How to manage mental flares.

What's happening in YOUR mind? Below is a snapshot of what can happen in mine.

Late last week I was catching up with a friend, relaying to her what was happening with me. I was telling her about a situation with an uncertain outcome. As I was recounting my woes, I heard how my mind was painting a grim picture about the situation. It was predicting how it would be difficult, that I wasn't equipped to manage it. It was creating images of me suffering with limited resources and concluding with a certain dismal ending.

The stories and images my mind conjured left me feeling depressed, anxious and wanting only to lay down and take a nap.

I know my mind well enough to know that it was making up these stories to protect me from danger.

One of the functions of the mind is to take stock of situations we find ourselves in and make decisions that are advantageous for us. Often, it discerns actions and projects outcomes based on its prior experience: it refers to the past to make decisions about the future. However, when the mind meets a situation with an uncertain outcome -like my mind did - it has no frame of reference.

In general the mind does not like uncertainty. It would rather rely on what is already known than risk potential harm. My mind instinctively went into protection mode and prevented me from taking action (hence nap).

Luckily, I know this about how my mind operates. Once I started speaking aloud to my friend and could hear the dreary result it was creating for me, it didn't take long at all for me to know that I was experiencing a mental flare.

Like an autoimmune disease that creates inflammation in our organ systems if left untreated, an unmanaged mind in the face of uncertainty tends toward negatively-skewed stories that inflame uncomfortable emotions and less than skillful behaviors if left unchecked.

The good thing is, once recognized, an unmanaged mind and its mental flares can be managed.

By saying the story aloud, I saw my fatalistic scenario for what it was: my unmanaged mind flaring up. Like a parent of a tantrumming toddler, I saw it it acting out chose not to engage. Instead, I considered alternative thoughts than the woeful ones that my mind spewed. I considered: 'Instead of X, What if I believed that y would result? Or z? I imagined these potential paths, and by trying them on for size, I began to get excited about possibilities that I wouldn't have pondered otherwise. I became enlivened and inspired to take entirely different actions that felt waaaaayyyyy better. My mental flare was thwarted and my mind-body was more open and engaged with the world once again.

This is the magic of a managed my mind. I'm getting much better at it.

Managing reactivity is a precursor to accessing creativity.

How does your mind flare-up? What helps you to cool it down?

Feel free to share!

Mara