Suffering is evidence that your brain is working the way it’s supposed to work or, at least, the way everyone else’s brain works (including mine). Everybody suffers from time to time, but it does not have to be a way of life.
- Anxiety and depression are common when you experience a failure or loss of jobs, health, or relationships, lose control or autonomy over your life, or encounter new situations with responsibilities that are perceived as confusing or overwhelming. Therapy can help you be more aware of how your brain creates and maintains anxiety and depression. This awareness helps you to begin practicing new, helpful habits of thinking and being.
- Depression and anxiety are terms used to describe what your brain does when you attempt to learn from the past and plan for the future in an unhelpful way. The experience of anxiety and depression is actually evidence of healthy brain behavior. These unhelpful behaviors, thoughts, and emotions can be viewed as unhelpful habits that our brains do a great job of picking up on and then repeating (i.e., maintaining status quo). If these perceived events were actually happening right now, you’d want your brain to get your attention.
- Changes in mood and affect get your attention using these powerful thoughts as well as uncomfortable physical sensations. Your brain continues to automatically track when, where, and what’s going on when they occur and how you are responding.
- Quite frequently, rather than putting energy and effort into responding to these thoughts and physical sensations, you would be better off noticing that this is what your brain is doing and get back to living your best life.
Avoidance creates and maintains anxiety and depression
- Anxiety and depression are typically created and maintained by avoidance of unpleasant emotions and physical sensations. Nobody enjoys being uncomfortable. It is understandable why you might make decisions about what you want to do each day based on what you don’t want to experience.
- Unpleasant feelings can have a powerful influence on your life because they can demand your attention. If you send the message to your brain that avoiding unpleasant emotions, physical sensations, and situations is a priority, a healthy brain will work hard to help you avoid feeling bad. You want to not feel bad, but you end up getting really good at picking up on stuff that feels bad and reacting to it. The brain keeps getting the message that you want to get really good at getting away from feelings you might feel.
- Avoidance helps you engage in what seems like a productive activity; however, when you put energy and effort into not feeling bad, your brain gets a strong message that you want to prioritize avoidance as a way of life. Healthy brains get that message and put you on the look-out for more life to avoid. You can even build confidence at avoiding which kind of feels good!
- While you are getting really good at practicing avoidance, something else is going on that doesn’t seem to matter at the time. You start getting out of practice at initiating and maintaining doing the stuff in your life that you want to do. Your values (i.e., what is important to you) don’t change much but your life doesn’t represent them as obviously as they used to.
- When you notice that your life has gotten smaller because you’ve also avoided doing things you enjoy, you still feel bad and your brain works hard to maintain status quo and help you avoid even more. The frustration creates fatigue. You might not sleep, eat, and move well enough, and you have less energy to do the stuff you want to do. This is simply more healthy brain activity working to maintain status quo and protecting you (sort of) from failing at trying to enjoy your life.