We usually think of weapons as external devices specifically designed to pierce the body and damage tissue. Weapons can be explosive, sharp, heat or light intensive, massive, chemical or biological, or atomic.
However, there is another powerful force in the human arsenal that has none of the physical characteristics of tangible weapons, yet can be devastating.
Humans have abilities not seen anywhere else among living creatures. Unique among these abilities is language, which we use to represent, describe, record, and communicate.
We use language among and against ourselves and each other. People use language to help, protect, facilitate, remember, and sometimes to hurt.
It may seem odd to characterize language as a weapon. You might remember the old sing-song defense, “Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words can never harm me.” Well, that’s not true. Words can be devastating. We’d do well to remember that the tongue has no eraser. Of course, we can apologize, ask forgiveness, and make up for oversights and blunders. But, words can sting and reverberate. As well, they can hang around internally in one’s mind, creating annoyance, intrusion, and self-doubt.
Usually, we do not intend to damage with language (though sometimes we use language to criticize or rebuke). Like other devices or implements, language can serve multiple purposes and can be misappropriated or used excessively with negative consequences. In the hands of an assailant, a kitchen knife can be a weapon; a drunk driver can inadvertently weaponize a car. Similarly, language is a tool whose use can backfire or have unintended consequences.
Words, of course, can be used to denigrate or cut someone down. Criticism may be offered in a constructive manner, though not easily taken as such. Criticism may be intentional, used to disarm someone or to make the criticizer feel better. Sarcasm is a variant of criticism that can drive home messages with acerbic or humorous effect. Criticism, sarcasm, and put-downs can be used to protect oneself, inflate one’s ego, or maintain the upper hand in relationships. This practice carries damaging effects.
Thoughts and language are often used inadvertently against oneself. It doesn’t necessarily reflect self-hatred; but it is a peculiarly adverse self-inflicted wound.
Language results from thought. It’s the expression of thought via verbalization or written symbolization in the organized format of linguistics. Language occurs constantly in our minds. Thoughts may be comprised of images and sensations, but they are formed into the cognitive constructs of language through habitual brain patterns. Thoughts are simpler, quicker, and less organized than spoken language; speech, in turn, is quicker and less codified than written language.
Because of this hierarchy, we have many more thoughts than we express in words (thankfully!) and our internal thoughts occur with rapidity and far less censorship than linguistic thoughts expressed to the outside world.
We are incessantly talking to ourselves, reflecting, commenting, interpreting, and editorializing on our experiences. This constantly chattering voice in our heads narrates, describes, interprets, opines, and comments on the world around us and ourselves. We can be our own harshest critics.
One of the ironic and quirky effects of language occurs when a person’s self-talk (which I call the “narrative”) gets in the habit of attacking from within.
For people with obsessive-compulsive tendencies, high anxiety, excessive worrying, self-esteem and self-confidence issues, perfectionism, or fears and negative attitudes, the voice inside can be a relentless critic.
The mind is very adept at building upon its ideas and images. We can conceive, create, and implement plans and materialization. We use language to bring fruition to concepts, thoughts, feelings, and impressions. Unfortunately, when your mind decides to bother you, it’s difficult to escape. The pressure builds, internal complaints and worries are persistent, and this often spills over into negative attitudes and despondency.
Who wants to hurt themselves? It seems an unnatural and peculiar deviation to “beat oneself up (or down).” Many people do it unintentionally, relentlessly, by means of self-chastisement and constant worrying.
The mind reviews unpleasant events; it turns things inside out and examines negative possibilities from all angles. It forecasts gloom, doom, and bad outcomes, and casts a pall over ordinary events. It worries and plays the negative tapes in torturing loops.
This adverse cycling of negative critical self-talk is a kind of psychological autoimmune response: the mind attacking itself. In biological autoimmune disorders, the body’s immune system identifies elements of it’s own tissue as foreign invaders, threatening the integrity of the system as would harmful microbes. The immune system then mounts a defensive response to protect the person. Unfortunately, it’s a case of misidentification, since the “invader” is not foreign, but rather an integral part of the natural body. Erroneously, the body attacks itself from within, seeking to overcome a counterfeit enemy.
The analogy of psychological autoimmune response is not equivalent to biological immune response; rather, it’s a colorful way of describing conceptually the mind’s misguided attempts to hound its thoughts into surrender, retreat, and escape. When the brain cogitates with worry, repetitive thoughts, and anxious images, it fuses these thoughts with neurological firings that cause negative emotional states, fight-or-flight responses, heightened vigilance, and impaired flexibility of cognitive, emotional, and neural control.
Whether the thoughts cause the feelings or the feelings cause the thoughts can devolve into a “which came first the chicken or the egg?” debate. Scientists and clinicians have regularly argued their stands on this. To those suffering from the self-flagellation of negative thinking, the academic arguments recede behind the importance of just getting over it. Nonetheless, the etiology of the negative cycling process does bear relevance to therapeutic approaches to provide relief.
I stand doggedly in the camp believing that neurophysiology is the cause of the problem when dysfunction settles in. Visceral neurophysiological response patterns give rise to emotional states that then spawn cognitive interpretations. The hyperaroused nervous system transmits information to the amygdala and limbic system to rouse the emotions. In turn, the system notifies the frontal and prefrontal cortex to interpret the situation and plan responses.
The resultant thought patterns comprise the narrative. I refer to this mentally active narrative as the “White House Press Secretary” of the mind. Just as the job of the White House Press Secretary is to report upon, justify, and favorably “spin” the administration’s policies, the job of our mind’s narrative is to support and rationalize how we feel physiologically through the filters of our beliefs and values, according to the events and circumstances evolving around us. These “stories” concocted by the narrative—though contributing to the stress—is your mind’s way to interpret perceptions, organize reality, and help you navigate a complex and ambiguous world.
If your neurophysiology is pumping you with an “on-guard” reality of ubiquitous threat, then your narrative will flood or attack you with negative imagery in an attempt to mobilize you to defend or protect yourself. The hormones and neurotransmitters are very real, even when the information your thoughts provide is “fake news.”
Though it’s true that the neurophysiological and primitive brain responses interact reciprocally with cognitive functions, the neurochemical responses are primary. With habituation, they may seem indistinguishable, thus appearing as if the thoughts cause the distressing feelings.
That thoughts primarily cause feelings is the assumption underlying the psychological treatment of cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT). In this approach, the clinician teaches the patient to frame distressing thoughts in less threatening contexts, thereby attempting to subdue or defuse the negative emotional charge. Unfortunately, this approach is backward, like putting on your shoes before putting on your socks. This is because the narrative of negative thinking follows the biological imperative of the physiology. If the White House Press Secretary departs from administration policy, the President simply fires him!
The chain of command flows from neurophysiology and neurochemistry to cognitive processes. Now, it’s also true that thoughts and perceptions can trigger or invoke neurophysiological loops entrenched in the brain. Once enlivened, the emotions and thoughts angrily dance and fight with each other. There are different levels at which to intervene and these can be collaboratively helpful in calming the storm. Telling yourself that there is no real threat, hearing reassurances that things are okay may intercept the escalating internal storm and stop throwing fuel on the fire. But the effective and lasting solution is to tame, train, and regulate the underlying neurophysiological cause of the problem. In a corrupt administration, cajoling the Press Secretary is not effective. It’s necessary to get the skunk out of the White House.
We all have doubts and negative thoughts. Even people given to optimism and confidence occasionally waver with intrusive thoughts and upset feelings. For those continually preoccupied, however, the weapon of self-criticism and internal obsession can be a living hell.
What can be done to combat this self-defeating habit?
I’ve made the case that the mind’s narrative derives from predominant physiological states. I’d like to add that the body and brain try to adjust to new inputs, including physiological and experiential. We assimilate and accommodate new inputs as best we can. The process of habituation facilitates this adjustment.
Therefore, whatever its origins, your mind’s habit of spinning self-preoccupation, overthinking, and feeling overwhelmed confronts you with the basic options of “catering” to it—attending and reinforcing the negative thoughts—or finding ways to ignore, minimize, or disattend to them.
I’m not suggesting that it’s easy or a matter of will or discipline. You’ve heard such well-meaning advice before, and it’s not helpful. Instead, I urge you to consider methods of dealing with your mind’s pestering that are not geared toward reframing or reassuring, but can help you counter the internal noise by reducing it’s intensity, “volume,” persistence, and interference.
First, I want to relate a true story I’ve recounted many times over the years that relates to clearing the mind:
In 1982, I attended a motivational seminar in Los Angeles that featured a very successful but rough-hewn businessman. I distinctly remember his peculiar and disconcerting habit repeated throughout his presentation. The speaker would periodically turn his head and yell (to no one visible), “Get outta here!” This happened numerous times, and was very weird and distracting. I thought that maybe he had Tourette’s Syndrome and these were tics. However, he explained that his exclamations were in response to “the devil distracting and baiting” him. He was, he maintained, “in the name of Jesus, chasing away Satan’s intrusions into his mind.”
Grateful for an explanation of his odd behavior, but still bothered by its unorthodoxy, I determined to try this strategy privately. Much to my surprise, the strategy repeatedly worked! Yet, I was horrified that some “religious ritual” could be effective in chasing away disturbing thoughts that resembled… well, er, demons. I was too embarrassed and self-conscious to engage in this response around other people; yet, its efficacy in combatting the internal fake news was undeniable.
Over the decades as I treated patients, I observed that mind intrusions and thought preoccupations are so prevalent in vexing people’s peace of mind and ability to calm themselves. This syndrome is a source and symptom of emotional and adjustment disturbance, affecting the equanimity, concentration, and sleep of millions.
The important message regarding mind noise and “fake news” is the role of self-control, flexibility, and the empowerment of knowing that you can essentially run your own mind.
The mind operates a bit like a camera lens. It has various powers of focus, including the ability to zoom in and zoom out, magnify or reduce images, freeze frames, and track movement. In the hands of a skilled photographer or videographer, subjects can be highlighted or cast in different lighting that amplifies or contrasts, thereby accentuating importance.
Your mind has a zoom lens, too. You are constantly using it to switch between observing a bigger picture (for context) and honing in on details. This is akin to the metaphor “looking at the forest or the trees.”
When preoccupied with troublesome thoughts, you are zooming in on repetitive preoccupations to the exclusion of a bigger picture. This bigger picture or larger context, is the arena of thoughts and feeling your mind contains. When zoomed in, or compelled by obsession or repetition of details, the mind ignores (or deactivates the prominence of) other information, including other thoughts, feelings, and neurophysiological states. Focusing on negativity highlights and reinforces it. However, the annoyances are compelling and difficult to ignore.
Enter the concept of disengagement. To disengage is to become separated or disconnected. This is a broad term that implies physical and psychological attachment and separation.
When you break off an engagement, you no longer plan or intend to be together. A rocket that disengages from its booster then travels under its own power on its own trajectory. When you disengage from a thought or feeling, you are separating yourself from its prominence and influence.
In dimensions small and large, we are always engaging or disengaging to some degree. Literally, to cease one activity and start another, you are engaging and disengaging. It’s the way we involve ourselves or withdraw from actions as well as emotional and cognitive material.
When addressing engagement with mental phenomena, we often use the term attachment. We become attached to people and objects of our affection and commitment. We attach ourselves to beliefs, opinions, and values, as well as to material things.
In many spiritual disciplines, life’s problems and unhappiness are viewed as the result of too much attachment—with some spiritual solutions advocating the relinquishing of attachments as much as possible.
The notion of attachment implies possession and investment. Your attachment to some item, person, or idea means that you “own” it, that it’s part of your identity, and that you are invested in keeping it or deriving a certain outcome or gratification. You may be attached to a certain team and root enthusiastically for their success. You may be attached to a lover or a pet and be highly invested in promoting and maintain the relationship. You may be passionate about social or political ideas, putting yourself forward to support or advance them.
When you detach, you render things less important or consequential to your well-being. For example, I enjoy watching sports. Though not rabid, I do favor home teams (a hardship in my local athletic economy). It’s not always relaxing to watch my teams compete. On the other hand, sometimes I watch college sports in which I have no particular investment in who wins. Interestingly, the game’s outcome is much less relevant than the cadence and competition of the game itself. While watching those events, I’m able to relax and enjoy in a different way because I’m more detached from the outcome.
At a microlevel, our brains attach and detach, engage and disengage continuously. We shift attention and action to different tasks and demands. We cycle through varying states of arousal and relaxation, optimally doing this fluidly so we can engage without becoming hyperaroused and subsequently relax, rest, and sleep.
By practicing detachment from the thoughts that may hound you, eventually your emotional and neurological investment and involvement diminishes. The thoughts may still arise, but they have much less power to dominate.
The natural cycle of engagement/disengagement dovetails with the autonomic nervous system’s counterbalancing mechanisms of arousal and relaxation. The sympathetic nervous response gears the body up for action, while the parasympathetic nervous response produces rest, relaxation, and recovery.
The reminder not “sweat the small stuff” is easier said than done if your brain’s habit leans toward too much sympathetic (fight-or-flight) response.
To facilitate the conscious habit of disengagement or detachment, I suggest the concept and exercise of permeability.
When you have permeability, you are able to let things that detract from intactness “pass though” your filters of overreactions and ego sensitivity. Anxiety and obsessive thinking are tied to attachment and the desire or compulsion to dwell on unpleasant thoughts and feelings. I know that “desire” may seem like a contradiction regarding attachment to anxiety. However, in the sense that compulsive attention provides temporary relief (like biting your nails or some other habit you don’t want to do), some people insist on feeding the negative thoughts with attention and reactions. No blame or judgment, here, just an observation.
When you exercise permeability, you allow circumstances to pass through your narrative so that you do not have to become attached to them. Essentially, permeability is the ability to exercise detachment, to allow the mantra of “This, too, shall pass” to comfort and replace any distress resulting from an involvement with something frustrating, painful, oppressive, or that causes suffering.
Permeability is a great antidote to the desires that can’t or shouldn’t be satisfied. Note that permeability is far different from willpower. Permeability involves choice, often at a conscious level, but it is not a white-knuckled battle against a strong adversary.
Permeability applies the exercise of acceptance of the desire, with its attendant sense of deprivation and preoccupation, while acknowledging the conflict created by living with an unsatisfied yearning. Permeability is about becoming larger than the desires and frustrations tugging at you. It takes you into the surprisingly satisfying realm of living under conditions that are unfavorable to you, yet does not rob you of your sense of wholeness or living intact. Permeability is a state in which you remember gratification and anticipate it in the future but are able to do without it for the time being—that is, right now! (I like to think of living contentedly in the present as being able to tolerate the condition of NO to all the things I really want while still having a big W because I am winning—that’s living intact in the NOW!)
With permeability, you’re not reframing or reassuring. Instead, you’re observing and accepting what your mind and body are experiencing, even if unpleasant. You’re watching your feelings and reactions and “stepping aside” until they subside. You allow the unpleasant thoughts and feelings to pass through your reactive and judgmental mind.
Acquiring control over your mind and its pestering intrusions requires that your brain and nervous system self-regulate efficiently. Self-regulation is a term referring to the natural biological mechanisms of neurological transmission that keep the brain and nervous system within balance and recovery. Functional self-regulation happens when the autonomic nervous system responds appropriately to changing conditions and requirements within the body and to adapt to external demands and situations.
Just like cars have brakes and accelerators, our nervous system has a sympathetic and parasympathetic system. (See my article Brains Without Brakes.)
People with stable brains and nervous systems have an advantage in maintaining self-regulation. However, multiple factors can influence and degrade self-regulation, leading to emotional, cognitive and physiological symptoms, including the mind “attacking” itself with worrying, self-deprecations, obsessive and intrusive thinking, anxiety, etc.
Many individuals are born with predispositions to such irregularities and disorders. As life happens—with its traumas, accidents, lifestyles, illnesses, and so forth, the predispositions to compromised self-regulation can be triggered and the person is thrown into a state of disregulation. In this condition of erratic or malfunctioning states, the brain can vacillate between acceleration into fight-or-flight and getting “stuck” in hyperfocus or obsessive rumination. This latter deviation is represents the brain activity narrowing and repeating itself inappropriately, akin to the old phonograph needle getting stuck in a scratched vinyl record groove and repeating the same musical phrase over and over.
Training the brain with EEG neurofeedback is a drug-free and remarkably effective method of developing and restoring self-regulation. While it will not change essential personality, it is effective in substantially minimizing and mitigating all kinds of anxiety, intrusive thinking, worrying, stress, and negative overwhelm. In addition to being very effective, it’s safe, long-lasting, and without the side effects of medication.
My colleagues and I have administered millions of sessions over many decades; the successful results are indisputable. Those who have issues with anxiety, obsessive thinking, racing and intrusive thoughts, sleep loss, and negative outlook should avail themselves of this remarkable treatment.
Our world is a difficult place in which to function. Along with the joys that come our way and the capabilities and coping mechanisms we learn, there are continuing challenges and frustrations all of us must manage.
People are similar in kind, but different in degree. Whereas some people have highly sensitive and overreactive brains and nervous systems—conditions that are diagnosable and treatable—all of mankind must deal with threat, perceived threat, danger, and the discomfort of the unknown.
Becoming adapted and mostly comfortable in an unfriendly universe is a huge task. Yet, it can be done, steps at a time. There are effective treatments for anxiety and obsessive worrying. Ultimately, we want to make peace with a world that is often far from our liking. Along with a settled brain, this requires the development of realistic expectations and the ability to “bind” the anxieties we can’t entirely eliminate. This doesn’t mean living with raging panic, heart palpitations, a racing mind, a raging nervous system, or a brain that attacks itself. It does mean that we can acclimate to a certain amount of periodic discomfort that is tolerable and does not disorient or deter us from inward harmony, balance, and hope.
I have described the unusual human “secret weapon” of language and criticism sometimes turned inward to form the unpleasant habit of obsessive thinking, self-criticism, and an overriding negative outlook. I’ve outlined some interventions to overcome this debilitating tendency in the hope that those afflicted can diminish degrading and sabotaging themselves.
I know it’s not easy, that old habits persist, and that these afflictions are not a matter of willpower or faulty character.
By combining effective brain training with behaviors that can help neutralize the self assaults and develop resilience to the inevitable frustrations and negative mind loops that arise, it’s entirely possible to stop the thought/language/anxiety brigade that often makes life miserable.
You may have been told or come to believe that you are the enemy and that your anxiety, negativity, worry, and self-criticism is your own fault. Please don’t add to beating yourself up. Others have struggled with this all-too-human tendency.
A couple of wry sayings illustrate this problem:
The first one was told to me as a Yiddish proverb:
“Vos der mensch ken alts ibertrachten, ken der ergster soyna im nisht vinchen.” (What people can think up for themselves, their own worst enemies couldn’t wish upon them.)
“Vos der mensch ken alts ibertrachten, ken der ergster soyna im nisht vinchen.” (What people can think up for themselves, their own worst enemies couldn’t wish upon them.)
–%>The second one is a quote attributed to Mark Twain:
“I’m an old man, and I’ve seen many, many horrible things in my life—only most of them never happened.”
“I’m an old man, and I’ve seen many, many horrible things in my life—only most of them never happened.”
–%>In addition to the human repertoire that peculiarly includes mind self-attack, we have another tool (or weapon, depending on how it’s used) that can empower or disempower us; that is the power of choice.
I like to say that your options may be situationally or circumstantially limited, but choices are always up to you. Specifically, you can choose how you respond to adversity, both outwardly and inwardly. You can elect, on a moment-by-moment basis, to be the cause of your experience and reactions.
A “weapon” need not be used aggressively. It can also serve as a shield against potential threat or intrusion. Tools are implements, devices, or skills that help us manipulate and fashion our environments and realities. Weapons and tools give us power. Choice is your incredible human power.
You can (and do) choose to act and to not react. You can marshal your power of choice to notice, observe, and focus on beauty, kindness, and consideration. You can choose to give people the benefit of the doubt and to cultivate your habits of forgiveness and acceptance. You can encourage brain states of wondering about and marveling at the mysteries of life that sustain you and allow you get through yet another onslaught of difficulties. You can exert power over yourself.
You may be struggling with a negative brain or a nervous system that lives often in traumatic fight-or-flight mode. You may be overwhelmed or “victimized” with ceaseless anxiety or intrusive thoughts. Perhaps you battle with physiological difficulties, pain, obsessive fears, or lack of sleep. It’s not your fault. Even so, think about doing a better job of overcoming these difficulties by choosing to employ the principles and techniques herein described.
Watch my video on Anxiety, Chronic Worrying, and Obsessive Thinking. Assess your own anxiety level and coping mechanisms by taking the Anxiety Test on-line. This brief self-administered rating scale will help you determine the degree to which you struggle with anxiety, composure, obsessive worrying, and nervous system overarousal.
— Mark Steinberg, PhD
