search for an explanation by asking 'What is the reason...?'

Mind Your Language

An integral part of self-management in relation to stress is monitoring what we think and what we say.  There is a distinct language set depending on our mindset.  If we can become just a little more disciplined in how we use words in stressful situations, this can go a long way in modifying how we deal with stress.  

Curious? Wish to know more? Visit us at www.MINDtalk.no

Focus, Feelings and Patterns of Questions

Focus Triggers Feelings

I want to begin this post with a simple question; in the last 30 minutes what have you, the reader, been focused on? Perhaps it was with a problem with work; great news you just received from a short call; or your kid asking you the same question for the hundredth time with a two-minute period. It could have been any number of things.

What we focus on directly determines what we feel. For example, an individual's manager gives some corrective feedback about taking more time to listen to people's side of an issue during the week's tactical meeting. John feels irritation with the feedback, which feeds into a sense of despise for his manager Kjetil also feels irritation, but it leads him to feel that his manager is trying to support him.

One thing is what we focus on, but what is also important to understand is the meaning we assign to that focus. We may wake up one Monday morning, look outside the bedroom window out onto a gray, cold, dark autumn morning. Some people's mood and motivation will be dampened and down, because of the what that particular mornings weather means to them. Some others will feel uplifted and looking forward to the day, because they reason with themselves that they will be inside the office most of the day engaged in an interesting project and the weather really has no significant relevance.

Learned Patterns

The meaning we assign to what we are focusing on at any particular moment is determined by our language, and more specifically by the questions we ask ourselves. We have a learned-pattern of questions that we ask ourselves time and time again. What do I mean?

Human being are pattern-based creatures. That is, almost everything we do, say, think, and feel in our day-to-day lives are based on learned patterns. We have an experience, we learn from that experience, and if repeated often enough it establishes a pattern (in some cases the event may only have to take place once to establish a learned pattern). For example, a person may as a child have gone up to a dog to pet it. The dog was scared and bit the child's hand. That person develops a pattern to avoid dogs. When her focus fall on a dog, she assigns a meaning that the dog is going to bite, and thus she avoids the dog. This is her pattern when it comes to dogs.

Questions as Learned-Patterns

We have a tendency to ask outselves a fixed pattern of questions depending on what we are focusing on. For simplicity's sake, focus can be categorized into three areas: what we can control; what we can influence; and what we can't control.

If our focus is on the areas of what we can control and influence, then the questions we ask oursevles tend to be constructive and opportunity-seeking in nature. For example, we may ask ourselves some of the following questions:

• What can I learn from this?
• How can I apply this to other areas of my life?
• What can I do with this experience/information?
• What won't I do next time? What will i do next time?
• What do I need more of? What do I need less of?
  
• This situation really blows, but where do I go from here?

These questions will tend to make us feel a number of resourceful feelings like a sense of control, oversight, certainty, growth, opportunity etc.

On the other hand, if our focus tends to be on those situations where have no-control, the questions we tend to ask ourselves tend to act as road blocks preventing from learning and moving forward. The questions tend to be negative of nature and endless-loops.

• Why did this happen to me?
• Why did events have to play out like this?
• Why does this always affect me?
• Why can't I find a solution?
• What is wrong with me?
• Why am I so useless and stupid?

Just writing these questions is depressing the hell out of me. Thankfully, I hardly ever do this anymore. For some people, this is their fixed pattern of questions. No wonder they tend to find themselves more often in an un-resourceful state than a resourceful one.

The questions we ask ourselves, depending on how we choose to focus on events, will have a direct influence on how we feel.

If you want to help someone, first find out what they are focusing on. Is it something they can control and/or influence or is it something where they have no-control? When they begin to describe the situation it is vital to pay attention, because they will tell you the questions they are asking themselves.

Important Note
The patterns people establish work on an unconscious level. Thus, the questions they routinely ask themselves are also being asked at an unconscious level. It is only by drawing their attention to this fact, that they can start to take control over their patterns. This awareness they then have the ability to change the questions they ask, the meaning they assign to an event and finally how they feel.