Monday reset: 7th April, 2025
Client "my thoughts are so automatic, I just get stuck in them and can't get out".
“Our brains are plastic, and we have the ability to change and shape them throughout our entire lives." - Andrew Huberman, Neuroscientist.
We all experience thoughts that cause us anxiety, from time to time, it’s part of being human. I think, part of the art of being human, is finding tools to manage the anxiety that these thoughts can produce. We may need different tools at different times. Each Monday, we will be tooling up!
Good morning everyone,
I don’t think I have been on a journey with any client who has not said to me at some point (at least once!) “my thoughts are so automatic, I just get stuck in them and can't get out". I have thought this myself, loads of times.
It is frustrating isn’t it when you know you are in a familiar and distressing thought pattern and you just are stuck in it? And you just seem to find yourself just there, often without warning.
I thought it might be helpful to understand what is going on in your brain that is causing this.
As you know, we have very complex brains. There is so much we don’t know about the brain. But we do know this. Everything we think, say, feel and do fires cells in the brain. Not just one cells, but many. When we fire the same cells in patterns together, they create, what I call ‘shortcuts’. A shortcut is created that is a collection of cells firing together.
For example. On a Thursday, in my house, the water is very hot. It is hotter than any other day to kill of any nasty bacteria that maybe in the system. Over the last 3 years I have got used to this thing and so without thinking, my brain activates what is now, an unconscious shortcut that makes me mix more cold water in the tap than I do any other day.
We have tonnes of these shortcuts. It enables us to do things on auto pilot a lot of the time. My Thursday shortcut helps prevent me from getting scalded (most of the time!).
It is like if we don’t cut the grass in our garden, but we walk the same path through it every day, we create a pathway. When it rains, the water flows down that pathway more easily than through the other long grass. We create these same pathways in our brains in exactly the same way, but with thoughts, behaviours and so on. That pathway we have created in our brain will light up more easily each time it is used and become the preferred pathway our brain uses.
Our brains are pretty busy and so these pathways make things easier for our everyday living. MOST of the time! We don’t have to learn that black furry, cute thing with four legs, that has green eyes is a black cat that lives next door, do we? We just know, oh there is Cuddles. We have created a pathway for Cuddles.
Some pathways are less helpful. For example, if we find social situations difficult, and have walked that path a lot of times in the way we think about social situations. What happens? When the next team get together comes along, our brain tries to help by opening that pathway, even though it is, that self critical, self judging pathway where we start feeling fear, think we will say something stupid, offend our boss and get fired, lose our house and end up living on the street. Feel familiar?
Our brains just use the most trodden pathway, not knowing that is it not actually helpful
We can start to change this by understanding this is not our fault. We have tricky human brains that can sometimes make our lives really difficult. Pathways may have been formed over many many years. We can recognise that we need to form a new, more helpful pathway. That takes time and practice to wear in a new path. As we wear in a new path, the landscape of the garden starts to change and we can see things differently on the new path. As the new path becomes stronger, the old path crumbles until the new path becomes automatic.
How could you take one step onto a new path?
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It is important to me to make my work accessible to as many as possible and so I currently do not have a paywall. If you found this post or this publication helpful, I would be so honoured if you would consider buying me a coffee. Thank you in advance. I seriously love coffee, mine is an oat, flat white, what is yours?
With all kind wishes
Jane
Accredited Cognitive Psychotherapist
Cognitive Behaviour Therapy (CBT), Compassion Focussed Therapy (CFT), Mindfulness & Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT)
➡️If you would like to work with me on a 1:1 basis you can contact me at: mail@janewatkinscbt.co.uk
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