Overexcited: Your brain, childhood and modern life
Getting overexcited can be quite easy right now. After all, you are running around in your head with old hardware and old software. If you look at your brain, your primordial brain - the reptilian brain - is perhaps more than 300 million years old. The brain stem and the basic functions of fighting, fleeing or freezing are millions of years old.
Then came the limbic system, your emotional system, even that is millions of years old. This came with the creation of mammals
A few thousand years ago came the neocortex, our analytical brain.
This is pretty short of the point, I'm not a brain scientist.
Your brain and stimuli
It's interesting, though, because if you look at millions of years ago and today, the world has changed. We get as many stimuli in a day now as someone in 1800 got in a year.
In fact, there is currently a phenomenon of information overload affecting society as a whole[1]. This can even trigger trauma-like developments when it comes to attachment to other people. You have, so to speak, your sociological self (who you are around other people) and your psychological self. When there is too much information, the sociological self takes precedence over the psychological self. As a result, you may even feel somewhat forced to conform to a certain identity, even though that is not who you truly are.
Now this is something many people suffer from.
Your brain can really take a lot, but probably not that much. Provided you don't do something about it.
After all, your brain is old hardware. It wasn’t built to handle all these stimuli, so you need to protect yourself a little from them. You see that many people struggle with this. This is evident in the rise of burnouts, ADHD, stress, and issues like that.
You see quite a lot of people getting burned out. The old hardware isn't pulling it[2].
There are several ways to manage this, such as through mindfulness and meditation. This helps you stay more present in the moment with your thoughts. As a result, you become less susceptible to all other stimuli. In addition, this actually changes some of the connections in your brain. So you can actually improve your “hardware” a little bit this way[3].
In addition, you can also help yourself by not exposing yourself to all kinds of stimuli. By not grabbing your phone right away in the morning and letting it flood you with all kinds of stimuli. You can turn off your notifications on your phone and computer.
Those notifications are all kinds of stimuli where your brain thinks every time, "Hey, what's that? Hey, what's that?" You just get dead tired of that.
Your hardware is not the best manager of these incentives. So you really need to handle this yourself.
Outdated beliefs about stimuli
Then we also have software. This is installed on that brain in your life, so to speak. The first eight years the biggest programs come in. If you're forty now, that software is obsolete too.
Twelve years ago came YouTube and Facebook and my children know no better than that has always existed, but it has just been around for ten years. Just like many other companies that now have almost global dominance.
My son doesn't know any better, but I do. I remember when there was no Internet, those were very different stimuli. That software was programmed from 1975 to 1983. If you look around you, the 1980s did pass, with the hairspray and the pastel pink jackets of Miami Vice. Those days are gone.
But the software can still frustrate with today's times.
Then I also talk about old rules in your head that may have worked well in the past, such as:
"When you perform, you are somebody."
"To put myself out there I'm going to put on a big mouth."
Perhaps that worked in the family situation in which you grew up and helped you get attention. Maybe it even helped you in school.
But now you're older, and at work and in your own family, it may no longer be working. Then you're in need of an update.
Just like an iPhone that at some point stops working with the latest update because the hardware no longer pulls it off.
Our hardware we just have to put up with, but it has worked for millions of years, so we just have to manage it.
Updating beliefs for current incentives
We can update the software to reflect the present day, so that we can better adapt to the stimuli of our time.
Then I'm not even always talking about the environment having to adapt to you, but also how you can adapt to the environment.
Because you are very important and your environment is also very important, so you have to find some kind of balance in that.
What I mainly mean is that you are no longer the adrift toddler you used to be. So you can now adapt that to your environment. You no longer go stomping around the Albert Heijn because something is not there. You also stay calm in traffic jams. That's what I mean by adapting to the environment.
You can't change the traffic jam by stampeding adrift. You might have gotten your way in the past, but now that traffic jam really doesn't dissolve from that. So you do have to adapt to that environment.
You have to adapt your software to the family situation that is there now. You are now a husband or wife and no longer a child.
The nagging childish part is of no use to you anymore.
It's not always easy to adapt. Your phone updates very quickly and people find it very difficult to put such an update into themselves in two hours about the beliefs you have about what works and what does not.
Fortunately, hypnosis makes this possible. We use regression to go back in time. We identify where programs that no longer work have been installed, and then we uninstall those programs.
Then visualize how you would have grown up without those non-working programs. Then your natural state emerges more clearly, which is:
- Curiosity
- Creativity
- Love
- Connection
You want to connect with other people. You are creative, curious and open. You are happy and laugh 400 times a day.
Anything that deviates from that is not your natural state. This is then due to programs not working. If you are reading this while you are grumpy, it is because of a non-working program.
Instead, you want to live joyfully, just like everyone else.
Some programs are fine. You just keep those then and is quite convenient.
But if it becomes something that will work against you anyway, you may wonder if it will work for you.
For example, you don't want to be the same at home as you are at work.
There are many such updates to make. For example, I learned that when the phone rings, you have to answer it. That you have to be reachable. But that was in the days when you could only be reached when you were at home. That was the time when the phone was the only "notification" of the outside world you had, along with the mail. So you only had two.
So you can also let go of that belief when you’re feeling overwhelmed. Are you going somewhere where you don’t need your phone? Then you can leave it at home, or turn it off or put it on silent, so you only pick it up when you need it.
You can also install these types of programs.
Also listen to this podcast:
https://www.buzzsprout.com/195236/2005702-oude-software-en-oude-hardware?play=true
Finding balance between stimuli and boredom
So you can get started with these programs to better ignore distractions. Now, the goal isn’t for you to become completely apathetic. Research shows that being overstimulated or bored can lead to burnout symptoms[4]. This is because in both cases, you may start to worry or ruminate a lot.
So it is important that you find a balance in where you are and are not attracted as far as stimuli are concerned.
With the erasure of unhelpful programs, you will find that what you really care about deep down, your attention will go there. You will then allow those stimuli, for example.
Self-hypnosis against being overexcited
In addition to meditation and hypnotherapy with a therapist, you can also practice self-hypnosis. This is very similar to meditation, but with self-hypnosis, you also consciously work on improving or changing your beliefs, which can lead to feeling overwhelmed.
Overstimulation, for example, can lead to sleepless nights, during which you just keep worrying or ruminating. That’s incredibly frustrating.
Self-hypnosis allows you to give yourself positive suggestions. Research shows that this helps reduce insomnia caused by rumination, by thoughts[5].
Would you like to learn more about how hypnosis can help you cope with overstimulation and other issues? Then join the free online masterclass.
Do you want to help yourself or others? Then sign up for one of our training programs.
Sources:
[1] https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/15299732.2013.724346
[2] https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10676-016-9414-0
[3] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1053810016302896
[4] https://iaap-journals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/apps.12257
[5] https://www.scirp.org/html/20-1761561_79325.htm