"No one can operate effectively in life when there is an overload of "danger alerts". Those who experience this overload, replace aliveness with anxiety and concern, living in a very dark and dreary place in the illusions of the mind.
The "way out" is always to learn about reality and the lack of big monsters out there AND to deal with each belief and story that says there is danger. Learning reality and adjusting erroneous beliefs one at a time to what is true and real is the path to freedom and happiness. Not choosing this path leaves one on the road of suffering and struggle, as is the basis for Buddha's Four Noble Truths.
Please, please choose wisely and commit to finishing off the toxic, harmful beliefs and the resulting overloading of circuits."
The BuddhaKahuna
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ONLY SO MUCH CAN BE DONE AT ONCE
Think about it a little. You have a computer in your head. If you run lots of programs at once and overload it, it becomes slow and often malfunctions. True, it does not have an emotion about that nor any idea that "this is upsetting", but you do - and that negative emotion, plus whatever upset you have about not operating well or being overwhelmed add more to what is going on - for even greater overload!
A person who learns to watch out for everything at once is so attuned to possible dangers that he/she becomes totally overloaded. Imagine a golfer trying to remember how to place his feet, bend his knees, loosen his hips, have the club behind you in such a position that it can go in a straight line, grip the club a certain way, etc. and etc. He would have a "stilted" swing, to say the least, and probably get exhausted in a short period of time.
Yet we tolerate our operating with attention overloads - and it fries our brain. Our amygdala processing center is hyperactivated and very schizoid, even paranoid, as it wards off the constant bombardment.
OUR ABILITY TO PAY ATTENTION TO "THE NOW" IS DIMINISHED
Let's picture for example, Jane going out into a social situation. She knows she has to watch out for her posture, her enunciation, what she says, the look on her face, etc., plus she is on "danger alert" for that person to approve of her or she'll be "ruined", devastated, as it will confirm her lack of self worth and likelihood of being loved. Is she likely to experience anxiety? Of course. Is she likely to experience overload? Of course. Is she likely to have her brain conditioned to be on hyperalert? Of course. Is she likely to be more sensitive the next time because she has "practiced it" and trained her brain to be more on alert? Of course.
So, given this "reality" is she doomed to social anxiety and even panic at times?
No.
Such conclusions come from limited, irrational thinking.
Instead of this limited thinking and jumping to conclusions, we must do some learning about how things work and then do some retraining so that we operate in a different way than the repetitive training of the past has taught us. Since we had so many repeats in the past, we can only replace that training by lots of repeats of what is healthy thinking and actions. It is doable. And, yes, it takes work. But the positive net return is immense!!!
LOOK, UNDERSTAND
When we look at it more deeply, we see that we are firing off "danger" signals constantly to our brain.
We must acknowledge that this doesn't work (except it does work to create constant anxiety!).
Then we must commit to not tolerating that in our lives anymore.
In order for us not to be "in danger", we need to change the stories we have about being in danger.
Perhaps we made up that all these things were important because our mothers were constantly carping at us and worrying about our being good enough, or even comparing us unfavorably to others (in the hopes of getting our attention so that we would correct it). If every time this happens, we tell the story about "I am this way because my mother did x and y", then we will be reinforcing it in our brain and we will be giving power to the story. Giving power to the story means that we are putting it "at cause", in the typical "the cause is out there, in circumstances or other people" stance - aka the victim stance. If, instead, we recognize that it was our choice to create that story and to use it as an excuse or reason why we are the way we are, we can then choose to be "in charge" of our own life - and able to choose other alternatives of behaving, thinking, and believing. (Yes, your story will almost always have a few true things in it, but it is the story we weave around it that is not truly real.)
Back to the overload problem.
OVERLOAD
Overload in this case is a form of overwhelm, where we are out of control (since there is, in fact, too much to control, if we try to control it all at once - and that's a foolish endeavor!). But it is surely impossible to try to handle all those dangers and inputs all at once. So the only "way out" is to list all of what is going on, prioritize by impact or importance, and then handle one at a time. This is akin to the golfer learning one part of the stroke until it is so automatic that there need be no further attention on it and the golfer can then move on to the next element to learn.
So, we need then to handle each individual element in our "dangers" list, one at a time.
The first thing to learn is that there is no danger in almost any of the things we are on alert about. There is no actual threat in reality, only in our brain, in our imagination - actual threats are those that show up in a physical way, such as in losing one's life or limb. Read Threats And "Fear" - Differentiating As To What Is A Real Threat.
The second thing, closely related to the first, is to learn that we do have a choice in life, that we are not victims and we can exercise our personal power. Part of this involves getting rid of the artificial creations of "right/wrong" and "good/bad" - a dangerous world to live in if we think in our primitive brain that our survival is threatened, as if we were children totally dependent on an adult. If one "grows up" (let's go of being a child and/or a victim), then one realizes he/she no longer needs approval. And if one no longer needs approval, a vast amount of freedom is achieved.
Addressing the thoughts as they come up helps, but it is a tough battle if there are still lots of flying objects (danger thoughts hurtling through your brain). So, please realize it is very difficult to address lots of thoughts as they come - which means you must address them at a separate time and set up a replacement thought - and then install the new thought so that it will come up automatically. See The Program For Upgrading Your Beliefs.
Retrain the brain so that the "sorting" center (in the same place in the brain as the "happiness center") automatically screens out nonsense thoughts.
