In Part I of this post I described how our bodies are designed for survival, not necessarily well-being. We pay a high cost for that genetic inheritance, as it was not designed for 21st century living.
The good news is that our capacity for well-being is also our birthright and encoded in our DNA. In fact, our capacity for experiencing deep connection (to ourselves and others—read “well-being”) is as much a part of us as our fight/flight/freeze response. The two systems just can’t be online at the same time, they were designed to be mutually exclusive.
So, how do we get to experience more well-being? Just BREATHE!
Is it really that simple? Almost…
While we don’t always have direct control over the stressors we face, we can train to lessen their impact. To be sure, this is NOT so that we can better succumb to them, thus allowing harm to hit us with impunity. Quite the contrary. The only way to have maximum agency is for the wisest part of our brain to remain fully online while we are faced with whatever we perceive as a threat.
That wise part of our brain, however, shuts down when our fight/flight/freeze response kicks in (ops!). Our threat-detection system rushes to save us more often than is needed, and in the process consumes all of our resources (not to mention our health). The fact is that most of us don’t need that much saving that much of the time!
Lessening the impact of stressors, then, gives us the chance to respond in more skilled ways to whatever we are facing in the moment. In other words, our best selves, and therefore our most thoughtful actions, come out of our very experience of well-being.
Ok, so how do we de-escalate our fight/flight/freeze response so that we might feel calmer and think more clearly? We, as human beings, have the amazing capacity to watch our thoughts, emotions, and physical sensations, rather than just have (which might as well mean be our) thoughts, emotions, and physical sensations. Once we learn to watch our thoughts, emotions, and physical sensations, and to recognize them as events happening in our bodies or minds (rather than as who we are, to the exclusion of everything else), we break the spell that shuts down our capacity to think clearly and broadly. All of the sudden, we have choices!
When we have access to the part of our brain that can take into account the whole context and consider a range of avenues to respond to what’s happening around us, we begin to feel more in control of our lives.
Our threat-detection system is powerful! This means two things.
1. It takes intention and practice to train our minds not to engage with it. But you can begin feeling a shift in how you approach your daily experiences by practicing even just a few minutes a day for a couple of weeks (to get you started, you might use the MBCT mindfulness recordings or Headspace “Basics”).
2. We’ll never be able to completely override our threat-detection system, nor would we want to—it does serve an important function at specific times (if you are stepping off a curb and a car rushes towards you, an automatic “flight” action is an excellent life-saving response). It’s when it comes to responding to ongoing daily stressors, even some grave ones, that letting our threat-detection system run the show actually limits our choices.
In case feeling calmer, being physically healthier, being more in control of your life, and making better decisions is not appealing enough, decreasing reactivity also opens us up (physiologically) to the possibility of feeling deeply connected (to ourselves and to others). Much of the love and joy we experience in our lives comes from this capacity. Love and joy are our ultimate sources of energy; they give us an inexhaustible inner sense of abundance, from where life can feel much lighter.
Decreasing automatic reactivity, then, is the portal we must cross to go from surviving to thriving. From there, we can maximize our capacity for connection from which love and joy spring freely.
One of the most helpful lessons I received on this topic is that love is a practice, not a feeling. I will share more about what that means and how to practice it in a future post!