Win the Inside Game: How to Move from Surviving to Thriving, and Free Yourself Up to Perform

by Steve Magness

As psychologist Lisa Feldman Barrett outlined, “A depressed brain is effectively locked into misery. It’s like a brain in chronic pain, ignoring prediction error, but on a much larger scale that shuts you down.” It’s the same with other mental health disorders. Prediction errors are a hallmark of obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD) and dysphoria’s like anorexia. Those who suffer from trauma experience a similar bad predictive rut. Getting stuck responding to a stimulus (sight, sound, smell, etc.) that their brain thinks means they are in real trouble. Getting stuck, choking, and freezing results from finding yourself in a predictive doom loop. We feel threatened, so we avoid, escape, or shut down.