Photograph from Mainichi Shimbun/Reuters | A tsunami wave crashes over a street in Miyako City, Iwate Prefecture, in northeastern Japan on March 11.
I was paying a visit to my parents when I first learned about the dreadful tsunami in Japan last year. As I entered the house, all eyes were transfixed on the television, watching footage taken from a helicopter of a massive rolling wave.
It took about a minute to take the scale of it all in: when thinking of tsunamis, I often think of the massive tidal wave hitting a coastline, but here was a wave that was travelling further and further inland, losing none of its destructive momentum or power in the process.
Everything it picked up was assimilated into its wall of carnage, and I don’t think I’d ever felt as impotent about a world event as I did at that moment. On the horizon, a giant motorway viaduct was visible, with ant-sized cars moving to and fro as if it were business as usual.
I estimated it would be merely minutes before the wave would hit and absorb that solid structure too into its vortex, along with countless human lives.
The tsunami literally cut a new pathway across Japan’s landscape. Cities, towns, neighbourhoods, schools – structures built with every belief that they would be permanent were simply flattened. Churned up, and remixed into a twisted mess of chaos.
Our brains work exactly the same way when we’re in a state of extreme depression, heightened anxiety or mania. A core belief, such as “I’m not ok”, becomes the first wave and as it cascades through the brain it picks up other, unrelated and vague statements: “I always fail at things”, “I’m so weak”, “Everyone will know I’m not coping” – and throws them into the mix.
The wave becomes more powerful, and as it does so, cuts new and destructive thought pathways in the brain just as surely as the tsunami devastated the landscape of Japan.
What can we do about this?
Fortunately, we don’t have to feel as impotent as we did as those horrific images unfolded before us in March, 2011. While there’s little we can do to stop the earth’s natural forces, we are capable of exercising a great deal of control over our internal ones.
My counselor Lyndon talked to me this week about the “thinking mind” and the “observing mind”. The thinking mind is on the ground, either waiting for the wave to approach or has already been hit by it. At our worst times, our thinking mind is at the mercy of the wave, clinging on to the nearest piece of driftwood for survival and incapable of any sense of perspective because sheer survival is the overriding thought.
The observing mind is more like the news cameras in the helicopter that relayed those awful images to the world. While they were able to do little in the way of actually helping, they possessed one important thing that those on the ground did not: perspective.
They were able to assess the horror in a detached way, doubtless feel the emotion of it, but because their very survival was not at stake, it allowed them to think.
We can do the same thing when a thought tsunami hits. Slowing down, breathing, and mentally transporting ourselves from the ground to that helicopter, so it’s possible to objectively assess negative thoughts and core beliefs and challenge them with evidence from reality.
I’ve mentioned before that our brains love narratives, and will happily piece together stories from unrelated flotsam and jetsam in our heads. Just like a tsunami, our brains in a state of depression, anxiety or mania are not picky – they’ll hoover up any piece of negativity in their path and add it to the soup.
Take time out during a thought tsunami. Sit in a chair, or even lay down if you have to. Concentrate on your breathing, close your eyes, and grab that lifeline to the helicopter.
Unlike the poor victims of the Japanese tsunami, we have the power to stop our landscape and lives from being destructively altered by attacks from within.
I really found this article enlightening. I, in a way apply this method a work. In a stressful job as an apprentice chef you dumped on constantly and after a few hours of negativity it really builds up to the point where you just want to explode or retroactively you’re just so over filled with negativity that it washes over your entire being. I’ve been blessed (and cursed at times) with a defiant personaility and because of this and the kind of person I am I refuse to take it lying down and this also includes depressive thoughts that are unessasary. I’ve used the whole ‘helicopter’ perspective train of thought before and it has worked at least 80% of the time, the other 20% is generally unleashed on the boxing bag at the gym. Lol. But it’s all about not letting it get to this point to begin with I guess. Finding a way to fix the problem before it becomes unmanageable is the best solution.
Hand me the boxing bag, buddy.
What a wonderful allegorical message, Mr. Banks. This reminds me of some of the neuroscience behind depression and, negative thinking in general. One of my early, and wisest, psychotherapists told me given the abusive childhood and adolescence I had, that neural pathways are created that lead to the negative thought/conclusion/reaction. When one is told something bad over and over again, these pathways become stronger. The challenge is to think differently, think positively to create new pathways. It is a lot of hard work. Now how much this is involved with cognitive behavioral therapy, I do not know. I am ignorant of real CBT and Rational Emotive Therapy for that matter. Thanks so much for this post. I, too, am loving it!
Joe S. – U.S.A.
Thanks Joe, I think there is something behind that idea of pathways being created in the brain. I’ve been doing some fitness training recently and, having always been a gangly uncoordinated SOB, my trainer had me doing exercises that on first blush made me feel like I was drunk. But by the second time through, I’d already started to click into the rhythm and movement. If this is true for physical movements, it makes sense for it to be true also for thoughts.
Mindfulness, living in the moment, managing our thoughts instead of our thoughts managing us – all these different names for the same thing. It’s wonderful. And I think mindfulness should be taught in schools but since GenY are already so much more confident than I ever was at the same age, can’t begin to imagine what the world is going to be like when their children are young adults! There are so many cliches and catch-phrases to describe this wonderful process – but the one that sticks in my mind is the one that goes something like…
The Gift
Yesterday has gone, you can’t do anything to change it, tomorrow is the future and hasn’t arrived yet – but today is yours for the making… that’s why it’s called the PRESENT!
Thanks, Craig. Distraction techniques are great, and you’ve just given me a few new ones! Now, to learn Welsh…
I really struggled with this when i first realised i was bipolar. I really fought hard to try to understand when my head was starting on its upward or downward spiral, because surely if i can recognise the signs i can do something about it. Its taken years to get to where i am now, at first even though i recognised the signs i couldnt stop it. Then i started to just go to bed when felt like it, which isnt always practical. Then i used methods i learnt of self harm websites, like holding ice or flickering an elastic band that i kept around my wrist.
Then one day a mate of mine gave me the best bit of advice.
“You’re over thinking it. We all have moments where our mind races. I just count to 10 in welsh backwards”
Now it’s a clique but, from the film Assassin, i simply say the classic line ‘i never did care about the little things’ over and over.
The basis of it is that to just take your mind to a familiar place or state of mind, do something random and distract yourself from what you are thinking.
Loving this blog. Thankyou xxx Craig, Wales, UK