Survival System, our essential ‘safety software package’.
From the book The Mind Shaman-
“Let’s first explore the survival system and how it operates. This is an essential ‘safety software package’ operating from your unconscious mind that has the top priority task of protecting you from any physical or emotional danger. It has been your best friend and your worst enemy. On one hand, it has been a lifesaver—protecting you from physical and emotional damage, but on the other hand, it has been the cause of most of your fears, anxiety, and depression.
“It sounds like a crazy contradiction, but you will get it as we will explore this system further. Our survival system operates like most commercial security systems available on the market. It compares all the data collected by our senses (as well as our thoughts and emotions) with a list of possible threats. In the case a match is found, it responds by using a priority defense protocol. Here are two examples of commercial defense systems that operate in a similar way. First, look at how your antivirus protects your PC. It constantly compares all the files that you download with a list of already discovered viruses and takes a defensive action every time a match is identified. Now look at the safety system used by the army to protect a post in a war zone. It works in a similar way. Radar and other equipment and detecting devices are constantly scanning the air and the ground according to a list of all possible threats. If they encounter a match, they automatically trigger a real-time defense protocol that may include alarms, offensive responses, etc. Another good example is our own immune system that filters everything that enters the body against a list of previously identified threats and tries to attack and destroy the recognized hazards.
“Let’s re-look now at our own safety system. Our brain constantly collects and processes millions of data derived from three typical sources: (1) the external data captured by our senses: eyes, ears, smell, taste, touch, psychic, etc.; (2) the internal data generated by our body—the list of these are endless; however, the ones perceivable are physical pleasure, pain, and discomfort; and (3) the self-generated data originating from the mind such as thoughts, feelings, and emotions. All of this data is filtered by the survival system and compared with a list of ‘dangerous’ items. If a match is identified, the survival system will believe that you are in danger and activate a defense protocol. The defense protocol typically consists of a shot of cortisol in order to sustain a fight-or-flight response followed by a warning, such as anxiety, fear, or panic. This is lifesaving in case of a real threat. If, instead, this process is triggered by mistake thousands of times a day, it can seriously affect your quality of life.
“You may wonder how this can happen if the mind is so perfect? The answer is simple. The survival system relies on a list of threats built throughout your life. This includes the period of pre-birth and childhood—periods where your mind is not developed enough to understand what is really dangerous and what is not. Therefore, we rely on our parents’ and caretakers’ guidance. If our folks or teachers are scared or angry or abusive people or just unable to create a safe environment for us, our assessment of danger is confused, and many things that are virtually safe are going to be listed by your young mind as dangerous. Some of these ‘dangerous items’ may be current in our daily life, so they will be constantly engaging your survival system in a totally unnecessary and highly crippling defense process. Imagine the nightmare if, in the army post that we mentioned before, all the sirens and the defense responses are constantly engaged without actual threats.
“Safety is the first priority, because it is survival, and so our brains allocate as much energy as is required to keep us safe. This is perfect in a real emergency situation because it is all about surviving the danger. But it becomes extremely challenging if this process is constant and unnecessary. It reduces the power of the brain that can be used for daily tasks. People affected by an overactive survival system use only a fraction of their thinking power since the rest is engaged by the survival process. This creates issues with procrastination, lack of creativity, resistance to engage in new projects or developing the existing ones, learning, and loss of energies to the extent that can lead to depression. Depression is lack of processing capability in the brain to accomplish the daily tasks, since virtually all of your brain’s resources are being used to fight or flight false threats.
“How can we fix that? Most therapies focus on providing coping mechanisms to help you to live with some of those ‘dangerous items’ as best as you can or they try to desensitize you by making you accustomed to experiencing these triggers without responding to them. We do something much simpler and certainly more effective—we clear from that list all the items that are not dangerous. This disengages the brain from all that unnecessary work. This is a rather simple procedure that I guess most people will use periodically in the future in order to reset their list of fears. It doesn’t make any sense to carry the fears and anxiety that we developed when we were babies or kids throughout our adult life.” – The Mind Shaman