Gentle Reader,
Psychological issues are not always easily identifiable or soluble. It takes a certain degree of self-awareness to tap into the presence of the treacherous little thought loops which sometimes cast a shadow over our mood, and many never manage to pull back the veil.
Amongst those who do, the first pit stop on the way to a more internally harmonious life is often seeing a psychologist, to address the distorted cognitive processes which can cause distress.
In effect, many psychological interventions boil down to saying: Hey, have you considered that you might have got this wrong, that you might be assuming the worst, and jumping to conclusions?
A classic kind of talk-therapy is known as ‘cognitive behavioural therapy’ or CBT. The evidence shows that it is effective, and it has saved many people from a darkness which otherwise might have proven all-enveloping.
Informally, I have found that you can even CBT your own way out of some of the milder psychological niggles which can take hold, if you have the know-how. This can be a useful trick, especially since the human mind really has the knack of tying itself unnecessarily into knots, particularly knots which are not easily disentangled without a bit of assistance.
Not all problems, however, are remediable by the application of such techniques, given that:
You can’t think your way out of a problem which you didn’t think your way into.
It can therefore be said that not all problems are thinking problems. Many problems, moreover, are emotional problems, which cannot be solved through logic or rationalisation, and cannot be out-thought.
The way I imagine it is that we all have a smart, executive functioning part of our brain (the cerebral cortex), but we also have older parts of our brain (the midbrain and brainstems) which have been around for a hell of a lot longer. These older brain parts pre-date sophisticated thought patterns, and I would assume that we still had problems back then, too.
Consider how your dog loves you with all of the affection his little heart can muster. Does he, however, have a thought process behind it? No, rather, he loves you instinctively, and bonds by spending time with you, by sharing experiences, and so on.
At the risk of saying we should treat each other like dogs, humans can do this too. I’ve had more success with connecting with my father by standing with him in a field, raking and digging the soil for two hours, despite barely uttering a word, than I had with many years of pondering how to bridge the gap between us, conversationally.
It was just what our nervous systems needed, an act of Being There. When we came back inside from the field, smelling faintly of damp and horseshite, we were also imbued with the pleasant glow which follows a pleasant shared experience, that of carrying out a physical task together in nature, a ritual as old as the human race itself.
We did not speak because we did not need to – co-regulation need not be verbal. Just as a mother co-regulates her baby by facial expression, eye contact, attention, and the rhythm rather than the content of her speech, we can do the same with our friends and family.
You can get these ‘reps’ in just by hanging out, be it in a structured or un-structured way. This is helpful as a healing process for our inner selves, but also as a way to bond with others, be they new people or old friends.
Exposure is the key to such experiences, and so environments which put pressure on interaction are the most optimised for developing connections. This is what makes many strong relationships – just time, in the same setting, working together, which explains why school, work, and university are the strongest contexts for developing friendships and relationships.
In microcosm, this can be re-created by trips away or intensive classes, or anything that makes people confront each other. Back when I was in medical school, it was well-known that if a two students went off on a ‘rotation’ together in a rural hospital, there was a good chance they would come back as a couple. Simply put, the lack of optionality here forced them to interact and bond.
We can bond with ourselves, too, and soothe our own nervous systems. This is why meditation, yoga, being in nature, exercise, companionship and so on, are balms to the soul – they nourish that part of us which cannot be reached by logic, spreadsheets, or exhortations.
Feeling good, therefore, can be approached in many ways – and may be tailored to what is lacking. In modern society, the part of us that feeds off of facial expressions, attention, and friendly touches is often neglected. Eye contact, for example, is a lesser-available commodity than in times of yore – when you steal a glance at your phone during a conversation, you break the rapport in a small but serious way.
In a world of remote work and study, the ‘third space’ therefore becomes more vital, as a way to give us what we crave. Society is no longer glued together, or as integrated, as it was before. Without such structure, many of us are staying at home, siloed in our dwelling-places, scrolling our infinity pools, and finding ourselves becoming, more and more, dull boys and girls.