{"id":36182,"date":"2024-02-28T10:14:23","date_gmt":"2024-02-28T18:14:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/?p=36182"},"modified":"2024-03-01T13:18:41","modified_gmt":"2024-03-01T21:18:41","slug":"th3-c0nn3c7i0n-b37w33n-adren4l-gl4nd-in5uffic13ncy-sy5t3m-2-7hnk1ng","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/th3-c0nn3c7i0n-b37w33n-adren4l-gl4nd-in5uffic13ncy-sy5t3m-2-7hnk1ng\/","title":{"rendered":"Th3 C0nn3c7i0n B37w33n Adren4l Gl4nd In5uffic13ncy & Sy5t3m 1 7h!nk1ng"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Created in Canva by Nancy Blackman<\/p><\/div>\n

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As soon as I began reading Thinking, Fast and Slow<\/em> by Daniel Kahneman, I felt my body tense with anxiety. I had to stop because the triggers were firing.\u00a0 The reason for the triggers is that I was, once again, recognizing the limits of my brain. For most of my life, I thought my brain was normal. Yes, I comprehend and view the world a bit differently than others, but I thought it was because I was an artist.<\/p>\n

\u201c\u2026we not only tend to compare things with one another but also tend to focus on comparing things that are easily comparable\u2014and avoid comparing things that cannot be compared easily.\u201d[1]<\/a> Dan Ariely discusses this theory of relativity and how it influences our understanding. In this case, my perception of self was being confronted by a new perspective.<\/p>\n

Digging a Little Deeper<\/h3>\n

A few years ago, during therapy, I was preparing for my first EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization & Reprocessing) session. I thought we would begin at my remembered point of trauma when I was five years old, but my therapist suggested I begin in the womb. I thought it was odd but trusted her.<\/p>\n

When Kahneman suggests an exercise of \u201cbeating a steady rhythm,\u201d I was reminded of the EMDR vibration paddles that are held, one in each hand.[2]<\/a> Before diving in, my therapist told me to think of my safe place, all while my palms felt the gentle back-and-forth vibration. Then she asked a question. My brain froze as it was attempting to enter System 2 thinking while feeling the vibrating paddles. I needed to let my brain get comfortable with the vibration before thinking about the question, also known as dual processing. Eventually, my body relaxed as I allowed the paddles to become second nature, and System 2 then engaged.<\/p>\n

I imagined I was in the womb. It was dark and warm. Occasionally I felt the closed walls around me contract, squeezing in, forcing me to hold my breath. I tried to stretch out but couldn\u2019t. This image would later become a symbol of me always trying to break through the rigid box of my nuclear family. For now, I was in the womb of a woman who gave birth to my existence.<\/p>\n

Suddenly, my body stopped. Everything went into slow motion. I gasped and said, \u201cShe didn\u2019t want me!\u201d as the vibrating paddles continued to buzz in the silence of her office. My eyes popped open, and I stared at my therapist for what seemed like minutes. All of this was confirmed when I was 19 years old and my mother, in a state of rage, shouted, \u201cI wish you were never born!\u201d<\/p>\n

My therapist knew of my adrenal exhaustion and wondered if I had been in this state all my life, not just since I was diagnosed in 2013 when I was bedridden for six months. In a matter of five minutes of EMDR, my whole life began to make sense\u2014the brain fog, memory issues, and the difficulty shedding weight, even when I was logging in 35-50 miles per week of training runs.<\/p>\n

There are days when I am thankful for muscle memory, but back in 2013, having my brain tell my body to get up and make the ten steps to the bathroom was as if I was carrying a ten-ton boulder on my back\u2014each step planned and intentional. During times of systematic errors, I had to tell myself out loud, right foot, left foot, right foot, left foot<\/em>, trusting my availability heuristic. On days when there were biases and my brain struggled with simple decisions, I would turn to Chris and say, \u201cPlease think for me,\u201d which meant, telling me what I needed to do next as the cognitive ease between easy and strained leaned to the strained side. I had lived within the halo effect for many years\u2014becoming an Art Director for a prestigious department store chain, athletic, running a marathon, and traveling, I was disillusioned when I was suddenly faced with the idea of not being able to do much of anything.<\/p>\n

What I have found, over the years, is that the only time this is easy is when I am being creative, reading a book, learning, traveling, or out in nature walking\u2014the spaces where I am happiest and know I am my beloved self. However much I would like to believe Kahneman\u2019s statement that a person is at cognitive ease when they are \u201cin a good mood, like what you see, believe what you hear, trust your intuitions, and feel that the current situation is comfortably familiar,\u201d[3]<\/a> most days my body remembered that current situations, especially the good ones, were temporary. Therefore, don\u2019t get too comfortable. A lot of this was because, for many years, the woman who gave birth to me consumed too much energy and effort, and nothing was stable. This also led to a misguided anchoring effect when trusting people.<\/p>\n

In conclusion, one of the helpful attributes in my continual journey of recovery is to adopt a heightened level of self-awareness to recognize cognitive biases that influence my health and daily living so I can make informed decisions.<\/p>\n

If I had the opportunity to ask Daniel Kahneman a question, it would be this: You said, \u201cSystem 2 is the only one that can follow rules, compare objects on several attributes, and make deliberate choices between options.\u201d[4]<\/a> Is it possible that artists were created to be System 1 thinkers most, if not all the time? Is this why we struggle to follow rules? Actually, there is no struggle, we just don\u2019t do it, but how does that line up with your theory?<\/p>\n

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[1]<\/a> Dan Ariely. Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions<\/em> (New York: Harper Collins, 2009), 8. Kindle Edition.<\/p>\n

[2]<\/a> Daniel Kahneman, Thinking, Fast and Slow<\/em> (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2011), 31. Kindle Edition.<\/p>\n

[3]<\/a> Ibid., 60.<\/p>\n

[4]<\/a> Ibid., 36.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

              As soon as I began reading Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman, I felt my body tense with anxiety. I had to stop because the triggers were firing.\u00a0 The reason for the triggers is that I was, once again, recognizing the limits of my brain. For most […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":128,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[3081,2967,2052,35,2071,2072],"class_list":["post-36182","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-adrenal-exhaustion","tag-dlgp03","tag-kahneman","tag-leadership","tag-system-1-thinking","tag-system-2-thinking","cohort-dlgp03"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36182","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/128"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=36182"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36182\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":36213,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36182\/revisions\/36213"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36182"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=36182"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=36182"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}