What would be more irrational: someone invents a problem out of this air, forgets they did that and then puts a lot of effort into solving it; or someone causes a problem and then decides they are the best person to resolve it?
Both scenarios are quite out there, right?
They are also not very dissimilar to how our brain functions.
The self-appointed saviour to the self-generated problem
Our brain is designed to predict and protect, and as such it wants to avoid past hurts, disappointments and failures from reoccurring. It uses our past to project problems into the future, so it can avoid them. Yet, the volatile and perhaps rather comical thing is that the same brain that invented the problem on the first place is now trying to find a solution to the problem it forgot it imagined. The brain is the self-appointed saviour to the self-generated problem, while it’s also the very source of the problem.
The issue we’re so worried about is a potentiality—it may or may not happen. But by virtue of the fact that we’re worrying about it in the present moment, the anxiety it evokes is very real. And it is perhaps that worry that makes us forget that the thing we’re worrying about was imagined on the first place.
The brain’s hypervigilance exposes us to the risk it’s evolved to protect against
The amygdala, a small almond-shaped region of the brain, plays a major role in learning and signalling danger. Five times a second, at an unconscious level, it scans our environment to ascertain whether we’re safe or in danger. When it registers danger, and that’s not a balanced decision because we have evolved to assume unsafety over safety, an emotional response known as the amygdala hijack happens. This suppresses the rational brain function and activates our fight-or-flight response. As a result our thinking becomes very narrowed, black-and-white and out of proportion with the perceived danger.
The functions of our brain have evolved in response to evolutionary pressures. But for most of human history, the brain evolved and adapted to circumstances very different to those of modern life. For most of human history, we lived in an environment ripe with life-threatening danger. While the brain’s hypervigilance has served our hunter-gatherer ancestors well, it is more of a danger to us than a solution in the context of modern life.
Imagined problems can’t be solved, they can only be dissolved
The brain wants to predict and protect because it thinks there’s something to protect from. But the solution to our imagined problems is in seeing that they are imagined—that there’s no problem on the first place. Imagined problems cannot be solved, they can only be dissolved.
Trying to avoid tends to attract
Our past experiences shape our expectations of the future. If the last conversation with a client didn’t go well, we are likely to be worried about the next one. We want to make sure we get it right this time and avoid anything that may go wrong. Ironically, what this does is the opposite—what we expect of the future is what we create in it.
By virtue of its predict and protect function, the brain anticipates hurtful outcomes in order to make sure it avoids them. And then the same brain that made up the problem tries to solve it, having completely forgotten that it invented it on the first place. This is all very human and a result of thousands of years of evolution. It is helpful to remember that our brains may not be best equipped to respond to the challenges of the modern world, and that we have the opportunity to investigate our instincts and thought patterns, and shape them.