Week 2, Day 5: Summary—Handling Automatic Behaviors

Day 5: Summary: Handling our automatic behaviors

“The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly.” (John 10:10)

“Meditation on the Hill,” a photo from Sobi Hill, Nigeria, from Wikimedia Commons

This week, I’ve focused on the automatic feelings and behaviors that often precede our conscious awareness. The first two days I talked about fear and anger. These are our fastest automatic reactions, ancient emotions that helped our ancestors survive by fleeing danger or defeating enemies.

Unfortunately, traumatic experiences teach our amygdala to be more sensitive to danger. People who have post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) have adapted to a dangerous environment. They may be easily triggered by stress, or have recurring nightmares or difficulty with relationships. A huge amount of my time as a therapist and a pastor is spent helping people unlearn or at least reduce the frequency of these automatic responses.

Even those of us without PTSD have fear and anger reactions that are faster than our conscious awareness. They often lead us to hurt people we love, or act in ways that are contrary to our values. Because we are triggered faster than we can think, we cannot just will or reason these reactions into submission. We have to train them and strengthen alternative responses to things that trigger us.  

On days three and four, I looked at slower automatic reactions: habits and impulses. Habits are ways we have programmed ourselves. Habits can be powerful tools! We can hand off tasks to other parts of our brains so that our conscious awareness can go do more important things. We don’t have to spend as much mental energy deciding or motivating ourselves to do a task — the habit practically does itself. This only becomes a burden when we are trying to create or interrupt a habit.  

Impulses, on the other hand, come from the part of our brain that is most like an untrained toddler or puppy. The role of the nucleus accumbens is to assist with the anticipation and appreciation of reward. It teaches us to crave certain things, which then become part of our habits.

I think the Inside-Out movies do a good job portraying how these different brain regions and emotions interact. The self inside each of us is less like a single individual and more like a committee. The poor chair of this unruly committee that includes anger, fear, habit, and impulse is the prefrontal cortex (PFC). It has a difficult job when all the committee members are yelling! This is one reason meditation is such a powerful tool—it trains the committee quiet down, so the chair can decide where to focus its attention.

I believe a common theme in the world’s major religions is a desire to become more conscious, to have a more intentional, abundant life. Disciplines like prayer, meditation, reading sacred scripture, service to others, and corporate worship shift us from everyday consciousness into a different state of awareness. This is a process of growing in spiritual maturity that helps us live our lives in ways that better match our values.

The theological word I like to use for this process is incarnation. In Christianity, the incarnation is how God “puts on flesh” in Jesus Christ. But I also think it makes sense for us to consider how we “put flesh” on our own values, how we embody an abundant life. I believe it involves a union of mind and body, awareness and action. We become conscious of what is unconscious, and take steps to bring ourselves into alignment with what God is already doing in the world. As we become more conscious, we incarnate what we long to see in the world.

Prayer: Source of Life, help us wake up to your abundant life now. Amen.