The secret addictions no one talks about- part 5: the addiction to overthinking and judging. Blog #30
This is the last chapter of my series of blogs about the secret addictions. This week I address the grandmother of all addictions: the addiction to over thinking and its evil twin sister: the addiction to judging.
Everything starts with a thought
Everything in the Universe is transient energy. As far as our humanity is concerned thinking is the first energy we are aware of that we use to design and shape our life with. A thought is an electric sparkle in our head that ignites powerful feelings and emotions from the magnet that our heart and body are. The energy of feelings attracts similar energy and is furthermore distilled into the energy of actions and reactions. Our reality is the collection of all those energies and as that reality is perceived and filtered through our senses and sensations we create more thoughts out of them and the cycle continues...
The brain is the organ in our head, The mind is the brain in action. 95% of our mind is subconscious and automatic and so are most of our thoughts. They seem to come from nowhere and have a life of their own. That voice we hear in our head from the moment we see our reflection in the mirror as we brush our teeth, that follows us through the day as we interact with the world and keep us awake at night in bed is what the Buddhist call the monkey chatter.
A paranoid brain
The brain's job is to keep us safe so it prioritises and emphasises negatives over positives since negative is associated with danger and our primal instinct is to survive first, then to thrive if we no longer need to survive. The brain is inherently negativity biased, insecure, reactive and defensive and that is where all of our troubles start, but there is more to it...
A precarious perception of the world
Because the brain reacts to danger the news and the medias create a world of doom and gloom as they understand perfectly well the human nature. News are typically 90% negative not because they reflect the state of the world, but because fear sells. The world is getting better than ever before as a whole and in all fields and there are more good people in the world than bad ones, but the perpetual scaremongering relentlessly hijacks our attention and we are bred into a constant state of fear.
Fear is also a universal and traditional tool used by governments, the Establishment and the Church to control and manipulate people, as narrated brilliantly by George Orwell in his masterpiece: 1984 and observed in many places in the world right now despite the presence of History and Science.
The vehicle of our thoughts is prone to negativity
Thanks to the occipital lobe the brain learns and operates with pictures. Language is the best invention created by humans to convey those pictures. The voice in our head that over thinks speaks with words. Linguists have noticed that both the English and the Spanish language contained 50% of words associated with negative emotions, 30% of words associated with positive emotions and 20% with neutral ones. And this is how unbeknown to us the very language we use every day generates more negative pictures in our head than positive ones, thus keeping us into a subconscious dominant state of negativity and predisposition for it.
We inherit disempowering beliefs from our upbringing
Children learn by observation. So no matter what adults tell them, if they don't walk the walk, no matter what they want to teach their children becomes obsolete. Because we are naturally hardwired to belong with our own kind, the vast majority of people all over the world suffers from a latent fear of rejection, which manifests into insecurity, which translates into the universal belief and affliction of:" I am not enough" and we pass that virus to the next generation like a poisonous tradition...
I am not enough means I am not enough to own a guaranteed safe seat in society. I need to have, do and own certain things and behave or look a certain way in order to be enough. It only takes a benign comment from a father telling his kid:" Do us proud, win that trophy"to instantly convert that message into the child's mind as:" I need to win the trophy in order for my parents to be proud of me. That means that they are not normally proud of me. Unconditional love therefore is not available to me and the only way I can be enough and get love is to keep on competing and winning all my life...". It only takes a child witnessing her mother looking disappointed at her own reflection and muttering a self critical comment to download that insecurity and feel insecure about her looks as she grows up, no matter how often everyone tells her:" You are gorgeous..." and no matter what the reflection shows.
So since the brain's nature is to be negative, the world's perception we have created out of that inclination is negative, the language we use and the beliefs we share are also negative it is not surprising that we ruminate negative thoughts in our head all day long. We are literally bombarded, surrounded, marinading in and recycling negativity.
We judge others and self all the time
Thoughts are essentially a series of questions and answers. Because we are insecure we need to constantly compare ourselves with others. Enter the addiction to judging.
Wether we say it out loud or not our mind is programmed to compare and judge all the time for reassurance that we are good enough to belong in the world. Some openly and obviously judge and condemn others in order to belong to the better people and feel safe within that superior club. Some show more compassion to others but we all judge ourselves. In that light it is easy to see how the addiction to over thinking and judging are twins. The over thinking we find impossible to switch off are questions and answers related to wether or not we are good enough. It is a vital and daily self assessment and it is important to highlight how apart from narcissists we judge ourselves harder and harsher than anyone around us. And because whatever we repeat we reinforce we get addicted to the self negative talk and we forget that we can absolutely silent and replace it with both and in turn inner peace and self empowering talk.
Mindfulness is the cure, the antidote and the food our mind needs to be healthy, RTT is the magic pill...
Although it is absolutely possible for many of us to find inner peace and solace from the incessant monkey chatter via the traditional practice of Mindfulness and Meditation, for those who don't necessarily wish to spend 5 years living like a Monk in a Tibetan monastery there is an efficient and powerful shortcut: Marisa Peer's Rapid Transformational Therapy (RTT). I offer a mentorship over the course of 3 sessions that consist of 1 RTT therapy session+ 2 sessions of Mindset, Mindfulness and Meditation that offers mind clarity and freedom from over thinking to all forever.