The brain you did not choose

You did not choose to be given the brain you have. You did not choose the fear in it, or the anger, or the need for other people’s approval. These are things that started in you before you had any say in them. In this theme we separate two questions that shame keeps mixing up for us: what formed in us without our choosing, and what we can do about it now.

A researched practice

The central idea in this theme goes back to Paul Gilbert, the British clinical psychologist behind compassion focused therapy. One of his main ideas rests on the observation that shame and self-criticism can keep a person stuck, and that they can ease when the person sees that much of what they blame themselves for is a product of evolution and of what human beings inherited, rather than something they chose. He explains this at length in his book The Compassionate Mind (2009) and in his public lectures.

What is written above is our own wording, and it is meant for writing and reflection, not as psychological treatment.

As for the evidence, there is a real research base for compassion based approaches, but it is still growing. The meta-analysis by Kirby, Tellegen and Steindl (2017) found that these approaches appear most useful in areas such as self-criticism, shame and low mood, while their effects in some other areas are smaller and less certain.

One thing is worth knowing in advance. Some people do not feel comforted when they try to treat themselves with warmth. They may feel that the warmth is threatening or unfamiliar, especially if warmth was scarce early in their lives. This response is documented in the research of Gilbert and colleagues (2011). So if this writing leaves you feeling heavier rather than lighter, stop. That is not a sign that you failed the exercise. It is important information about how your inside responds to it.

Nobody chose to be the way they are. You did not choose your genes, or your first language, or the family you grew up among, or the country or the time you were born into. Even the threat and fear system running inside you is not something you designed. You arrived in life and found all of it already there and working.

This matters, because self-criticism does something harsh with our reactions: it turns them into harsh verdicts on us. You were afraid? Then you are a coward. You got angry? Then something in you is broken. And so a single moment of fear or anger becomes a judgement on your whole character.

But many of these reactions are very old. The threat system that responds first and thinks afterwards helped our ancestors stay alive, by reacting to predators and to the dangers of the old world. It was not designed for modern life, with its offices and schools and exams, and it was not designed for a message that arrives on your phone at midnight. It is doing the job it was made for, in a world that was not made for it.

This is not an excuse, and it does not mean you are responsible for nothing. The idea is simpler than that. There is a difference between what formed in you without your choosing and what you do with it afterwards, and that second part does fall to you. Shame mixes the two together. While they are mixed, it is hard to know where you can actually step in.

Something changes when you look at your reaction this way. It loses a little of its sharpness. You can look at the fear device inside you the way you would look at an alarm that screams every time the bread burns: annoying, in the wrong place, but not evil. And you can learn how to handle it.

Write about the same situation twice. The first time, write your reaction and the verdict you passed on yourself because of it, in your own words and without dressing it up. The second time, write the same reaction as something that formed in you before you had any chance to choose it. Then compare the two: which one leaves you more able to do something?

A simple way to start: pick the reaction you are tired of apologising for. Write about another time when that reaction could have been useful, or a different situation in which it could have protected you. Then ask yourself: what is the small part of it that I could steer differently today?

For instance

I went quiet and could not answer when I was criticised. Until recently I had been calling that cowardice for twenty years. But this reaction of mine is an old thing planted in a brain I did not choose, and whose reactions I did not choose. It looked to me like a fast device programmed a long time ago to treat silence as the safest option in that situation. I can see that now.
I got angry, and I was ashamed of my anger, and I thought about why I got angry, and I realised it happens when somebody interrupts me, which is what happened today. I do not understand why I get angry, but I do know that I did not make the brain I have and did not choose it. I feel better when I think about it this way.
I forgave myself for my anxiety. Nobody chose to give me this nervous system, and I was never offered the chance to choose a different one. The only thing I own is what I do in the ten minutes after the anxiety starts.

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Today's prompt

Write about one reaction of yours that you often blame yourself for. Describe it as it is: what sets it off, and what does it do to you? Then write about it a second time, but this time look at it as something given to you before you knew how to choose, not as a flaw you decided to make in yourself. At the end, write the part that really does fall to you, and what you will do about that part this week.

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