The Addiction You Have Without Even Knowing it
The past and the future do not exist outside of the mind.
You will never experience ‘the future’ because when the future finally comes, it occurs in the present.
Once the present moment passes, it becomes a memory, and thus, apart of the past.
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Going over conversations from the day before, interactions that didn’t sit right, an recent exam you studied all night for, that time you said the wrong answer and everyone looked at you, any sort of recount of any past experience is quite literally using your present moment to relive a somewhat uncomfortable experience that is never. going. to. change.
Ok… we know everyone does this, anxiety is practically a personality trait in this day and age, what’s the issue? Why can’t we use our mental capacity to relive our embarrassing moments and awkward interactions, feel a little guilty and move on with our lives?
The incredible power of the mind is in its duality. Consciousness refers to ‘awareness of existence’ and it is metaphysical, meaning there is no pinpointed area where our conscious awareness actually resides in our brain.
The duality of the mind comes into consideration when our non-physical consciousness regularly produces a physical affect on the body.
If you’ve ever experienced anxiety, you‘re familiar with a racing heart, sweaty palms or a bright red face that results from overthinking. If you’ve ever experienced trauma, recounting a traumatic experience can make your guts twist, your heart drop, or even onset a panic attack, almost as if your body is mimicking the way you felt when you actually experienced it.
As our minds experience memories, our bodies follow suit.
There is an emotional state of being tied to every memory we have, some stronger than others, depending on how strong the state was during the experience.
Remembering a night out with friends may prompt a smile or a laugh but remembering the day you broke a bone or chipped a tooth prompts feelings of discomfort and disgust, kind of like a massive cringe or a punch to the stomach.
Recounting sexual encounters causes reactions in sexual organs, remembering how your dog snuggled you for the first time warms your heart, missing a late parent or grandparent brings tears to your eyes.
We regularly experience emotional states prompted by our minds recounting the past, but fail to appreciate the impact of those emotional states on our impressional mind and intelligent body in the present moment.
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Feeling stress from recounting a test you took last week, feeling stress for the speech you have to give tomorrow and feeling stress for the car that almost cut you off just now is no different to the body.
Sure, it comes in different levels depending on the situation but the process of releasing cortisol stays the same.
In other words, when our minds feel stress for the past, present or future, our bodies know no different.
The hypo thalamus pituitary adrenal axis (HPA) is a series of interactions between endocrine glands in the brain and the kidney that control the bodys reaction to stress.
The HPA axis is activated when your brain detects stress of any kind, priming the bodies to react immediately by releasing cortisol. High levels of cortisol have a direct affect on the amygdala, which just so happens to be the fear center of the brain.
At the same time of heightened activity in the amygdala fear center, the hippocampus, where we store memories, skills and control stress levels deteriorates.
As we experience stress, fear centers turn on. The activation of these fear centers deactivates our center for memory storage, learning skills, and most importantly, STRESS CONTROL!
No wonder it’s ridiculously hard to turn off stress once it’s been deeply activated, our bodies are literally less able to help ourselves once the process has started!
Stress not only affects how we feel consciously, it reconstructs energy distribution in the brain.
This unfortunate trade off makes complete sense of panic attacks and anxiety, the more stress we feel, the weaker our hippocampus becomes and the harder it is to control the initial stress that prompted this increasingly painful and incontrollable chain reaction.
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When experiences directly affect how genes are expressed in our DNA we call them Epigenetic changes.
Chronic stress falls into this category, as it directly changes our genetic code.
Not only does chronic stress affect judgment, decision making and memory, it causes gene mutation that can alter how new cells are produced in your body.
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- Feeling an emotion derived from the present moment is the same to our bodies as feeling an emotion tied to a recounted memory.
- Elevated levels of cortisol from feeling stress weakens the energy in our brain to alleviate and can even alter our DNA.
How are these two things connected?
Familiarity is a funny thing amongst humans.
The mere-exposure affect accounts for developing preference solely based on familiarity.
Breaking habitual patterns can be just as agonizing as forming new ones, moving cities, starting a new job or switching directions in any essence feels scary at one point or another.
Our bodies seek familiarity over anything.
The mechanical process in our biology uses the past to inform decisions made in the present to make sense of the future.
The more you familiarize your body with something, the easier it becomes. It is common to hear about the 21 day rule, a phenomenon that your body only needs 21 consecutive days of adding or subtracting something from your routine to make it comfortable, i.e. cutting out sugar, going to the gym, waking up 30 minutes earlier, etc.
Regardless of the specifics, it is widely understood how uncomfortable it is to break away from familiarity. Unfortunately, the process of emotional reaction prompted by memory recount follows the same rules.
The more you feel stress, the more familiar your body becomes to the cortisol release and the more you unconsciously crave it.
Luckily for our bodies, our minds are powerful enough to satisfy that craving without seeking physical stress. All we have to do is take a stroll down memory lane, recount some bad memories, over analyze for pointless reasons, go over the worst possible outcomes and BOOM our bodies get their cortisol fix.
This unconscious but prevalent mental behavior can feel inescapable.
We unconsciously train ourselves to use our ‘empty time’ recounting the past or going over every potential future outcome, when what we are really doing is exposing our bodies to chronic stress.
Our biology will easily sync up with a routine that wakes up with cortisol, falls asleep with cortisol and fills up free time with cortisol! It’s ridiculous to think about but even more ridiculous when we realize how common it is!
At the same time, the wonderful thing about all this is our bodies are just as readily able to sync up to a NEW routine that skips out on cortisol all together, with the simple redirection of our intent and mindful awareness.
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Stress is a powerful emotion linked to fear that paralyzes important parts of the brain. It is meant for fight or flight instances, to shut down other parts of the body and condense energy to focus on the urgent present. Stress was never meant to be triggered upon opening instagram and seeing 45 likes on your bikini pic because Sally’s got 250.
Evolution has given us safety, and now we deal with a threat that seems inescapable; our powerful minds.
Technology is a wild thing because it can provide the perfect distraction from reality, the distraction from the imminent cortisol spike we get from spending a handful of moments alone with our minds.
People are so scared to be alone with their thoughts that they turn to apps to distract their awareness. Sadly by doing so, destroying the self image, diminishing attention spans and eliminating self worth.
We somehow seem to condone it because hey, at least we’re not listening to our analytical mind over thinking ourselves into a black hole, right?
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It’s no surprise that the two most powerful cures for chronic stress are exercise and meditation, two things that require immense presentism; focusing your conscious awareness on your immediate surroundings and the present moment, leaving no room for your mind to wander.
It’s also no surprise that the average person would rather swipe through TikTok for three hours than actually deal with their thoughts.
As we move through life, growing more and more unwilling to deal with our powerful and annoying minds, hungry for cortisol spikes, distracting ourselves with media of any kind, it is important to understand that what were doing is not really avoidance, but immense destruction.
By ignoring the root of the problem, the inability or unwillingness to control the mind, the problem actually grows! We are way too familiar with what this problem has the potential to grow into; addiction, depression, anxiety, trauma, even suicide.
We are so controlled by our minds and yet we are the ones that possess them.
Our conscious awareness decides what we pay attention to and what we care about in the outside world, why is it so hard to understand that the same rules apply in our inner world as well?
Our minds can be overwhelmingly powerful to a point where we can be convinced there is no off switch, no control panel, no surveillance of any kind, and even though we’ve been told time and time again that there IS a way to quiet the mind, so many are to apprehensive to actually take the steps to learn how.
Cortisol addiction is way too prevalent and completely under appreciated. Ignorance happens daily and the addiction grows stronger.
Changing the chemistry of your brain starts with harnessing the power of your mind and that is done by simply asserting your awareness, the same way you focus in on your homework, your sports game, a lecturer, your favorite song or the last few minutes of a race.
It is a practice we engage in regularly in our external environment and shouldn’t feel threatened or any less able to do so internally as well.
I invite anyone reading this to challenge themselves by asking how many times have they fallen victim to their mind, felt harassed, uncomfortable, unworthy or in pain due to the power of their minds. I also invite you to compare that time to how much time you have dedicated to trying to alleviate that struggle, through whatever way you know how.
Play with your awareness, let go of your perceptions and just f**king meditate, dude!
The worst that can happen is that it takes time to master… not nearly as much time as you’ve spent in the negative depths of your mind, I can guarantee it. ;)
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xx
AES
