From reaction to response
As human beings, we have inherited a physiology that is sub-optimal for our time:
Our brains have evolved to purposefullly look out for threats in our environment (helpful to our early ancestors), yet most of the distress that we feel today does not come from life-threatening circumstances.
Our brain, however, treats any kind of negative trigger as perceived threat, and orchestrates a complex automatic physiological process - the fight-flight-freeze response - sometimes even just in the background, without our knowing.
This automatic reactivity - often triggered by our own thoughts, judgements and interpretations - and the habitual coping behaviour that follows, is the resaon many of us experience feelings of stress, anxiety or low mood (even depression).
The good news is that we can train our minds to relate to experience (internal and external) more wisely. By learning to strengthen self awareness and how best to control our attention as situations unfold, we are able to regulate our emotions and shift from automatically reacting to skilfully responding.
Viktor Frankl famously said:
"Between stimulus and response, there is a space. In that space lies our freedom and our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our happiness.”
