How the Brain Keeps You Stuck
Is it seeking homeostasis or something else?
Good Morning,
I came to fuck up your brain a bit.
I mean I’ve kind of been saying it this whole time, but with the wrong words.
You’ve heard of homeostasis, correct?
In ancient Greece, they believed that the function of the human brain and body depended on a ratio between four internal fluids, known as the “humors.” Too much or too little of any of these fluids would cause all the problems a person could have in their mind and/or body.
And since the late 1800s, we’ve had this concept of homeostasis. It’s this concept that our bodies have certain “set points,” to maintain health. Like our average body temperature and all that good stuff. Disease occurs when the body deviates from these invisible set points.
Got it? Good.
So I’ve spoken about how our brain wants to reach homeostasis, by creating these set points. But, what I was actually talking about was this concept called allostasis.
Pause for your questioning glare.
Homeostasis creates this viewpoint that there are set points that we always want to return to and are not in alignment when we no longer at those points.
Allostasis opens us up to the idea that we create “stability through change.”
This means, that instead of just trying to preserve this steady state of being, the body is designed to anticipate and adapt based on previous experience.
You can see this in pre-meal enzymes. Our bodies will release these enzymes before a meal based on our meal patterns (what we eat, when we eat, etc) even enzymes that contribute to type-2 diabetes.
That’s why creating a meditation habit causes so many benefits because we are teaching our bodies to anticipate that stress-release response.
My main point is to offer up allostasis as another way to understand how to shift into a new identity.
It’s like exposure therapy. The more you subject yourself to that fear, the more your body will adapt to it and accept it as part of your experience.
So we’re basically always doing exposure therapy. Our body is creating these circuits to help it anticipate our needs and then creating these subconscious patterns to make our existence the most efficient while keeping the adapted status quo.
There may or may not be a lot of debate over the semantics of homeostasis vs allostasis, BUT I wanted to use it to really drive home how impressive our minds are at making our patterns subconscious.
Our Blindspot
We all have blindspots, physical and mental. We don’t see our nose even though it’s right there, because our brain deletes in from our perception.
Our brain can do that with our experiences as well.
Have you ever lost your keys and spent what feels like hours looking for them only to discover that they were right in front of you?
It’s not a ghost hiding them on you, I don’t think. It’s your brain adapting to the prompt you offer it.
“I can’t find my keys.”
So your brain says “okay, you don’t want to find your keys,” and then adapts to make sure that you are right.
In the concept with allostasis, if you experience this key blindspot enough, your brain will begin to anticipate this pattern and make it more common for you to misplace your keys. Because your mind and body believe this is now a pattern it must adapt to.
It doesn’t really matter if the pattern is good or bad. It’s just a pattern, that when exposed to enough times, becomes subconscious.
That’s where I got the idea for hell loops. That’s where we see the concept of neuroplasticity.
Neuroplasticity is the brain’s ability to adapt and change its structure and function in response to experience. Sounds like allostasis right?
Going a little bit deeper, have you ever seen the experiment where they put a fake arm next to you and get you to believe it’s yours?
Since our brain’s are SO powerful at adapting, they create body ownership when presented with enough information. AKA, they make you think a rubber arm is a part of you.
If you can take on a rubber arm as your own, what are you taking on right now that you may not even realize?
Breaking Out of You
And if your brain is so good at adapting to patterns you present it, do we actually have any say in the patterns we develop or are we just hopeless Sims characters trying to get to the otherside of the game?
I’m going to believe the former.
That’s why I love Joe Dispenza, someone I talk about like it’s my religion.
A particle vibrating from the sound when you speak has the ability to affect the center of a star on the edges of the Universe. It’s called quantum entanglement and I’m not getting into that because well, I’m not smart enough yet.
But, what it means is everything you experience, affects everything around you. It ripples.
And that’s why you DO have more control over your reality than you think.
The more I speak on these kind of topics, the more my brain will adapt to repeat this pattern; meaning, the more I write about this, the easier it will become to write about this and the more subconscious it will be to write about this. It’s now a pattern that I am just consistently experiencing.
Because our minds want consistency.
Constant is comfortable. No matter how good or bad you perceive that constant to be.
Think of your mind like a laser. You just have to tell it what to point at.
The Meltdown
The thing to remember when we are shifting out of patterns that no longer serve us, is our brain is like a toddler with their security blanket.
The brain has adapted to these patterns because it was exposed long enough to believe this pattern is necessary.
When we take away that pattern, the brain will believe we are in crisis, so will double down on said pattern.
Like when we want to cut out sugar, and then all of a sudden all we crave is sugar.
So we have to remove the pattern and offer the brain something even more appealing…like a security teddy bear instead of a blanket. I don’t know.
To combat this freak out, we can look at our inner child and shadow.
When I talk to people about their shifts, I ask them
“is the inner child still driving the bus?”
You as a child, didn’t have nuance. You experienced life in black and white. So if you always saw your parents fighting over money, you internalized it and said “if I get money, I will experience pain.”
When your inner child is driving the bus, no matter how much you work on yourself, you will always push away money, because of that black and white pattern you absorbed.
Shadow experiences something similar, by hiding away aspects of self that it believes you will be unloved if you embody.
Suble Activations
When you’re in the shower, imagine that the water is cleansing you of your inner child wounds. Call forward your inner child and place your hands on your heart. Say “Thank you for keeping me safe. You can let go. You don’t need to survive anymore. I’ll protect us.” Say it over and over again until you feel a release.
Pick one topic for a week (money, love, home, job etc) and then write down any pattern that comes up. How you talk about that topic, how you feel about those you have that thing, emotions that come up. These all point to where you inner child still holds certain beliefs.
Choose one pattern to try on for 3 days. Put a reminder in your phone for it. This can be as simple as telling yourself that you always find a parking spot. Write down anything that occurs after those 3 days.
When I’m trying to break out of a pattern sometimes I get what I call the shakies.
My whole nervous system will freak out and I get so nervous about making the wrong decision. That’s because I’ve programmed myself to believe that I’m incapable of making a decision by myself.
But, everything is a mirror. Everything is just energy bouncing off each other, trying not to explode. In every moment, we can decide who we are and how our reality shows up.
This isn’t for future-casting. Every pattern is in the right now. Every version of you is in the right now.
You just have to decide.
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