Of Bluebirds, Neural Pathways, and the Stories We Tell Ourselves
© Martha Wooding-Young, The Resilient Executive, LLC.
Ever find yourself fighting with an old version of you? The smart one, the victim, the one who gets it done, the people pleaser?
In early March I was joined on meditation retreat by a small, female bluebird. She was building a nest just off the end of our back porch with her mate, while spending the bulk of each day fighting with her self-image in the glass sliding door on the porch. The noise was a scrabble and a light thumping that, on my first break of the first day of retreat, got me looking out my window to see what was going on. It continued all week and mysteriously stopped when I exited retreat.
Each time my attention was distracted by the sound of the bird, I was reminded of how we shadow-box with our mistaken self-concepts. So many of us live in the gap, the space between where we are and where we imagine we ought to be. Whether we are never satisfied or feel we will never be good enough we are engaging with the corners of our own mind, partially reflected, not quite clear, but surprisingly persistent.
These reflections we subconsciously battle are typically patterns we’ve picked up as survival mechanisms throughout our development. They emanate from the oldest, least evolved parts of our brain, gathering language along the way that works to create the fear and subsequent avoidance they seek. They form a mostly hidden decision architecture that keeps us in familiar “safe” ways of being. They are trying to protect us … but in doing so they are keeping us stuck. It is when our intellect tries to fight back that the unwinnable struggle is joined. You can’t fight these old patterns – their basis is hard-wired, and their reactive pathways are myelinated. What you can do is learn to recognize the voice, to name it and claim it so you can tame it.
Apparently my bluebird friend was engaged in territorial behavior common during mating season. Apart from missing the fun of swooping and diving with her friends over the freshly tilled veggie garden, her actions were essentially harmless. On the other hand, as I know from many clients, this common self-attack pattern is far from harmless in humans. Acting out these subconscious or unconscious patterns can keep us stuck in survival mode, unable to access our calm, our clarity, our curiosity, our creativity, our compassion. We can become enchained in loops of discursive thinking, unable to lead with passion and purpose because we are too busy giving ourselves a hard time. Like the myelinated pathways that help us to walk and talk, these behavior patterns can become our default reactions, the unhelpful well-worn neural pathways we slip into when stressed.
As you turn towards the voice of your survivor mind and hold it in the sunlight of natural awareness, everything changes. Rather than saying to yourself, “I’ll never figure this out!,” noting that “My imposter syndrome says I’ll never figure this out,” changes everything. Once you can see that these patterns are not you—they’re just patterns—a lightness emerges, a workability. As the space of presence opens, new responsive pathways become available. Over time, we can myelinate these healthy new responses, and the old mechanism will give way to the neural pruning through which our marvelous brains keep themselves tidy.
Spring neural pruning anyone? If you’d like to explore your version of hidden decision architecture, imprecise self-reflections, or the out-of-date stories you tell yourself, reach out.