Language and Mindfulness - Understanding Psychodynamics and The Internal Monologue
The Monkey Mind
I’m anxious.
Is that all you’ve got to say?
No. Do you want to hear the rest of it?
Let’s give it a crack.
I’m anxious because I’m worried that …
(rambling)
… and that’s why I think my life is about to fall apart and that’s why I’m anxious.
Wow. And you believe all of this?
Yea.
Have you considered that these thoughts may not be true?
No, they’re in my head so they’ve got to be true.
In Buddhism, there’s the concept of the monkey mind, the mind that is unsettled, restless, uncontrollable, and capricious. If you’ve ever had a conversation with somebody like the one above about an intense feeling such as anxiety, depression, or rage, you’ve accessed the monkey mind. The monkey mind typically runs in the background throughout the day. If we want to use the analogy of computers for minds, we can liken the monkey mind to having 30 tabs open on Chrome that eat up RAM and slow down the whole machine. The mistake we make is thinking that the monkey mind is inherently part of us, just as we think that those 30 tabs are actually part of the computer as opposed to processes that can be shut down.
So how do we start getting a handle on the monkey mind? And if we’re not our monkey minds, then what are we? What is the concept of “I”? To answer these questions, we start at a matter of language and observation.
Model Agnosticism Turned Inwards - Or the Curse of Blending
If you ever get hijacked by an emotion like our anxious friend who we introduced earlier, you would want to dis-I-dentify with the emotion and recognize it as a temporary experience. Instead of saying “I’m anxious”, we’d say “I’m experiencing anxiety”. The aim is to manipulate the language in our internal dialogue as much as possible to honor the subjectivity of our experience. Any verbs of the form “to be” or verbs that act as descriptions add on some notion of appearance or perception. Here are some examples of changing things accordingly:
I am anxious → I am experiencing anxiety
My friend is ignoring me → I perceive that my friend is doing something that I believe is ignoring me
This country has a terrible leader → I believe that this country has a terrible leader
I am scared because I’m worried about failing my interview → I am experiencing fear because I am experiencing worry about the possibility of failing my interview
The mystic Robert Anton Wilson would call this model agnosticism, specifically an agnosticism to notions of identity. In his book Quantum Psychology, he discusses the concept of reality tunnels as lenses through which individuals view reality. This concept of a reality tunnel may be turned inwards when observing internal reality. Wilson’s method of becoming aware of reality tunnels is to modify his language to what he calls English prime, or E prime. This shift stresses the fact that we are conscious observers of Reality, which forces us to change how we use verbs when describing reality. Here are more general examples of E prime in action (taken from Quantum Psychology):
Recognizing suffering or thoughts as temporary things that pass through the mind is the first step towards healing them. If we truly identified with our suffering, thinking it is fundamental to our being, then any attempt to heal this suffering would be akin to annihilation, which is the absolute last thing a person would want (outside of some extreme circumstances).
In the theory of Internal Family Systems, this identification with a temporary emotional state is called blending. Internal Family Systems (IFS) is a form of psychotherapy developed to help trauma patients and hinges on the idea that the mind consists of many different parts. IFS allows people to access their fragmented parts, understand the dynamics of these different parts, and heal them to make the whole system work more smoothly. We will explore IFS more in depth in the next section, but to do IFS correctly, we must have some notion of the observer Self that can name the fragmented hijacked selves appropriately using the language E prime.
Psychodynamics
So how do these fragmented selves even come about? And what can we do to reintegrate these fragmented selves so we have more control over our mind and aren’t hijacked by our emotions? To answer this question, we look at the book The Body Keeps the Score by Bessel Van Der Kolk - in particular, the chapter on self-leadership which discusses IFS theory in depth with relation to severe trauma.
IFS posits that the mind is a mosaic of many different parts and that each part serves an important purpose in ensuring the survival of the individual, no matter the dysfunction present within the associated actions. It focuses on the nature of subpersonalities, a longstanding concept within psychology. In fact, Carl Jung himself wrote that “The psyche is a self-regulating system that maintains its equilibrium just as the body does”. In humans, severe trauma doesn’t get processed correctly, and thus IFS states that the psyche splits into three distinct parts: the exile, the manager, and the firefighter. All three of these parts store certain beliefs and emotions that attempt to ensure the trauma never happens again, but they also prevent the three parts from getting integrated into what IFS terms the internal leader, or the Self. The three parts in more detail are:
The exile - this fragment holds the memories, sensations, beliefs, and emotions associated with trauma. They’re exiled because it’s dangerous to expose them to the outer world for fear of annihilation. They typically embody very self-deprecating and self-destructive thought patterns and painful physical sensations. Keeping the exile locked up also keeps the parts of oneself that hold many positive emotions such as love, creativity, and liveliness locked up, which is why many trauma survivors have a difficult time truly enjoying life.
The manager - this fragment attempts to keep the individual organized and safe and prevent humiliation and abandonment. Managers often have us adopt dysfunctional or avoidant behavior that ensures the exile doesn’t come out. The perfectionist parts of us are very easily identifiable managers.
The firefighter - this fragment’s sole purpose is to make pain go away. They share the task of locking away exiles with the manager but will willingly burn down everything to ensure the exile doesn’t come out. Firefighters are associated with destructive behaviors such as drinking heavily or playing video games addictively. It is critical to remember that firefighters attempt to protect the system and have good intentions despite how destructive their associated behaviors may be.
These three parts only integrate when the Self is able to take charge and ensure the safety of the system. IFS therapy involves understanding the fragmented selves associated with a series of dysfunctional behaviors and negative cognitions, and reaffirming that the Self can keep the individual safe, letting the fragments step aside.
While not everybody is dealing with severe trauma, there are many things that we can learn from IFS therapy. The recognition that every part exists to keep the system safe generalizes to us wanting to have acceptance and compassion for our internal dialogue and gives us a hypothesis for understanding why our internal dialogue may exist. In the case of terrible anxiety, we may recognize that thoughts of terrible fear are a fragment of our personality that wants to ensure our safety. The paranoid thoughts that come with the fear try to ensure that any possible threats in the environment are detected. Next, understanding that at the core of our dysfunction is a need to run away from the threat of annihilation allows us to find out what we perceive as trying to annihilate us. For example, somebody who suffers from severe abandonment issues, these issues may come up because humans associate abandonment as a child with death.
The most important piece to the puzzle is understanding that there is that leadership Self underneath that contains the wisdom and judgment to “steer the ship” in a healthy and equanimous manner. This leadership Self can be cultivated by honoring the subjectivity of each of the fragments. IFS tries to hand back more control to the leadership Self from traumatized patients, but we generalize this to handing back control to the leadership Self from the monkey mind in all situations.
If you’re familiar with Buddhist philosophy or similar branches of philosophy, this leadership Self seems awfully familiar. Could it be that clinical psychology has found its way to ancient theologies and practices? What does it mean to acknowledge the leadership Self as having the wisdom and perception required to keep the individual safe and content?
Tat tvam asi
It seems like every theology points to some notion of “soul” that exists in the body that is immaterial and connected to some higher knowledge. This “soul” is a pre-verbal awareness that defies logic in its existence, yet exists through the fact that we humans can formulate consciousness and achieve altered states of consciousness.
In Vedantic Hinduism, there is a concept of Brahman, the ultimate reality within the universe. We as individuals cannot comprehend Brahman. There is also a concept of Atman, which is the Self that exists outside of the personality. Within the Chandogya Upanishad, the phrase “Tat tvam asi” is written, which translates to “Thou art thou”. This phrase, in more literal terms, signifies the fact that Atman is part of Brahman. Bringing it back to IFS theory, the leadership Self is connected to the grand Reality, and we get our wisdom from that reality.
Believe it or not, Christianity has its corresponding “Tat tvam asi” when, in Exodus, Moses asks the burning bush, Yehovah, what he is to say to the Israelites when they ask which god sent him. The bush responds “I am who I am”. While it may seem like gibberish if you try to think about it literally, the bush’s response is true in that it’s stating that words cannot describe what it is. It lies in that preverbal realm that transcends language, which is how God is often portrayed throughout the Bible.
It is interesting to note that there is some concept of God throughout all of these theologies. The Hindus call it Brahman; Christians call it Yehovah; Muslims call it Alah. And within each of these religions, there is some idea of the soul that is a fragment of the larger God and imbued with “Godly” qualities. Surely this can’t just be a coincidence.
If we want to try to explain this using more secular ideas, we need to return to Robert Anton Wilson and Alfred Korzybski, the creator of the E prime language. In his book Prometheus Rising, Wilson posits an eight circuit model of consciousness, starting from the most basic form of consciousness in the basic bio-survival circuit up to the eighth most developed consciousness, which seems to be when one is in complete union with the universe. Humans are meant to develop through the circuits linearly, though development of multiple circuits may happen at once. The third circuit is the “time-bending semantic circuit” which is the circuit responsible for creating symbols to describe reality. The seventh circuit is the metaprogramming circuit, which is the state of consciousness that allows one to “reprogram” the mind. Wilson seems to require that a person use the language E prime in order to really activate the seventh metaprogramming circuit. Korzybski, the creator of that language, would frequently repeat “whatever you say, it isn’t” in his seminars to make clear that any third circuit semantic maps one creates are not the territory of the complete psyche. One could see “whatever you say, it isn’t” and the division between the third and seventh circuits of consciousness as a secular instantiation of the dual notions of God and soul from various theologies.
Settling Into the Self
So how does one actually settle into the Self? Debugging Cognition As Though It's Software gives some hints as to how one can fully activate this metaprogramming circuit, but to understand what “metaprograms” one should install is an individual task. This is to be done using reason. The most productive thing we can do for now is try to activate the metaprogramming circuit and understand the internal psychodynamics. Here are some exercises I have used on myself to get a better handle on this internal subjectivity:
Meditate every day for at least ten minutes. In this practice, try to empty the mind. If you find yourself blending with your stream of thoughts, catch yourself and recognize the stream of thoughts for what it is and then return to detaching. If ten minutes proves too long, try 5. And if 5 proves too long, try 2.
Use the language of E-prime for a day and see what happens. Catch yourself when you fall into streams of thoughts where blending occurs and then return to subjectivity, ex: “I feel anxiety” etc.
With all thoughts that enter the mind, attempt to ask what purpose they serve for the maintenance of your system. Try to see how the cognitions and behaviors are linked together. (Note, if you suffer from trauma or deal with damaging self-harm type behavior, I’d stay away from this and the later exercises and see a therapist).
Ask yourself what the leadership Self, Atman, or Soul (depending on your favorite reality tunnel) would suggest in place of the fragmented self that is running the stream of thoughts.
Try to catch yourself blending throughout the week and act instead on what the leadership Self suggests you do instead.
Your mileage may vary. But that’s that’s the fun of it.