To my Thinking Brain

 You know why you should read books , a lot of them?

When you have read a lot of books, you somehow stumble upon the book you need at the time. You stumble upon the right excerpt from a book at the right time. You somehow read the thing that you didn't know you needed but that helps you or you just recollect something you had read long back in a book that helps you now. I am going through a traumatic experience and I just start shuffling my books in the rack, and smell books randomly and at the start of a book, I noticed I had scribbled a page number so I flip to that page and find that it is a ' Letter to the Thinking Brain' talking about the Feeling brain. As I kept reading, I realized that it was what I needed to hear. I started feeling better and I understood what I needed to do next, I found few ways to cope. 

So guys, read! You can't imagine how that helps. Things you read in a book pop up when you need them and if you have read a lot, you learn to identify those pop-ups and use them to your benefit.

I guess what I am trying to say is that we rarely meet people who know the right things to say at the time you need to hear it, that might possibly be true for books too. But I found books before I found the person. 

Anyway, did you know many say that our brain can be divided into two parts?

Daniel Kahneman likes to call it system 1 and system 2. Mark Manson calls it feeling brain and thinking brain.

Here's the letter to the thinking brain from the book ' Everything is fucked' by Mark Manson.

Hey, Thinking Brain.

How are things? How's the family? How'd that tax situation work out?

Look, I know there's something the Feeling Brain is screwing up for you. Maybe it's an important relationship. Maybe it's causing you to make embarrassing phone calls at 3:00 am. I know there's something you wish you could control about yourself but can't. And I imagine, at times, this problem causes you to lose hope.

But listen, Thinking Brain, those things you hate so much about your Feeling Brain- the cravings, the impulses, the horrible decision making? You need to find a way to empathize with them. Because that's the only language the Feeling Brain really understands- empathy. The Feeling Brain is a sensitive creature; it's made out of your damn feelings, after all. 

Instead of bombarding the Feeling Brain with facts and reason, start by asking how it's feeling.  The Feeling Brain won't respond with words. No, the Feeling Brain is too quick for words. Instead, it will respond with feelings. Yeah, I know that's obvious, but sometimes you're kind of a dumbass, Thinking Brain.

The Feeling Brain might respond with a feeling of laziness or a feeling of anxiety. There might even be multiple emotion. Whatever it is, you, as the Thinking Brain(aka, the responsible one in this cranium), need to remain nonjudgmental in the face of whatever feelings arise. It's important to let the Feeling Brain air out all its ick, twisted feelings. Just get them out into the open where they can breathe, the weaker trip is on the steering wheel of your Consciousness Car. 

Then, once you feel you've reached a point of understanding with your Feeling Brain, it's time to appeal to it in a way it understands: through feelings. Maybe think about all the benefits of some desired new behavior. Maybe mention all the sexy, shiny, fun things at the desired destination. Maybe remind the Feeling Brain how much you respect yourself when you've followed through on your goals, how happy you are when you live by your values, when you act a an example to the ones you love. Start easy. Do not fight the feeling brain. That just makes things worse. For one, you won't win ever. The feeling brain is always driving. Second, fighting with the Feeling Brain about feeling bad will only cause the feeling brain to even feel worse. So why would you do that? You were supposed to be the smart one, Thinking Brain.

You don't get to control your feelings, Thinking Brain. Self-control is an illusion. It's an illusion that occurs when both brains are aligned and pursuing the same course of action. It's an illusion designed to give people hope. And when the brains aren't aligned, people feel powerless and hopeless. You may not have self-control, but you do have meaning control. You get to control the meaning of your impulses and feelings. You get to decipher them however you see fit. And this is incredibly powerful, because it's the meaning that we ascribe to our feelings that can often alter how the Feeling Brain reacts to them.

And this is how you produce hope. This is how you produce a sense that the future can be fruitful and pleasant: by interpreting the shit the Feeling Brain slings at you in a profound and useful way. Instead of justifying and enslaving yourself to the impulses, challenge them and analyze them. Change their character and their shape. This is basically what good therapy is, of course. Self-acceptance and emotional intelligence and all that. Actually, this whole 'teach your Thinking Brain to decipher and cooperate with your Feeling Brain instead of judging him and thinking he's an evil piece of shit' is the basis of CBT( Cognitive behavioral therapy) and ACT( acceptance and commitment therapy).

Engage the feeling brain on its own terms. Create an environment that can bring about the feeling brain's best impulses and intuition, rather than its worst. Accept and work with, rather than against, whatever the Feeling brain spews at you. Everything else( all the judgements and assumptions and self-aggrandizement) is an illusion. You don't have control, Thinking Brain. You never did, and you never will. Yet, you needn't lose hope. 

This is the real work of anything that resembles psychological healing: getting our values straight with ourselves so that we can get our values straight with the world.