Someone I know told me she could not sleep last night. Her brain, she reports, is not her friend.
We've all been there, in need of a friendlier brain, one more down with the program of better being.
If your brain’s main function is to tell you what a loser you are, try this: Give that critical voice a name: “Terrible Cat,” “Godzilla,” “Charlie.” It does not matter what this name is. Now, every time you hear that voice address it kindly: “Oh hey there ‘Awful Dog.’ Thanks for being here to try and take care of me. Can I offer you some tea?” Because the truth is that in some immature and no longer useful way, this voice is trying to help you. The trick is to put some space between it and the old, hardwired feeling it delivers. You won’t get rid of it, but you might make it quieter and less constant and that can be a big relief.
If the above is just a little Learned Optimism at work, some, Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, I also notice more and more people saying “I don’t know” when the problem is not a lack of information but too many answers.
In a time of few options—grow the food, hunt the beast, find the shelter— no one stayed up at night worrying about if they should go to grad school, join a friend’s start-up, volunteer for a year, or go home and hang out in the basement until the world feels safe again. But for us such nights of worry are commonplace. While it is a good thing—right?—to have options, it is easy to think of how each one must be Googled and mulled over for all its permutations. Each one, after all, comes with an opportunity to think about cost-benefit analysis and some deadly “should.” What should I do about money? What should I do to please my parents? What should I do to live up to my image of myself?
And on and on.
None of that is easy. Choices can be tough. But one way to begin to make your brain a little more friendly in this case is to remember that too many answers means there is a good path out there—and likely more than one—not that you are lost.