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Ever had a disagreement with someone and they said something, you said something, they said something hurtful, and you froze? Retreated? Replied with something silly?
Then much later, during a completely unrelated activity or as you cozy down in bed with a book you finally come up with a perfect comeback. “Why didn’t I think of this at the time?!”, you wonder.
The answer is in how the emotional part of our brain functions.
Honestly, this kind of thing happens way too often. When I am stressed, and I need to retort, it always comes out like something ridiculous, and I forget words too while I am at it. For some of us it is just a part of life and they accept it as is and move on. They know that it will happen and they are cool with it. Yet, for others it is a torture… the sleepless nights tossing and turning and replaying the conversation over and over again with all the wrong things we said and all the right things we should have said instead. It is exhausting, and I have heard of many a laudable people go down like that.
After a friend of mine had been going through a particularly painful replaying session where he agonized over the elusive reasons on why he did not come up with all the smart things to say to his girlfriend during the fight and not after. His lamenting would have been OK, but it escalated into self-flagellation of never before encountered proportions. “I am so stupid!”, he kept saying. It was becoming a liability. He was beginning to believe his words, and it started to affect his daily life as he would “float back” in time to replay the scene in his head.
You see, our brain is ancient.
It consists of three parts: the lizard brain, the emotional mammalian brain, and the executive functioning cortical brain. Guess which one evolved first and which last? The lizard brain was first of course, and it is responsible for monitoring and regulating our everyday body needs and for responding to threat by mostly freezing. The mammalian brain is where our amygdala resides,and this little number is the smoke detector. It is responsible –among other things – for mobilizing our bodies at the times of threat. The high functioning brain has only evolved recently, and in evolutionary terms it is quite new to the scene, but despite its tender age it is complex, and it is responsible for things like logic and language, telling time and social engagement. So, we’ve all heard of the fight and flight response, this mechanism is activated by the older parts of our brain. When a threat is perceived, the smoke detector – amygdala – freaks out and sends the signals to the body to fight or run. The way our system works is that if the brain directs the body to respond to threat then all rather unnecessary features shut down to some degree. Those nifty features include language, time, social engagement, digestion, and critical thinking among others. This is why we can be “scared speechless” and we tend to remember only parts of what happened during a traumatic event. So, stressful situations take us out of our high functioning brain. The trouble is that it is exactly there that the assessment of variables happens which in turn allows us to think of something awfully smart.
The degree to which our emotional brain takes over during a threat dictates the strength, relevancy, and overall awesomeness of our comebacks and reactions. It determines our mental resilience.
So, someone insults us and we stumble and forget words, we go on tangents and stutter. And then much later… something happens in our brain and we suddenly become witty and sharp-tongued, and we remember all the relevant details that we so inconveniently forgot before. What’s the dealio? Well, as the stress hormones subside and the system does not need to fight or run any longer, the beautiful cortical executive functioning comes back online and makes all these wondrous things possible. This is why we come up with the best comebacks during unrelated and usually peaceful activities.
It is not because he was “so stupid” that my friend couldn’t defend himself properly, but because during the disagreement with his significant other his brain made some calls in favor of mobilizing his body for defending itself at the expense of impairing the higher functions. His brain was doing its job; it was doing what it had been wired to do so perfectly millions of years ago. His brain was only concerned with survival. It was not a physical fight by any means, and I would like to point out that the threat need not be physical. It can be words or a facial expression as the threat response is a complex mechanism.
So, next time you agonize over not retorting in a smart way at the right time, do not call yourself stupid, thank your brain instead for doing such a marvelous job at keeping you safe.
Of course, some of us – a special bunch – may not be OK with accepting this and moving on. Luckily, there is an app for that…I’m just kidding… no, there is not, but one could definitely re-wire that circuitry to allow for a more controlled approach to one’s own reactions during the arguments. It is not as simple as an app and it will never be, but diligent and methodical work on self-awareness can do wonders.
We cannot change the irrational organic responses of our bodies, except if we become deeply involved in ourselves, in our internal world.
It will not happen overnight … the brain is stubborn like that. It gets set in its path-ways. But if we are to believe the laws of neuro-plasticity, the more you use a brain part the bigger and better it becomes. So which part of our brain do we need to exercise to get better at keeping our cortical brains online when we get hot and bothered? The medial pre-frontal cortex (mPFC) is the place. It is our self-experience, looking into yourself the interoception. This is the part of consciousness that allows us to guide and monitor ourselves someway or another. mPFC can been gauged during activities such as yoga, meditation, Tai Chi etc. In other words, something that will allow you to notice yourself, to not detach from your body and your sensations. The more you engage it, the stronger it will become.
If you are like me, you are not all that determined in the exercising department.
To solve this, I choose to train my self-awareness with every day things, the ones that I know I will do no matter what. Like brushing teeth, and eating and drinking, putting dishes away and watering plants, going outside and generally kicking ass. For a short time a few times a day, I narrate what I do to myself in my head while I am doing it without an opinion, it must be without an opinion, but a statement of fact. This engages my physical senses and the way my body feels at a particular moment. I learn it, I get to know the physical signs that “crap is about to hit the fan”. And when I know them, I can see things coming and be better prepared for the unexpected. Nowadays less often I forget words or comeback with something like: “Well, and you are … yourself…you don’t know what you are talking about!” Seriously… who talks like that?
Try it:
During an everyday activity, like eating breakfast, putting dishes away, or hugging a loved one bring your mind to the moment and narrate to yourself what you are feeling in your body, where does it feel and how. Scan yourself as you touch, smell, or taste something. You will not know it right away, but this will engage your mPFC. Give it a week of diligent execution and see if you can begin noticing feelings and impulses you have not noticed before.
During an everyday activity, like eating breakfast, putting dishes away, or hugging a loved one bring your mind to the moment and narrate to yourself what you are feeling in your body, where does it feel and how. Scan yourself as you touch, smell, or taste something. You will not know it right away, but this will engage your mPFC. Give it a week of diligent execution and see if you can begin noticing feelings and impulses you have not noticed before.
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Photo/Pixabay