Are you feeling overwhelmed?
Some days you may rock-and-roll, other days you may only crawl.
Embrace what you can.
Welcome to my first blog post. While saying bye-bye to 2020 (not a goodbye), are you also feeling overwhelmed like me? I can describe the 2020 as a long cold winter night. If you feel the grief or fear at least once during this global pandemic, stay with me, you are not alone!
It's not our fault.
“Volatility. Uncertainty. Complexity. Ambiguity.”
Neuroscientist Amishi Jha uses these four words to describe the type of high-stress at the University of Miami. This high stress can rapidly degrade and weaken our attention.
Attention, please!
Our #attention creates our reality because brain system is like a flashlight and it can focus on what allows you to hold. You might have an experience that dripping tap is keeping you up all night or cannot leave your mind to say the last word to your opponent.
Attention allows us to brood about the #problem or stick in our happy #memory from our past. It is powerful and chooses the moment-to-moment experience of our life—what we perceive, feel, remember, think, and do.
This superpower has also kryptonite: #threat, #stress, and #poormood. I know myself that whenever I feel sorely disappointed or shock, the blue screen (404 not found) cuts in a second. During this pandemic, I have experienced a heightened sense of threat, new and constant stressors, anxious, and deeply unhappy.
Attention Deficit Trait (ADT)
“Writing a PhD thesis while my entire family fighting with COVID-19 is devastating.”
You might have heard about attention deficit disorder (#ADD) which is a neurological disorder and mostly thought to be genetic, ADT mimics the ADD's conditions. Too many interruptions and excessive data overwhelm the brain neurons.
When the mind is coping, it is being governed effectively by the frontal and prefrontal lobes of the cortex, which guides our decision making and planning, the organisation and prioritisation of information and ideas, and time management. The deep centres below the frontal lobes govern basic functions like sleep, hunger, sexual desire, breathing and heart rate.
These centres are pumping up our attention and motivation and won’t interfere with our working memory, which is what we need - to track the many data points coming in.
However, when the brain suddenly has to deal with the sixth decision after the fifth interruption, the brain goes to panic! It reacts as if it were responding to a sabre-toothed tiger attack. The deep centres now interpret the messages from the frontal lobes by sending alarm signals of fear, panic, anxiety and irritability. The frontal lobes are hijacked by these deep centres’ messages and cannot assert their #calm, rational decision making.
The term “Amygdala hijack” coined by Daniel Goleman defines this situation when our deep centres hijack our rational thought and we respond to challenging stimulation with #anger, fear and anxiety. It robs us of our flexibility, our sense of humour and our ability to deal with the unknown.
We forget the big picture, the targets and values for which we stand. We fail to manage our creativity and our ability to change the situation.
We need to be careful about what is paying our attention.
Although our attention is easily fooled and vulnerable to what and how we feel, the good news is that attention can be trainable! We should pay attention to what we interest, care and love for others. Regular daily #mindfulness #meditation practice helps our brain to focus on present movement without judgment, elaboration, or reactivity.
Mindfulness practice helps restore attention so we can be aware of our emotions and relate to them differently by allowing them to arise and then pass away. We can track of what’s happening in the mind so we aren’t as easily hijacked or fooled into believing that our thoughts are reality and deal with ADT.
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