I have recently made several big life changes, and I have been noticing how de-stabilizing it is to enter into the unknown. Admittedly, when I first made the choices, I was flush with initial excitement, the potential of possibilities buoying me on. Yet, after a couple weeks, I found that this emotion had wained, and I was back amidst many of the same insecurities, but now without the added benefit of stability.
I understand that stability, ultimately, is illusory. I don’t know what is going to happen tomorrow. I don’t even know what this next moment will feel like; whether a phone call or a thought will send me down a rabbit hole — pleasant or unpleasant.
That said, my brain can be surprisingly tricky in suggesting that I know what tomorrow will bring. In fact, my brain relies on this form of projection as a shortcut. If I had to truly face the enormity of possibilities that the next moment might bring, I would be paralyzed by the deluge of data. Our brains encode “implicit memories” – templates for situations – that help us interpret and process our experiences in more efficient ways.
This tendency couples with the reassurance that our pre-frontal cortex affords by planning and organizing. The pre-frontal cortex (PFC), often referred to as the executive function of the brain, sits right behind the forehead and allows for higher-order thinking, including the capacity to observe and plan. When we start to feel stressed, our limbic brain (responsible for registering emotions, which sits directly behind the pre-frontal cortex in the center of the brain) will start to activate. One of the best mechanisms for regulating this activation is to engage the pre-frontal cortex, as this executive command center can slow down energy flow to the limbic area by increasing energy flow to itself. There are many ways to do so. In fact, the mere act of labeling an emotion which requires the organizing capacities of the PFC will decrease the intensity of the emotion (as Dan Siegel puts it, Name it to Tame it).
Another key strategy for the regulation of emotions revolves around our ability to plan. Developing a schedule or a list of to-do items engages the pre-frontal cortex and helps to lower activation of the Limbic brain.
So what happens when you make big decisions to change something? In a way, this can be seen as the removal of these limbic safeguards located in the PFC. When we take away the structures of our lives (however illusory), we must face the full torrent of the limbic brain without an anchor. I remember this feeling in the fall as the excitement of novelty dissipated, suddenly, there I was afraid. My stress ratcheted upwards, sleep deteriorated, I felt an ominous pressure in my chest almost all the time. I had entered into a limbic storm by throwing away my map.
At first, I tried to ignore it. Maybe if I just distract myself with enough activities, then I’ll find myself out of this storm. I don’t know if I even realized this was my strategy. I tried to implement lots of self-care activities (meditation, exercise, gratitude practice), again with the hopes of weathering the storm. I had lists upon lists. One friend quipped about the near obsessive control evidenced by my ability to rattle off all the activities I was doing to manage my mood.
But still the storm raged on, and slowly I was dragged further and further in the more I fought to ignore it. I told my inner critics (demons of the storm) to shut up. I was tired of listening to them.
But what I realized is that I never surrendered, I never just let myself feel shitty with the faith that I would survive. Recently, I’ve begun shifting this pattern by embracing the motto that “slow is fast”. I often want things to be done, I want to feel good, I want to be competent at whatever I do. Yet, usually this desire for instant-gratification leads me to self-criticism or avoidance of the dissatisfying experience. Instead, I am recognizing that when I move into a topic slowly, to be patient as I learn, when I allow myself to be fully present to my emotions – even when that is the feeling of frustration or sadness — then this slow progress ends up moving more quickly than when I try to push through.
I can’t profess to be through the storm. But now I am actually allowing myself to be in it. I am turning and seeing how this torrent feels. I am allowing the heavy sadness to sit in my belly, feeling the ways it gently pulses, bobbing up and down almost imperceptibly.
I still catch myself falling back into my old patterns, wanting to avoid pain and sadness. I develop plans about what could be better, on how I want to improve. But now, when I feel sadness, I am actively reminding myself that it is okay — as Rumi writes, I am trying to welcome my emotions as guests, treating each with the kindness afforded a visitor in my home.
It isn’t a panacea. The sadness is still there. The hurt and the regrets are still visible. The limbic sky is still dark. But I am no longer fighting it. I am plodding through, acknowledging that caution and compassion are important in choppy seas.
This is a new paradigm. Instead of using my pre-frontal cortex to plan, I am engaging another one of it’s functions: empathy. I don’t have a scientific study to back this hypothesis, but to me, the planning strategy seems to provide calm by inhibiting limbic activation, whereas empathy may mediate calm through the creation of new interconnections between the PFC and limbic area. Perhaps, through an empathic stance toward our own emotions, we allow both the limbic area and the prefrontal cortex to function simultaneously, entering into a both/and, rather than either/or paradigm. I can be lost and safe. I can be sad and curious. I can be frustrated and growing. I move into an increased state of intentionality and presence, allowing my slow pace to be fast.