I’ll bet you answered no to that, and I wouldn’t blame you. What a bizarre idea. But actually I’m here to tell you that it might actually be doing you a lot of harm mentally, and physically too, without you even realising its doing it! The good news is that this ninja assassin can be stopped, and you don’t need a hitman to do it, you might not even have to leave the house! But first, how is your imagination trying to kill you?
A powerful beast!
Lurking inside your own brain is your imagination. This powerful tool can imagine captivating stories, write uplifting songs, generate ideas so inspiring they change the way we do everything, and paint the most thought provoking works of art. That’s all quite impressive, I hear you say, but hardly life threatening.
Or is it?
What if I told you that the reason those things are as uplifting, thought provoking, inspiring and captivating as they are, is because they make us feel things?
Still no?
What if I told you that our imagination can make us feel any emotion. Just listening to a song, or reading a book can trigger thoughts and emotions. Anyone who has enjoyed 50 Shades of Grey knows the effects our imagination can can have on our physical bodies. Listening to songs like Eye of the Tiger can help us improve our performance.
It’s not just songs
And it’s not just songs, just the thought of your mums cooking or a childhood trip can trigger a nostalgic feeling. Is it one or warmth, joy, or something else?
Movies do it best though. Even a half decent horror can make our hearts beat faster and our hands sweaty. We know it’s just pictures on the telly, but it still triggers a fear response.
Ever been engrossed in a scary movie and been scared out your wits by a noise in the garden? In that moment, all your senses had become hyper sensitive, just as if you were the main character in the movie. – useful if you are trying to stay hidden from a knife wielding maniac – less so when you are just sitting on your couch watching the telly! But our imagination can’t tell the difference, so we go through it too!
Like that, we can trigger any emotional response using only our imagination including joy, loneliness, anger, sadness, confidence, feelings of success and failure, and that dreaded anxiety!
Now we’re starting to get somewhere.
Imagined stress; The assassins accomplice
When we trigger the feeling of anxiety we also trigger our bodies natural response to stress. Anti-threat protocol is triggered and our body prepares for war, or to escape. Anti threat hormones flood our bodies triggering the start of the “save me” protocol making our muscles stronger and more responsive, our brains switch to survival mode, our hearing and sight become more sensitive, and our pain receptors are de-sensitised. We only have limited responses, so to accommodate these essential survival responses our body supresses processes we don’t urgently need, ie those associated with digestion, rest, and recovery. In short, we lose our appetite, can’t sleep, and we get sick!
But that’s ok, once we’ve escaped, or fought off, the danger our bodies can return to normal! Except when the anxiety is imagined, there is no war. Your body thinks it’s living in a cave still but there is no bear to run from, or intruder to fight off.
Stop fighting bears!
Modern stresses include debt, challenging work environments, training the new puppy, traffic jams, managing kids routines, the list could go on and on! They also include imagined stress such as just thinking about all that stuff I just mentioned.
It also includes thinking stuff like; what if I lose my job, what will my friends think of me in this dress, social media induced worries, replaying unsatisfying conversations, rehearsing future rows, worrying about all that debt, thinking about what’s for dinner, what is that noise the car is making, should I park “here or there”, do I even want to go out with everyone tonight, and of course, that embarrassing thing you said in 1985 to that work colleague you haven’t seen for 30 years, you know that thing that everyone has forgotten about, except you, and all those other repetitive thoughts that make their way into your mind-space that just swirl round and round all day.
We can’t escape from these kinds of threats. Unlike the bear, we can’t chase work away. We can’t kick those repetitive thoughts that plague us constantly to the kerb. So the loop never closes. The stress response wasn’t designed to deal with this kind of threat, so it just keeps going, waiting for a resolution. And so we get stuck in this weird version of fight or flight, left over cortisol swirling all around the place.
The end result?
All this stress is killing us. Our imagination generated the anxiety that triggered the release of cortisol. And now it’s swimming all around the place causing havoc. We know the stress response temporarily affects digestion and appetite. When it becomes chronic we can gain weight, and are at risk of diabetes. We start to crave quick fixes to replace energy stores that we aren’t using, because we haven’t run away yet, but the body thinks we will, so get that mars bar, just in case, in fact, better to get two! This is also no time to be thinking about weight loss. We have a lot of tigers to run from (or so it seems), so we’ll need all those energy stores at some point!
We know that fight or flight affects processes associated with rest, or a lack of it. When it becomes chronic we see severe fatigue, muscle and bone loss, increased injury, and chronic inflammation. Our brains can be affected by a lack of restorative rest too which effects memory and, of course, our mental health.
Other processes are affected that I didn’t mention yet, such as our sex drive. After all, no one needs to be thinking about reproduction when they are running for their lives. When this becomes chronic it can affect relationships, and self confidence too.
Can you just think yourself better?
If our imagination is so powerful that it can cause all that, surely it can turn it off too? It would make sense, wouldn’t it?
If we can imagine having a row with our boss, surely we can imagine winning that argument and winning the day! Would that be enough to close the loop so we can finally get into rest mode?
Trauma is linked to a feeling of helplessness. It is common that trauma sufferers re-play the traumatic event over and over, intensifying the feelings and experience each time. They often report wishing they had done or said things differently, and those are the moments they re-play the most.
The fear PTSD sufferers feel during an attack is very real. Telling someone that is having a panic attack that they are safe is pointless, the imagination is making up it’s own, pretty terrifying reality, at that time. In therapy, we sometimes try to avoid replaying traumatic events because it triggers those debilitating emotions. Instead, we find new stories to tell ourselves where we win the day, we can trigger relaxation by imaging ourselves in our happy place, and we use grounding techniques to help the brain find it’s way back to reality when it becomes too lost.
Our imagination got us into this mess, and it can get us out of it too. But, it’s not quite as easy as it sounds. Anxiety, fear, insecurity, guilt and loneliness are much more easily triggered than they are countered.
How many compliments does it take to undo the devastating effect of a single throw away insult, and not even by someone you like and respect? I’ll bet that for most of us, even if you absolutely know that their opinion counts for nothing, and they know nothing about you, their words will still swirl around in your brain triggering feelings of insecurity.
So what else can we do?
Well there’s lots we can do, visualisation is a powerful tool in combatting this kind of stress, as we can see. We can use our imaginations to change the stories we tell ourselves, which changes the feelings we trigger – a great start!
We can also stop adding to our stress pot, and leave room for the stuff we can’t avoid. I saw a post on Facebook recently that had been written by a stressed out mum who had just booked a flight for her family. In order to save money she declined the option to pay a little extra and select seats for everyone. Instead, she would let the airlines computer do it when they checked in. However, she was already panicking (her imagination did that) that they might end up separated on the plane. Her flight wasn’t for months, and so, inevitably, her imagination would now torture her with various scenarios and outcomes (none will be good), causing a constant state of anxiety, from now, until the time they checked in, and they discovered their actual fate. Why not just pay the fee and avoid all that self-induced stress?
Knowing what causes you to worry most, is the first step to avoiding it. A counsellor will help you identify areas of self-induced pain. But, if you listen to the conversations in your head, you’ll find some clues there For example, if you know that rushing about causes your imagination to go into overdrive with worries of being late, and imaginary conversations where you experiment with excuses for your inevitable lateness. Instead, make yourself be the kind of person that leaves early and takes it easy! You’ll thank yourself.
Do something future you will thank you for!
If you get stressed by heavy traffic, and spend the whole journey “arguing” with the other drivers, and making up imaginary scenarios where you tell them off for their inadequacies, and will continue to argue with said drivers until it’s time to go home and do it all again? Then why not just leave early for work and take a book to read to fill time when you arrive!
If you are always running late in the morning and rushing about with too many things to do. Don’t try to pretend otherwise and put off getting petrol for the car. Just get it on the way home. I know you’re tired, but you’ll thank yourself in the morning. Also, make your lunch and set out your clothes the night before too – you’re welcome!
Make time
A lot of modern day stress comes from a lack of planning and a lack of time. We rush around because we are trying to fit too much in and have cut things too fine. We are the ones that suffer though when we end up getting frustrated and impatient. I appreciate that not all stress triggers can be avoided, but I’ll bet there are some things you could do differently! If you changed a few things, you might cope better with the stuff you can’t avoid. And if there isn’t, then maybe consider the possibility that you might be “yeah… but” guy.
“Yeah… but” guy is rarely as happy as “but what if I could, guy”. Just saying!
Exercise can also be hugely powerful too. When we trigger the fight or flight response, our body is waiting for us to resolve the conflict by either running away, or fighting something. It seems obvious now, but of course, exercise replicates both these responses. So, a little exercise can give our bodies permission to close the loop, and finally turn off fight or flight mode.
Any physical activity will do if it gets you out of breath, your heart racing, and the blood flowing. But, when you’ve been suffering from anxiety for a while, one or two sessions won’t cut it. You’ll have to take a leap of faith and keep doing it to see the benefit, which can be hard, especially for a chronic anxiety sufferer – yep, I do see the irony!
When things get really bad, medication can help get the ball rolling enough that counselling and exercise start to take effect and can help with the healing process.
So, what about now?
Do you think it’s possible that your imagination just might be trying to kill you?
Book recommendation…
If you are interested in learning more, I highly recommend you check out Why Zebras Don’t Get Ulcers by Robert M. Sapolsky