Things that stop us from connecting
Have you ever been stuck ruminating? Churning the same thoughts over and over again. Playing the same scenario over in your mind - on repeat. Rumination of thoughts is often caused by experiencing something that makes you feel shame, shocked, sad, frustrated, angry, worried, or annoyed. The emotions and corresponding thoughts just won't go away. You feel stuck churning over the same thoughts and emotions that hold your attention and you can't unhook yourself - even when you need to reset and refocus your attention elsewhere - you find you are unable to connect and be fully present.
Jha writes in her book - Peak Mind, “When we’re mentally writing and rewriting things over and over again, regardless of what we’re looping on, it leaves no room for anything else”.
We don’t have the capacity available for either cognition or emotional regulation. You might find yourself, in this situation, making a hasty decision or snapping at your kids. Stress levels go up, mood goes down. That self-assisted stress wears on our attention, making it even more difficult to resist what I call the “loop of doom.” Rumination Loops happen to everyone, and sometimes they cause us to behave in ways that hurt others, lead to miscommunication and even break down relationships”.
Last month I wrote about presence and I shared a story about a conversation I had with my daughter. - click here to find out more.
The thought of her feeling the way she did put me into a Rumination Loop. Thoughts and emotions churned and it was all I could think about. It was impossible for me to refocus on anything else at that time.
The emotions I felt made me feel sick to the stomach as I churned and worried over what I was hearing my daughter say. My sympathetic nervous system was triggered and my limbic system was activated. Cognitively, I was offline. Emotionally I was in overdrive!
Our sympathetic nervous system activates the fight or flight response, and our limbic system is a region of the brain important for experiencing emotions, memories and motivations. The limbic system includes the amygdala, insula, hippocampus and orbital cortex. Your limbic system is activated and the emotions that creates are causing you to feel the way you do.
Rumination
Rumination is one of the most potent forms of mental time travel. It involves getting stuck thinking about the same thing over and over. When we ruminate on something, we get caught in a loop: we go over events, wishing they could have gone differently; sometimes we imagine the alternate ways things might have gone, or we remember how they actually went, and we end up going over those events yet again. We can also ruminate by catastrophizing: imagining how events might unfold in the future, worrying about various potentialities that may never come to pass. These types of mental loops are magnetic—they become conflict states, and it’s very hard to pull our flashlights away from them. When we do manage to, we tend to return immediately to the topic as soon as possible, like a tongue seeking a sore tooth.
Pause and Acknowledge
When you notice you are in a loop. Pause and acknowledge that you've noticed it. 80% of people can't even recognise that they are in a state of sympathetic arousal and simply carry on.
The actions we take when the limbic system is activated are often misinterpreted by others leading to misunderstanding and miscommunication which can create relational strain in the workplace.
Our Triggers
Any number of things happen that cause us to get stuck in a loop thus creating disconnection. These are things that put the sympathetic system on alert. Typically these fall into one of five categories called social experiences that trigger the brain. Any of these five experiences can put us into an emotional funk. It is worthwhile asking yourself next time you feel in a funk, or see someone else in an emotional funk; which of these five is in action?
Let Me Elaborate! - S.C.A.R.F
Status - Where you are in the social order of the communities you are involved in. It is like taking self-esteem and making it relevant to other people. The status increase is a reward; status decrease is a strong threat.
Certainty - Your ability to predict the future. Increasing uncertainty is a threat; increasing certainty is a reward.
Autonomy - Having control of choices. A sense of autonomy is a pleasant reward. A sense of no autonomy can make small stresses overwhelming. Finding choice in a situation increases the perception of autonomy.
Relatedness - Being safely connected to people around you. It involves sensing if people are friends or foes. Other people are generally foe until proven otherwise.
Fairness - The state of being in which people act ethically and appropriately with one another.
For me, in my story with my daughter it was certainty or, should I say uncertainty. Uncertainty is a big trigger for me. More so than any of the other SCARF experiences. Uncertainty puts me in a Rumincation Loop every time. I begin to worry and create all sorts of stories and scenarios. However, I am getting better at noticing when a Rumincation Loop happens and I am able to move through it faster.
Moving Beyond The Funk
Here are three things we can do to move out of a Rumincation Loop. You don't have to be a Zen master to learn self-regulation and to train yourself to move through a Rumincation Loop .
Regulate. Slow down. Stop and breathe. Pay attention to the quality of your breath and try counting out your breaths with different techniques. Ocean breathing is one technique. Breathe slowly in through your nose, taking care to completely fill your lungs and breath or slowly, repeat and you will notice your breathing begins to sound like the ocean.
Relocate and move - move away from where the event or incident that has put you into that state has happened and move. Walk, run, dance, do yoga, and go for a bike ride. It doesn't matter, just move. The movement is a critical part of shifting your neurochemistry and refocusing your emotional response.
Reappraise - move from problem-focused to solution-focused. Ask solution-focused questions rather than problem-focused questions? Moving your focus gives your brain a whole different circuitry to activate and it gives your limbic system a whole different out piece of things to be to focus on.
It is important to notice the language I am using here. It is very important that we learn to listen to our emotional signposts/ They are important and give us important information about what is happening.
Susan David - author of Emotional Agility, shared this post in her newsletter on the 27 April a quote from Viktor Frankl, a psychiatrist who survived a Nazi death camp and went on to write Man’s Search for Meaning, shared this sentiment: Between stimulus and response, there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.
If we can learn to use the space between stimulus and response we will be able to better bring our attention to what's important in the moment instead of getting locked in the rumination loop of mental time travel. In doing so we can be more present in the moment. A critical skill needed today in leadership.
Until next time
Be courageous and try something new.
You are doing great.
Tab
References
Jha, Amishi P.. Peak Mind: Find Your Focus, Own Your Attention, Invest 12 Minutes a Day. Little, Brown Book Group. Kindle Edition.
Rock, David. Your Brain at Work (Strategies for Overcoming Distraction, Regaining Focus, and Working Smarter All Day Long). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.
