False Alarms
Listen: “Where is My Mind?” by The Pixies
Last week I lost my wallet and my brain freaked out. I facilitated a six week introduction to yoga and meditation for beginners by recruiting two of my friends who are teachers. We decided to do a ninety minute class with 45 minutes of yoga followed by 30 minutes of mindfulness meditation. We held the class at Living Water Christian Church, advertised it on Facebook, and had about twenty people show up for the first class.
We had to move all the furniture to make room for the twenty yoga mats, and I set my wallet and keys down on a table top before class began. We had a great opening night which released a flow of peace and gratitude in my mind and body.
I greeted people after the class, helped get the furniture back in place, and did a bit of debriefing with Brian Fritz and Pam Hausner who taught the class. When I arrived home after the class and got settled, I realized I didn’t have my wallet at some point.
My first thought was that I had left it on the table at the church or maybe it had gotten misplaced in the shifting of all the furniture. I went back up to the church and searched everywhere for my wallet. No wallet.
Now I am starting to feel a bit panicked. Not like a clinical panic attack, but an alarm went off in that ancient, reptilian part of my brain—the amygdala.
I knew most of the people in the class, so I was thinking that maybe someone saw my wallet or maybe somebody accidentally moved it or picked it up inadvertently. Everybody had their wallets and purses strewn around the room before class. So I got back home and started texting people and asking them if they had seen a wallet, and I asked them to double check their stuff just in case it had gotten misplaced.
By the next morning I heard back from everyone in the class—no wallet. Now my anxiety is shooting through the roof. I’ve misplaced my wallet on several occasions over the course of my life, but I always found it relatively quickly. My schedule has been crazy busy and the thought of canceling credit cards and replacing everything in my wallet, including my drivers license, created a great deal of stress.
I start praying prayers of complaint. “Really God, like I need this right now!” That’s a common prayer for me whenever something goes wrong. I’ve had a lot of those prayers in the last four years. Not that it’s God’s fault. I have trained myself to talk to God everyday and that’s the way it comes out when I’m pissed at myself or some circumstance. I start cursing myself or some force out there in the universe. It’s irrational, but hey, that’s the point of this blog.
Our amygdala can be highly irrational. It’s the “fight—flight—freeze” part of our brain. It evolved to protect us from predators and keep us alive. It’s where trauma is stored and how PTSD emerges in our lives.
I have often wondered whether or not I have an over-active amygdala. No kidding. It’s the source of my anxiety disorder and my decades of struggle with insomnia. It’s certainly a human condition, but some humans are definitely more susceptible to amygdala hijacks—an emotional response that is immediate, overwhelming, and out of measure with the actual stimulus. The emotions triggered by the amygdala are real, but they can be highly irrational.
I have been in many situations in which my amygdala actually saved my life—like hiking, driving, rock climbing, cycling—situations in which my life was actually threatened. But most of the time my amygdala overreacts to circumstances which are not life threatening like relational conflict, rejection, past regrets, or future fears.
I can get angry at my amygdala. It wears me out. It’s constant “fear alerts” trigger my anxiety and insomnia. I can get triggered by some “imagined threat” which actually does not exist, but my anxiety over it can last for a few hours or days until I figure out the threat is not real. Then I finally calm down.
Outwardly, I have managed to present myself as calm and confident through the years, but inwardly I can be a basket case (thinking of a Green Day song).
Which brings me back to the practice of mindful meditation. For decades I would try to fight, suppress, conquer, or subdue my negative emotions triggered by my amygdala. It didn’t work well over the long haul.
Meditation has taught me to sit with my negative emotions versus fighting them. I am learning to sit with my negative emotions and be curious, open, and compassionate. I have treated my amygdala (which is me, a part of myself, my body) like an enemy for so many years that it is challenging for me to befriend it. It’s always trying to save me and protect me; it’s just a little too hyper-vigilant.
Self-compassion has taught me to be kind to myself, my body, my mind, my amygdala. I am consistently kind and forgiving towards others, but I can be extremely harsh towards myself. Meditation helps me practice unconditional friendliness towards myself.
Viktor Frankl famously stated: “Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.” The neuroscience of meditation has shown that mindfulness practice expands the space between stimulus and response (neuro.Wharton.UPenn.edu).
So I have been sitting with my old enemy—my amygdala—and making a new friend. We’ve been having chats and listening to each other. It’s a rambunctious child with good intentions trying to protect me, and for that I am grateful. It calms down after a while and I am able to see the world, and circumstances, through a new lens of gratitude.
By the way, after I had gone through the hassle of canceling my credit cards, ordering new cards, and going to the DMV for a new drivers license, I found my wallet. It fell out of my pocket at home after class and slid under the bathroom shower curtain. False alarm. My wallet was never lost. Isn’t it ironic, don’t you think? (A nod to the universe and Alanis.)
Shalom
©realfredherron, 2023
