Control Gained is Control Maintained

That’s Control’s Motto

The brain’s only function is to think, think, think all the time, nonstop 24-7. What are the odds we might think inappropriate thoughts that become suppressed under Control’s ruthless determination to make sure we don’t have too much fun? (We really must think of a more descriptive name for Control.  Thoughts?) How to get Control‘s attention.  It takes a paradigm shift of the magnitude of a 2 x 4 blow to the forehead to convince Control to lower its guard long enough to hold a decent discussion – and it better be important or enter the wrath of Control interrupted.

Monitor the Memories

Chaos, on the other hand, takes to extremes any and all thoughts, ideas, scenarios to present to the self as viable possibilities for action.  No conscience what so ever. The psyche (mySelf) doesn’t stand a chance against a random below the belt hit if we don’t govern the thoughts Chaos ad Control send over. We were intrigued by the simplicity of the ERG theory (Existence, Relatedness and Growth) which prompted me to visually identify and divide my Shebrain into 3 distinct personalities.

• Existence – protector – denies self examination for our own good
• Growth – Always learning – the judge and decider
• Chaos – the unspeakable – provider of inappropriate, salacious, tawdry, painful, wrong thoughts and memories

Control and Chaos seem content making life miserable, so why not develop a style of super introspection to examine the critic’s critiques. We devised a mind map as useful visual guide to travel or brain-walk through those 3 o’clock a.m. reoccuring, anxiety producing memories. It occurred to us a good idea to apply rationality and reason to examine, identify and categorize our troubling, unresolved, anxiety-producing thoughts/memories. When we feel anxiety at at 3:00a.m. the triangle of me, myself and I come together to discuss the source of these feelings, their validity, meaningfulness, importance. Together we work to identify and resolve the cause of the anxiety or guilt feeling. Identify the anxiety. Animal, Vegetable or Mineral? Does it threaten survival?

• Food
• Money
• Job

Related to an unresolved memory?

• Parents
• Children
• Boss

The mind map helps us break the issues down, take them apart and methodically examine thoughts or memories individually, through the steps in the map to examine objectively, Ask the hard questions

• What is the value of the thought or memory?
• Is it a stereotype?
• Can it be updated?
• Is it necessary to keep?
• Is it worthy of keeping?
• Worthy of consideration?

What gave us the idea of this psychological brain map was the Sherlock Mind Palace where he stores knowledge in categories, rooms and closets for orderly retrieval. Why not apply that same organization technique with thoughts and memories?  A quiet orderly thought process to sort of defrag the brain to get rid of the useless, meaningless and unresolvable and unwelcome left-over, obsolete junk memories. We’re pretty sure Sherlock didn’t invent the Mind Palace and as far as we know a similar Theory of Pat by another name might just be a well known technique…to other people. The Theory of Pat seems to work for us.  These days once we start feeling anxious we stop everything to ask the Self to find the memory that triggered this feeling so we can examine and run it through the BrainMap.