- 12 Jun, 2023
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- 6 Mins Read
Stories for Eliminating Anxieties
“We think in stories” said, Lisa Cron, author of Wired for Stories. This makes storytelling the mind’s virtual reality. This process helps in shaping our decision making according to Dr Antonio Damasio, thus we learn from the experiences of the protagonist and make our own decisions for the future. This information sends my scholarly brain into a 90-degree spin. What about charts, statistics and the difficult language we scholars deploy to prove our higher-than-average IQ? Well, turn out that it is us scholars in need of some re-education, particularly about the workings of the mind. We have this mistaken belief that our capability to reason is what makes us different (or in some people perception better) than animals. On the contrary, humans are more emotional than animals. We express quite a range of emotions unique to us and these emotions are key to the power of stories.
The question is why we think in stories? The clue is somewhat provided by scientists studying human evolution. According to them, storytelling was evolved to protect us. Protect us? one might ask. Well, this is what the scientist believe that Stories were evolved to serve the purpose of our survival. Storytelling conveyed critical information on which our survival depended. Imagine our hunter gatherer ancestors in Africa with no writing skills. How will they transfer critical survival and hunting info to the next generation? I deployed my mind’s storytelling capability and came up with the story of a stone age father telling his son the following,
“So, my child, once upon a time I rose up early to fend food for the family. It was still dark, and I had long way to go. I planned to hunt a big animal so I can spend the next few weeks with the family. I decided to head for the river, which is by the mountain, you see over there. My child, all animals come to the river for a drink, and this saves me precious time and energy wandering around. There are a few trees on the left bank of the river, by the big rock formation. You cannot find a better place to hide as animals are weary of every other creature, particularly us humans. As I was walking towards the river, I heard some rustling in the bushes, fearing it might be a predator, I climbed the nearby tree so I can have a panoramic view of the landscape. Turn out the sounds were due to a group of pigs walking toward the river “.
This is how the father would have transferred valuable information rather than drawing charts or giving him a boring to do list, something we scholars mistakenly believe will work. I am thinking it is because of that hunter gatherer ancestor that I walk and write today.
So now that the child has listened to the story, he developed an appetite for it. This is because anything related to our survival pings our mind’s attention, according to Dr. Richard R. Restak. Coupled with that our Brain rewards us with powerful pleasure chemicals called Dopamine when we are curious. Now you know why we get pleasure from gossip. Some scientists believe that gossip was and still is our intelligence gathering mechanism, after all we need to know who is having affair with whom in the office, or who is friends with whom in the hierarchy chain, all critical information to survive in the ruthless savannah of office world.
The power of storytelling over our mind is an established fact, however, like everything else there is a downside to this if not channeled properly. When we ruminate or worry, our survival component in the brain called the Amygdala get activated. This increases heart rate, diverts blood from the digestive tract, prepares the body for action or commonly called “fight or flight” response by stimulating the adrenal glands to release adrenaline. This state of alertness is designed for short bursts but can take its toll on our body if done regularly. This can result in depression, anxiety, early aging, damage to our career prospects and social relationships. This happens all because we tell a wrong story or stories to ourselves constantly. According to Dr Aaron Beck, our feelings are caused by our thoughts, be they negative or positive. In his words, “when you tell yourself that you’ve done something bad or hurt someone you love, these triggers feelings of guilt. When you tell yourself that you’re in danger, this causes feelings of anxiety. When you tell yourself that you’re a failure or a loser, this causes feelings of depression.”
In a way Anxiety is conned fear where you worry about things that are not real. Real fear is when you are really in danger and is healthy for our survival. To change behavior, we must break the cycle of negative thought and our belief in that thought. We need to replace the negative thought with a positive to change our behavior. However, this is difficult since when we are depressed, we strongly believe in the truth of those thoughts or stories. There are remedies available to get us out of this negative trance and they all involve telling ourselves a different story.
Have you ever noticed that when our friends are down and depressed, we usually encourage them and tell them that things will be fine? How come we don’t do that to ourselves. Next time we catch ourselves deep in negative stories, we should imagine our Amygdala as the friend or relative we are talking to. We should start telling it positive stories, all religions been doing that for centuries, it’s called prayers. Things does need to be real for the brain to believe in the moment. For instance, when amygdala see a video of heights it starts to believe it and creates physical sensation like tingling in the body Particularity legs. Similarly, we can fool the amygdala when we are suffering anxiety, or stress or in a state of fear by showing it some positive images or thought patterns called positive thinking.
Similarly, rather than complaining and worrying about things that we don’t have, we can tell our ourselves the story of what we have. Form kings to paupers, we all have something, and we all lack something. Our lives are a struggle to have it all, but there is no promise of everyone having everything. The moment we tell ourselves the story of what we do possess, the brain has no choice but to bask in the happy hormones as abundance is what it craves.
Finally, the story we must all tell ourselves is what the Stoic philosopher Epictetus advised two millennia ago. We suffer more in imagination than in reality, he said. How many times did things turn out exactly as you feared? Your tragedies and your pains will be different than what you imagine, and you have no control over changing that. The most important story you need to repeat is that nothing is beyond our capacity to endure, and every situation can be improved. We humans have been doing just that since our first ancestor walked the earth.