so, tonight riding home in the car I was telling Loopy about some stuff I've been pondering lately...
about how I feel like my rational mind, which makes plans (I think I'll be a teacher!) and carries them out (time for homework!) is in some kind of pitched battle with a basic instinct, animal-level brain which is just stuck in fear, and has been for years.
Here's the theory I've been working on (yes, I'm aware of similarities to many other theories; where do you think this theory came from?): see, the animal level of my brain (or anyone else's--this is supposed to be a general theory) doesn't understand nuances like embarrassment, regret, etc.--the animal brain just understands one binary variable: alive or dead.
This is a problem because the situations that make people feel threatened in modern life are not usually life-and-death situations. instead they are more like, "I am going to flunk out of graduate school," "i am going to get fired," etc.
But the animal brain does not understand this; with each experience of fear, the animal brain stores the key information: "there was a threat, I responded this way, and I survived." THis results in a lot of mis-learned information about how to respond to threats.
What my animal brain did the first time I encountered a situation that overwhelmed my childhood defenses (specifically, the near-simultaneous death of my grandmother and a good friend, while I was also in the throes of a desperate unrequited first love) was freeze up and refuse to do anything. I managed to get through that okay, but later, as life got more and more complicated, my response was the same to every crisis: freeze and hold still and it will go away.
I'm starting to call this my "rabbit brain." You know how rabbits freeze and think you can't see them? That's how I feel when I get "stuck" and feel like I can't do anything. The more I try to do stuff the more I "go unconscious" and discover that another day has passed with me doing some stupid thing instead of my work.
What I finally realized was that my "rabbit brain" must have concluded that this freezing strategy worked. Indeed, when I would freeze long enough, eventually the threat would go away--grad school went away, my various jobs went away...and I didn't die. Obviously, freezing works--if your goal is a rabbit-goal, i.e., make the threat go away and don't die. It's funny, but also not.
It reminds me of our old dog Angel who used to bark at fireworks and then look very proud of herself when they vanished--see ma, I made the scary bang-sparkle-thing go away! Similarly, the rabbit-brain says, "I was scared, I responded this way (shut down, freeze) and I didn't die, so I must have done the right thing." Hmmmm.
Anyway, Loopy wants me to go to bed (wonder why? -- I think we're on Hawaii time at this point), so... I will continue this tomorrow.
