How to understand your mind

This is one of a maze of tunnels that run underneath the old building we live in. 

They are dark and a little musty and the ceilings are too low for me to stand completely upright. 

The creaking of old pipes echoes through them but they are still quiet enough for you to feel very alone down there. 

The drumming of the laundry rooms provides intensity like a horror film sound track trying to build fear by encouraging your heart rate up as your mind conjures stories of what might happen next. 

When I go down there my mind presents stories images to me of something running at me in a horror film style and my heart rate increases. 

When I pass the tunnels as I take the bins down my brain insists that I glance back at the entrance to make sure nothing is coming.

This is how our brains work. 

They create stories, they make assumptions and paint terrifying pictures of the future. 

They keep us on edge to potential threats in order to prepare us to fight or flight or freeze should a future situation require it.

The emotion is a warning that something could happen not that it has. 

As adults we run the numbers, we smile, we dismiss the threat story and we move on with our day. 

It is part of growing up, learning to identify the tricks our brain plays on us so that we can dismiss the story and continue on as planned. 

Horror is the clearly visible way that this happens but procrastination, putting things off, dismissing our own ideas and dreams as bad ideas or impossible. 

These are the product of the same thing, invented stories of danger in our future should we take THAT path. 

When these story's come in it's time to look at the data again, run the numbers ask some opinions. 

Separate reality and horror again so we can keep moving forward. 

Negative thoughts are adding a story to a feeling, not an accurate prediction of the future. 

Ed Ley