This morning I leant on a tree, closed my eyes and listened to woodpeckers.
Schools are back, the birds are busy and there’s a frenzy of activity accompanying spring. How to keep a steady rhythm? Nomar is doing what he usually does, sniffing around looking for tennis balls. Nothing really changes for him, he’s oblivious! Which is quite nice in a way. It has felt essential to keep plodding on throughout the winter lockdown, head down, doggedly looking after kids, working, doing the chores… with very little light relief or anything concrete to look forward to. A hamster on a wheel, whilst juggling. Now that spring has arrived and restrictions are easing (we hope), there may be a tendency to get carried away and overdo it. Make up for ‘lost’ time. I can’t speak for anyone else of course but I wonder if we are a bit institutionalised in our own homes now. A slight panic creeps into my thoughts and muscles when I start to make plans and imagine meeting up with people again, go on journeys, stay overnight at other places. How do we make up for lost time without becoming overwhelmed? It feels necessary to take it steady, a gradual process of creeping out into the world again, blinking and rubbing our eyes.
In September 2018 I found myself free on Fridays to do whatever I wanted. I’d spent many hours in therapy working out how to find more space in my life. Suddenly, I had Fridays. I called it my ‘New Found Friday Freedom’. I decided to set myself and Nomar walking challenges, the first of which was ‘6 parks in 60 minutes’; an epic whistle stop tour of some of South Bristol’s parks and, as it turned out, street art.
I increasingly felt, as the walk progressed, that I was two people with conflicting agendas – one of me was on the clock, determined to achieve my goal, whilst the other of me was repeatedly distracted along the way by the array of artwork in the streets and stubbornly kept stopping to stare and be mesmerised (much to the frustration of the other part of me and also Nomar, although he frequently stops to sniff anything and everything, which is equally frustrating).
I took photos from various angles, trying to capture iconic Bristol landmarks in the background.
Pondering on this push-pull with myself, I’ve started thinking about self-sabotage… putting obstacles in my own way when I set out to achieve something, hence not often deciding to set goals at all or make new years’ resolutions, or only half-arsed ones. I also struggle on a daily basis to finish tasks that I have started and therefore, I am systematically denying myself that satisfied finished feeling and the rush of dopamine which can accompany it. I can’t remember now if I was like this before having children, or if it’s a habit I’ve got stuck with, due to getting so used to being constantly interrupted. I’ve noticed that when I do finish something big which has felt important to me, like a Counselling Diploma for example, I end up with a rather empty feeling inside and find that my mood drops for sometime afterwards. It is not a surprise that I might struggle with endings and I often associate this with the wrench of leaving the family farm at the very start of adolescence and events which preceded and followed it (mentioned several times in the other blog posts).
For this post though, I’m interested in the relationship between the neurotransmitter dopamine and processing of reward. Whenever we recognise a task as completed, usually – our brains release a load of dopamine and a sense of accomplishment. Drugs which manipulate the dopamine system are dangerously addictive, as is gambling, for similar reasons. Sue Gerhardt considers the impact of different types of childhood experiences on the brain and explains,
‘With plenty of dopamine activity, the child approaches experience in a positive way. Dopamine flowing through the orbitofrontal cortex helps it to do its job of evaluating events and adapting to them quickly. It also helps the child to delay gratification and stop and think about choices of action. The child with fewer dopamine cells will be less aware of the positive rewards on offer, less able to adapt and think, may be physically slower, and may be more prone to depression and giving up.’
(1)
I’m not sure which applies to me… I tend to dwell incessantly on the potential consequences of my choices and actions, to the point where I feel like not bothering at all. Am I blocking the rush of dopamine, or do I not feel like bothering because I sense there won’t be much of a rush at the end anyway? Judy Ho (2) seeks to understand self-sabotage and why we get in our own way. She suggests that it is in built into our survival and associated with attaining rewards and avoiding threats;
‘They aren’t independent systems, and there is a constant interplay in the brain to try to bring the two drives to an equilibrium’.
Self-sabotage occurs, she says, when our drive to avoid threats is more active than our motivation to attain rewards. This is the tendency to over-estimate threats. Thinking about striving for an equilibrium, got me reading more about polyvagal theory (3). Before polyvagal theory, our nervous system was pictured as a two-part antagonistic system involving the sympathetic (fight/flight) and the parasympathetic (freeze/flop/fawn) nervous systems. Polyvagal theory proposes the existence of a more cooperative, coherent ‘Social Engagement System’ (4); more of a parasympathetic-sympathetic interplay,
‘The Polyvagal Theory provided us with a more sophisticated understanding of the biology of safety and danger, one based on the subtle interplay between the visceral experiences of our own bodies and the voices and faces of the people around us. It explains why a kind face or a soothing tone of voice can dramatically alter the way we feel. It clarifies why knowing that we are seen and heard by the important people in our lives can make us feel calm and safe, and why being ignored or dismissed can precipitate rage reactions or mental collapse. It helped us understand why attuning with another person can shift us out of disorganized and fearful states. In short, Porges’s theory makes us look beyond the effects of fight or flight and put social relationships front and centre in our understanding of trauma. It also suggested new approaches to healing that focus on strengthening the body’s system for regulating arousal.’
(5)
Therefore, our experiences of relationships and most notably, relationships in our childhoods, seem crucial for understanding the choices we make throughout our lives and our approaches to achieving our goals or avoiding them. The impact of the pandemic and lack of social contact feels very relevant here too; in understanding why the world may feel a more threatening place now, even as the virus recedes, and why this may be exacerbated even more for some depending on their history. Meeting friends in the pub is not necessarily the relaxing and liberating experience it may once have been.
Generally though, I often assume I am dealing with opposing forces within myself; a contrast between new choices and old habits, the paradox between wanting to challenge and make an impact or retreating into the shadows, the mismatched forces of anger and fear. Family roles surely come into this. For example, the Simpsons has been cited as demonstrating well-known family roles (6) such as ‘Hero’, ‘Scapegoat’, ‘Lost child’. Lisa, for instance, is equated to the ‘Family Hero’; driven and striving for perfection, avoiding failure and shame at all costs, being the ‘good girl’ (with rage and resentment lurking in the background because it is a very difficult burden to shoulder). I used to consider myself very ‘driven’. I later realised it wasn’t sustainable and was detrimental to my health.
This began, I think, when I was going through the Clinical Psychology application process for the 4th time and had been offered 4 interviews. During the second one I froze and then burst into tears. I quickly went into flight mode and left there and then, promptly returning to the train station to go straight home, a journey of several hours. I sobbed the whole way. I cancelled the other two interviews and decided to never apply for a Clinical Psychology Doctorate ever again. This was a minor breakdown and major breakthrough. I find it fascinating now to seek to understand when self-sabotage is actually self-protection, self-preservation – when it is more of a help than a hindrance, to put it mildly. It had been drummed into me as a child that I wasn’t a ‘quitter’. So quitting this particular goal has become one of the most alleviating and liberating things I have ever done. I gave up. Ever since, a line from one of my favourite films, Garden State (7), often pops up into my mind: “I’m okay with being unimpressive, I sleep better”. I became happy to settle… and I mean settle in all senses of the word, including neurophysiologically… I became happy to settle for a 6 mile walk, with regular breaks to take photos and the reward of a delicious Chai Latte and cinnamon bun cake.
This was the first and finest Chai Latte I had ever tasted, the sensory experience on my taste buds and olfactory system was intense. I soon discovered this was partly because I was pregnant with my second child – the biggest obstacle possible to my New Found Friday Freedom! The next week I was tired and decided to stick to 3 parks in 30 minutes.
© 2021 Psychodography Blog
REFERENCES
- Gerhardt, S. (2004, 2015) Why Love Matters: How affection shapes a baby’s brain. London/New York: Routledge.
- Ho, J. (2019). Stop Self-Sabotage: Six Steps to Unlock Your True Motivation, Harness Your Willpower, and Get Out of Your Own Way. HarperCollins: New York, NY.
- Porges, S.W. (2011) The Polyvagal Theory: Neurophysiological Foundations of Emotions, Attachment, Communication, and Self-regulation. W. W. Norton & Company. ISBN 978-0-3937-0700-7.
- Porges, S.W. (2015) Making the World Safe for our Children: Down-regulating Defence and Up-regulating Social Engagement to ‘Optimise’ the Human Experience. Cambridge University Press.
- Van Der Kolk, Bessel (2014) The body keeps the score: brain, mind, and body in the healing of trauma. New York: Viking Penguin. p. 80. ISBN 9780670785933. Retrieved 3 February 2018.
- Sweet, M. (2014) Dysfunctional Family Roles (Illustrated!). Retrieved from: blog.mattsweet.com
- Braff, Z. (2004). Garden State. Fox Searchlight Pictures.
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